"When You Pray" - Part I

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 6:5-6

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Well this morning we continue on in the Sermon on the Mount, and we are in chapter 6.
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And as we began chapter 6 several weeks ago, you'll remember that there's three primary areas that comprise chapter 6, three major units that Jesus teaches upon.
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The first of that we considered about three weeks ago, that of charity or almsgiving, and Jesus' warning against giving in a way that we're seeking the attention and the acknowledgement of men, rather than giving in secret, knowing that the
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Father who sees in secret will reward us in due time. And so the the act of almsgiving, which was one of the ways that God -fearing people demonstrated their faith in the
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Lord, demonstrated their return of all that God had given to them, and that they sought to care for those in need.
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Then prayer, as we began this morning in verse 5 and 6, and this is going to occupy our attention for many weeks to come.
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In fact, as we look at verses 7 and 8, and then as we actually get into the Lord's Prayer proper, we'll consider that line by line.
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So for at least the next seven weeks, we'll be talking about prayer in one fashion or another, although the
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Lord's Prayer touches on so much that we won't really be talking about prayer, but the content of the
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Lord's Prayer and all that it touches upon. And then lastly in chapter 6, the matter of fasting.
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This also, like prayer and almsgiving, was one of the ways that the fear of God was demonstrated in the lives of His people, that there was time for fasting.
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I trust that will be a shift for many of us in this congregation to consider what Jesus has to say about that.
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Before we get there, we want to focus on where we began two weeks ago, this great warning about hypocrisy, and that we find in each of these three units.
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Jesus is saying, here's this act of piety, and here's the warning. Do not be like the hypocrites.
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Do not be like those who make a big show out of their external holiness, but have nothing of the sincerity of that within themselves.
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He says, take heed. That's a warning that is sort of the umbrella for the whole chapter.
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Take heed. And of course the other thing that we see within that is where we left off in chapter 5.
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Jesus has been driving the need for an exceeding righteousness. And as we said, with this call for exceeding righteousness, with this demand for kingdom living,
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Jesus knows that the stakes are very high. Whenever God's people strive after a righteousness that is deeper, that is internal, that is sincere, not something that is plastic fruit, scotch -taped to the end of the branches of our lives, but something true, something true -hearted, as I hope we'll learn about more this evening.
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Whenever we seek this exceeding righteousness, there's many snares and pitfalls toward hypocrisy. Generally speaking, we'll strive and struggle and stumble, either in the direction of legalism or just an abject hypocrisy.
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And Jesus knows this. It's why he says, take heed. Always be oriented to God. Always be mindful of the
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Father who sees. Do your best to put the blinders on for the eyes of men. Don't live a life of pretense or show.
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Live a life of genuine, sincere holiness toward God. Of course, the scribes and the
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Pharisees think they're fine just as they are. The legalists and the hypocrite thinks they're fine just as they are.
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But here comes Jesus preaching a kingdom that is unlike the kingdoms of this world, demanding works that cannot be explained apart from the presence and power of God in someone's life.
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Preaching words that expose the sin within the most tender of his people and calls them, therefore, to not only repent, but to respond to the claims of Jesus.
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And as the scribes and the Pharisees, as the legalists and the hypocrites, hear this teaching, see this one in their presence, they hate him for it.
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And 2 ,000 years later, legalists and hypocrites still hate the message of Jesus, still hate his searching words, still hate his presence and example.
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The people that hate Christians the most tend to be the most hypocritical of all.
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No one hates hypocrisy like a hypocrite. No one hates hypocrisy like a hypocrite.
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We tend to overreact against the things that frustrate us the most, and perhaps we're the most imbued by those very things.
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And so for all that show, for all that seeming zeal, their righteousness is just a sham.
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This won't cut it in the kingdom, Jesus says. What they're really after, in fact, is not a holiness toward God.
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It's not a means of pleasing God or serving God. Really what they're after is padding their own pride, pursuing their own vanity.
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They want to validate themselves, promote themselves. They're seeking a reputation, a name, and to all of that,
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Jesus says, take heed. Beware. Not so among you, he says to his disciples.
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So a hypocrite is preoccupied with the outward show. A hypocrite therefore ignores or at least minimizes the inward reality.
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Jesus says his people will focus, fixate on the inward reality until what is true on the inside bears upon the actions and the lifestyle on the outside.
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That is what it looks like to live in fear of God, to live in faith with God.
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Now the same concern carries into verses 5 and 6, and that's what we're looking at and unpacking this morning.
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Jesus says this, When you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites.
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For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men.
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Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you've shut your door, pray to your father who's in the secret place.
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And your father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly. So with these verses, we launch into the series on prayer.
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Some view prayer as the very center of the Sermon on the Mount. Now that's true textually.
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We're in the central chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, and we're sort of in the center of the text of the central chapter.
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So some would argue, not just textually, but even thematically, prayer is the very center of the
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Sermon on the Mount. I think that's maybe pushing a little too far, but I would say the contours of chapter 6 are all about complete dependence and trust in God, complete dependence upon Him, complete trust in Him, and certainly that has a lot to say about prayer.
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And so in verse 5, we're given this little pretext, and it launches right into the
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Lord's Prayer, and that's not surprising. The Lord's Prayer has branches that touch upon both chapters 5 and 7, and we'll see that as we work through those various petitions.
