All right, we return to Hebrews chapter 13 this morning, and we are getting ever nearer to the finish line of this great letter. And I pray that we'll continue to see there are important things given to us in this text that we need to think about. And this is certainly an example of that as we talk about prayer and a request for prayer that is seen in the text. And we've titled it a fitting request because it is fit to ask for prayer. It's fit for any Christians to ask for prayer. But of course, in this case, it's speaking of one who is something like a leader of the congregation. And we'll talk about that a little bit more today. But as we've been thinking about this chapter and how it's begun to expose or help us understand what the unshakable kingdom is like, we've seen many things. But particularly lately, we've been looking at the mistake that was being made of thinking that we could add sacrifices on to what Christ has done for us. That we could return to the old covenant sacrifices and somehow that would avail for us. And we've spoken that the author of Hebrews says, no, no. Anything you add to Christ, not only is not additional, really, but it's harmful. And so you must understand the grace of God and must understand what Christ did for you and that he did what you could not do for yourself. So there is no purpose, he's saying, in going back to those Old Testament sacrifices, meaning the shedding of the blood of bulls and goats. There is no purpose in that now. They were all pointing to Christ, and He has come, and He has completed His once and for all atonement for God's people. And so the question is, are we left with nothing to do? And that's what we've been looking at over the last several weeks, right? There is something that we're left to do. There is a sacrifice, if you want to think of it this way, that we can do. It's not truly a sacrifice at all, although that language is used. Those things that we offer up to God is the idea here. And what are those things? Well, for one thing, it's to give praise and thanksgiving to God. to give Him sincere thanks and praise. And we talk about that because we're getting nearer and nearer to Thanksgiving as well, right? A day that we set aside for thanks and we need to recognize it's a day of thanksgiving unto God. But every day for the Christian should be a day of thanksgiving. We should always be thankful to our God for what He has done for us. And so that is an important thing to think about. But also He adds to that that we should do good to one another. that we should share and do good to one another, that we should love each other. Love each other. We've talked through these weeks that this is really the picture of the Old Testament, right? Of the law. To love God with everything we have and love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the calling of the law. And if we do those things righteously and perfectly, then the law would have no testimony against us. Unfortunately, we're human beings. fallen an atom and what happens? We transgress. And so that is the problem we're all in. And Christ came, of course, to be an atonement for sinners that we might stand in His perfect fulfillment of those commands. for Christ perfectly loved His Father, and He perfectly loved us in giving His life for us. And so again, we see how these things are being worked out. We are called as Christians to live in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit as a people who do that which pleases God. Well, what pleases God? Those things that are born of faith. And those things are the things He's called us to do by faith and particularly we would recognize that it is to love God and to love our brothers. And so we see that in this text. But it doesn't end there because Christ also left us in a body, in the church, and there we are called to recognize that there is structure and order, and to love even that, love the order and structure that He's given us, such that as we think about this text, He says that we are to obey those who rule over us and be submissive, for they watch out for our souls as those who must give themselves an account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you. And we talked about this text last week, that it's an important thing to think about that God appreciates, I should say, or is pleased by Christians who live in the church in an orderly fashion. And we can find that in many texts. We tried to point to a few of them recently, but it's not just here in Hebrews. There are plenty of places where it speaks even in the Greek language of being in order, being in order in the ranks and so forth. And so this is a call and to realize that we all have our place in that. You know even the elders that are being spoken of here must give an account to the king. And in actuality that should be a serious thing to consider and must weigh upon the hearts and minds of elders. Now as we come to today we're going to find that it continues. This text continues to speak about things that we're called to do. Now this is the author of the letter asking for this and so I want to read this section if you will. as we think about it. Therefore, by Him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls as those who must give an account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you. Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a good conscience in all things desiring to live honorably. But I especially urge you to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner. Amen. Now we recognize as we read this text that it's about prayer. And so we want to think about prayer today. And we're going to look at three easy brief points this morning. First of all, a call for prayer. Second of all, a need for prayer. And third, a timely prayer. And I pray as we think about this, we'll see the importance of what's being asked for in this text. So we don't have to look very far to find our first point this morning. It's found at the very first clause of our text, as our author simply says, pray for us, pray for us. Simple command, simple request, I should say. Pray for us. But it's an important one to think about, because as we've said all along, prayer is important, right? Prayer is a part of the Christian life, as we recognize our need to lift up all of our concerns, all of our cares unto God, to be anxious for nothing, both prayer and supplication, all thanksgiving, let our requests be known to God. That's the formula. Anxious about something? That's okay, pray. Take it to God's throne. Recognize that He is glorious and over all. And there is nowhere better to take it than to Him. And so there's this command over and over to be prayerful and to recognize the importance of prayer. And we can imagine in our churches the need for prayer for one another. And oftentimes there are many aspects of our life that need prayer, maybe our job. We need prayer about our job or maybe a family concern. We need prayer or maybe a health concern. We need prayer. And so we go to one another and we ask for prayer. And oftentimes you come to your leaders to ask for prayer on something very specific like that or to be remembered in prayer. And that's good. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what we should do. We should be lifting up one another and interceding on behalf of one another. These are the things that Christians do. But we would recognize that our leaders also need prayer. Our leaders also need prayer. It is right that we should pray in all things. In fact, when you think about it for a moment, we see not only the command to pray without ceasing, but we realize even in the model prayer that our Lord gave us, there is a model, if you will, for how we're to pray. We pray for our daily needs. We pray for the Lord to protect us from evil. We pray also for the extension of His kingdom in this world. We pray all these sorts of things, physical needs, spiritual needs, kingdom requests. All these things are prayed for in that model prayer. And we recognize it as a good model for us to think about. But as I said a moment ago, we often see that our elders need prayer, our deacons need prayer, our teachers need prayer. There's a need for that kind of specific prayer. In fact, when you think about, as you bring your prayers to leaders, say, for instance, elders or your deacons, you think about that's something we see in the scriptures, and particularly with elders, because one of the reasons for deacons being appointed was to give the apostles who later had an office that kind of transferred over to the elders in one sense, not the apostolic authority, of course, but the model, if you will, for that in the church. And they are called to the study of God's word and to preaching and to teaching and to prayer. So those are things that are good. We should be praying for one another. But we also need to remember that our leaders themselves need prayer. I need prayer. And as you think about this for a moment, you would see here that this request is not alien to these people. There's some connection that they have to the author of the letter to the Hebrews. We don't know exactly what it is. It would seem that he had been there early on in their founding as a church, that he might have been there when those previous generation of elders were appointed. He's been gone for a long time. F.F. Bruce sees it as something like that, that he's been gone for a long time but had an important role in founding the church by God's grace, maybe in some sort of apostolic authority went there. And then the elders were appointed and most of them have died off and he reminds them to follow the example that they had set. But he also says, your current leaders you should follow. Your current leaders you should listen to. Now there's a lot here to be deciphered in what's said in these two verses. We're going to try to look at it here in just a moment. But whatever it is, he is someone that has a connection to this church and he says, remember me in prayer. Yes, you should remember your leaders in prayer, your elders and your deacons in prayer, but remember me too as someone who has a role in the life of your church as a leader of some kind in your church. Remember me also in prayer. My friends, we could turn to many places in scripture where we see a request for prayer for leaders. Paul, in numerous cases, asked for such prayer. I had a whole sermon on Paul's request for prayer in the