Sunday Sermon: Do Not Pray Like a Pagan (Matthew 6:7-8)

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

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

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

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. We continue our series in the

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Sermon on the Mount, and we have been looking at Christ's instructions on how to pray.

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This is Matthew chapter 6. We'll begin in verse 5. We'll read through to the end of the Lord's Prayer.

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And when we get to the Lord's Prayer, let's all recite that together. And I'm going to do it in the King James English, since that's the way that most of us have probably memorized that.

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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And we'll conclude with the statement, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, using the words debt and debtors in the

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Lord's Prayer as well. This is Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 5.

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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

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

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And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do.

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For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them.

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For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this.

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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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

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

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

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Thank you. You may be seated. In case you haven't been watching the news lately or pulling it up online, our culture is currently in chaos.

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That is an evergreen observation. Really, is there ever a time in our world where it could not be said that everything is a mess?

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Someone ten years from now may be hearing a recording of this sermon and hear me say our world is in chaos and they're sitting there going, wow, did he record this just yesterday?

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That's describing our world right now. Perhaps you woke up this morning, you got ready to come to church, and you asked yourself,

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I wonder if Gabe is going to preach a sermon related to all the crazy stuff that's going on. The answer is yes.

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But no matter what the current events may be, I can think of nothing better to preach on than the power of prayer.

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Jesus begins his lesson on prayer by teaching us how not to pray, which were the verses that we considered last week, verses 5 and 6.

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He said, when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, once again confronting matters of the heart.

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Don't behave one way in view of others and in your heart be far from God.

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You may fool others, but you cannot fool God. He knows the mind and the heart of every man.

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He will render to each person according to his ways. That's Jeremiah 17 .10.

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So take heart knowing that, for the Lord is near. He knows you and your circumstance.

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He knows the chaos that's going on in this world, and the Lord is still on his throne.

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He will render to each person according to his ways. Jesus says, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your

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Father who is in secret. Do not pray wanting man to see you. Pray knowing that God sees you.

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Notice that Jesus describes our Father as being in secret. Of course, we know that.

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God is invisible. Why is God in secret? Well, the answer is very simple.

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It's because He is holy and you are not. Because man has sinned against God.

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We are separated from God. Part of the curse upon mankind is that God would be more difficult for us to see.

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And yet, as the Apostle Paul preached at the Areopagus in Acts 17 .27, he said he is actually not far from each one of us.

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He said in Romans 1 .20, God's invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

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So it may be difficult to see God, but we can certainly know that He is there.

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Especially because, for us as Christians, Jesus has revealed the

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Father to us. John 1 .18 says, no one has ever seen

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God. The only God who is at the Father's side, that is

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Christ, He has made Him known. Colossians 1 .15 says that Jesus is the image of the invisible

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God. Verse 19 says, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

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And later on when we get to Matthew 11 .27, Jesus says there, no one knows the

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Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the

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Son chooses to reveal Him. We know the

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Father in heaven through Jesus Christ the Son. And when I say know,

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I don't mean that we simply know of the Father. I mean that we know the

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Father intimately. Just as you might know your own earthly Father with affection.

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We have a relationship with the Father through the Son. We have been adopted as sons and daughters of God through Christ the

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Son of God. For now we see God by faith. But as Horatio Spafford so famously penned in his hymn,

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It Is Well With My Soul, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight.

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The Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, for now we see as though through a glass darkly, but soon we shall see face to face, and then we will know just as we are fully known.

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The rest of verse 6 here in Matthew goes on to say, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

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There's some interesting phraseology there in the Greek. The King James Bible and the Young's Literal Translation both say that the

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Father will reward you openly. Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

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The point being that you pray to the Father in secret not to be seen by others, and the

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Father will reward you in such a way that you will be seen by others. Now that doesn't mean that God is going to heap open reward on you so that you will become the envy of all of your friends.

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Remember again what we considered in 1 Peter 5 -6, which says, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time

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He may exalt you. There's a proper time when the

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Father will reward you. And that time may be in heaven among the saints, who will see the reward your

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Father gives you, and we all as the saints of God together will glorify

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God because of the treasure and the reward that God gives.

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So do not pray to be known by men. Pray as you are known by your

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Father who is in heaven. Don't pray like the hypocrites.

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That's the instruction that we get next in verses 5 and 6. Well, that's the instruction we see here in verses 5 and 6.

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But then we get to verses 7 and 8, and Jesus says, Don't pray like the Gentiles either. I want you to notice something before we continue on.

