Should We Pray for Unbelievers or for Evangelists?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Well, some of the best questions you all send to us

00:00:06.080 | come from the tensions that you see directly in scripture

00:00:08.960 | as you read through the Bible.

00:00:10.520 | And that leads to the question that we have today.

00:00:13.160 | Do we pray for the salvation of unbelievers directly,

00:00:16.820 | or do we pray for the evangelists

00:00:18.520 | who bring the gospel to those unbelievers?

00:00:21.660 | It's an interesting Bible question on this Friday

00:00:23.600 | as we close out week number 489 on the podcast.

00:00:28.320 | Wow.

00:00:29.520 | The question today is from a listener named Tim.

00:00:31.320 | Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:32.160 | Can you tell me if we are commanded to pray for unbelievers?

00:00:36.480 | It seems like the prayers and the instruction on prayer

00:00:39.000 | in the New Testament are focused on praying for believers

00:00:42.440 | in context of evangelism.

00:00:44.560 | I'm thinking of Colossians 4, verses three to four,

00:00:47.160 | and Ephesians 6, verses 18 to 20.

00:00:49.700 | In those places, Paul is seeking prayer

00:00:51.340 | for his bold preaching,

00:00:53.040 | not prayers for unbelievers themselves.

00:00:55.440 | Is this instructive for us?

00:00:57.380 | Are we to pray for unbelievers,

00:00:59.120 | or to pray for evangelists?

00:01:00.840 | How does the Bible instruct our priority here?

00:01:03.400 | Yes, the Bible teaches us to pray for unbelievers,

00:01:07.880 | and particularly to pray for their salvation,

00:01:10.900 | but not only for their salvation,

00:01:15.600 | but also lots of blessings

00:01:18.720 | of other kinds that flow from salvation

00:01:23.760 | or lead to their salvation.

00:01:27.640 | But the question Tim asks is not uncommon,

00:01:32.640 | because Tim is right that ordinarily,

00:01:37.580 | Paul in particular, asks for prayer for his preaching

00:01:42.200 | more than he does ask prayer

00:01:46.120 | for those who are hearing his preaching.

00:01:48.280 | Now, I'll come back at the end

00:01:49.460 | to why that might be the case, but that is the case,

00:01:52.320 | and that's why the question arises.

00:01:53.920 | I can remember maybe 40 years ago at a conference

00:01:57.720 | at Wheaton College where a person stood up in the audience

00:02:00.680 | and asked J.I. Packer point blank,

00:02:02.600 | "Give me one text where we're told to pray for unbelievers."

00:02:06.900 | And I'll tell you what he said in a minute when I get there,

00:02:11.440 | but this is not an unusual question.

00:02:16.200 | Now, my reason for saying that the Bible does teach

00:02:19.800 | that we should pray for unbelievers

00:02:21.160 | is that there are at least five lines of evidence

00:02:25.760 | pointing more or less explicitly in this direction.

00:02:30.760 | So first, there's the Old Testament example.

00:02:35.000 | It may be surprising to you, it was to me,

00:02:38.280 | that it turns up, this example turns up in a psalm

00:02:42.200 | where righteous indignation,

00:02:45.240 | the righteous indignation of the psalmist

00:02:48.360 | is calling on God to vindicate him against his enemies.

00:02:52.560 | But listen to what brought him to this point

00:02:56.400 | in Psalm 35, 11 to 14.

00:02:59.040 | "Malicious witnesses rise up.

00:03:01.140 | "They ask of me things I do not know.

00:03:04.900 | "They repay me evil for good.

00:03:08.320 | "My soul is bereft.

00:03:10.020 | "But I, when they were sick, I wore sackcloth.

00:03:15.400 | "I afflicted myself with fasting.

00:03:17.880 | "I prayed with head bowed on my chest.

00:03:22.880 | "I went about as though I grieved for my friend

00:03:26.760 | "or my brother as one who laments his mother.

00:03:30.800 | "I bowed down in mourning."

00:03:33.440 | So the psalmist had prayed for his enemy

00:03:38.040 | until evidently God showed him

00:03:41.780 | that he's going to become an instrument of God's judgment.

00:03:44.880 | That happens in the Psalms.

00:03:46.760 | So we've got an Old Testament example

00:03:48.840 | of praying for our adversaries.

00:03:51.200 | Second, there are Jesus' instructions.

00:03:55.440 | Matthew 5, 43, "You have heard that it was said,

00:03:59.020 | "you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

00:04:02.020 | "But I say to you, love your enemies

00:04:04.000 | "and pray for those who persecute you."

