How NOT to Pray

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Matthew, chapter six, and you hold your place at verse five.
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Over the past few months, we have been in a verse by verse examination of the Sermon on the Mount.
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In chapter five, we were focusing on what Christ was teaching and that he was correcting errors which were being made in regard to the teaching of the Old Testament law.
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Now we have moved to chapter six and in chapter six, Jesus Christ is correcting false practices which involved worship and piety.
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The three that he focuses on using these three as examples.
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Animals are giving prayer and fasting.
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He demonstrates to us that even the most religious exercises, even the best religious exercises, if not done with the right heart, if not done the right way, then even the best religious exercises we do are in vain.
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Last week we saw that giving to the needy, while it is a good thing, can be sinful if we are doing so, so as to receive some type of accolade from men.
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If we give to the needy simply to be seen by others in doing so, if we give simply to get an applause from the world.
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Or from the church, then we are.
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Committing a sin, Jesus is talking about the fact that even in things which are right, there are wrong ways to do them, and today he's going to begin something that's going to become quite a long little section for us to get through, and he's going to begin talking about prayer and how even in our prayers we can be in disobedience to God in how we pray.
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So the title of today's sermon is Atrocious Prayers.
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Heavy title.
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I hope it gets your attention because it was intended to.
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Atrocious, what do I mean? What did Christ mean when he talked about prayers which are offensive to God? Let's stand and read God's word, Matthew chapter six, beginning at verse five.
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We're going to read through verse eight this morning, not getting quite to the model prayer, which we will get to after Mother's Day, which is next week.
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Today, we'll just begin with verse seven.
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And when you pray, rather, I'm sorry, back up to verse five.
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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.
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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 heap 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.
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For your father knows what you need before you ask him.
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Our father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity that we have to study your word.
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I pray first and foremost that you would focus my mind on what I'm doing.
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That you would keep out things which matter not.
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And that you would keep me from error.
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I pray also that you would open the hearts of the people to the truth.
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I pray that this would hit us all right in the face today, father, because this is something we all need to hear.
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Not only the importance of prayer.
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But how it has been so misused, how it has been so misunderstood.
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And how it has been so neglected.
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By the church.
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Father, convict us all in Christ's name, amen.
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There are few subjects.
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Which are as important and yet which perplex believers as much as the subject of prayer down through the ages.
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There have been many practices which have made their way into the church regarding prayer, which are a direct contradiction.
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To the biblical teaching on prayer, but yet they've made their way into the church, they've made their way among believers and they continue to be perpetuated.
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Likewise, today there is so much false teaching regarding prayer, which accompanies the modern health and wealth movement, the word faith movement, that it can be hard for a Christian to navigate through all of the ungodliness and find the truth amidst the error.
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So as we begin our journey this morning, our journey through Christ's teaching on prayer, I want to, by way of introduction, ask a very rudimentary question.
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What is prayer? What is it? When we say the word, it's part of the vernacular, certainly it's part of something we say, let's pray.
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But what is prayer? If you're taking notes, you may want to write this down, but if you're not, you'll still remember it, I hope.
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If you get nothing else from today's sermon, hopefully you'll remember this because it is very simple.
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Prayer, in its most simplest definition, is communication with God.
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It is a conversation between the creature and the creator.
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It involves both speaking to God and meditating on his word.
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People don't often think about meditating on the word as prayer, but it is.
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How does God speak to you? If you're hearing voices, we need to talk because this is from where God speaks.
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He speaks to you through his word.
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So we speak to God and we listen to his word and we meditate on his word.
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Prayer is meant to have the intimacy of a child speaking to a parent and yet maintain the honor of a servant addressing his Lord.
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Think of it.
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Think of that.
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Think of the profundity of that.
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That prayer is meant to have the intimacy of a child speaking to a parent, but yet maintain the honor of a servant speaking to his Lord.
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Prayer is not meant to be difficult or hard to understand.