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But Jesus here, long before we get there, is warning again about the need to take heed.
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He says, don't be like the hypocrites. Why? They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners.
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Why do they love that? They love to be seen by men. Well, notice what Jesus says first.
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He says, when you pray. He doesn't say if you pray. When you pray. Generally speaking, and there's always exceptions that prove the rule, but generally speaking, prayer is the very first activity we have ever done as believers.
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Generally speaking, we pray before we even learn how to read God's Word. We learn how to speak.
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We learn how to pray. For many, prayer is what brought us into the faith. We had heard a lot, we had wrestled through a lot, but the first act of faith, the first, as it were, launch of the wings of our faith, was actually just a simple heartfelt prayer to God, a crying out to God.
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Prayer in that way was an entrance into the life of faith. And for many of us, prayer will be the exit of our life of faith.
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It will be the very last act of our faith to pray while we have conscience and reason and ability within our bodies.
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Prayer is both in that way the beginning and the end of the life of a Christian. Of course, the problem is that that childlike, sincere, heartfelt cry to God that makes us a
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Christian and puts us on the path of righteousness soon becomes performative.
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We go from that private, secretive, intimate prayer to God to now prayer at a public hearing.
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Prayer that becomes primarily not devoted to God, but actually seeking the acknowledgement of men.
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Am I praying with enough poetry? Am I rounding out my prayers in the way that so -and -so does?
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Will they think this if I say that? Will they assume this if I don't say this? And pretty soon our prayer becomes very flat and horizontal.
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And to that Jesus says, don't pray like the hypocrites. You can find hypocrites in the street corners.
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You can find them in the synagogues. They go to the temple. They attend church every Sunday. Don't pray like a hypocrite, Jesus says.
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Why? Are the hypocrites faithless? Oh, no, they're very disciplined. Are they prayerless?
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No, they have the most robust prayers. In fact, we read they love to pray standing.
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They love to pray. Isn't that great? But why do they love to pray? Because they love to be seen by men.
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They love to pray because they love the acknowledgement of men. They love to pray because they love the pats on the back that they receive.
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And by the way, Jesus is not ridiculing standing. He's just a description of how prominent they appear to be.
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They loom over everyone as they pray. Of course, there's prayer in every position, standing, kneeling, lying prostrate on the ground.
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Jesus' concern is not bodily position. It's spiritual sincerity. It's heart integrity.
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That's what he's concerned about. Hypocrites are only concerned about being seen. They want reputation.
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They want social standing. That's why they stand so large in the way that they pray. To counteract this,
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Jesus says, first and foremost, you must have private prayer. Just as your
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Christian life began, that's always the heart of prayer. Private prayer. Prayer that is intimate.
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Prayer between a believer and their God. That's the antidote to hypocrisy in prayer.
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Where fleshly eyes do not see, that's where sincere prayer is offered. Where fleshly ears cannot eavesdrop, that is where there's intimate communion with God.
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And so Jesus says in verse 6, but you, when you pray, go into your room, when you've shut your door, pray to your father who's in the secret place.
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Notice the emphasis. But you, when you pray, it's needlessly repetitive.
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He's doing it for the sake of emphasis. But you, don't be like them. You, you will pray like this.
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That's what Jesus is saying. And you get the point. Wherever you're able to reinforce this kind of praying to God, you are to do it.
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Prayers to God, not prayers before men. Some translations say when you get to your closet.
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There wasn't exactly a lot of closet space in the ancient homes. There's sort of large cubicle -like structures in Judea.
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But of course, you would have had places for storage, and most likely a closet would have included live animals.
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But Jesus isn't saying the prayers that really count to God are the ones where you have one foot in a mop bucket, and you're sort of hunched over underneath the paper towels, and there's laundry and Christmas decorations and totes.
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That's the place where prayer is really sanctified. It's not Jesus' point. He's saying that the kind of prayer that can't be performed before men, that's the kind of prayer that shows faith and fear and sincerity in the lives of his people.
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Jesus is also not saying that only secret private prayers count. He's not downgrading the significance of praying together.
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He's not saying don't even bother praying corporately. There's just too much temptation to be seen and acknowledged by men.
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So just only pray in private. That's clearly not what Jesus is saying. What he's saying is that even corporate prayer must have at its very core this intimate sincere focus on praying to God.
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That's what he's saying. And to the degree that we're praying to one another and not praying to God, we're not praying at all.
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We're just speaking to one another if we're not praying to God. In the closet, in the secret place, in the place where no eye, no ear can see nor perceive what your prayers are, that's where you're really praying.
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And Jesus says start there. And then wherever else you pray and whoever else you pray with, your prayers will be sincere.
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Your prayers will be to God. G .A. Carson in his treatment on the
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Sermon on the Mount, he asked several questions. He doesn't do this very often. But he just wrote out several questions about this passage that I thought were so helpful.
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Questions that help us examine ourselves and say, is there any glint of hypocrisy in the way that I pray?
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Is there any way that when I'm praying to God, I can't help but have one eye upward and one eye slanted horizontally?
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One eye very concerned and my conscience isn't running toward the things I'm seeking to offer up to God.
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My active conscience is simply running along the things I want others to hear and what they might receive from that.