00:04:09.000 | Same thing in Luke 6, 38, "Pray for those who abuse you."

00:04:15.040 | Not pray against them.

00:04:17.400 | (laughs)

00:04:18.240 | It's not in precaritory prayers.

00:04:19.680 | This is pray for them.

00:04:22.160 | Pray for what they need.

00:04:24.440 | And what they need most is faith in Christ and eternal life.

00:04:28.960 | I think this is what the command of Jesus

00:04:33.200 | to bless means as well.

00:04:36.880 | Jesus said in Luke 6, 38, "Bless those who curse you."

00:04:41.880 | Well, what does bless mean?

00:04:43.680 | Well, what does bless mean?

00:04:45.220 | It means pronounce a God-word wish

00:04:51.080 | of well-being on someone.

00:04:54.800 | Blessing is the hope that things will go well with someone.

00:04:59.800 | And then that hope is directed to God in longing

00:05:04.920 | and expressed to our enemy in words.

00:05:08.440 | That's the way blessings work,

00:05:10.040 | whether they're to believers or unbelievers.

00:05:12.880 | You can see it in that famous blessing in number six.

00:05:15.720 | The Lord bless you and keep you.

00:05:17.480 | The Lord make his face shine on you.

00:05:20.080 | So you're asking the Lord to do something,

00:05:21.760 | but you're speaking directly to a person.

00:05:24.000 | So this command to bless our enemies

00:05:27.520 | became a watchword in the early church.

00:05:29.840 | It's amazing how frequent it is.

00:05:32.080 | So 1 Peter 3, 9, "Do not repay evil for evil

00:05:36.280 | "or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless."

00:05:41.080 | Romans 12, 14, "Bless those who persecute you.

00:05:44.920 | "Bless and do not curse them."

00:05:47.920 | Paul set an example of this in 1 Corinthians 4, 12.

00:05:51.000 | He said, "When reviled, we bless.

00:05:54.420 | "When persecuted, we endure."

00:05:56.180 | Now, these blessings are prayers.

00:05:58.920 | They're prayers for unbelievers

00:06:01.400 | that God would cause things to go well for them,

00:06:05.600 | for their ultimate good, for their salvation.

00:06:08.720 | Then there's another kind of instruction.

00:06:10.640 | Jesus gave, and I think it indirectly tells us

00:06:15.480 | to pray for unbelievers.

00:06:18.140 | And this is the answer that J.I. Packer gave.

00:06:21.000 | I remembered all these years later

00:06:22.520 | because I didn't expect him to go here at all.

00:06:25.500 | He went to the Lord's prayer.

00:06:26.760 | Prayed then like this, "Our Father in heaven,

00:06:29.460 | "hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,

00:06:31.900 | "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

00:06:34.920 | Well, when it says, "Pray for the kingdom to come

00:06:38.600 | "and for God's will to be done as in heaven,"

00:06:42.080 | that phrase, "as in heaven," means not just

00:06:45.720 | that God's sovereign will be done the way Judas did it.

00:06:50.440 | That's not the way it's done in heaven,

00:06:52.580 | but that it would be done the way angels do it.

00:06:56.100 | And the angels do it full of joy, full of faith.

00:06:59.600 | So think of the Lord's prayer as a prayer

00:07:05.200 | for unbelievers to believe and obey and do the will of God

00:07:09.600 | the way the angels do it in heaven.

00:07:11.760 | I thought that was a remarkable, insightful answer.

00:07:14.880 | I mean, there are a lot more direct answers.

00:07:16.480 | I'm not sure why he went there.

00:07:17.520 | Maybe that was just all that came to his mind at the time,

00:07:19.900 | but I thought it was remarkable.

00:07:21.680 | Here's the third line of evidence.

00:07:23.520 | There's Jesus' example, not just the instructions

00:07:27.600 | that we just saw, but his example.

00:07:29.980 | While he's on the cross, he prays for his enemies.

00:07:33.920 | And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them.

00:07:36.080 | "They don't know what they do."

00:07:37.960 | And then Stephen continued that same dying prayer

00:07:42.720 | as he was being stoned, Acts 7, 60.

00:07:47.440 | And falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice,

00:07:51.820 | "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

00:07:56.460 | That's amazing.

00:07:57.420 | He prayed for his unbelieving killers.

00:08:03.360 | Fourth, fourth line of evidence.

00:08:05.400 | Paul's example, not only of blessing,

00:08:10.280 | which we just saw, those who persecute him,

00:08:14.960 | but also of explicitly praying for the salvation

00:08:19.680 | of his lost Jewish kinsmen in Romans 10.1.

