INVINCIBLR CHURCH 5-5-24

Invincible Church Sermon Notes
5/5/2024
Effectively Praying in Jesus’ Name
Matthew 1:18-25
Names matter. When we speak a person’s name, we’re either addressing or referring to a specific person. The Bible describes the name of Jesus in several different ways. Each one of them refers to Him in a unique way and tells us something significant about who He is. Today we’re going to look at one of the most important and familiar names of Jesus. Let’s look at…
Matthew 1:18-25 NIV - 18 This is How The Birth of Jesus The Messiah came about … His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through The Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to The Law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of The Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from The Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give Him The Name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what The Lord had said through The Prophet … 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they will call Him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what The Angel of The Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a Son. And he gave him The Name Jesus.
In the Bible, names are really important. Back then, parents gave their children names that would start guiding them to the hopes, dreams and livelihoods they might have later in life! So, names would start identifying what the child was destined to become.
Today, names are primarily just used for us to identify each other. If I ask for Brandon, Dennis isn’t going to respond because it’s not his name. But names can be more than ID’s and references, so we need to talk about the personal name of Jesus and the invincible power in His name.
The name of Jesus is the name above all names… and the Name He’s most well known for. It’s the name that refers to Him even when other names are used to describe Him. And the name Jesus means savior, rescuer or deliverer. The Old Testament name for Jesus was Joshua (Yeshua).
Joshua in the Old Testament is also an example of a deliverer. Moses sent 12 recon scouts to assess the enemy who were occupying the promised land. Joshua and Caleb are the only 2 who were obedient to God when the other 10 were afraid. So, later God allowed Joshua to lead the Israelites into battle and defeat the Canaanites, which delivered them into the promised land.
So, Joshua’s name, which is the same as Jesus in the New Testament Greek describes him as one who led the way for the Israelites to enter into God’s place of blessing. He delivered God’s people from the enemies who were trying to put them in prison, hold them hostage and ultimately kill them!
The primary reason God sent His Son to earth through human birth, to live in human flesh, to be raised by human parents, to become a human man, while still being fully God… and then name Him Jesus was to rescue or deliver people from their sin. God wants to rescue us from our sin so we can live with Him I heaven!
So, when God named His only begotten Son, Jesus, He gave Him the name that means…
Savior, rescuer or deliverer from sin, which means He’s not going to rescue us from a bunch of other stuff until we’ve allowed Him to save us from the biggest issue, we all have, which is our sin!
A lot of people try to use Jesus to rescue them from all kinds of peripheral bad things that they’re facing, but being rescued from all the other bad stuff in this life only matters if they’ve been rescued from their sin in the first place.
So, what Jesus wants everybody to fully understand is if we don’t go to Him first to be rescued from the primary issue of unforgiven sin, which we all have... then, our prayers aren’t going to be effective when we call on Him to be rescued from all the other bad stuff because…
All the other bad stuff we struggle with in life is related to sin in some shape, form or fashion. It’s either falling to a sinful temptation, an impulse reaction to sin from a spontaneous event or making a conscious decision to sin for whatever reason (failure to follow instructions, hiding another sin, knowing the good we ought to do and not doing it!)
It might even be related to somebody else’s sin, where the sin they committed has a negative effect on us just by association or it can be that the places we live, work, rest or recreate are contaminated / sinful environments.
Which means it may not be directly caused by us or even by somebody else, but it could be that our evil enemies have invaded the environments we have to operate in. So, the impact is going to be felt by us in our spiritual walk with Jesus.
What all this means is no matter what kind of trouble we’re dealing with in our life, it can be traced directly, indirectly or circumstantially to the presence of sin. So, if we’re not asking Jesus to help us deal with the sin in our life first, then…
We’re not allowing Him to address the other problems we’re crying out for Him to fix. A lot of people want Jesus to fix things, as long as He doesn’t mess with their private life or interfere with the hedonistic pleasures they may pursue from time to time.
