CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD
PETITION AND INTERCESSION
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 7:7-11
FEBRUARY 25, 2007
In the year 1884, Leland Stanford Jr. died. He was a young man. He died of typhoid fever. He died while touring Europe. His parents, understandably, were devastated. His parents were also very, very rich and they resolved that Leland Stanford Jr. would not have lived in vain and they decided to establish a memorial to commemorate his life. He had been a brilliant student, so they decided to create a memorial in the world of education. Where better to go than to Harvard University? And so, in 1884, Leland Stanford Sr. and his wife Jane met with Charles Elliott, who was the President of Harvard University, and told him that they wanted to establish some kind of memorial for their son who had just died.
Charles Elliott did not know this couple. He had never met them. He did not know that Leland Stanford Sr. had built the Central Pacific Railroad. He did not know that Leland Stanford Sr., 22 years earlier, in 1862, had been the Governor of the State of California. He only knew that this man and his wife were grieving. They had lost their son, they were devastated, and they wanted to have a memorial for him. Charles Elliott said, “Maybe we could do this: Maybe you could give us the money to provide a scholarship to Harvard in your son’s name and every year a student would come to Harvard University in the name of your son, Leland Stanford Jr.” Leland Stanford Sr. and his wife Jane shook their heads and said, “No, we want to do something greater. We want to do something significant. We want to do more than that.”
Charles Elliott looked at the couple and they didn’t look rich. Their clothes were not particularly nice clothes and Charles Elliott said, “Well, why don’t we just stick with the scholarship thing.” Leland Stanford Sr. and his wife Jane left Charles Elliott’s office and they were kind of offended. They shut the door and the rest was history.
Just one year later, in 1885, Charles Elliott picked up the newspaper and was stunned to see that Leland Stanford Sr. and his wife Jane had indeed established a memorial to their son. It was in Palo Alto, California, a new university called Stanford University, Leland Stanford University. They gave the land, they gave $26 million in cash, and Charles Elliott realized all of a sudden, “Wow! I really blew it! I really missed an incredible opportunity!” Of course, none of us today feel sorry for Harvard. They are well endowed. By all accounts they have over $20 billion now in their endowment.
Is it not true we live in a world where so often there are missed opportunities? I’m sure in your life as well as in my life there have been many missed opportunities. I think as Christians oftentimes we miss opportunities because of prayer: Prayers never prayed, petitions never made, intercession never offered. I think there are many blessings that would come to our lives and come to the lives of our friends if we were more faithful in prayer. The Bible says in the Book of James, the Apostle James writes, “You have not because you ask not. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
So today we take a look at the subject of petition and intercession in the context of prayer and what it means to pray such prayers. I have two teachings. They’re both very important and they’re both fairly simple. The first teaching is this: God wants us to make petition to Him in prayer for our own needs. God wants me to petition His throne on behalf of my own needs. God wants you to petition His throne on behalf of your own needs. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this. God wants us to approach Him with our needs—physical, spiritual, relational, financial. In every way, God wants us to approach Him with our needs.
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us to pray. In Matthew 6, verse 11, Jesus said, “Pray like this.” Jesus said, “Give us this day our daily bread.” This is how the Lord wants us to pray. “Give us this day our daily bread.” I’m sure all of you have said those words many, many times. Around the world millions of Christians say those words every day. I say those words every day as I say the Lord’s Prayer every day. “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Believe it or not, that phrase is amongst the most controversial phrases in the entire Bible. Greek scholars and biblical theologians have looked at this phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and they’re not sure what it means. It sounds simple but in the Greek it’s really very complex because of the word “daily.” You see, the Greek word for “daily” is the word, “epiousion.” Epiousion is only found in the Lord’s Prayer. Nowhere else in the entire Bible do we see the word epiousion. If you look in parabiblical literature, if you look outside of the Bible, in the ancient literature the word is rarely used and scholars just aren’t certain with regard to its meaning. What does this word translated “daily” really mean?
They know the prefix is “epi” and epi is a prefix of intensification. It can mean, “upon,” “above,” “over,” and it intensifies the meaning of the word it precedes. The question is “ousion.” What does “ousion” mean? Where does “ousion” come from? Some Greek scholars think it comes from the word “ousia,” and “ousia” means “substance,” and so “epiousion” would mean, “over and above substance,” maybe even “supernatural substance,” that which is “super substantial.” So you find some theologians today who believe Jesus is teaching us to pray, “Give us this day our supernatural bread. Give us this day that bread which is super substantial.” These theologians believe that Jesus is thinking of the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the cup, the elements that are blessed. Of course, this would be unusual because Jesus had not yet instituted the Lord’s Supper when He taught us the Lord’s Prayer. But He may have been thinking prophetically, “Give us this day our communion bread.”