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Notice that in verse 6, Jesus says, When you pray, go into your room and shut the door.

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We considered that last week. Many pious Jews loved to pray near the open windows so that they could be heard by others.

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Yes, Jesus says they pray on the street corners, with their arms raised, with loud voices, and they pray these long prayers.

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So they stand up in the synagogue so that they can be heard by others. That's two of the locations that Jesus mentioned.

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But these pious Jews also loved to pray in their homes near the open windows. So when you were walking by their house, you would hear them praying these long, loud prayers, and you might be thinking,

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Wow, what a spiritual person that is. Listen to those long prayers. He's so devoted to God that I can even hear him through his window.

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But Jesus says, Go into the inner place in the house and shut the door.

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You're probably familiar with the King James Version that says, But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.

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Right? Go into your closet and shut the door. This was the part of the house where the extra garments were kept, where the empty vessels were kept, and the sleeping mats were stored.

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So Jesus was basically saying, Don't pray out by the open windows or by your open door to be heard by others.

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Go where only the mats will hear you. But we know that there where we pray in secret, the

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Father who is in secret hears us. So we're not just praying to the mats.

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We're not just praying to an empty room. We are praying to be heard by God. If we love

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God, then we're not out there to have our righteousness be seen by others. We desire to have a relationship with our

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Father who is in heaven. So with that instruction in mind, now notice verse 7 where Jesus says,

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And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the

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Gentiles do. So here's the flow of Jesus' instructions. First he says, Don't pray like the hypocrites.

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Don't stand up in the synagogues or out on the street corners with your arms in the air so that others will see you. By the way, if you've ever wondered why our standard posture in prayer tends to be with your head bowed and your eyes closed and your hands folded.

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Any parents teach your kids to pray just like that? Okay, we do as well. Now you're probably teaching your kids to do that because you want them to keep their hands to themselves and not be looking around all over the place.

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But have you ever stopped to wonder why we pray like that? It's because that's contrary to the way that these open hypocrites would pray with their arms raised and their faces up and their prayers loud.

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Don't pray like that. Bow your head, close your eyes, and fold your hands. Now I say to you, you can pray that way and it'd be hypocritical as well.

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But I just mentioned that as kind of a little factoid so that you know how did we even get to head bowed, eyes closed, hands folded.

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That's why. You can pray with your arms up and your eyes open if you like.

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But may it be that your heart desires God not to be seen by others. The point remains, don't pray out in the open to be seen by others so to receive the praise of man.

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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward, Jesus says. If the recognition of man is what they want, that's all they're going to get.

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But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door. So a disciple of Jesus has followed

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Jesus' instructions. They go into the inner room to pray. And how do they pray? Well, first of all,

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Jesus says, don't heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

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This instruction is in the context of private prayer. The person's gone into their room, they've closed the door.

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Now while you're there, don't start praying like a pagan. There is a way to pray to your

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Heavenly Father. That's what we're going to look at next week when we get to Matthew 6, 9. But the way that you pray is not the way like the pagans pray to their gods.

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Now it's true that we have the word Gentiles here, but the word Gentile is synonymous with pagan.

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The Greek word is ethnikos, and in addition to Gentile, it also means pagan or heathen.

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Those of you who have King James or New King James, that's what you have there. Don't pray like the heathens pray.

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A heathen or a pagan, especially a Gentile, is anyone who is a non -Jew.

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If you are not of the people of God, descended from Abraham, who received the law, who followed with the law and the prophets, if you were not of this people, then you were a pagan.

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And this is actually still true today. If you are not of the people of God through Christ, then you are a pagan.

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Now, what is a pagan? Basically, a pagan is someone who worships the created rather than the creator.

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There's your simple definition of paganism. Even those who claim to worship

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God may still actually be pagan. For example, a

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Mormon may claim to worship the creator, but they worship a created

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Jesus. Now, I don't just mean a Jesus that Joseph Smith came up with, although that's certainly true.

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They literally think that Jesus is a created being. He was the literal offspring of God the

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Father. A Muslim may claim to worship the creator, but they worship a version of God created by Muhammad, not the

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God of the Bible. Other gods that we see pagans worship, especially among polytheist religions, we recognize are the creations of men.

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Gods like Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon among the Greeks. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva among the

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Hindus. Yama, Mahakala, and Yamantaka among the Buddhists. These are not creators.

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They are created. They are idols wrought by man to do man's bidding.

