Our text today is going to be verse 22,
and I'm going to speak to us this morning on the subject of
prayer. Verse 22, we read, "...and all
things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall
receive." I want to say a few things about the context in which
our text is found. So we'll begin reading in verse
1 of this chapter and read down to our text. We have four Gospels
in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The first three are many times referred to as the synoptic gospels. That is, in Matthew, Mark, and
Luke, we have a glimpse of the life of Christ. The apostle John,
he tells us at the end of his gospel that if all things that
Christ had done had been written, that the world itself could not
contain the books. So we have a glimpse of the life
of Christ in these three Gospels, and each Gospel writer wrote
as God the Holy Spirit inspired him. The inspiration of the Word
of God is a great mystery, like everything about God, beyond
our ability to fully comprehend. But Matthew wrote like Matthew,
and Mark like Mark, Luke like Luke, and John like John. And
yet all of them, though they were distinctive, they were all
inspired by God the Holy Spirit. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke all
record what we are going to read first of all in this chapter.
But Matthew, and we're told that he wrote his gospel especially
to the Jews, he's going to point out to us that what took place,
our Lord's triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday of the
week in which he was crucified, is the fulfillment of an Old
Testament prophecy. He was writing to the Jews who
had the Old Testament Scripture. Let's begin reading in verse
1. And when they, that is the Lord Jesus Christ and his company,
drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, just
a small village, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus to
disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against
you, And straightway you shall find an astide and a colt with
her. Loose them and bring them unto
me. And if any man say ought unto
you, you shall say." Now notice this. If anyone asked you, why
are you unloosing the colt and its mother? Why are you doing
that? Then you tell them, the Lord,
not Jesus. you tell them the Lord. You see
this one, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's the term we use first
of all when we speak of Him, the Lord. He is the Lord of Lords. He is the King of Kings. He's
the eternal Son of God who came into this world and was born
and given the name Jesus, which means He shall save His people
from their sins. If anyone asks you why you're
unloosing these animals, you tell them, the Lord hath need,
the Lord hath need of them. And straightway He will send
them. Now the Lord said, you do this
and this is what's going to happen. So we're not surprised that when
they asked and they told them that this did happen. Because
this is the Lord's Word. The Lord's Word. And all this
was done. This is what Matthew says. All
this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the prophet, saying... Now this prophet was the prophet
Zechariah. And in that prophecy, in the
chapter 9, In verse 9 we read, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of
Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy king cometh unto
thee, he is just, and having salvation, lowly, and riding
on an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. This is fulfilling
that prophecy. Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold,
Thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and
a colt, the foal of an ass. And the disciples went and did
as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass and the colt,
and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. Now,
Luke, we have three Gospels, as I said, that record this,
and Luke tells us that they put their garments on the colt, and
it's mother, the name, but they set him upon the colt. He rode into Jerusalem riding
upon the colt, the foal of an ass. And a great multitude spread
their garments in the way. The disciples no doubt first
began to take off their outer garments and lay them in the
road in which he was traveling. And then others began to cut
down branches from the trees and put them in the way. And
the multitudes that went before and that followed cried saying,
Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in
the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. And when
he was coming to Jerusalem, all the city was moved saying, who
is this? And the multitude said, this
is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. Jerusalem was filled
with people at this time because this was the Passover week. This
is one of those three annual feasts in which the law commanded
that all the Jewish males appear before him, before him in Jerusalem. And Jesus went into the temple
of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple
and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats
of them that sold doves. And said unto them, it is written,
my house, my house, God's house, it is written, my house shall
be called the house of prayer. But you have made it a den of
thieves. could not help but wonder if
the Lord attended so-called Christian churches today in our land, how
many of them he would find like he found the temple that day,
houses of merchandise. Men selling, buying and selling,
getting gain. You see, they had a business
going here, didn't they? You had to bring a lamb and the
lamb had to be approved. And so they would have the priest
put their mark of approval on the lambs that could be sacrificed. They had to pay a temple tax.