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Yet because of sin, men tend to make even the most basic spiritual exercise.
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More complex than it needs to be, and sometimes outside of what it means, what it is meant to be, and it's in this complexity that we often find the most erroneous understandings of the purpose and practice of prayer.
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So let's begin looking at Jesus's words.
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In the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus focuses his attention on prayer, reminding us of the importance and the centrality in the life of the believer that prayer has.
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If you're taking notes, I'm going to give you a very brief outline that I did outline today, something that I think is important to notice in the text.
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In the text, we see three things.
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First, we see one assumption about prayer, one assumption.
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We see two atrocities regarding prayer and we see three admonitions regarding prayer.
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I normally don't do the alliterated outline.
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So there you go.
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We got one this week.
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So those of you who are taking notes, I'm sure you like that.
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We have one atrocity, I'm sorry, one assumption, two atrocities and three assumptions.
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So let's look first at the assumption, the one assumption.
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Matthew, chapter six, verse five, and when you pray, what is the assumption in that statement that you will pray? That's the assumption.
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This is not a command to prayer.
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This is saying that when you do this, assuming that you will, beloved, this stands to reason for the Christian.
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It stands to reason for the Christian that a Christian would be a person of prayer.
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Do you know why it stands to reason? Because we call ourselves Christians, what's the root word of Christian? Christ, who is Christ, Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ, if he were anything, he was a man of prayer.
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He was a man who prayed throughout his ministry.
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He was a man who separated himself from his disciples and prayed all night long.
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He was a man who on the night before his crucifixion prayed two very powerful prayers.
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One is what we call the the intercessory prayer, John 17, where he prayed for his disciples and all those who would come after them.
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But he also prayed on his knees before God, if it be thy will, take this cup from me.
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And he and he sweat, as it was great drops of blood.
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Christ was a man who was accustomed to prayer and his followers.
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You and I are supposed to imitate that example.
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Dr.
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Stephen Lawson says this.
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He says that when we think about prayer and we think about Jesus, what we ought to understand is that the principle that we see is the principle of the greater to the lesser.
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Jesus is obviously greater than we are.
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And he needed to pray.
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Jesus is greater than us.
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And he needed to pray.
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How much more than do we need to pray if Christ needed to pray in his life? If Christ needed to pray in his ministry, how much more do we who are so much lesser than him need to pray? So the assumption made by Christ is that we will be people of prayer.
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In fact, he makes this assumption twice.
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When I opened the text this morning, I actually went to the second one because they're both the exact same phrase.
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I went to verse seven instead of verse five because my eye caught that.
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And when you pray, it says in verse five and then again in verse seven, the assumption is there.
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The assumption is natural.
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If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are a follower of your Lord Jesus Christ, you will be accustomed to prayer.
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And if you are not accustomed to prayer, I would ask you, are you truly a follower of Jesus Christ? Pastor, that hurts my feelings.
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We'll get over it.
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Because I'm going to ask you some hard questions today about your own prayer life, because we must face and confront these things, because the next thing he's going to talk about are the two atrocities which often accompany prayer.
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And if we can't even deal with the question, do we pray? Well, then how are we going to get to the question of how do we pray? So let's look at those two atrocities.
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Jesus addresses two things, two methods.
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Which are often employed in regard to prayer.
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If you want to write them down, I know some of you take notes and you like to write these things down.
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Number one, some men pray as a show to impress others.
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Some men pray as a show to impress others.
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And number two, some men pray mindless prayers.
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Some men pray as a show to impress others, and some men pray mindless prayers, and Jesus condemns them both.
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Let's look first at the one in regard to impressing others.
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Look at chapter five or six and look in the middle of the verse.
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He says in verse six, he says, for they love.
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I'm sorry.
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Excuse me.
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I'll make sure it's in the middle of verse five.
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I'm sorry.
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It says 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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The people that Jesus is talking about here, the scribes and the Pharisees.
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It's without a doubt.
