There we go. Now is it on? Was it not on when I was spraying? Figures. It's the place to be. Oh man, all the time. I can't, no. Can I kindly ask you to move back? I can't handle this. Well, I don't even let them sit here at night. You can ask Daniel. Thank you. Okay. Well, let's turn together to Mark chapter 1. Mark chapter 1. So I mentioned last week the possibility that is now a reality, that our evening series for the summer is going to be a series on the topic of prayer. And the way it's going to work, Lord willing, is this. When Tony has the opportunity to teach, he's gonna be using a book that some of you may have read called The Praying Life by Paul Miller, which is a really wonderful book. So he's gonna be drawing lessons out of that book. And when I have the opportunity to teach, so we're kinda gonna go back and forth somewhat, I'm gonna be teaching from different prayers in the Bible. We're just gonna be doing just Bible study of some of the best prayers in the Bible and drawing lessons from that and kinda tying the two things together as we go along. So that should take us through the rest of the summer. Tonight what I'd like to do is kind of follow up on our lecture from last week and look actually into the larger catechism, which we haven't been doing much of. We've been in the shorter catechism, but the larger catechism has some really wonderful things, and use that to give us some insight into the scriptures teaching on some other aspects of prayer we didn't cover last week. I'd like to read for us, just to get started, Mark 1.35. which says, and rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, everyone is looking for you. And so we see in the life of Christ a great emphasis on prayer, and there's lots to consider. We may even be able to come back to this in a few minutes. Lots to consider on why Jesus prayed, and what was it that drove Jesus to pray, and what his prayer life was like. But what I'd like to do then is begin just by a little bit of review from last week. So on your sheet, you should just see one side is just the outline I'm gonna use tonight, and the other side is questions from the catechism. Does everybody have one? So the top is what we went over last week, which is the shorter catechism's question just defining prayer. And we used that question itself as our outline for last week's lecture and just talked about what prayer is, offering our desires unto God for things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ with confession of sins and thankful acknowledgment of His mercy. So we talked about those five aspects of prayer, a definition, and then What does it mean to pray in the name of Christ? We spent the most time on that main question. But does anybody have any other questions or comments from last week before we get into the larger catechism? Nate. I was wondering last week, I didn't have a chance to ask it. Since we have the Lord's Prayer as His example, why aren't those things in it? Why aren't all those things in it? All of the, like the things in the shorter catechism, or that, yeah. I need to find a tissue real quick, I'm sorry. No tissues, anybody toss me some tissues. We ought to be better equipped than this. Okay. Like for instance, I don't think, like he doesn't pray in his own name. Right, right. There is definitely confession of sin, right? And then later he teaches us to pray. So I think it's a good proof, first of all, that the Lord's prayer is not all that we need. It was a teaching tool that Jesus was using, but not, it's a good place to start, but not everything, right? So that's one thing I would say. You could even make an argument that in there is probably some implicit thanksgiving. That if you're gonna pray for your daily bread, implicit in that is a thanksgiving for it. As you talk about the Kingdom Come, God's will be done, things like that. That's an argument that I would insist, if we were to go to Puritans, they would pull out 50 things that are in each of those things. They would probably say there is thanksgiving implicit. If you're gonna ask for bread, you're probably thanking him for yesterday's bread, something like that. That also teaches us another aspect of the Lord's Prayer, which is that it's much more than, you know, ten lines on a paper. That it is like the Ten Commandments of the Beatitudes. It's one of those special parts of Scripture that seems to continually unfold new things as we meditate on it and use it. That's a good question, thanks. Any other questions? Okay. Well, we're jumping to the larger catechism, which you can see as you read those questions and answers, is larger. It has longer answers. The larger catechism was written first. and then sort of condense into the shorter catechism. Interestingly, the question, what is prayer, and its answer in the larger catechism is exactly the same as the shorter catechism. But the larger catechism goes into much greater detail on some of the things we talked about last week, and on some things that the shorter catechism simply doesn't talk about. And so I'd like to pick up on three of those tonight. The spirit of prayer, the subject of