They couldn't use money from other countries in which they
might live. And so all these people who would
come to Jerusalem, they would find there a market. in which
they could buy their lambs that had to be sacrificed and they
could exchange the money. And they could buy doves also
if they were very poor. They had a business going on
in God's house. God said, my house shall be called
a house of prayer. But men, religious men, made
God's house a house of merchandise. And you don't think that's true
today. You need to open up your eyes and look at what is going
on in so-called Christian churches today. Nothing more than houses
of merchandise. And the sad thing is the merchandise
is the souls of men and women who are being deceived and who
are going out into eternity unprepared to meet God. That's the sad thing. My house shall be called the
house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And
the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed
them. And when the chief priests and
scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, And the children
crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the son of David. They were sore displeased. If
it wasn't for the truth about depravity, total depravity, in
which all men are born, you would think they would have been pleased.
They were religious rulers, religious leaders, and they saw the good
things that he was doing, healing the blind. opening the ears of the deaf,
giving power to those who were lame to walk. All of these miracles
that the Lord Jesus Christ brought in the temple, you would have
thought that those religious rulers and leaders in the temple
would have been pleased, but no, they were displeased. Why? Because they realized that
it was going to affect their business, their money scheme. They said, don't you hear what
these are saying? Jesus said unto them, yea, have
you never read out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast
perfected praise? And he left them, and went out
of the city into Bethany, and he lodged there. Now in the morning,
as he returned into the city, he hungered. Now I want to point
out that what Matthew here describes in verses 18 and 19, Mark tells
us took place on two different days. In other words, Matthew
combines our Lord cursing the fig tree and it withering and
his disciples asking him about that in one account where Mark
tells us that our Lord, it was on Monday morning that the Lord
was coming back to Jerusalem, and that's when he sees this
fig tree that is covered with leaves. And he hungered. And that reminds us that he's
not only God, the Lord, but he's man. He's the God-man. God cannot hunger, but he hungered. Because He's man. It's very important,
isn't it, that we recognize both of His natures. Yes, He's God
of gods, but He's also man in every sense of the word. Sin
only accepted. When He saw a fig tree in the
way, He came to it. and found nothing thereon. And
what was this but a picture of Judaism, of Judaism at that time,
when the Lord was here in the world. They had all the leaves,
they had all the ceremonies, they had all the rituals, everything
to make a person feel religious, if you please. But they had no
fruit. What a picture of Judaism. barren of fruit. And the Lord spoke and said,
let no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever and presently. And as I said, we find from Mark's
gospel, it was the next day when they are returning again to Jerusalem
that they see that the tree, the fig tree, is withered. Jesus answered and said unto
them, Verily I say unto you, if you have faith and doubt not,
you shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but
also if you shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and
be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done. You know, there's
a lot of mountains that have been removed since our Lord spoke
these words. Not literally. He's not talking
about Mount Sinai being cast into the ocean. But I tell you,
there's been some problems between individuals that have been cast
into the sea of God's forgetfulness. And the mountain has gone away. Fellowship has been restored.
