Sunday Sermon: How Not to Pray (Matthew 6:5-6)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be

Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. So we're going to spend the next several weeks studying on how to pray.

And it's interesting here as Jesus begins these instructions in Matthew chapter six, he starts off by telling them how not to pray.

As we go over this passage, we are going to divide this up into twos. We have how not to pray followed by how to pray.

And within how not to pray, we have this divided up into hypocrites and Gentiles. Under how to pray, we have the

Lord's Prayer divided up into divine exaltation and personal petition. So we're going to spend most of our time today regarding Jesus' instructions on how not to pray like the hypocrites.

We're just going to get as far as about two verses today. Then next week, we're going to consider how not to pray like the

Gentiles. And then for the weeks that follow, we're going to concentrate on the various parts of the

Lord's Prayer. Now this isn't necessarily a prayer that Jesus has given in which he says, pray this.

We pray this together, but notice that the words right before the

Lord's Prayer, exactly at verse nine, he says, pray then like this. So what we have in the

Lord's Prayer is a blueprint for prayer. And that's what we want to consider as we study this together as Jesus teaches us how to pray.

Now when it comes to the spiritual disciplines, you may be like me, prayer is just not one of those things that comes to you naturally.

Now of course it doesn't come to any of us naturally. It is a supernatural enterprise to speak to the

God of creation, the one who sits enthroned over all of heaven and earth. So when

I say that it doesn't come to you naturally, I mean that even as a Christian, someone who is spiritually minded, prayer is just not the first thing that you think about.

Maybe for some of you it is, but maybe you're the kind of a person who does not say, you're like me and you do not say, you know what,

I need to stop what I'm doing and I need to pray. I need to turn off the

TV. I need to get away from the electronics. I need to get by myself for a little while and I just need to pray.

Kids, leave daddy alone for a little bit. I need to spend time in prayer. Maybe you can do that.

Maybe that is some sort of a spiritual liveliness that you have about yourself that you love to pray.

You love to pray for others. You're who your family refers to as a prayer warrior, right?

Maybe that's how people know you as a praying person. But I'm just not the kind of person that spends a lot of time in prayer.

Well, it's difficult for me to involve myself that way. Maybe that's surprising for you to hear that. Recently, our local radio station here in Junction City called me up and asked me to record daily prayers and they did that every day for a month.

All I did was I prayed the scriptures. I would record myself just praying what was written in the

Bible. I opened up to the Psalms or a few places in the New Testament and I would just pray what was on the page.

Well, the guy at the radio station figured out that I was doing that and he sent me a text message one day and he said, I think you're plagiarizing these prayers.

I was involved in a community production not long ago, and before we went out on stage, the director asked me if I would pray before every performance.

That was a privilege that I got to do that. I knew that most of the cast were not believers, so I would pray scripture.

I would include a lot of scripture in my prayers, but I wouldn't give references so they didn't know that I was actually quoting

Bible verses, or I would just straight up share the gospel and what it was that I was praying. One night the director came up to me and I thought that she was going to tell me to tone it down a little bit.

I thought she was going to tell me that I was getting a little too preachy, but instead she said, can we just ask you to come and pray for us every time that we do a show, whether you're in it or not?

Now I've been privileged to ask to pray before military funerals. Brother Dave has asked me to come and pray a couple of times at the veterans' motorcycle gatherings.

I have prayed at the governor's mansion a few years ago when Sam Brownback was the governor. I kind of doubt that Governor Kelly would ever ask me to come and pray.

Prisoners at the jail and patients at the hospital have requested that I come and pray with them, and you've probably called me up and asked for prayer as well.

So knowing that I have been a praying pastor, it may be surprising for you to hear that I just don't think that I'm very good at prayer.

In fact, when it comes to the act of prayer itself, I'm ashamed to say that more often than not,

I hesitate to pray. Now, that's a pride issue.

I certainly don't pat myself on the back for that. When we refuse to pray or when we think that we don't need to pray, that's prideful.

Perhaps you know 1 Peter 5 .7, which says, Cast all your cares on him, because he cares for you.

That's a pretty popular verse. You might even have it printed on a magnet and stuck on your refrigerator. But consider what is said in the verse right before that, 1

Peter 5 .6, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties, all your cares upon him, because he cares for you.