prayer, and the shape of prayer. I used shape just because it had to be an S at that point and I couldn't think of another good word for it, but you'll get the point when we get there. What I'd first like to do then is talk about and discuss together the relationship of the Holy Spirit to prayer. So the Holy Spirit's relationship to prayer. So let's review first together, what does the Holy Spirit do? And if you have a verse to go with your answer even better, if you don't have a verse, then I might be able to give you one. Let's just come up with a list, just by way of review, what are the things that the Holy Spirit does? Right. So he is the helper. Jesus says, I'm going to send you a helper, right? Right. And so he helps, he, um, uh, instructs and encourages. He's the one who comes alongside, does lots of kind of wrapped up in this great big idea of being the helper that Christ sends. Yes. Okay, so the Spirit prays for us, and we're going to come back to that verse in a few minutes. What else does the Spirit do? He teaches, the Spirit is a teacher, John 14. What else? He inspires scripture, 2 Timothy 3.16. So the Spirit assures us of our salvation and moves us toward the Father. Is that fair to say? The Spirit within us is moving us toward the Father and toward whom? toward Jesus. So the Spirit is moving us toward the Father and toward the Son. Let's look up just a few verses to get this because this is fairly significant. Romans 8.5, 1 Corinthians 12.3, and 1 Thessalonians 1.5. So, again, the idea is that the Spirit is moving us toward the other two persons of the Trinity. Not away from Himself, but toward them. So, Romans 8.5. Okay, and so there he's bearing the, this one's not quite as clear, but he's bearing the work of sanctification, helping us to kill sin that we might be more like Christ. All right, 1 Corinthians 12.3. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Okay, so no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the spirit. If we take a super literal interpretation of that passage, then Paul is clearly wrong. Because can an unbeliever say the words Jesus is Lord? Yes, so it has to mean something more. It has to mean a sincere confession of Jesus as Lord. So there's no way that somebody can confess Jesus as Lord without what being true first? Regeneration by? the Holy Spirit, which gets us to another thing the Spirit does in Titus 3. Were you going to say that? Okay. Somebody else look for us Titus 3.5 and we'll come back to that in just a minute. Titus 3.5. But first, 1 Thessalonians 1.5. Okay, so Paul's writing to the Thessalonians, sort of celebrating their faith, saying the gospel came to you, the gospel, which unites people to the Father and the Son, came to you in the Spirit. The Spirit is the one that makes the gospel alive and understandable to us. Let's keep going. Who has Titus 3.5? Andrew, go ahead. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own pursuit by the Washington generation, So he saved us. So the Holy Spirit is instrumental to our salvation, but here he is specifically given the task of regeneration. So when somebody is born again, which person in the Trinity does that? It's the Holy Spirit's work, right? So we attribute different parts of our salvation to different members of parts of the Trinity, giving glory to God himself altogether, but we see the Spirit being sort of the spearhead of our regeneration. What else does the Spirit do? The Spirit, both spiritually and physically, brings life and order from creation and Jesus. So what do we see in Genesis 1? The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters. He's there, being breathed out by God as part of the power of creation. And wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, God is working. Okay, what else, David? In Ephesians 6, when Paul's going through the art of our God, he mentions the word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit. I hope that means the more scripture one memorizes, the bigger the sword that will be used. It's an interesting phrase. If we were to spend time meditating on that just a little bit. It's the sword of the Spirit. The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit. The Word of God is not the sword that the Spirit gives to you. It's the sword of the Spirit. The sword resides in the hands of the Holy Spirit, right? So we become instruments of it, but the more we learn, the more we can see the Holy Spirit work and use His sword, but it's always the Holy Spirit wielding that sword. So we put it on, and so it kind of, it's interesting in terms of the armor of God in Ephesians 6. It's the one thing that, it's not ours. I mean, we put on the righteousness, we put on the faith, we do all these things. All of it's a gift of God, but it's still the sword of the Spirit. Anyway, so He uses the Word of God. Wherever the Word of God is bearing fruit, the Holy Spirit has done it. Any other thoughts? Oh, Matthew almost raised his hand. Gotta be careful. Okay. So to review, oh, somebody read for us Acts 1-8 or quote it for us. You will be my... Oh, but I started you wrong. I started you in the middle of the