Wednesday, April 5, 2023 PM

Prayed for deliverance, and God answered. God did so for his sake of his own name and for his own glory and for his own purposes. When God gave Hezekiah 15 more years of life, he did so for the sake of his name and his own purposes so that the Babylonian envoys would come and they would take a note of that and they would show up about 150 years later.

So I feel too. Total discord. So when you pray, you're praying to the Lord who is sovereign. If God wasn't sovereign and couldn't order the world for the sake of his own purpose and for the sake of his own name, what's the point in praying to him?

But if the Lord can order everything for the sake of his own glory and the sake of his own name, that he has the power to do that, that's the one you should pray to. You're praying within the sovereignty of God.

There are certain things that God has planned that will not be thwarted. If all of his people got together and says, please do not send Messiah to us in the first century, God would have said, no. This is going to happen.

If all of God's people today says, please, let's not have Jesus come back right now, I've got stuff to do, no. If that's when Jesus comes back, God says, no. When Jesus prayed in the garden and he said, let this cup pass from me, God said, no.

And Christ's response should be our response. Not my will, but thine be done. We pray within the sovereign will of God. The idea behind this lesson tonight is it's going to be kind of two parts and we'll get into the Lord's prayer more next time.

But I wanted to talk a little bit about that and then we'll start our prayer time. Somebody once asked R .C. Sproul, does prayer change God? He goes, no. Well, then what's the purpose? Does prayer change anything?

He says, yeah. Changes us, changes our attitude. The character of God is to judge sin and be merciful and gracious for the sake of his own name. When a nation repents and God says, I'm going to do this, and they repent and they turn back and he relents.

So the Bible says he repents. It's a different word. But it also means comfort, that God was comforted with their repentance. And it is consistent with his character to extend grace and mercy to those who repent.

That's God hasn't changed. And if it wasn't, and there was a huge revival among the Babylonians, it would have been another nation, Hittites, some other, right? Because that's the, that's what happens.

The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6

So as we talk about how the example prayer that we have in Matthew, like you guys to, one, think about the sovereignty of God and praying within it. Remember that it was Jesus himself who prayed in the garden.

And God said, God gave him his answer. And Jesus' response was not by will, but thy be done. And when the disciples said, okay, how should we pray? Christ gives them an answer. And we can meditate on this.

And hopefully I'll be with you next week. If not, then we'll, we can continue it. But turning to Matthew 6, close with this. I'm going to use this as a bridge for part two. Matthew 6, five through eight.

This is when they said, how should we pray? I love the way Jesus answers lots of these questions. Sometimes he says, well, first off, don't do this. Don't do this and don't do this. He kind of gives them bookends and then says, okay, now that we've got that out of the way, let's kind of move forward a little bit.

And he says, okay, when you pray, don't heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Don't be like them. There are certain places in the world where they have prayers written on wheels.

You can spin them, prayer wheels. And if you spin them, that's a very efficient way to pray. Now you can get like 30 or 40 prayers in there. You will not be heard for your many words. So don't be like them.

And in verse five, don't be like the hypocrites who are just praying to be seen. Don't just be like them. Truly they have their reward. When you pray, go to your room, shut the door, pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will repay you.

They wanted to be seen by everyone. They got their reward. They got the praise. Go and just pray in secret and your father who sees in secret, he will repay you far better than anything that you could ask for.

And don't have frilly words and many words. Don't sit here and spin your prayer wheels. Your father knows what you need even before you ask, Jesus says, because we pray within the sovereignty of God. He knows.

So when you pray,.

Pray.

And isn't it ironic that he just got done saying, don't just, you know, say the same prayer over and over and over and with lots of words that we heard because there are many words. And he gives us a short little prayer and this is the one that we say over and over.

It's good to memorize scripture and this is scripture. But understand that just saying this prayer isn't like a mantra, it isn't a magic formula. You're not casting a spell. This is an example that God in the flesh gives us to pray to God the father within the power of the Holy Spirit gives us.

And he starts off with our father. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

And he gives us a nice little application. If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father forgives you. But if you don't forgive others, neither will your heavenly father forgive you. So when you pray, pray within the sovereignty of God.

The example that our Lord gives us is praying to our father who knows our needs before we ask. The words, if they don't come easily tonight, it's okay. I have stumbled over my words. I stutter on occasion, get tongue tied.

It's really okay. Because my daughter can sit next to me and try to get out something that's really important to her, but she doesn't know exactly how. And it eventually comes through, I hear it. And so does our heavenly father.

Understand who that is that you're praying to tonight. And as an application, understand what he has done for you. Yes, praise him. Yes, be thankful. Yes, let your requests be made known. Yes, confess and forgive others as you ask the Lord to forgive you tonight.

That's what I wanted to bring tonight. If we have the ability to, I wanted to dive into some of the phrases that Christ uses in the Lord's prayer that tied directly back to Isaiah 37. Kingdoms, and in particular, and our father working in world history for the sake of his own glory and for our benefit.

And then we'll talk a little bit about this fun little book. Who here has ever heard of Matthew Henry? He's relatively famous. And he's probably like the one Presbyterian that every Baptist probably has in their library.

Obviously he's known for his commentary. He, as I was reading this little book, this is A Way to Pray by Matthew Henry. He stopped the work on his commentary series because he thought this was so important.

And he wrote this and then got back to his commentary series. I don't think he ended up finishing all of it because he spent so much time with A Way to Pray. So I'm gonna recommend that book. This particular printing is Banner of Truth.

It's done by O. Palmer Robertson. He's a relatively famous author as well. And the reason he did this printing is because his own copy that he received from his father, who was also his grandfather's, was so worn out, it was falling apart.

And the pages were like so worn that he almost couldn't read some of it. So he's like, I guess I'll print my own. But that's Matthew Henry, A Way to Pray, highly recommend. Let's close in a word of prayer and then we'll take some additional prayer requests.

God in heaven, thank you so much for our study tonight. Thank you for the privilege and the responsibility to pray. Hear us tonight, not because of our words, but because of who Christ is and what he has done and is in his holy name, we pray, amen.