There’s also all these false Christians, prophets and preachers in the world today who’ll call on Jesus to fix the racial, social and economic problems in the world or to fix the division in the family, community and nation.
But they’re tolerating every kind of sin known to man, including the sins that are an abomination to God. Now, we can call on Jesus for anything and everything, but God wants us to know if we’re not seeking Him first to help us deal with the main thing...
... which is our sin, then we’re not putting ourselves in a position for Him to help us with all the other stuff we want Him to fix because the root of all the other stuff we’re calling on Him to fix is directly, indirectly or circumstantially tied to sin.
So, it’s got to become automatic to us that whenever we call on the name of Jesus, we’re not just asking Him to fix the consequences of our sin problem. We’re asking Him to transform the root of its origin from evil to good (which happens in our heart!)
But a lot of professing Christians aren’t willing to let Him transform their heart or the root of their sin problem from evil to good, which means the problem is going to keep coming back, most always with a vengeance! People will most always ask Jesus for forgiveness…
But they usually avoid asking Jesus to address and uproot the sin that’s causing the problem. What usually happens is people spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, effort and resources (money) trying to fix symptoms and consequences on their own because they don’t really want to address the sin problem in their life with Jesus!
Now, in order to appreciate, honor and respect Jesus – the power in His name and the role His name fulfills, we have to understand the nature of God, which is God exists, operates and lives in His perfection, for His glory. Everything about God is perfect!
So, in terms of His standard, all sin has the same consequences. It contaminates us and separates us from God! If a person contaminated with germs walks into an operating room, the patient is exposed to the germs and their body can be infected by germs.
But also, even if there’s just a tiny bit of germs on scalpel, like the bacteria that can’t be seen, when the surgeon uses the scalpel to make the incision, the same infection that comes from a tiny amount of invisible germs is just as dangerous as the infection that comes from a lot of germs!
The operating room and everything in it has to be sterile! The doctors and nurses have to wash their hands all the time. They wear sterile gloves, masks and gowns. All because they understand that a little bacteria can produce a lot of infection, which is a big problem!
Everything about God is always holy and pure! He’s perfect and He’s not going to dumb down His standard to make us feel better! If He did, He wouldn’t be who He is! So, the presence of sin is the major problem in the US that God wants to address, whether it’s a little…
… or a lot… and it’s the only way He’s going to address the consequences and symptoms that we usually call on Him to fix! So, the first thing we have to do when we pray for God to fix our bad circumstances is, ask Him if there’s any sin in our life that we need to address!
If we call on Him about a problem with our money, health, job, relationship, emotions or whatever other worldly problem we have and we don’t confess that we have a sin problem, which we most always know we have.
Or we don’t allow Him to address a sin problem in our life that we’ve ignored, just kind of keeping it hidden in the background of our life for a long time, allowing it to exist… and most times, fester…
Then we’re keeping ourselves in a position that prevents us from receiving His blessing! It would be like having cancer and asking the doctor to cure it with a baby aspirin! What we’re asking for won’t really fix what is wrong. So, what He is saying is a lot of people ask Jesus to fix things but they’re not really addressing the real heart or root of the problem.
They know His name is Jesus… and they’ve been taught that there’s unlimited power in His name. So, they believe that He can fix bad things but they’re asking Him to change some consequences and symptoms without really repairing the root of the problem.
They’re asking Jesus to change the consequences from bad to good without either realizing what sinful actions caused the bad consequences in the first place or ignoring the fact that they’re out of alignment with God’s word, will and ways, so they’re not taking action in their own life to realign with God’s perfect plan. This matters because the Bible says in…
Romans 6:23 NIV - 23 For the wages of sin is death, but The Gift of God is Eternal Life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Death doesn’t mean we stop existing. Physical death here means a temporary separation has occurred. Death in the Bible means permanent separation from God in a place called hell! It’s not the end of life because life is eternal! Death just changes from a person’s location in eternity from heaven with Jesus to being in solitary confinement in hell!
