How True Prayers Make a Difference: Part 1 Matthew 6:5-8

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God's Guidance in the Life of His People Part 2, Genesis 24:10-28

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world is the Lord's Prayer. It is usually spoken in old
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English and the prayer goes like this, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
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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 trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
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For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. It is called the
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Lord's Prayer because in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught his disciples how to pray and this is the prayer that he gave them.
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He was telling them your prayers to God should be something like this since to pray like this honors
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God and makes your prayers more effective. But there's a huge problem in the way this prayer is often prayed in our world.
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Most of the time when this is prayed in churches or in other places it is not honoring to God and the prayer is not effective.
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This is so because this prayer has turned into a ritual, a magical formula that if spoken one will receive
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God's favor even if that person has no idea what they are speaking. The irony of this is that Jesus told us not to do this very thing in these verses that we are going to look at today.
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While people think they are honoring God and their prayer has some impact, in reality their prayer has fallen on deaf ears.
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The prayer is useless and God is dishonored. In the sermon today we are going to learn the importance of praying the right way so that God is honored and our prayers are used as a powerful force in this world.
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So this time as always I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew.
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We will be looking at chapter 6 verses 5 -15.
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This is a longer sermon so what I have decided to do is we are going to break this up into two Sundays.
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We will look at verses 5 -8 today and the next Sunday we will look at verses 9 -15.
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If you are using the Bible in the pews it is on page 964.
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The sermon is titled True Prayers Make a
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Difference. I already quoted the passage today so I am going to read the verses that we are going to look at which is verses 5 -8 and then we will look into these more deeply.
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Jesus said and when you pray you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others.
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Truly I say to you they have received their reward. But when you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
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And when you pray do not keep up empty phrases as the Gentiles do for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
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Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him.
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This sermon is calling us to do this. Follow our Lord to know how to communicate to God properly.
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Follow our Lord to know how to communicate to God properly. And Jesus is going to give us 8 examples in this text as to how to pray.
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And my prayer is that this will be so helpful for you in your prayer life as it has been in my prayer life.
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We want to be known as a praying church. We truly want to be that. And so I hope that today and next
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Sunday will be a time for us to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray together and to pray light a fire in you. To be a praying person like you never have before.
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So we'll see 8 examples of how to pray in this text. But before I jump in, let me give a little recap of last week's sermon.
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Jesus preached to this crowd, overlooking the sea of Galilee, about showing faithfulness to God when no one is looking.
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What that sermon called us to do is to aim to be admirable and private. And we sought two ways how.
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The first way is by refusing to live for the praise of humans. This is such an enormous temptation that we must avoid.
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We must avoid doing works to be looked at and applauded by others. The second way how we are to aim to be admirable and private is by striving to live for the praise of God.
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At the end of the day, when all is said and done, there is only one opinion that matters, and that is the opinion of God.
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He will recognize all the faithful deeds that no one knows about, and He will reward you.
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Now this leads us to our text this morning in verses 5 -15. Like I said, we'll look at verses 5 -8 today, 9 -15 next
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Sunday. I'm going to start by reading verse 5 again. In verse 5,
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Jesus says, And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.
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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. So Jesus begins this section with a prohibition.
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When a prohibition is given, this means the words do not are spoken.
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And when you say do not, it means do something else good in its place.
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And what Jesus says in verse 5 is do not be like the hypocrites. Jesus has been targeting the false
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Jewish teachers since verse 20 of chapter 5, and He is targeting them once again right here.
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The Pharisees, who were predominantly false teachers at this point in the first century, these were hypocrites.
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And Jesus is calling them. He's calling a spade a spade. We saw this in our sermon last
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Sunday. They love to give to the needy in public because they would receive the praise of men.
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And here Jesus tells them that they love to pray in public places like synagogues, which were the
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Jewish place of worship at this time. They love to pray on street corners so that people would see them.
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And just as Jesus said in verse 2 of this chapter, they have received their reward.
