Prayer

It's interesting, I was so caught up with all the announcements. I forgot to mention anything about the Winter Family Weekend itself. I'll just mention, of course, many of you were there. If you weren't, it was a wonderful, good crowd. I think we had almost 1,100 people there at services on the Sabbath, and the gym was pretty full. So I think everything was a success, and I returned to sports for the first time in so many years I can't count. So I was thinking of that as Mr. Call was leading songs. We were teammates.

We had a team consisting largely of me and several calls, and some brethren from the New England area. I say the pride of our team, Courtney, was far and away our best player.

We managed to break above 500, and we felt pretty good about that. At least I did.

There's not that long ago I set for myself the goal of reading through the book of Psalms. I set myself a goal because I'm mostly interested in the historical parts of the Bible, so I really like reading narrative. Going through the poetry parts, I sometimes have to make myself do it. I've had different ways to get into that. I remember once, it's been quite a few years, I said, I'm going to make myself meticulously study the Psalms.

What I did is I would take a Psalm, I would read it, then I would go through a Bible commentary on what it said about the Psalm, then I would pick up the hymnal and see how it was interpreted, sing the tune if I knew it, and after all that, then go back and read that particular Psalm again. Now, I can't say that I've done that a lot of times, but at least once I did that.

Other times, I've mixed the Psalms, or I said I want to go through it more gradually, so along with other Bible study, I would read one or two or three Psalms in a day. And other times, I've just read through them from start to finish. Not in a day, by the way. But usually making sure that I don't go too fast to appreciate the poetry, the beauty, the ideas. And we understand that most of the Psalms were written by King David. We see the listing, quite a few, written by someone named Asaph, that we don't know exactly who he was, and quite a few by the sons of Korah.

And I'm pretty sure those weren't the sons of Korah involved in Korah's rebellion, so some other Korah. And Psalm 90 was written by Moses. And we're very aware, partly because of our hymnal based on them, that many, probably most of the Psalms were intended to be put to music.

And I'd say more than intended, they were put to music, as beautiful songs of praise to God. But it's also obvious that many originated as prayers. You know, a fervent prayer, the essence of which was written down, and I suspect later put to music. Although I don't know, perhaps David had a tune in his head and thought of a prayer or lyrics to go with it. We know David was very musical and had the Holy Spirit.

So studying Psalms should help us with many concepts. And one of the concepts I want to focus on is how it can help us learn more about prayer, at least by example. Now, this is well and good, and I'm sure I haven't told you much of anything that you didn't already know.

But if you're like me, sometimes you've read across something in the Psalms, or perhaps you've been singing one of the songs in our hymnal, and you'll hear a phrase that makes you stop and go, hmm, I'm not sure about that, or that just seems out of place. And that was part of what started me on this sermon, particularly one line ever since I was a teenager, has occurred to me. It's in one of our more beautiful Psalms, and I double-checked.

It's in page number 82 of the hymnal, and I'm not going to ask you to pull it out and stand up. But you might know it by its title, The Servant's Prayer. One of those beautiful songs, and also one with only two verses. So it's been common for a song leader to call on when you had an extra-long sermonette, and you want to get a short song before the sermon.

And it starts off with that beautiful melody. Lord, teach me that I may know of the way where I should go. It just makes it all so beautiful. The phrase that's always caught my ear, made me stop and think, is in the second verse where it says, Cut off all my foes, destroy them they which do. And if you're like me, have you ever stopped and said, Really?

Now, it's understandable that David might pray for God to save him from his enemies. I've wondered, is that the music that David put to it? And we know Dwight Armstrong wrote that. For some reason, it seems easier to think of calling on God to smite your foes if there's one of those power chord rock songs.

I don't know if David, you know, he didn't have an electric guitar, but if he did, it might have been, Cut off all my foes, you know. But we don't want that in our church services either.

But then when we think about this as an example of prayer, you know, you might wonder, is this a proper example for Christians? You know, how do we think of those as prayers? Is there a time for us to pray such things? Was it right for David? He got pretty vicious in a number of his Psalms. I'm going to turn to Psalm 58 to see a couple of examples. Psalm 58 and verse 6.

Where he says, Break their teeth in their mouth, O God! Break out the fangs of the young lions. If I thought he was only speaking of lions, I wouldn't question, but earlier he's talking about the wicked people. And down in verse 10, The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He'll wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. As I said, that sounds kind of vicious. And yet, I remember, 2 Timothy 3, 16 says that all scripture is inspired by God, and it's profitable. So that leads me to ask the question, Well, how is Psalm 58 profitable? Particularly in light of learning about prayer. Now, I think I can answer that, but I want to set a larger context first. So set this aside, and we're going to come back to it in a little bit. But let's talk about prayer, and I want to emphasize the fact that there are different styles of prayer, and we can have variety in our prayer at different times.

Now, God's people do pray. That's one of the hallmarks of Christians. We pray. And of course, we know when his disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he didn't say, Well, when you finally get around to it, or if you ever pray, but he said, When you pray, he knew they would pray.

