Introduction
In last
week’s Bible study, we learned what Peter meant when he told the believers in
Asia Minor to have sound judgment and be sober-minded when they prayed. We came
to understand this means believers must exercise self-control and consider
themselves humbly in relation to God. This self-control comes through the
indwelling Holy Spirit, if we let Him control our thoughts, emotions, actions,
and words. With a sober mind, we believers can stay calm and collected in the
face of persecution, trials, and adversity remembering Jesus faced these
without sinning. Jesus’ life testified to God’s love, mercy, and grace continually.
A believer, Jesus said, will face hard times so we should be guarded knowing hard
times will come. Because we are believers, we can know the Holy Spirit is
available to protect and guide us.
In the earlier
Bible studies on the effective person of prayer, we learned the Bible teaches
this person is to be righteous, alert, and fervent, believe God can do what we
ask, pray in solitude, pray ceaselessly, and approach God with his or her whole
being. This week we will learn from Jesus, Peter, and Paul. As believers, our relationship
with other people – husband to wife, believer to believer, and believer to all
people – affects our communing/prayer time with God.
Jesus’ Teaching – Relationship
among Believers
Prayer
with God is communing with Him through petition, intercession, thanksgiving,
adoration. Communing with God includes all acts of worship while at church and
in our daily lives. Prayer requires speaking and listening to God, just as any
other growing relationship requires speaking and listening. God is not the only
one who listens; we are supposed to listen to Him, too. Listening to God comes
from reading the Bible, listening to preachers and teachers, and being aware of
the Holy Spirit’s inward changes of our thoughts and resultant actions.
Being in a relationship with God means
worshipping Him, too. Adoration results in worship. Within worship, believers
sing, pray, listen, read, and bring offerings. True worship requires harmony
between Christians. Jesus spoke to this point in Matthew 5:23-24. He said,
“Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering.” [NASB]
In
this passage, Jesus spoke about the relationship of Christians to each other.
He said if anything hinders your relationship with another Christian it will
affect your relationship with God. Jesus instructed the people to reconcile with
other believers whom they offended or who had offended them then take their
offering to God. Remember, God said He will hear the prayers of righteous
people, not the unrighteous (Proverbs 15:29; Psalm 17:1 and 19:14; 1 Timothy
2:8; James 4:3 & 5:16; 1 Peter 3:12, and 1 John 5:14-15). He will listen to
the prayers of those who genuinely seek Him. To be righteous before God, we
must repent and confess our sins. By going to the fellow believer who has
something against us and making the relationship right, we acknowledge our sins
and repent of them.
We
show our repentance by correcting our actions, words, and attitude. We turn
from our old way of life to the new way Jesus has made for us and empowered us
to have through His Holy Spirit living in us. After we repent and renew our
walk in God’s ways, we go before God seeking His forgiveness. When Christians
do these two things – repent and confess – God promises to forgive them of all their
unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). When forgiveness occurs, we can be in His
presence and He will accept our prayers and offerings.
When
we as Christians reconcile with another believer, we are following Jesus’ teaching.
Our offerings to God become acceptable because He made us righteous and holy
through the forgiveness of our sins by the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. When we are made righteous by God, He will be with us and allow us to
be in His presence, and will accept our offering. By obeying Jesus’ teaching
and God’s command to love our neighbor, we show our love for God. Reconciled
relationships among believers can bring unhindered prayer/communing with God.
Peter’s Teaching – Relationship
between Husband and Wife
Jesus
taught about right living in one kind of relationship – Christian to Christian.