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These are false teachers, and the only reward that they are ever going to receive is from the world.
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And that reward is you are praised, right? And this is the fleeting praise of man.
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And God is not pleased, of course. Only punishment is awaiting them.
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So what we see in verse 5 is the prohibition not to be like the hypocrites. But in verse 6, we are told what to do.
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Jesus says, but when you pray, go into the midst of the people into your room and shut the door and pray to your
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Father who sees in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
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Just as we saw last Sunday, God sees everything. He is omniscient, which means that He is all -knowing.
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When we pray, we pray to Him and not with the goal of others seeing us.
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He is the audience and He is the focus. This is so whether you are alone or you are surrounded by people.
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We should never think, I want people to see how spiritual I am, so I am going to sound very spiritual in this prayer.
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To think that way is to pray for the praise of humans. And you are falling into the same error as the
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Jewish leaders of Jesus' time. A number of years ago, I was at a pastor's gathering.
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It was a very broad gathering. And the reason I know this is that there were women ministers that were there.
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The Bible teaches, of course, that all people are equal, but they have different roles.
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And when God lays out the roles, women are not to be pastors. That is what the
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Bible clearly teaches. So when I go to a gathering like this and I see this, red flags immediately go up.
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As this gathering took place, there was a prayer time. Now God ultimately is the only one who knows motives.
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But it seemed like this woman was trying to impress everyone with her prayer. The other pastor
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I was serving with at the time thought the same. We should not pray with the goal of receiving the praise of man.
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What Jesus is saying here is to be the same person in private as you are in public. And you are able to do this because your focus is on God.
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A consistent teaching of Scripture is that the Lord calls us to be real. He doesn't like phonies.
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The Lord despises phony people, those who are one way in public, but something completely different in private.
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There was a 19th century Scottish pastor by the name of Robert Murray McShane. He was a pastor for only seven years, and he died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis.
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And what he said during his ministry was, my people need my holiness more than anything.
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He also said, who one is before God on their knees in private prayer is who you are.
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So do you just pray when people are around, or do you cry out to the Lord day and night, bringing everything before him?
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That's what God calls us to do. That's what a child of God does. My prayer is that our church would be full of people who have a sweet prayer life with God when no one is around.
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And not only that, obviously when people are around too, but I'm just saying it must be there when no one is around.
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The power of this in our church and our community is hard to overstate. Think of what
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God will do. Think of how enjoyable your time with him will be. Now what the end of verse 6 says is that he will reward you for this.
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We don't know exactly what reward Jesus has in mind, but the reward may be answered prayer.
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The prayers that are answered are the ones that are done with a sincere heart toward him.
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The reward may also be a reward at the final judgment, just as last week's reward was for obeying the
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Lord in secret. The Lord sees your faithfulness in your prayers and he's going to answer it however he wants to, but just making the prayer.
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He will reward you for your faithfulness in that. To be a man or woman of prayer, or a child of prayer, is to show faithfulness.
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And when we pray with the right heart, he is pleased. Even if he doesn't answer it the way that we expect him to.
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If you pray rightly, he will answer it. And he knows how to answer it best.
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And he will reward you for your faithfulness in sincere prayer. So we are to follow our
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Lord to know how to communicate to God properly. And the first example that Jesus gives is do not pray to be seen by others.
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The second example that Jesus gives is how we are to follow our
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Lord to know how to pray to God properly. The second example is do not pray mindlessly.
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Do not pray mindlessly. In verses 7 and 8 we will see this.
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So let's begin by reading this second prohibition that Jesus gives in verse 7. Jesus says, and when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the
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Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
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It appears that Jesus is pointing out the folly of a different group, the
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Gentiles. And he is. But this is not his primary focus.
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His primary focus is once again straight upon the Jewish false teachers that he is speaking with right here.
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And why is that? Because false religions, you know what they do? They borrow secular ideas.
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They take things from the world that they like and they make them religious. Which, by the way, we are seeing a lot of that in our world right now.
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What they borrowed is repetitive uses of empty phrases.
