Do You Want the Church to Grow?
Understanding Prayer's Role in Winning Souls For the Kingdom
Good Morning,
Today for our look at the Directory of Public Worship we are going to be talking about the work of the gospel in converting sinners in and through the pastoral prayer. It is an element of our corporate calling out to God in the service of Christ through the minister’s meditation whereby we testify to our desire that there be more believers tomorrow than there are today. It seems like a captain obvious moment to want that. However, a church should have a hope of spiritual work in all that they do, and that especially goes for the pastoral prayer. We’ve talked before about how as the preacher prays at this moment in the worship service he’s speaking for the whole congregation as one. A church should want to grow, and to grow in such a way that men and women who have never previously heard the gospel message might do so and then blessedly through the preaching of the word and the fellowship of the saints be at rest in Jesus.
Below’s selection from the DPW will help us think through how best to do this and provide for us some reasons as to why we should not only be praying for this every week in the pastoral prayer, but how us as individual Christians must needs be supporting the labors of the minister as he pleads to God for the power of the Holy Spirit to break through the hearts of men.
Read here:
To pray for the propagation of the gospel and kingdom of Christ to all nations; for the conversion of the Jews, the fulness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of our Lord; for the deliverance of the distressed churches abroad from the tyranny of the antichristian faction, and from the cruel oppressions and blasphemies of the Turk; for the blessing of God upon the reformed churches, especially upon the churches and kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland, now more strictly and religiously united in the Solemn National League and Covenant; and for our plantations in the remote parts of the world: more particularly for that church and kingdom whereof we are members, that therein God would establish peace and truth , the purity of all his ordinances, and the power of godliness; prevent and remove heresy, schism, profaneness, superstition, security, and unfruitfulness under the means of grace; heal all our rents and divisions, and preserve us from breach of our Solemn Covenant.
As we have noted before this DPW is the one adopted by the Church of Scotland in the 1640s. There are going to be terms and phrases which sound foreign and weird to our ears. Yet, that should not stop us from learning and applying the meat of what is written above. For instance in the paragraph above we have Solemn National League and Covenant, plantations, fall of Antichrist, and cruel oppressions and blasphemies of the Turk. Each of those probably need a more full accounting elsewhere, but for our purposes today that will have to wait. The Solemn League and Covenant and the National Covenant refer to historical agreements that were made promising that the State (in this case the King) would ensure that the Church in the three kingdoms would be Presbyterian, and by virtue of that Reformed in theology. The DPW is asking us to pray for the king (more on that next week) and those in authority over us that the gospel might be protected from enemies, both foreign and domestic, which gets us to the other words.
The Antichrist in this passage is in reference to the Pope in Rome, and therefore the whole of the Roman Catholic communion. The Turks mean the Islamic states, i.e. – The Ottomans, and the Muslim religion in general. Remember at the time this directory was written there was genuine fear the Ottoman Turks would overwhelm Europe from the east. The goal in mentioning these groups is that part of our prayer for gospel growth is that the enemies (and those who would stand in the way of the Church in her sending out men to preach the word of truth are to be thought of as such) be silenced by the power of God. I think we would agree that all of the ones mentioned here would fit with such a description. Part of the interest is of course not that the Lord would simply wipe them off the face of the earth, but rather that they themselves would also come under the influence of the good news of Jesus Christ and be blessedly converted. We should be desiring that all men, no matter how much they hate us, come to faith.
Lastly, the Plantations are not thinking about Scarlett O’Hara. This is a way to speak about the colonies, including us folks in the Americas. It’s humbling to think about a large part of the reason why we are reading this today is because of the fervent prayers of those who came before. The United States was sought after for the blessings of Christ long before the founding of Bethany ARP Church or the ARP. Same can be said of course for all our faithful churches. It is a keen reminder that our prayers have a much larger effect than many times we realize, and why it is vital that we keep praying for them at all times. It is good to pray for the same things all the time. We are not boring God or ourselves in repeating requests for gospel work to flourish.
In closing, one aspect of this is the particular things we are asking God to do in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to all nations. We are seeking that, “. . . therein God would establish peace and truth, the purity of all his ordinances, and the power of godliness.” There is a word there that we need to focus on, and that word is unsurprisingly God. Whenever I teach kids I joke with them that if a preacher asks a question the answer is either Jesus, sin, or God. Why is that? Because all things are of God and for God and done by God. We are the instruments, or the means by which the prayers we are asking for are completed, but it is God, as the apostle says, who causes the growth. This is why we need to remember in seeking the kingdom to be built that we need to make sure we are putting His ordinances forward for men to observe, and only in the way that He has established. We are never to be wiser than God. We are to trust in His wisdom and in the manner of His choosing, especially if we desire our prayers to be heard and fulfilled.
Last word:
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/god-given-growth
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church