Thessalonian epistles where he requests prayer that the gospel might go out in power. and effectiveness. Think about that for a moment. Pray even for the work of the gospel. Pray for the preaching of God's Word. Pray that God might use His servants powerfully, though their efforts are often pitiful. Let's be honest about it. But God can bless it in amazing ways. I often remember, and I've shared with you before, Spurgeon one time said he preached a sermon and he just thought it was terrible. He said, I just, it didn't land, you know, it just didn't have the effect he'd hoped it would. and he was bothered by it all week. And the next week he got up and he preached a sermon and he said, I thought it just connected, everything went great about it. And Spurgeon had office hours on Mondays and a gentleman came to the church and said, I've been thinking about your sermon. I can't get it out of my heart. I can't get it off my mind. I need to talk to you about it. And Spurgeon said, I said, the one yesterday? And he said, no, no, the one a week ago, the one a week ago. Again, it's a reminder that it's not in what we think of our work, but it's how God uses it. And we need to pray that the Holy Spirit would move in power at the proclamation of his word. And as we see this here, there is a need to pray for your pastors, for your elders, for your deacons, for your teachers. And we see this over and over in the Scriptures. Pray for us. This author says, pray for us. Pray that we would live up to the high ideal that the Scriptures hold for the offices that we are blessed to inhabit. Pray for me that God guards my heart, guards our deacons' hearts, guards our teachers' hearts. My friends, many of us had some discouraging news this week about one of the brightest expositors of our day walking into a minefield of sin and blowing up his ministry. Decades of work gone. Decades of work gone. And my friends, it's a reminder that these things can happen, and we need to be guarding our steps, absolutely praying that the Lord would guard our hearts, and that we're praying for our leaders, that they would recognize the temptation of sin and guard against it. take reasonable steps against it. And there is much that is being talked about recently in this regard, I know. But there are things that we need to think about in terms of, is it good for men to be traveling in ministry work without their spouse? for weeks at a time. Is that a smart thing to have happen? I think we have to think through those things and ask about guarding our steps. But also, in addition to that, we need to be praying about these things. Pray that the Lord would guard our hearts and He would protect us and protect our leaders. I don't say that just because I'm up here. I'm not the only leader in this church. We need to be praying for one another and pray that God would guard our hearts, that we would bring glory to Him and not shame upon the name of Jesus Christ. So as we think about this, I'm reminded recently, some of you may have seen this, that MacArthur and Piper did some kind of Q&A, and one of the questions that they asked was, I think they were asking both of them, but, you know, in your aged wisdom, you know, what have you learned or whatever? And I think MacArthur said, the one thing I come back to is this. you know, Lord, guard my steps or something. I can't remember exactly how he worded it, but John Piper in that said, yes, that's it. That's it, you know, because we need to recognize that it is it is terrible for any of these sort of things to happen, but for it to happen when a man 73. You know, that's just so sad to blow up a ministry of decades. I don't know the details, obviously, but again, it's a reminder to us that we need to be careful. Lord, keep us faithful. And so, in light of all this, we see that there is a prayer for faithfulness of pastors. We need to pray that they're faithful. We need to pray that they're not allured by the lesser pleasures of this world, the fleeting pleasures that are here today and gone tomorrow, and cannot rival the eternal glories that we have in Christ. We need to keep our eyes upon Jesus, and that's what our author tells us. Keep your eyes upon Jesus. not on lesser things, not on things that can draw you away to your own demise, but follow after Christ, trust in Him, walk faithfully, and pray that your pastors will do that. Pray that your pastors and deacons and teachers will do that. And so as we think about that for a moment, we need to realize that there is a call to pray here. Pray for their spiritual walk, pray for their preparation, pray for their sermons, pray for the effect their sermons have. pray for the effect their sermons have. I'll go to another Spurgeon story, I've got a lot of them, but he one time had a visitor to the tabernacle and he came in and said, how do you explain the effectiveness of your preaching? Is it in some preparation method, or, you know, he had all these questions. And he said, well, it's a work of the Holy Spirit. But he said, I'll show you something. And he took him, supposedly, back to a back room. And there was a group of Christians there gathered in prayer. They would pray every Sunday morning before the sermon. And they