Sunday Sermon: Pray Then Like This (Matthew 6:9)

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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. 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. Only have one comment to make about current events, and then

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I'm going to come straight to the text here. Last night, I imagined a future group of scientists looking back on the year 2020.

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They will read in medical journals about the COVID -19 pandemic that infected

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America, and they will consider the other things that happened in America at exactly the same time.

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Those scientists are going to look at each other and say, are we sure that COVID -19 was a respiratory disease and not a neurological disorder?

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Becky and the kids and I, we have been praying that the current unrest that exists in our nation would bring people to the

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Lord, that it drives them to their knees in prayer. First of all, we pray that they would know the gospel, for as we've considered in previous weeks apart from Christ, no one can even come to the

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Lord in prayer. But knowing Christ and Him crucified for our sins, having heard that gospel witness, that those who know the gospel would cry out to the

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Lord with a heart that longs for God. May your prayers be more than a mere sentence that you say to yourself in the morning as you bless your breakfast, or a couple of friendly things that you might share with your kids at night when you put them to bed.

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Instead, may your prayers be serious. May they be heartfelt.

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May they be yearning, desperate for God, pleased to the

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Creator of the universe who gave His Son for us all and also graciously gives us all things.

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It is true that we should pray all the time. Pray without ceasing was the instruction that the apostle gave to the

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Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 5 .17. David said in Psalm 32 .6,

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let everyone who is godly offer a prayer to you. Everyone offer prayers to God.

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We see in the book of Revelation that prayers are being lifted up to the Lord even in heaven.

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Whether times are good, which we can most assuredly say in heaven they are, right?

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Or whether times are bad, which here on earth would be any time you see bad news going on.

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In any situation we should pray. But now especially I hope that people are reminded what a privilege this is to call upon our

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Father in heaven and be reminded that He cares for us. As we have been looking at Jesus' words about prayer, and remember this is a teaching from God Himself on how to pray to Him.

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We have considered the last couple of weeks how not to pray. Jesus said, do not pray like a hypocrite.

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And then He said, do not pray like a pagan. I want to be able to say, now we get to the meat and potatoes of this particular lesson.

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But Hebrews 5 .14 says, solid food is for the mature. And what we're considering here as we look intently and longingly at the

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Lord's prayer, this is a kind of food that anyone of any spiritual maturity can enjoy.

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Whether you were born again yesterday or you have enjoyed the presence of God in your life all of these many years, we all delight to sit and partake of the morsels that Jesus gives us here in this lesson on prayer.

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These are the basics that Jesus is teaching His disciples. A word that simply means learner.

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And if we are sitting at the feet of the Master, asking Him to teach us, then we too are

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Christ's disciples. So let us again rejoice in learning about the basics of prayer.

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Now maybe there are aspects of this that we look at today that will be a first for you.

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Maybe you have never considered before that what we call the Lord's Prayer is not simply a prayer to be prayed, but it is actually a blueprint for prayer.

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Right here at the start of verse 9, which is about as far as we're going to get today, but Jesus says, pray then like this.

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He does not say, pray this. He says, pray like this.

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Now we've already prayed this here this morning and we have not done anything wrong in doing so.

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I pray the Lord's Prayer with my children whenever we do our devotional time. Surely it isn't wrong to pray the

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Lord's Prayer. But we do not only pray the Lord's Prayer. As I said to you last week, the entire book of Psalms is a book of prayers.

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And the week before, I showed you how you can take any passage of Scripture and turn it into a prayer.

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Does this mean we should only pray the Scriptures? No. Most of my prayers, though they may be informed by the

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Scriptures, are not exclusively the Scriptures. The way you pray might also be affected by your circumstances.

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Whenever things are really, really hard, whenever our situation gets really, really difficult, our prayers tend to be the most simple, right?

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This is what the Bible calls crying out unto the

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Lord. Psalm 88 .1, I cry out day and night before you.

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Psalm 102 .1, O Lord, let my cry come to you.

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Psalm 130 .1, out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord.

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Psalm 142 .1, I cry out unto the Lord. It's really interesting that crying out to God is mentioned in the first verse of all of these

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Psalms. So it looks like a preface for a desperate plea.

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And that's the kind of prayers that we probably pray when things are really, really difficult. They are those desperate pleas.

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The crying out to God. Maybe even asking basic questions. How is this supposed to be?

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Or saying, what is going on? Where are we going? But when things are really good, even then, our prayers can be pretty simple sometimes.

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And not all that deep. You might thank God for the beautiful weather. You're thankful that the kids haven't tried to repaint the living room couch yet today.

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You're thankful that your dog is so cute. And you know that your dad has been passing another kidney stone.