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Here's what G .A. Carson asks. Do I pray more frequently and more fervently when
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I'm alone than I do when I'm with others? That's what
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I would call an ouch question. Do I pray more frequently and more fervently than when
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I am alone with God than when I'm with others? Do I love secret prayer?
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Is my public praying simply the overflow of how I pray privately? Nothing radically different.
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It's not like going to bed and your eyes are half open. You're like, oh God, thanks for the day. Hope tomorrow's a good one too.
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Amen. In the morning you get up. Oh great father and king in heaven.
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It's not that kind of great canyon between the two. Is it simply an overflow of how you pray to God to begin with?
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Am I so busy scrambling to find expressions that can please my fellow worshipers that I'm not concerned about my attention on God?
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In fact, I'm barely aware of his presence even though I'm praying to him. And then lastly, and I'll repeat these questions at the end, could it be that the prime reason my prayers are rarely answered is because I am less concerned about making my requests known to God and more concerned about showing it off before men?
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If our main concern is for other people to hear our request rather than God, something has gone off in our understanding of prayer, hasn't it?
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Well, I'm only going to focus on two points this morning. As I said, we'll have many weeks to discuss prayer.
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And the first point is this, private prayer shapes all prayer.
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Private prayer shapes all prayer. Every other aspect of prayer, corporate prayer, formal prayer, every other aspect of prayer is shaped, is grounded in private prayer.
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Private prayer is where the Lord shapes all of our times of prayer, all of our prayers for that matter, find their seminal root in praying to God privately.
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C .H. Spurgeon put it this way, secret prayer is the secret of prayer. Now, certainly this explains what
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Jesus is getting at. Go into your room, shut your door, pray where you can't be seen or heard, pray with that intimate exclusivity with your
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Father who is in heaven. Pray to Him in this way. Private prayer then is the foundation not only for our walks as individuals, but it becomes the fountain of prayers in our marriages, the fountain of prayers as a family, the fountains of prayer as a church.
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And we might say, although there's greater efficacy attached to prayer in these larger spheres, it's all built upon private prayer.
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It's all built upon it. So if we neglect private prayer, if we're not seeking that intimate communion and conversation with God, when we do join together, if we attach a premium to that, we're standing on a foundation of sin.
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Seeing prayer as the, corporate prayer, as the overflow of how we're praying privately. That's what
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Jesus is pointing to here. Don't be like the hypocrites. All they care about is when they can be seen and heard.
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And perhaps they're deluded enough to think that's when prayer really counts, when in fact they've severed the lifeblood of what prayer really is, communion and attention given to God.
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Private prayer then is the battery of all prayer. It's the fuel of all prayer.
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Private prayer is a time we drink deeply in our communion with God. It's a time we most intimately relate to him as father.
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Some of you have young children. And you know what it's like, and perhaps kids, some of you children, you know what this is like.
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When you have guests over, other people in your home, and mom and dad seem a little more stiff than they usually do.
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Maybe, I hope so. They seem a little more formal and aware and polite. And then as soon as the company leaves and you're just back to that intimacy of you and your father and your mother, there's a little more laughter, a little more goofing around, a little more friendliness and happiness and things that would be a little embarrassing if it was done in front of others.
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There's that sense of, there's this intimate communion that is so exclusive, so secretive, that you wouldn't want anyone else to, as it were, eavesdrop upon that.
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Of course, as we drink deeply in this communion with God, we learn how to contemplate. Everything that we experience, everything that we see, everything that we receive from him, we turn this over in meditation so that our prayers don't become static or empty.
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Our life becomes dynamic. It's a life lived before the face of God. Everything we see and encounter, everything we experience, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our griefs, our joys, all of this is done in a constant dialogue and openness and awareness with God.
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But all takes place in the private sphere. Private prayer is a time that we examine ourselves before the
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Lord. Now, this means getting into detail. Details that other ears don't hear.
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Details you don't want other ears to hear, but it's what the Lord already knows. It's what the
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Lord already sees. It's nothing hidden from his sight. And so in private prayer, you don't have the generic prayers, the formulaic prayers, you have heartfelt, honest, detailed prayer.
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It's often in the midst of straining after details that the Lord gives us light from his word. The more particular, the more realistic we are about where we're really at before God, the more direction we receive from him, the more peace he reveals from his spirit.
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Forgiveness really feels like forgiveness because we've really laid it all out, not in some vague way, but in a very specific and detailed way.
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And therefore, when we embrace God's terms through the gospel, we actually feel embraced by God on the terms of the gospel.
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Of course, getting into detail, it's not something natural to us if all we care about is the prayers that other people hear.
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Your prayers will be as vague privately as they are publicly in that case. Again, this isn't what prayer is.
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What would a physician think if you went to go and you're going in and you're coughing up blood and you're purple and you're limping in and they're going, oh, what's going on?
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Yeah, I'm okay. Clearly not. You are about to die. I just don't feel good, but it's okay.
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A physician, you have to tell me exactly what you're experiencing. We've got all sorts of tests we need to run upon you.
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In prayer, in private prayer, the physician of our soul says, tell me all of the symptoms.
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Don't spare any detail. As humiliating as it may be, as pointless as it may feel.
