Episode Transcript
Well good morning to our 10 o'clock Bible study group.
In fact we have several 10 o'clock Bible study groups don't we?
Mine and Brother Fulton's and then a couple of the children's groups back there.
We also have an 11 o'clock Bible study group which consists of all the 10 o'clock Bible study group members and then a few stragglers who didn't make it to the 10 o'clock group.
And you know the only difference in what we do now and what we do in about an hour is that we add a scripture memory verse and some congregational singing but it's the same thing because the central feature feature at 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock and in 7 o'clock Wednesday night is Bible study.
And I guess you couldn't have guessed that could you?
I taught adult Bible study at another church for about seven years and it was followed by what we used to call big church.
Y'all say that when you were a kid or going to big church or sometimes we call it the worship service and I always wondered why Sunday school didn't qualify as a worship service but it does.
It is.
We worship God in spirit and truth, the truth of His Word.
An old pastor once told a congregation at a church where I used to attend and taught Sunday school, that old pastor told our congregation that Sunday school was like the salad and his preaching was the main course and that's a bunch of hogwash.
Don't you ever accept that premise that Sunday school is anything less?
Now that's if the Bible's being taught.
I'm teaching from the same Bible brother Fulton is.
When God's Word is taught it's always the main course and it doesn't matter what hour it's happening.
Alright well let's look at our main course today.
2 Kings chapter 19, 2 Kings chapter 19, and we left off in verse 4 last week.
I'm glad to have you all here and those who are joining on the internet and in our last study King Hezekiah's representatives which if you remember included Eliakim and Shepna and then it said the elders of the priests also went.
So it wasn't just two or three of them, it was several of them.
That all of these men were speaking to Isaiah the prophet about what Rab Sheikah, the Assyrian military leader, had told Judah.
And we look back at verse 4 and let's just read that again 2 Kings 19 verse 4 where these men say to Isaiah it may be the Lord thy God will hear all the words of Rab Sheikah whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God and will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.
And as we learned last week all of Rab Sheikah's words amounted to one thing.
Every promise, every threat, everything he said it amounted to one thing.
He reproached the living God.
We spent some time learning what that word meant and it brought us to an important point and that is the world mocks the church and treats it disrespectfully just like Assyria did Judah.
Judah was supposed to represent God's people.
But when the world mocks the church and treats it disrespectfully, meaning you, not the building but you and me, that reproach is really against the living God.
And it's only because a believer is in Jesus Christ by faith that he's persecuted at all.
And our identity is in Christ so that's who's actually being persecuted.
And we have to remind ourselves of that because it's easy to take personal offense to the things that the world says about the church.
Let's look at a passage that will help us understand this a little bit further if you'll just mark down Acts chapter 9 verses 1 through 5.
Acts chapter 9 verses 1 through 5 where it says, "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues."
That if he found any of this way, that means any Christians, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.
So he was getting arrest warrants from the priests to bring Christians to Jerusalem.
This was before Saul became Paul.
He was an unbeliever at this time.
"And as he journeyed he came near Damascus and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven and he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him."
Now listen to what the voice says.
"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"
He didn't say, "Why are you persecuting these men and women?
Why are you arresting these men and women?"
He said, "Why persecute us thou me?"
And he said, "Who art thou Lord?"
And the Lord said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks or the ox-goats."
So we learn from just looking at those five verses that even though Saul was threatening and slaughtering the Christians, he stood at the area where Stephen was stoned to death.
So he was a Christian killer, not just a Christian persecutor or a Christian arrestor.
And of all those people that he killed and arrested and mocked and said they were committing blasphemy, Jesus said, "You're persecuting me.
That's who all this is against.
It's me and why are you doing it?"
Now wait a minute, that passage says that Paul was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.
But Jesus said, "Why persecute us thou me?"
And there you go.
Even though the bodily persecution of Jesus' disciples, arresting them, beating them, imprisoning them, even killing them, even though that was very real, just ask Stephen, it was Jesus who was being persecuted then and that's who's being persecuted today.
And both the people of Judah that we're reading about and Christians today have to understand that it's not we who are being persecuted but our Lord.
