We continue our series on prayer this afternoon. We've been studying the topic of prayer in general, and we continue this afternoon. And so I'll read for us from Matthew, chapter six, verses five through 13, where our Lord Jesus teaches us about prayer. So give your attention to the reading of God's holy, inerrant and inspired word for this is the word of your God. Matthew six, verse five to 13. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray, then, like this. 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 also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation. but deliver us from evil. Thus far, the reading of God's holy word, may he bless it to us. And then I invite you also to look at the insert. We have our Heidelberg Catechism lesson this afternoon from Lord's Day 45. We'll be considering question and answer 118. Question and answer 118. And we'll just read responsively that question. We already read the Lord's Prayer in the Bible, so we'll just read responsibly question and answer 118 in English. Christian, what has God commanded us to ask of him? All things necessary for soul and body, which Christ our Lord comprised in the prayer which he himself taught us. Well, so far, we've considered why Christians should pray And how Christians should pray. If you remember, as for the why, we consider two reasons. First, we are to pray because prayer is the mouthpiece of thankfulness to God. God has given us the greatest, most valuable gift that a person could ever receive in this world by saving us through the precious blood of His only Son. And the way in which we say thank you to Him is through prayer. We hear God speak to us in His Word. And then we respond in prayer, giving Him thanks. It's a natural response for those who are children of God. And the deeper we understand the Gospel, the greater our gratitude becomes. And our prayers soar up to heaven. And it's important that we remember that although our prayer life will never be as perfect as it should be, God sees us in Christ as those who pray perfectly. We have to remember that part of Christ's earning righteousness for us was his prayer life. And God looks at us as those who are in Christ, and so our prayers arise out of gratitude, not out of guilt, but out of thankfulness to God. They are, as our catechism puts it, the chief part of our thankfulness to God. And secondly, we pray because prayer is the open hand of receiving God's grace. We receive grace upon grace as we go to him in prayer. Why should we pray simply put, because Jesus tells us to pray, he says, and he teaches us to pray in Matthew six, which we just read in Luke 11. He says, I tell you, you and I tell you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks will be open. And so you see, we are taught by Jesus that we are to make our requests to God as a child makes his requests to his father, knowing that God is greater and more loving than any other father we could imagine on this earth. You imagine the greatest father, the most ideal father in the world, and God is greater. And he is able to answer our prayers, being almighty God and willing also being our faithful heavenly father for the sake of Christ. And he knows what we need before we even ask him, but nevertheless, he wants us to pray. Not so much because it's going to alert him of something he doesn't already know, we're going to help him run the universe better. No, he wants us to pray because, you see, we need prayer, not so much because God needs prayer, but because we need prayer. You think about it, the various elements of prayer. Many have taught that what we should pray for is can be summarized in that acronym ACT. Have you ever heard that? ACT, A-C-T-S, which stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. And just think about it. We need prayer because we need communion with God that prayer gives us. We need to praise God in adoration. Not so much because we're going to make him more glorious than he already is, but because he needs to be more glorious in our hearts than he is. He needs to be enlarged within us. We need to see his glory. And so we come and praise God in prayer and adore him because we need to adore him. Furthermore, we need to confess our sins to God, not so much because God hasn't forgiven us of all of our sins, No, we need to confess our sins because it is how we express our heartfelt sorrow for sin and experience his forgiveness. It's part of how we put it to death and continually take our refuge in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. And when it comes to prayers of intercession, prayers of supplication. We pray because we once again need to pray. Prayer is the means that God uses to bring about his sovereign plan. Not only does he plan the ends, but he plans the means. And he's called us to pray in this way. It may seem that there's no point in praying if God has already ordained the end of all things. But it is a privilege that he uses our prayers and he draws us into prayer. Whenever you feel led to pray, that's the spirit drawing you into prayer. And he does this once again because we need prayer. We need to see him here and answer our prayers so that we trust him more and more for his grace. You know, sometimes we have to, in a sense, wrestle with God. You remember the story of Jacob, don't you, when he wrestled with the the Lord? Sometimes that's what it is for us, isn't it? Sometimes we need to wrestle with God's promises and prayer and take hold of them. Sometimes God descends with us into the arena, as Calvin once put it, as it were, in order to test us through his grace, to test us with some sort of trial in order to draw us to no longer trust in our own strength like Jacob so often did. He, in a sense, cripples us so that all we can do is cling to him and him alone for his grace. All of these are reasons that we should pray. We pray out of gratitude to give thanks to God and we pray to receive grace upon grace. As for the how Christians should pray, I won't go into as much review, but you remember that we are to pray with our our whole heart according to the truth. We are to pray in humility and we are to pray