Answered Prayer for our churchJames 5:15-17 Legacy Standard Bible
15 And the prayer [a]offered in faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, [b]they will be forgiven him. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective [c]prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed [d]earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.
Every year the president of the United States gives a state of the union address. Sometimes it seems to just turn into a “list of my accomplishments” speech. Sometimes, in our family, we have had a sit-down to discuss our financial situation. We lay out our income and bills and debt and make a plan for meeting or completing our financial obligations. At the end of the school year, at my school, they will usually present us with an evaluation of where we are as a school. How did we do with state testing? Are there going to be any staff cuts?
Well, I thought that it was important for us to sit down and have a “state of the church” address. Obviously, we can all look around and see what is happening at our church, and what is not happening. And we can sit down together and talk about the possibilities for the future. We kind of did that months ago when I presented to you five different courses of action for our future.
Those possibilities were labeled, “dissolve,” “tread water,” “revitalize,” “replant,” and “pass the baton.” Those options could be divided into two types; our work moving forward, and someone else’s work moving forward. As we looked at the future of Parkview Baptist, we were faced with either pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps or getting help from outside. Now I’m not going to rehash all that we talked about before, but I just wanted to let you know three conclusions that I have come to since those meetings.
The first conclusion that I have come to is that there is not any readily available outside help for our church. I have had multiple meetings with leadership at our associational headquarters, and though they would love to be able to send us strategists, or church planters to reinvigorate this work here, they have no list of such individuals to draw from.
The second conclusion that I came to regarding our future casting concerns us. I said that we had to determine whether we would receive outside help or pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. And I have determined since that meeting that we can’t do that. Let me show you something. I can grab a hold on my own shoes. I can grip them very tightly. I can pull up with all my might. But even if I were in prime physical condition, I will never, in that way, lift myself up off of the floor.
And try as we might, we don’t have the power to fix what needs fixing here at Parkview. Before you sink into despair.
But let me clarify that statement further by saying two things. First, what I mean by that is that if we are looking around at churches that are “successful,” they have certain things happening and succeeding that we either can’t do or have been unsuccessful doing. To put it briefly, we are living in a time where those who are seeking a church, don’t come to church to serve, but to be served. And there is an expectation that all the expected services will already be in place when they arrive. Children’s service, youth service, lots of kids and youth, young families, nursery, dynamic music, weekly activities. So, though we have tried, and have desired to provide some of those activities, we have been unsuccessful, and the activities have been unfruitful. That’s what I mean when I say that we are unable to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
But I also mean something else. There’s another reason why we can’t fix what needs fixing. There’s another reason why we can’t pull ourselves out of decline. And it is because we have never been able to do so. “Fixing ourselves” has always been a false starter in our church, and guess what, it has been a false starter in our church, and every church. We can’t do things to build this church. No church builds itself. Let me share with you from Scripture.
Matthew 16:18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
Who builds the church? Christ
Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in
vain.
So, those are my first two conclusions coming out of our last meetings about our church’s future; we can’t “revitalize” ourselves, and there’s no one else from the outside who can fix what ails us. That sounds kind of discouraging, doesn’t it? But that brings us to the third conclusion. The third conclusion comes from that same verse we sited before.
Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in
vain.
We often over emphasize one part of that verse; the vain labor part. We think about the futility of building a house or guarding the city. When we set out to build the house we begin thinking of all the reasons that doing so is a vain or empty activity. We think, “I can’t build a house. I don’t have the necessary skills, tools, or building materials.” “And if I do build it, it will fall down.” And we go about saying, “Woe is me, woe is me, it can’t be done. I can’t do it, and there’s no one to help me do it.”
But we forget that the verse doesn’t start by describing our vain labor, it starts with these words, “Unless the Lord build the house…” What does that mean? It means I can’t build the house, nobody from outside can build the house, but who can build the house? The Lord.
Last time that we visited this topic about our church’s future, I have to confess, part of me, maybe a good part of me, was placing my hopes on outside plans and strategies. Maybe there’s a plan that we can concoct, or maybe there’s an outside person group or strategy that will arrest and reverse our decline. But now, I have concluded that I had my hopes placed incorrectly. Our hope must be in the Lord, and the Lord alone. Until we get that correct, all of the rest is futile.
