Well, it indeed was a great week, wasn't it, for BBS this week? We had over 200 kids, over 100 workers, over 300 people scrambling all around here. I mean, I knew it was a full week when I asked one of the women the last day, so how'd it go? And she said, I'm going home to take three Advil. That was not Missy. And I thought that that last day, when it was announced that the Sharks got the Golden Toilet Plunger Award, that the roof was going to come off the ministry center. His kids were so happy to get that. Any Sharks here? There's a Shark. Okay. It was a great time. And Tim said in the first service, I didn't hear him say it this time, that when they took that money, nearly $2,000 to the bank, that, you know, I mean, you come in with these bags of money and the teller takes it and He said, what is this all for? And they told him he threw 10 bucks in of his own. So it's just a wonderful time. God blessed so richly. And if you're here because of VBS, we especially want to welcome you in coming to worship with us. We are going through the most famous sermon ever preached called the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus delivered. We began last week. Chapter 6, about the radical difference that knowing you have an unseen Heavenly Father makes in your daily living. So, you see some material from last week's introduction at the top of your sermon outline, which is there in your bulletin, and I simply want to call attention to the main points that Jesus makes in this chapter. You see there that Jesus is trying to help us to be consistent with what we say we believe. We say we believe in an unseen kingdom of God. We believe in an unseen Heavenly Father. And yet, he says, we live many times as practical atheists in two basic ways in this chapter. Number one, in terms of whose favor we seek, verses 1 to 18. And then secondly, what treasures we seek. verses 19 to 34. And he divides whose favor we seek in three ways, in our giving, in our praying, and our fasting. He says that we seem to have our eye on people more than on this God that we say is the center of our attention. And then in terms of what treasures we seek, verses 19 to 34, he talks about two kinds of concerns. There's, first of all, the concern for acquisition, verses 19 to 24, just accumulating more and more. And then secondly, the concern of anxiety, verses 25 to 34, both of these crying out, more, more, never enough, need more. And so if chapter 5 is about righteousness, chapter 6 is about faith. If chapter 5 shows you your need of Christ and His record of righteousness because of the things that you do, that you recognize are wrong, your anger, your revenge, you're breaking your word, you're not loving people who have hurt you. If those things you do and show you, I need Jesus, my heart is an evil heart, What he does in chapter 6 is he continues to show your heart on a deeper level, because now he talks about good things. Now he's not talking about bad things we do, he's talking about good things. He's talking about how you give, how you pray, even how you fast. How many are into fasting? Well, we'll get to that. Jesus is talking about even those three good things. He's saying, your motives are twisted and your eye is not on God. So last week we began with this matter of giving. And Jesus was saying, basically, we tend to toot our own horn. He talks about the trumpets. But we do it our own ways, toot our own horn for being generous or for giving. Or do we see that it really is enough when you give something, when you do something, that your Heavenly Father sees it, that He knows. You have the reward of His pleasure, and you can trust that in the end you will not have sacrificed, but simply have made a wise investment. So you see why chapter 6 is about faith? It's about believing, really acting on what we say we believe. So this morning we come to this second example, that of praying. We're going to spend a fair amount of time, a number of weeks, on praying. You see the introduction to that in verses 5 to 8, which is what we're looking at today, where again Jesus is showing you and me how pervasive our sin is, how twisted our hearts, that even when you come to pray, particularly when you do it in public, your motives are so impure that what you're thinking about is more about what others think than what God thinks. You're thinking about people more than you're thinking about God in a public place. And if this does not make you and me cry out, Oh God, I am undone. I can't trust my heart. I look and I just so crave attention and admiration. I need desperately the righteousness of Christ to cover even my prayer life, let alone all the other stuff. To see that there is sin at every point. If you don't see it in your praying, then nothing's going to show it to you. He shows you the very depths of your heart, even in the things that seem most centered on God. And I must say to you, as we look at this, what's your immediate reaction? Are you defensive? Irritated? Give me a break. Now you're going to criticize my praying? I mean, come on, cut me some slack here. You ought to be glad I do pray. God should be glad I take the time You know, if that's our hearts, you see, that's just showing us more again how we resist, how we fight against Him. We want the world to center on us. And He wants to show us what the true center is and what He wants to do. Remember, happy are His disciples, the reward that He intends to give you as you center yourself on Him. So, let's look at what Jesus says here. You see, Four verses, verses 5 to 8, and it's quite simple. Verse 5 tells you how not to pray. Verse 6 tells you how to pray. Verse 7 and 8 tell you once again, second way, how not to pray. And then verses 9 to 13 tell you how to pray the Lord's Prayer. So, first of all, this