It always has been, it always will be until that ends.
Until Jesus brings an end to that.
Now what would the result be if we really understood and embraced that the world's hatred of us as the Assyrians hatred of Judah is was really directed toward Jesus, that it was really directed toward the living God.
Well when you understand and accept that that is the case then you won't be worried about pleasing the world.
Now we naturally want to please people don't we?
We want to, when we're little kids if we find out that something makes our mom or daddy happy we like to do that.
You see a maybe a little girl or boy bring his mom of flowers from the garden even though they were her fresh flower she just planted because it makes her happy or a little boy fix something or do something he thinks makes his dad or mom happy.
We like to do that and we carry that out into the world.
Nobody likes for somebody to be angry with them or upset with them.
If you're talking to somebody and they frown at what you're saying and start shaking their head it bothers you.
Now what you do with that makes a big difference and so what the church has done and I use that term in the way that people use it the church not the true Lord's Church in every case but the churches have done is seen that the world doesn't like the way that they did business and so they've changed the way they do business.
But when you accept that it's not you who they're talking bad about even though they may use your name it's not you whom they are persecuting it's Jesus then you'll let Jesus handle what the world says about him and how the world thinks about him and reproaches him like the Assyrians did.
You'll remember that you're one with him so what happens to him is or what happens to you is happening to him.
You're in him by faith in his finished work at the cross.
You rose again with him from the dead and it was not the Assyrian threat against Judah that Judah's messengers declared so much as it was that Rabshika was sent to reproach the living God.
That's what he did.
They didn't go to Isaiah and say did you hear what he said to us?
Why he said this about our fig trees and this about our cisterns and all that?
He said Rabshika's come to reproach the living God.
Now let's look at a passage from a very familiar event told in 1st Samuel chapter 17 and this was where David accepted the challenge against the Philistine giant Goliath and as he faced off with Goliath there were many things he could have said but he stated these words in verse 45 that's 1st Samuel 17 verse 45.
"Then said David to the Philistine thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear and with a shield but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts the God of the armies of Israel whom thou hast defied."
Now Goliath had challenged anybody from Israel to step up.
Send your best man step up and even Saul whom the Bible says was head and shoulders in stature above all the other Jews didn't step forward.
He just froze.
David said I'll go and so when he went he didn't say Goliath do you realize you've slandered my king?
Do you realize you've belittled all of these Israelites my brothers and sisters or do you realize who you're talking to?
He said you have defied the Lord God the God of the armies of the Lord of Israel.
David did not come in his own name.
He came in the name of the Lord and Goliath had not just defied the children of Israel although he had done that he'd defied the God of the armies of Israel and David did nothing.
Here's David's response.
He didn't say well hey let's see if we can work this out.
Maybe there's a way that we can get along.
I'll give a little, you give a little and the Philistines and the children of Israel can become friends again and all of that.
Well that was the reason they were having this trouble in the first place is that the children of Israel had become friends with the nations like the Philistines.
God said drive them out.
They didn't do it.
They didn't do it all the way back to Joshua's time and forward.
They didn't drive the Canaanite out of the land completely and so now they have this problem but David did not try to get the Philistine giant to like him or to like Israel.
He came in the name of the Lord and believers in churches need to realize and embrace that we are not trying to get the world to like us.
In fact the world cannot like the church not the Lord's church.
It can't.
So churches need to stop pandering to the world to get them to like them.
How is it that the church right next door to us and I researched this I'm not slandering anybody.
How is it that the church right next door to us has a homosexual pastor who supports a place called the Rainbow Ranch which is a gay and lesbian campground.
Got it on his Facebook page.
Wrote a review on how wonderful it was.
How does that happen?
Well it happens slowly and incrementally over time.
I wish this microphone was as loud to them as their church bells are to us after church.
They can hear all this button there and that that's the way it is.
It happened over time slowly and incrementally as the Presbyterians in that church and many others but in that one said yes to the approval of the world and they just like many political groups government agencies and large corporations wanted to be liked.
They didn't want people to talk badly about them.
They wanted to be inclusive.