James 5, 16 says, The effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

That's a good reason both to pray and to strive to be righteous. We want to avail much.

When we pray, we're communicating with God. We're talking to him.

And at the same time, we're worshiping him. Prayer is an act of worship.

And of course, that's one of the reasons that prayer should be for us for every day.

And we go beyond that probably more than once a day. And there are many examples in the Bible of a righteous man praying three times a day. That's a good round number. It might vary from person to person.

But there's where I thought with all that praying every day and several times a day, wouldn't be surprising that we would pray different styles at different times.

So let's think about this. If you'll turn to Matthew 6, we'll look at the standard. So I said, Christ's disciples made a point of asking him to teach them to pray. They mentioned, well, John taught his disciples, so will you teach us?

It's probably not that they had never prayed before, but they saw that Christ prayed a lot. We have examples of him going off on his own to pray sometimes all night.

And he prayed publicly sometimes, and they wrote down some of his prayers. We know notably John 17.

And we can see from examples he didn't always pray in the same way, but he did provide a good, what we call a model. Thus, what we call the Lord's Prayer, or the model prayer, begins in Matthew 6, starting in verse 9.

It says, In this manner therefore pray.

Now, not in these exact words as a recitation, but after this format, you could say, Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. We pray to the Father, knowing that Jesus Christ is at his right hand, and we worship God. We praise him. There's a lot of variety you could put into that.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I want to, later on in the sermon, I'm going to come back to some of the underlying meaning that you could put in with saying, Thy kingdom come.

Somehow it sounds better with the old King James when you say, Thy kingdom come instead of yours. But same meaning. We want God's kingdom to come.

We also say, God's will be done on earth as in heaven. Now, we know that's not going to be completely fulfilled until Jesus Christ does come and establish his kingdom.

I always like to mention, well, please God, help me to do your will in my life. Whatever your will is for me, first help me to understand it, and then help me to do it.

Give us this day our daily bread.

It's not wrong to ask God for our needs. Certainly not. We certainly do and should. This reminds us again of the daily nature of our communication with God. He didn't say, Give me a week's supply of bread, and I'll meet you back here this time next week.

You know, it's getting at your needs, but it's also not...

Well, I was going to quote Philippians 4.19. It says, God will supply all your needs.

Not necessarily all your wants and luxuries, but we know God gives us quite a few of those. I wonder... I don't know that my mother was studying the Bible when she came up with this, but she told my sister and I later when we were grown. She didn't dare tell us this when we were little, but she told us, When you were young, I strove to make sure that you had everything you needed and at least half of what you wanted above that.

And I appreciated that, you know, because she did give us a lot of things that we wanted that we didn't necessarily need. I don't know if she ever made it quite to half, because, you know, kids can want an awful lot.

And probably it's that way when I pray to God. I ask for an awful lot, you know, that I don't necessarily need, and He gives me some of it, but not all of it. And of course, He goes on to point out, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And we could include the word sin. Forgive our sin. And He reminds us God wants us to be like Him. So if we want Him to forgive us, we'd better forgive others. He mentioned that, of course, right after He wraps up the model prayer in verse 14. If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you don't, He's not going to. So when we ask God for something, we need to strive to be like Him and doing the same for others.

In verse 13, lead us not into temptation.

Now, God doesn't tempt people. We know James tells us that. But we ask Him to deliver us from any and all temptation, and particularly from the evil one.

We want to call on God's help for deliverance from Satan the devil, and never forget in our own minds that Satan is smarter than we are.

And he's more powerful. But he's not smarter or more powerful than God, not even close.

So it's smart for us to hide behind God's skirts when necessary.

And, of course, the model prayer wraps up with, once again, praise and honor to God. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

As I said, I'm rushing through this a little bit, and you've heard whole sermons devoted to this, I'm sure, and it's worthwhile to do that. It's a good pattern for a daily routine prayer, and it also provides, as I said, if we consider this a model, room for a tremendous amount of variety, even within this model.

But I think, looking at examples in other parts of the Scripture, we might get the idea that there are other ways we can pray that don't fit within the model at all. They're totally different styles.

And I think it's worth considering some of those.

Now, I don't want to say that there's no wrong way to pray. There probably are. So we do well to look for examples in Scripture. And, once again, the Psalms provides a lot of examples. I'm not going to go through all the book of Psalms today. As a matter of fact, for some of my examples, I thought I'd better stay away from Psalms because the examples they give are longer than I want to get into. But it's good to go there. I'll mention one easy style that we should go to, probably fairly often, that's not in the model prayer, is focusing on thanksgiving.

