Christ is risen Alleluia!

Transcription

1 Warsaw International Church Mobile Worship every Sunday at ul. Miodowa 21 (near Old Town) at 11:00 AM Entrance from Schillera Street Website: WIC WEEKLY 6 May 2018 Christ is risen Alleluia! Our news On this coming Sunday (6 May 2018), being the first Sunday in the month, the service at 11 a.m. will be a Communion service. Prayer requests Jamil, our adopted member from Afghanistan, continues to need our prayers in the unfriendly Muslim environment in which he lives. Last Sunday s sermon Bible readings: Isaiah 12, 1-6; Acts 16, 23-34; Matthew 11, Sermon preached by Khashayar Nemati. This Sunday s readings 6 May is the fifth Sunday after Easter. Verse for the week: Blessed be God, Who has not turned away my prayer, nor His lovingkindness from me (Psalm 66, 20). Responsive reading: Psalm 95, 1-7. Old Testament reading: Exodus 32, New Testament reading: Colossians 4, 2-4. Gospel reading: John 16, 23b Food of the Spirit Praying for the Lost Why should we pray for the lost? I offer four reasons.

2 First, we should pray for the lost because of God s heart. The greatest verse in the Bible assures us that God truly cares for those who don t know him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Even people who don t know the Bible know this verse. But far fewer know the following verse: For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:17). Taken together, these two verses tell us that God s love motivated him to send his Son to the world and that his purpose was not to condemn the world but to save it through the sacrifice of Christ. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 tells us even more about God s heart: This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And 2 Peter 3:9 plainly declares that God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. As I read those verses, they seem to have no limits at all. When Paul says all, he means all without exception. When Peter says anyone, he doesn t mean some but not others. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He truly wants the lost to be saved and he waits patiently, giving men and women more time to come to repentance. I say this as a Calvinist and as one who believes in predestination and election. There is no conflict here but there is a mystery we can t fully explain. It is better to let Scripture speak for itself even if we have trouble fitting it into our categories. God s love is broad and vast, reaching out to the ends of humanity. As a beloved gospel song says, the vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives. Let us have no doubts about God. He loves the world and wants the lost to be saved through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Second, we should pray for the lost because of Christ s sacrifice. Christ came for the lost. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). And he died to provide a way of salvation for the whole human race. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men (I Timothy 2:5-6). Third, we should pray for the lost because of Paul s example. In Romans 10:1, Paul reveals his heart for his Jewish friends, neighbors, and relatives: Brothers, my heart s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. If Paul felt so concerned that he prayed for his own people to be saved, should we not do the same? Fourth, we should pray for the lost because of their condition. The New Testament in many places reveals to us how hopeless and helpless the lost are without Christ. They are: Blind: The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (II Corinthians 4:4). Captive to Satan: We should pray that unbelievers might escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will (II Timothy 2:26). Condemned: Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God s one and only Son (John 3:18). Dead: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1). Bound for hell: Whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God s wrath remains on him (John 3:36b). Helpless: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (John 6:44). Hopeless: Without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12).

3 Without Understanding: The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (I Corinthians 2:14). A whole sermon could be preached on any one of those verses. Taken together they show how desperate is the plight of those without Christ. They are blind and think they can see. They are dead and think they are alive. They are captive and think they are free. They are helpless and think they can do anything. They are without understanding and think they know everything. They are bound for hell and think they are going to heaven. Ponder this question. What do you say to a dead person? Dead men can t hear, can t see, can t understand, can t walk, can t talk, can t think, can t feel. Dead men can t do anything except be dead. You might tell a corpse to run the high hurdles as to tell a spiritually-dead person he needs to be saved. Because he is physically alive, he hears your words. Because he is spiritually dead, they make no sense to him. He literally has no idea what you are talking about. And because he is blind, he cannot see the truth. That s why you can talk to a lost person until you are blue in the face and it will do no good. You can quote Billy Graham, Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer, and if you re creative, you can throw in some John Calvin and Martin Luther. Quote Brittany Spears and Mike Ditka if you like. It will do no good. You can quote Scripture till the cows come home and the lost will still be lost. Their condition is so hopeless that without divine intervention your witnessing will do no good. What is the answer? We must pray for the lost that God will open their eyes, give life in place of death, enable them to hear, create within them a desire to understand, give them a hunger for Jesus, and then grant them faith to believe the gospel. In short, before we do the work of evangelism, we must fervently pray that God will go before us. When we pray for the lost, we are saying to God, You go first! If you don t go first, all our efforts will be in vain. ( ) The Bible tells us that sin has separated the entire human race from God. It also tells us that each of us is individually guilty because of sin and therefore under God s righteous judgment. Until a sinner sees his true condition, he will have no reason to come to Christ to be saved. John 16:8 tells us that this conviction is the unique work of the Holy Spirit. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit will break the sinner s heart and cause him to cry out to God for mercy. Then we should pray that the sinner might be Released to trust Christ. We ve already seen that the whole human race is in bondage because of sin. We re caught in Satan s trap with no hope of escape. This is precisely the point where we find many people today. Sin has so captured them that they despair of ever being set free. When Jesus spoke at the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30), he announced his ministry by quoting Isaiah 61:1. This verse tells us why Christ came to the earth: The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Jesus came to set free those who have lived in the dark prison of sin. As we pray for the lost, let s focus our prayers by asking God to break the chains and set them free so they can trust Christ as Savior. Finally, let s pray for A life transformed by the gospel. II Corinthians 5:17 reminds us that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. True conversion leads to total transformation. When Christ comes in, he changes everything. We should ask God to work mightily so that sinners would be radically transformed from the inside out.