They don't want folks to be mad at them so much that they were willing to disobey God's word to gain the admiration of the world and listen I'm not interested in arguing with their pastor about the merits of his position on sodomy.
I am interested in preaching to his congregation and him to repent toward God and have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
They've got a picture of the Bible on their on their website or on their Facebook page and I'm interested in declaring the message of repentance to them.
The same one John the Baptist preached by the way.
You remember how John the Baptist was received after he said about Herodias and you're not supposed to be sleeping with her.
He got his head cut off didn't he?
He wasn't about to endorse that adultery.
He said not in these words but I come in the name of the Lord.
In other words the the words he gave them were the words of the Lord.
And so when we preach this message of repentance the one John the Baptist preached we are going to be mocked by the Rabshekahs of this world who belittle our God and persecute us even unto death and many of them will do that and they'll do it in the name of God.
That's what's so interesting here and so ironic.
You know in the 14th and 15th chapters of John Jesus spent a lot of time teaching his disciples about how the world would hate them and in John chapter 16 which follows those two chapters he told them why he said all of those things in the prior verses.
This is found in John 16 verses 1 through 3.
John 16 1 through 3 where Jesus said these things have I spoken unto you that you should not be offended.
They shall put you out of the synagogues.
Yea the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God's service.
And these things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father nor me.
Do you see how Jesus again puts that back on him on the Father.
He said all of these things they're going to do putting you out of the synagogues killing you and so forth it's because they don't know me.
They don't have their faith in in me meaning in Jesus.
There was a man named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and he was a Muslim terrorist who cut the head off of a Jewish man named Daniel Pearl in 2002.
I saw that video and I do not recommend you watching that.
I don't care whether you're a child or an adult.
You don't need to see that and as long as I've been in law enforcement as many gruesome things as I've seen done to the human body that was still appalling to me.
But Sheikh thought he was doing God a service.
His God was Allah and just like the rest of the Muslims who shout Allahu Akbar which in their language in that Arab language means God is good and he is just not their God he's a false God.
But in doing that neither Sheikh nor his fellow terrorists, his fellow Muslims have known the Father nor Jesus Christ his son.
The Assyrians did not know the Lord either which was shown very clearly by their persecution of the nation of Judah.
But just as Hezekiah was not concerned about his own image and the messengers of Judah were not concerned about their image then we shouldn't be concerned about our image.
What all this does to us to our reputation.
We're crucified with Christ.
Our old reputation is crucified with Christ and I'm thankful for that.
I don't want the the Lord or the world or anyone else to measure me by the good and the bad that I've done because you know I couldn't pass that test with the Lord.
Well Lord I've got more good things than bad things that might not even be true I don't know.
Well I'm glad that's out the window.
But in the world's eyes if I had a thousand good things and ten bad things what are they gonna write about?
They're gonna write about the bad aren't they?
But I'm not worried about my image in that respect and we shouldn't.
Don't make this about you.
This is about the Lord.
And let truth be truth and let the world hate us knowing it's really hating Jesus.
That's what you need to remind yourself of.
It's not just a keep saying.
When somebody says, "Boy y'all sure waste your Sundays coming up here they're talking about Jesus.
They're not talking about you.
They may use your name they say, "Doug I can't believe you go to church when doors are open when you're able to go."
You know so and so I can't believe you spend all that time reading your Bible every morning.
Don't you can't you get out and mow your lawn?
You know it it's the heat of the day by the time you get through praying.
They're not talking bad about you it's about Jesus.
They're persecuting Him.
And if we can remember that it sure makes it a little easier to take all that.
But one more thing here.
Let the world hate you for your faith not for your foolishness.
Don't act foolishly and then reassign the world's hatred of you to God.
So well they're just hating me because I hate God.
If you go out here and steal something and then people talk bad about you don't say, "Well they're doing that because of the Lord."
No they're not.
You committed theft that's not of the Lord.
So of course don't take take it that way.
But love them to hate you and despise you and persecute you.
Preach the hard truth to them and then let them answer to God in the end because what they do with that truth has nothing to do with you.
You know I've heard a very good very short summary of what witnessing is actually about.
And this very wise pastor said witnessing is not about results.
It's about obedience.