had, I think, a second team that prayed during the sermon for the sermon. I'm not saying you've got to leave this room and go somewhere to pray, but you can pray where you're at. Pray for the effectiveness of the preaching, that God would bless it and that the gospel would go out in His power. Because it's not in our oration, right? Oftentimes we can get caught up in that sort of thing. But again, Paul says what to the Corinthians? I didn't come with words of wisdom. Corinth was a town of oration, right? Their greatest heroes were orators. They had the Corinthian games, the Isthmus games, and they loved their athletes too, but their statues apparently were to orators. And Paul knew this was a danger, right, that we could attribute the glory of the gospel to the men preaching it. So Paul says, I didn't come knowing anything, right, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That whatever God would do here would not be attributed to my wisdom or my greatness or my preaching ability, but would be attributed to the Holy Spirit and His movement. to what Christ accomplished on Calvary's cross. And so again, I think we need to remember this. Pray for our ministers. Pray for our leaders. Pray for our teachers. Pray that God would use them for His glory. But if we've kind of broadly gone over the need for prayer for ministers, and I think there is a great need, there is a more specific request given here. There's a call for prayer in our text today in light of a desire to be restored to the congregation. He says, I'm praying that you pray even more urgently, you know, in this moment that I might be restored to you, I might come back to you. And there's much written about these couple of verses that you might pass over as insignificant until you begin to wrestle with them. And see, there's some strange things said here. Like, for instance, it says that we are confident that we have a good conscience. Well, what would make you think that they wouldn't? What would make you think in this text that this leader felt the need to say that? And so there's many commentators who are wrestling with the idea that maybe this leader's been gone so long that some of the church members are beginning to say, of course He wants us to remain faithful. He's not here. Of course He tells us to endure difficulty. He's not here. We're the ones that are here. Who is He to tell us anything? If He loved us, He would be here with us. Now it reminds you 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 contains what's often called Paul's apologia or apology in which Paul's defending a similar idea in Thessalonica. Paul was there with them as the church got started and trouble came and he left and he went to Berea and other places. He was traveling around and there began to be this argument going around that Paul didn't really care about those in Thessalonica. He didn't care about them. That the Thessalonians weren't important to him. And chapter 2 is Paul arguing against that saying, as a mother I've cared for you. I care very deeply about you. And I pray that God will bring me back to you, but I've heard a report about you and it's great. But don't think that just because I've been hindered from returning, it means I don't care. You might remember Romans 1 where Paul says, I've longed to come to Rome, but he's been providentially hindered. It has not been God's plan for Paul to as of yet make it to Rome. It is God's plan for Paul to make it to Rome, isn't it? Just not yet. And so again, whatever's going on here in which there'd be this argument that whoever this author is, and it may be Paul, right? That's been, we talked about this in our very first week. Historically, they said it was Paul. I think there's some reason to think it isn't Paul. It certainly, the theology sounds Pauline. I think that's for sure. But the wording isn't Paul. I mean, there's times where the wording is clearly to me not Paul. That's led people like Luther to think that it's Apollos who's basically writing what he remembers Paul teaching. And I think that makes sense, something like that. But we don't know, right? Only God knows who wrote this letter. But whomever it is, he's praying, I want to be restored to you. It's not that I don't care. I want to be restored to you. I want to come to you. I want to be with you. As I've called you to faithfulness in the face of persecution and told you to listen to your leaders who are telling you these same things, I've written this letter to you to argue out so you hear it from me that you must stand fast and faithful in the gospel. Now, I believe this author we've said all along believes that they will. And here's another evidence. He asked for them to pray. And it seems he's pretty confident they're Christians. but he's warning them of the dangers for those who would turn to something lesser, that it would be evidence that they were never truly amongst the people of God. And so he says to them, listen, I want you to know not only do we have a confidence of a good conscience, but in all things, in every way, we desire to live honorably before God. They desire to live honorably. This is the call for Christians, but particularly for ministers. We are certainly not held to a lesser