in confidence. And this brings us to our theme then for today. What should Christians pray for? What should Christians pray for? And our catechism gives us a very simple answer. We should pray for all things necessary for soul and body, which Christ taught us in the Lord's Prayer. And so in the weeks to come, we'll go through the opening of this prayer, we'll go through each petition of the Lord's Prayer, and we'll go through the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer. We'll even consider that little word, Amen, and what that means, or as I'm learning to say here, Amen. But we'll consider that great little word at the end of our prayers. Amen. But for today, I thought it would be helpful if we considered more generally what we should pray for. And so let's consider these two things that our catechism points out to us that we are to pray for. We're to pray for the needs of the body and we're to pray for the needs of the soul. First, we are to pray for the needs of the body, as we heard this morning, our bodies are important. They are an important aspect of who we are as humans created in the image of God. Man was created in the image of God in soul and body. Yes, God is a spirit, but in some sense, even our bodies are created in the image of God. They're not useless. He gave us a body and a soul and both together We are created in the image of God, body and soul. And that's why Jesus had to come and take on true humanity, both body and soul, he took on a human body and he took on a human soul to redeem us. And as we heard earlier today, our resurrection will be a bodily resurrection like Jesus's resurrection. The eternal state is a new heavens and a new earth where we'll dwell with glorified bodies and souls. Like we've never before experienced. And so there's something about our body which is necessary to who we are, not only as those who have been created in the image of God, but as those also who are being redeemed in the image of God. And so Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord's Prayer. Give us this day our daily bread, reflecting the fact that our bodies have needs and God cares about them. And what do we need? Well, it's quite simple, isn't it? We at least need food. We need water and we need clothing. Those are a few things that we need, don't we? And so Jesus encourages us to pray for these things in the Lord's Prayer, and he goes on in Matthew six and he says, therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body. What you will put on is not life more than food in the body, more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to a span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so close the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothed you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious saying, what should we eat or what should we drink or what should we wear for the Gentiles seek after all these things and you and your heavenly father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you. Do not be anxious about your life, your heavenly father knows that you need food, that you need clothing, that you need water. And He will hear your prayer as you pray for these things. It's appropriate to pray for these things. What else do we need? Well, what happens when we get sick? What do we need? We need healing. And so we can pray for healing. Even those of us who believe that the extraordinary gifts of healing have served their unique purpose in redemptive history and have ceased, we can still pray for healing. There might not be individuals with the gift of healing, but God still heals. He ordinarily heals us through medicine, but he can still heal us through miracles as we pray. And so James encourages us to pray in this way in James five, he says, is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him. And of course, if you're familiar with that passage, James has a few things that may raise some questions, something about anointing oil as well. We won't go into all those details. The simple thing I want to communicate to you from James 5 is that we can pray when we're suffering and we're sick that God would heal us. But we need to know that if God doesn't heal us or doesn't alleviate our sufferings, we ought not to conclude that we necessarily don't have enough faith. as some tell us, or that God doesn't hear us. Beloved, suffering is a part of the Christian life. We've been considering the sufferings of Paul in the book of Philippians and how if he hadn't gone to prison, then the Gospel wouldn't have advanced in amazingly new ways. And so he prays simply that whether he lives or dies, that Christ would be glorified in his body. And so we need to understand that even when we suffer that it's and pray for God to heal us and we don't feel like he hasn't heard us and he's not doesn't heal us. We don't necessarily need to conclude that we don't have enough faith or that he's against us or that he doesn't hear us. But if God has a good design and purpose between behind all of the sufferings that you will face in this life, if you are his children. I love how the words I love how William Cooper put it in One of the hymns that he wrote, he says this behind a frowning Providence, he hides a smiling face behind a frowning Providence, he hides a smiling face. Remember that your God loves you and cares for you as your father, and he has a good design and he will hear your prayer ultimately. And even when he doesn't heal us in this life, we can take hope and great encouragement They just care about our bodies and that he's going to resurrect us on the last day with a glorified body that will never be subject to decay or suffering or sickness or any of those things. And so we can, in those moments, look forward to the resurrection of our bodies. So we are to pray for the needs of the body. And secondly, we're to pray for the needs of the soul. God also cares about our souls, that is our that immaterial aspect of our being. Besides physical needs, we have emotional needs. We have intellectual needs. We need comfort. We need security. We need hope. We need joy. We often get anxious, afraid, depressed, angry. And so God provides for the needs of our souls as well. He tells us in his word in Philippians four, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. What do you do with your anxious souls? The Bible encourages you to cast all your anxieties upon the Lord, for he cares for you. And the promise is sure that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts. in your minds in Christ Jesus. 