Humble yourself and pray. Humble yourself and take your concerns before the

Lord. If you think that prayer is a last -ditch effort, if you think that prayer is a thing that you do when all else fails, then, my friends,

I'm telling you, you have a wrong understanding of prayer. Prayer should actually be the first thing that we do, not the last.

And the Apostle Paul even says to the Thessalonians, Pray without ceasing.

Now, that's a tall order. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians to give thanks in everything, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

There was a song from Stephen Curtis Chapman years ago. It was actually back in high school when this song came out called, Let Us Pray.

And the chorus is, Let us pray, let us pray, everywhere and every way, every moment of the day, it is the right time.

For the Father above is looking down in love. Let us pray.

Every time is a good time to pray. And as we go through this series,

I hope that what you learn from this and what you glean from this is a better practice of prayer, knowing how to pray before God and desiring to pray to God.

And that really should be the attitude of our heart when it comes to a prayer life, that we desire

God. There's a famous quote attributed to Martin Luther who said, I have so much to do today,

I think I will spend the first three hours in prayer. Yet many of us, for most of us,

I should say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, right? Jesus, in His most trying hour of prayer,

His most trying time of prayer, in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was going to be arrested and taken to the cross and crucified,

He asked His disciples to go with Him and pray. Then He took Peter, James, and John, went on a little further with them.

Then He left them and went by Himself and prayed. And He was in such anxiety that He sweat drops of blood.

But when He came back to His disciples, He found them sleeping. And what did

He say to them? Could you not even watch and pray for one hour?

Now I'd have been that disciple. Like I said, most of the time I hesitate to make prayer a priority.

As a husband and as a father, I'm confessing to you that I have done a poor job in leading my family in prayer.

So you really have a poor teacher standing in front of you today about to teach you about prayer.

This is as pressing upon me as it might be upon you. But we have a teacher who is even greater than I am, and that is the

Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit guide us into all truth as we open up the

Word of God and we ask Him to teach us how to pray.

In keeping with Jesus' instructions here, we're going to begin by learning how not to pray.

And by proxy, I mean you're going to learn how to pray by also learning how not to pray. This is just as important as learning how to pray.

So important that Jesus mentions it first in the Sermon on the Mount. Notice verse 5 begins here, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.

Now when we began our study last week in Matthew 6, I mentioned to you that verse 1 kind of sets the tone for the rest of the chapter, and all of Matthew 6 flows from that.

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your

Father who is in heaven. Taking that theme, Jesus applies that now to prayer. Don't pray as to be seen by others.

Pray to your Father in heaven. That's who you're talking to. Talk to Him.

Not praying as if to be heard by everyone else around you. There was a friend of mine that was telling me about a church that he used to attend when he was a kid, and they had a pastor that was real funny with his prayers.

It sounded like he was talking to God, but he was actually using the pastoral prayer time, like I did this morning where I prayed for about 7 or 8 minutes.

He would use that time to talk about people and talk to people in the congregation, but he wouldn't mention their names.

And it would be something like, Oh God, we know that you don't like it when a woman comes into your church, oh

Lord, and her skirt just doesn't come down under her knees. And my friend said, some of us young guys, we'd kind of open our eyes and look around and see which woman's dress didn't quite come down over her knees.

And then he would pray and he would say, Lord, please forgive us when we think we can start cutting back on our tithes and we think no one will notice.

You notice, oh Lord. Can a man rob from God? Maybe we don't need to buy that 70 -inch television set.

Maybe we can settle with the 50 -inch television set and we can give the rest to the mission's fund.

And he said, we know that Brother Bill was bragging earlier that week about a 70 -inch television that he just bought, so we knew the pastor was talking about that guy.

That's not praying to God. That's using prayer as gossip time.

Many will use the promise of prayer to fish for gossip. You might say something like,

Hey, is there anything that I can be praying for you about? Which, by the way, that's a fine question.

We should pray for one another. I'm saying check your heart and make sure that you're not using such a question to treat yourself to personal information.

