If you'll kind of stay right
there in Hebrews 4, and just to let you know, I'm going to
be preaching from Matthew 6, talking about the model prayer,
the disciples' prayer, the manner of true prayer is the title of
these messages. But I want to begin there in
Hebrews 4, and let me just give you an idea of where I'm going
with this. Eventually I'm going to get to
that prayer in Matthew 6 and preach through the prayer itself.
But what I wanted these messages to be is sort of like a primer
or an instructional messages on prayer in general. We've seen
the Lord's prayer, His intercessory prayer, praying for us. He prayed
by example, didn't He? And the Lord was praying and
the disciples came upon him. It's recorded in Luke chapter
11. They said, Lord, teach us to pray. We have to be taught
how to pray. Somebody says, well, you know,
my prayer life is so weak and well, I hope. I've said that
myself, you know, and I hope that these messages will teach
us, but not only teach us, but inspire us in this exercise of
prayer. We don't want it to be ritual,
do we? We don't want it to be just surface, but we want to
do it. We want to pray. Maybe it's good
for, maybe you've set aside a time each day Maybe before you go
to bed at night or when you wake up in the morning that you get
with the Lord and you express to your Heavenly Father the things
that you desire according to His will. And there's nothing
wrong with that. We're met here today and we pray
in corporate prayer. This is worship. This is not
standing out on the street corner to be seen of men, as I mentioned
last week. This is not just trying to make
prayer our witness, because it is not. The gospel is our witness.
But this is worship. And so someone stands and leads
us in prayer, and we enter into that prayer as a body, the body
of Christ. And so I want to do that. I may
get into the first part of the model prayer today, but my plan
is mainly to do it next week. But I wanted you to understand,
I ended last week talking about this subject, the power of prayer. I've heard that all my life,
there's power in prayer. But in reality, the power of
true prayer is not the prayer, the power of true prayer is to
the one to whom we pray. And that's not just splitting
hairs, folks. We need to be aware of these things. We need to know
these things. And I thought about this over
in that Psalm 66 passage. I'll just read this to you. The
psalmist writes here, he's talking about prayer there. He says,
God heard me. He attended to the voice of my
prayer. And he says in verse 18 this,
he says, Psalm 66, 18, listen, if I regard iniquity in my heart,
The Lord will not hear me. He'll hear the words. We know
that. But if I regard iniquity in my
heart, well, what's he talking about? Well, I've heard preachers
say this. Well, if there's some habitual,
unconfessed sin in your life, then you can't pray. And I want
to tell you something. If that's what that verse says,
I'm gonna make an extreme statement here now, I want you to hear
it. If that prayer says, well there's some secret sin that
you haven't confessed or anything like that, of course we do confess
all of our sins when we confess that we have no righteousness
before God but Christ. Do you know what I'm talking
about? This idea that men and women have of confessing our
sins, it's almost like the Catholic confession, you know? You go
to the priest and confess, and then he gives you so many Hail
Marys, and that's idolatry, it's all it is, it's self-righteousness.
But if he's saying there, if you have some unconfessed sin
or habit, you're not qualified to pray, if that's true, then
every prayer that I've ever prayed was hypocritical. Why is that, preacher? You got
a problem? Yeah, I got a lot of problems. How about you? You
don't have any? Well, goody for you. I'm a sinner. And I'm saved by the grace of
God. What's the psalmist talking about there? He's talking about
how we, as the people of God, are to go to God. How do we go? Well, you know, last Tuesday
I had a great day. And it just like everything just
went so well. And I was really qualified to
pray. Or the other day I had a terrible
day. Had some bad thoughts, I'm just not qualified to pray. Is
that what he's talking about? And absolutely not. He's talking
about what the writer of Hebrews expresses here in Hebrews chapter
four. And this is, he's talking about
the basis of true prayer, the power of true prayer. Listen
to it again, verse 14 of Hebrews 4. Seeing then that we have a
great high priest, right there, right there is our qualification
for prayer. Do you have this great high priest
interceding on your behalf? That's Christ. Now I'm not saying
that that we should go willy-nilly into prayer and have sinful and
what we might call flippant thoughts. No, prayer's serious business,
you know that. Worshiping God, it's serious
business. It's not to be taken lightly at all. You say, well,
I wanna clean up. Well, here's what can wash away
your sins. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What he's talking about is going to God in prayer with having
thoughts of Christ, who saves a sinner like me, who qualifies
a sinner like me to enter into personal, private, holy communion
and prayer with God. That's what he's talking about.