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What is this going to accomplish if I share this? Share it anyway. Share it anyway. And with the details of our stumbling, with the details of our suffering, with all of our dashed out hopes, with all of our fears that are so deep within us that we don't even know how to articulate them.
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They seem so irrational. They seem so beneath us, but they're palpable.
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They're real to us. Jesus says, tell all. So that I can seek to be a double cure, so that I can direct and resolve you in my perfect care.
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Now that might make your prayer more of a ramble. And that's what private prayer is for.
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That's what conversation is like, isn't it? Sometimes you're just rambling. It's taking all sorts of twists and turns.
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The most intimate communication you have is that way, isn't it? It's like the Puritan Richard Sibbes said, God will pick sense out of your confused prayers.
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Don't worry. Just take it. It's like when you have a toddler. You're like, okay, that's a lot of random word.
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I don't think you know what even that means, but kind of understand what you need and where you're going with it. That's what God is like with us.
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I used to, do you remember all the Saturday mornings we used to pray at the Carlson Manor? And some of us would be up at the crack of dawn, would be half asleep.
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How many times a brother would say, and Lord, I, I, honestly,
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Lord, I just forgot where I was going, but I know you know, Lord, and just sort of lost in the ramble. Lord, this is just,
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I know somehow you even know where I'm going, even though I'm weak and my mind is scattered. The more detailed our private praying becomes, the more honest our prayers remain.
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This is why it's so important. The more detailed our private prayers become, the more honest they remain.
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An honest prayer stands at the very opposite end of the hypocrite.
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Jesus is the one against hypocrisy. He wants honesty. He wants realism in our prayer lives, and that means details, doesn't it?
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Details in secret. In other words, secret prayer makes for sincere prayer. It gradually shapes the position.
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It gradually contours the posture of our hearts, and soon, though we'll never pray those details publicly, we've already captured the very heart, the very essence of what praying to God is like.
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Every other aspect of prayer then is simply the overflow of these things. That's the kind of prayer that Jesus models to his disciples.
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That's what they observe in his life. That's the kind of prayer that Jesus demands of those who belong to his kingdom. The antidote to hypocritical prayer is honest prayer, and honest prayer begins in detailed prayers in the private place.
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And that private place may be the car ride on your commute. It may be the closed door in your bedroom.
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It may actually literally be a closet. It's wherever you're no longer performing. You're simply addressing
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God in that intimate communion between yourself and him. And as you read,
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I've been reading this book a bit by bit. It's a history, and it's a count of revivals in Scotland in the 19th to the early 20th century called
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Glory in the Glen by Tom Lenny. And I wanted to start reading some books on revival because I'm so struck by the effects, the immediate effects of when
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God breathes out his spirit upon a certain region at a certain time. And you can imagine the significance of this for prayer.
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Whenever revival breaks out, prayer is both the leading cause and the overflowing consequence of revival.
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Prayer is what leads to revival. It's what, as it were, opens up the floodgates of God's presence from heaven.
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But it's also what overflows as a result of revival. In almost every account,
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I'd have to choose between dozens of accounts of prayer. And I choose this one in particular of revival that made its way because it was spilling out of the cities.
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People that were converted miraculously began to stretch out to the mining towns and the villages all around them.
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And in the 1880s toward the very end of that decade, revival reached the town, the region of Fife.
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This is what Tom Lenny writes. In Fife, the mining towns were completely irreligious, completely irreligious.
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Drunkenness and gambling abounded. In the fishing villages and in the industrial towns, they were so full of formal cold religion, which is far more damning than open sin, that the nickname was given the devil's seat.
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That's what they call these places, the devil's seat. If there's any religion at all, it's so hollow, so dismal, so godless that it's worse than actually just open, unrepentant sin.
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But as revival began to spread, well, first came with that opposition.
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We should think of revival as walking on daisies and cupcakes, right? Revival provokes opposition.
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And certainly opposition came, and surprisingly, from religious leaders in these townships as much as from the local wags and youths.
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But the opposition was intense. But it didn't last very long. Open opposition,
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Lenny writes, soon gave place in many cases to conviction of sin. And as a breath from God began to sweep over the county, village after village was visited by spiritual awakening.
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And then what rose up? Half nights of prayer became common. Half nights of prayer became common.
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Think about this. Revival is spreading, and as a result of this, people are completely fixated upon pouring out prayers to God through the night.
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These were times of sober dealing with God. Converts and pilgrims would gather from 10 30 at night to 2 30 in the morning.
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These are my people. Half nights of prayer. Let's bring it back. Pilgrims would meet from 10 30 to 2 30 in the morning.
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Why? And this is what Lenny writes. To be searched and humbled by God.
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To be searched and humbled by God. This was not lining up in some humdrum way to say, oh, and we pray for the next village, too.
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And hopefully we'll get some converts. People were coming as if no one else was there. They were just pouring themselves out to God.
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Search me and know me, Lord. Is there any unpleased? Lord, I want to see you. I want to know you.
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I want my walk to be closer with you. That's how they were praying in these half nights. It wasn't the sort of thoughtless checklist of things we ought to pray for.
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It was the overflow of private prayer that was conducting their corporate prayer. Do you see? This is what one convert said.
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I can never tell you. I can never tell you. Words can't describe.
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How near he came. Broke us down in his presence and then changed our morning into joy.