verse. but you will receive power, and the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses. You'll receive power. The Holy Spirit gives power. In that verse, what does he give power to do? Be a witness. We look at that, we think about the fruit of the Spirit, and broaden out just a little bit. The Holy Spirit gives power to obey God. So if we obey God, so a couple things we could say sort of as general truths, wherever the word of God does something, the Holy Spirit is doing it, right? Wherever a Christian is able to obey or serve the Lord in any way, the power to do that has come from the Holy Spirit. Now that doesn't mean it hasn't come from Christ, right? We don't separate out the Trinity so much that we say it's just the Holy Spirit because who sent the Holy Spirit? Christ, right? So it's always all three members of Trinity, but we can look in different ways and seeing them work in their own various ways for us. So he teaches us, he bears fruit of sanctification, he inspires scripture, he's always pointing us to the Father and the Son. And this is one of the things that we want to always highlight when we talk about the Holy Spirit is that he rarely is the center of attention in scripture. He very rarely is pulling attention to himself, but is almost always like a spotlight, pointing attention first to Jesus, and then through Jesus ultimately to the Father. So the Holy Spirit's always not really wanting us to spend all of our time focused on Him. If He does His job rightly, we're focusing on Jesus. Now, it doesn't mean we shouldn't think about Him and we shouldn't delight in Him, but we should follow His direction and keep driving our, letting our hearts be driven to Christ. So the point then of reviewing this is all these things that we've just mentioned bear on the work of prayer. All the things we just mentioned in terms of what the Holy Spirit does influence the life of prayer. So let's look at question 182. How does the Holy Spirit help us to pray? We, not knowing what to pray for as we ought, the Spirit helpeth our infirmities by enabling us to understand both for whom and what and how prayer is to be made, by working and quickening in our hearts, although not in all persons nor at all times in the same measure, those apprehensions, affections, and graces which are requisite for the right performance of that duty. There's a lot there. Holy Spirit does things for us in terms of prayer, and they match up with everything we've just been saying. What the Holy Spirit does, these big missions of His, all of it bear on when we pray and how we pray. So let's just explore a couple of those. How do we know what to pray for? And we did talk about this a little bit last week, so you're free to just review a little bit. But how do we know what to pray for? Things that fit the will of God, which leads me to another question. Zachary, how do I know the will of God? His word, okay. So we have two main categories, like prayer requests over here and over here. These we know are the will of God. How do we know these? By what's in the word of God. We absolutely know that if we pray according to the word, we're praying according to the will of God. Who gave to us the word? The Spirit. Who helps us to understand the Word? The Spirit. So whenever we know the will of God well enough to pray it, we only know it because the Spirit gave us the scriptures, and the Spirit gave us understanding of the scriptures. And so whenever we are able to pray with information coming directly from the Word of God, the Holy Spirit has done that, and He's the one that ought to receive credit if we utter some good prayer at some point in our life. He's the one that's helped us to do that. We have prayers over here now that we don't know if they're the will of God. And so last week we talked about praying if there are things agreeable to his will. And so in here, how do we pray for things that we don't know are the will of God? When you pray for something and you don't know if this is what God wants, how do you bring that to God? So that's sort of like a coverall at the end of our prayers, right? I don't know if you like any of this, but not my will, but yours be done. So that's one of the things that we should be saying to God on a regular basis. This is what I want, what I desire, but whatever you want's better, so you do that, right? So we submit it to God. But I want us to consider that in this category of prayers, we can grow closer to understanding the heart of God or farther away from understanding the heart of God. In other words, we can grow in our ability to pray for things that God loves. or we can distance ourself from the, so another, you could spend a half hour every day praying for things that if you knew God well enough, you probably shouldn't spend all your time praying for those things. It's probably, like you could pray for money, but if you have enough money, then God, it's probably not a thing that God wants you to spend all your time praying for. But it's as we grow in our knowledge of God that we're able to pray more and more according to His heart, according to His passions. And so this