So, the goal of the enemy is to try to separate everything… separate us from God… us from one another… whether it’s the ethnicity, political or social crisis… or whatever else. And all separation is due to sin! And the predominate sin that causes separation is hating others!
Satan’s scheme is to get the focus of the conversation away from sin and make it about ethnicity, social class and customs or skin color. When we let it happen, we can have all the social and cultural peace seminars we want or stage all the activists protests we want…
But if we don’t address the sin problem, then we’ll never see a change in the hate people have for each other in society! The Bible says the sin of hate for others is the root cause of separation in society. So, it’s not about the difference in ethnicities and nationalities!
As long as the focus of the conversation can be steered aways from spiritual failure… and put on the social, secular, economic, political, racial or whatever other controversial worldly issue... then, the root problem of sin will always reappear! It’s obvious to true followers of Jesus!
So, we can save ourselves a lot of time dealing with issues in our families, churches, schools, communities, cities, states and nations. If we just deal with sin, obeying Jesus fixes the issues of politics, ethnicity, money or whatever other issues there are!
So, we have to remember Jesus didn’t come to fix the symptoms. He came to fix the causes of sin, which results in the repair of symptoms. But unless we’re willing to face sin and deal with it, we’ll always just be doing the temporary patchwork of fixing symptoms!
Bad things might get better for a while, but they’ll reappear because sin’s goal is always death, which is separation! If Jesus doesn’t come back while we’re still alive, then everybody will eventually die a physical death! (Aren’t you glad you came to be encouraged today!)
But in terms of physical life on earth, if Jesus doesn’t come back before it happens. Everybody’s going to die a physical death at some point! And since we’re talking about the bad news of death, let’s cover it all! We have an appointment to die. The Bible says in…
Hebrews 9:27 ESV - 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
So, it doesn’t matter how much we work out… how many vitamins we take… how clean we eat (and we should be doing all these things for quality of life) … we’re still going to die. Now, being healthy is important! But since we’re appointed to die, the fact that we’re physically healthy is not the primary concern!
The reason why everybody’s going to face spiritual death is because we’ve all sinned! The penalty of sin is always the same… being death! And it can be addressed once and for all the moment we enter a salvation relationship with Jesus by submitting to Him as Lord and Savior!
A lot of lost people throw the name of Jesus out there, but He’s never given them permission to use it because they don’t have the Holy Spirit! But they use His name anyway because they think it gives them some kind of magical/ spiritual power.
But when they’re using His name without His authority, they have no power! There’s a great illustration of it in…
Acts 19:11-15 NIV - 11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. 13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke The Name of The Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In The Name of The Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?”
In some of Paul’s ministry, he’d been casting out demons from people and the “Seven Sons” of Sceva were watching what Paul was doing. And they said, “We can do that!” They noticed that every time Paul cast out a demon, he did it in the name of Jesus!
Somebody would take Paul to a demon possessed person and he’d say, “In the name of Jesus come out!” And the demons would come out! The 7 Sons said, “We like that!” So now they want to get rid of demons like Paul was doing. They’d go up to a demon possessed person and say…
“In the name of Jesus, come out!” But nothing happened! They used the right name but when they called for the demon to come out in the name of Jesus. The demons spoke up and said, now we know Jesus and we know Paul, but we don’t know you. Who are you!
It goes on to say, the demons came out of the person and possessed them because they were falsely using the name of Jesus! So, just because they knew the name and used the name, it didn’t mean they had the rights and authority that belong to the name. It says in…
1 John 5:15-16 NLT - 15 And since we know He hears us when we make our requests, we also know that He will give us what we ask for.16 If you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I am not saying you should pray for those who commit it! ...
John says we should pray for followers of Jesus who’re sinning and God will hear our prayers! But there might come a time when God decides to cut a believer’s life short because of continuous /unrepented sin! Prayers for a person like this aren’t going to be effective.