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Night after night after night. He says, I can't tell you. You can write it, but you'll never understand what it was like.
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You'll never know just how near he was. And how that melted us and then exalted us all in the course of a few hours.
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That is an experience of prayer the hypocrite could never know. That's not what the hypocrite seeks in prayer.
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We forfeit a lot of that because we don't even seek that in prayer. We're flatly content to leave with no more soul of his presence.
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We might as well shrug and say, I hope that did something somehow. It's why the
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Puritans used to speak of prayers that break through. And revival was the spirit of prayer breaking through.
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There was actually a minister that was ministering in Fife, both before, during, and after the revival swept through.
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For my part, I attribute most of God's blessing upon Fife to Annie Kincaid of Kincardine, who from her invalid's bed strove in prayer with God for the sake of the world.
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I'm a minister. You ask me why we're experiencing revival. I'll tell you, her name's Annie and she prays.
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And I visit her and I've never seen someone pray like this. And that's why we're experiencing revival. Private prayer shapes all prayer.
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When you pray, go into your room. When you've shut your door, pray to your father who's in the secret place.
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In the Gospels, we see Jesus often withdrawing himself for times of solitary prayer. In fact, at almost every moment of pivotal significance in his mission, we see that Jesus withdraws himself.
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The disciples wake up and they're cooking raviolis on the campfire and they're going, where'd the Lord go? They can't find him.
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He's in the desert or he's in the woods. He's seeking the secret place of prayer. We find that Luke 5 reports he often withdrew himself into the wilderness to pray.
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Often. Often he would remove himself. He would go far away to dwell with God.
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Remember, this is Jesus we're talking about. The one who has a sinless ability and perfect understanding to pray.
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And yet even he did not exempt himself from the need for secret, devoted, exclusive prayer.
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Are you surprised at all that Jesus removed himself to pray?
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Is that not surprising? If anyone didn't need to, wouldn't it be Jesus in constant communion with his father in heaven?
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Why would he remove himself? His entire life was driven in relationship to God.
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Every straining fiber of his body was devoted to his father's will. And yet he was compelled with the need to commune with his father in some secret, exclusive way in order to find alignment for his direction.
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In order to find a certain comfort in his tasks ahead. And of course, we have to understand the significance of this in terms of Jesus being in our place.
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Walking as we must walk. Doing the things that we're called to do. Jesus came and stood where we are standing to show us the way.
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And in this state of humiliation, if it was necessary for Jesus to seek his heavenly father in the secret place, how much more necessary is it for you and I?
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He's given us this as an example. As J .C.
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Ryle, the great preacher of the 19th century said, this is the pulse of our Christianity.
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This is the pulse of our Christianity. Here is the true test of our state before God.
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Here, true religion begins in the soul or it begins not at all. Here, it decays and goes backward if we backslide away from God.
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Here, we walk in the steps of our blessed master. Like him, let us be diligent in private devotion.
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Private prayer shapes all prayer. That's the first point. Second point. Last point this morning.
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Private prayer shapes our approach to God. Private prayer shapes our approach to God.
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The way we view God, the way we understand God, the degree to which we know
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God is all shown by the way that we approach Him. And private prayer, more than anything, will demonstrate the way we approach
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Him. How we view, how we understand, how we know
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God will be demonstrated first and foremost by the way we pray in secret, where we don't pray as we should.
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We don't pray as we know others would want us to. We just pray as we really are, as we really view
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Him, as we really understand ourselves. The hypocrite on the street corner or in the synagogue may have elaborate, verbose, rhetorically skilled ways of pleasing men's ears, but they're concerned with the presentation of their prayers more than they are concerned about the
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God that they are addressing in prayer. And you ask the question over time, how does that begin to shape their approach to God?
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How does all of that hollow presentation, all of that thoughtless, heartless, carnal way of praying begin to shape their understanding and approach to God?
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In such prayers, God becomes a hollow concept, as hollow as the prayers themselves. It's just a performance.
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God becomes a sort of abstract spectator for the main show, the audience of men and women all around.
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And in this way, private prayer shapes our approach to God. That's the whole point Jesus is saying. Go to your
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Father in secret. Stand before Him. Prayer, as the great
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Ian Murray, he says, prayer is not some mystic reasoning after the unknown. It's responding to the
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God who speaks in Scripture, the God who acts in the lives of His people. That's exactly right.
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Prayer is not some wish that we project into an empty sky. Prayer is not some mystic reasoning after the unknown, some futile attempt to muster up significance for our life and try to make some sense of order within the chaos.
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That's not what prayer is. Prayer is a response to the God who's made Himself known. It's a response to the
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God who speaks. I absolutely love this way of thinking about prayer. How often do you and I think about prayer as something we speak in search of an answer?
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I am to speak to God, that's prayer, and I'm searching for an answer from God. That's why I'm praying.
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It's not off, certainly part of prayer. But notice what Murray is saying.
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Long before prayer is something we speak in search of an answer, prayer is rather something we are answering to God as He speaks to us.
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Remember what we saw several weeks ago in Psalm 19? The whole world, line by line, it speaks, it makes itself known, its text is heard.
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There's no eye, no voice that hasn't received, as it were, this communication from God. And then it goes into the
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Word, the Word that speaks forth wisdom. And so we have God addressing us in the world, all around us, in the
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Word, everything that comprises our life. What is prayer then? It's a response to God.