And listen, what's the basis of prayer? This great high priest
is passed into the heavens, through the heavens. Now what does that
mean? Does that mean he just shot up
into the air or something? He did a sin. Disciples watched
him. But that's not just saying he
shot up into the air. He's not up there living on a
cloud right now. What did he do when he passed
through the heavens? He went to the Father on behalf
of his people. having done whatever was required
to save us from our sins. The Holy Spirit convinces us
of righteousness because Christ goes to the Father. And that's
what this is talking about. We prayed our heavenly Father
through the merits of our great high priest. That's what's to
be on our thoughts. And if you come any other way,
he won't hear your prayer. You come because you had a, I
hope every day this week is a good day for every one of us. But
if we come to God on that basis, he won't hear it. Somebody says, well, you know,
we mostly pray to God when we're in trouble, when we have bad
days, when we're hurting and all that. Well, we ought to pray
at all times, pray without ceasing. But there's nothing wrong with
a A child of God going to the Father when he or she is hurting.
I do it. You're in trouble. But seeing them, we have a great
high priest that is passed into the heavens. And who is he? Jesus,
the Son of God, the Lord, our righteousness. And let's hold
fast our profession. What is our profession? It's
Christ crucified, risen from the dead. It's God forbid that
I should glory save in the cross. And realizing that we have a
high priest who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
all of those sinless infirmities that are natural to the flesh,
Christ suffered, he had pain, he cried, he sore, he got hungry,
all of those things. And he was in all points tested
just like you and me, except he was without sin. We're not. I think I've told you the story
when I first come here to Albany, we had a Sunday school teacher
who stood before everybody and said, he said, now it's not a
sin to be tempted, it's just a sin to give in. I got him away
privately, I said, think about that. What are we tempted to
do? We're tempted to sin. And that's
sinful. Tempted to do something we desire
that is sinful. When Christ was tempted, it wasn't
to sin. It was to deny the glory of God
to feed his hunger, for example. He had no thoughts like that.
He's not like you and me. He was without sin. So let's
therefore come boldly, confidently. This is what prayer is. Under
the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace in
time of need. And I've often said we're just
a needy people, aren't we? Don't pray thinking there's power
in prayer or the number of people praying. I mentioned this last
week. People say, let's get a prayer chain going. You think that impresses
God? He doesn't hear you for the number
of people or how hard they pray. There's nothing wrong now with
us asking each other to pray for us. Nothing wrong with that. The power is in the one to whom
we pray. People think if they can get enough people praying
for someone or something and they pray hard enough, then they're
gonna change God's mind or convince him or he'll hear them. No, not so. God hears all the
prayers of all his children who come to him through Christ, period. John wrote this in 1 John 5,
14. Listen to this. This is the confidence that we
have in him that if we ask anything, Now here's one of the most basic
fundamentals of prayer. Now listen to this. If we ask
anything according to his will, he'll hear us. And if we know
that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions that we desired of him according to his will. Now that doesn't mean that we'll
get anything we ask for in prayer. And that if we don't get it,
God didn't hear us, or we just didn't have enough faith, or
we just didn't do enough. The Lord would have us ask for
things we desire for his glory and our good, the good of others.
Not that we'll get everything we ask for, but we should pray
about everything. Paul wrote in Philippians 4.6,
be careful or anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and
supplications with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known
unto God. Tell the Lord what we want. I
pray for healing for someone, for myself. Next, God directs
us to ask again according to his will. I can't stress that
enough. Our wills are to be in subjection to God's sovereign
will. And you know why? Because he's
our heavenly father. He knows what's best. We don't.
Over in Matthew 6.10, this model prayer, he says, thy kingdom
come, thy will be done. Now we're not to pray for things
that God has forbidden according to his revealed will. You know
the difference between God's revealed will and God's secret
will. God's revealed will is right
here in this book. For example, he says, thou shalt
not steal. So it's useless for me to say,
Lord, help me to rob this bank and not get caught. Because I
know that's against his revealed will. That's a sin. He's not
going to aid me and abet me in sinning. But there are things
about God's secret. We don't know about God's secret.
