Redeeming Worship means that we do the things we ought to do, and that we don’t do the things we mustn’t do when we come to worship God.

When we turn our hearts, our eyes, our minds toward God, worship should become God-centered. All that we do in worship is about God, it is for God, and it is constrained by God’s direction for the event. There is perhaps nothing more arrogant, nothing exceeds the presumptuousness of one who determines what he will do in worship as an act of praise or in a design to give God glory, and doing so without  considering what God has said about how he should and must be worshiped. We, like the followers of Aaron at the foot of Mt. Sinai, melt our gold and contrive our devices and concoct our forms and our limericks, we silence the voice of God, melt out golden bobbles into an altar and dance merrily around the Golden Calf, thinking all is well, because it is done is in the name and for the sake of worship.

Praying to the Golden Calf

Our worship doesn’t fail so miserably as the Israelites, but we are prone to the same kinds of sin. We substitute what God has commanded for actions that we have invented. We are quick to dismiss the confession of sins as too obtuse or old-fashioned and our sins are unconfessed before our holy God. We set aside the reading of God’s Word because our focus is on new believers or seekers whom we hope to reach for Christ, and we starve believers in the pew and leave them spiritually emaciated, like those in the death camps, scarcely skin and bones, spiritually, because we have chosen to entertain or dazzle rather than to strengthen, feed, inform, mightily comfort in trial and sorrow, or fully prepare for battle those who are Christ’s.

First prayers

The content of the prayers in Ephesians opens a door into the spiritual life of the Apostle Paul. Some have said that a man at prayer is the most accurate representation of the condition of his soul and it is a point at which he is the most honest and the most God-focused.

Ephesians 1:15-17 — It was their faith in Christ (1:15) that moved the Apostle to pray for the people to whom he is writing (Ephesians was probably a circular letter to many churches in the Lycus Valley of Asia Minor, so there were many church-recipients of this letter). Their faith in Christ was the beginnning point of his prayers for them. We should pray differently for people who are Christians than for those who are not. Our prayers for Christians must be about the knowledge of God and our need to grow — “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened”  … “the hope to which he called you”  ‘the riches of the glorious inheritance”  “the greatness of the power at work in you” — all these prayers were for those who believed. The prayer was so that they might understand and walk in the great provisions that God has given them.

When people come to Christ, often all they know is that Christ died for their sins. They may not know that God desires for their hearts to be enlightened, for their minds to be instructed, for the greatness of power to be experienced, within their very lives. But to these ends, Paul “makes remembrance of them” in his prayers. He not only knows about them, but he chooses to remember them in prayer.

The pastor’s duty is to teach and preach, but it is also to pray. To remember to pray for his people. The pastor who does not pray for his people ought not to pastor them. This would be like the shepherd who allows the sheep to go hungry or to be eaten by wolves, who allows any other flock to envelope his own, or to permit thieves to take the sheep to expand their own flock.

The good shepherd prays for his people. He prays for them to know God, to know about God, and to walk with God. He prays that they might be given the Spirit of God to teach, to reveal, to open the Word of God. And he prays that the people of God would live by the power that raised Christ from the dead, and not in their own failing power.

The pastor prays honestly for his people. The Law of God exposes the thoughts and the intentions of the heart and the pastor knows their sins because he knows his own, as Scripture informs us.

But the prayers are not purely theological, dealing only with matters of heart and head. The majestic prayers in Ephesians lead us to live for Christ. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” These prayers for good works come from the Apostle of Grace. Paul prayed for the truth of our life with God to be translated into our daily life with God and how we live for God. There is a context for these good works — they were “prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (2:10). The workmanship of God, making the dead alive — teaching them about their spiritual riches and the certainty of their life with God forever (“inheritance”), this workmanship was given to us by grace, through the Spirit, so that our lives would be lived in these truths, in these realities, and in this power.

What a horrible waste to have the power of the resurrection poured into our lives, working in us a redemption that takes away all our sins and then to live in utter defeat, to know no peace, and to never experience the provision of God, the life of God, or the passion for God. That our lives would never be touched or changed or corrected or helped or made right because we are “his workmanship,” would be a tremendous failure.

Ephesians 3:14-21. Pulling the main verbs out of the prayer, here is a simplified sentence from this prayer:

“I bow my knees before the Father … that he may grant you to be strengthened with power by his Spirit … that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith … that you may have strength to comprehend … and to know the love of Christ … and be filled with the fulness of God.”

This is very different from praying for traveling mercies for MaryBeth and Homer as they go back up to Ohio, or Aunt Judy’s broken finger. Intercession and petitions are part of our prayer-life, but they only make sense after we have appropriated the grand gifts of God for our lives. When we are filled with the fulness of God, then when we turn to pray for Aunt Judy, we will pray for much more than for her broken finger, but for her heart to be filled, for her life to be dominated by the Spirit of Christ within, that she might comprehend the dimensions of the love of God. How much better our prayers are, when we first pray for the grander themes, the higher aspirations, the glorious content that God desires to pour into our lives. Then we are his workmanship. Then we can know and be filled with the fulness of God.