Let me share some other verses with you to hammer home that point.
Psalm 33:16 No king is saved by the multitude of an army; A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. 17 A horse is a [d]vain hope for safety; Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength. 18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope in His mercy,
You can’t place your hopes in a huge army, your great strength, or a horse.
Proverbs 21: There is no wisdom or understanding Or counsel against the Lord. 31 The horse is prepared for the day of battle, But deliverance is of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 3: 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.
Psalm 121: I will
lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help? 2 My
help comes from the Lord, Who made
heaven and earth. 3 He will not allow your foot to [a]be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. 4 Behold,
He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The Lord is your [b]keeper; The Lord is your
shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not
strike you by day, Nor the moon by night. 7 The Lord shall [c]preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve[d] your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and
even forevermore.
So, effective help and revival of our church does not come from outside, or within ourselves. The Lord must be the last and only source for us. And it seems so obvious, it is a truth we have repeated and taught in our Bible studies and sermons for years. But preaching it and living it are two different things. What I wanted to do today, and over the next few weeks is to depart from our study of 1st Corinthians and spend some time with another topic of study. That topic is Answered Prayer.
What we really need now at Parkview is for the Lord to act on our behalf. We know that we are powerless. We know that nobody else is coming to save us. So, we need to return to where we should have started; trusting and petitioning God for the answer. We need to know what we are to do. And so we need to pray.
So, all that to say that I think we need to pray for direction. So, I am going to be teaching from Scripture about answered prayer. We need to realize that God is now, and always has been our only answer. If He doesn’t lead us, we are lost. If He doesn’t save us as a church, we are doomed. And I’ve been doing some study over the last several weeks about answered prayer. Right now, I have five points I want to make. -The Humble/Repentant have answered prayer.-The Righteous have answered prayer.-The Fervent have answered prayer.-The Scriptural have answered prayer.-The God exalting have answered prayer.
And that list may grow as the weeks go by. But this is what I want us to do. I want us to do something radical. We are searching for answers. I want us to search the Scriptures for those answers. I want us to obey the Scripture’s instructions. And I want us to trust God for the results. And right now that means praying, and praying correctly.
The Humble/Repentant have answered prayer. The Scriptural have answered prayer. The Righteous have answered prayer. The Fervent have answered prayer. The God exalting have answered prayer.
prayer
I. The Humble/Repentant have answered prayer.
I can say without reservation that answered prayer comes to humble, repentant people. How can I say that? I’ve read the Word. I want you to join me for a moment and search your memory. I want you to try and think of any proud, arrogant, self-exalting character whose prayers were answered in the pages of Scripture. Can you think of someone? The person that came to mind for me was Samson.
If you read his story, he was God’s chosen judge over Israel, but he was extremely arrogant. God used him mightily in battle against the Philistines, but he is not portrayed as a great spiritual leader. In fact, there are only a couple of recorded prayers from Samson. They are both selfish. One of them, it is after he fails spiritually, loses his great strength, has his eyes gouged out, and is taken captive. After a great time of hard physical slave labor for the Philistines, they bring him out to their amphitheater to gloat about their enslaving him. You know the story. Judges 16
28 Then Samson called to Yahweh and said, “O Lord Yahweh, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” 29 Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house was established and supported himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with his strength so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it.
The one recorded prayer of Samson. The first recorded prayer of Samson comes earlier in his life when he fought the Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey and slew 1000 men. But after he does so, he is extremely thirsty. After that exertion out in the open countryside, I can imagine. But he becomes extremely dehydrated. Judges 15
18 Then he became very thirsty, and he called to Yahweh and said, “You have given this great salvation by the hand of Your slave, but now [k]shall I die of thirst [l]and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi and water came out of it. Then he drank, and his spirit returned, and he revived.
And his prayer is answered as he desired. Samson was arrogant. Even in his prayers we detect his pride. He asks for vengeance for his two eyes, water for his thirst.
So, if God answers the prayers of the humble and repentant, why did God answer the prayers of Samson?