Because if you make it about, now this is my add to it, if you make witnessing about results you're going to feel an awful lot of pressure that's not yours.
He said go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
He said whoever believes is saved whoever does not believe shall be damned.
He doesn't say whoever you get to believe or whoever you can convince to be saved it's just not up to you.
So there are many places in our Christian life where this truth can be applied that it's not about you it's about Jesus.
It's not about what you've done it's about what Jesus has done.
It's not what about you get others to do it's about whether they believe what Jesus, the record that God gave of his son.
You're just a vessel you passing out bread.
It's all you're doing.
Now let's look at the phrase in our text.
The phrase the living God.
Look back in verse 4.
We are still in second Kings 19 verse 4 and it says in the middle of the verse the king of Assyria his master sent to reproach the living God the living God.
Rabshika was sent to reproach the living God.
He was not sent here necessarily to reproach the dead gods the idols of the nations although he did that as well.
He was sent to Judah to reproach the living God that's what he did that's where Satan sent him.
Sennacher was just Satan's representative the king of Syria was just a representative of Satan.
Judah really couldn't or shouldn't care less about what Rabshika said about the false gods of the nations.
He's actually right they're weak but only his about his reproach of the living God that's the only thing that should have been important to them.
And yes even though it is the living God rather than Judah itself who's the target of their approach it still upsets faithful men women when the Lord is being mocked.
So when you hear somebody mock the Lord and you think oh I hate that that's okay.
You remember that it's not about you but it also doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy does it?
I don't like hearing that.
And I would say no believer likes hearing people mock the Lord and cast doubt on the truth of his word when they say oh it's not true it's written by a bunch of men 40 to be exact and they were used of God.
Yes we do not deny that it was written by men but every word is God breathed.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
So there's nothing unprofitable in the scriptures at all every bit of the scriptures is profitable.
And as believers we know the world hates Jesus.
Judah knew the world that the Assyrians hated God they knew that even some of their own countrymen both in the northern kingdom and in the southern kingdom hated God they worshiped idols as well.
But we know that the world hates Jesus and Jesus said he that hateth me hateth my father also.
So never let somebody tell you well I love God but Jesus I don't like Jesus you can't have that because they're one.
And if they don't understand that then they don't really understand God and the three persons of the Trinity.
But when we hear someone reproach the Lord it ought to upset us.
We know it's about him but I don't like hearing it.
It makes my stomach turn when I hear someone take the Lord's name in vain or when they say Jesus was a homosexual or when they say there is no God.
I don't like to hear any of that.
But I also know that it's not me or my wrath that that person will face one day if they remain in unbelief.
And it's not going to be Judah's wrath but the wrath of God that Assyria will one day face if they remain in unbelief.
No Assyria and all the other unbelievers will face the person and the wrath of the Lamb of God Jesus Christ.
So when someone in a restaurant says the Lord's name in vain we don't go over there and smack them across the face.
When someone says there is no God we don't put them in a headlock until they confess that God is real.
We don't do that.
James 1.20 says the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
So if you think well that fellow across the restaurant said the Lord's name in vain I'm gonna go over and straighten him out.
You're not working the righteousness of God.
You let God deal with that man.
I'm going to show you that here in just a minute.
God can handle it.
You don't have to handle it for him.
Remember you were also, you pray for that person to repent and you remember that you are also once in unbelief.
You probably had a foul mouth or if you didn't you had some unclean habits or maybe you had both.
But there was someone praying for you.
In fact the Lord himself prayed for you in John chapter 17.
Doug you had your name in mind too and he had all the rest of his name in there too.
So for those who will believe on my name that was one of those in that prayer.
Thank God he prayed for me.
Now look back in your text where it says in the middle of verse 4 "and will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard."
So he started the verse off by saying it may be that the Lord thy God will hear all the words and he did but now that he will reprove all the words that were spoken there by Rabshika and will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard.
Reproach is what the Assyrian did to the Lord.
Reprove is what the Lord will do to the Assyrian and that's what the men of Judah are praying will happen.
That word reprove means to correct or to chasten and reproaching the Lord will bring the Lord's reproof.
You can remember that can't you?
