if you can figure out who it is that I'm talking about before I tell you what his name is, all right? He was born in 1962. His name is Stanley Kirk Burrell. He was one of nine siblings of a professional gambler, a casino manager, and yet a very extremely religious Pentecostal father, which I find that blend interesting. Burrell spent much of his time as a child as an Oakland A's bat boy. During games, he would often entertain the fans with his amazing dance moves. And it's here that he was given the nickname Hammer by Reggie Jackson, who said that he was a spitting image of all-time home run leader Hammer and Hank Aaron. And when you actually go and look at this kid as a kid, compared to Hank Aaron, it's like, wow, Reggie was right. His dance moves came from emulating his musical idol, James Brown, and after spending three years in the Navy, Burrell would pursue a career in music. He was originally an R&B rap singer. His fame came from his second album, which became the first hip-hop album of all time to sell over 10 million copies. With the help of those dazzling parachute pants, do you know who I'm talking about now? And his hit solo, You Can't Touch This, Burrell became known to millions as MC Hammer, adding the MC moniker for being a master of ceremonies in his early days on the road with the A's and in the military and at various clubs where he cut his musical teeth. Now that album actually saw an even bigger hit than You Can't Touch This. Believe it or not, it was actually the B-side song of the single called Pray. Perhaps you've heard the chorus. That's word, we pray. And I'm not going to rap this. We got to pray just to make it today. Now the word pray actually is found 147 times in that song. Setting the record for the number of times the song title is repeated in an American Top 40 hit. Hammer would eventually gain a net worth of $30 million before squandering it all and going bankrupt. After his bankruptcy, he decided to pursue becoming an ordained preacher. By the late 90s, he hosted MC Hammer and Friends on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, telling the world that the MC, which he had taken out of his name for a couple of years, he now put back and it stood for Man of Christ. What did the MC Hammer teach us about prayer in his song? Well, this is how it starts off. All my life, I wanted to make it to the top. Some said I wouldn't, they told me no, but I didn't stop. Working hard, making those moves every day, and on my knees every night, you know I pray. Now, I just think that you can do whatever you want. I'm busting these rhymes, making this money, and I won't forget my people or my town or my ways. And on my knees every night, I'm still gonna pray. He goes on to sing about people who were against him, and so he prayed. He saw the children dying in the slums, so he prayed. Once he made it to the top, he still prayed. So now he's sending out his song out to the Lord, because all the blessings that are good, they come from above. Now, we've heard that song many times. The lyrics aren't bad at all. And Hammer did teach an entire generation of kids the importance of prayer. But what effect has that song had? Might be tempting to pick on Hammer for promoting a kind of health and wealth prosperity prayer gospel because of his affiliation with TBN and a song about becoming famous. Do we pray simply to get rich? And what if that doesn't happen? It's also interesting to see what has happened to prayer in churches over the last 35 years. I can't believe it's been 35 years since that song came out. What has happened to prayer in churches in 35 years since it was released? Essentially, corporate prayer has vanished. along with the prayer meeting. Do our people know why they've got to pray? Do we know how to pray? And frankly, for that matter, do we even know what prayer is? Well, in this series, Week five that we're on, we've been looking at the means of grace. We discussed the word as a means of grace, and then the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Today we're going to look at prayer. Jeremiah 23, 29 says, Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? And whether he understood the connection to his name or not, M.C. Hammer was in fact onto something that is actually the real hammer, which is God's Word. And it becomes the key to prayer as a means of grace, something many people do not understand, and which is basically absent in the song. Too many people think that prayer is only their words, not God's words. Think about that. To understand this, We need to think rightly about prayer, and that's what I want us to do for our next 45 minutes together. The Baptist Catechism asks, what are the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefit of redemption? And it answers, the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, baptism, the Lord's Supper, and prayer. all which means are made effectual to the elect for salvation. Now notice that these means are outward and ordinary. That is, they belong to all God's people publicly, and they are common things, repeatable things, not extraordinary things such as miracles. The Catechism cites Acts 2.42, which says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Now, curiously, the Greek here is the prayers, the ESV has that right, and it must refer to specific prayers that they were already accustomed to praying, prayers that came out of the synagogue liturgies, and almost certainly out of, especially, the Psalter. These prayers should most certainly be understood to include at least God's Word in the form of prayers, that we have in the Holy Scriptures. Now, one of several vital teachings that the Catechism gives us about prayer comes in question 95. Actually, the Catechism ends on the teaching of prayer, which is very interesting. It asks, how is the word to be read and heard? So, in other words, you come to church, you come to hear and read the word. How are you supposed to do that? so that it may become effectual to salvation? The answer is that the word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend to it with diligence, preparation and prayer, receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts and practice it in our lives. What a great answer. And in this way, we focus on the human responsibility side of the effectual nature of the means of grace. That is, the means of grace are not meant to be learned about and understood to be only about God's sovereign direct working, but rather to be treated as something precious and holy, receiving them with faith as Christians. Because if you don't engage in them, they are of no value. Prayer is one of the chief ways God gives us to receive the Word and sacraments so that they are effectual in our sanctification. That is, we prepare ourselves ahead of time through prayer, knowing that we're coming before these powerful and otherworldly means of grace, especially when we don't see it that way with our physical eyes. What's so special about what we're doing in this moment? Remember, it's common, and it's ordinary, and it takes faith to see. So remember, God not only uses his word to save us apart from our cooperation, but then to sanctify us through our cooperation, especially using prayer and the accompanying of the other means. An obvious question is, therefore, when you come to church, are you preparing yourself that morning? and even the night before through prayer to expect God to meet with you? Or do you just show up giving no thought ahead of time to what you're about to enter into? And that's what the catechism is getting at. Starting in question 105, there's a series of instructions on prayer. It begins with the most foundational question, what is prayer? And the answer is, prayer is an offering up of our desires to God by the assistance of the Holy Spirit for things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ, believing with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledges of His mercy. Now when I read that, I thought it could be easy here to make this definition only about our words to God because it's an offering up of our desires to God. But notice, it's the Holy Spirit who assists us. And he does this regarding things agreeable to God's will, and in the name of Christ. All of this necessitates, to one degree or another, knowing God's word, and praying his word back to him. This is especially true of the last part. Confessing our sins and being thankful for his mercies, because where do we learn about our need for both of those things? We learn about them through the Holy Scripture. tell you that prayer is in fact offering up our desires, doing so not in the absence of God's word, meaning that it's only and solely about my heart's desire and that's all I'm doing, which is really kind of what Hammer's Song is, but it's a doing this in conformity with praying God's word back to him, agreeing with him and making them conform your desires to his will. Whatever prayers you offer, be they prayers of adoration or confession of sin, thanksgiving or supplication, grounding your prayers in God's word. And what do I mean? Well, we're going to spend some time on this. So let's start with the example of the prophet Habakkuk. I remember reading a thing from Joel Osteen saying, he's gonna talk about Habakkuk, and then he states this joke about how, you know where that book is? Don't worry, neither do I. Three little chapters, takes up maybe two pages in your Bible. This little prophetic book is one of the great short treatments of theodicy in all the world. What's theodicy? Theodicy is essentially human beings grappling with the problem of evil. Why God? Why do you do these things? Many people think that the book begins at the complaint from the prophet over why God won't hear his prayers at all. for help in the face of great wrongdoing of the wicked. And as such, we might call this a kind of starting place for the prophet's prayers of his desire to be heard, which is what we saw the catechism is teaching. But a close reading shows that he's not simply complaining that God won't hear him and thus venting his pure emotions, but that he's not answering him right now. That's actually key. It begins this way. How long, oh Lord, God answers him and starts to teach him that he is in fact working, but praying at this moment for mercy is not going to be heard. ...of acting in judgment on Israel through the Chaldeans because of what they've done. So again, the prophet then hears that and then he complains to God. He realizes that his people are evil, but how could God use an even more wicked... And God tells him that he does not have the whole picture, and Babylon is not going to escape God's judgment any more than Israel is. And then it's at this point that Habakkuk, in the third chapter, launches into the last bit with a prayer that's called the Prayer of Habakkuk the Prophet, according to the Shigonath, which is a musical instrument. He calls out, it says, to the name of the Lord. Oh, Lord, I have heard the report of you and your work. Oh, Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. That becomes his prayer. And in this prayer, the prophet learned that while he may not fully understand, he has learned to rely totally on the wisdom and justice of God to bring about the proper resolution in ways he never could have imagined. This is certainly worthy of Habakkuk's praise and worship. which is how the book ends. That's a note from the ESV on thinking about that prayer, but it's more than this. The prophet has learned that his prayers must be in accordance with God's will, and that God's will is revealed as his covenantal plan for all of history. It isn't that the prophet has come to realize that God does in fact answer prayers, glad you answered prayers, but that it may not be the time for him to answer his prayers for mercy, as Habakkuk must adjust his thinking and his emotions accordingly. This is how prayer becomes a means of grace, friends, because through the right understanding of God's word, his prayers were adjusted from being totally self or at least Israel-centered to becoming