Here’s the truth; in order to see God answer prayer, you either have to humble yourself, or God has to humble you. In both cases where Samson had prayers answered, God had physically humbled him. And I think God had to humble him precisely because he was arrogant. He just killed 1000 with the jawbone of a donkey. But yet God allowed him to experience extreme dehydration so he would know that it was by God’s power. He was strong enough to take down the pillars of the amphitheater, but it was only after spending a long time as the Philistines slave with his eyes gouged out
But at this point, Samson is humbled, and by comparison to other great victories in his life, in this one he acknowledges his dependence on God. “O Lord Yahweh, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God.”
The point is that God answers the prayers of the humble and repentant.
So, can you think of anyone else in Scripture who was proud who had their prayer answered? If you think of someone, we will look at them, and talk about it in a future sermon. But the truth stands that God hears the prayers of the humble and closes His ears to the proud.
James 4: 6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
Psalm 138:6 6 For Yahweh is high, Yet He sees the lowly, But the one who exalts himself He knows from afar.
Isaiah 57:15 Legacy Standard Bible
15 For thus says the One high and lifted up Who dwells
forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy
place, And also with the crushed and lowly of spirit In
order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the crushed.
Zephaniah 2:3 Legacy Standard Bible
3 Seek Yahweh, All you humble of the [a]earth Who have worked His justice; Seek righteousness, seek humility. Perhaps you will be hidden In the day of Yahweh’s anger.
This is a particularly interesting passage. Israel was going to be invaded and judged for their disobedience and idolatry. But Zephaniah is saying to those willing to humble themselves before God and obey; the die is set for the enslavement of Judah, but if you will humble yourselves and seek to be obedient, you might escape that judgement.
Humility/ Repentance. And I think it should go without saying that humility brings repentance. A properly humble attitude acknowledges that we are sinners, and that our sin is noxious to God. So, we approach God first by confessing and repenting of sin.
So, if God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, how should that truth affect our prayers? Let me suggest four ways it should impact your prayers, four ways it should instruct our prayers about the future of Parkview.
A. If we are humble and repentant we will go to God first.
A truly humble person is one who knows how truly powerless they are. A truly humble person knows that they are the Lord’s slave. Thus they have no power or right to do anything outside the consent and authority of their Master. A truly humble person is always aware of God’s presence, and always seeks God’s direction. We know this. But how often do we set out in our lives, with our plans and never even acknowledge God in them? How often do we do that even in the church?
Proverbs 16:3 Commit your works to Yahweh and your plans will be established.
There are numerous examples in Scripture that should be instructive for us. Examples of people who set out to do something, they made plans, but they failed to ask God first, and so their plans failed, or calamity or disaster ensued. A humble relationship with God, leading to answered prayer, begins with our acknowledging Him first in all our plans.Proverbs 3:5-6 Legacy Standard Bible
5 Trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways [a]acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.
We could go through the whole of Scripture and find examples of those who failed to go to God first before proceeding with their plans. Sarah comes to Abram and says, “Abram, I am old and can’t have children. God has promised you that you will be the father of many nations. So, go sleep with Hagar my handmaid, and have a child by her.” All it would have taken was for Abram to say, “Let me check with God first.”
Joshua and the children of Israel, with God’s directions, have conquered the city of Jericho. The walls fell down. The next town up the way was a little village called Ai. Some of Joshua’s soldiers come to him and say, “there’s no need to send the whole army to this little village. Just send a few. And Joshua did, and his soldiers were defeated because sin had been committed by someone in the battle against Jericho. All it would have taken was one thing. When some of Joshua’s soldiers came to him saying, “send just a few to Ai,” Joshua should have said, “Let me check with God first.”
When Rehoboam inherited the throne from his father Soloman, some of the people from the tribes of Israel came to him with a request. They said, “your father taxed us heavily and conscripted many of our people into service to his many building projects.” “If you will lighten the load on us, we will serve you as king.” After hearing the people, Rehoboam consulted the old counselors and his young friends. The old counselors said that he should listen to the people. His young friends told him to speak harshly to the people and let them know who the boss is. He chose his young friends advise and spoke harshly to the people. Because of that 10 tribes of the nation chose a new king and seceded from the union.
All it would have taken was for Rehoboam to say, “Let me check with God first.”
Jonah 2:11 Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the stomach of the fish, 2 and he said, “I called out of my distress to Yahweh, And He answered me. I cried for help from the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.