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We're not first, from nothing, speaking to God, searching for an answer. We are answering
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God who is speaking to us, speaking to us in the world He's placed us in, speaking to us through His Word, prompting us, illuminating, convicting by His Spirit.
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Prayer begins as an answer to God. Lord, you've shown me this. Lord, I see this.
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Lord, how could I still be struggling with this? Lord, I'm not even, I'm deluding and deceiving myself,
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Lord. We're answering Him as we pray. What do we sing from John Newton? You know, where does he say his prayer begins?
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Lord, remove this load of sin. What is that but an answer for the conviction of the
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Spirit? Lord, I begin by answering what you've seen and what you've convicted me of.
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Prayer begins as an answer. And notice that, again, it's not some unknown that we're reasoning after.
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It's the God who speaks. And who is the God who speaks? Who is Jesus supremely concerned to reveal?
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It's His Father in heaven. We all too often fail to understand the significance of this.
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Jesus, throughout the Gospels, is constantly disclosing the oneness He has with His Father. His mission is to restore fallen men to communion with the
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Godhead. So for all that we rightly address in terms of Christ being the yes and amen,
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Christ being the center of it all, we can't fail to see that Christ's own mission, the centrality of His place in redemption, is about bringing fallen men to union with God.
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In other words, as we read the Gospels, what's on the heart of Jesus is, oh, that you would know my Father the way that I know my
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Father. When Philip says, well, what do you mean? We can see you. We can't see your Father. What does he say to Philip?
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Philip, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I'm here in the flesh so that you will know Him. Everything that we'll see in the
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Sermon on the Mount has this filial concern, that you would know the Father. The Father who sees. The Father who cares.
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The Father who removes your burdens and your fears. The Father who provides. The Father who guards. Jesus says that you would know my
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Father. That's why I have come. You could worship Him and know Him as I know Him. That you would be one with me in Him as I am one in Him.
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When you pray to your Father, Jesus says. So significant. If we miss it,
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He'll say it again. Your Father who sees in secret. Prayer shapes our approach to God.
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It's right for us to say, as Lloyd -Jones said in dismissing the attempt of Queen Elizabeth to have private audience with him prior to a worship service, and he said, you'll have to excuse me,
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I'm in appointment with a higher authority. For all the ways that we ennoble the
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Lord, our King, the great God to whom we pray, it's all fitting and appropriate as we in reverence address
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God. And it's not irreverent. In fact, it's the very heart of prayer to say, have to go speak to my
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Father in heaven. He's my Father. With that kind of comfort and boldness,
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I address Him. With that kind of simple delight, basic commitment, that filial concern,
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I address my Father. The Father that as we press forward and get to Matthew 11,
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Jesus says that the Father is hidden from the wise and the learned. They don't know God as Father in this way.
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But rather, the Father reveals Himself to whomever He wills. And what does that look like in Matthew 11?
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Especially little ones of faith. We enter the kingdom as children.
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As we said, the first thing you do is you pray. You're simply responding to God in light of what
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He's doing in your life. You're responding to God. You don't understand it all. You're like a kid. And Jesus says the whole kingdom is like that.
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They've come into this awareness of God being vast, transcendent, eternal overall, and being intimately concerned to show mercy and grace in our lives.
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And all we can do in that sheer incomprehensibility of salvation is to just utter,
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Abba, Father, by the Spirit. That's what Paul says in Romans 8. And so God pours out
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His love through His Son by His Spirit, poured out abroad in our hearts. And what's the result of that?
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Abba, Father. It's just a childlike response to God. That's all that prayer is. Take the most elaborate prayers.
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Take the Nehemiah 9 prayers. Take all of the great prayers of Scripture, all the great prayers of history.
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You can simply boil it down to simply that. Father, Father. That's the heart of prayer,
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Jesus says. So private prayer shapes our approach to God.
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But as we see, before prayer can shape our approach to God, God must approach us.
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Before prayer begins to shape that Abba, Father communion, God must actually adopt us as sons and daughters.
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God must actually approach us and make Himself our Father in heaven. As Lloyd -Jones said, if you're not in Christ, He's no father to you.
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He's God, the dread judge of all. But if you're in Christ, you're a beloved son, a beloved daughter.
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You've been adopted by the spirit of adoption. God has become your Father and you His child.
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You've been adopted in the beloved one. And with that, everything changes. Now you pray not to the unknown
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God you're reasoning after, striving through blinded eyes, but now you pray to the one you know as your
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Father. Abba, Father, I know you are my
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God. I know you're my Lord. You are the one in whom I trust. You are the
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God of my salvation. It's you that I praise. It's you that I delight in. I'm speaking to you.
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I'm in love with you. I'm desiring you. I'm longing for you. That's why
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I pray in this way, in the secret place. It's the Father that we know.
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It's the Father who's always caring for us. We go astray and we're cold for weeks on end.
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And then we look back and we see His steadfast mercy. He was renewing mercy when we weren't even looking for it.
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Showing mercy every morning, loving us with an everlasting love, a love that cannot fail. How is that proven?
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He once for all sends His Son, His only begotten Son, not just into the world but onto the cross to die for our sins.