I say this regularly. It's not a bad idea for our own well-being to sometimes make most of a prayer, even all of it, all about giving thanks to God. And start thinking about things you can be thankful for. And when you get down to it, you can get quite fine. I'm thankful I have shoelaces in my shoes, thankful for the air I breathe, thankful for having running water. And, you know, I like to do this type of thing, especially when I'm feeling kind of down and feeling like, oh, I'm left out or I'm not, you know, life is rough. When you start thanking God for the things you do have, it starts getting hard to feel that way. And it really can make a difference. And, of course, you know, it's beneficial for us as well as I'm sure God doesn't mind us noticing the things He does for us. So I wanted to mention that one because it's such a good method of prayer, but I don't think I have to say a lot on it because there are plenty of examples and it's pretty easy. I want to mention another style that I think is fairly common, at least, and I do it not all the time, but every now and then I'll take quite a bit of time to do this. And I'm not sure if there's a particular title for it or name, but I call it a prayer by review. I'll verbally look back and go over a time period and discuss it with God and sort of to help figure out what's happened. You know, this is valuable, especially where you see a situation and you start thinking, how do things get this way? You know, you ever stand and look around and say, what? No, how did I get here? Or how did things get so messed up as a lot of times the way you do that? And this can be helpful to verbalize it and go through it. I'm going to mention Psalm 78 is a good example, but I'm not going to turn there because it's a long example. And you could call that an example of just review. It's also a very good history. I want to look at a couple of shorter examples, though. 1 Kings chapter 8 provides one. 1 Kings 8 beginning in verse 22. This is the case, of course. Solomon had just finished having his workers build the temple. You know, his father David wanted to build the temple, made plans for building the temple, gathered resources for building the temple. But God told him, no, David, you can't build the temple. There's too much blood in your hands. Wait, your son is going to be a man of peace, and I'll have him build the temple. And God blessed Solomon tremendously, and he did. He was able to get the workers organized, raise the money, and build this temple. And then here, we see him starting to make a prayer of dedication. I'm not going to read all of it, but the first couple of verses reminds us in a way he reviews with God how it came to be that he was doing this.

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Eternal, and the presence of the assembly of Israel spread out his hands towards heaven and said, Lord God of Israel, there's no God in heaven above or on earth below like you who keep your covenant and mercy with your servants who walk before you with all their hearts. You have kept what you promised your servant David, my father. You have spoken with your mouth and fulfilled it with your hand as it is this day. Therefore, Lord God of Israel, now keep what you promised your servant David, my father, saying you shall not fail to have a man sit before me on the throne of Israel, only if your sons take heed to their way that they walk before me as you have walked before me. And Solomon goes on to continue asking God, you know, help the people of Israel to look to you. And when we mess up, if we turn back to this temple, and he mentions, we know you don't live inside the temple, it's not big enough to hold you, but please always watch this temple and let your ears be open to our prayer when we turn to it. But I think it's interesting he started off by saying, God, remember, you promised David his son would be able to build the temple, and now here I am, and let's move forward from there. Let's look at another similar example, and Daniel. It's interesting, it occurred to me, I'll mention this on the side, by the way, Daniel 9, we'll start in verse 3. This is not only a format possibly for prayer, but I've seen it used in movies and TV shows as a way of presenting something. Often those shows will start at the ending, where you'll see the characters in some kind of a mess, and they'll say, how did we get here? Unfortunately, some of these are when they've been drinking or doing drugs or something, and they don't remember. Literally, they got to talk to each other. It occurred to me, a movie that I didn't see, but the title says it all. It had the ridiculous title, if I remember correctly, of, dude, where's my car? You guys remember hearing some years ago, and apparently, they wake up, and they're kind of, what happened last night? You know, and they have to go and talk to people, and oh, now I remember we did this, and then we went over here, and as I said, it's in various movies and TV shows where people, they talk together and work things through, and they start to figure out what happened. I'm not advocating binge drinking, taking drugs, or even really movies about those things. Not at all. But one of my points is, if talking to other people can lead you through a thought process to clarify things, how much more talking to God, you know, might help you? We see that, well, sort of that. In Daniel chapter 9, it says, Then I set my face toward the Lord God, to make requests by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy. It reminds me of that hallowed be thy name. He starts off his prayer, worshiping and praising God.

Keeps covenant and mercy with those who love him, and those who keep his commandments. We've sinned and committed iniquity. We've done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and judgments. In a sense, he's sort of waking up, saying, where's my car? How did I get here? I want to drop down to verse 11. As I said, he recounts some of how they did get there. Verse 11, he says, Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law, has departed so as not to obey your voice. Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we've sinned against him. And he's confirmed his words, which he spoke against us, and against our judges who judged us, by bringing on us a great disaster. For under the whole heaven, such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem.

And as it is written in the law of Moses, he keeps referring, okay, it's there. Now I say, it's written. We broke it. This happened. He's reviewing in his mind. And yet, we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God that we might turn from our iniquities and understand your truth.

Therefore, the eternal has kept the disaster in mind and brought it upon us. For the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice. And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and made yourself a great name as it is this day, we have sinned. We have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all your righteousness, I pray, let your anger and your fury be turned away from your city, Jerusalem, your holy mountain. Because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people are reproach to all those around us. And he continues on, but you see how it sort of, one thing led to another, this happened, and you brought on us the consequences.