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There are biblical accounts that show this practice. One example comes from Acts 19 .34.
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In that verse, we are told that for about two hours, the pagans cried out with one voice,
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Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Great is Artemis of the
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Ephesians. And as they did that, they think he's going to answer us. If we just keep saying his name, if we mindlessly just keep repeating this, something is going to happen.
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They believe this false God would hear and respond to their request. But because they prayed to a false
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God, their prayer was of course to no one. But the Jews from the first century borrowed this style of prayer.
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The English translation, empty phrases, is in fact one word in Greek and it means thoughtless chatter.
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This is using buzzwords without thought. The problem with those who desired to be seen in public, as we saw in verse 5, is their focus was on the praise of man.
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But the problem with keeping up empty phrases, as we see in verse 7, is there is no care about intimacy with God.
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One is content in mindlessly repeating things thinking that it somehow brings about a desired outcome.
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Thinking this is somehow holy, this is somehow spiritual. But we must understand, verse 8, to understand the purpose of prayer.
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Verse 8 again, Jesus says, Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask
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Him. What is interesting is that God doesn't need us to pray. It's not as if He's waiting to hear something so that He learns something and then
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He's like, okay, now that I know about that, I'm going to respond. Just like we communicate with someone and we need something and then once they know what we need, they respond.
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It doesn't work that way with God. God could have made it that we didn't even have prayer.
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He could have made it that we merely do what He says based on what the Bible says and have
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Him bless it and stop there. But He doesn't stop there. One way we are obedient is through prayer.
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What verse 8 says is that God already knows everything. When we pray, we are not informing
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God about something or trying to persuade Him to do something. If we are praying with the right heart, we don't need to persuade
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Him. He knows that our desire is a good one if we come to Him in the right way, and He will answer it how
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He sees best. As I mentioned, His answer might be different than we expect, but His answer will always bring about a good outcome.
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So think about that. Jesus says this, right? He says, If you pray according to My will, it will be done.
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That means that every sincere prayer is answered somehow. That's amazing.
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But why does God have us pray? He calls us to pray since it is an opportunity for us to have intimacy with Him.
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A conversation. That's what prayer is. It's a conversation. Think about this.
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The infinite God, the One who has no limits, the One who is so great we cannot fully comprehend
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Him and never will, He desires to have intimacy with us. Think about it this way.
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I love to spend time with Brianna, and the means of spending time together is through an activity.
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So we go out to eat together, or we go for a bike ride, while someone watches our kids.
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We are grateful that Hansi does that sometimes for us. Going out to eat or going for a bike ride is the activity that deepens our relationship.
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Or even as simple as saying, having a conversation together is a deepening of intimacy.
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In a similar way, God gives us an activity to have intimacy with Him, and that activity is prayer.
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Prayer is a time to go on a walk with God, whether a literal walk or figurative.
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I like going on prayer walks, especially when the weather is nice. What Genesis 5 .22 says is that Enoch walked with God.
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You can just see that deep intimacy that Enoch, who lived thousands of years ago, this deep intimacy that he had with the
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Lord, as he walked on this journey to the life of faith. You can imagine the prayer that Enoch had with the
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Lord. Do you see your life as one where you are going on a walk with God?
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I heard one pastor say, you only go on walks with your friends. How is your friendship with God?
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He wants to hear from you. Not only is prayer intimacy, but it's also dependency.
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Through the prayers of his children, God is going to do certain things.
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The means by which He acts in this world is through prayer. God's design is that through continual communication with Him, He would accomplish enormous things in this world.
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This is so important for us to understand. Much of God's work happens through prayer. James 4 .2
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says, you do not have because you do not ask. God is waiting, saying,
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I am going to bless you. Just talk to me. He is waiting to respond.
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We just need to knock at the door. As we pray, God is glorified.
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It shows our dependency on Him. It shows His power and love toward us.
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He deeply loves us. He has the power to answer all of our sincere prayers.