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Even atheists, agnostics, and other secular humanists worship gods.

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They may say that they don't believe in God, but an atheist worships the God of self.

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He worships the God of naturalism. He worships the God of materialism. His moral standard is whatever he wants it to be.

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He may not have a Bible, but he does have a system of ethics, and he expects you to live by his system of ethics as if he thinks that the ethics that he believes in should be common sense knowledge to everybody.

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By the way, I've never met an atheist who was not spiritual. I've known atheists who were into various forms of Buddhism, or Taoism, or New Ageism, or finding inner peace, or getting in touch with nature, or reading horoscopes, or communicating with the dead, or dabbling in witchcraft, or the occult.

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Atheists are some of the most spiritual people I've ever met. They just hate the God of the Bible. The late atheist

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Carl Sagan was really into searching for extraterrestrial life.

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Now, you may have never thought of this before, but the search for extraterrestrial life, aliens that live on another world.

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You may have never thought of this before, but that's pagan. It is attempting to communicate with or hear from intelligences on a plane of existence beyond our own.

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Does that not sound like the definition of a seance in which the participants attempt to channel ghosts or evil spirits?

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Just a few weeks ago, America's interest in UFOs was revitalized when the

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Pentagon declassified several videos showing UAPs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.

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This is like the term that they're using now instead of UFO, which is an unidentified flying object.

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I've always said that I believe in UFOs, and I've even seen a UFO before. It was an object. It was flying.

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I didn't know what it was. Therefore, it's a UFO. Now, that's a completely different statement than saying,

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I believe that we've been visited by aliens from another world. Anyway, I watched these videos that were released by the

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Pentagon, and what they show are flying objects that cannot be identified.

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And what they do in the air defies physics. No one knows what they are.

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No one knows where they come from or where they go when they either zoom out of view or they just vanish.

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These are not video tricks. It's not a bug on the lens of the camera or anything like that.

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They are verified by our own military intelligence and military instruments as airborne objects defying what we know of natural law.

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A documentary film recently came out entitled Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, Contact Has Begun.

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This documentary is not another one of those films interviewing people who are speculating what's inside Area 51 or talking about a

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UFO that they might have seen or sharing their abduction story. This documentary includes real -life scientists who say that we have already made contact with these extraterrestrials, and they tell you how you can make contact with these extraterrestrials.

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One of the things that is stated in the documentary is that these extraterrestrials, not aliens, but ETs who exist and communicate on a whole other level than the world that we live in, they are not a threat to our national security.

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They are not even a threat to our planet, but they are a threat to how we view ourselves.

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And the documentary says how we view ourselves philosophically and theologically.

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That does not mean that we should fear these entities, the filmmakers say. It means that we should want to learn more about them.

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Even Carl Sagan said decades ago, when we learn who they are, we will learn who we are.

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Building a certain narrative, the documentary pushes the viewer to believe that what we need more people to do is make contact with these entities.

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The film even uses the word relationship. We need to develop a relationship with them.

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Since these beings travel and communicate on a whole other quantum level, then we also need to communicate with them on their level.

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How do we do that? If their technology is so much more advanced than ours, and they exist on almost like a different plane of existence than we exist in, how can we communicate with these beings?

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We communicate with them, no kidding, through thought and meditation.

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The documentary tells the viewer how to make contact with extraterrestrials using meditative practices and shares the testimonies of people, including educated, decorated scientists, who have accomplished this.

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Friends, this is the occult. It's a satanic ritual.

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These are the same practices that pagans have employed for centuries to communicate with their spirits.

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It doesn't matter that you now want to call your seance science.

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It's still demonic. I don't deny that they're making contact with something.

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I absolutely believe that they are. But they're communicating with demons, not Alf. You might be able to reach across the void and communicate with these intelligences too, but my friends, you may not like what you find there.

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And you may not enjoy the door that you just opened. In Deuteronomy 18, 10 -14, the

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Lord says to His people, There shall not be found among you anyone who practices divination, or tells fortunes, or interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead.

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For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the

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Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the

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Lord your God. For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune tellers and diviners.

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But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this. A pagan priest can even look like a scientist.

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What we call sorcery, the world might call modern medicine.

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And what we call divination might be an attempt to communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence.

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The point being, even secular humanists and naturalists pray.

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They pray like pagans. And what does Jesus say here?

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Do not pray like a pagan. Prayer is not some sort of mindless, empty enterprise where we're supposed to empty our thoughts and try to make ourselves one with nature, or with our environment, or communicate across a chasm to some sort of spirit that exists on the other side.