Reproaching the Lord will bring the Lord's reproof.
Notice these men would leave that reproof in God's hands.
He said we will, he didn't say we'll reprove the Assyrians.
He said though maybe that the Lord will reprove the Assyrians.
Judah and Israel were weaker than the Assyrians.
There is no way in their own strength and with their own equipment that they could have overcome these Assyrians.
These Assyrians would have wiped them out, captured them just like they did Samaria if left to their own devices.
But this is wise to leave this reproof in the Lord's hands.
This correction or this chastening because God has the perfect reproof in the perfect measure at the perfect time.
Every time.
The perfect reproof in the perfect measure at the perfect time and we have none of those things.
We don't have the right answer.
We overdo it when we do do it and we don't do it at the right time.
We have bad timing.
When we try to reprove in our flesh, when we try to correct or chase in somebody who's done something against the Lord, do it in our own flesh like the person in the restaurant using the Lord's name in vain.
We just do it all wrong.
Here's a couple of examples in the Bible of where man does it wrong.
When man doesn't leave something in God's hands to handle, bad things happen.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was about to be arrested and at that time, remember this is about timing as well, at that time Jesus had chosen not to execute wrath upon his captors and these were elders and officers sent by the priests.
So he had chosen not to execute wrath upon him.
After all, he had allowed them to capture him in the first place.
But Simon Peter wasn't going to stand for it.
Listen to the words in John chapter 18 verses 10 through 11.
John chapter 18 verses 10 through 11.
"Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it and smote the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear.
The servant's name was Malchus."
Okay, so there Peter executed the wrath of man, didn't he?
Now it says after that, "Then Jesus said unto Peter, 'Put up thy sword into thy sheath.'
Wrong reproof.
That's not the right reproof, Peter.
The cup which my father had given me, shall I not drink it?"
And of course we know by studying further other reports of this same event in the other Gospels too, that Jesus put Malchus' ear back on him.
So Peter used the wrong reproof, he went overboard and he did it at the wrong time, didn't he?
He didn't get anything right.
Peter's wrath worked not the righteousness of God.
In fact, if Peter had been successful in delivering the Lord from arrest, then the Scriptures would not have been fulfilled.
God's righteousness would not have been worked if the Scriptures had not been fulfilled.
But instead of wrath, at that time Jesus showed grace and he allowed himself to be arrested.
He saw the big picture, didn't he?
He saw you and me.
Then he lay down his life for the people, just like Simon Peter, just like Malchus, just like those wicked Jewish priests and elders and you and me.
Now in another instance, Moses did the same thing, thinking his wrath would work the righteousness of God.
And while he was on Mount Sinai receiving the law of God on the tablets, the people down at the foot of the Mount had grown impatient and they fashioned a golden calf and proclaimed it as their God with the permission of their religious leader Aaron.
And I'll pick up with the scene in Exodus 32.19 where it says, "And it came to pass as soon as he came nigh unto the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing.
And Moses' anger waxed hot and he cast the tables out of his hands and break them beneath the mount."
Whose anger waxed hot?
Moses.
And Moses' anger was followed by Moses' action.
He broke the tables of the law.
Can you think of anything he held in his hands ever that was more precious than the tables of the law?
Listen to the words between God and Moses after Moses returned down from the mountain.
He's already broken the tables of the law.
He's upset, very upset, and rightfully so, with the children of Israel at the foot of the Mount.
And now he's returned to the mountain once the golden calf issue has been dealt with.
So we skip down to Exodus 32 verses 32 through 35.
Exodus 32 verses 32 through 35 where Moses said to the Lord, "Yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin, and if not, bought me I pray thee out of the book which thou has written."
And the Lord said unto Moses, "Whoever hath sinned against me him will I blot out of my book."
He didn't need Moses to tell him who to blot out of the book, did he?
He said, "Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee.
Behold my angel so go before thee."
And that angel is with a capital A.
I love that.
That's the Lord Jesus Christ.
"Nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them."
And the Lord plagued the people because they made the calf which Aaron made.
God didn't need Moses to execute wrath upon the people.
He wanted Moses to lead the people.
That was what he sent them there to do.