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I mean, if you look at the context of the passage, he uses the phrase hypocrites.
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Jesus's term for the scribes and the Pharisees, specifically in the Gospel of Matthew.
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You remember the Gospel of Matthew is written to the Jews.
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Each one of the Gospels has a different audience in mind.
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The Gospel of Matthew is written to proclaim Jesus as king of the Jews.
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So there's so much about the scribes and the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew because Matthew is pointing out the fact that here are these who are supposed to be your righteous leaders that are actually hypocrites.
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And this is what Jesus said about them.
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So there's a focus there on them.
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And he calls them in Matthew 24, woe to you, or Matthew rather 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
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And he says that over and over and over and over.
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So when Jesus says the word hypocrites, typically in his mind, he's talking about those religious people who do all of the outward things of religion.
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But in their hearts, they are nowhere near to God, and he says they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners.
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Apparently, the scribes and the Pharisees would arrange their day so that their prayer times and the Jews at this time pray three times a day, it was their custom to pray three times a day, you would pray once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening.
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And it was apparent that the scribes and the Pharisees would would arrange their affairs so that when prayer time came, they would be out in the midst of people so that they could stop and get everyone's attention and say, look at me, I am going to at this moment engage in my piety, bask in the glow of my religious power.
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May sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but I've met a few guys, so I can imagine it to be the case.
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They wanted their religious devotion to be conspicuous.
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John Stott said this, he said, behind their piety lurked great pride, what they really wanted was applause.
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They wanted people to be impressed.
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Look at what I do for God, look at what I do in my life, I pray and my prayers are impressive.
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My prayers include articulate words, my prayers include long diatribes about the truth of God and the word of God and the expressions of God.
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And look at me for my brilliance.
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Look at me for my piety.
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Look at me for my religiosity.
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Look at me, beloved Christ tells us this is an atrocity.
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It is a mockery of what prayer is meant to be.
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Prayer is meant to be a humbling experience for us all.
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It is meant to be the place where men demonstrate men and women, that's the generic men, for those who might not realize what I'm saying, is meant to be a place for all people.
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To demonstrate their absolute necessity or dependency, rather, on God.
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If you are proud in your prayers, you have missed the point of your prayers, your prayers is to demonstrate your need, not your own sufficiency, but your own deficiency, your prayers demonstrate how much you like, not how much you have, your prayers demonstrate how much you need, not how much you give.
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But yet the man who stands in his prayers as a way to demonstrate some sort of piety and religiosity is demonstrating nothing but his hypocrisy.
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And the saddest thing about this passage.
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It says they love to stand and pray in synagogues and on street corners.
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I wanted to see what that word was, so I I went to the original language to see what the original word used there.
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You know, there are multiple words that are used for love.
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Most of us are familiar with agape love, the type of love that is a sacrificial love, the love that God gives to us, that agape love.
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There's also another word, philo, phileo.
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So we get the word Philadelphia means Delphos's brother, Philadelphia's brotherly love.
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Philo is used here, the root.
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And I was thinking about it.
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They have made the applause of men their friend.
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Because that's what philo is, it's the love of one friend to another.
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These men love the applause, they love to do this thing.
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They have so associated themselves with it, they love it.
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It is their friend to have the applause of men.
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You might say, Pastor, you're certainly not talking to me.
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I don't stand.
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Hey, you're the one who stands up and prays in front of everybody.
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You're preaching to yourself.
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Beloved, I want to challenge you because I imagine there are some of you here who don't pray at all, except when you're here because, you know, people are watching.
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Think on that.
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Now, let's move on to the second one.
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Do we do it because people are watching? That's the first thing Jesus said.
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That's an atrocity.
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That is that is sickening that someone would only pray because they're being watched.
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Number two, some men pray mindless prayers.
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Look at me at verse seven.
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And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think there will be heard for their many words.