Now, these examples of Solomon and Daniel, of course, are men who were leaders in their nation, praying on behalf of their people. Now, we won't necessarily find ourselves in that situation too often. None of us are a leader of a nation, but we are important people to God, and it can be useful for us, as I said, to look back. I know I've done it. As I said, when you find yourself in a situation where things have gone pretty wrong, sometimes going through from beginning to end helps us start to see where we got off track. At least, that's the way my mind works. I'm not good at randomly just recalling facts, but if I start at the beginning of a story and move along, all kinds of facts will come back to my memory. And sometimes I'll be rehearsing this and talking to God about it and saying, oh, I see. Now, that's where I started going off and thinking the wrong thing. And that's often when I'll say, God, please forgive me for that. I didn't repent earlier because I didn't realize where I was going. Or sometimes you'll see where God stepped in and intervened. Oh, you saved me there and I didn't even realize it. Thank you so much.

And many, many times, while I've been perhaps praying this way, as I said, understanding and thoughts will come to my mind. I'll figure out a solution to problems. And I think that's, as I said, a good thing that works for me.

I'm looking for something else I knew. Oh, yeah, of course. The other thing I was going to say is, I find myself sometimes in this kind of prayer stopping and saying to God, it's like, oh, Father, I know I'm telling you stuff that you already know, but this is helpful to me. So, please bear bear with me. You know, he doesn't need me to tell him what I was doing. He already knows. And he certainly doesn't need me to explain to him how he gave me a blessing or how I sinned.

But God is very patient. He wants us to spend time talking with him. He's not like other people who might say, okay, I've only got two more minutes. Finish your story. He'll take as long as we need. And he's happy to have us spend that time, even if our story might not match exactly.

This happens in our household. You know, quite often, I'll take Connor outside and we'll go off somewhere and have an adventure and play. And we come back inside and Sue will say, well, Connor, what did you do? And he'll tell her something. Sometimes it's pretty accurate. Sometimes I'm looking and saying, was he the same kid that was out there with me? But it's still, the funny thing is I still want to listen to him, even though I was there. I don't say, no, I'm not interested already. No. And the same way for God. He'll never have us tell him about something and say, I'm not interested in that. I saw it already. No, he's listening. He wants us to hear us and he wants to help us see things a little more clearly. Now, in all this, of course, so far, I've been focusing on our prayers mostly about ourselves. But, you know, and prayer has to do that a fair bit of time. You know, we're, God made us individually responsible, which is good. And we focus on our needs and our growth. But God is an outward concern being. I made that word up. I'm not outwardly concerned. Maybe I need to know why. But he wants us to be that way, too. And I noticed that in the model of prayer doesn't include the word, I. He said, we and us forgive us our sins, as we forgive others. Lead us not into temptation. Now, that doesn't mean you can't use the word, I, when you're praying. But I think it's interesting even there that God's thinking in a wider phrase or frame. So there are times when our prayers can be, and I would say should be, more about others than ourselves. And that's where I want to turn and spend the rest of the time focusing on two different types of prayers that are largely about others. Now, for the first one, I'm going to get back to those Psalms that I mentioned in my introduction. And it turns out there is a word to define those harsh Psalms or harshly worded prayers. It's imprecatory. Now, I haven't always been real familiar with that, but they're called imprecatory Psalms or imprecatory prayers.

As their prayers asking God to punish your enemies. Now, as I said, I've gained some familiarity, but not so much that I didn't need to go get a dictionary and look them up. I found a couple of interesting definitions. One said that an imprecatory Psalm is a prayer asking God to kill, maim, curse, or send him to eternal damnation or to otherwise harm an enemy. I laughed at the other one. I said, what's left? A more simple one said, to imprecate means to invoke evil upon or to curse one's enemies. In case you're wondering, imprecatory is spelled with an I. I-M-P-R-E-C-A-T-O-R-Y.

And I'm not going to give a spelling test at the end. I just, if you're like me, if you want to take notes, you're thinking, how do you spell that? But I thought, wow, maim, destroy my enemies, invoke evil upon them. I thought, well, that's not something we talk about in sermons very often, and maybe for good reason, but there are several Psalms written that way. And this morning, I started kicking myself while I was up speaking because I had the number and didn't write it down, but I think it's somewhere between about eight and a dozen. So it's not a majority by any means.

But remember, David wrote many of these, and God called David a man after my own heart.

Were they really written by David? Then I wondered, are they a legitimate part of Scripture? Let's turn to Psalm 35 to notice. I'm turning to this one for a specific reason. Psalm 35 and verse 6. See, one of the more colorful phrases. This is what happens. I'm going to have to put the glasses on. I just turned to Isaiah and thought I was in the right place. Psalm 35 and verse 6, let their way be dark and slippery, and let the angel of the Lord pursue them. And let's notice down in verse 19. Let them not rejoice over me, who are wrongfully my enemies, nor let them wink with the eye, who hate me without a cause. That hate me without a cause comes up in a couple of other Psalms, and notably it was quoted by Jesus Christ. If you want to turn with me to John chapter 15. John notes that when people hated him without a cause, it was a fulfillment of prophecy, and he quotes the Psalm. John 15 and verse 25.

