MISSION WOODS CHURCH
Worship, Sunday, February 23, 2025
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  • If My People's Hearts Are Humbled
  • I Lift My Eyes Up
  • As The Deer
  • Agnus Dei
  • Jesus was once challenged by a lawyer, “what is the greatest commandment?” One would think that the teacher was referring to the decalogue or Ten Commandments. Leave it to Jesus to expand our understanding. He quotes from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-5
    Deuteronomy 6:4–5 ESV
    “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
    And then adds to it, Leviticus 19:18
    Leviticus 19:18 ESV
    You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
    Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s a powerful statement. How do we love our neighbor? Perhaps one secret is in how we love ourselves. We pray for our needs, ought not we do the same for our neighbors? And as Jesus tends to do, he took us even deeper, John records Jesus as saying, John 15:13
    John 15:13 ESV
    Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
    Ironically John records this as part of Jesus’ teaching as they reclined at the table celebrating the Passover. He points to exactly what he is about to do.
    Jesus is always inviting us to love, and to turn from hate. Look again at the Sermon on the Mount he tells us: Matthew 5:43-44
    Matthew 5:43–44 ESV
    “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
    Wow!
    Love my neighbor. Love myself. Love my enemy.
    I pray for myself, and I must pray for those that persecute me (that can be my enemy, it could also be a neighbor). This praying for others is called:

    Intercessory Prayer

    This kind of praying for others seems hard. BINGO! IT IS.
    No!
    it isn’t hard. It’s impossible. It is impossible for me, we say. I simply can’t. I’ve been hurt too often. I’ve been taken advantage of in business deals. I’ve gotten the short end of the stick too many times. There is no possible way I can do it.
    If you’re saying that, I want to say something. You’re right. You’re right! You can’t. You are wounded. You’ve been victimized. You’ve been devalued. In our own power, in our own selves we cannot even begin to love in this way.
    To lay down my life for my friends? Much less love my enemies and pray for my persecutors.
    The Apostle Paul wrote: Romans 7:15-20
    Romans 7:15–20 ESV
    For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
    It was also the Apostle Paul who wrote later in the same letter to that church in Rome: Romans 12:1
    Romans 12:1 NIV
    Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
    The idea of laying our life down, a living sacrifice.
    to the church in Galatia he writes: Gal 2:20
    Galatians 2:20 ESV
    I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
    Ah, I think we found the key there. Galatians 2:20
    Galatians 2:20 ESV
    I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
    Christ in me. It’s part of St. Patrick’s prayer:

    Christ with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ in me.

    When we pray for others (friend, neighbor, enemy, persecutor) it moves us from being inwardly focused upon ourselves to be focused on others. It forces us to consider another’s point of view. It means we need to do our best to view the world through their eyes.
    Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
    “Intercessory Prayer is the bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day.”
    When we only pray for ourselves we limit ourselves to our own perspective and selfishness. When we broaden our view to pray for our neighbor, our enemy, and even our prosecutor, we are forced to consider perspectives entirely not our own.
    When we pray in the Name of Jesus for others we do several things simultaneously. To quote Donald Bloesch,
    To pray in the name of Christ means to pray in the awareness that our prayers have no worthiness or efficacy apart from his atonement sacrifice and redemptive mediation. It means to appeal to the blood of Christ as the source of power for the life of prayer. It means to acknowledge our complete helplessness apart from his mediation and intercession. To pray in his name means that we recognize that our prayers cannot penetrate the tribunal of God unless they are presented to the Father by the Son, our one Savior and Redeemer.
    Central to our prayer is the recognition that we are not the ones who are in control. It goes back to the “sovereignty of God” one of the central tenets of the reformation.
    We are not the ones who are in control, it is God who is in control.
    Richard Foster in his book: Prayer: Finding the heart’s true home, writes:
    “By ourselves we have no entrée to the court of heaven. We need an interpreter, an intermediary, a go between. This is what Jesus Christ does for us in his role as eternal intercessor.”
    He goes on to say:
    “He opens the door and grants us access into the heavenlies. Even more: he straightens out and cleanses our feeble, misguided intercessions and makes them acceptivle before a holy God. Even more still: his prayers sustain our desires to pray, urging us on and give us hope of being heard.”
    I admit, my prayers for others try as I might to be in the mind of Christ are often still caught in the quagmire of my selfish motives. I am so thankful to have Jesus as our intercessor filtering and editing my prayers that they may be truly acceptable to God. He is our mediator.
    Praying for others is difficult. Perhaps not so much when praying for a family member or close friend. But it is especially so when it comes to praying for someone we don’t particularly like and even more so when praying for someone we can’t stand.
    It’s the latter for which we often justify our reasons not to pray for them. They’re my rival at work. They’re the neighbor whose dog barks all the time, or who constantly complains about our tree blocking their view or leaves falling into their yard.
    Yet Jesus calls us to pray. It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a given. He taught us how to pray when he teaches us the prayer we’ve unfortunately called the “Lord’s Prayer”. Other branches of christendom refer to it as the “Our Father.” Why? Because much of the church recognizes what Jesus taught was not Jesus praying - Jesus prays for us in John 17 want to close with reading that chapter that we might consider this amazing intercessory prayer for us. It happens after the celebration of the Passover and just prior to his going with the disciples to the garden. I’m going to invite you to use your imagination here for a moment. Close your eyes and imagine that scene. Your’e gathered with the disciples in the upper room. Jesus has washed your feet, you’ve celebrated the passover. Judas has left but your’e not sure what for. Listen to this passage. As I read these words imagine Jesus praying them over you. I’m going to let this be the closing prayer of the sermon. Let’s let Jesus pray over us:
    John 17 ESV
    “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
    Amen.
    Jesus loves you, and invites you to be praying for others as he prays for you. I invite you to do the same.
  • Make Me A Servant
  • Seek Ye First
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