morning, how Jesus says not to pray. First point, how not to pray, the first thing to avoid is Ostentatious prayer. That's the first blank. Ostentatious prayer. God knows, get it down there phonetically. I might get it wrong, that's why I'm not going to tell you. So, in this case, you see, prayer is about my image. I-M-A-G-E. Got that? Prayer is about my image. I couldn't help but think about that when I saw this picture in Time Magazine this week. You may recognize there. The article was, How the Democrats Got Religion, Leveling the Praying Field. Well, you know, this, despite what some of you are probably thinking or hoping, is not – come on, let's see these guys again here. This is not intended as a slam against the Democrats, because what they're saying is that the Republicans have for years been parading their piety and their politics, saying, we are the praying party. And they're saying, hey, hey, hey, we pray too. Come on, no fair. Get us a few photo ops here praying. that is so used in politics. Jesus says, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, on the street corners, making sure there's a photographer there, to be seen by men. I tell you, they have received their reward in full. To either party. You know, there was a Republican senator this week who was known for his family values and praying and was exposed as a client of the D.C. Madam. So, I mean, nobody has a monopoly on this, violating this verse in politics. This is what Jesus is talking about. But you see, it's easy to see that and say, yeah, you know, this is, that's them and what do you expect? But Jesus is saying, you and I do the same kind of thing. You see there in the outline, we try to be seen by others in two ways. The first way is that I want you to see that I am spiritual because I pray. People talk to you about a need and you say, well, I'll pray for you in that. Or somebody may ask you and say, don't forget to pray for this person that you've never seen or heard of, and, you know, don't pray, don't forget to pray, they're going to go to the doctor, I'm concerned. He says, sure, I'll pray for you. Well, you know, do you? Or do we want to just give the impression that we take all prayer burdens upon ourselves? Have you ever been realistic enough to say, you know, what if I added up how much it would mean, how many people I'd be praying for per week, per day, if I prayed for all the people I said I was going to pray for? Or all the people that I nodded when they said, will you pray for this? You know, we want to give the impression that we are willing and that we have these extensive prayer lives when we are not deceiving our Heavenly Father who knows our prayer life. Jesus talks about the Pharisee in Luke 18 who stood up in public and said, I thank you God that I'm not like other people. And he's praying and wants everybody to see what a great person he is. He's not like this creep over here who's a publican. And on and on and on, you know. Martin Lloyd-Jones in his classic two-volume work on the Sermon on the Mount tells of a man who had written a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, on this verse, and in his commentary he warned against calling attention to ourselves when we pray. He was a very prominent man, had a biography written of him in the man's biographer, wrote on how impressed he was when he visited the man's home because the man would go from room to room and he would fall down on his knees in the hall between the rooms and begin to pray. And I thought, boy, that's really impressed. This guy just needs such a burden of prayer. And Lloyd-Jones says, the guy was doing exactly what he said don't do in verse 5. He's parading his prayer life, trying to impress you with how much he prays, how much you and I We crave admiration, don't we? I mean, we're starved for it. We want people to think in laudable terms. We want to impress them. We want them to respect us. And so in doing that, we block God's presence because our focus is on them rather than on the Heavenly Father. I remember a friend of mine who was known as a person who spent a great deal of time One time Kathy and I were visiting him and his wife in the home, and he wasn't there. He was upstairs in the bedroom praying. I still remember his wife took us up and opened the door unceremoniously into the bedroom and said, come on John, get up. We got some guests here. And I thought, well, you know, it's interesting. She doesn't seem all that impressed when he's out there prostrate on the floor praying, you know. I also couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't because they had seven kids, that maybe he thought, you know, I'll go up in the room and I'll just close the door and get some peace. I don't know. But the fact is, he had this reputation, which his wife wasn't that impressed with. And she was a godly woman. We so want to impress people. That's the first thing. Second thing is, I want to impress you that I'm spiritual because of how I pray. Not just how much I pray, but how I pray. I remember being in a prayer group at one point, where a fellow came and he joined us, and I noticed that as we were praying, this fellow began to pray, and as he prayed, you know, about a minute into his prayer, he began to weep. And he began to weep, he was broken, and my heart was touched, and I thought, oh boy, this guy is really seeking after God, and I was deeply moved by that. And we joined together, Another time, we were praying again, and once again, a minute into the prayer, this guy begins to weep, and he's just, you know, broken. And I'm thinking, man, this guy's really seeking God. I mean, he's broken. I began to realize every time we prayed, he would weep. And one day, we were praying about some routine matter of the schedule, and he was weeping. At