Genuinely have a concern for another and genuinely desire to come into God's presence and lift up prayers to him on behalf of another, not to benefit yourself, but to bless the

Lord. Avoid using prayer to spread gossip. Hey, Philip, pray for Jack and Gretchen.

They're having some marriage problems. When it's something personal, whether it's a medical issue or a death in the family or a disagreement that somebody has with somebody else or someone's just going through a difficult time, make sure you check with that person before you start sharing their prayer needs with other people.

Be able to say, I've checked with so -and -so and they told me they were okay with telling you this.

Especially check the intentions of your heart. Do you have a genuine concern for people?

Do you desire that your church would be a praying church? Or do you want to be that guy or gal that everyone thinks is in the know?

Do you just want to impress people? Here's another one. Are you using prayer to complain about other people?

You get some people together and you say, me and so -and -so, we're just not getting along right now. I'm having a very difficult time with this.

Can you pray for us right now? It might look like a genuine request for prayer, but what you're actually doing is poisoning the well.

You're trying to get people on your side of a conflict. If that's your heart, then in your prayer, when you appeal to God and use

His name, you are actually taking God's name in vain. And you are blaspheming

God when the intention of your heart is not to pray before the

Lord, but to actually benefit yourself. Now, I want to reiterate, there's nothing wrong with asking people to pray for you, even if you're in a difficult trial with somebody else.

The point I'm making is the point that Jesus is making. Examine yourself.

Check your heart. What is your motivation when you pray? Is it about the

Lord? Or is this about yourself? Do you want the name of God to be exalted?

Do you want the person you're praying for to excel? Or do you just want other people to think that you're the exceptional one?

Once again, when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. May your heart's desire be for God, for He should be the very focus of our prayers.

And may your practice in prayer be more committed to what you pray in private than what you pray openly or publicly.

If you want to have a healthy practice of prayer, desire God, don't be like the hypocrites who look to themselves in prayer.

If your end game in prayer is to glorify yourself rather than glorify God, then that is going to be something that will become evident outwardly as well.

Consider this next part of verse 5. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others.

Now notice the two locations here. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues. We would expect prayer to be seen or heard in a synagogue.

And they love to pray at the street corners. That's a little more unusual. But what's their motivation here?

They want to be seen by others. And that's really the key part. Jesus is not condemning public prayer.

And I have heard a passage like this used to condemn public prayer before.

Well, we shouldn't gather in the park and pray because Jesus said, don't go stand in the synagogues and the street corners so that you may be seen by others.

This is still confronting a heart issue. We do have occasions in Scripture where we see a command that's even given for public prayer.

In 1 Timothy 2 .8, the Apostle Paul says, I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands.

The men in the church are to set the example for the rest of the church when it comes to prayer.

And they do this by leading prayers openly. Where it says they keep their hands holy, this means that they are consistent in speech and in action.

When they say that they are a God -fearing Christian, what you see in their life is a

God -fearing Christian. So when they lift their hands and pray, and they lead a congregation in prayer, you know that you're looking at a man who follows

God. And as he prays to God, he lives his whole life for God.

Public prayer, praying aloud in the church, leading prayer at public gatherings or at Bible study, leading prayer for your family, all of these are good things.

So Jesus is not prohibiting public prayer. Once again, he's confronting a heart issue.

The hypocrites pray in the synagogues and at the street corners not to glorify God, but so they may be seen by others.

Prayer was a very common practice among the Jews. Twice a day, at sunrise and at sunset, the

Jews would pray the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9. This is that passage that begins,

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your

God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. They prayed that section of Scripture twice a day, sunrise and sunset.

Then there were public prayers in the synagogue and at the temple using a liturgy, meaning that these prayers were written out.

They were traditional prayers, and everyone knew them, and everyone recited them. Then there was the

Tefilah, a series of benedictions recited two or three times a day. Then there were the offering prayers, which were at 9 a .m.,

noon, and 3 p .m. This practice was derived from a legalistic rendering of Psalm 55, 17.

Evening and morning and noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.

And we also see in Daniel 6 .10 that Daniel prayed three times a day. So the scribes and the

Pharisees would take these mentions of praying three times a day, morning, noon, and evening, and they would apply this to 9 a .m.,

noon, and 3 p .m., and it was a very legalistic sort of a thing. If you want to be holy, you have to pray these times every day.