2 Corinthians 1 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. So you see, He comforts us in our affliction. And one of the reasons why He has us go through these afflictions is, as Paul says to us there, so that we might comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received from God and the hope that we have in him. So Christians are to pray for all that we need for body and for soul. And Christ summarizes this for us in the Lord's Prayer. We'll go through the Lord's Prayer in greater detail, but notice some of the general themes of this prayer. Notice that we are to pray for two things in this prayer for God's glory and our good. And you may have noticed that in the Lord's Prayer, we begin with God's glory. We begin with God's glory because man by nature is man centered and we need to be drawn outside ourselves to behold the glory of God first in our prayers. And then in the Lord's Prayer, we learn that we are to pray for at least three things. We are to pray for provision. Give us this day our daily bread. We are to pray for pardon. Forgive us our sins. We are to pray for protection, guard us from the evil one. So provision, pardon and protection are the things that we learn to pray for. And then you may have noticed that we end the Lord's Prayer once again with God's glory. So His glory is like bookends in this prayer. And so we learn also in the Lord's Prayer, not only to pray for ourselves, but for others. Have you ever noticed that in the Lord's Prayer you don't pray? My father who art in heaven or give me this day my daily bread, you pray for others, you pray our father, you pray, give us today our daily bread. This is a family prayer that we pray with our brothers and sisters in the Lord. But the Lord's Prayer is not the only place in the Bible that we learn how to pray. If you want to know what you should pray for, you can study the Lord's Prayer, which we're going to do, but you can also study the rest of the scriptures. The more you study them, the more you'll know what to pray for. And so I've found it quite helpful in my life to study the other prayers in the Bible. The Apostle Paul has a lot of prayers, typically at the opening of his letters. You can study them and even pray those prayers. You can study the Psalms, which are the prayers of the saints as well. And you have basically three kinds of Psalms. You have prayers of praise, prayers of lament and prayers of thanksgiving. So if you want to know how you can praise God, how you can lament and sing the blues when you're struggling. And learn how to thank God, study the Psalms. Just studying the Scriptures in general, you'll learn how to pray. Think of it again, like the relationship of a father and a child, the child learns as he gets to know his father better. How and what requests to ask the father that the father will delight to give his children the same is true with prayer to our Heavenly Father, the more we study the Bible, and dig deep into the Bible, the more we'll come to know our heavenly Father and what we should pray for. We'll see then what our true needs are for body and soul, because sometimes we don't really know what our needs are. And beloved, even when we feel like we don't know what we should pray for, we can be encouraged and thankful because our triune God is watching over us. The Father knows what we need before we even ask Him. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6. We also learn from Hebrews 7 that the Son is at the Father's right hand, and He ever lives to make intercession for us. Jesus is praying for you. And furthermore, we learn in Romans 8 that we can be thankful because the Holy Spirit, Paul says, intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express when we do not know what to pray for. And so even when you are struggling to know what to pray for, you can be assured that the three persons of the Godhead are working all things together for your salvation and His glory. And this is what we ultimately need. We ultimately need eternal salvation from bondage to sin and death. and the devil, and this is something that we can be absolutely confident that God will grant us when we pray forgive us of our sins in the Lord's Prayer. We can be confident that God will give us this. He will not condemn us in our sins. His promise in Romans eight is sure that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And there's other precious promises in Romans 8 that I love. One of my favorites is when Paul goes on and says, he who did not spare his only son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Think about that. Would God, the father who gave up his only son, to die on the cross for the sins of His enemies, would He then refuse us as His children? No. Would He then not take care of us for all of our needs, both body and soul? No. He cares for you. Cast all your anxieties upon the Lord in prayer. He cares for you. Indeed, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that you would write these words on our hearts by your Holy Spirit and that you would increase our prayer life, that you would draw us by your Holy Spirit more into prayer. So often we fail to come to you and cast our anxieties upon you because we have idols in our lives that we're trusting more in. And these idols can't satisfy our needs. And so we grow anxious, but we have a hard time giving these things up. But help us to drive out these idols in our hearts and cast all our anxieties upon you, the one true God. Draw us more into prayer. Help us to be a praying people so that we might know the joy and blessing of communion with you, our triune God, and see the glorious promises that you've made to us fulfilled in our lives. For we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.