But here we come to my text now. And all things whatsoever you
shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive. The subject
is prayer. Everyone here today has prayed,
no doubt about it. We all think we know about prayer,
and we do all know something about prayer. But I hope that
it hasn't become so accustomed to all of us, the subject, that
we do not feel that we can profit from a message on prayer. And
we're going to look at it in a very simple way. I have four
simple questions that I want to ask and answer, and for us
to think about these answers. Number one, what is prayer? What is prayer? And as I answered
that, I wrote down, prayer is one of the choice privileges
of the children of God. Prayer, what is it? It is one
of the choice privileges of the children of God, and I want to
emphasize the fact it is a privilege of the children of God. In prayer, God's children, we
all have the privilege to come to God on a throne of grace and
yet to come to Him as our Father. We read the prayer that our Lord
the example of the prayer that our Lord gave to his disciples. And the first thing he said when
he gave them that model prayer is, when you pray, say, our Father
which is in heaven. Prayer is a privilege of the
children of God. to have an audience with the
One who is God of gods and King of kings, Lord of lords, who
is the sovereign Lord God of all things. He's our Father. He's our Father. And He's our
Father, we know this, but let me remind us of this, He's our
Father only through the Lord Jesus Christ. There's many people
in this world who no doubt pray and say, our father, but God
is not their father. He's their creator, no doubt
about that. But we have a privilege, those
of us who may call him our father, to speak unto God and we come
to him as his children. Our father. He's only our Father,
let me say this again, He's only a person's Father through the
Lord Jesus Christ. There's no other way to have
God as your Father other than through the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn back just a few pages, if
you will, to chapter 10, Matthew chapter 10. And verse 40, I'm going to read
the whole verse, but I want to emphasize just the last part
of this verse. Our Lord said, he that receiveth
you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that
sent me. Now who sent Christ? The Father,
right? The Father sent His Son to be
the propitiation for sin. He that receiveth me, the Lord
Jesus Christ said, receiveth him that sent me. When we receive
Christ as our Lord and Savior, at the same time we receive God
as our Father. I know The Scripture says, to
as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons
of God, even to them which believe on His name. And sometimes we,
because of our sinful flesh and because of Satan, we ask this
question, well what does it mean to receive the Lord? I'm confused
about that. What does it mean to receive
the Lord? If He were here, in the flesh
as he was at this time, I would understand that. For him to come
to my door and I open the door and let him in, I would receive
him. But what does it mean now to
receive Christ? To as many as received him. Well it tells us it means to
believe on his name. That is his person. But think
about this. Everyone understands how it is
to receive another person. Suppose there was some person,
a friend of yours you hadn't seen for a while, maybe a long
while, and you received that person. What would that mean?
That means you would welcome that person, right? You would
welcome them. You would embrace them. You would
be thankful for them. And that's what it means to receive
Christ, isn't it? It's to welcome Him, yes, with
open arms, to receive Him, to wrap the arms of faith, not these
literal arms, but the arms of faith around the Lord Jesus Christ
and to be thankful, thankful for Him. That God has provided
the very Savior, the perfect Savior that I need as a sinner. I need someone. I need someone
who can take away my sin. I need someone who can reconcile
me unto God. I've sinned against the holy
God. I'm under the wrath of God. I
need someone. Christ is at one, and to receive
Him is to welcome Him, to wrap your arms around Him by faith,
and to be thankful. He's the very Savior I need. It's not hard, really, to understand
what it means to receive Christ, is it? We may make it hard, but
the point I'm making is this. When we receive Christ, we receive
Him that sent Him. the Father, and He becomes our
Father. Our Lord told Mary Magdalene,
and He told her this after His resurrection. Remember, the tomb
where His body was laid was in the garden, and they went out
there, and of course, the tomb was empty. But Mary Magdalene,
she stayed around for a while, and He appeared unto her. And
this is what he told her, he said, touch me not, touch me
not, for I'm not ascended to my father. Now, don't read into
that, that he had not yet gone to heaven. What did he tell the
thief? Today thou shalt be with me in
paradise. And don't fall for that old,
whatever it is, that he went to hell. That he actually went
to hell and was there preaching to those spirits in hell for
that time. No, he went to heaven when he
told Mary Magdalene, I have not ascended to my father. In other
words, he was going to be here for 40 days more. There would
be time for this when he would appear to them. But at this present
time, Mary, I've got something for you to do. You go to my brother. the eleven disciples, you go
to them and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father. I ascend unto my God and your
God. You go tell them. Our relationship