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So you ask God that he wouldn't be in too much pain, but maybe a little bit of pain for that time that he grounded you when you came home just five minutes after curfew and that was unfair.

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You know, maybe those are the kinds of prayers that you pray when things are really, really good. Nothing's really affecting me right now.

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I'm not bothered by anything. So we tend to pray these simple, light prayers without a whole lot of demands.

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Now, as I said to you a couple of weeks ago, prayer is very simply talking to God. More broadly, according to the

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Baptist catechism, prayer is an offering up of our desires to God by the assistance of the

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Holy Spirit for things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ, believing with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies.

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So what kinds of prayers should we pray? Before we get to looking at the basics of the

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Lord's Prayer and the different parts in this blueprint that Jesus has given to us, let's consider what kinds of prayer we ought to pray.

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I think Paul summarized it best in 1 Timothy 2 .1 where he said, First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

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So what kinds of prayer should we pray? Well, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings.

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What are the differences between those different kinds of prayers? The first word which we have translated supplication is déices in the

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Greek. This is an entreaty or a request that is made in earnest.

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The same Greek word comes up in Romans 10 .1 where the Apostle Paul writes this, Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

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Now, he's talking about his fellow kinsmen, the Jews. He's praying that they would see Jesus Christ as the

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Messiah, not an opponent of the Word of God, but the Word in the flesh. That's what

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Paul is praying for, and it's that word there, déices, that's the same Greek word that we see here for supplication.

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So you hear the urgency in Paul's words that he deeply desires for his fellow kinsmen to know

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Christ the Messiah and so be saved. So don't pray just simple prayers.

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As we understand this word supplication, tell God your deepest desires.

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Express the innermost yearnings of your heart. What aches your spirit?

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Don't think that God doesn't care. For as I've quoted to you just about every week that we have been looking at the subject of prayer, in 1

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Peter 5 where it says, Cast all your cares upon him, for he cares for you.

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What is the most vexing thing that is going on in your soul? Express it to the

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Lord in supplication. One discipline that I've tried to exercise in my own personal life is that I not express anything to a person more deeply than I express it to God.

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And I'm more eager to express the aches and pains and hurts in my heart to people than I am eager to express those things to God.

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God is going to know the depths of my heart more than any person, even in the words that I'm able to articulate concerning the emotions or feelings that I might have.

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Whether you are frustrated, whether you are hurt, whether you are searching or questioning, even and especially when you are happy and joyful, express these things unto

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God. The next word that we have here for these kinds of prayers that the

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Bible tells us to pray, the next word is prayers. Well, I mean, we're looking for kinds of prayers.

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So Paul says here prayers. That seems very simple enough. What would be the difference between prayers and supplications, intercessions, and thanksgivings if all of these are types of prayers?

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Well, in the Greek, the word is prosuche. That's the Greek word for prayer.

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So what makes a prayer different than a supplication? Well, the interesting thing about this word prayer is it doesn't simply just mean pray.

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It also is used to describe the place where prayers are offered, or the place where one worships.

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You know that God is omnipresent. He is everywhere, so you can pray to Him anywhere.

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So this word is used as if to instruct us to pray anywhere.

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Lift your requests up to God. By the way, this is why we should not do as the

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Catholics do and pray to Mary or any dead saint. Now, a

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Catholic might say we don't pray to them, we petition them that they would pray for us, but that's even more silly.

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You can go to God Himself. Why would you try to involve a middleman? Or a middlewoman, in the case of Mary, I suppose.

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To appeal to any invisible entity is to express that such an entity is omnipresent.

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That they can hear you anywhere, at any time, and multiple people can pray at once, and that entity can hear all of those prayers that are being prayed at once.

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That is a quality of omnipresence, and that is strictly a divine characteristic.

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Only God has it. So not only should you not pray to Mary or any dead saint, you can't do that.

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It's not even possible. We're told in 1 Timothy 2 .5, For there is one

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God, there is one who is omnipresent, and there is one mediator between God and men, our access to the

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Father, and that is the man, Jesus Christ. In John 4 .21,

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Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the

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Father. Then in verse 23, The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the

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Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship

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Him. We can talk to God anywhere. So as we see this word prayers in the context of 1

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Timothy 2 .1, this simply means talk to God anytime and in any place.

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The next kind of prayer that we have mentioned here is intercessory prayer. The Greek word is entuxis.

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Sorry, I do this every time. Entuxis. I was even trying to rehearse the pronunciation of this word last night, and I still couldn't get it.

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Entuxis, meaning a petition. Now, this word is not too unlike supplication, except in this way.

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A supplication is to express your deep personal desire.