is where these two categories kind of begin to come together a little bit. That though I may not have concrete information about this particular thing being the will of God, that I can begin to move in this direction confident, not in my exact prairie quest, but confident knowing that it is in line with the heart and the passions of God, with the things that He loves. Am I making sense? Okay, so if I can grow in my, over here I can grow in my knowledge of the Word of God. That's how I pray more according to His revealed will. I want to pray also more according to His unrevealed will. I don't know what it is, but I know Him. And the more I know Him, the more I know the things that interest Him and give Him joy and delight Him, the more I can pray for those things. And I still have to offer them up like Jesus did in the garden, but I can grow in effectiveness in prayer by knowing God. I can pray for things not revealed more effectively if I know the God to whom I'm praying. And I think kids are always, when I think about prayer, kids are always kind of at the top of my sermon illustrations for myself, at least. Kids grow, as they grow older, they grow in their ability to ask you for things according to your interests, according to the things that you're interested in. They will know, like, if you ask dad for this thing, he doesn't care at all about it, and he probably will say no. But if you ask dad for like tickets to go see a Purdue basketball game, he might just be able to go with you. Then lo and behold, you might, but they don't know that when they're three. When they're 12, they begin to figure it out. Like I could ask for that. I'm not going to get it. So I'm going to ask for this. I'm not guaranteed it, but I know the things that my dad likes to give me. It's not different, is it? As we grow in our knowledge of God, I begin to learn who He is and the things that He delights to give, and I begin to push my prayers in those directions. And so the Holy Spirit is behind all this. He's the one revealing the Word and revealing it to us. He's also the one that's teaching me about God. And he's teaching me through the word. I'm not saying that we're receiving direct revelation about God outside of the word, but it's the Holy Spirit who's really using the revelation, not just of God's will, but of God's person. So here, God's will is revealed, and I pray according to that. Here, God's person is revealed, and I pray according to that. And so that's one of the things we want to be growing in, knowing the Word of God so I can pray according to His will, and knowing the Word of God so I can pray according to His person, according to what He loves and the things that delight Him. Questions about that? I feel like I finally stumbled on saying it in a way that made sense. Yes, no? It makes sense? Okay, okay, we got a couple, okay, I'll take it. So this is how we know what to pray for and really how to pray. And so before we, five minutes, before we go on, let's go back to the passage in Romans eight. So we wanna talk about the spirit's prayer life. So it's interesting to me that Jesus prayed, but it makes sense to me that Jesus prayed because he was a man. He became a man and he prayed. But in Romans 8, we see something interesting, which is that the Spirit prays. And the Spirit never was incarnate. The Spirit didn't become a man and take to Himself the infirmities of the flesh and have all the needs that the human Jesus has. He didn't have to pray like Jesus had to pray, but the Spirit still prays. Which makes me think that prayer is really just relating to God. that prayer doesn't require weakness, although we have it. But the spirit can pray because he's always relating to the father and bringing his desires to him. So let's look at Romans eight and what it says about that. Eight twenty six. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Right, this passage has frequently been used in the past as sort of a passage about speaking in tongues or praying in tongues. It has absolutely, absolutely nothing to do with that at all. This is not about speaking in tongues or praying in a different sort of language. The groanings mentioned in verse 26 are not your groanings. They are the Spirit's groanings. The idea is that Paul's saying that the Spirit's praying things you couldn't understand even if you could hear them. The Spirit is relating to God for you. And this comes in the midst of Romans 8, this great passage about new life and putting to death our sin and the hope that we have. And the Spirit's the one who's praying for us. And so we see in verse 27 that the Spirit is praying according to the will of God. So this over here that we try to do, we want to pray according to the will of God. Well, the Spirit is God. And so He is continually pleading the will of the Father back to the Father. The Holy Spirit is praying for you. And so we often think, well, probably not even often enough, but we do think about Christ praying for us. We know that Christ is interceding right now for his people. He's our high priest who's gone into heaven. Like the high priest had the stones on his chest