And God didn't need Moses to tell him who to blot out of the book of life.
God said, "I'll blot those out who have sinned against me."
And God already had a consequence in mind for the people who'd made the golden calf and he had a time that he was going to execute it.
Moses just didn't know about it.
You know God doesn't have to fill us in on all that and he doesn't.
He handles it.
Had Moses just waited and let God handle everything?
Does he think God didn't see the children of Israel?
Oh he saw them before they ever did what they did with that golden calf.
But had he just let God handle everything?
He wouldn't have had to trudge back up the mountain for a second copy of the law.
He would have done well by leaving... that's a long trip isn't it Nilda?
Back up the mountain again for a second copy.
But Judah did well by leaving their approach by Assyria to the reproof of the living God.
They let him do the reproving.
Now back to the text at the end of verse 4.
"As these men tell these things to Isaiah and say, 'Wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.'"
Wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.
That is because of all these things we just told you, would you lift up your prayer for the remnant, for the people that are that are left?
And that Hebrew word translated lift up was used very early in the Bible all the way back in Genesis chapter 7, chapter 7 verse 17 where it says, "And the flood was forty days upon the earth and the waters increased and bear up," that's our word, "bear up the ark and it was lift up above the earth."
Now the men of Judah were asking Isaiah to bear up this prayer, to lift up this prayer to the Lord.
And the image here of course is that the Lord is higher than we are.
He is above us.
And we know the Lord is everywhere.
There's nowhere that He's not.
But the image is that He is higher than we are and He's above us so we lift up prayer to Him.
We don't throw it down to Him.
We don't hand prayer down to Him or pass things down to God.
Remember where incense went when it was burnt or the smoke of the incense?
It went up, didn't it?
Revelation chapter 8 verse 4, Revelation 8 verse 4 says, "And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand."
When they asked for Isaiah to pray for them, they must have known that Isaiah was going to pray for God's will, not for their own.
Perhaps they had a strategy in mind.
I don't know what it would have been.
But they said, "We can't do this.
This is an impossible situation.
Isaiah, here's what they've done.
Would you pray for the remnant that are there?"
He didn't say pray for us to win.
Pray for us to have victory over the Assyrians.
They needed more than that, didn't they?
There's a reason that Israel and Judah were divided.
Sin.
There's a reason Israel was conquered by the Assyrians.
Sin.
There's a reason the Assyrians are at Judah's door right now.
Sin.
So for the people of Judah to prevail in an earthly battle over the Assyrians wasn't the answer to the question.
Whether that would happen or not, we'll see.
But what they needed more than anything is to return to the Lord their God.
All of them.
And that answer that would come back when Isaiah prayed may or may not be to their liking in the flesh.
So their trust had to be in God and so must ours be when we lift up prayer for one thing or another.
Now let's look at that for a moment.
It was a good thing for these men to tell Isaiah the problem and ask him to lift up prayer for the remnant in Judah.
That was a good thing.
You know I don't ask very many people to pray for me even though I am very thankful when someone tells me they have.
I really am.
If you ever pray for me, you don't have to tell me about it, but if you do that's fine.
And if you don't, thank you that you pray for me.
But when I ask for prayer, I normally go to my closest, wisest, spiritually minded friends.
My mother's one of them, by the way.
Our pastor's another.
And I don't have a lot of them that I trust with spiritual matters.
Do you know why?
Because most people don't really understand those matters well enough to pray God's will.
Oh they love me and they'll pray for me.
Oh God, you know help Andy with this or that.
I know they would.
But I want somebody who's going to do what Isaiah did.
Who's going to pray for God's will, whatever that answer might entail.
And I do that because I'm confident they won't just ask the Lord to bless whatever it is that I'm doing.
Those people, those select people will lift up prayer on my behalf and they'll ask God to perform his perfect will in the area for which I ask prayer.
In my 29 years of teaching Sunday School and 11 years as your associate pastor, I've heard a lot of prayer requests.
Lots of them.
Not just on Wednesday nights but throughout the week.
Some very private, some very public.
And I've read a lot more of them.
And the ones that are the most precious to me and the most important are the spiritual ones.
