Praying God's Handwriting
The Puritans had a saying that went something like this: "Pray God's handwriting back to Him." That's good advice for when we pray the Scriptures we can be sure that our prayer are in accordance with God's character and will, not just random ramblings from our finite minds. Below is the prayer I (Joey) prayed in our service yesterday based on Ephesians 1:3-14:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. You chose us in Christ before the ground of the world was laid to be holy and blameless before you; In your love you determined in advance to adoption us as your sons and daughters through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of your will, to the praise of your glorious grace.
Grace which you gave us in your Beloved Son through whose blood we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of Your glorious grace which you poured out on us in abundance. In all wisdom and insight you made known to us the mystery of your will, according to your holy counsel, which you settled beforehand in Christ, in whom you will unite all things, thing in heaven and on earth.
In Jesus we obtained an inheritance, having been predestined to the purpose of the one who works out everything in accord with the counsel of his will, so that we would be a praise of his glorious grace! We who were the first to hope in Christ, when we believed in the gospel of our salvation, have been sealed in Christ with the promised Holy Spirit; who is the down payment on what we will inherit when God redeems his own people to the praise of his glory!
We give you praise Father for you are the grand architect and designer of our creation and redemption. We give you praise Jesus for you are the agent of our creation and redemption. We give you praise Holy Spirit as you apply the work of creation and redemption to our hearts that we might know, praise, enjoy, and delight in Jesus the Christ.
When you don't know what to pray, pray God's Word back to him!
Nibbling or Feasting?
This past Sunday, we saw that when the Gentiles heard the good news of salvation, "they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord" and "they were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 13:48; 52). These verses confront us with a question: When was the last time your rejoiced and and overwhelming joy because of your salvation? When was the last time your joy in God caused deep rejoicing in your heart?
If it's been a while, could it be that you are nibbling too much on the mediocre things of the world that you have no room left for the great things of God? Here's the way one pastor exposed this truth: "If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” (John Piper, A Hunger For God)
May we all replace our nibbling with feasting!
The Pleasure of God in All He Does
Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord, give praise, O servants of the Lord,2 who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God! 3Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing to his name, for it is pleasant! 4 For the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession. 5 For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. 6 Whatever theLord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.
The psalm begins by calling us to praise the Lord: Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Then, starting in verse 3 the psalmist gives us reasons for why we should feel praise rising in our hearts toward God. It says, for example (verse 3), "Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good." The list of reasons for praise goes on until it comes to verse 6, and this is the verse I want to focus on:
Whatever the Lord pleases he does,
in heaven and on earth,
in the seas and all deeps.
Psalm 115:3 says the same thing:
Our God is in the heavens;
he does whatever he pleases.
Always Free, Never Constrained
This verse teaches that whenever God acts, he acts in a way that pleases him. God is never constrained to do a thing that he despises. He is never backed into a corner where his only recourse is to do something he hates to do. He does whatever he pleases. And therefore, in some sense, he has pleasure in all that he does.
These texts and many others should lead us to bow before God and praise his sovereign freedom — that in some sense at least he always acts in freedom, according to his own "good pleasure," following the dictates of his own delights.
God never becomes the victim of circumstance. He is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice. He is not mocked. He is not trapped or cornered or coerced.
A Fragrant Offering
Even at the one point in history where he did what in one sense was the hardest thing for God to do, "not spare his own Son" (Romans 8:32), God was free and doing what pleased him. Paul says that the self-sacrifice of Jesus in death was "a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). The greatest sin and the greatest death and the hardest act of God was pleasing to the Father.
And on his way to Calvary Jesus himself had legions at his disposal. "No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord" — of his own good pleasure, for the joy that is set before him. At the one point in the history of the universe where Jesus looked trapped, he was totally in charge doing precisely what he pleased — dying to justify the ungodly like you and me.
So let us stand in awe and wonder. And let us tremble that not only our praises of God's sovereignty but also our salvation through the death of Christ for us, hang on this: "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases."
Rhythm
From Ray Ortlund:
My dictionary defines rhythm as “movement or procedure with patterned recurrence of a beat, accent or the like.” The score of life is not, or should not be, an endless blur of sixteenth-note intensities. God wants us to follow a recurring pattern of intense work and then rest, intense work and then rest, and so forth. Whatever view one takes of the Sabbath, surely the six days of work and the one day of rest embedded in the creation remain relevant in some sense.
Any routine of life that is unsustainable long-term cannot be of God. He calls us to work. But he also calls us to rest, in order to work most fruitfully. What sets us apart is this. We rest, in order to work; we do not work, in order to rest. We who believe the gospel are not living for the weekend, but for The End. In the meantime, we figure out rhythms of life that make fruitful labor sustainable.
Jani and I have just returned from a week in Chicago celebrating our fortieth anniversary. It was one of those special times when the usual disciplines of life are temporarily suspended for the sake of renewal and celebration. It was a time to sleep in, to buy my wife some nice things, to take it easy, to savor the goodness of God. It really was refreshing.
Now we’re back in Nashville. It’s time again for productive labor. But the rhythm of God-created life will include more moments, on a less grand scale, of restful self-care.
We receive it all from the good hand of God.
Be Filled But Obey
In this past Sunday’s sermon, we addressed numerous questions regarding the Holy Spirit. One of those questions was, “How are we filled with the Holy Spirit?” The brief answer given was through prayer (cf. Luke 11:13) and meditating upon the Word (cf. Eph. 5:18; John 7:37-39).
In regards to the verse in Ephesians it says, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” I answered how this verse points us to the Word one way in the sermon; now let me come at it from another angle that you might find helpful.
Paul in Ephesians 5 is drawing parallels between drunkenness and being filled with the Spirit. And how does one get drunk? By drinking alcoholic things. So how does one get filled with the Spirit? By drinking ‘Spiritual things.’ But what exactly are ‘Spiritual things’? 1 Corinthians 2:10-14 gives us a crystal clear answer.
"These things [that is the glorious gospel] God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
Here we see the “natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit.” In context, the “things of the Spirit” is the Spirit-inspired Word of God (cf. 1:18-25). So how do we drink ‘Spiritual things’? By drinking deeply from the Word of God.
This truth is also made clear when we compare Ephesians 5:18-20 with Colossians 3:16-17:
“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
By looking at these two verses we see that “being filled with the Spirit” and “letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly” have the exact same results. Why? Because the Spirit fills those up who “hear the word of Christ with faith” (Galatians 3:2).
Also, it’s important to note that prayer and Word, lead to filling of the Spirit as we obey. We can’t be like the man in James who looks in the mirror but walks away and forgets and expect to be filled with the Holy Spirit. For this reason, obedience also plays a role in our being filled with the Spirit.
If we disobey, we either “quench” the Spirit (Eph. 4:30) or “grieve” the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). However, if we truly approach God in dependent prayer meditating upon His Word and repenting of our sins while trusting in Christ, we will be filled with the Spirit. That’s exactly what Acts 5:30-32 tells us:
“But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him."
May we all be filled with the Spirit as we seek to advance God’s kingdom here in DC for the fame of Jesus’ name!!
Be Filled with the Spirit
As we've been exploring the book of Acts, we've continually come across the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we thought it best to preach an overview sermon on the person and work of the Spirit, specifically from the book of Acts. For those that would like the sermon notes or manuscript, here you go:
Sermon Notes
Sermon Manuscript
Also, here are a couple of related resources:
- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance
- The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
- Joy Unspeakable
- How to Be Filled with the Spirit