that time, I began to wonder, Has he just got his tears and his heart is so close to the surface? Or in my heart, I would like you to think that I'm just such a pious person and my heart is so seeking after God and you kind of learn what to do. It's kind of scary. I don't know, maybe he was trying to show God. He was sincere. I don't know his heart, but I know my heart, and I know your heart is not all that different from my heart. Our motives are suspect in the things we do to demonstrate. You know, some of us have grown up and we've come through various youth ministries, parachurch groups. I remember some years ago that you could always tell people that had been in certain parachurch youth groups. It was when they'd pray, every third word was just. You know, just, Lord, we just want to ask You to just come and save this and just do it. And I began to realize that this had derived from, you know, camp meetings and things where you just wanted to get to the bottom line, you know, just really be sincere. Not all this flowery stuff, though, is just. And we pick up certain phrases, certain ways of addressing God or things that we do that become formulaic. And certainly, the Lord hears us in our simplicity. And even if it's crude and repetitive and all the rest of it, I'm not criticizing that. What I'm saying is, well, let me illustrate it with a friend of mine. I had a pastoral friend who I remember was talking to. And it was one of those times we were really getting vulnerable with each other. And he said, you know what scares me to death? He said, I have learned that I have mastered the art of being able to pray. publicly that my heart could be a million miles from the Lord and I can coast through the prayer and nobody knows. Nobody knows that my heart is distant from the Lord or whether I'm close to the Lord. I've mastered how to do it, to say the words. Have you mastered the art of looking spiritual? Mastered the art of in your conversation or in your praying, in a prayer meeting, being able to say the things that people think, this person knows how to pray. Maybe discourage somebody else that doesn't know how to pray in public and they hear all these articulate praying Presbyterians and wonder, Lord, could you ever hear me? Jesus is saying, be careful. Why? Because He says, I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. They have received their reward in full in the impression that they've created on people. People admire them. That's their reward. It is not in changing the world. It is not in laying hold of God and advancing His Kingdom. Such prayers do not change the world by their prayers. Prayer is in its essence connecting with God. You need an honest, open, humble heart. It comes before the Lord with need. If you try to impress people, then you might as well shut up and give somebody else a turn, myself included, because I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full to be seen by people. On the other hand then, what's the positive side? How should we pray? Verse 6, Jesus says, when you pray, go into your private room, Close the door, pray to your father who is unseen. And then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. How to pray? Sum it up in one word, privately. Privately. There are three words that are used in this verse to indicate the need for privacy. The first you see there when you go into your room, the NIV, but it's really a private room. The word's used four times in the New Testament, and it refers to a room where you can be in private, apart from people, a closed room where you have privacy, not just any old room. Secondly, he says, close the door, literally having shut the door. It's not open for visitors. This is a private time. And then thirdly, he says, you pray to your father in secret. He sees what is done in secret. It's an intimate time. There is that old hymn that people sometimes criticize as being a little saccharine, sentimental, but it does contain an important truth. I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses. The voice I hear falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses. He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own. There is in the heart of that hymn writer a longing for intimate communion in a separate sacred place with Jesus. And Jesus is talking about the importance of that. He's talking about the importance of hearing His voice. Do you know the difference? between reading the words on a page of scripture and hearing his voice. I'm not talking about audibly saying, I heard him speak and I can tell you what his voice sounds like. I'm talking about having those words impressed on your heart that it's just as if he had spoken to you. That happened to me less than a month ago. It was such a precious intimate time, I don't want to talk about it. All I can tell you is that during that day, while I was coming to lay many burdens before the Lord, there was the sense that, Lord, if I could just meet with You, know Your presence, hear Your voice, then I'd leave with all well. I wouldn't need to have a promise that all the things would turn out right. And at a point during that day, He impressed His Word on me so vividly so personally, I can still see exactly the scene and hear what He said to me. And it impressed me. There's a big difference between simply reading words on a page and having the Spirit take those words and impress them on your heart. This is for you. My child, my daughter, Let me tell you, you don't have an experience like that very much praying in DC traffic. You don't have that kind of experience with the five minutes here and a couple minutes there standing in a line and say, yes, I pray. I multitask with God. You don't multitask seeking the heart of God. So the implications of this are that you and I need