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An intercession is to pray on behalf of someone else's deep desire.

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A little more than a week before Betty Carpenter passed away, I went to Archie and Betty's house, and I prayed for Betty.

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And I also prayed with my brother Archie, and he and I shared tears together. I couldn't possibly understand in my heart what it's like to lose someone that you've been married to for decades.

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It's a hurt that I could not parallel, but nevertheless, my heart hurt for my brother.

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Becky and I, we have shared tears praying for other friends in this church as well.

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So, as you pray in earnest for someone else's needs, that is intercessory prayer.

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That is intercession. Now, if you're praying for somebody else's salvation, that's not quite intercession.

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That's more of a supplication, just as we saw Paul praying in Romans 10 .1. That's your deeply held desire.

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You're expressing to God that your desire would be that they would make God their desire, but it's not intercessory prayer.

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In intercessory prayer, you are sharing someone else's hurts or pains or even rejoicings.

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When we read in Romans 12 .15, Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

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That's a perfect example of intercession. Praying for our missionaries should be intercessory prayer.

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Do you ever look up the news about what's going on with missionaries serving in parts of the world? Now, that's the kind of stuff that cable news is not going to tell you.

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You're not going to see a whole lot of headline stories about how our missionaries around the world are struggling.

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You're going to have to use or do a little bit of digging to find out where in those places that are hostile to Christianity are our missionaries being persecuted, so we may know how to pray for them.

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The Lord tells us to pray for them. We must share the hurts of our brothers and sisters who are suffering for the gospel of Christ.

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Remember when Jesus appeared to Paul when he was on the road to Damascus to round up Christians to persecute them.

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That's why he was going to Damascus. At that time he was known as Saul of Tarsus. When Jesus appeared to him on that road as he was going to Damascus, he said,

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Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting those Christians over there? Is that what he said?

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He said, why are you persecuting me? Jesus in heaven saying to this man on earth, why are you persecuting me?

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If our Lord Christ shares in our sufferings that intimately, as we also share in the sufferings of Christ, then how much should we also as brothers and sisters in the

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Lord share in each other's hurts, especially for those who are on mission for the gospel?

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Occasionally I'll throw something on the church Facebook page or the church website. Just a few days ago I linked to a report that said in just two weeks in the month of April, 48 churches were shut down in the

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Chinese county of Ugan. A secretary for the Chinese Communist Party explained the reason for the shutdown.

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Quote, higher echelons of government declared after an inspection that there were too many

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Christians in the county. When so many believe in God, who will listen to the

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Communist Party? There is no other choice but to remove your crosses from your churches.

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Unquote. We should pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are hurting abroad and we should hurt with them.

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Consider those who do not enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy here in America and make intercessions on their behalf.

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Finally, the last kind of prayer that we have mentioned here in 1 Timothy 2, verse 1.

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The last kind of prayer is thanksgiving. And I think that should be pretty self -explanatory. The Greek word here is eucharistia.

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That's an interesting sounding word. What other word do we know of that sounds like that?

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It sounds like Eucharist, which is the bread at the Lord's table.

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But the Eucharist is aptly named because it is an expression of thanksgiving for the body of Christ which has been broken for us.

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Eucharistia is thankfulness or gratitude. Literally, the word translates as the giving of thanks for God's grace.

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And what greater demonstration of God's grace do we have than in the cross of Christ? No matter what happens, no matter what we are going through, let there be a spirit of thanksgiving for the grace of God.

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We should know that even in the worst of our circumstances, even in your worst trials, you are still getting better than you deserve because the blood of Jesus Christ has been spilled for our sins so that all who believe in Him will be saved.

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We have fellowship with God, and you are able to talk with God because you have access to God through Christ.

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The very fact that you can pray is by the grace of God. So let every prayer that we pray, even if we're expressing hurt.

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Having thanksgiving doesn't mean that you just have to put on a fake smile whenever you pray. But in every prayer that we pray, even if it's in a longing, even when we are crying out to the

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Lord as we saw expressed in the Psalms, let us be filled with thanksgiving. Philippians chapter 4 verses 4 through 7 says this,

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Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

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And remember that Paul was in prison when he said that. He was in chains for preaching the gospel and yet, while under house arrest, couldn't go anywhere, waiting for trial before Nero, who was a persecutor of Christians.

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Paul said, rejoice always. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

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The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

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And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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So when you see all the unrest that's happening in the world, when you see an economy that is being deeply affected by the turmoil that is going on, even when we're seeing that on top of all of our own personal struggles and hurts and pains, yet we do not lose heart, we do not panic, we do not despair, even when people believe nonsense and worldly ideas, and you see pulpits in churches all across the

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American landscape leaving the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they're falling into a social gospel of works righteousness and liberal rhetoric, even then, let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

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The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but be filled with thanksgiving.