Other Greek scholars, other theologians, believe that Jesus is actually referring to the heavenly banquet, the marriage supper of the Lamb, and that this prayer is eschatological, that it has to do with heaven and the life to come. “Thy kingdom come”—”let it come today.” “Give us this day the heavenly banquet. Give us this day the supernatural bread. Give us this day the marriage supper of the Lamb.” You will find some commentaries that translate this passage that way. The Word Biblical Commentaries just published 52 volumes. I have them in my office. They are prestigious commentaries from the Greek scholars and they render this verse, “Give us this day our eschatological bread.”
I must say there are other Bible scholars who point out that “ousia” and therefore “ousion” comes from “eimi,” a Greek verb which means, “to be.” Or it can mean, “to go.” The thought might be, “Give us this day the bread to keep us going”—epiousion. Or, “Give us this day the bread that allows us to be, enough bread to continue our subsistence, our ability to live.” Of course, if it’s taken from “epion,” in the participle it means “coming,” so it would be, “Give us this day the bread for the coming day. Give us tomorrow’s bread today.” Or it could be, “Give us today bread that will allow us to live until tomorrow.”
I know most of you are not even aware of the controversy and most of you don’t care. I know that. But the Lord’s Prayer is a big deal. You can see why people would want to know what it means, right? You can see why people want to know how to pray and what to pray and what it means. This much every scholar agrees on, this much is clear: Jesus wants us to make petition. He wants us to petition the Father for our needs—physical bread, spiritual bread. Either way, He wants us to petition. Physical needs, spiritual needs, earthly bread, heavenly bread, whatever our needs, He wants us to petition. The Lord’s Prayer is just filled with petition. Even, “Let Thy name be hallowed” is a petition. “Thy kingdom come” is a petition. “Forgive us our sins” is a petition. “Lead us not into temptation or testing” (the Greek word is “peirazo”), that’s a petition. That’s a petition. The whole of the Lord’s Prayer is petition. So, Jesus teaches us to ask. He teaches us to make petition.
In the Bible, God is given many names. We have looked at these. God is called “Jehovah-Jireh, The Lord Who Provides.” In Genesis, chapter 2, Abraham realized God is indeed “The Lord Who Provides, Jehovah-Jireh.” Abraham must have prayed with desperation for God to provide a sacrifice, an offering, to take the place of his son Isaac. Can you imagine? He must have prayer desperately for some offering, some sacrifice that would take the place of His Son. God provided and Abraham realized God is indeed “Jehovah-Jireh, The Lord Who Provides.” Because He’s The Lord Who Provides, He wants us to pray for His provision. He wants us to pray for His protection. He wants us to pray, so we make petition to Him in prayer.
I want to tell you a story. I read it in Christianity Today Magazine and it concerns a woman named Lois Spoon. Lois Spoon is single. Lois Spoon is very poor. Lois Spoon loves Jesus Christ. She gave her heart, her life, and her soul to Him. Lois Spoon has been very sick. She was diagnosed with a form of cancer that was deadly and grave and yet she is a cancer survivor. The medical treatments that she received were very hard on her body, just devastating, and she developed lymphedema. If you have lymphedema, you have swelling oftentimes in your arms and it can be embarrassing and hard to live with, but those are the risks of the medicines that are treating diseases that are so severe.
So, Lois Spoon was talking to her doctors and her doctors really love her. Her doctors love her because she’s such a wonderful person and so the medical staff that treated her became friends with her. They came to her and they said, “Lois, there is a conference in Indianapolis on lymphedema and we want you to go to it because we think it will encourage you as you seek to live with this condition. We think it will encourage you, edify you, and we just think you’ll be blessed by this so we’ve paid your way to the conference. We’ve paid for your hotel, we’ve paid for your food. We just ask that you buy your airline ticket. We’ve bought you tickets for the conference itself and food and hotel but if you’d just get your airline ticket. They had no idea how poor she was. She didn’t have the money for the airline ticket. Even though she lived in a city not that far from Indianapolis, she checked it out and the cost of the flight was $153.27. She just didn’t have it, but she thought, “Maybe I can save that money. Maybe I can save that money before the conference.”