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Now, where the first atrocity primarily dealt with Jews, when Jesus was talking about the hypocrites, he's talking about the scribes and the Pharisees.
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He's talking specifically to his religious brethren.
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He's challenging them on their error here, he says specifically, he's talking about the Gentiles.
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He says, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do in the King James version.
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I really this is one of those times where I love the way the King James reads on this, because I think it reads in such a powerful way.
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It says, but when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do.
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By the way, that word vain repetition translated in the ESV as empty phrases translated in the New American Standard Bible, I think is babblings.
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It's a phrase which is used.
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That word comes to us from the Greek language.
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It is the root word is Bata Logos, Bata Logio.
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What do you think it means? Logos means what word we know that we hear that all the time.
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Logos is word.
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But what is Bata? Well, the thing is, it's it's not one of those words where it has a definite meaning.
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There's actually been many linguists who have gone to try to figure out what what word is being used here.
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One said that it is potentially named after Baptist, the king of Cyrene, Baptist, the king of Cyrene was a stutterer.
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He stuttered in his speech.
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They said that to Bata Logos or Bata Logos is to talk like Baptist is to talk in a stutter.
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But there is also.
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The idea that it could simply be a statement.
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Of how the words sound, Bata, Bata, Bata, Bata, Bata, Bata, Bata, by the way, you've heard the word barbarian, right? You know what the word barbarian comes from? Barbarian, because the sophisticated would hear someone speak who was not sophisticated and they would say everything I hear is bar, bar, bar, bar, bar.
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They're barbarians.
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They can't speak well.
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That's where the word barbarian comes from.
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So the idea of Bata Logos could mean simply babbling.
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Simply speaking without sense now, having said that, by the way, that the New English translation, another translation I really like, it says when you pray, do not babble repetitiously.
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It really tries to get a literal sense.
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And that's what the literal sense of do not babble repetitiously.
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The meaning is simple, beloved.
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Any prayer where there is an absolute disconnect between the mind and the mouth is not a righteous prayer.
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Any prayer where there is a disconnect between the mind and the mouth is not a righteous prayer.
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And let me tell you something, those type of prayers are are all over the pagan religions, Hindus with their prayer beads and their mantras.
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The Buddhists, the Tibetans, they believe they can reach some type of peace by sitting and going, ohm, ohm, ohm, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.
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We say these things over and over and over and some attempt to reach some level of spirituality.
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Even in Islam, there is a practice called Sufi whirling, wherein the Mohammedan dervishes spin in a circle and repeat the name of Allah over and over and over and over until they fall down in a dizzy collapse.
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But beloved, this is nothing new.
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Religious repetitions, religious chants have been used by pagan religions since the beginning.
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The prophets of Baal, think of the prophets of Baal.
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Remember when they were fussing with with Elijah there on Mount Carmel? What does the Bible say that the prophets of Baal did? It says they use the same formal invocation for Baal over and over and over from morning until noon.
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They kept saying the same thing over and over and over again, thinking that through repetition, through the repeating of this phrase, they would somehow garner the blessing of their deity.
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Same thing happens in Acts chapter 19, when the men who opposed the gospel cried out the same sentence of devotion and Acts 19 says they did it for two hours straight, the same sentence over and over and over again for two hours straight.
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These repetitious chants and statements have a hypnotic effect on the brain and they allow the participant to have a religious experience because their brains shut off.
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And their subconscious takes over, they're hypnotizing themselves by saying this over and over and over and over again, and Christ says such a thing is an atrocity.
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Now, let me add to this, this is not just in the pagan religions, this has made its way right into the church.
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We can talk about the Tibetans, we can talk about the Mohammedans, we can talk about the Buddhists, but why don't we get real and talk about ourselves? Because there are two things that go on in.
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Quote, unquote, Christendom.
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That I would say fall directly under the condemnation of Jesus is preaching here, two things which I would say are directly under the condemnation of Christ in this passage.
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The first one is the praying of the rosary within the Catholic Church.
