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Prayer and Preparation for March 27th, 2022

This Lord's Day

Hey church,

This week I re-read part of a Lloyd-Jones sermon (the great preacher of the last century, some even say “greatest”). It stirred me to pray for our services this week, and the next four weeks.

“Possibly one of the most devastating things that can happen to us as Christians is that we cease to expect anything to happen. I am not sure but that this is not one of our greatest troubles today. We come to our services and they are orderly, they are nice—we come, we go... But where is the Lord of glory? Are we expecting him? Or let me put it like this. You may feel and say—as many do—‘I was converted and became a Christian. I’ve grown—yes, I’ve grown in knowledge, I’ve been reading books, I’ve been listening to sermons, but I’ve arrived now at a sort of peak and all I do is maintain that. For the rest of my life I will just go on like this.’ Now my friend, you must get rid of that attitude… This is Christianity: the Lord appears! Suddenly, in the midst of the drudgery and the routine and the sameness and the dullness and the drabness, unexpectedly, surprisingly, he meets with you and he says something to you that changes the whole of your life and your outlook and lifts you to a level that you had never conceived could be possible for you… There is always this glorious possibility of meeting with him in a new and dynamic way.”

Doesn’t that stir your hope and prayers for yourself and our church and this Lord’s Day? It certainly does mine. I can turn this teaching into a few prayer requests for myself and for you and for this week’s gathering:

  1. A prayer of confession, asking for forgiveness for my faithlessness in not expecting anything to happen in our church or in our service and prayerlessness that results
  2. A prayer for the Lord of glory to show up this week (and every week) and to say something that changes everything for an individual, or for several, or for our whole church
  3. A prayer for the truth of the resurrection to accomplish this kind of life-changing, paradigm-shattering work in and among us this week
  4. A prayer for everyone in our Calvary family to be delivered from the lie/temptation of a maintenance-mode Christianity

Here are some other details about the morning sermon and service that may inform your prayers and aid your preparation:

Songs: “See What a Morning,” “Jesus Is Lord,” “It Was Finished Upon That Cross,” “Is He Worthy,” and “Sovereign Over Us”
Sermon title: “The Tomb Was Opened!”
Supporting texts:
  • Resurrection and Jesus’ Lordship (v. 3)—Acts 2:24; Romans 10:9, 14:9; Philippians 2:5-11
  • Resurrection and remembering what Jesus had said (vv. 6b-8)—Luke 18:31-34
  • Resurrection and the significance of Scripture (v. 8)—Luke 1:37, 4:4, 16:31; 2 Peter 1:16-21
  • Resurrection and reporting (vv. 9-11)—Acts 1:8, 4:20


Relevant teaching:

In a sermon on this text, Tim Keller talks about the kind of conversation he has with folks today:

“They say, ‘I could never become a Christian.’ Why not?’ I ask. ‘Well, because there are parts of the Bible I find offensive.’ I usually say, ‘Let me ask you a question. Are you saying that because there are parts of the Bible that you don’t like, Jesus Christ couldn’t have been raised from the dead?’ ‘Well, no, I’m not saying that.’ And I say, ‘Every part of the Bible is important, of course, but would you please put the ethical teaching of the Bible aside for a minute? If Jesus was raised from the dead, you have to deal with everything in the Bible [whether you find it offensive or nr not]. But if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, I don’t know why you’re vexing yourself over any particular ethical teaching.’”

In A Shy Person’s Guide to the Practice of Evangelism, Steven Bonsey writes,

“Let’s pretend that you are someone who might be willing, in theory, at some point, possible, to consider maybe doing something that, while not evangelism-type evangelism, still could be in some way construed as a sort of sharing of hope. Kind of.”

And finally, Greg Gilbert wrote a wonderful little book titled Why Trust the Bible? In chapter devoted mostly to the resurrection, he brings his argument to this conclusion:

“Look, the one thing you can’t do (not with any intellectual honesty, anyway) is pretend that nothing happened. Clearly something did, because it has created shockwaves around the world and throughout history for two thousand years.”

Jeff Tague