In Acts 3, we read the story of Peter and John going into the temple for the hour of prayer at the ninth hour.

This was the prayer gathering at three o 'clock when everyone was going to be there to pray. And it was during one of those offering prayers that we read the story about them healing the lame beggar at the beautiful gate, and this became a disruption.

This guy who's now dancing around because he can walk again. These guys that this beggar didn't even know had just healed him, and he's now disrupting prayer.

And it became an attraction. It gathered everybody's attention so that Peter and John could preach the gospel to them.

This all happened at that hour of prayer when they were gathered there at the temple. There was also a prayer called the minhah that coincided with the time of the daily burnt offering in the temple.

You also had mealtime prayers. Now, you probably pray for your meals also, but the Jews prayed before a meal, and they prayed again after the meal was over.

So, as you can see, prayer was a regular practice for the Jew. The problem was that it had all become very mechanical.

It was the same thing over and over and over again. The people did it, but they did not really mean it.

This was the very issue that Isaiah warned about. In Isaiah 29, 13, this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me.

700 years later, Jesus quoted this passage in Matthew 15, 8.

The people draw near with their mouth, but their heart is far from me.

The Jews were a ridiculously religious people, but it wasn't real.

It wasn't genuine. It was all on the surface. It was never from the heart.

Now, this is something that we have to be careful of as well, even as we're praying the Lord's Prayer, that we don't let this become something mechanical, but that we love this prayer, and we pray it as the way that Jesus taught us to pray, and may it guide us into the rest of our discipline for prayer when it comes to talking to God.

In 2006, the New York Times published an article entitled, Long Awaited Medical Study Questions the

Power of Prayer. The study was conducted over a period of 10 years and involved more than 1 ,800 patients.

If memory serves, it was actually 1 ,802, if I had to be precise. And the basic conclusion to the story was this.

Prayer doesn't work. According to the study, prayer by strangers had no effect on the recovery time of patients undergoing heart surgery, whether they knew they were being prayed for or not.

So the recovery time was exactly the same, whether they were being prayed for, whether they weren't being prayed for, whether they knew they were being prayed for, or they did not know that they were being prayed for.

Everybody recovered from heart surgery at the same pace. I remember when the results of this study were released.

I was in Christian radio at the time, and just about every atheist on the internet fell all over themselves, touting what they claimed was scientific proof that prayer does not work.

If atheists had a Bible, they would have inserted this study into their canon. I mean, it was like the greatest pseudoscience since Darwinism.

I still get this bunk story thrown at me even 14 years later. There was an internet atheist who had made me a hobby horse at the time.

He went simply by the name Zero. And on his blog, he wrote an entire article calling me out, saying that this study has concluded once and for all just how foolish

Christians like Gabe can be praying to their non -existent sky fairy. He even turned my name into an acronym,

Gabe, G -A -B -E, grasping at any biblical excuse.

Well, I responded to him. This is actually a guy that I even met in person at one point.

I responded to him, and I said, did you read who was actually involved in this study?

And he said, yeah, everything was verified, but you Christians are so anti -science and anti -data, it wouldn't matter if Einstein conducted this study, you still wouldn't accept it.

And I replied, no, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the organization. I'm not talking about if this study was even peer -reviewed.

I mean, did you look and see who in this study was actually praying for these patients?

Those who were praying consisted of a contemplative Catholic order called the

Teresian Carmelites, a Catholic monastery and a convent, both of whom deny the gospel, that we are justified by grace through faith in Christ alone, and there was also a

New Thought organization called Unity who denies the Trinity of God and even that Jesus Christ is

God incarnate. And he said to me, I suppose you're going to tell me that these groups don't count.

And I simply shared with him this. John 14, 6,

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but by me. If anyone prays by any other means than through faith in Jesus, or if anyone thinks that by measure of their own virtue, by their own merit, they have earned a place before the

Father, God does not listen to their prayers.