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There is a practice of praying with a set of beads, with each bead representing a certain prayer.
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These prayers alternate between the Hail Mary, the Lord's Prayer and the Gloria Patri.
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By the way, the Lord's Prayer is a righteous prayer.
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It's a scriptural prayer.
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And why do we do the Lord's Prayer on a regular basis? As it is by way of instruction, because our children, which we have in the service with us, because we believe it is a righteous thing to worship together as families and we make that part of the instruction in prayer in church.
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So, yes, we pray the Lord's Prayer, but why is the rosary then? A negative thing, because it's prayed over and over and over and over as if it has some type of a magic power and it is accompanied by a sinful prayer.
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Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
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Hey, Pastor, that doesn't sound too bad.
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Well, let me continue.
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Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
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Amen.
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That is blasphemy.
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Mary is not your intercessor.
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Mary speaks not to God for you.
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And to proclaim your prayer through Mary is to proclaim your prayer through an idolatrous deity, not the God of the Bible.
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I'm not trying to be ugly, and I know some of you guys come from a Catholic background.
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I am not trying to hurt your feelings.
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I'm trying to tell you the truth.
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I told you this is going to be confrontational today because it is.
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Prayer is important.
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We have to be confronted with the truth, if otherwise not, if I were standing up here telling you great stories about the week and how good everything could be and how I could give you the best parking spot and the best marriage and the best this and the best that.
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But I didn't tell you the gospel and I didn't tell you the truth.
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I would be a liar and I would be twice as worthy of hell as anyone else.
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Because a teacher is held to a higher standard, according to Mary, is not the intercessor of the church, and to pray to her is to pray in an idolatrous way, it is idolatry.
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So it's not just vain repetition.
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It's a faulty prayer.
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But there is also something else which falls directly in view with this verse, and that is the idea which is done in many modern churches.
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And that's the idea of speaking in tongues.
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Now, that's a sensitive issue for many people because they don't know how to deal with the subject.
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We know the Bible talks about speaking in tongues and the modern churches who practice it say that they are well within their biblical parameters to do so.
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The problem is that the modern practice of tongue speaking is much more akin to pagan chanting than it is to anything described in the Bible.
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The modern practice of tongue speaking is not a speaking of a language.
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It is an over and over and over chanting of words that have no meaning.
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It is a direct bata logia, it is a babbling.
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The scripture describes tongues, which were miraculous sign to the early church as being a demonstration of God's gospel going from one language, the Hebrew language, out to all languages.
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That's how the tongues demonstrated themselves in the book of Acts.
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It's how the tongues are spoken about.
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And it's only mentioned in three books of the Bible, by the way.
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And there's debate as to whether or not that's what Jesus was talking about in Mark 16.
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So it could be that it's just to first Corinthians and Acts.
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The first instance that we see of it is men who speak in a language they don't know.
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They don't babble.
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They don't repeat the same thing over and over and over again.
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There's no misunderstanding of what they're saying.
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There's a language which can be interpreted by someone who knows the language.
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The Bible never describes ecstatic speech or mindless chanting as something which is righteous and godly.
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Never.
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Yet among those who practice it, this is what is seen.
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No discernible language, but rather mindless gibberish.
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Brian shortly said this, and I'll quote him.
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He says tongues and ecstatic forms of devotion are common in pagan religions.
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This was practiced in ancient Greece by a number of tribes in modern Africa and can be found even among the Muslims, Eskimos and Tibetan monks.
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Tongues have also been found among practitioners of the occult, praying in tongues, which is nothing more than babbling is completely worthless and even harmful, for it is a counterfeit miracle that mocks the true gift.
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End quote.
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I may speak more on this in the weeks to come because this is such an important issue.
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But let me just suffice it to say today that the modern practice which is done in most churches is in direct conflict with the way the Bible sets the parameters for the gift of tongues.
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For it is spoken in vain repetition over and over and over, meaningless language is not godly expressions of worship.