with God as our Father is founded upon the relationship that exists
between the Lord Jesus Christ and God Almighty. Our relationship to God is founded
upon His person and upon His work. Now, as the eternal Son
of God, the Father had always been the Father. But when He came into this world
as a man, the man Christ Jesus, then God became his God as man. And he was a servant of Jehovah. And he worked out that work which
the Father had given him to do. When he finished that work, he
ascended back to the Father. But the first thing about prayer
that I would answer, what is prayer? It is an audience. It is a choice privilege that
God's children have. We may have an audience with
God. We have the ear of God. Those of us here today who are
fathers, you know our children can get our attention when they're
little, can't they? And even when they're older,
why? Because they're our children,
because we love them. And as God's children, if we
being evil know how to give good gifts unto our children, how
much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them
that ask him? A choice privilege to come to
God and not to come to him as a sovereign upon his throne,
though he is that, but to come to him as a father upon a throne
of grace. Now the second question is this,
what is acceptable prayer? What is acceptable prayer? You
know, there are many examples of acceptable prayer in the Bible,
in the Word of God, but there's one thing that's true of each
and every one of them. Whether it was the prayer of
Abraham, the prayer of Jacob, the prayer of Gideon, the prayer
of Joshua, the prayer of David, or the prayer of Daniel. Whether
it was a prayer that was a long prayer, Or it was a prayer that
was very sharp, two or three words. One thing is true of every
prayer and of all prayer that is acceptable unto God. What is it? It's what we are
told in our text. It is faith. It is believing. Notice the text again. Our Lord
said, All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing. Acceptable prayer is believing
prayer. And it is, as James the Apostle
calls it, the prayer of faith. So what is faith? Or what is
prayer, rather? It is an audience with our Father. What is acceptable prayer? It
is prayer believing. Now that brings me to the third
question. What is it to pray in faith? What does it mean to pray in
faith? Our Lord said, all things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer
believing, you shall receive. What does it mean to pray in
faith? Well, in answering this question,
I have a threefold answer. First of all, to pray in faith
means to pray in Christ's name. Our Lord said in John 14 and
verse 13, whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do. I'm afraid many people believe
that only means that when you get through asking for whatever
it is you want to ask, you just tack his name on the end of your
prayer. I'm not, that's not what I'm
talking about. That's not it at all. To pray
in Christ's name is to come to God as our Father in the name
of Christ, in the merits of Christ, recognizing the only right that
I have to be here before God Almighty, making these requests,
is based upon the merit of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. I have no other right to be here.
I have no other merit To ask in Christ's name means, as one
writer said, to come to God with the Lamb, the bleeding Lamb,
the Lamb of God in our arms and present Him to God. And for Christ's
sake, for Christ's sake, hear my prayer, hear my plea. And number two, to pray in faith
is to pray for what God has promised. It's not possible to pray in
faith without a promise from God. Let that sink in. Anything other
than basing a request upon a promise from God from a Word of God is
nothing more than presumption. That's all it is. God has promised, and there are
many promises. I mean, that shouldn't hinder
us from prayer. That shouldn't discourage us from praying, because
we have a Bible full of promises. But the thing is, we've got to
read the promises, and we've got to know what the promise
says. Someone said, well, I prayed for a new house and I didn't
get a new house. And I've prayed and prayed for
a new house. You don't have a promise anywhere
in the scripture that God's going to give you a new house. Now
what we do find in the word of God is, the scripture says, for
the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord will give grace and
glory, no good thing. No good thing will He withhold
from them that walk uprightly. You prayed for a new house? You
didn't get one? It wasn't good for you to have
one. That's the only way you can look at that. Turn over to
1st John with me. 1st John chapter 5. To pray in faith is to pray with
a promise from God. To come to God in Christ's name
for Christ's sake and plead a promise from God. In 1st John chapter
5 and verse 14 we read, and this
is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything
according to His will, He heareth us. You remember in that model
prayer the Lord taught His disciples? Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. Thy will, God's will. Where do
we find God's will? In the Word of God. This is a confidence that we
have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth
us. Now notice, and we know We know
that He, and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask,
we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. Whatsoever. If we ask according to His will,
and that's what many people do not take into consideration.
They just think that God and the Bible gives a blanket invitation for people to ask
for anything that they want, whether it's God's will or not.