Peter taught of another important relationship that needs to be right before
communing with God. In 1 Peter 3, Peter spoke to the believers in Asia Minor about
the husband and wife relationship and its relevance to prayer. He said in verse
seven, “You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding
way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman, and show her honor as a
fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered.” [NASB]
In this
verse, Peter taught Christian husbands to live with their wives recognizing she
is physically weaker, and show her honor as a fellow heir of God’s grace. He
reminded the husbands women are generally weaker physically. This fact is known
and understood. More than that, and different than what the world knows, Peter
told them to honor their wives because they are heirs of God’s grace, too. [Paul
taught also about the love of a husband for his wife in Ephesians 5:25 and
Colossians 3:19.] Unlike the cultural thought that women were property and only
had status in the community by being the wife or mother of a man, Christian
wives – Christian women – have value because God created them and saved them. They
have the same status in God’s kingdom as men; they will inherit eternal life
just like male believers. This value explains part of the definition of “honor”
used in this 1 Peter 3:7. The honor due to women is two-fold. Honor women
because God created her in His image. Honor Christian women because they will
inherit the kingdom of God because of His grace.
Made in
His image and redeemed by His blood - women, wives, men, husbands – all people have
value. To view and treat them as lower than one’s self is sin and hinders
prayer. The last part of this verse is the main point. To love God in word, but
not in action shows that “love” to be false. True love of God shows itself in a
person’s life, by godly actions, words, and attitudes. These show the real
heart of a person. If one truly loves God, one will follow God’s commands,
laws, and precepts. Jesus summed these up with two commandments. He said we are
to love the Lord God will all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love
our neighbor as ourselves. Though women and wives of the time had no value or
status, the husbands and men were to treat them as having value. They were to
honor them.
This
holds true today. God made each person. He loves everyone. Jesus Christ, God’s
Son, died for the sins of all people. That is true love. Who are we to devalue
the people for whom Christ died? To be right before God so our prayers will not
be hindered and He will listen to them, we must live right in this world. We
must treat each person with respect because God made them. A Christian woman or
man must honor her Christian husband or his Christian wife because she or he is
a joint heir of God’s grace. We must love our neighbor as our self. Peter
emphasized this when he repeated part of David’s prayer in Psalm 34:15-16. He
said, “For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and His ears attend to
their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” To look down
on your spouse and dishonor him or her, Peter said, is unrighteous, and the
Lord is against those who do evil. Come before the Lord in obedience. Come
before Him seeking forgiveness and an unhindered relationship with Him.
Paul’s Teaching – Relationship
among All People
In
Matthew 5, Jesus taught Christians to live in harmony among themselves so their
offerings to God would be acceptable to Him. In 1 Peter 3, Peter taught
Christian men to honor their wives so their prayers would not be hindered. Paul
taught about relationships and prayer, too. When he wrote to Timothy, he said
in 1 Timothy 2:8, “Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray lifting up
holy hands without wrath and dissension.”
In this
passage, we learn about Paul speaking to Christians regarding their
relationships with all people, not just their spouse or other believers. He
told them to lift up holy hands –hands that have done no sin. Hands are
important for worship. For by the hands, worshippers present offerings to God
and they praise Him. Hands are offered to God for His service in the world. For
God to receive and use something from a sinful person, it must be presented
with holy hands, hands that have not sinned or been a part of sin. To have holy
hands requires having a clean heart and performing only acts of love and care.
It affects the heart, mind, and body, the areas by which a person is to love
God. Having holy hands comes from loving God with one’s whole being, just as
Jesus and Moses taught in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37-39. James taught
this, too, in James 4:8. He said, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to
you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded.”
James spoke about the whole part of the being when he talked of cleansing hands
and heart.
For a
Christian to have holy hands, one of two things must occur. He or she must not
sin, which is highly improbable because each person sins and falls short of the
glory of God (Romans 3:23) or he or she must confess and repent upon which God will
forgive him or her. The latter is most probable for a person to have holy hands
because all people sin. Paul recognized the source of most uncleanness of
hands. He said it comes with wrath and dissension. These words from the Greek
language mean to be angry, have a temper and be violent, to doubt and dispute,
to argue, and to question what is true. Wrath and dissension lead to a
breakdown in relationships and chaos in community. God is not a God of chaos, but
of love and peace (1 Corinthians 14:33). True worship and prayer to Him cannot
come from chaos, anger, violence, and doubt. That is why Paul taught people to
lift holy hands. He knew and taught people to seek God, confess and
repent, receive His forgiveness, and restore a right relationship with Him. When
people are cleansed of their sinful actions and words, which come from a
person’s heart and mind, they have holy hands and can offer to God unselfish
prayers, God-centered worship from a clean heart, and love offerings to God by
their actions and words.