How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a Muslim? Because they reject

Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It's even written in the Quran, 4 .171, Exalted is

Allah above having a son. How do we know that God does not hear the prayer of an

Orthodox Jew? Because they likewise reject that Jesus Christ is the

Messiah, the Holy One of God. How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a

Jehovah's Witness? Because they believe that Jesus is not

God, but the Archangel Michael. He's a created being. How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a

Mormon? Because they believe in the Jesus that Joseph Smith made up, who was not the

Jesus of the Bible, a completely different Jesus who was the literal brother of Satan and not the creator of all things.

God does not receive every prayer. No matter how solemn or religious the ceremony that the prayer came from.

I went on to tell Zero, the atheist, even if that study had concluded that the patients who were prayed for recovered faster than those who received no prayer,

I still would not receive that study as legitimate. In Matthew 4 .7, Jesus said, You shall not put the

Lord your God to the test. And here we have in Matthew 6, Jesus saying, Not to pray that you may be seen by others, which was the very heart of the entire study.

I'm going to continue believing what the Bible says about prayer, not the New York Times. Now, I think that you and I would agree that the

Apostle Paul was more righteous, more humble than anyone else who's in this room.

Right? Amen? Are we all humble enough to admit that? He said in 2 Corinthians 12, that a messenger of Satan was sent to him to torment him, and three times he asked

God to take it away from him. And what was God's answer to Paul?

He said to him, and some of you have already said it, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

Now, you might look at that and say, Why did God not answer

Paul's prayer? As if you think that an answer is to give you the thing that you asked for.

Paul asked for this to be taken away from him. It wasn't taken away from him, so God didn't answer

Paul's prayer. But he did answer his prayer. He answered Paul's prayer with an answer even greater than the answer that Paul was asking for.

How did God answer Paul's prayer? With himself.

Jesus showed himself to the Apostle Paul. And in response, when

Paul had the privilege of seeing Christ in the midst of his turmoil and circumstance, he said,

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so the power of Christ may rest upon me.

This thing that had previously been the source of his angst, and he was asking

God to take from him, when Christ showed himself to Paul, became the very subject of his praise.

Is that how we pray? My friends, if you think that God does not answer prayer because you did not get the answer that you wanted, could it be that the answer that you rejected, the answer that you thought was not sufficient enough for you, was

Christ himself? As we read, and we read this morning from Psalm 34,

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.

The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

When Paul wrote to the Philippians and instructed them on how to pray, in Philippians 4 -6, he says,

With thanksgiving present your request to God. Do not be anxious about anything, but with thanksgiving present your request to God.

My friends, how many of you know that you can be vexed, you can be burdened by a difficult situation, and still in your prayers be thankful to God?

The Bible tells us that there are other conditions for prayer. In Isaiah 1 -15, the

Lord says to wayward Israel, When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you.

Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Unless what?

Isaiah 66 -2, This is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word.

Psalm 66 -18 says, If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

If we love our sin and we don't confess our sins to God, He does not listen to our prayers.

In 1 Peter 3 -7, we are told, Strife in a marriage hinders our prayers.

If I don't honor my wife, my prayer life is hindered. James 1 -16 says,

That the one who doubts will not receive from the Lord. James 4 -3 says, You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

So how do we ask of the Lord rightly? Well, consider a very popular prayer that comes up,

I think, every May, when we have the National Day of Prayer that comes around the first week in May.

Just consider 2 Chronicles 7 -14. If my people who are called by my name...

Let me stop there. Brothers and sisters in the Lord, followers of Jesus Christ, that's us.

We are the ones who have been called by His name. That's not the United States of America, even though that's who gets lumped under this statement, if my people who are called by my name.

The people of God are those who believe in God, who follow God, who love

God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. We've been called by God to be out of this world and to be followers of Jesus, to be people, citizens of His heavenly kingdom.

So when we read here in 2 Chronicles 7 -14, if my people who are called by my name, we know that He's talking about us.

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

So what do we have here in our prayers? We have being humble before God, seeking God. We have turning away from anything that is against God.

He says, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal.

Only then I will heal their land. The hypocrites are not humble.

They do not seek God's glory but their own, and they do not turn from their wicked ways because, my friends, the hypocrites think they're righteous.

That's the whole reason they're standing on the corners and standing up in the synagogues praying loud, boisterous prayers to be seen by others.