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It is clear that God desires to have intimacy with us and for us to show our dependency upon Him as we pray.
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You can see God's design in prayer. But the error that Jesus addresses is the unengaged heart in prayer.
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We see this in our world, and sadly, we see it in our own lives, if we are honest.
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This happens far too often. Let me first address some broader areas in the church where this mindless chatter is happening before I address how we commit this error in Baptist churches like ours.
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Some of you grew up in Roman Catholicism. In Roman Catholicism, rosaries are marked to count repeated prayers of Hail Mary and Our Father, the very prayer that we are looking at right now.
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There's a great irony in this. In the passage where Jesus says, don't do that, people are using the
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Lord's prayer to do the very thing He said, do not do. We see this wrong type of prayer among charismatic
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Christians in the evangelical world. The speaking of tongues is supposed to be a private prayer language between the believer and God, but really it's just repetitive babble.
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It's an unrecognizable language, and I realize to say this is controversial to many in the wider church, but I will say it.
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The modern tongues movement is not from God, and to practice it dishonors Him.
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To say that in some places, you'd probably get thrown out. But you know what? I believe it's the truth, so I'm going to say it.
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Look at the evidence of the modern tongues movement. It's a mess. So you might be saying, aren't there tongues in the
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Bible? And the answer is, yes, there are tongues in the Bible. Let me tell you what they are.
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The tongues were there in the first century to authenticate the ministry of the apostles, to show that their ministry was a true work of God in the world.
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Hebrews 2 .4 talks about the foundation of the apostles. They were able to do these miracles, these visible miracles that everyone could see that would bring glory to God and say that this was the true work of God in the world.
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And the tongues that were spoken are different than the tongues that are spoken today. The tongues in the first century were a true language, a true language like English or Spanish or Greek or whatever language that there is.
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And one was able to miraculously speak on the spot a foreign language that they never studied.
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So in other words, it's something completely different. So where did this repetitive babble come from?
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It didn't come from the Bible. It doesn't come from God. So the repetitive tongues that we see today is a counterfeit.
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But where might we in this church fall short and take part in this mindless chatter?
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I mentioned some broader areas where this is seen. How about this?
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When we pray before meals or before bedtime, we often recite words, even without thinking about it.
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We must not do that or we are committing the same error that Jesus is saying right here. I remember when
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I was growing up, I said the same prayer every night. And I wasn't even thinking about what
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I was saying. And years later, I had to repent. And I said, Lord, I was just babbling to you thinking that this was somehow going to make a difference.
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And in reality, it fell on deaf ears. If you find yourself reciting words without even thinking about it, you are committing the error that Jesus is addressing right here.
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So may our prayers be thoughtful and sincere. Our prayers do not need to be long, but rather quality matters over quantity.
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As Jesus says, they think that they will be heard for their many words. Think as you pray and do not think that you need to ramble on as if it is somehow holier.
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Now, when I say quality over quantity, this does not mean you don't need to pray frequently. We should pray frequently.
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First Thessalonians 517 says we are to pray without ceasing. We should be in continual prayer throughout the day.
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But when we pray, we we do not need to say I need to be longer so that it is more effective.
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And let me address something else you may be thinking about. Is it OK to pray the same thing over and over again?
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Because what Jesus says here is that they think that they will be heard for their babbling, their many words.
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So it almost sounds like he's saying just pray for something once and then leave it right there.
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OK, is he saying that? He is not saying that. Jesus is speaking against using the same mindless words over again and not persistent prayer.
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Persistent prayer is holy and it's something we should do. Let me show you this from Scripture.
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The Apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12, verses 7 and 8.
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What the text tells us is that he pleaded with the Lord three times. Take it away.
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But the Lord told him that he would not remove it, but rather his grace is sufficient for him.
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You notice how the Lord did not rebuke him saying, why do you keep asking? Paul asking three times was appropriate.
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Another example is from Jesus. In Luke chapter 18, verses 2 -7,
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Jesus gave a parable about an ungodly judge who was visited by a persistent widow.