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When we are thankful to God for all He has given, we will be at peace.

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The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet is looking out at things that are going on in his culture at that time.

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And he said, How long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?

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Or I cry to you, violence, and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?

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And the kind of violence that was going on in Habakkuk's day was far more intense and far more widespread than what you might see turning on cable news.

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I mean, what we're seeing happening in America right now is unprecedented, but it's still not even anything compared to what

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Habakkuk was witnessing. Habakkuk was seeing God's people being slaughtered.

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And yes, they deserved it. They had turned from God, who had rescued them from slavery, who had given them the promised land, a land that was flowing with milk and honey, and they worshipped the false gods of the pagans, and they behaved abominably before the

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Lord. He warned them not to do that. He even gave them the law and said, Don't go the way of the pagans.

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He expressly said it. Do not worship their gods. Do not do what they do.

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And that's exactly what the Israelites did. Their sin was greater than Sodom and Gomorrah's because Sodom and Gomorrah did not have the law, nor did they see the miracles that God had performed before their eyes.

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But the nation that was slaughtering the Israelites was the Chaldeans, and Habakkuk was saying,

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God, look, I know we're pretty bad, but the Chaldeans are way worse.

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Why are you letting them have their way with your people? How long will you allow this to go on?

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What are you going to do about their sin? And yet the

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Lord answered Habakkuk like this. He said, Look among the nations and see.

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Wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days you would not believe even if I told you what it was.

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The Lord said, Habakkuk, I know, okay? I know the

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Chaldeans are bad, but I am using the Chaldeans to correct and purify my people and bring them to repentance.

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And I will save my people. But the

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Chaldeans are going to be utterly destroyed. They will pay for their sins too.

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The short book of Habakkuk ends like this. Habakkuk 3, verses 17 and 18.

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Habakkuk says, Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor the fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food.

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The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice in the

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Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

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If you were to take those words, those closing words from Habakkuk, and you were to put them in our present modern

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American context, you might say something like this. Though the economy be decimated by a pandemic, and the stores are looted by thieves, and the neighborhoods are burned down by rioters, and it's hard to find work, and it's difficult for me to make ends meet, and there's no food on the shelves at the grocery store, or toilet paper, yet I will rejoice in God.

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I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

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That is praying with thanksgiving. We have no reason to fear losing anything that we have here on this earth, even our own bodies, my friends, because our eternal reward will never be taken from us in heaven.

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And as we continue to go through Matthew chapter 6 here, we're going to see that, because as Jesus is comforting us by teaching us how to pray, eventually gets to a part here in Matthew 6, very well -known verses that you probably know.

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Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust cannot destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal.

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For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And he goes on even toward the end of Matthew chapter 6 to say, don't be anxious about anything, for your

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Father in heaven knows what you need. Does he not care for the sparrows and the lilies of the field?

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Are you not of more value than they? Who has added one hour to his life because he worried about it?

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So trust in God. Depend upon the Lord.

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Worship your Father who is in heaven. So here in 1

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Timothy chapter 2 verse 1, we have the kinds of prayer that we should pray. So this prayer in Matthew chapter 6, the

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Lord's Prayer, is like a blueprint for the way that we should pray.

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You should be able to take the Lord's Prayer and be able to pray with this blueprint, supplications.

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Prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings. Jesus says, when you pray, pray then like this.

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The Baptist Catechism says, what rule has God given for our direction in prayer?

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The whole Word of God is of use to direct us in prayer.

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We've considered that the last couple of weeks. But the special rule of direction is that prayer, which

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Christ taught his disciples, commonly called the Lord's Prayer. This prayer that we have here from Jesus, it's almost like a catechism in itself.

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Now it's certainly much more than that, because a catechism is not the Word of God, and what we have in the Lord's Prayer is most definitely the

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Word of God. But nevertheless, what Jesus has given us here is an example for us in how to pray.

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We find this prayer, we find in this prayer, all the main parts that we should consider our prayers to have.

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Now, it takes practice to get this. And maybe after we go through this lesson on the

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Lord's Prayer, you can more rightly apply this to the way that you pray.

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And you will find, even in your own prayers, more comfort from the Lord than you were receiving before.

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A couple of weeks ago, I said to you that this prayer is divided up into two main portions.

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The first is a divine exaltation, and the second is more personal. You can probably identify the dividing line when you look at the

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Lord's Prayer. The first part is, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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And then the second part is, Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

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Or, more rightly translated, deliver us from the evil one. Now, this is not unlike the

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Ten Commandments, which is also divided up into first and second tables of the law.