As the time approached and she needed to buy the ticket, she’d only saved a little over $20. That’s all she had. That morning the church called her, the morning she needed to have the money and didn’t, the church called her, the church where she attended and where she was a member, and a missionary had just come into town from Romania. There was kind of a dead spot in her schedule at midday and the church folk asked if she would be willing to go to lunch with her. Lois thought the missionary would pay. They got to the restaurant and the missionary said, “I left my wallet at home.” Don’t you hate it when people say that? And so Lois had to pay and it took all of her money, a little over $20. That’s all she had. The money was gone. She came back to the church and was sitting in her car in the church parking lot and she began to cry. She said, “You know, Lord, I prayed more than a week ago that I could go to this conference and You would provide the money and I haven’t told anybody. It’s just been between You and me and yet it just feels, Lord, like you don’t care.”
About that moment a car came into the church parking lot. It was another woman who was a member of the church. She came up to Lois’s car and she said, “Lois, I know we don’t know each other that well. They told me that you were here today. I just came by because a little over a week ago, the Lord laid it on my heart when I was praying that I was to set aside some money for you. I don’t know why but I’ve just set aside coins and some bills when I have them and I just put them all in this envelope. I don’t even know how much is in the envelope, but here it is.” The woman left and Lois emptied the envelope, counted the money, and, according to Christianity Today Magazine, it came to exactly $153.27. Lois Spoon said, “If the Lord had given me $2 million, it would not have been as wonderful. If the Lord had given me $2 million, it would not have been as beautiful because the Lord wanted me to know He knew exactly what I needed and He provided it exactly.”
I hope you know and believe we have a God like that. I hope you know, believe, and trust that we have a God that knows exactly what you need in your life and He has the power to provide. He knows what I need in my life, and He has power to provide.
One of the words in the Bible for prayer is the word “enteuxis.” We’ve seen this word before. In the beginning of the use of this word, it simply described a relationship between two people, a friendship, a relationship that had transforming intimacy. That was how “enteuxis” was used, and it’s a good word for prayer because prayer is a relationship with God and it has transforming intimacy. So “enteuxis” is a great word, but this Greek word evolved over time. It went through an evolution, and it began to be used of a petition to a king. That’s also kind of a good concept of prayer because prayer is when we petition the King, we make petition for the needs in our lives. God wants you to understand He’s a King who cares. Jesus wants you to understand He’s a King who cares.
God has a big job and there are a lot of prayers. He doesn’t always answer them maybe the way we would like. Many of you have probably seen the movie Bruce Almighty. In that movie Jim Carrey plays the part of Bruce and Morgan Freeman plays the part of God. Bruce thinks that God’s not doing a good job of running the world. God appears to Bruce, incredibly, and says, “Why don’t you try it for a while?” and gives him some divine powers. Bruce begins to hear the prayers of the people. I want you to see this clip from Bruce Almighty.
“Prayers. Prayers. Prayers. Okay. Files. Let all prayers be organized into files. Well, that takes care of the voices. Not exactly a space saver though. I know! Prayer post-its! Okay, I need something with a lock, security combination password. Password! You’ve got prayers! Welcome to the Revelation Super Highway. We bless. No mess. Downloading now. That’s good. This is going to take a while… 1,527,503 prayer requests? I’d better manifest some coffee.”
There are a lot of movies that have prayer scenes in them. None quite like that. But it is an amazing thing, is it not, how God can hear all the prayers from all over the world? Simultaneously millions of prayers beseech Him and yet God cares, listens, hears, and responds in His divine way to all of them. You see, perhaps nowhere is there greater evidence of His omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence than His ability to deal with the prayers of His people. I suppose in many of our lives we would like Him to say yes—maybe not for all the prayers of the world, but at least for our own prayers. We would like God to always say “yes” to us. You know God just doesn’t do that.
We saw from the very beginning of this series as we had the introduction to the subject of prayer and we looked at the purpose of prayer that prayer really isn’t about getting things from God. That’s not the primary purpose of prayer. Prayer is about friendship and intimacy with God. Prayer is about the transformation of our lives. As we experience friendship and intimacy with Him, He wants to change us. And yet it is true God, in His love for us, does provide. God doesn’t want us to miss opportunities. When it comes to prayer, there are some prayers where God just says, “Yes, I will do it no matter what.” Other times I think God says, “No, I won’t do it no matter what.” But there’s this third category of prayer where God says, “I’ll do it if…” God makes it contingent. God says, “I will do it if you pray, if you learn to pray, if you spend time with Me in prayer, if you ask Me or if you keep asking Me.” God does provide. So He wants us to petition Him with regard to the needs in our own lives.
