PRAY THE SCRIPTURE FOR YOUR PEOPLE
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-Tonight I want to talk about praying for your people. I’m going to start tonight with a fairy tale......or is it?
-Once upon a time there was a nation that was a bright, shining city on a hill. But that bright, shining city on a hill sullied itself and doused out its light. This nation exchanged their holy God for the gods of greed, materialism, and fleshly lusts. This nation bowed down to the idols of wood, metal, and stone. Once a powerful economic and military might, its riches were taken away and given to the other nations. Its military became weak, unable to defend its once strong borders. The leaders of the nation corrupted for the lust of money and power to the detriment of the good of the nation. It was nothing but a haven for people to look out for only themselves. The wicked seemed to prosper in this nation and the godly were oppressed. There was nothing left for that nation but the judgment of God to be handed down because of all the wickedness and sin and rebellion that permeated the land.
-What nation is that fairy tale all about? If I didn’t write that fairy tale up myself I would have thought I was speaking of our situation today and referring to the United States. But that is not the nation I am speaking of, although the similarities are uncanny. I was referring to the kingdom of Judah.
-Judah at one time was a great nation, but because of sin it rotted from the inside out and the judgment of God came upon them. They were taken into captivity by Babylon even though they had been warned by the prophets for centuries to turn from their ways. But God did not give up on His covenant people, but He had promised that He would restore the rebellious if they would repent of their ways.
-Even in captivity the people’s hearts were not always right, but there were some godly people who interceded with God on behalf of their people, and Daniel was one of them. But what they based their prayers on were not some mere heart desires, but they used the Scriptures to direct their prayers. So often we say that we don’t know what to pray, but if we get into the Word of God, the Word gives us the specific topics to pray for ourselves, our families, our churches, and our nation.
-The Jews were in a unique situation because their religious identity and their national identity were one and the same. We are not like that. We are part of a religious community which is the church which is the people of God through Jesus Christ. We are also part of a nation by way of our earthly citizenship and it is within the scope of that national identity within which we live. Now, our religious identity ought to form our worldview and how we live out our national identity. On the other hand, our national identity ought not to form the way that we worship God. Our Christian worldview ought to have some weight on what we do as Americans, but American values do not force us to conform to the ways of the world. But since we are part of both groups, we are called to pray and intercede on behalf of both. And it is Scripture that directs the way that we pray for both.
-And we see in this chapter of Daniel that it was Scripture that directed his prayer for himself and his people on both the religious and political spectrum since they were somewhat combined for the Jews and their identity. But I’m hoping that it encourages us to use the Scripture to guide our prayers so that we know that we are always praying according to the will and promises of God.
1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans—
2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
-At this point the Medo-Persian Empire defeated and took over the territory of the Babylonian Empire. Daniel was raised to a high government position under Darius. But just because he was this high official did not stop him from seeking God and seeking God’s Word and seeking God’s face in prayer. It would appear that in his own personal Bible study, Daniel came across a promise that God had made to the people through the prophet Jeremiah. It specifically dealt with their current situation. God gave through Jeremiah the amount of time that they would go into captivity under the Babylonians. And so Daniel read Jeremiah 25 and/or Jeremiah 29 and saw the promises of God and realized that right at that moment he was living in the times spoken of. So, this is what he read in Jeremiah:
11 This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.
11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
14 I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
-After seeing these Words of God, Daniel calculated that the 70 years was about up. Whether it was 70 years from the first phase of the captivity (around 605 BC) or 70 years from the destruction of Jerusalem (in 586 BC), Daniel knew that the time was about over. So, seeing this, he used God’s Word as a catalyst for prayer. The Scripture provided the motivation for prayer and it provided the content of prayer. Daniel saw Scripture relevant to his day and age and situation and religion and nation, and it serves as the catalyst for him to seek God in prayer for himself and his people. He knew that the 70 years was about up, and that means he wanted to pray that he and the nation were spiritually prepared for God to restore them to the land.
-I fully believe that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God and that it not only gives us an accurate historical account, but it also speaks to us today. This Word of God is living and power and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And because of this fact, it has something to say about me and my life and my ministry and my family and my church and my nation. And since prayer is a 2-way communication with God, what He says to me via His Word should be the basis with which I come to Him with my requests.
-So, this type of prayer might look like this: God, Your Word says THIS, and so I come in prayer in response asking for THIS based on that Word. Based on the promises of God in the Bible we pray according to the grace of God given. If God spoke a promise, then we can take it to the bank and it forms the basis of our prayers.
-So, it might look something like this. You read Psalm 37 for your Bible study, and what it says really speaks to you about the needs of the nation. So, I see the first four verses and they say:
1 Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers!
2 For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
-I read that, and in light of the political or moral or economic situation in the United States, I pray that God would give me the perspective that remembers that the wicked will have their day, but then God will have His day. And I pray that I do not fret, worry, get angry, or even fall into sin because of what the wicked do, but instead I pray that I would trust and commit and rest and delight in the Lord. And then I might pray that the day of the wicked will come to an end and the Day of the Lord would shine forth.
-Or, I might read Deuteronomy 6:4-5 “4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” And so in light of that I might pray, “Lord, I know that You are one and there is no other like you, so help me to love you with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength.
-Or maybe you read 2 Timothy 4:2 “2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” And that leads you to pray for your pastor that he would be compelled to preach the truth of the Word of God and that God would use his messages to reprove and rebuke and exhort all those who hear, and that God would give the pastor patience and the ability to teach.
-Scripture can lead us how to pray for all our people, be they family or church or nation. Donald Whitley wrote in his book entitled PRAYING THE BIBLE:
[T]he almost universal tendency [is] to pray the same old things about the same old things and that ...prayer is boring. When prayer is boring, we don’t feel like praying. And when we don’t feel like praying, we find it very hard to pray. When we have to compel ourselves to pray, our prayers are joyless, our minds wander, and a very few minutes in prayer seems like hours. As a result we feel like spiritual failures, certain that we are second-rate Christians. But now we’ve learned that instead of saying the same old, gray, colorless prayers, we can pray in fresh, new ways about almost everything we pray about virtually every time we pray. A woman, let’s say, who wants to pray every day for her children or grandchildren might pray for them today as she prays through Psalm 23. This text prompts her to pray that God “shepherd” her children in various ways, and there’s something about that shepherding imagery that transforms the same old things she usually prays into a dynamic new prayer enriched with the inspired words of God. Tomorrow she might pray through 1 Corinthians 13, and doing so leads her to ask the Lord to develop in her children the kind of love taught in that chapter. The next day, while making her way through Psalm 1, the text guides her to pray that her children would become mediators on the Word of God. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to pray for your children? But would you ever pray that if you didn’t pray through Psalm 1? The following day she finds herself in Galatians 5 and pleads with the Lord to develop the fruit of the Spirit in her children. After that she’s back in the Psalms, and while conversing with the Lord through Psalm 139, she asks that her children would sense his presence wherever they go that day. In reality, the heart of her prayer—“Bless my children”—remains unchanged, even though her words change. By filtering that prayer through a different passage of Scripture each time, her prayer changes from a mind-numbing repetition of the same old things to a request that ascends from her heart to heaven in unique ways every day.
-That’s good stuff, and that’s what drives our prayer for our people, be they our family, or church family, or nation family. Let Scripture drive our prayers and watch how God answers and blesses