Now what am I saying? Am I saying that you should get up in the morning and pray to God, “Lord, should I wear blue socks or white socks today?” No. Truthfully, for most of us, many of life’s choices are already made. We have a certain level of self-care. We have responsibilities for household upkeep. We go to work, and the labor is decided for us. We have family responsibilities.
I’m not talking about waiting around for a word from on high regarding every step you take. Rather, it is an ever-present awareness of God in your life. It is an ever-present awareness that “His ways are not my ways.” It is a continual spoken and unspoken request to God that He be a “lamp to your feet and a light to your path.” This is the sense of it from Scripture;Psalm 143:8 NIV
8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.Psalm 5:3 NIV
3 In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.
But as for me, O Yahweh, I have cried out to You for help, And in the morning my prayer comes before You.
Why does the Psalmist pray in the morning? Because from his first waking moment he is “God-aware.”
That’s where humility begins, with seeking God first. And the same applies to church.
So, what is step two?
B. Search your heart for unrepentant sin
Humble/repentant prayer that will be answered starts with understanding our sinfulness and our fallen nature.
Before we knew the Lord we were Spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. That means that before we came to Christ, we had no capacity to make Spiritual choices.
Romans 8: 5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.
And even after we come to Christ, we have a dual nature. We have a battle within us between walking by the flesh and walking by the Spirit. And frankly, sometimes we can’t discern whether our inner voice is the voice of the Spirit, or the voice of the flesh. It is a very dangerous place we will find ourselves if we begin to think that every little voice in our heads is the voice of God. Preachers fall prey to this notion often. They come up with plans and schemes, and because they thought of them, then it is God’s plan, God’s scheme. Let me illustrate from Scripture.
Do you remember the story of King David in the Old Testament? David was chosen by God to be the King of Israel. God protected David for years while Saul tried to kill him. God gave David great victory in battle. David is called “a man after God’s own heart.” And after years of difficulty and faithfulness, David finally sat on the throne of Israel as king. So, one day, apparently with no battles to wage, David thought a great thought. Here he was the king of Israel, and God had blessed him in so many ways. He had been able to build himself a grand house. It was a house of cedar and stone. But God’s house, at that time, was still the tabernacle; a tent.
And David thought a great thought; We need to build God a magnificent house. A house more grand than any that even a king lives in. Now this is marvelous isn’t it. It exalts God. It acknowledges David’s own humility. It is a theologically sound plan. God’s house, the tabernacle represented the mobility of God going before and in the presence of the children of Israel from the wilderness wanderings into the promised land. And now that they were established in the Promised land, it makes sense that we state the permanence and immutability of God by building a permanent temple. And David even had the stamp of approval from God’s prophet Nathan.
2 Samuel 7: Now it happened when the king inhabited his house, and Yahweh had given him rest on every side from all his enemies, 2 that the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I inhabit a house of cedar, but the ark of God inhabits tent curtains.” 3 So Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that is in your heart, for Yahweh is with you.”
Nathan just says, “Go for it.” Now what have we learned about answered prayer so far? Humm. That humble prayer begins by our going to God first. How simple would it have been for Nathan to say, “So, you want to build a temple David, that sounds wonderful, but, let me check with God first.” That’s what he should have done. Because that night God answers the unasked question. And His answer almost sounds like a rebuke.
4 Now it happened in the same night, that the word of Yahweh came to Nathan, saying, 5 “Go and say to My servant David, ‘Thus says Yahweh, “Are you the one who would build Me a house to inhabit? 6 For I have not inhabited a house since the day I brought up the sons of Israel from Egypt, even to this day; but I have been going about in a tent, even in a [a]tabernacle. 7 Wherever I have gone about with all the sons of Israel, did I speak a word with one of the tribes of Israel, which I commanded to shepherd My people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?’”’
Now God goes on to tell David that his son will indeed build the temple. But here’s the point David’s wonderful, God-exalting thought wasn’t God’s thought. So, when we go to God in prayer, we go realizing that we are flawed and sinful. So, we confess our known sins, and search our hearts for unknown sins. If you want answered prayer; deal with sin first.
James 5: 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
1 Samuel 7: 3 Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you are to return to Yahweh with all your heart, then remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and set your hearts toward Yahweh and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.”