And God's will is not going to be changed. His purpose is settled. To pray in faith is to pray in
Christ's name, and it is to pray with the promise that we find
in the Word of God. And as I said, there's so many
promises here. You know, this is a promise I
like to remind myself of. It's found in Deuteronomy. And
I won't ask you to turn there, but it says this, as thy days,
as thy days, so shall thy strength be. You know, we see something up
in front of us and we say, I don't know how I'm going to deal with
that, how I'm going to handle that. You've got a promise that
as your days, so shall your strength be. He's going to be there with
you and for you and the strength that you're going to need, He's
going to give you as your days shall demand. But if you don't
Need that strength today, He's not going to give it to you today.
But when that day comes, the strength is going to be there. Here's another scripture in the
New Testament, this promise. There hath no temptation taken
you. By the word temptation, I'm not
understanding this to mean just temptation to evil. That may
be included. But know this, there's no temptation,
there's no trial, there's no difficulty taking you, but such
as is common to man. You're not the first one who's
gone through this. Whatever it is, it's something
that's common to man. But God is faithful. God is faithful. who will not
suffer you to be tempted, to be tested, to be tried above
that you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way
to escape that you may be able to bear it. That's a wonderful
promise, isn't it? And that's a promise for God's
people. What is it to pray in faith?
It's to pray in the name of Christ, it's to pray with a promise,
and number three, It is to pray, fixing our faith upon the faithfulness
of God. That is, believing that He does
hear and that He will help. And I challenge you, if you can
find one place in the Scripture where God said something and
failed to do what He said. You're not going to find it. Did he tell Adam that if he ate
the forbidden fruit that he would die? He did, didn't he? And did he die? Absolutely. He died spiritually that very
day. Did he tell Noah that all flesh
would be destroyed which was outside of that ark? He did. And the scripture tells us, the
waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high
hills where under the whole heaven were covered. In other words,
the water prevailed over all things and all beings outside
that ark. That ark is a picture of Christ,
isn't it? It really is. And only those in Christ are
promised eternal salvation. Did he tell Moses he would deliver? He said, I've come down to deliver
my people. Did he tell Moses he would deliver
his people from Egypt? He did, and he did deliver them
by blood and by power, and at the same time destroyed their
captors. Did he tell Joshua You walk around
that city of Jericho seven times. You march around it seven days.
Most ridiculous thing in the world. City walled up to heaven. And you just march around them.
Go around it one day, go back to camp, come back the second,
third, fourth. And on that seventh day, you
go around it seven times, and then you blow the trumpet. What's
going to happen? The walls come down. We've got
to fix our faith upon the faithfulness of God. When He gives us a word,
you can take it to the bank. It's sure. It's steadfast. And
here's the fourth question. How do we know if we truly pray
in faith? Well I want you to turn to Luke
chapter 18, and I'll be very brief. But how do we know if
we pray in faith? I believe we can see here in
this example of two men who prayed. One man prayed in faith, and
one man prayed in presumption. Verse 11 of Luke chapter 18. Well, let's begin in verse 10.
Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee,
the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed
thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men
are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast
twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. That man did not pray in faith.
He prayed in presumption. And the thing we notice is the
man who prayed in faith, his prayer was a humble prayer. God, he wouldn't even approach
as far up in the temple as that other man. But it says standing
afar off would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven,
but smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner."
A prayer said in faith is a humble prayer. This man, he prayed in
humility, and his prayer was answered. He went home justified. And the second thing about a
prayer that's prayed in faith, not only is it a prayer prayed
in humility, But it is a prayer prayed with the understanding,
I'll wait until you answer, God. I'll wait. I'll leave that with
you. That's in your hands. You answer,
and I'm gonna keep on praying. I'm gonna keep on coming. But
Lord, it's up to you when you answer. prayed in humility, and
prayed willing to wait God's time. We don't dictate to the
Father, do we? We come asking. We come beseeching. But I'm so thankful for the privilege
of prayer. Some of us here today, I know
many of us, we could give testimonies of how God has answered our prayers
in many different ways. And I would just encourage all
of us, but especially young people here today, when you have God
as your father, you have the ear of God and make use of prayer. Make use of prayer. Be often
at the throne of grace. Well, I pray the Lord would bless
this word to all of us here today.