I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. I pray, Lord, keep
us safe. Keep us healthy. Get rid of this pandemic thing. I pray that. But thy will be done. You know
why this pandemic's here? Because it's God's will. How do you know that? Because
I can read the past. I can look at the past. I know
what God did five minutes ago. I don't know what he's going
to do five minutes from now. That's his secret will. We are to pray
knowing that God's sovereign will is the best thing possible.
Whatever God has in store for us, that's the best thing possible.
It's for his glory and it's for our good. Our wills may not line
up with his his hidden will. I pray, Lord, get rid of this
pain. Lord, heal me of this disease.
Oftentimes we pray with the wrong motive. Listen to what James
said. Let me just read this to you. This is James chapter four
in verse one. He says, from whence come wars
and fightings among you? Now he's talking about professing
believers there, fighting. Come they not hence even of your
lust that you wore in your members? You want your way. You lust and
have not, you kill and desire to have and cannot obtain, you
fight and reward, yet you have not because you ask not, you
ask and receive not because you ask amiss, wrongly, with a wrong
motive, that you may consume it on your lust. That's the wrong
way to pray, isn't it? We know that God's sovereign
will will be done. So why pray? You know, that's
a big question among unbelievers. God is sovereign. He's already,
I believe God is the God of predestination who's working all things after
the counsel of his own will. He knows what, I don't know what's
happening five minutes from now, but God does because God ordained
it. So somebody says, why pray? If our prayers do not coax God
into doing something he doesn't want to do or is reluctant to
do, our prayers don't change God's mind. We don't pray to
change his mind. So why pray? Well, And the reason
unbelievers come across that, they cannot explain the truths
of God's absolute sovereignty and man's responsibility. They
always question the reason for God's commandments to his people.
And they'll reason this, they'll say, well, if God is sovereign,
he's ordained all things to come to pass, and if we cannot change
God's mind and God's will, why pray? Well, let me give you just
a few things. First of all, number one, God
says to pray. God commands us to pray. It's kind of like you with your
children when they would grow up, because I said so. They'd
say, why? And if you answered them at all,
you'd probably at some point in time get tired of it, because
I said so. I'm the head of this household.
Well, God's the head of the universe. He's the head of this household.
And he commands us to pray when Christ teaching the disciples
to pray here, listen to what he says in Matthew chapter six
here. He says, after this manner, verse
nine, after this manner, therefore pray ye. And it's a matter of,
in verse seven he says, but when you pray. He doesn't say if you
pray, he says when you do. And as I said, we need to work
If somebody says my prayer life is weak, well, we need to think
about that. We need maybe to set aside a time. Pray without
ceasing, Paul wrote, in everything give thanks. You know, that's
a main part of prayer, giving thanks. Not just asking for things,
but giving thanks to God for what he's, especially salvation
by his grace through Christ. Think about that. I'm a sinner. God does not charge me with my
sins. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth not iniquity. Thank you, Lord. Don't you thank
Him for that? And He's given us the righteousness
of His dear Son to justify us and from which we have spiritual
life. Thank you, Lord. And then He's pretty much spoiled
us rotten with the things of this world happening. Thank you,
Lord. Don't take them for granted.
Think about Job, here today, gone tomorrow. Isn't that right?
Thank you, Lord. Pray without ceasing. For this
is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you, Paul wrote.