4 When you pray for the lost, remember that you aren t trying to convince God of anything. He s already convinced that the lost should be saved. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23). He truly desires that everyone should come to repentance and that everyone should be saved. As a practical point, I don t think we should pray for someone to be saved and then add if it be your will. This is one time when we already know what the will of God is. He wants the lost to be saved. We can pray with confidence, asking God to do whatever is necessary that lost sinners might come to Christ. I think God s biggest problem is not with the lost. He knows how to deal with sinners. God s biggest problem is with the saved. We don t pray as we ought for those who stand outside of God s grace and therefore sinners remain in their sin. I should add that there is no theological problem with that statement since God has ordained both the means and the ends of salvation. We must pray and we must preach the gospel because that is God s ordained method for the lost to be saved. Could God have decreed to save the lost in some other way besides our prayers and the preaching of the Gospel? I don t know the answer to that question and it doesn t matter anyway. What does matter is that we take God seriously and use the means he has put at our disposal. When we pray and when we share the Good News, God moves from heaven and the lost (who seemed so hardened) begin to have a new attitude and eventually they come to Christ. And all of it comes from God, even the strength to pray for sinners, so that in the end God alone gets the glory. Salvation is of the Lord. We need to talk to God about people before we talk to people about God. Salvation is such a great miracle that unless God divinely works, no sinner will ever be saved. Our eloquence avails nothing unless God grants the sinner eyes to see and ears to hear. But even uneducated Christians can win others to Jesus if they care enough to pray for the lost and then tell them the Good News. This is God s plan for reaching the world. ( ) Here is a powerful and encouraging thought: When God wants to save a sinner, he first gets Christians to pray for him. God surrounds that sinner with so much prayer that the sinner has nowhere to go but to Jesus. Through believing prayer God builds a wall around the sinner, one prayer at time. When the wall is finally built, God looks down from heaven and says, It s your time. And that sinner comes to Christ. Lest anyone misunderstand, I do not believe that our prayers for the lost have any power in themselves. God alone can save. God alone can change the heart. But he has ordained to work through our prayers to do what only he can do. That is, he has said, I will allow you to partner with me in the great work of winning the lost. When we pray, we are joining our puny hands of flesh with the omnipotent hands of Almighty God. George Muller ( ) of Bristol, England was known as a man of prayer. Without ever asking for funds and living entirely by faith in God, he established five orphanages in Bristol that provided care for 10,000 orphans over a 60-year period. His journals record in minute detail how God directly answered thousands of his prayers. Toward the end of his life he remarked that he had prayed for two men to be saved for over 55 years. Don t you feel like giving up? someone asked. Oh no, he replied, Why would God give me such a burden for these men if he did not intend to save them? Before his death one of the men came to Christ. The other was saved after Muller died. His point is well taken. Because God is God, and because a true prayer burden comes from the Lord and not from us, we may well believe that if God burdens us to pray for a certain person or group of people, it is because he intends to work a miracle of saving grace. If you need one final reason to pray for the lost, here it is. You came to Christ because someone prayed for you. It might have been a godly mother or father or a friend who witnessed to you or a pastor or a Sunday School teacher or a youth pastor or a deacon or a missionary or a fellow student or a coworker. Someone cared enough to pray you to Jesus. Don t think you came to Christ on your own. Someone lifted you before the Throne of Grace

5 and God moved from heaven to draw you to the Savior. If someone prayed for you when you were lost, won t you do the same for someone else who needs Jesus? ( ) I truly believe that God earnestly desires that everyone be saved. I know this is true because he has done everything necessary for everyone to be saved. No one needs to go to hell. The lost do not have to die in their sins. We can say to the world, God loves you. And we can point to the cross as proof of divine love. Those who trust in Jesus are saved by his blood. And thus we invite anyone and everyone to be saved. I should add this word. If you do not know Christ, God wants you to be saved. He desires that you repent of your sin and trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Do not delay. Do not wait. Do not hesitate. Run to the cross and lay your sins on Jesus. Come to Christ now and he will save you. ( ) Many times lost people don t want to hear our witness. Don t ever mention Jesus to me again, they say. They may even throw us out of the house because of our bold witness. But through our tears while we are walking away, we can still pray for them. They can silence our voice but they can never stop our prayers. Let us then pray for the lost. Pray, pray, and keep on praying. Never give up. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up. Let us keep on praying as long as God gives us breath. When we finally get to heaven, we will discover that God used our prayers and our tears in ways we never imagined. And around the throne we will rejoice with those who today are far from God, but in heaven will stand with us - redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. God give us faith to keep on praying until that day finally comes. Ray Pritchard