John is also telling us the most effective way to pray in the name of Jesus is to make sure we’re seeking God’s will for the situation that are impacting our life! God’s not going to respond to us using the name of Jesus if we’re not equally concerned with doing His will because it’s using Jesus’ name illegitimately!
There’s no supernatural power in using the name of Jesus apart from God’s goal of dealing with sin! If we’re not committed to God’s will and person, then there’s no need to call on the name of Jesus! So, when people falsely call on the name of Jesus, there’s no power!
We know there’s no power because the demons don’t respect or recognize a human who doesn’t have the power of the Holy Spirit, which a person can only have through salvation in Jesus! That fact alone ought to be enough to motivate people to pursue a relationship with Jesus!
So, when we use the name of Jesus without His authorization or outside of His will, He has no obligation to respond the way we’re prefer Him to respond... which means that in our prayers, when we’re asking him to rescue us, fix a problem we’re facing or who us a clear sign of discernment…
Now we have to be willing to recognize and identify whatever current shortfall or sin we have in our life… and be willing to address it… and deal with it first because it’s part of the root cause of the reason for our prayer as well.
Once we’ve confessed and addressed the sin or circumstance that’s the root cause of the issue, we need His intervention in… then we’ll be able to move forward in discerning His word, will and way for the prayer request we’re making in His name.
If we skip past His will in the situation and fail to recognize, identify and address the circumstance, shortfall or sin that needs to be dealt with in our life (which also hinders our relationship with Him), then we’re probably not going to receive the response we’re hoping for in our prayers. So, it’s using time unwisely!
The reality is everything we do has spiritual consequences! It’s a Biblical principle we identified last week. That every physical action we take has an impact on all spiritual matters in our life! Jesus said in…
John 16:23-24 NIV - 23 In that day you will no longer ask Me anything. Very truly I tell you, My Father will give you whatever you ask in My Name. 24 Until now you have not asked for anything in My Name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete! ... AGAIN in … à
John 14:13-14 NIV – 13 And I will do whatever you ask in My Name, so that The Father may be Glorified in The Son. 14 You may ask Me for anything in My Name, and I will do it! …
The context here is IF we ask for something in the name of Jesus, then we better be sincerely seeking to glorify God! We can’t just casually throw in the name of Jesus. When somebody does that, Jesus doesn’t even consider it His name. It’s just a word. Then Paul says in…
Philippians 2:9-11 NIV - 9 Therefore God exalted Him to The Highest Place and gave Him The Name that is above every Name, 10 that at The Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to The Glory of God The Father.
It doesn’t matter who we know, it doesn’t matter who we think are, the most important people in our life or who the famous worldly people might be associated with in some kind of way. There’s one name that’s above every name and it’s Jesus!
Worldly doctors can diagnose and treat health problems, but there’s a “header” who’s bigger than them! Attorneys and lawyers can legally advise and represent us but there’s an “advocate” who’s already fulfilled the law and He’s bigger than then!
It’ good to have friends and it’s a blessing to have true friends, but there’s one friend we have who’ll never let us down and he’s already died to save us! As long as we keep the meaning of His name “pure,” He’ll transform our life by dealing with the sin according to His timing and will!
Paul closes in (vs 10-11) by saying that at the name of Jesus every knee is going bow and every tongue’s going to confess that Jesus is Lord. So, He wants us to do 2 things that will help us pray effectively in His name! He wants us to take a knee… and while we’re on our knees…
He says open our mouth to confess our sins to Him and testify to the world the truth of the power that’s in the name of Jesus!
If we’ll faithfully, honestly and continually work to make everything about Jesus, then He’ll deal with the sin in our life, we’ll receive power in His name and He’ll change our circumstances in His perfect timing and way!
His name describes Him as a person and He’s a person we can know! He’s the only person who can really save us! The Bible describes Jesus standing at the door of our heart knocking. Once we let Him in, the relationship and process starts!
If you’re watching or listening online today and God’s message has resonated with you, but you’re not sure about a salvation relationship with Him, reach out. We want to help!
Let’s pray!