You know, in spiritual warfare, we're fighting a spiritual warfare
for believers. We have the flesh against the
spirit. And when Paul wrote about the armor of God, he concluded
it with this way in Ephesians 6, 18, praying always with all
prayer and supplication in the spirit and watching thereunto
with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Pray in this
warfare. Don't pray anxiously thinking
that if you don't state every petition, the Lord will not bless
you, or if you don't confess every individual sin, he'll damn
you. Don't pray like that. Don't pray, obviously, thinking
you might change God's mind or will. Thy will be done. Let's
pray that hoping that God will change our minds concerning the
things of his providence. Secondly, prayer is an act of
worship. That's what prayer is. It's worship. It's an act of
faith. We have a great high priest,
we pray to the Father through the Son. It's an act of worship
where we express our total dependence upon God. It's our submission
to God. And then thirdly, prayer is an
act of love to God in Christ. We start the model prayer off
in this way, our Father. Do you realize how much is involved
in that? It's like the Spirit with our
spirit bringing us to God and we cry, Abba, Father. Our fellowship
and our communion with God, we can approach God and he hears
us, he accepts us. We can communicate with God through
Christ on the basis of his blood and righteousness. And then fourthly,
just as God has a chosen people to save and he intends to save
them and he will save them, he does so by the preaching of the
gospel. He uses that means because it glorifies him. When the same
way God has determined to bless his people and he often does
so by the means of true prayer, it glorifies him. Now, over here in Matthew 6,
just look at it in a minute, as I said before, people call
this the Lord's Prayer, but the Lord's Prayer, we see several
places in scripture where the Lord himself prayed to the Father,
and those are the Lord's Prayers, and I went through John 17, but
this is the model prayer, the disciple's prayer, and let me
read you this over in Luke 11. This is sort of a parallel to
this. But this is Luke 11, verse one. It says, and it came to pass
that as he was praying, Christ, so he led by example in this
matter of prayer. It says, in a certain place when
he ceased, when he stopped praying, one of his disciples said unto
him, Lord, teach us to pray. As John also taught his disciples. So John the Baptist taught his
disciples to pray. And he said, in verse two, it
said, unto them, when you pray, say, our Father, which art in
heaven. And he goes on with the prayer.
Let me give you a few things about this first verse in Matthew
six, verse nine. He says, after this manner, the
manner of true prayer, therefore pray ye, our Father, which art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Let me deal with the phrase first,
which art in heaven? Our Father, which art in heaven?
Where is God? Most people, it's sort of like,
where's God when you need him? Isn't that right? Well, the fact
is we need him all the time. You know, when Paul was preaching
to the Athenian philosophers and religionists over in Acts,
chapter 17, listen to what he says here as I read it to you,
verse 28. It says, for in Him, in God,
the creator, in Him we live and move and have our existence,
have our being. What does that tell you? It tells
you we need Him all the time, not just some of the time. He
said, even certain also of your own poets have said, for we are
also his offspring by creation. We need God all the time. We
don't need him just on Sunday. We don't need him just when we're
hurting. We need him all the time. So when he says, our father which
art in heaven, he's not talking about geography here or location. Somebody says, well, God is up
there. Well, God is down here too. He's everywhere. He is omnipresent. That's what that means. He's
everywhere. He's spirit. And the point here is that in
true prayer, we're to recognize and acknowledge simply this. When we say which art in heaven,
it's simply an acknowledgement and submission to the fact that
God is high above us in his nature, in his knowledge, in his work. We have an awesome God. Proverbs 15, three. The eyes
of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good. We read it in Hebrews four. The
word of God is sharper than any two edges. God knows our hearts,
doesn't he? That thought that just shot across
your mind, God knows it in vivid technicolor. Let me read this in Psalm 139,
verse seven. The psalmist writes, where shall
I go from thy spirit? Or where shall I flee from thy
presence? If I ascend into heaven, thou
art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold,
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there shall thy hand lead
me and thy right hand shall hold me. When we pray our God which art
in heaven, we're not to think of God as being contained or
limited by space and time. In that same passage in Acts
chapter 17 where Paul was talking about God, he says in verse 24,
he told him this. You remember what he's doing
there? He said, I'm gonna tell you about the unknown God, the
God you don't know. And he says, God that made the
world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven
and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. What he's saying
is here is our worship and our prayers and our understanding
of God is not to be limited to some place that people have designated
as sacred ground. Don't do that. Remember that
old song back in the 60s, we stopped into a church so that
we could pray. Well, you could pray just outside
too. Don't think that way about God. So here he says in Matthew 6,
our Father which art in heaven. Now, our Father sets the tone
and the basis of true godly prayer. And here's the question we need
to ask. Can we really call God our father? Is he truly our father? Somebody said, well, isn't he
everybody's father? Well, he's everybody's creator. That's what Paul said in Acts
17 when he said, neither is worship with men's hands as though he
need anything, seeing that he giveth life to all and breath
in all things. He created us all. But let me tell you something.