2 Chronicles 7: 14 and My people [d]who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their evil ways, then I will listen from heaven, I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.
Daniel 9: 17 So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your slave and to his supplications, and for [j]Your sake, O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary.
What does that mean for our church? It means that we need to pause and consider our history and consider whether we have sinned as a church. Now we could get into the weeds here because every church is a collection of individual people. And people are sinners. But what I’m talking about I not enumerating the sins of every person who has been in our church. Rather, it is looking within ourselves and asking some fundamental questions about our obedience as a body of believers.
Church purpose statements
Acts 2:42 could be considered a purpose statement for the church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
Another commission given to the church is proclaiming the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8).
Some final purposes of the church are given in James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
What is step three? First, seek God first. Second search your heart for sin, repent and confess. Third,
C. Humbly make your petition
The third step
Numbers 21: 6 So Yahweh sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned because we have spoken against Yahweh and against you; pray to Yahweh, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses prayed for the people.
1 Kings 8: 35 “When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain, because they have sinned against You, and they pray toward this place and confess Your name and turn from their sin when You afflict them, 36 then listen in heaven and forgive the sin of Your slaves and of Your people Israel; indeed, teach them the good way in which they should walk. And give rain on Your land, which You have given to Your people for an inheritance.
Nehemiah 1: 4 Now it happened that when I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5 I said, “I beseech You, O [c]Yahweh, the God of heaven, the great and fearsome God, who keeps the covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 6 let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your slave which I am praying before You today, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your slaves, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father’s house have sinned.
Psalm 35: 13 But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth; I humbled my soul with fasting, And my prayer kept returning to my bosom.
D. Release the result to God
2 Chronicles 33: 10 Then Yahweh spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. 11 Therefore Yahweh brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against them, and they captured Manasseh with [c]hooks, bound him with bronze chains, and took him to Babylon. 12 And when he was in distress, he entreated Yahweh his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. 13 Then he prayed to Him, and He was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication, and returned him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that Yahweh was God.
18 Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, even his prayer to his God, and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, behold, they are among the chronicles of the kings of Israel.
II. The Scriptural have answered prayer.
A. Pray for what God has already ordained
Matthew 17:20 And He *said to them, “Because of your little faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
This verse is taken out of context 99.9 % of the time. It has been taken to mean that I have to have great faith, and that if I have great faith, any mountain in my way can be removed. But we misinterpret this passage in two ways; we fail to define faith, and we fail to define the object of our faith.
First, we fail to define faith. What is often implied is that faith is “believing really strongly in something.” If I have a mountain, an obstacle in my life to my happiness, to my prosperity, that if I can just eradicate all doubt, if I can believe that the obstacle will be removed, with all my heart, then the obstacle will be removed.
Second, we fail to define the object of our faith. We think we are putting faith in the result we desire. I just have to believe strongly enough that the disease will be gone, or the financial crisis will be resolved, etc.
But there is one answer to both of those misinterpretations. Faith is not “believing really strongly in something.” It is “believing really strongly in God.” We are not to think of what we want and focus on removing all doubt that we will have it. We are to think on our Lord, and focus on removing all doubt that He is over all and above all, and that His Will and Word will be accomplished.
I said that we take this passage in Matthew out of context. What that means is that we take Jesus’ instruction to His disciples that was in response to a specific set of circumstances, and remove it from those specifics, and treat it as though it applies to all circumstances when Jesus said this?
Matthew 17:20 And He *said to them, “Because of your little faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
What were the circumstances? Jesus had taken His three inner circle disciples up on a Mountain and was transfigured before them. Meanwhile the remaining nine disciples are at the base of the mountain waiting for Him to come down. While there, a man approaches them, recognizing that they are Jesus’ disciples. He has a son who is demon possessed, and he asked them to cast the demon out.
Now that is the circumstance that Jesus is referring to later when He says, “If you have faith you will say unto this mountain be removed, and it will be removed.”
This is not Jesus handing you a blank check for one million dollars and saying “You decide where the money goes.” He was talking specifically about the disciples inability to cast the demon out of this boy.
You might say, ”Well why is that important?” It is important because they should have been able to cast out the demon. Why? Because He had already commissioned them and given them the authority to do so. Go back seven chapters.