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So the two atrocities to pray, to impress others and to pray without using your mind to simply babble.
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Or to turn your mind off in some sort of hypnotic chant.
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Now, let's look at the three admonitions and we'll we'll go through these rather, rather briskly.
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Jesus gives us three things to consider in our prayer life, and I don't want to cut this into two sermons, so just stay with me for a few minutes longer because there's three things Jesus says here's the wrong way.
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Here's the right way.
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The first thing he says is to pray with privacy.
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He says, but when you pray for six, he says, 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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Beloved, there is something very special.
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And very vital.
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About praying to God alone when we are alone, there is no sense where the ears of other people will hinder our words.
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When we are alone, we know that the conversation is between God and us and no one else.
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We can be open with God.
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We can express ourselves to God.
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We can be unchained, unfettered before our God when we are outside of the earshot of other men.
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Praying in private also ensures that we are not performing our prayers as a show.
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When no one knows that we're praying, no one can applaud our prayers.
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It forces us to make the object of our prayers God and no one else.
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Now, I want to make mention this words of Christ in verse six, this is not a condemnation against all forms of public prayer.
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Jesus prayed publicly.
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So, too, are pastors called to pray before the congregation.
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So, too, did the apostle Paul pray before the people of God.
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It's not a condemnation of all public prayer.
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It is a condemnation of the heart that would seek to pray publicly for the accolades and the applause of men.
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That is the statement here.
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And as I said earlier, if all we ever pray our prayers in the church or our prayers at the supper table or our prayers in our times of distress, if those are the only prayers that we ever pray, then our prayer life is anemic.
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We have to have times where we get alone with just us and God and speak to him as Lord and Father, for without such things, our spiritual lives, our spiritual lives will suffer.
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If they're alive at all, we also need to pray with focus, look at verse seven again, it says, when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do.
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You see, the danger of this type of prayer is that people turn their brains off.
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In 1 Corinthians 14, the apostle Paul says this, 1 Corinthians 14, 15, he says, what am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.
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I will pray.
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I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing praise with my mind also.
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He's not saying that you're supposed to do something with your spirit and your mind shuts off.
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That's wrong.
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Use them both.
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What is it that the apostle Paul says gets renewed? The renewal of the mind, we have become such an anti intellectual culture that everything is about feeling, everything's about spirituality.
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But beloved, what you think matters.
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And how you express your faith in your prayers matters.
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Now, there will be times when you don't know what to pray.
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There will be times when you have no words because you are beyond words for prayer.
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And the Bible says in Romans 8 and 26, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray as we ought.
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But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
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That's true.
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There are times when you don't know what to pray and you just have to rely on the fact that God knows what you need before you ask.
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Certainly that is the truth.
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The beloved do not use Romans 8, 26 as a reason to shut off your brain.
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Do not use Romans 8, 26 as a reason to say, you know what? I'm going to just turn it off, let go and let God that phrase, let go and let God.
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It's one of the many thousands of trite phrases that has no meaning, but yet so many people use it in some sort of expression.
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We always let go and let God in the sense that we know we can't do anything on and of ourselves.
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But the idea tends to be when people say let go and let God is that I'm not going to participate anymore.
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No, we must engage and focus with our minds, and finally, we pray with confidence.
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Look at verse eight.
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He says, your father knows what you need before you ask him.
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Why can I pray with confidence? Why can I pray to a God who I know I can be confident in? Because I know that he knows everything about me, he knows everything I need before I even ask, and he has promised to cause all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
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He has promised that to me.
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So when I go to God in prayer, I don't go to God in prayer with a kind of wondering if God's will is going to be done.
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I go to God with confidence to know that he is God and I am not.
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I know that I can ask for the wrong thing and I certainly have asked for the wrong thing in the past.
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I've done the wrong thing in the past.
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I've done the wrong thing many times in the past.
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Hope that's not a shock to you.
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But I know this.