There’s a second teaching and the second teaching is this: God wants us to make intercession in prayer for others. He doesn’t just want us to pray for ourselves. God wants us to make intercession in prayer for others. It might be an interesting thing to just ponder for a moment, maybe as you go home today, how much of your time when you pray is devoted to your needs and how much of your time when you pray is devoted to the needs of others. It would be good to think about that because I think God wants us to spend a little more time in intercession than in petition.
As we look at “enteuxis,” we’ve already seen that it can mean “to petition a king,” but what scholars have discovered is that enteuxis, this word for prayer, normally means, “to petition the king on behalf of someone else, to petition the king with regard to the needs of others.” So, oftentimes in your Bible this word enteuxis is translated “intercession”—not petition, but intercession, and it refers to intercessory prayer.
There’s a beautiful passage in the Bible in Acts, chapter 12, really one of the most amazing scenes in the Book of Acts where we’re told that the Apostle Peter had been incarcerated. Herod had arrested Him and Herod had him thrown in prison. Herod is kind of afraid that, because Peter’s kind of a big shot in the midst of the Christian community, the Christian community might rally and try to rescue Peter and help him escape. So Herod is very careful and he put Peter in the cell and he bound him in chains and then he put guards in the cell on either side of Peter. He has Peter chained on the right and on the left to these guards. It wasn’t comfortable for Peter and I’m sure it wasn’t comfortable for the guards either. Then by decree of Herod, other guards were posted outside the cell. Peter was secure.
The Christian community met in the home of John Mark in the city of Jerusalem and they began to pray prayers of intercession. “Lord, help Peter escape! Lord, deliver him from his jailers! Deliver him from the Jerusalem prison! Bring him back to us! Restore him to our community!” They prayed for days like that, and the day came when God answered those prayers. We’re told in Acts, chapter 12, that the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven and that cell in the prison in Jerusalem was filled with light. The chains were just cast off. Supernaturally doors were opened. Peter walked out of the prison into the city of Jerusalem and he went immediately to the home of John Mark.
He arrived at the home of John Mark. It was evening time, and this had all happened at night when the Angel of the Lord showed up. The prayer meeting is still going on at John Mark’s house. The assembly of believers are praying for Peter’s escape and here’s Peter at the door. The maid went to the door. Her name was Rhoda. She saw Peter and she was just stunned. She was joyful. It was just amazing. She ran back into where the prayer meeting had been held and she said, “You’re not going to believe this, but Peter is at the door.” How did they respond? What did they say? Do they say, “Wow! Our prayers have been answered!” Do they say, “God is good”? No. They say to Rhoda, “You’re crazy!” They had been praying for days, making intercession for something they really didn’t believe God would do.
Aren’t we all a little bit like that? I think oftentimes we’re all a little bit like that. We pray maybe for something in our own life or in the life of our friends, family, or loved ones. We think, “There’s no way God’s going to do this,” but God wants us to understand He hears our prayers and He does have power to do anything.
On December 7, in the year 2006, just a little less than three months ago, Vatican archeologists announced that they had made a discovery of a sarcophagus under the second largest basilica in the city of Rome. They explained that actually they had found the sarcophagus a few years ago but they had spent four years analyzing scientifically the contents and now they’re ready to make a revelation to the world. The sarcophagus was under an ancient basilica built by Theodosius, the Roman Emperor. They believe it is the sarcophagus of the Apostle Paul, that it contains the remains of the Apostle Paul. It was an amazing announcement in Biblical Archaeology and other magazines and periodicals. And so, perhaps, they have found the remains of the Apostle Paul. We don’t know for sure.
I don’t know how you feel about that, whether you care about that. Personally, it doesn’t mean a lot to me. I know that Paul was never in that sarcophagus. His soul and spirit left his body the moment he died. The moment he was beheaded, his soul and spirit went straight to heaven and he’s in the presence of Christ. But there was a time where he was in those bones and he was in that body. That was during the time of his earthly ministry and his earthly ministry was so blessed, so anointed. Christ started His church and greatly used Peter but it was Paul who took the gospel to the nations. What an anointed ministry Paul had, and I’ll tell you why Paul was so powerful when he was in that body. He was powerful because of prayer. He just constantly sought the prayers of the people.
If you look at the Pauline epistles, you look at the letters of Paul, virtually every time at the end of every letter, what does Paul say? “Pray for me. Intercede for me. Pray for the ministry. Pray for my health. Just pray. Pray that I might escape prison,” (because oftentimes he was in prison), “but pray.” I think it right that all of us seek prayer. I seek prayer and I covet your prayers. I need them. I know you need prayers in your life. I know your needs are great too. It’s right that we ask people to pray for us and we expect people to be faithful in that service as they intercede in prayer.