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The first four commandments are what we call the first table of the law. They're all vertical commandments.

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They all deal with our relationship with God. The next six commandments we call the second table of the law.

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They're all horizontal commandments. So they deal with how we interact in our relationships with one another in honor to God.

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So, just as the Ten Commandments are divided up into two tables with ten instructions, so the

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Lord's Prayer is two parts with also smaller pieces. In fact, in the history of the

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Protestant Church, and from the historic catechism that I've been quoting to you, it has been taught that there are six petitions to the

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Lord's Prayer. Now, here's how I would like to finish this up today. I'd like to do an overview of the entire

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Lord's Prayer. Next week, we're going to look at the first three petitions, and then in the week after that, we're going to look at the second three petitions.

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So we begin the Lord's Prayer with a preface or an address, and it's very simply,

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What does Jesus teach us in the preface to the Lord's Prayer? There is even a lesson to be learned here in just these six words.

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So what's being taught to us here? Jesus teaches us to draw near to God with all holy reverence and confidence as children to a father, able to and ready to help us, that we should pray with and for others.

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Did you know you could learn that in even those six words at the beginning of the Lord's Prayer?

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The first petition of the Lord's Prayer is this, We pray that God would enable us and others to glorify

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Him in all that He makes Himself known, in everything that we have all around us, that we might see

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God in everything, and that He would do all things to His own glory.

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That's what we express when we say, The second petition is,

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And here we pray that Satan's kingdom would be destroyed, and the kingdom of grace may be advanced, that ourselves and others would be brought into God's kingdom and kept in His kingdom, and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.

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The third petition is this, We pray that God, by His grace, would make us able and willing to know, to obey, and to submit to His will in all things as the angels do in heaven.

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The fourth petition is this, We pray that by way of God's free gift and His charity to us,

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His children whom He loves, that we may receive a portion of the good things of this life and enjoy

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His blessing with them. The fifth petition is,

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We pray that God, for the sake of Christ, would freely pardon all of our sins, which we are rather encouraged to ask for, because by His grace we are enabled from the heart even to forgive others.

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The sixth petition is, And here we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin, or support and deliver us when we are tempted.

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And finally, the conclusion to the Lord's Prayer is this, Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

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Amen. This teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise

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Him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to Him. And in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we finish our prayer by saying,

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Amen, which very simply means, so be it. It means to be in agreement with everything that was said.

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Now, I've been welcoming all of us to pray this prayer together, as we've been doing every week, as we've been in this particular section of Matthew chapter 6, and we'll come back to it again next week.

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And when we pray it, we've been praying the version of the Lord's Prayer that most closely resembles what you would read in the

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King James. As you know, I preach from the English Standard Version of the Bible. And in the ESV, the conclusion of the

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Lord's Prayer isn't there. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

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It's not in the English Standard Version. Why isn't that in the ESV? We'll talk about that when we get to it.

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Charles Spurgeon once said, Prayer itself is an art which only the

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Holy Ghost can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer.

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So pray for prayer. Pray till you can pray.

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Pray to be helped to pray. And do not give up praying because you cannot pray.

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For it is when you think you cannot pray, that is when you are praying. I will say that it's probably in those moments that I've prayed the most sincere and heartfelt prayers to God.

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When I've come to God and I have said, I know I need to pray, but I don't know what to pray.

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So God, give me the words that I should say so that I may say them. It's in such humility that you will find yourself uttering the most reverent of language when you pray to God.

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Most of all, our prayers must be for God because it is to God that we are praying.

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They are offerings. It is our worship. And He alone is worthy of our praise.

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And so also, He alone is worthy of our prayers. My friends, you may languish in a lot of your responsibilities.

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You may be as I am, and you may procrastinate in all kinds of work. You may hesitate to begin or even complete any number of tasks.

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You may pause, stumble, waffle, waver, dilly -dally, or demure at your job.

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But never be slow to pray. We need prayer.

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It is, in the very spiritual sense, like breathing. I heard someone speak of prayer and reading the

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Bible like this. Prayer is exhale, and studying your

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Bible is inhale. You read your Bible, you read the words of God, you're breathing in what

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He has said to us and what He has promised us. When you pray to God, you exhale. And just like you need to breathe in order to live, so we need in our spirits to read

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God's Word and pray in order to live. If we languish in prayer, we will perish without it.

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Consider these words from David as we close. Psalm 42 verses 1 through 6.

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As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you,

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O God. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall

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I come and appear before my God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long,

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Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how

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I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

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Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me?

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Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my

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God. 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.

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