account. We're held to a higher account. In fact, though we keep all of that on elders, we also remember the same thing is true for deacons, right? They're to be held to a standard. To a standard. They're given qualifications. And guess what? We might think it isn't true of teachers, but James says not to even be quick to make yourself a teacher. For do you not know that you'll be held to a higher account? So clearly, again, it's a reminder to us that when you teach, when you lead, when you pastor, how are you going to claim you don't know? I've made this point several times. How can I stand in this pulpit preaching God's word for decades and stand before God and say, I didn't know. I didn't know. He can say, you've preached a sermon on that very passage 10 times. How are you going to claim you don't know? My friends, if we're going to take the position and stand there, we do so at a higher standard. And this is why it's so important. In this recent event we were talking about a moment ago, I was glad to see many of those ministries come out and say, listen, the person's done, right? The person's done. We have to have standards. When you've broken the trust of your people, that's the end. There's no more trust there. And I saw several people online saying, well, can't he be restored after six months? And none of us know the details of this. But here's what I trust, the men who do know the details, the elders of his church, the board at One Passion Ministries and all these things, they said he's permanently disqualified. They know the details. I trust their judgment. I trust their judgment on that. But my friends, we need to recognize that high standard, that high calling that we are called to. We must live in a way that brings honor to the name of Christ. Now one final thing I want to say about this and this need for prayer. It'd be easy to separate this from the few verses that went before it. I've read it together so we wouldn't do that, because it seems clear to me that as he's talking about leaders and obedience to leaders, he asks for prayer. And many commentators, including Andrew Murray, one of the old Baptist commentators, says on this that he believed that this is another one of these sacrifices. The call to prayer for our leaders is one of the things that God calls for us to do by faith and that pleases Him when we do it. Because again, we need to pray for our leaders. And so as you think about this, we recognize there are duties that we have. We put out literature all the time, as we did even this morning on our table. This one's out there all the time, The Glory of the True Church by Benjamin Keech, one of the Mount Rushmore figures, if you will, amongst Baptists. And I want you to hear what he says about this and why it's important. Of the duty of church members to their pastor. Now, what would you think the first duty is? You might think, well, you know, show up in church or something like whatever it might be. The first one is prayer. Here's what he says, Again says Paul, praying also for us that God would open a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ. Prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for Him. They that neglect this duty seem not to care either for their minister or their own souls, or whether or not sinners be converted and the church edified. They pray for their daily bread, and they will not pray to have the bread of life plainly broken and plentifully broken before them. Motives to this are as follows. In other words, what are your reasons? What are the reasons you should be praying for your ministers and teachers? Number one, minister's work is great, and he quotes here 2 Corinthians 2.16, for who is sufficient for such things? Friends, I just want to take a second there to have you think about this. The Apostle Paul described the gospel ministry as taking out the aroma of Christ and taking it out to those who are both living and perishing. And he said, as the aroma of life to those who are living and the aroma of death to those who are perishing. And who is sufficient for such a thing? I don't think you have to guess at this. If Paul didn't feel he was sufficient, I am not sufficient to do this. So my friends, we need to pray for our ministers that the Lord would bless their work because in themselves they will never be sufficient. Number two, the opposition made against them is not small. Type in names of recently fallen pastors into Google and see the articles that pop up. See all the websites gloating and laughing and mocking over it. The devil, I believe, loves nothing more than to see ministers fail. Because again, it gives a testimony against Christ. An easy one for non-believers. And you hear it all the time. You know, you'll hear things like, oh, if that person turned out to be a fraud, you know everybody's a fraud. Everybody's a fraud. And my friends, we need to be praying because the opposition against our ministers and teachers is not small. Third, God's loud call, as well as the call of ministers themselves, is for the saints' continual prayer and supplication for them. In other words, Scripture and ministers ask you to pray. Therefore, obedience calls for you to pray. Four, their weakness and