Matthew 10: And summoning His twelve disciples, Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. 2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these:
5 These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them, saying, “Do not [c]go [d]in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; 6 but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And as you go, [e]preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven [f]is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.
Go back to Matthew 17. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 And He *said to them, “Because of your little faith;
Jesus was not saying to them that they should have believed more strongly in their ability to cast out demons. He’s saying that they should have believed more strongly in Him, and His Word that they were given authority to cast out demons.
Every moment of great faith described in Scripture is a moment where someone grabs ahold of God’s Word, and chooses to believe it, despite overwhelming odds. The moments of great faith in Scripture are not, “just believing in what I want.” It’s believing in what God told me I have. Let me illustrate.
Daniel 9: In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, from the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans— 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, discerned in the books the number of the years concerning which the word of [a]Yahweh came to Jeremiah the prophet for the fulfillment of the laying waste of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. 3 So I gave my face to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.
B. Don’t pray against Scripture
Deuteronomy 3:25 Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land that is beyond the Jordan, [w]that good hill country and Lebanon.’ 26 But Yahweh was angry with me on your account and would not listen to me; and Yahweh said to me, ‘[x]Enough! Speak to Me no more of this matter.
C. Be specific
1 Samuel 23: 11 Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down just as Your slave has heard? O Yahweh, the God of Israel, I pray, tell Your slave.” And Yahweh said, “He will come down.” 12 Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And Yahweh said, “They will surrender you.”
2 Samuel 15: 31 Now David informed them, saying, “Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.” And David said, “O Yahweh, I pray, make the counsel of Ahithophel foolishness.”
III. The Righteous have answered prayer.
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective [n]prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed [o]earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. 18 Then he prayed again, and the [p]sky gave rain and the earth produced its fruit.
A. Our positional righteousness
Proverbs 15: 8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to Yahweh, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.
29 Yahweh is far from the wicked, But He hears the prayer of the righteous.
B. The righteousness of our daily walk
C. Answered prayer is not for the super-spiritual but for the obedient
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective [n]prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed [o]earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. 18 Then he prayed again, and the [p]sky gave rain and the earth produced its fruit.
IV. The Fervent have answered prayer.
A. Prayer is as much about changing you as changing your world.
1 Samuel 1: 10 And she, bitter of soul, prayed to Yahweh and wept despondently. 11 And she made a vow and said, “O Yahweh of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a seed amongst men, then I will give him to Yahweh all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head.”
2 Kings 20: 5 “Return and say to Hezekiah the ruler of My people, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you.
B. Prayer is Spiritual warfare
Daniel 6: 10 Now when Daniel knew that the written document was signed, he entered his house (now in his roof chamber he had windows open toward Jerusalem); and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God, [h]as he had been doing previously.
V. The God exalting have answered prayer.
A. For His glory.
Numbers 14: 16 ‘Because Yahweh was not able to bring this people into the land which He swore to them, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.’ 17 So now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have [g]declared, 18 ‘Yahweh is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children [h]to the third and the fourth generations.’ 19 Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”
2 Kings 19: 14 Then Hezekiah took the [f]letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of Yahweh and [g]spread it out before Yahweh. 15 And Hezekiah prayed before Yahweh and said, “O Yahweh, the God of Israel, who is [h]enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. 16 Incline Your ear, O Yahweh, and hear; open Your eyes, O Yahweh, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to [i]reproach the living God. 17 Truly, O Yahweh, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands 18 and have put their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. 19 But now, O Yahweh our God, I pray, save us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Yahweh, are God.”
B. Not my glory
Psalm 109:7 When he is judged, let him come forth a wicked man, And let his prayer become sin.
Proverbs 28: 9 He who turns away his ear from listening to the law, Even his prayer is an abomination.
Jeremiah 7:16 16 “As for you, do not pray for this people and do not lift up a cry of lamentation or prayer for them and do not intercede with Me, for I am not hearing you.
Jeremiah 14: 11 So Yahweh said to me, “Do not pray for the good of this people. 12 When they fast, I am not going to listen to their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I am not going to accept them. Rather I am going to make an end of them by the sword, famine, and pestilence.”
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