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The widow pleaded over and over again that she receive justice. And this judge, who was wicked, granted her justice.
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Not because he was a good judge, but because he was annoyed. He said, fine,
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I'll give you justice, just leave me alone. Jesus in this parable praised the persistent widow.
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And he said in the last verse of that parable, will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night?
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Will he delay long over them? In other words, if this unrighteous judge answered after persistent pleas from the widow, how much more will
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God, who is good, answer the persistent prayers of his people?
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He is waiting to hear from us. And he loves to answer our prayers.
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It is wonderful that we worship a God who desires for us to continually come to him.
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And he will answer us. Think about that. We have people in our life, sometimes you might think, you know what, I really want to talk to this person, but I can't talk to them right now.
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With God, it's never like that. You can always talk to him, no matter where you are, no matter what is going on in your life.
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That's truly remarkable. And Jesus says in Matthew chapter seven, verses seven and eight, ask and it will be given to you.
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Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives.
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And the one who seeks, finds. And to the one who knocks, it will be opened.
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I love the Bible. It's the words of life. We come here every week and it's like,
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OK, we get to hear from God. That's who we need to hear from, right? We don't want to hear from anybody else. Let's just hear from God and be blessed by it.
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Persistence is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And may we go to God in prayer. So what we have seen in verses five through eight is
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Jesus is making it clear how not to pray with these two prohibitions.
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Some prayer is sinful and we should avoid it. We should always aim to pray with our hearts fully engaged.
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God isn't impressed with fanciness. He's not impressed with repetitive babble. He's not impressed with trying to make ourselves look good.
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He just wants sincerity. A child who doesn't know much can go to God in prayer with sincerity.
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And God will listen to that. And you could have a Ph .D. doctorate who's just trying to impress people and God's like, you're trying to impress people.
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I'm not pleased with that. So you have to understand, prayer is such a humbling thing. It's not a sophisticated thing.
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And I'm not saying that, I think the more we know about God, our prayer life will be better.
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Because as we know about God, we know more what he desires, right? But it's a humility thing.
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Those are the prayers that are effective. And we must pursue that with our lives.
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So we are to follow our Lord to know how to communicate to God properly. And the second example that Jesus gives is not to pray mindlessly.
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And our first example that we saw today is that Jesus tells us not to pray to be seen by others.
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So I hope that this was instructful for you today and helpful to you. And my prayer, as I mentioned earlier, is that this would really light a fire in our prayer lives.
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That we would go on a walk with God and bring everything before him. And as I say this too, during our prayer and praise time, we go through the acronym
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ACTS. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. As we pray to him, we should try to check the boxes on those.
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Adoration is we adore something about God. So we need to learn about who God is. And as we learn about who
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God is, we adore him. And as we pray prayers of confession, we confess our sins.
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We should always be continually confessing our sins before God and turning from those sins. And then
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T, our prayers of Thanksgiving, we need to be coming before him and thanking the Lord for how wonderful he is and what he's doing in our lives.
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And we need, we have so many requests as we go through each day and each week that we need to bring before him.
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So think about what's going to happen as we pray. And then we see
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God work in our lives, in this church, and in everything that we see around the world.
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So next Sunday, we will look at number three through eight in your outline about the examples that Jesus gives about how to communicate with God properly.
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At this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, it truly is remarkable that you hear us.
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You hear us and you answer. And Lord, we knock right now. And what
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I pray for right now, Lord, is that this would light a fire in people's hearts.
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Lord, that they would have this deep intimacy with you and this dependency on you.
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And as 1 Thessalonians 5, 17 says that people would in this church would pray without ceasing.
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Everyone prays a formality. There are times to pray. It's good to pray at meals.
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It's good to pray before bedtime. But are we talking to you as we are going through our day? And I pray that this church would be full of people who just talk to you, who learn about you and your ways and your word, and then talk to you in light of that and pray and you answer,
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Lord. So this is what I pray for in this church. And we ask this in Jesus name.