This happened that the word might be fulfilled, which is written in their law.

They hated me without a cause. So Jesus is quoting and saying, this is part of the law.

Let's turn over to Romans while we're in the New Testament. Romans 11 and verse 9. We'll see the Apostle Paul also quotes one of these imprecatory Psalms, and does say that it's indeed by David. Psalm 11 verse 9. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block, and a recompense to them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and bow down their back always. This is quoting. I lost track of where it was. Here we go. It's quoting from Psalm 69 verses 22 and 23. I'm not going to turn there. You can trust me, it does say that. It's a direct quote. But here's where we start to get some reasoning, a purpose for these calls to punish. In the very next verse here in Romans 11, Romans 11 verse 11, Paul explains, he says, I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall?

Well, certainly not. But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. So he's saying, these people did wrongly, they were punished, and it worked to good for someone else. Now, if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness? Now, we see then a reminder. God's punishment is never to make people suffer. And it's obviously not his enjoyment to watch. God always has the higher purpose. God wants to help people to learn the bad results of sin. And he wants them to learn to repent, and later gain the blessings that come from that. We read earlier from Psalm 58, and I want to go back there. Psalm 58 is one of the most harshly worded. I realize this parts of the sermon are more like a Bible study with a lot of scriptures, but that's okay. I'd rather let the Bible explain itself than me do it. Psalm 58 and verse 11.

As I said, there's some harsh wording earlier. We're talking about breaking out their teeth and washing your feet and their blood, but if we get down to verse 11, we get to see how it ends.

He says, "...so that men will say, surely..." There's a reward for righteousness. There's a reward for the righteous. Surely he is God who judges in the earth. There's a reward. There's another way of saying, what people so they will reap. And this punishment is so that people will learn that. When David prays for God to break out the teeth of the wicked and to save him, it's partly because he wants God to show that there is justice in the universe. That God has rules and standards and consequences that will come. Let's turn back to the first imprecatory psalm, Psalm 7. Notice I'm working in so I can say imprecatory about as many times as possible, but I also have to drink more glasses of water to be able to say it. Psalm 7 and verse 6.

Psalm 7 and verse 6 arise, O Lord, in your anger lift yourself up because of the rage of my enemies. Rise up for me to the judgment you have commanded.

But let's skip down a few verses to see the desired result. And verse 9.

O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just, for the righteous God tests the hearts and the minds. This is what we should pray concerning people who may harm us or make us their enemies. We need to realize and remember that God alone knows people's hearts and minds. I don't know what's in someone's mind when he's doing wrong against me. I might think that I do. I might say, he's trying to do such and such. Now, God, I'm going to get him. But we know God does know the hearts and minds, and his goal was for the wickedness of the wicked to stop.

So that should be our goal, too. Our goal is for that wickedness to stop. And that doesn't only happen just because they die and they're not able to do wickedness anymore. This is where the understanding of God's plan, of a general resurrection, of a resurrection to physical life gives these psalms and prayers a bit more sense. Because I found it interesting reading the commentaries about these. A lot of theologians and scholars think that they're calling on God to send people to hell. Eternal damnation. They think David's saying, burn them up in hell and make them rise forever in pain and agony. That's not what David was praying for. He knew better. And Christians should not be praying for anyone's condemnation like that, either. I'd say the only being that we might ever pull out all stops and pray that God would put them in the lake of fire would be Satan the devil. The one that's responsible in certain ways for all that sin.

And he will get the suffering and punishment he deserves. But even in this case, I would advise following the example that we see in Jude verse 9, where it says, the archangel Michael, when he was disputing over the body of Moses, dared not bring a railing accusation against him. Even when it was Satan, Michael said, the eternal rebuke you. But he didn't. When it comes to our fellow human beings, we do well to remember what it says in a couple of places in Scripture. I noted 1 Samuel 2.6. It says, the Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to the grave. He brings up. He's the one, he will bring everyone back to life who has lived, both the wicked and the righteous. But the goal is for the wickedness to end. Let's turn over to Ezekiel 33. Ezekiel 33 in verse 11.

We'll see an important thing that tells us what God believes and thinks. And of course, that's an example for us that we should follow. Remember, we're to become perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. So we see here in Ezekiel, God speaking in first person. And he says, Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways, for why should you die, O house of Israel? That's what God wants. And we don't have to see this as only a call to repent and change now in this life, as those who might meet tomorrow morning and Sunday churches who don't understand about the resurrection and think, we got to get people to repent now so that they don't go to a hellfire. But the opportunity to turn and repent extends into the resurrection. For most people, that turning will come at that time when they finally will know God's plan, when they'll be able to do it without Satan the devil to pull them away and deceive them. And when they'll have God's Spirit available to not only understand his word, but invoke that power to live by it. In that light, consider, you know, has there ever been a community more wicked than Sodom and ancient times? You know, God determined that he would destroy them because they were so evil. And when Abraham convinced him, well, if there's at least 10 men, don't wipe out the whole city, or 10 righteous men. Well, I couldn't find that many. So it rained down fire and brimstone. You know, talk about an imprecatory, you know, result. Burn them up.