with the names of all the tribes of Israel. Jesus has gone into heaven with your name on his chest and he's pleading your case before the Father. He's pleading for your life and your joy and your sanctification. And Samuel Rutherford once wrote, if I could hear, if I could just hear Jesus praying for me in the next room, what I couldn't endure. But He is praying for me. He is praying for me right now. just as wonderful should be the truth that the Holy Spirit is praying for us. And perhaps this is even more mysterious because we don't know the Spirit as well as we should or as well as we know Christ. But the Spirit himself is interceding for us with groanings too deep for words, and he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit. So in verse 27 where it says, he who searches hearts, who is that talking about? That's God the Father, so it's saying God, the Spirit's praying for us, God searches hearts, God the Father searches hearts, and He knows what is the mind of the Spirit. So we have the Father's perfect relationship to the Holy Spirit. There are things that when you and I pray, things that sort of block our prayers, not in terms of God not actually hearing, but things that reduce the effectiveness of our prayers. If I have sin in my heart, God won't hear me. If I pray against His will, God won't answer that prayer. The Spirit has the will of God in His heart, and the Father knows the mind of the Spirit perfectly. There's perfect sympathetic connection between the Father and the Spirit, so that when the Spirit groans, the Father is perfectly in line or in tune with those prayers. And so it's not only is it encouraging and significant that Jesus is praying for us now and that the Holy Spirit is praying for us now, but this Spirit who brought you again to new life is now residing within you. The Holy Spirit lives within you, and He connects you to Jesus, who brings you to the Father. And so we have a praying Savior to follow and to love, and we have a praying Spirit dwelling within us. Is it any coincidence then, is it any surprise that a Christian's first response to God is prayer? This is why prayer is so central to the Christian life. The Holy Spirit within us is a praying spirit. The Savior we follow is a praying Savior. And the Father we seek is always returning to His Spirit and Son. Not in terms of praying to them, but sympathizing and being in tune and responding to them. And so this is ultimately why we pray, because the spirit within us is a praying spirit. And we are going to be more and more like him. And as he bears the fruit of the spirit within us, we are going to bring those things out in prayer. He prays, so it's only natural that we would pray. Let me end then just with one more thought and then we'll take any questions and save the others for some other time. The Spirit, we talked about the fruit of the Spirit that the Holy Spirit works in our life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. As you think about those things and have that list kind of ringing in your mind, consider the connection of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 to the life of prayer that we're called to live. And if we had another hour, we could spend time just meditating on how does prayer grant to us more of the fruit of the Spirit and give to us an outlet for the fruit of the Spirit? The Spirit's within me, he's causing me, he's driving me to pray. My prayer is an act of love to God. And you and I both know that when we're praying in the Spirit, when we're really praying in the Spirit, our love for God is increasing. We've all had that experience of just being in prayer and loving God more than when I did five minutes ago. So the Spirit's bearing, and joy, and peace, and patience, and kindness, all these things, as we pray, we're receiving, And we're giving the fruit of the Spirit at the same time. And so we often talk about the fruit of the Spirit as things that we work out with other people. I want to be more loving and more joyful and more patient with you people. But first and foremost, it's the Spirit. The Spirit is giving them to us. And the first way we express them all is in prayer. So all I'm arguing is that the life of prayer is central because of the Spirit who is within you. He's a praying spirit connecting us to a praying Savior. Any questions before we, or thoughts before we close? Seems right then. Were you going to say something, Avery? Okay, let's pray then. Holy Spirit, we thank You for praying for us. Even now, with groanings too deep for words, Lord, Holy Spirit, You pray perfectly. And we praise you for that. Jesus, we praise you for praying for us. We thank you for bringing us with you into heaven and pleading our case and our needs before our loving and merciful Father. Father, we praise you for hearing not just our weak prayers and often prayers that aren't according to your will. We praise you for hearing the prayers of our Savior and our Spirit. So Lord, we do pray that you would indwell us. and that with the spirit living within us who is a praying spirit would make us a praying people. We pray for it in Jesus' name. Amen.