And people who've been praying for a lost family member or spouse or parent or friend have my undivided attention.
And every other prayer request, they're all important, but every other prayer request takes a back seat to that, to the spiritual matters.
And I'll suggest to you that almost all of the unspoken requests people have are about spiritual matters, at least partially.
And when you ask me to pray for you, I want by the grace of God to lift up my prayer for you just like Isaiah did for Judah.
He knew the problem and he took it to the Lord.
And when we take a prayer request to the Lord, we're lifting it up.
We're bearing it up.
And when we do that, we do it with the expectation that God will honor that request according to His Word.
He'll honor His Word in answering the prayer.
Let's say you asked me to pray for someone with financial trouble.
Well, first and foremost, I expect God's Word to be honored.
If that person is robbing God of the tithes and offerings, I don't have anything I can do for them.
So my prayer is not, "Lord, help them to get out of financial trouble and do this and that."
My prayer is, "Lord, if they're not tithing and if I find out they're not, I'll say, 'Lord, they're not tithing.
They told me so.
Please show them that your Word is true and that that's the answer.'"
And then what happens after that is in God's hands, but at least I've lifted up the prayer according to God's Word and not, "Well, God, I know they said they're not tithing, but I just ask you to overlook that just this one time.
I'm not doing that and I love you, but I'm not gonna do it."
But if they don't have a job, let's say they've been faithful, but they don't have a job, I'm gonna ask God to help them find work.
Not the job they want necessarily, but the job they need.
And that job may be jobs.
It may be working six days a week at the feed store and throwing a newspaper on the mornings before you go to work.
Maybe that's what it'll be.
Or perhaps you may ask me to pray for a person's upcoming marriage.
You know what I'm gonna do with that?
When I lift that prayer request up to the Lord, I'm gonna run it through the filter of God's Word every time.
And I'll let you in on the kind of prayer I would pray for in that situation.
Here it is and then we'll close.
"Lord, I lift up Charlie in the request made by his friend concerning his upcoming marriage.
Lord, I don't know if Charlie is a Christian, but if he's not, I pray you would not give him peace about marrying.
If his intended spouse is not a Christian, I also pray you would not give her peace about marrying Charlie.
My prayer is that both have trusted Jesus first and that they're faithful in prayer and Bible study and worship in the house of the Lord in Jesus' name, amen."
That may not be the kind of prayer request you thought I was, or the kind of prayer you thought I was gonna pray.
But be honest, in either one of those situations, can you find fault with how I would pray?
I ran it through the filter of God's Word.
I lifted up just like Isaiah was to lift up that prayer.
So if someone asked me to pray for Charlie and went on his way, that person might think, "Oh, Brother Andy's gonna ask God to bless this upcoming wedding between Charlie and his bride-to-be.
You better think again.
I want to pray like Isaiah, not like the world expects me to pray."
And I'll just give you a clue.
Never are emotions more involved when Christians ask you to pray for the upcoming marriage of a son or a daughter or their own or whatever.
That is a time when I've seen them put their own Christian principles aside because they think it's cute, that this makes a cute couple, or that these folks are made for each other.
How do you know?
One son are made for another, we don't know that.
My desire and your desire is not what are important in prayer, and that's why to be an effective prayer, an effective pray-er, one who prays, you need to know what God's Word says on the matter.
Isaiah knew what God's Word said about the matter of Judah and Assyria.
Next week we'll pick up with verse 5 and I have some more to say about prayer, and I think you're gonna like it.
It's gonna be enlightening to you.
Now you may not like it in the flesh, but it's gonna be enlightening to you because the answer, I'm gonna give you a clue, the answer has been there the whole time.
Let's pray.
Father, we're so thankful for your Word, and Lord, we thank you that we can take the problems like Judah had, like we have, and you already know all about them, and we can just bring them to you and lift them up, that we can pray on behalf of other people and do the same thing Isaiah did.
Lift those prayers up, praying that you just honor your Word, and we don't know whether you decide to heal or to give grace to a person who is sick and dying, whether Lord, you would grant one thing from one or withhold it from another, those are all in your hand.
But we thank you that we can trust you with them.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