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His love never fails. This is the Father that we address in prayer. What would you hide from Him?
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Isn't that the reason? The logic of Romans 8? Do you doubt His intention to do you good?
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How could you doubt that if He did not spare His own Son? What would you possibly withhold from Him in the private place, in the secret place?
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What would you withhold from Him? What fear, what wound is so deep that you would keep it from Him who sent
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His own Son to die? This is the believer's relationship to God.
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And the moment you realize it, it transforms everything about your life. Gone is the hypocritical pretense.
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For a lot of people, their testimony is, I was just going to church, going through the motions, and that all changed.
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I don't even know if I was seeking God. I think part of me was. Part of me was just seeking change. And then God just showed up and found me and saved me.
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Gone is the hypocritical pretense. Gone is that slavish fear that makes us run and hide from the presence of God.
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In its place is a new heart, a heart that now desires God's presence. It longs to worship. It longs to serve.
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It desires to show a loving gratitude because His gift is unspeakable. And sometimes in prayer, it's what it is when you realize that, isn't it?
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It becomes literally an unspeakable gift. Lord, thank you for it. You just can't even get the words out. It's unspeakable, who you are and what you've done.
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Thank you. Before prayer shapes our approach to God, God must approach us.
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You could put it like this. We could not speak to God in prayer unless God first has spoken to us.
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And what does God first speak to us as believers? He speaks His Word, the
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Word, the Son of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
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Word was God. He speaks the Word into the world. And for that reason, we can reply in praying to God as our
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Father. We could not speak to God unless God approached us, sent
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His Son, dwelling in us with His death, giving us new life by the power of His Spirit, by whom we can cry,
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Abba, Father. Another, a theologian, I actually really appreciate a lot of his writing.
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I wouldn't recommend him for other reasons, but Hans Urs von Balthasar is an amazing 20th century
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Swiss theologian. And he wrote a little book on prayer in the early 80s, and this is one of the things he says.
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As we advance in prayer, we learn that all of our stammering is but an answer to God speaking to us, for it was
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God who spoke first. Think of every Our Father you've ever prayed, addressing
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Him every day. Is this just not His own Word, as we see here in Matthew 6? And were we not taught it by the
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Son of God, who is God, and the Word of God? We bring nothing to God that He hasn't first given to us.
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Again, you see this image of everyone in the kingdom is like a child when it comes to praying to God, simple, heartfelt answers.
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We stammer to God. And like a good father, he condescends, he brings out that speech, he reinforces the things that we're feeling and trying to articulate.
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If you have toddlers, you know exactly what this is like. You're trying, you see the desperation to try to put things into words, and you coax it out and you train it.
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That's what God is doing in prayer. And so prayer is then bound up with the gospel.
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Just as soon as faith is born from the gospel, the first act of faith is prayer, so you see that prayer is bound up with the gospel.
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You could not have embraced the gospel if you have not embraced prayer. And Jesus says, having embraced prayer, having embraced the gospel, don't be like a hypocrite.
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Don't let that become performative. Don't flatten that out to the eyes and ears of men. Go to the secret place.
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Always be in communion with your Father. Thomas Boston, the great
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Puritan, he spoke of the spirit in this relation. It's the Holy Spirit, he says, who engages the heart of the believer as a child to the
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Father. The most weighty Scottish theologian of the vintage centuries is but a child before a toddler when it comes to prayer.
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And what seems like thunderous, elaborate prayers to our eyes and ears was simply the overflow of that intimate, direct address to God that in God's ears was like a precious little child stammering and sputtering his prayers up to God.
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Whenever we cry to God the Father, whether at the beginning or at the very end of our days, it is like a child saying,
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Abba, Father. That's prayer. Boston says, prayer in this way is not just a privilege that comes from our adoption.
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It is the sign of our adoption. Isn't that the argument of Romans 8? The spirit enters our hearts.
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The result is we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit of adoption is a spirit of prayer.
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Therefore, Boston says, this casts all those persons without private prayer as none of God's children.
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Private prayer shapes our approach to God. Boston writes, if we attempt to approach
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God outside of Christ, seek God by some other way, the glory of God will scare us away like a consuming fire.
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But when we behold God in Christ, He as the object of our love and adoration, then the whole
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Trinity is glorified in our prayers. The Father as the hearer of prayer, the Son as the advocate, the intercessor, presenting prayers to the
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Father and the Spirit as the author and articulator of what is prayed. Isn't that what Paul says in Ephesians 2?
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Through Him, that is Christ, we have access by one Spirit to the Father. You see, prayer is always
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Trinitarian. But where does the whole crescendo of redemption go? The Father sends the
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Son. The Son accomplishes redemption and He sends the Spirit. The Spirit brings us to the
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Son, to the Father. We only approach the Father by the Spirit through the Son, do you see?
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The whole cascade of God sending and then receiving is a result of His own triune activity.
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And for this reason, Jesus says, when you pray, pray to your Father. What the gospel will unfold is you'll only be able to pray to the
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Father through the Son by the Spirit. You can simply take it at this.
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As a believer, when you cry, Abba, Father, you are praying through the Son by the Spirit. It's the
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Spirit of adoption that enables you to address God as your Father. By the way, this isn't just when you feel bold.