00:08:23.720 | I think if somebody asked me in public,

00:08:25.960 | give me one example of the Bible teaching

00:08:29.200 | that we should pray for unbelievers, I'd say Romans 10.1.

00:08:32.560 | Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them

00:08:37.320 | is that they may be saved.

00:08:39.860 | So I take this to mean that this was his steady prayer

00:08:46.080 | as he ministered in the Lord's name.

00:08:49.040 | Lord, save my brothers in Israel

00:08:52.080 | and make them my brothers in Christ.

00:08:55.760 | And the fifth line of evidence,

00:08:57.880 | Tim, when he asked the question,

00:08:59.040 | he pointed to Colossians 4 as a typical way

00:09:02.960 | that Paul asked for prayer,

00:09:04.520 | namely for the preachers and not the hearers.

00:09:07.600 | And I commented that that is typical.

00:09:10.200 | That's right.

00:09:11.240 | Paul does that most often.

00:09:13.900 | He said this, this is Colossians 4.

00:09:17.760 | "Pray also for us that God may open to us a door

00:09:22.760 | "for the word to declare the mystery of Christ

00:09:27.260 | "on account of which I am in prison,

00:09:29.740 | "that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak."

00:09:34.600 | Same thing then in Ephesians 6.19,

00:09:37.040 | where he says, "Pray for me that words may be given to me

00:09:41.760 | "in the opening of my mouth boldly

00:09:44.260 | "to proclaim the mystery of the gospel."

00:09:48.840 | And we could add to this 2 Thessalonians 3.1,

00:09:52.000 | "Pray for us that the word of the Lord may run

00:09:55.820 | "and be glorified as happened among you."

00:10:00.560 | Now, none of these texts says explicitly

00:10:04.940 | that we are praying for the unbelievers,

00:10:07.320 | none of those last three that I quoted.

00:10:10.120 | But when you think it through,

00:10:13.040 | what they're asking for is that Paul's word

00:10:17.120 | would be bold and clear and unhindered

00:10:22.120 | and triumphant and glorified.

00:10:25.320 | You can't avoid the fact this includes,

00:10:28.240 | Lord, grant converts to Paul's preaching.

00:10:32.300 | So I think Paul is indeed asking indirectly

00:10:38.280 | for prayer for unbelievers.

00:10:41.500 | And I suspect, this is my effort to answer the question

00:10:45.340 | why Paul spoke the way he did most often.

00:10:48.520 | I suspect that one of the reasons

00:10:52.260 | Paul asks for prayer this way,

00:10:54.320 | namely for himself and his preaching,

00:10:57.960 | is that he is so keenly aware that faith comes by hearing

00:11:02.960 | and hearing by the word of Christ.

00:11:08.480 | He knows that it is God who raises dead people spiritually

00:11:13.480 | and brings them to faith.

00:11:16.520 | And God gives them life and faith and eyes to see

00:11:22.420 | the glory of Christ by causing them to hear the word of God.

00:11:27.420 | Paul really wants us to keep in mind

00:11:33.380 | that God does not move around through the world

00:11:38.380 | bringing people to faith

00:11:41.820 | apart from the hearing of the gospel.

00:11:45.060 | God has bound salvation to the news of Jesus Christ

00:11:51.060 | so that Christ gets glory for the faith.

00:11:54.180 | So let's always keep these things together,

00:11:58.900 | namely prayer for the salvation of unbelievers

00:12:03.900 | and prayer for the word to run and be glorified

00:12:09.120 | through more and more faith.

00:12:12.260 | - Amen, thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:13.500 | And thank you for joining us today.

00:12:15.440 | As you try to wrestle to understand your Bible,

00:12:17.260 | send us the questions that you face.

00:12:18.740 | You can do that or search our growing archive

00:12:20.920 | of answers or subscribe to the podcast

00:12:23.240 | as we go along and hear episodes as we release them.

00:12:26.000 | You can do all that through desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:30.200 | Well, how do I find my ministry calling?

00:12:34.340 | Will I find it internally like some impulse

00:12:36.740 | that will lead me to start a new thing

00:12:39.140 | or will my ministry calling come from the outside?

00:12:41.820 | Will it come from others telling me where I'm needed?

00:12:45.460 | This is a great question and it's up next time.

00:12:47.880 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:12:48.720 | We'll see you back here on Monday for that.

00:12:50.400 | Have a great weekend.

00:12:51.500 | (upbeat music)

00:12:54.080 | (upbeat music)

00:12:56.660 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Should We Pray for Unbelievers or for Evangelists?

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