But let's see the way God looks at them. If you turn to Luke chapter 10, Luke 10, beginning in verse 12.

Now, this is in the middle of God or Jesus giving instruction to his disciples, but he brings out an important point that we'll only understand if we realize that the truth of the resurrection. He says, Well, this passage then, in this passage, judgment doesn't mean condemnation and burning up. It couldn't because then how could there be more toleration?

Because you don't say, okay, Sodom, you're going in the lake of fire, and you other city, you're going in the lake of fire. Now, it's more tolerable for you than it is for you. Now, in you go, burn them both up. Well, there's no more toleration. But if there's a resurrection, and you say, okay, I understand you were deceived, we're going to work with you to teach you the truth, and we're going to give you every opportunity to change, you should have known better.

We're still going to give you more opportunity, but you should have known better. There's a little more toleration for one than the other. It all has to do with that opportunity to truly repent. I almost said second chance, but we know it's not a second chance. It's a legitimate first chance. Now, we need to keep this in mind whenever we think about and pray about people who are wicked, especially if they're people trying to do us harm.

And that happens at times. And I thought, when, if ever, do we as Christians who are filled with God's Spirit pray an imprecatory prayer? Now, I'll mention King David had God's Spirit. And Psalm 51 is when he asked God not to take it away, and he made such prayers. So, you know, I don't want to go as far as to say, well, no Christian should ever pray something like that.

I'm pretty sure, though, it shouldn't be a common thing. And searching for an answer, I found two principles that I think are worthwhile to consider. The first one is that all these imprecatory psalms and prayers call on God to do the judging. David never wrote, God, step aside and let me blast them.

He always said, God, you do this. You take care of it. And that brought to memory a movie that I saw. And I don't remember, I just remember this line. You know, it has some memorable lines. There's some movie where the good guy was about to take on the bad guys, and he told him, may God have mercy on your souls, because I sure won't. I'm not sure.

I was thinking maybe that was John Wayne. It seems like it should have been. I don't know if any of you remember. You can tell me afterwards. But anytime we might want to pray for a person to get what they deserve or what we think they should, they deserve, it's worth us keeping in mind what we read in Romans 12. Romans 12, verse 17. Romans 12, verse 17. Actually, repay no one evil for evil.

Have regard for the good things in the sight of all men. If it's possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. For its written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Eternal.

So, vengeance is God's, not ours. He'll repay, which is the point I was making. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him drink. When doing so, you'll keep coals of fire on his head. Don't be overcome by evil. Overcome evil with good. And I thought of that actually after the sermon this morning, Orville Bumgardner, who many of you have met, who has served in the ministry longer than I, pointed out.

He said in cases like this, he sometimes prayed for those that are trying to harm Christians, that God would cause whatever harm they want to do to come back on them, so they'll experience what it is they're trying to do to others. I can see that. That's, I think, that kind of fits with this, saying, God, you take care of it. The second point I want to make is that all of these are for the sake of leading the wicked to change his ways.

A positive end result should always be our goal, our deepest hope, because that's God's hope. He's always looking at the big picture. He's planning for the resurrection and for his kingdom. And that's where it occurred to me in the model prayer, when we say, Thy kingdom come, in a small sense, that's an imprecatory prayer, because we understand the prophecies of the tribulation to come before Christ returns. You read in Revelation of the seven trumpet plagues, and the wrath of God poured out in the seven last vials, and it's like, wow, that's going to be pretty bad. But that's God deciding what to do and when.

But we know there are some, I'm not going to turn there, Revelation 1611 says that some people would blaspheme God because of their pains and sores and still not repent.

Now, we don't pray for Christ's return because we want the plagues. Most of it, I think, we pray, God, please let the plagues pass quickly. Let your wrath pass swiftly and bring the good stuff that comes afterwards. We want repentance, turning from wrong to doing right, to lead to avoiding God's punishment. You know, repentance is a way to end the punishment. You know, if it turns out that some people are really stubborn and have to get more of that, then God will give them as much as they need. But our prayer should not be that God loads on the punishment and suffering. We want to pray rather than people realize what they're doing and turn and change their ways. As David did in Psalm 7, where he said, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end. And I think about that for a Christian who's doing it the right way, an imprecatory prayer is not necessarily a prayer against an enemy. It's for that enemy to change and stop being his enemy. It's a prayer for that person's ultimate good. That's something that does and should sound natural to us. Actually, I think that's the sort of prayer that many of us do all the time, and it has its own name, too. I mentioned two different types of prayer about others I wanted to cover in the last part of the sermon. The second one is what we call intercessory prayer, the two I's. Now intercession and intercessors sound pretty religious, and of course they are. And that's because the central aspect of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is our intercessor with the Father. Let's turn to Romans chapter 8. It's only a couple pages away if you're where I was. Romans 8 and verse 27. Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Similarly, I want to read Hebrews chapter 7. Hebrews 7 and verse 25. Hebrews 7 and verse 25 says, Therefore he, that is Jesus Christ, is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy and harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens. It does not need to alter as those high priests, meaning physical ones of the Levitical priesthood. He doesn't need to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the people's, for he did this once for all when he offered up himself. So we see very clearly Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is the intercessor. His blood covers our sins so that we can come to the Father.

