Ephesians 6:18; Persistence and humility in prayer.

Class Outline:

Wednesday August 10, 2022

Between the parable of the persistent widow and the parable of the pharisee and publican we find the word “faith.”

 

Both parables involve prayer.

 

LUK 18:1

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart,

 

The second parable is about the prayers of two very different men.

 

LUK 18:9

And He also told this parable to certain ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:

 

In prayer: we are to persist in asking the Father for the same good things and humble ourselves under His will.

 

People the world over are offended by hypocrisy. As believers who desire a daily, deeply personal and experiential relationship with God, and therefore desire very effective prayer lives, we understand that we must diligently guard ourselves against trusting in ourselves. All of our trust must be on the only One worthy of it.

 

Effective prayer, as well as effective lives, center on continuous good behaviors. Daily we create a life in which our thinking and behaviors put us in the sphere of God’s will and love.

 

“Why should we ask that we may be kept from evil? For the great and wonderful reason that our fellowship with God may never be broken. If a man merely wants to be holy as such, there is something wrong with him. Our supreme desire should be to have a right relationship with God, to know Him, to have uninterrupted fellowship and communion with Him. That is why we pray this prayer, that nothing may come between us and the brightness and radiance and the glory of our Father which is in heaven.” [Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount]

 

If we are seeking righteousness for some personal reason, if we persist, we will become self-righteous. If we seek it so that we can commune with God, we will live abundantly.

 

Will we be those who continually pray to our Father in faith for the purpose of living worthy of our calling and helping others to do the same or will we be so-called worshippers of God who come to the Father for the purpose of confirming their greatness and how grateful God should be to them that God has them on His side?

 

One of the main functions of the spiritual life is to make men and women humble, but in many cases, the word of God, the church, has made many self-righteous, self-satisfied, and contemptuous people.

 

People seek cheap success for themselves in their ambition, and the same lust invades the Christian church. We must not let it invade our souls. An effective prayer life and an effective spiritual life takes diligence over a long period of time.

 

Beware, fallen man craves eminence that costs them little.

 

MAT 6:1

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.”

 

MAT 6:5-9

“And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. 7 And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Therefore do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him. 9 Pray, then, in this way:”

 

It is easy to stand in public and recite prayers, and even easier to silently look like you’re praying. To enter into an inner room and privately bear your heart to the one infinite, holy Father, day in and day out; that is much harder, but the reward, which is life in His presence, is beyond what we can imagine.

 

Shallow characters are content to have the appearance without the reality.

 

Virtue is diligent hard work. We should want the manifestation of the life of Christ in us more than anything, and it takes us doing the hardest thing any human can do, die to the old self completely - as Jesus did in Php 2, obedience to the point of death. It’s a lot easier to put on the appearance of it. The Pharisees became so committed to appearance with lack of substance that their name became the standard for this kind of behavior.

 

The next parable is for the self-righteous and how they pray.

 

LUK 18:9-14

And He also told this parable to certain ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer. 11 "The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, 'God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. 12 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.' 13 "But the tax-gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' 14 "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted."

 

Jesus made His parable thick with irony. The Pharisee addresses God and so God is recognized. But the great satire that Jesus gives us is that while recognizing God he is praying to himself.

 

The implications are enormous. It involves more than simply being self-righteous.

 

Ezekiel is given a vision of the temple in the Millennium:

 

EZE 43:12

This is the law of the house: its entire area on the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house.

 

Notice the doubling of the phrase, “this is the law of the house.” This is a way of underlining: “the entire area shall be most holy.”

 

Pray “in the Spirit” - humility and obedience to God as ones insignificant before all glory.

 

This is not difficult if we simply know the truth about who we are and who God is. We are entering an inner room, shutting the door, with the most holy. That would dictate our state of mind, position of self-consciousness, and manner of thinking.

 

So then, we are to be good in character, not just in some overt behavior that is approved of by our peers. The Pharisee hasn’t swindled anyone not committed adultery. That is good, but good fruit does not make a tree good. It’s a good tree that produces good fruit. God has set about the work of making us good men and women, not people who do a few good things, even perhaps a few more than most.

 

EPH 3:16-17

that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;

 

DEU 6:5

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

 

God longed for Israel to fear Him in their hearts (DEU 5:29).

 

PSA 51:16-17

Thou art not pleased with burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

 

ISA 29:13

And honor Me with their lip service,

But they remove their hearts far from Me,

 

There are so many passages like these where God wants our hearts. Let us be careful not to fall for this temptation to outward show when all of our efforts should be on the inward person of the heart - to be truth and righteousness and faith and virtue.

 

Let us beware of practicing our righteousness before men in order to be seen by them (MAT 6:1).

 

Listen to this quote and see if it reminds you of anything: “And when Pharisaism dominates in any community, men are actually judged irrespective of character, and their position as religious or irreligious persons is determined by their observance or non-observance of certain outward forms and practices which have no necessary connection with morality.” [Dods, ibid.]

 

The world’s “cancel-culture” is a modern form of Pharisaism.

 

The great end of Christianity is to make us like Christ. If it is not doing that, then all the churches and schools and prayers and even the Bibles are meaningless. It has forever occurred that the public in general agrees with certain practices that make a person appear religious - and a person can do these things fairly easily without being Christlike in character at all. They go to church, they say their prayers, they don’t swindle or commit adultery, etc. This public expectation bleeds into Christians, who find out they can keep up appearances while they more secretly give into the flesh. Attention is turned to a few habits, the people agree he is religious, and at some level, he himself agrees that he is a good and fine chap. And thus, Pharisaism is encouraged; and men who would not for the world go to bed without saying their prayers or miss church on Sunday, show no resistance to slandering or anger, cheating their neighbor, boasting of self, being cold, sullen, and tyrannical at home, greedy, vindictive and violent. Because Satan has gotten many in the church to buy the lie that a few observances makes the person a good-enough Christian.

 

Speaking of Pride (what he calls “The Great Sin”) C. S. Lewis writes: “It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity—that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride—just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains (itchy, red patches on skin from exposure to cold) cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”