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Our union is with the Father, and our way to the Father is through Christ.

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We're not trying to reach across a void. He is here with us now.

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We're not even trying to do like the Charismatics and the Pentecostals, trying to say, Lord, pour your spirit out upon us.

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If there are Christians in this room, the spirit is here. He is with each and every one of us.

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God is a person. Yes, He is God, but He is a person.

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The Father is the first person of the Trinity. The Son is the second. The Holy Spirit is the third, as we have understood them in our historic church confessions.

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And like any conversation that you have with any person, prayer is very simply talking to God.

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Though God is invisible, He is not absent. He is with us when we pray.

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And just as you must communicate sensible words to the person that you talk to, there must be substance to our prayers.

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Furthermore, there must be sense to the words that we say. You don't utter nonsense when you're talking with a friend, right?

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At least I hope you don't. Maybe I need to talk to your friends about that. Likewise, don't speak nonsense when you're talking to God.

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Jesus says here, What are these many words that we're talking about?

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What kinds of things were the pagans praying? When we read empty phrases or vain repetitions or mindless speech, however your translation considers that phrase, the

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Greek word here is This is the only place in the

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New Testament that word appears. It's actually a composite of two words, which means to speak.

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So literally this word is The pagans would pray these prayers that were real long on noise, but they were short on meaning.

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They might pick one word or sound, and they would repeat it over and over and over again to remain in a state of prayer, but they're not actually saying anything.

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The standard way of describing such prayers was It's as if they were reciting bata over and over and over again, and it just sounded like Maybe they would sway back and forth, think of Have you ever seen videos of people in other cultures and other languages and other religions praying this way?

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Now, when I learned this, it reminded me of being at a baseball game and saying, Another English equivalent to this might be the word

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It's like, have you ever said It would be like saying, That's nonsense.

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It doesn't mean anything. Is there any kind of prayer in the church today that might resemble this kind of prayer that Jesus is teaching us not to pray?

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When I asked that question, perhaps you thought of the practice that we call But what the

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Assemblies of God church or the Pentecostal church down the street calls speaking in tongues is not what the

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Bible calls speaking in tongues. In the Bible, speaking in tongues is speaking other human languages.

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The languages may not be known to the person who is speaking those languages, which is why this is a supernatural miracle that is done in the life of a person.

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They don't know how to say this language. The Holy Spirit gives them this language so that they may communicate the gospel or biblical truth to a person in a language that they can understand it.

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But the charismatic notion of speaking in tongues has morphed into the biblical definition of other known human languages, and it has become nonsensical gibberish.

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In his book, Strangefire, John MacArthur points out that the Pentecostal charismatic movement radically changed their interpretation of the

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New Testament, manipulating the text in order to justify and preserve a counterfeit.

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Thus, the clear teaching of Scripture about languages was twisted in order to redefine tongues as nonsensical gibberish and thereby fit the modern phenomenon."

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My friends, if praying gibberish is really how you want to pray, well I can teach you to do that.

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I can teach you to pray with the best of the nonsensical preachers like Ken Copeland, Benny Hinn, and Joyce Meyer.

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Are you interested in learning how to pray this way? Here is a prayer following the charismatic practice of praying in tongues.

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She came in on a Honda, oh my shin, oh my knee, see my bowtie, tie my bowtie. Now I will interpret this prayer for you.

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She came in on a Honda, oh my shin, oh my knee, see my bowtie, tie my bowtie.

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She came in on a Honda, oh my shin, oh my knee, see my bowtie, tie my bowtie. There you have it, praying in tongues.

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That is, by the way, literally how they learned to do that. Stringing together a bunch of nonsense consonants, putting accents in various places to make it sound like they're praying some other kind of language, which they'll even claim is a divinely granted language, but it's not at all.

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It's just speaking gibberish. Perhaps you saw the video that went viral a few months ago featuring televangelist

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Perry Stone, who was praying in tongues while he was playing on his cell phone.

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Anybody see this video? So at first he started praying the gibberish that I just demonstrated for you, and then he started going, yes,

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Lord, have your way, have your way, have your way. Then it looks like he gets a text message or something, and he starts playing on his phone, but he's still trying to speak in tongues, and he can't do both at the same time.

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So it just comes out as this obnoxious groaning. He's playing on his phone going, uh, uh, uh.