temptations are many. Their weakness and temptations are many. Elders and deacons and teachers are just people. Right? We pray they're godly men. We pray they're people that God has raised up and the Holy Spirit is guiding their steps. We pray all of that. But they're still human beings. They are prone to wander. They are prone to error. We need to pray for them that they not stumble, that they not fall. And then as we come back to this, we see number five. The increase in edification of the church depends upon the success of their ministries. Do we doubt that? If we don't have good preachers and teachers, is the church going to be edified? God appointed teachers and preachers for the edification of His church. So, of course, we'll have no edification. And I think that's why when we see certain people fall, stumble, we say, well, of course, you know, they were, look what they were all about the money or they were all about whatever. When it's people in our own camps, it's a little harder, right? Because we say, well, they knew the truth. They knew the truth. There's no really covering it up. And I think that's two giants of the reformed community in the last month have lost their positions. And again, it's a reminder, my friends. So that's important that the church needs good teachers and we need them to be faithful that they may teach and we need to be praying for them that they teach well and preach well, that the church is edified and increased. Six, and finally, if they fall or miscarry, God is greatly dishonored in His ways and people reproached. We already said that. And my friends, it's true. So pray for your pastors, pray for your teachers, pray for your leaders, pray for them. And if there's other people that you listen to, pray for them. If there are godly preachers, pray for them. We need to be praying for our families, for our church brothers and sisters, for our leaders. There is no end to the prayer that we need to offer. And my friends, it's an important responsibility. And I've been at this church long enough to see many dedicated prayer warriors go to glory. Who's picking up their spot in the line of battle? Who's taking their place and praying for the congregation, the people of God? It needs to be us. That's a duty of all of us to do. And so, my friends, we need to see that there's not just a general call to prayer, but in this case, a specific need of prayer that we want to look at, that the need of prayer is timely. It's timely, saying, I need you to pray now and urgently. Why? That God in His mighty providence might restore me to your fellowship. There are many times we see timely prayers in Scripture. Paul at the end of 2 Timothy is urging Timothy to get to Him with all haste. Why? Paul knows his time is short. His time is short. Bring me my books, Paul says. Bring me my cloak and get here. Get here. And I'm sure Paul was praying, Lord, get Timothy here. I want to fellowship with him one more time." And I don't know what all was in Paul's books, if these are some kind of theological books or accounting books, and he's wanting to settle his affairs. But Paul knew what they were, and Paul knew it was important, and he wanted to fellowship with Timothy one more time. That's a timely prayer. There are prayers that are timely. They're needed in the moment. If you come to me and you tell me, or you call me and you say, listen, my husband is in surgery, in serious surgery, will you pray? And I say, yeah, I think I've got time in a couple of weeks. I'll get around to praying then. That would obviously not answer the need you have in that moment, because it wouldn't be timely. We recognize there is a timeliness to prayer at times where we are called to come before the throne of God boldly in that moment and lift up our prayers and supplications to God. And that's what he's saying here. There's a need for a timely prayer. We need to pray for our ministers. We need to pray that they be with us and that they be faithful and that they be effective. We need to pray for them. My friends, that's not just timely prayers for our ministers. That's obviously where the text is at. But this is a principle we can understand in the life of our fellowship. How about this morning? We've got Brother Henry coming up here to be baptized. It is right that we pray for him. It is right that we pray for his family to be instruments of God's wisdom and grace to him and to develop him, and not just his family. I see grandparents sitting here and so forth, that they also be involved in that. And how about for us as a church body, we say, well, let it be to his biological family. That's not what the Bible says, right? We're a community. We come together around him and support him and love him and pray for him and we ought to be praying for him today. And we ought to be praying for him regularly on and on as he walks this Christian walk. That he also would grow in knowledge and grow in the grace of God. And that he also would bring esteem and honor to Christ by his walk. It's important that we pray that for ministers, but also for each other. Also for each other. So my friends, as we close today, let's do just that. Let's pray for the baptism we're about to have and for our church.