Because they want everybody to see, look how righteous I am. And that's not how we are to be in our prayers.

We are to humble ourselves before God. If the intention that you have in prayer is to be seen by others,

Jesus goes on to say here, truly I say to you, they have received their reward.

As I mentioned to you last week, that is a scary statement of condemnation. If a person just wants to be seen by others and that's what they want, that's what they're going to get, and they're going to get nothing from God who is in heaven.

Instead of the public places to be seen by others, where does

Jesus tell you to go to discipline yourself that your prayer habits would be about God and not about yourself?

Look finally at verse six. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your

Father who is in secret and the Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Our Father is in secret, the invisible God, creator of heaven and earth.

And so may our prayer habits, our discipline, begin by praying in secret to God.

Our prayer is not limited to the things that we do publicly in church, at Bible study, at other prayer gatherings, but we have a regular habit of prayer alone with God, by ourselves, concentrating on the

Lord, desiring to spend time with God. Now if I could put this in a modern context and press upon you even a little bit more.

When you pray, go into your room and shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret. That also means for us, turn off your phone, turn off the

TV, get off your computer. Stop sitting there going,

God, I thank you for today. Help me to have a good day.

And you're scrolling through your phone while you're praying. And like I said, I'm as much preaching to myself as I am preaching to you.

Spend time in quiet, just you and God. Make a time for it.

Specifically schedule it. This is a time that I'm going to sit and be with God. Read His word.

He will speak to you. Pray to God. You will speak to Him. Now don't let these warnings about hypocritical prayer and praying to be seen by others or even the conditions for genuine prayer hinder you from praying at all.

You might be thinking, goodness, there's just so much here that we've covered today. All of those qualifications, how can

I be certain that I'm doing it right? My friend, it's very simple. Seek God.

Do you want God? Then talk to Him. But God is so holy and I am not.

Yeah, you're right. But if you were with us when we went through the book of Galatians last year, one of the things that I said to you is that the thing that God demands of you is the very thing that He gives to you.

God demands righteousness of you. He demands you to be holy, but He gives you righteousness.

He gives you His holiness. Even previously in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said, your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the

Pharisees. And then at the end of Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said, you must be perfect as your heavenly

Father is perfect. But these things that God has demanded of us, He gives.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you have that righteousness that He demands of you. You have the righteousness of Christ.

And God receives your prayer because you have an intercessor before the

Father, and He is the Lord Jesus Christ. If you still ask, but how can

I be certain that He is listening to my prayer? And my answer to you is this, because the

Bible says so. Jesus said in John 14, 13, whatever you ask in My name, this

I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Now that doesn't mean that you ask for a

Ferrari in Jesus' name and it will be given to you. Sorry to disappoint you graduates that you didn't get a

Ferrari for graduation. Because remember, our request in prayer is that God's will be done.

Jesus taught us to pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. If we ask that God's will be done in our lives to the praise of His glorious grace, it will be done.

Jesus has promised us this. We read in 1 John 2, 1 that we have an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. An advocate is a representative who speaks favorably on behalf of another.

So just think about that. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is speaking favorably of you before His Father in heaven.

We read in 1 Timothy 2, 5, and 6, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man

Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Romans 8, verses 26 and 27 say that the Spirit of God helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the

Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the

Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. That's incredibly profound.

I don't know how much we actually think about what the Spirit does for us before God. But notice that Paul says here, we do not know what to pray for as we ought.

He doesn't say, when you don't know what to pray for. He says, we don't know. We don't know what to pray for as we ought.

God created everything. Do you know how big the universe is? It's just really big.

It's huge. It's so vast that with all of our advanced technologies, we've still never found the edge of it.

And scientists are constantly changing their estimates on how many stars they believe are in the universe.

There was a news story that came out just within the last couple of months where scientists are saying, we now think that the universe is bigger than we thought.

Hey, shock, surprise. It's really big. And you're praying to the

God who created all of it. How do you know what to pray to a

God that big? You don't. So how can our prayers, as teeny little people on this speck of dust in the middle of this solar system in the

Milky Way, how can we know what to pray to a God who's that big? How can we be sure that our prayer from this tiny little speck gets all the way out there to God?

And Paul says, we don't know what to pray for as we ought.