I want to make that clear so that we realize when I talk about us making intercessory prayer, we're not trying to take over some of Jesus Christ's job. And I also want to be clear, we don't hold the teaching that's common in the Roman Catholic Church. That prayer, their version of intercessory prayer, means that we pray to saints or to Mary, who is in heaven, and then they'll go to God and try to get us on his good side. Now we don't believe that. We know that anyone who's ever lived and then died is still dead. They're awaiting the resurrection. But we do believe that God hears the prayers of the living saints, those of us who are called out now whom he's built a relationship with. Christ taught his followers that Christians should love each other. And naturally, if you love each other, you pray for one another. Now in that prayer, we don't have the ability, as Jesus Christ did, to shed our blood to cover someone else's sins or to take stripes so that they can be healed. But we can pray that Christ's blood will cover someone's sins and that God will help them to come to repentance. We can pray for God to apply the stripes of Jesus Christ to someone who's suffering and grant healing. We can pray for someone to have strength and a trial or comfort.

And I'm not saying that as though you don't. I know you all do that a lot.

And that's a very good thing. The Apostle Paul had no qualms about asking brethren to pray for him. If you look in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, I believe just a few pages towards the front, 2 Thessalonians 3 verses 1 and 2. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the Word of the Lord may run swiftly and be glorified just as it is with you and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men for not all have faith. In a way, this also fits under the heading of praying, the Thy kingdom come when you understand prophecy. We know in the Olivet prophecy, Christ said that before the end of the age, the gospel would be preached to all the world. So when we're, what we say, breaking our prayers down fine, you know, we say, Thy kingdom come, well, you can go into a little more detail. Well, help us to preach the gospel, bring more people into the church, open the ways for us. For many of us, that goes far back, far enough back to praying for Mr. Armstrong as he went in front of a radio microphone or a TV camera. He's not doing that now, but we have men who get in front of cameras and microphones. And as we saw in the video, we have men working behind the scenes building websites and answering telephone calls or emails and such, and we want to pray for them that the work will be efficient and swift. Let's look at Romans chapter 15, verse 30.

Romans 15 and verse 30, Paul once again, not hesitant to ask for prayers. He said, Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me. He used the term strive together, and modern times we've used the term co-workers, work together with me. It's still, I think it's a proper term, and it goes to show we've used co-worker as one who provides financial support, but I think it applies to someone who works through their prayers. We can see that in Colossians chapter 4. Colossians 4 and verse 12. Paul describes someone who's assisting him who's part of the work who he says his labor is in prayer. At least, I'm sure he did other labor, too, but Colossians 4 and verse 12, he says, Epiphras, who's one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers. You could say, prayers that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.

For I bear in witness that he has a great zeal for you and to those who are in Laodicea and those in Hierapolis. I think it's interesting that Paul had to explain who Epiphras was. He's one of you, perhaps meaning from Colossae or perhaps meaning he's a Christian like you. So he had to introduce him to at least some of them, but he said he's fervent and zealous in praying for you. He's praying that you can stand and be perfect and complete in the will of God. That's intercessory prayer. It seems that Epiphras had no qualms about praying for people that he'd never even met.

And as I said, I understand I'm not introducing a new concept to you, but I think it's important to realize we pray in different ways. Sometimes we might think, I'm going to follow the model prayer today. And of course, we expand out from there. But other times we might spend a half hour, 40 minutes or more just thinking of people and naming to God some of the problems that they have and the things we're asking for him to do for them. And that's a very important thing that we should do. We're making intercessory prayer when we ask God to heal someone or strengthen them, or to give them, as I said, strength in trial or comfort. This is one of those times when, as I made a reference to beating our prayers down fine, we make that analogy of prayer being like incense. And you understand that in the ancient temple, burning incense was part of the worship, and God gave a recipe for making that incense. And he made a case that said, don't make this for yourself or for no other purpose. But he said, grind it fine. Take those ingredients and grind them into this fine powder, tiny, tiny particles. And so if we liken incense to our prayer, it could be like, make your prayers, beat it down to small details, not like a little child praying to God at night by the bedside might say, God bless mommy, God bless daddy, God bless grandma and grandpa. You know, that's not bad, but we could be a little more detailed. That reminds me of a story I heard from long ago. I'm not sure which minister I heard say this, but he was talking about the early days in the church. I think it was like in the 40s or 50s, where there was an older lady who made a point to pray for each one of the ordained ministers every day, and to help her keep track she wrote each of their names on a piece of paper that she could pull out. Well, as you know, the latter 50s and the 60s, the church started growing rather rapidly, and a lot of people came into the church, a lot of men were ordained, and she was getting a lot of pieces of paper. So finally she put them all in a bag, and in her prayer she would say, God bless the bag. Now that's a good example of efficiency, but not necessarily of effectiveness. But it illustrates a point, though. We have limited time. So if we want to make intercessory prayer for others, how can we do it all for everyone all the time? Well, maybe not. There might be times when we do have to group some people together.