He is not every person's father. He is every person's creator,
but not every person's father. You see, all people created by
God have fallen away from God in Adam. when Adam sinned. We fell into sin and death, and
we sold ourselves out to another father, an evil father, named
Satan. Look at John chapter eight with
me. You need to read this. John chapter eight. He's talking
to religious folks here, the Pharisees. And in verse 36 of
John chapter 8, listen to what he says. He said, if the Son
therefore make you free, you shall be free indeed. Who's the
Son? That's Christ, the Son of God. The only liberty and freedom
that we have from sin is in Christ, through His blood and His righteousness
alone. The only liberty we have from
the darkness, the ignorance, and the deception of our natural
father, Adam, who sold himself out to Satan, which is what we
did, is that Christ give us the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He said in verse 37,
I know that you are Abraham's seed, but you seek to kill me
because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I
have seen with my father, and you do that which you have seen
with your father. They rejected the Son of God,
they rejected Christ. Verse 39, they answered and said
to him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto him, if you
were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham.
Talking about a spiritual relationship. Verse 40, but now you seek to
kill me, a man that had told you the truth, which I have heard
of God, that this did not Abraham. Verse 41, you do the deeds of
your father. Then they said to him, we be
not born of fornication, we have one father, even God. This is
the Pharisees now. Verse 42, Jesus said to them,
if God were your father, you would love me. Love the son. For I proceeded forth and came
from God, neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do you not
understand my speech, my word? Even because you cannot hear
my word. Verse 44, you are of your father, the devil. And the
lust of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and listen to it, He abode not in the truth. Because there's no truth in Him,
when He speaketh a lie, He speaks of His own. He speaks what comes
naturally. For He is a liar and the Father.
Here's what I'm saying. If we don't know Christ, if we
don't believe in Him and rest in Him and love Him, the only
Father we can truly claim is Satan. Isn't that right? John wrote in 1 John 3, he said,
how are you going to know the children of the devil and the
children of God? How is it manifested, made known,
that I'm either a child of the devil or a child of God? Well,
do you follow the way of Cain or the way of Abel? Are you coming
to God like Cain based on your works? Are you praying to God
based upon your works? Are you coming to God through
the blood of the great high priest, the lamb, pleading his righteousness,
confessing your sinfulness, Lord, I have no right to call you father. except that which has been graciously
and mercifully given to me in Christ." Our Father, he said. You know
what that means? That means prayer is based on
a right relationship with God. Now how is that possible for
me? I'm a sinner. God is righteous, I'm not. God
is just, I'm a sinner who deserves nothing but hell and death and
everything bad. So how can I have a right relationship
with God? Well, let me conclude with this,
and I'll pick up right there next week. Two things are required
to have a right relationship with God. The first thing is
a legal matter. You know, adoption is a legal
matter, first and foremost. We're adopted into God's family.
But based on what? Well, it's a legal matter and
refers to our being justified before God based upon Christ's
righteousness imputed to us. He's passed through into the
heavens, our great high priest. That means he fulfilled every
requirement and condition to give his people a right relationship
with his father. And where God imputes sin, There's
nothing but hatred and rejection and wrath. If you don't have
Christ, if you're not washed in his blood and clothed in his
righteousness, you may call God your father, but he's not. The Bible says in Psalm 5.5,
the foolish shall not stand in God's sight. He hates all workers
of iniquity. David acknowledged that in Psalm
130. He said, Lord, if thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity,
who would stand? So what's our hope? Blessed is
the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto which the Lord imputeth not iniquity,
and in whose spirit is no guile. Writer of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews
10, 19, having therefore brethren boldness to enter into the holiest.
Pray with God, worship God, commune with God by the blood of Jesus. That's it. And the second matter
is a spiritual matter and refers to our sanctification by the
Spirit in the new birth. And I'll go into more detail
on that next week and give you some scripture, but here's what
it's saying. Unless we've been brought being given spiritual
life and brought by God to faith in Christ and true repentance,
to a knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,
all we're doing is praying unto a God that cannot save. I'll
show you that. We come to God in prayer through
Christ, our Father. What an awesome privilege it
is. Is He my Father? Is He your Father? Seeing them,
we have a great high priest that is passed through into the heavens.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. There it is. Okay.