to find those sacred places where we remove the distractions and our hearts are set on Him and we say, God, God, I am lost if You don't meet me. God, I need to know that this is true. What You say in Your Word here, I need this more than I need food and drink. God, I need You. And you come to Him and He says He will reward you. He will meet you. You need to find that place. I remember when I lived in a seminary dorm. It was crowded. It so happened that my room on the second floor was an old mansion. There was a closet there. It was a big old walk-in closet. It had a light. And I thought, well, hey, it looks like it works for me. The Lord said, you know, the old translation was a prayer closet. So I would go in there and set up my stuff, put on the light, and just shutting everything out. I remember one day I was talking to some guys in the hall and I went in and I knew this was my only chance. And so I walked in, shut the door, got in the closet and heard a knock at the door. Guys wanted to continue the conversation or something. And I thought, well, I'll just not get an answer. Well, I didn't keep them. They walked in the room and I heard them out there muttering. I thought I heard, I saw them come in here a minute ago. I don't know. Walked back out again. I was so glad I had the closet. You know, today, for many of us, it's the issue of cell phones, checking your voicemail. I saw an article in Discipleship Journal a couple of years ago about a woman who was kind of like an in-touch junkie. She said she realized she had gotten to the place where she couldn't meet with God before she first checked her voicemail, her email, played something on the iPod, a little music. I remember trying to disciple a fellow who was from New York City, and this guy told me it was impossible for him to meet with God without music going. He said, you can't do it. I said, yeah, you can. No, you can't. Yeah, you can. No, you can't. I worked with that guy three weeks to just get him to shut off the music and to meet with God. And after the fourth week, he came, he stood in a group, and he publicly said, I have finally learned to be quiet before God. And it's a treasure. Some of us are afraid, I think, to be quiet before God. We live in a culture that's so full of noise and distraction and everything going on that we even think our quiet times have to have background music. You know, we've just got to have something going all the time. Why? Because, you know, you meet with a holy God who comes to speak to your heart in quiet and silent sustain for more than five minutes and you get nervous. Jesus says, come, shut your door, come, I want to meet with you. I have something, my child, I want to say to you and I want your attention full and first. Do I deserve that? You don't multitask with God and know His heart. Jesus is calling some of you. Turn off the cell phone. Turn off. Don't check the voicemail. Start your day. in quiet with your Heavenly Father. You see what He says there? Pray to your Father who is unseen. That's the work. You don't see Him. You don't have a dialogue. And that's hard for us. To pray, to speak, to pour out our heart to someone who is unseen and doesn't speak audibly back. But then it says, then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. You don't see him, but he sees you. He sees your heart. He knows your heart. He knows what the longings of your heart are. I know for you young mothers, this is really hard. And some of you say, it's easy for you to say. The idea of having some little sanctuary where I can get off alone, that just doesn't happen. Susanna Wesley had 19 kids. You know what she used to do? She'd throw her apron up over her head. That was the signal. Back off! Hey, whatever it takes. I think of all of us husbands need to help, and the moms, to say, look, I care that you meet with God. I'll take the kids. I'll relieve you so you can get some time. Whatever it is, we need to work at it. It's a struggle. It's a fight. But He says He'll reward you. Do you believe that? He wants to reward you with His presence and His promises entering into your heart. He'll reward you. You know, I think one of the reasons that we don't pray so much is because we don't gain credit for it. I mean, what would you think? Suppose we had some little digital monitor we plugged into you, that every time you prayed, then it would record. And then we had this computer, and everybody, when you come in on Sunday, you'd plug in for just a moment, and it would download how many minutes you prayed that week. It would be on a display. What would be the effect? You know what? We'd triple the amount of time you'd pray. Why? Because now everybody knows. Hey, 57 minutes, three more, I can go for an hour, you know, get it up there. So it looks good. But the problem with praying is when you seek God's heart alone, nobody knows it. When you intercede, when you pray for revival in our community, in America, you say, hey, you know, I can pray now. But what difference will it make? Who will see? Who will know? I told you about years ago, praying outside for God to bring revival to Howard County. And I was pouring out my heart to God, and it was like the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, hey, but how about I do it through another church? I said, Lord, that thought had never occurred to me. I assumed it was going to be through our church. Well, suppose I did it through a Baptist church or some other church. Very searching. Would I still be as eager to pray if I don't get any credit? You see, The reward is from the Father who sees what nobody else sees. 1872, Dwight L. Moody was visiting London. He went to a church. He preached there in the morning. He said it was a distinctly unspectacular service. He said, I was actually rather disappointed. I