I. Introduction
Good morning! I hope you all had a great week; I trust it was full of the Lord’s blessings. I’m sure it was. I hope you were able to see the countless things in your life which come from God, which are His blessings. I hope then that you were thankful, had a heart of thanksgiving, to God. Remember, the blessings which we have in our life that are from God are a direct result of His mercy. Without the mercy of God we deserve nothing but eternal condemnation – which is separation from Him. All of the blessings we have are a result of His mercy. We thank God for His blessings and we praise God for who He is (gracious, merciful, just, omnipotent, omniscient).
Today we will finish our mini-series on prayer. The past two weeks we examined first, what exactly is prayer, and secondly, last week, we examined thanksgiving and praise prayer petitions. Today we examine the three remaining types of prayer petitions: intercessory, supplication, and confession. My hope through this series is to give you a better understanding of the absolute importance and power of prayer. Prayer is talking to the God that spoke the universe into existence, that parted the Red Sea, that walk on water, that raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, and has made a difference in many of your lives. Knowing that God did these things, and that He is still able to do them, why would you not want to pray? Why would anyone of you not see the utmost importance of talking with God? God cares about your prayer petitions and wants you to talk to Him.
Let us pray.
II. Body
A. Intercession John 17: 15-19.
a. What is happening here? Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He is crucified, just hours or minutes before He is betrayed by one of His own disciples, Judas Iscariot. What is happening here in these verses? If you look, Jesus is actually do this is verse 6- 19. That is, He is praying for His disciples.
b. When you pray for someone else it is called intercession. This word literally means “to stand between.” Here is John 17, Jesus is standing between the His disciples and the Father, as He prayers for the Father’s blessing and protection on them.
c. Earlier today we took prayer requests. As we went into quiet time we were praying for these requests, or so I hope you were. If you were, you were standing between the subject of the request and God the Father. Another definition of intercession is “favor of”, you were bring the request in favor of God’s healing, blessing, help, whatever it was that you prayed for.
d. Romans 8:34 Jesus is praying on our behalf to God the Father. You see my friends, if it is important enough for Jesus to pray for earnestly for others, as He did in the Garden the night before His crucifixion, and as He is doing so sitting at the right hand of the God the Father, don’t you think it is vitally important that we, too, intercede on behalf of our Brothers and Sisters in Christ that are sitted here in the sanctuary?!
B. Supplication John 17:4-5, Luke 22:42.
a. What do we learn these two passages?
b. Often I hear other people saying that they don’t feel it is right for them to pray for themselves because it is selfish. There are starving children in the world and they think it is not good to pray for themselves when they could be praying for the children.
c. Well, I have a solution to that, and of course, as always, it is found in the Bible. In John 17 and Luke 22:42, Jesus is praying the Garden just hours before His execution as a criminal. Up until this point Jesus had never sinned in His life. He was completely free from sin. But now we see Jesus praying for Himself? Yes, absolutely! Praying for yourself is not a sin, but rather praying for yourself is following in the example set forth by the Sinless Savior. Jesus prayed for Himself, it was not sin. You too can pray for yourself. God cares about what you care about. God made you so intricately, He knows your emotions, your passions, and your cares. So, just like Jesus did, take them to Him. Jesus’ prayer in Luke 22:42 was a prayer of desperation. He was hours away from the cross – a brutal, bloody, humiliating death – yet Jesus made His request known to God.
C. Confession 2 Samuel 12:13
a. Romans 3:23 says that “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” That means that all people have sin in their lives. As we just read, even the anointed, hand picked king of God’s people was a sinner. You are a sinner and I am sinner. I say this not on judgment, but on the firm foundations of the teachings of Scripture. If we had no sin, there would have been no reason for Jesus to come to die and rise again for us.
b. David’s sin was private. He sinned with a woman who was not his wife, but rather the wife of another man, then David had that man killed. Surely none of you are murderers, I hope none of you are adulterers or adulteresses.
c. Hear me now: no matter what sin there is in your life, it can be forgiven. Maybe you have cheated on your spouse, maybe you have lied, stolen from a co-worker, maybe you stealing from God by not giving to this church, maybe you are envious of someone else’s material things. Not matter what the sin is, confession of the sin leads to absolution.
d. Absolution is not a Biblical term, you will not find it in Bible, but neither is omnipotent nor omniscient, but we use them all the time because they are Biblical concepts. Similarly, absolution is not a Biblical term, but a Biblical concept. When one confesses their sins to God they receive absolution – the application of forgiveness.
e. Look at 2 Samuel 12:13. David confessed his sin, but the Lord forgave Him.
f. 1 John 1:9 – If we confess our sins…there is a conditional clause here that is “if” we confess our sins. If….then God is faithful and just to forgives us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
g. My friends, Christianity is all about forgiveness! Why did Jesus come? Remember Matthew 1:21, He came to free us from our sins! But folks, we can not be freed, we can not be forgiven of our sins if we do not confess them!
h. When we confess our sins we must have a contrite heart – a heart of contrition. Contrition is simply defined as “sorrow over sin.” David realized his sin in 2 Samuel 12 and became sorrowful and confessed his sin. Look at Judas Iscariot, he realized his sin, but he did not confess it, he tried to take care of the sin himself, whereas David confessed it before God and received God’s forgiveness.
i. No matter the sins in your life – God’s grace is abundant and sufficient. One of my favorite verses in all of Scripture is found in 2 Corinthians 12:9, Jesus is speaking to Paul and says, “My grace is sufficient for you, My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” My friends when we are weak and fall into sin, it is the strength of God and His sufficient grace that enables us to be strong and forgiven.
III. Conclusion
In conclusion of this three week min-series, remember prayer is talking to God. NEVER be ashamed to pray, NEVER feel unworthy to pray, and NEVER don’t pray. We have learned about the 5 types of prayer: Praise, Thanksgiving, Intercession, Supplication, and Confession. The Apostle Paul gives us two strict commands in regard to prayer: the first is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.” And the second is found in Philippians 4:6-7 (and I leave you with this command from Paul)…” 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