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He's not your Heavenly Father when everything is going well and you're spiritually strong. And then
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He's disowning you because you're weak and you're stumbling. And then you start to get your act together and you discipline yourself and you've been rebuked and now you're on the straight and narrow.
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Now you can be a son again, at least for now. No. You know,
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Thomas Boston was writing on these things. Thomas Boston experienced great sorrow in his life. When he was 15, he lost his mother.
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Ten years later, he lost his father. He married a godly woman named Catherine Brown as a young married couple.
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They had all these dreams and excitements about ministry. He began his ministry. For about ten years, it was a flatline.
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Just when you'd want things to look up, his wife experienced all sorts of depression, acute depression, bouts of insanity.
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She eventually was consigned to their apartment. She couldn't leave. He called it the inner prison.
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And then you think, well, maybe the ministry will blow up and instead a controversy blows up. What? The Mero controversy, some of you have heard of.
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And he's at the very center of it. In the midst of this time, they have ten children. Thomas buries six of them.
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Then he himself is dealing with pain and weakness that he can't explain and it will not go away. Ends up consuming his life.
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I was reading a book by Joel Beakey and Brian Najipfor called, Taking Hold of God, and this was their summary of Boston.
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He endured such trials cheerfully in submission to a loving heavenly father.
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Private prayer shapes your approach to God. How you pray in the secret place reveals what you understand of God, what you know about him, how you relate to him.
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I mentioned Ian Murray. I was just reading this last night. Ian Murray, who's now 93, the great biographer of Martin Lloyd -Jones and Charles Spurgeon and John Wesley and all the greats.
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One of the founders of Banner of Truth Trust. And I was just reading this little interview about him.
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He's 93 now. He's still got some gas in the tank. Any more books coming out? In the course of the interview, he said, the interviewer said,
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Well, now we're in your house and you've lived here with Gene, his wife, his deceased last year for over 30 years.
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What is it like to be on your own again? And he says, well, it's a whole new experience. It brings you back to the foundations.
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We all have to leave this world alone. And as long as we live, we have new things we have to learn. But there's a lot more time to stop and pray.
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This interview was like one page long. He must have mentioned prayer 20 times. He says there's a lot more time to stop and pray.
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The next question, he's speaking of his wife. He said, well, she stopped speaking. And for that whole week, I prayed, Lord, take her home.
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And he answered that prayer. And then he said, I routinely am praying for my children. They're in different parts of the world.
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And I always pray for my grandchildren. And then he said, you know, the sweetest thing in my life right now is the friendships of those who are preparing for glory and the influence of prayer in our midst.
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It's like everything he had to do was about prayer. You see, that's the arc of a mature Christian's life. I have less bodily capability.
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I have less intellectual capacity. And the whole arc of my life is everything slowly but surely being stripped away until all
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I have is increasing opportunity to commune in a childlike relationship with my father. Thank you,
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Lord. Be with me today. Lord, take me when it's time. Lord, I'm ready, you know.
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It's just a childlike communion with God. He strips everything else, all the clutter away from our lives.
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If that's the core of our life, if that's our approach to God, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
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But if the secret place has been empty and the closet's been unfulfilled and the only prayers that are prayed are performances and acts, we have everything to lose.
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We've missed the whole point of it all. This whole drama of redemption is about communion with God. And prayer shapes our approach to God.
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Private prayer shapes all prayer. Private prayer shapes our approach to God.
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So how, brothers and sisters, how is your private prayer life? I don't loom over you as one who should speak on this.
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I mourn my private prayer life. No, this is a hard sermon to preach. Let me ask the questions again.
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Do I pray more frequently, more fervently in public than I do in private?
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Do I love a secret place of prayer? Is my public prayer the overflow of what
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I'm praying privately? Am I so busy scrambling to find words that will please fellow worshipers that I cannot concentrate my attention on God and I'm not aware of his presence even though I'm addressing him in prayer?
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And could it be that the prime reason my prayers are not answered is because I'm more concerned with my request being heard by men rather than bringing my request to God?
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When you pray, go into your room, close the door behind you, pray to God, your heavenly
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Father, who is in the secret place. Your Father who sees you in secret will reward you.
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Amen? Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.
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Lord, make us not hearers only but doers. Give us the spirit of adoption.
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Give us the spirit of prayer. Let GRBC's corporate prayer become the overflow of our private prayer, our simple childlike communion with you.
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Let our prayers be detailed in all the ways that we maintain honesty and realism in our lives and begin to crush and move away from that hypocrisy and pretense that cripples our walk of faith.
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May we learn, Lord, in private prayer, how to perceive and contemplate you, how to enjoy you, how to answer to you by prayer, even as we learn how to bear up one another, how to rejoice with those who rejoice, how to grieve with those who grieve, the very hardest things to do in a church body.
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And may you give us, Lord, the comfort and understanding and peace that only comes through private prayer. May we understand the very heart of why you withdrew so often to commune with your heavenly
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Father in prayer. And Lord, may by your spirit we understand some glimmers of that communion, of that intimacy that you experienced with your
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Father, knowing that that's our destiny. Lord, as this vapor of life nears its end, may everything about our walk of faith simply be stripped away until there's nothing but a childlike communion with you, our heavenly
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Father, through your blessed Son, by your all -powerful Spirit. We pray in the name of our