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And then he puts his phone down, and he goes back into going, by the anointing, by the anointing, by the anointing, by the anointing.

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That's nothing. It's Christless expounding on nothing. Jesus called this kind of prayer pagan because that's exactly what it is.

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The pagans pray like this, bata, bata, bata, bata. It's nonsense. Nowhere in the

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Bible do you find an instruction to pray this way. Every prayer in the

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Bible, from Moses to Joshua, from David to Solomon, from Elijah to Elisha, from Isaiah to Ezekiel, from Jesus to Paul, every prayer you read in Scripture makes sense when

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Jesus teaches us how to pray. And again, the section of the Lord's Prayer we'll look at next week.

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When you read the Lord's Prayer, it's clear. It's an articulate prayer. You know what it says.

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You can learn from it. This gibberish that is called speaking in tongues is pagan.

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Don't pray like a pagan. Verse 7 again. 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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By the way, that's superstition. So I'm praying this way and I'm doing it this way because I think that it will get me this.

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And the longer I do this, the greater the chances that I'll receive the thing that I want. That's superstitious prayers.

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So Jesus is not only saying, don't pray in mindless gibberish and phrases that don't mean anything.

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He's also saying, don't pray with a heart that's superstitious. Don't pray thinking that if I do this, then

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God will give me this. On the contrary, we must have faith. James says in James 1 .5,

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If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives generously to all, without reproach, and it will be given to you.

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But he who asks must ask in faith without doubting.

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It's almost like it's this noble thing in the world today to be a doubter, to not have assurance, to have this attitude of like,

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I don't know, but maybe God is there. I'm just going to continue seeking

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God. Because it's like if you doubt, then you're saying that you haven't had it all figured out yet.

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And that way you look more humble to people, I suppose, whatever the intention there might be.

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But Scripture tells us to ask without doubting. To know that God is

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God and he is there and he loves us and will give to those who ask of him. The Scripture says it.

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We believe the Scripture. And so therefore, ask without doubting. Believe by faith.

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And it will be given to you. Don't heap up all these empty words thinking that more words will increase the chance that I will get the thing that I want.

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Ecclesiastes 10 .14 says, A fool multiplies words. Jesus goes on to say here,

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Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

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In other words, there's no need to drone on and on believing as the pagans do that the longer you're in a state of prayer, the greater the likelihood that God will hear you.

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If you are a Christian, my brethren, God hears you. He is with you.

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Of course he hears you. You're his child. And if you know that God knows all, then you know that God knows what you need even better than you know what you need.

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The example that I gave last week was from 2 Corinthians 12, where the apostle Paul was asking

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God to take away this tormentor of Satan. And God's response to Paul was,

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My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

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Paul prayed for a thing, and the answer that he got was greater than the thing that he was asking for.

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For the answer that he received was Christ himself. The grace of God poured out upon us by faith in our

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Lord Jesus Christ. He who searches mind and heart knows what you're going to say, even before you say it.

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If you have your Bible open in front of you, please turn with me to Psalm 139. Turn to Psalm 139.

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Open up the Psalms right in the middle of your Bible, and you're looking for 139. Consider what

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David prays here unto the Lord. O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

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You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar.

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You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all of my ways, even before a word is on my tongue.

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Behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before.

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You lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

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It is high. I cannot attain it. Verse 7.

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Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?

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If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

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If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

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If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you.

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The night is bright as the day. For darkness is as light with you.

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Verse 13. For you formed my inward parts.

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You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

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Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you.

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When I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed substance.

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In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

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Verse 17. How precious to me are your thoughts,

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O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

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I awake and I am still with you. O that you would slay the wicked,

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O God. O men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you with malicious intent.

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Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you,

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O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred.

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I count them my enemies. Verse 23.

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Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts.

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And see if there be any grievous way in me. And lead me in the way of everlasting.

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That's a prayer we just read. All 150

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Psalms are prayers. If you need more examples on what to pray, there's literally a whole book of the

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Bible dedicated to it. Here David has said, before a word is on my tongue,

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Behold, O Lord, you know it all together. Your thoughts are not nonsense, are they?

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Again, maybe I have to ask your friends about that. If your thoughts are not nonsense, do not let your words be nonsense.

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God's thoughts toward us are not nonsense, and he has made his word known through the law, through the prophets, and through the apostles that we have in the

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Word of God, the Bible. You can read it. You can make sense of it. Of course he hears you.