didn't feel any liberty. There wasn't any response. And I was a little discouraged, but I was already scheduled to speak there in the evening. I went back and I spoke again. He said, that evening, the power and the glory of God filled that building in a way that startled me. And when I asked for expressions of faith in Christ, hundreds of people responded. And I had no idea why the difference. Six months later, Moody found out that there was a bedridden woman in that congregation who didn't know that he was coming to speak. But she found out at lunchtime that he had spoken. And she said, bring no food. I want the whole afternoon undisturbed. And she prayed, and she interceded, and she cried out to God that he would use Dwight Moody to bring revival in her congregation. And Moody draws from that and says, it is the unseen people who don't care to get the credit who are probably going to be closer to the throne than I'll ever be as one known internationally because of their heart seeking God. Those are the people who make a difference. Those are the people who have the Father's the reward of His presence, the reward of His promises, the reward of Him revealing Himself to them in ways that you and I, when we taste it, treasure it. Does God give you a hunger for that this morning? Jesus wants to reward you. Finally, the last thing I want to touch on is He says in verses 7 and 8, The second way how not to pray. The second way not to pray is superstitious praying. The first is ostentatious praying, superstitious praying. If the first is about my image, the second is about my technique. When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Very interesting observation, isn't it? You don't need to inform Him. He already knows. It's not about your technique. You don't force God by making sure you end with, in Jesus' name, Amen. You don't use some technique of length. If I pray for a half hour rather than for ten minutes, I've got better odds, or if I get 20 people praying rather than two, how does that all work? I don't understand. I do know that we have people that pray in the prayer closet back there for every service. I also know that we have about half of those who have continued over the years of what were before. Why is that? It's hard stuff. It takes a lot of perseverance. I'm sure we ask, you know, what difference does it make? What difference would it make if we had 20 people back there? I don't know. I can tell you this. Charles Spurgeon, when he preached and saw thousands come to Christ, said, I got 500 people praying downstairs every time I preach. What does it mean? I don't know. You know what I think it means? It means as a people, we're serious about our need for God. We communicate that by showing up. If you want to talk to me about being part of that team, it's very simple. You just show up and put your email down there and I send you an email and tell you any ways I saw God answer prayer. But it's not because of our length, it's not because of formulas. The Jews had all kinds of formulas that they would use in order to impress God and control Him. It's kind of a magic, you know, think we can control God and get Him in our debt by doing certain things. It doesn't work that way. Sometimes I hear people go on praying And I'm asking myself, so what are you asking God to do? It's kind of rehearsing the problem. You ever do that? I do it. You know, the old fretting out loud. You tell God everything that's wrong. Jesus says, He already knows that. You really, you could sort of cut to the chase and say, God, here's where I am in this. Here's where I see you. I'm not so sure that I see you wanting to do this. I need to look at your character more. I need to understand your promises. Wrestle with Him. You don't need to just be going through the stuff. You say, I think we do that because we don't know what to pray. It's kind of like, well, keep talking about it. Maybe some idea will occur to me. At least I put in five minutes or ten minutes, you know. I ought to get some credit for that. Jesus says it doesn't work that way. Come before Him. Just pour out your heart. He knows what you need. Now, the idea is to connect with Him as your Heavenly Father and His promises. And that raises the question, well then, Lord, if this is not how to do it, well, how do you do it? Could you give me some help, a little model? Jesus says, I'm glad you asked. And that, brothers and sisters, is the introduction to the Lord's Prayer. This then, he says, verse 9, is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Six simple requests. We're going to start looking at those next week. We're going to look at them the rest of the summer and a good part of the fall, so that you and I might learn how to pray and remember that the heart of praying is connecting with your Heavenly Father by grace through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross to give you access. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You. We can call You Father because Jesus Christ died for self-centered, superstitious sinners who think we can control you by the way we pray, or how long we pray, or impress you by something we do or say. And you thrust us, Lord Jesus, again and again back on the cross simply on Jesus. So, Lord Jesus, teach us to pray. Teach us to have hearts that you would pray after the unseen Father, that you would speak to our hearts from your Word, and that we would connect with you because our eyes and our hearts are simply fastened upon you, that even this week you'd help us to set aside those sacred quiet places to give you our first and our full attention because we want that reward, the reward of your presence, the reward of meeting with us as your children. Give that to us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.