I think my observation would be that God is most potent in His response to intercessory prayer when we’re praying for ministry. Each and every one of you, I hope you know you’re all called to ministry. You’re called to be ministering to people in your neighborhood, ministering to the people at work, ministering here at the church and out in the world. You’re called to ministry. If you pray for the ministry or have others pray for your ministry, that’s when we really see the power of God descend because God cares about ministry in a very special way. I think sometimes we pray about frivolous things, and I don’t mean that God doesn’t care about them, but I think the saddest thing is that in many of our lives we’re just not involved enough in the lives of people in our neighborhood or people at work. We don’t have ministry prayers because we’re not doing ministry. My observation would be that when we pray prayers for ministry situations, there’s a very special sense in which we see the provision of God and the power of God. We certainly see this in Paul’s life and I know God wants to bless your ministry in all of its forms.
On December 6, in the year 1884, six guys were standing on a wooden platform in a gale, strong powerful winds, 550 feet above the city of Washington, D.C. They were putting the cone, what was called the pyramidion, on the top of the Washington Monument. December 6, 1884, that’s when the Washington Monument was completed. The amazing thing is 101 years earlier, in 1783, the newborn government of this newborn nation had rendered a decision that George Washington should be memorialized. Washington in 1783 hadn’t even become president yet but because he had led the Continental Army, because he had led in this great cause in the Revolutionary War, our government wanted to memorialize him and honor him. Nothing really happened.
Fifty years before the completion of the Washington Monument, 51 years before, they began to collect money for a monument for George Washington. Thirty-six years before the completion of the Washington Monument, they laid the cornerstone on July 4, 1848. Why? Why did it take so long? Why did it take 36 years just to build that structure which, when completed, was the tallest structure in the world? It took 36 years because they had problems with architects; 36 years because they had problems with the construction people; 36 years because of weather problems, financial problems; 36 years because of a little thing called the Civil War; 36 years because there were people who actually sabotaged the project because, believe it or not, there were people in America who didn’t want George Washington to be so honored. But they persevered and finally on December 6, 1884, it was done.
My observation would be that in my own life and throughout history very few things are accomplished without perseverance. It seems that way. In each of our lives and throughout history, very few things of significance and greatness are accomplished without perseverance. I think this is true in prayer too. In the Bible we’re instructed to pray with perseverance. Jesus tells us there are times when the Spirit of God would guide us to pray prayers of perseverance. I know there are times when God just wants us to pray once and trust Him but there are other times where we’re supposed to pray for the same thing again and again and again and again.
So you look at Luke, chapter 18, and the Parable of the Unjust Judge and Luke, chapter 11 and the Parable of the Friend at Midnight. What is Jesus saying to us? He’s saying persevere in prayer. There are times when you really need to persevere. I know this is true when praying not only for ourselves but praying for others. There are times when the Holy Spirit will just lead us to pray this prayer with perseverance. In fact, in our passage of scripture for today, Jesus says, “Ask and seek and knock.” Those are all verbs in the present imperative and so they could be rendered, “Keep on asking. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking.” Perseverance.
I know in my own life, every afternoon I have a prayer time. And in the evening Barb and I have a prayer time together and we seek to be open to when God wants us to persevere. There are some people on our list that we’ve prayed for in this church for ten years. There are members of our family that Barb and I have prayed for for the whole 35 years of our marriage, but we persevere. There have been some people in the life of our church who have had cancers so severe that they weren’t expected to live, and the Lord just told us to keep on praying. Some of them, ten years later, we’re still praying. We just feel like the Lord is saying, “Don’t quit.” So we keep praying.
I think the Lord wants us all to be willing to make a list. I think God wants you guys to be willing to make a list. If you’re going to be intercessory prayer warriors, if you’re going to be people of prayer, if you’re going to please God, make a list and ask God if there aren’t just some people you’re supposed to persevere in prayer for them. I think you’ll find that there are people like that who you are supposed to persevere in prayer for.
My mother had her 94th birthday this week. I thank God that most of those 94 years she’s prayed for us. She’s prayed for me and my wife and kids and my brothers and their families. She’s been faithful in prayer, intercessory prayer, and I want to be a person like that. Do you want to be a person like that? Do you want to be faithful in prayer? You’ll never be sorry that you’ve done this. So, we want to come to prayer every day. God wants us to make petition for our own needs. He wants us to intercede for the needs of others and in the midst of all of this He wants to grow His friendship and intimacy with us and He wants to change and transform us. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.