Jesus’ Teaching – The
Greatest Commandments
Jesus’
answer to the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ question is the primary lesson about
right relationships to God and all people. With these relationships being
right, our offerings, prayers, and worship will be righteous and unhindered.
God will commune with us and hear and answer our prayers.
In
Matthew 22:37-39, Mark 12:29-31, and Luke 10:27-28, Jesus taught we are to love
the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our
neighbor as our selves. The teachers of the Law knew this. They learned it from
their teachers who learned it from God through Moses in Deuteronomy 6:5 and
Leviticus 19:18. Jesus reiterated it for the Jews who followed Him. He, Paul,
and Peter taught it to the diaspora Jews and the Gentiles they discipled. By consolidating
all God’s laws into these two great commandments, Jesus taught all the laws of
God are about the love of God and the love we are to share with Him to other
people. By teaching them side by side, he taught the love of other people is a
top priority of God. When we do not love other people like God loves them, we
do not love God with our whole being. We qualify our love. The teacher in Luke
10:29 wanted to qualify it, too, and justify himself when he asked, “Who is my
neighbor?” Jesus replied with the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable
tells us our neighbor is any person whom we meet or know about, not necessarily
our family or neighbor by proximity. The Jewish teacher understood the person
who showed mercy to the beaten man was the man’s neighbor. Jesus commanded him
to go do the same. Be the same to someone else. Our neighbor is any person who
needs mercy and love.
Relevance and
Conclusion
A person
can only truly love the Lord God by obeying Him that includes loving your
neighbor as yourself. Hosea taught this in Hosea 6:6. He recorded God saying,
“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in knowledge of God rather
than burnt offerings.” Samuel said it to Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22 when he said,
“Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying
the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed
than the fat of rams.” Jesus carried this teaching forward and further. In
Matthew 12:33, He spoke about the character of the person. He said, “Either
make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad;
for the tree is known by its fruit.” With this passage Jesus condemned the
Pharisees for leading the people astray with their teachings. These Pharisees
could not worship God with clean hearts nor pray unhindered because they were
not righteous. They had not accepted God’s grace, and it had not made them clean
from their sins. If the Pharisees had loved God, they would have loved the
people as God does. This showed their sinfulness and their split loyalty to God
and their own selves. We must each decide if we will love our neighbors as our
self and love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The teachings
and commandments are still real and relevant today.
What have
we learned from this lesson today?
- Every person has value and is worthy of love, care, honor, etc. because God created and loves him or her.
- Honoring a person means you recognize the person’s value and worth in the eyes of God and act toward him or her with proper respect and care.
- When we honor and love the Lord, it should show in our actions as honor and love of our neighbors – all other people.
- When we do not honor and love other people, it shows we do not truly love and honor God.
- To go before God with offerings, prayer, and worship, we need to have holy hands, hands pure from anger, dissension, bitterness, hate, and neglect.
- To have holy hands, we must either not sin or repent and confess our sins to God and be forgiven by Him.
- When God reveals to us our negative attitudes towards a person, we should go make things right with the person. Only by obeying God’s commands to love your neighbor are you showing God’s love.
- The teachings of Peter and Paul about love of people and right worship and prayer are not their own teachings. God told these commands to the Israelites through Moses in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Jesus reiterated and consolidated them in His teachings recorded in the Gospels.
Are your heart and
hands clean before God?
Will your prayers,
worship, and offerings be acceptable to Him?
Do you hold
bitterness, anger, or hatred toward other people in your heart?
God offers a way for you to
commune with Him.
Confess and repent
of your sins to Him and He through His righteousness will forgive you and
impart righteousness to you.
Come,
now is the time to worship and pray with your whole heart.
God
will be with you and hear you.