But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings that are too deep for words.

That means that whatever the Spirit is communicating for us on our behalf, it's mind -boggling beyond comprehension.

And yet God does this for us that we may be in fellowship with him, that we don't have to feel like we're insignificant little creatures on this tiny little planet off in the middle of black nothingness.

God created us, made us in his image, and wants to fellowship with us.

And he made that way of fellowship possible when he gave his son Jesus, who left his throne in heaven and took on human flesh and lived a perfect life which we could not live.

He died the death we were supposed to die, atoning for our sins so that all who believe in him will not perish under the holy righteous judgment of God.

But we now have fellowship with the one who sits in throne over all of the entire universe.

And God wants to have that fellowship with us through his son that he made that way possible.

Jesus gave us his word. I was listening to R .C. Sproul this morning and R .C. Sproul just made this kind of off comment about the scripture that he was reading.

It wasn't even the point of his sermon. But he said, that Jesus speaking to us here, what the father had authorized him to say.

And what we read here in Matthew chapter 6 is exactly what the father wants to communicate to us.

How do we know how to pray? We pray the way that Jesus taught us to pray.

And if we follow what the son of God himself prayed, then we know that God hears our prayers.

We have the son of God mediating for us. We have the spirit of God interceding for us. Even when we don't know what to pray for as we ought, we haven't lost touch with God, he is still holding on to us.

He is a loving father. So pray to him. We have been commanded to pray, so you must.

But pray because you want to. Let me show you one more thing as we bring this to a close.

Turn in your Bible please to Colossians chapter 3. Turn over to Colossians 3. I spoke to a men's group in Lehi, Utah, about this time last year.

And one of the things that I talked about with these guys, I took them through the entire book of Colossians. When we got to Colossians chapter 3,

I used this particular section as a lesson on how to pray. So let's look at Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 through 4.

If you're someone who still struggles with, I don't know what to pray, I don't know how to pray. Well, we'll continue to talk about that as we go through the

Lord's Prayer. But let me show you an example of how to pray the Scriptures. And the

Scriptures likewise end up speaking to you. Colossians 3, 1 through 4. Here's what we read.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

So how do you have reverence in your prayers? It's perfectly fine to have a particular concern or a request that you take to God.

That's just fine. But how may we pray in such a way that we know that we are exalting

God, and He is likewise responding to our requests? Take this very section of Scripture that we've read here,

Colossians 3, 1 through 4, and now personalize it and make it a prayer. Pray then like this.

God, I know that I have been raised with Christ. So help me to seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Heavenly Father, help me to set my mind on things that are above, not on things that are here on earth.

For I know that I have died. You might even include another verse that we have in Galatians.

I know that I have been crucified with Christ, and my life is hidden with Christ in God.

I know that when Christ who is my life appears, then I also will appear with Him in glory.

So you even have in this prayer an expectation of the future kingdom that is to come, not desiring things that are on earth, but things that are above.

Asking God to control your thoughts that you might not set things on the passions of your flesh, but you would set your mind on things that are holy and righteous and pleasing to Him, and that the subject of our prayers would be

Christ and not ourselves, but that we would seek the will of God to be done in our lives on earth as well as in heaven.

So maybe as you go home and you put this into practice, you go through the rest of Colossians 3, and you find out you can take that and pray that unto the

Lord, that He might guide you and lead you according to His word. I hope that you will return and continue to fellowship with us and learn together as we study this lesson that our

Lord Christ has given to us on how to pray. Next week we'll go on to the next two verses here in Matthew 6.

If you are here today and you do not know Christ, then please stick around and talk with me, talk with Pastor Dwight, and we would love to visit with you more about what it means to have a relationship with God.

Let us continue to pray for each other. Lift one another up in prayer. If there are people that aren't here today that you know that need prayer, pray for them before the

Father when you go home. Let us be regular in prayer because we love God and we desire to be

His people. Lift one another up in prayer.

If there are people that aren't here today that need prayer, pray for them before the Father when you go home. If there are people that aren't here today that need prayer, Let us be regular in prayer because we love God and we desire to be His people. Lift one another up in prayer. Let my soul retreat With humble hearts and love

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week. Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.