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He hears you if you pray in your mind, if you meditate on the Lord in this way. Pray clear prayers to the

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Lord, as he has taught us to pray, and as we'll consider that further next week. Now just because God knows what you are going to pray before you pray it, that's no excuse not to pray.

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Do not be saying to yourself, Well, if God knows what I'm going to ask for before I ask for it, then why do

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I even bother asking? That's prideful. That's like saying,

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Well, my wife is going to love me no matter what, so why do I need to talk to her? You talk to her because you want to.

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You talk to her because you love her. Likewise, you pray to God because you want to.

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Just like you should want to talk to your spouse because you love your spouse, pray to God because you love him.

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You cannot have a relationship with somebody that you never talk to. And so it is the same with God. To neglect to pray to God is selfish.

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It is prideful. It's as if you are saying that you've got this whole thing figured out and you don't need

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God. We read in the Bible about a king who thought that very thing. In Isaiah chapter 7, the

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Lord says to Isaiah to go and speak to the king of Judah, who at that time was Ahaz. What was going on at that particular time?

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But the Assyrians were partnering with the Israelites, the northern kingdom, to rise up and come against Judah.

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And so Isaiah, by the instruction of the Lord, goes to Ahaz, and Isaiah says,

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The word of the Lord through Isaiah says to Ahaz, Ask a sign of the

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Lord your God. Let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.

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A prophet of God has come to Ahaz and has said, Ask for whatever you want.

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You want the armies of heaven to come against your enemies? Ask for it. I'll do it. Because God is faithful to his covenant that he has made to David and to the throne of David, and that's the throne that Ahaz sat upon.

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Now if someone, if a prophet of God or an apostle came to you and said this to you, said,

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Ask for whatever you want, and God will give it to you. What would you ask for? You know what

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Ahaz asked for? Nothing. It was literally being handed to him,

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Whatever you want, it will be given to you, and he didn't ask for anything. Here's what he said,

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Isaiah 7 .12, But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the

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Lord my God to the test. He thought he was being noble, but he was being arrogant and stupid.

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God was saying, Ask of anything that you want. Ahaz was going, I got it. Don't worry about it. I can take care of this.

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In verse 13, Isaiah said, Hear then, O house of David, Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my

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God also? So Ahaz thought, I'm not going to put the Lord my God to the test by asking for anything, and the reality is that he was putting the

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Lord God to the test by not asking for anything. So Isaiah goes on in verse 14,

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Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name

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Immanuel, which means God with us. So even though Ahaz was stupid,

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God was faithful to his promises, and he said, I'll give you a sign anyway.

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Now this sign wouldn't come for more than 600 years after this exchange was going on, but that sign is fulfilled in the giving of the

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Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave so that whoever believes in him will not perish under the judgment of God, but we have fellowship with God.

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Jesus is our access to the Father. Jesus is our fellowship with God.

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Immanuel, God, is with us. Our world is in chaos.

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Ahaz's world was in chaos, but he wouldn't ask anything of God. When you watch the news, when you see the things that are going on in the world around us, do you just sit there in despair?

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What happened to us? We were so patriotic. We used to say,

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God bless America. Now everybody's destroying America. Do you just sit there and grieve over that, but you never take that to God?

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Then you are as prideful as Ahaz. Even if it doesn't grieve you, even if you just think, eh, it's just stuff that happens.

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We'll be fine tomorrow. That's prideful as well. James rebukes that directly in James 4 and 5.

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Do not think that you have tomorrow. You do not know what is going to happen tomorrow.

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You are amiss that is here today and is gone tomorrow. Jesus Christ is

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King of kings and Lord of lords, and he has promised that he is coming to put an end to all of the godlessness that is happening in the world today.

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Jesus, who is with us. The last words that Jesus speaks at the end of the book of Matthew, Matthew 28, verse 20,

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Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.

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Just like Ahaz, just like Isaiah, we see a world all around us that is in turmoil and in chaos.

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Seek the Lord with all your heart. A day is coming when God is going to put an end to all of the wickedness of man.

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If you want justice, want Jesus. For as it says in Deuteronomy 32, 4, the

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Lord, the Rock, he is perfect. All his ways are justice.

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So the answer to any problem you're going through and any problem we see in the world today is

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Jesus. He has spoken to us. Talk to him.

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Pray. Let my soul retreat

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With hearts bent beneath thy feet

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Thy mercy seat is open still

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Here let my soul retreat

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With humble hope Ascended beneath thy feet

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

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org. On behalf of our church family, my name is

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Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.