I was listening to the news this morning driving down to Pressensburg and reminded of the huge storm in the Philippines. I don't know too many individuals in the Philippines, but I can pray for them as a group. Now, I still know a lot of individuals. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll do a rotation. I might have a number of people that I pray for in detail one day, and the next day, don't pray for those same people as much, but I pray for the next group of people. And I said, break it down fairly fine if you can. And I'm not suggesting the only style. As I'm just mentioning, we need to realize our limitations and work out a way where we pray sincerely and with some fervency, but not overwhelm ourselves. And that brings to mind also being considerate of others when we ask them to pray for us. And I'm thankful. I know many of you pray for me. I figured there's no way I would have gotten this far if that weren't the case. But if I asked every person I ever met to pray for every challenge I ever had, but every other person I knew was asking for that, they'd be overwhelmed. You know, they can't... There's limitations. So, you know, I try to restrict how much I call on other people. And in some ways, I've done that. I remembered another lesson from a professor back when in my college days. He was there teaching, but he mentioned before that when he was out in the field of Pastoring, he said, he told us that there was a group of older ladies, widows in the church, that he would go to some of them when he had a really severe problem and say, this is a serious problem. I'm asking you to pray for this. He didn't come to them for just anything. But he said, when it was serious, he said, they were my secret weapons in prayer. You know, and that stuck in my mind. I used to use my grandmother for that, because I think God does have a special place for widows in the church. And now that she's not here to talk about it, I'll mention I did that a few times with Naomi Ruggles. You know, I knew that she was close to God, and I could come to her, and it wouldn't go to anyone else, and I'd ask her for particular things. And, you know, I'm not saying that about me in particular. We can all do that. We can have certain confidants of people. We don't ask them to pray for everything, but we go to certain people at certain times, and they'll know that you mean business, because you don't come to them for just everything at every time. Now, last point I want to add to this. If you go to 1 Timothy 2, I want to add that our intercessory prayer doesn't have to be only for called-out Christians.

1 Timothy 2, verse 1, Paul says, Therefore I exert, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and become the knowledge of the truth.

Eventually, all those people will know the one true God. They might not know Him now. Matter of fact, we know a lot of them positively don't, but that time will come. But right now, God does know them, and we certainly can pray for them now. I'm reminded in Samuel when the people of Israel came to Samuel and said, Make us a king so we can be like the other nations. And he said, Oh, he wasn't happy about that, but God told him, No, no, go ahead, make him a king, but let him know what they're getting into. And afterwards, at one point, he said, Oh, we've sinned. We've done evil doing this. Please don't leave us. And Samuel said, and this is in Samuel 12 verse 23. I'm not going to turn there, but he said, Far be it from me that I should sin against God and cease Him to pray for you. So that it would be a sin for me to stop praying for you. And he wasn't talking about a group of converted people. Now you could make the case, well, he was Samuel. He was God's representative on earth. Of course, it was his job to pray for the people. Yeah, but who is God's representative on earth now, if not the called out ones of his church? In some ways, it's our job to pray for those people. Because if we don't pray for them, who will? Now, I should qualify that because I don't think that God has turned a completely deaf ear to people that he hasn't called. He sees and hears everything. But he's built a special relationship with us, and he's listening to our prayers, perhaps in a different way. And so it's not wrong for us to pray for our leaders, for people to have understanding. Maybe to God save them and us from the wrong decisions they might want to make. I don't know, but as I said, if we don't pray for the people of the world, who will? So I wanted, as I said, to look at prayer in a little bit different way today. Realize that our communication with God can and should include perhaps as much variety as there is variety in the things we experience in life and in the way we feel about things. You know, we can pray and thank God. We can praise God. We can look back and reflect with Him, talk things through with Him. At times, we may share our concerns, even our feelings, even harsh feelings about those who are doing wrong, people who have made themselves enemies with us.

But of course, we should keep in mind that our ultimate goal is for every person to come to repentance and to be in God's family, because that's God's ultimate goal. And of course, there it's good for us to take our mind and focus off ourselves and remember that God hears the prayers, hears our prayers for others. So we should pray for others. We should intercede for them. And as I said, we do. I want to encourage us to continue doing that. I barely touched the surface. There's a lot of variety. But knowing that there are so many different ways we could pray to God, it makes it easy for us to do what Paul said and always pray. So let's be doing that.