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I know God is sovereign.
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So in my prayers, there's a trusting in that sovereignty.
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But here's the problem that some people say, well, God knows everything.
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Why do I need to pray? They say that's a problem.
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They say, hey, we don't have to pray.
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Beloved, here's the thing.
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Prayer is not a magic formula for manipulating the will of God.
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That's true.
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And those people who say you can name it and claim it, they are.
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There's a Greek word for that.
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You all know what it is.
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Baloney.
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It's baloney.
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It's what it is.
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We know that that is false, but we do pray and we should always, always qualify our prayers with these words.
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Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done.
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I remember sitting in a hospital room with a man one time who was sick and I had another man from another church with me and I prayed, Lord, it is our prayer that this man be made well.
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It is our prayer that this man be lifted up and that he be healed.
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But nevertheless, not my will, thy will be done.
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We trust you with him, Lord.
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In Christ's name, amen.
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I think that's about the tantamount to the prayer that I prayed after we left, went out to get in the car.
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This man from another church, he looked at me and he said, that was a wrong prayer to pray.
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Well, giddy up, because here we go.
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Is this about to have a revival in this car because we don't talk about theology for a minute.
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What do you mean it's a wrong prayer to pray? He said, Jesus already said he wanted to heal him.
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Oh, well, it says in the Bible that God wants to heal everybody.
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Now, at this point, I have to stop the car.
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I can't drive with this much, this much to deal with.
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I said, number one, if it's a wrong prayer to pray, then Jesus was wrong in the Garden of Gethsemane because he said, nevertheless, my will, thy will, not my will be done.
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So so take it up with Christ if you don't like the way I said it.
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I said, but secondly, what ignorance would say that it is always God's will to heal when Christians die every day? What ignorance? Beloved, God's will is perfect.
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And when we pray, we demonstrate submission to it.
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First, John 514 says this, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
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You know what that means? You can make an inference to the opposite.
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If we ask anything not according to his will, he does not hear us.
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There's a necessary inference built into that text that when we go about asking God that which is not in accordance with his will, he is not inclined to bend his ear to us.
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Our confidence in prayer is not that we have a magic formula that bends the will of God.
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Our confidence in prayer is not that we will always get a positive response to our every request, but our confidence in prayer is that we have a God who knows what we need before we can even ask it and that he has already ordained that he will cause all things to work together for the good of those who love him.
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That is our confidence in prayer.
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And beloved, that is the confidence which should lead us to prayer.
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I pray that we take these admonitions seriously.
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That every one of us, all of us here who proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, that we would all take the time to be alone with God, that we would all engage our minds.
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In the consideration of who he is and our relationship with him and that we would pray in confidence with him and to him, knowing that he knows our needs better than we ever could and rest assured in him.
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Do you have a prayer time? Do you have a prayer time? Do you have a serious, devoted time where you separate yourself to give yourself to God? I have a lot to do.
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I have a job.
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Get up earlier.
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People get up and go to the gym at 4 a.m.
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Would you get up and pray to God at 4 a.m.? We need a time outside of the view of others, outside of the attempt to win the accolades of men, outside of an attempt to draw the applause of men, to just be with us and God.
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I pray that you would pray to God because, beloved, the Lord has told us the two types of prayers which are atrocious to him.
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But I will tell you this.
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To not pray is the most atrocious thing of all.
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So let's go to the Lord.
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Our Father and our God, we come to you in Jesus' name.
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We thank you and we praise you for this opportunity that we've had to study your word.
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I pray that you have kept the hearts and minds of your people attuned to your word so that through this message, they have been moved towards a closer walk with you, specifically in the discipline of prayer.
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Let it be, O God, that we never shirk our responsibility to have time alone with you, that we carve out time in our day.
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Certainly, if we have time for email and Facebook and television, certainly we have time for you, O God.
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Let it be that we carve these times out and make them a priority.
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In Christ's name we pray, amen.