God-centered. Prayer as a means of grace transformed Habakkuk better into the image of his creator by thinking properly about actions in it as he prayed. Now, thinking about Habakkuk opens the door for us to learn some vital truths, I think, about what prayer is, biblically speaking. And what follows, like we do with baptism and the supper, we will consider a short biblical theology of prayer. Biblical theology takes you from the beginning of the Bible to the end of it. Where is the first prayer in the Bible? Have you ever thought about that question? Well, it seems to come after the fall at the end of Genesis 4. After giving us the genealogy of the line of Cain, this is what we read. Genesis 4, 25 and 26. And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him. To Seth also was born a son, and he called his name Enosh. At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Now this verse is very curious. The targums, which are Aramaic paraphrases of the scripture that were used in the synagogues, the word began, and they actually translated as pollute, because those words are identical in the Hebrew. The idea is that they were polluting the name of the Lord by creating idols for themselves in the name of God. But no English translation takes that view and contextually given the proximity to both Cain and his line to Genesis 6 and the whole Nephilim story there it could be a possible reading but you should also consider Genesis 3.15 and the promise of the sea. And in this case the working out of the story is that Cain and his line show that a man that none of those men is going to be the seed that was promised to Eve. And so as Peter might put it, they're thinking, well, where then is the promise of this coming? And it's into this that the sons of Seth begin calling upon the name of the Lord with that question, presumably. Either way, it seems that calling upon the name of the Lord becomes the definition of what prayer is, biblically speaking. So what does that mean exactly? Well, it means to cry out to God in prayer. And we see this over and over in the Old Testament. But looking at the many examples, you can actually get more specific. It means to cry out to the name of God. That is the Word of God. That is Jesus Christ himself. so that he would specifically come through on his promises given to you in the Bible. That's what you're crying out to him for. And we see this time and again. Prayer isn't just venting your frustrations or asking God for the desires of your heart. It is pleading with God in Christ to deliver on his covenantal promises. Alexander summarizes a very fascinating book By miller on a biblical theology of prayer and he and he puts it this way He just kind of goes through the old testament. I just wanted to read this to you Nation israel, so israel's a little child led by moses asked god to make good on his command commitment to be their god and lead them to canaan Prayer and joshua and judges asked god to give his people victory in the conquest which he had promised them and then especially by the king from their enemies and to secure them in the land which he also promised them. David's prayers are prayers not simply of self-interest and personal protection, but for the covenantal promises of Yahweh to be fulfilled by securing David for the throne. Solomon's prayer at the temple dedication asks God to come through on his promise forgiveness for his people when they repent. The prophets prayed that the nations would see God's glory and salvation and judgment as God had promised. And they pray that God would establish this people in the place beyond the exile. Job pleads for covenant blessing to replace his inexplicable suffering. In the exilic and post-exilic literature, prayer continues to be understood as calling on Yahweh, particularly at moments when the future of the covenant hangs in the balance. The argument crescendos in the Psalms where David's messianic prayers ask God to vindicate his chosen king and to use him to accomplish God's saving plan for his people. The Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done, is a plea that God will act so decisively in judgment and salvation that his glory will be unveiled. It is thus a prayer for the consummation of the kingdom of God. Jesus's high priestly prayer calls on God to complete what he started. Jesus also models prayer at key moments in the saving mission God gave him, in his baptism, at the selecting of disciples, at Gethsemane, and on the cross as he prays for the forgiveness of his executioners. As we visit early church prayer meetings and acts in the epistles, we hear them praying about God's saving purposes in Christ and asking for boldness in preaching those saving purposes. They also pray for opportunities to proclaim the gospel and the power to confirm it in the heart of those who hear. Paul prays for churches, churches focuses on the growth of the church, the grace of the gospel. So much so that everything Paul prays for has already been achieved for us and he held out to us in the gospel. And John confirms the whole thesis. He who testifies to these things says, surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come Lord Jesus. This is the heart of biblical prayer. Now, as it was mentioned above, and as Jesus told us, that this is both what we should pray in Luke's version. Luke says, when you pray, say this. But it's also a model of how to pray in Matthew's version. Matthew says, pray like this. So let's take a look at the Lord's Prayer as we're thinking about what I'm talking about here. I'm gonna follow Matthew's version because it's long known. So who do we pray to? We'll properly speak to our Father, don't we? It matters who you pray to because there are other supernatural entities that pose as God. The true God is our Father. He has adopted us into his family as Christians, and so we go to the one who gave us life. We go to him directly through the intercession of the Holy Spirit and the name of his beloved son, Jesus. This is a privilege that no other religion knows in all the world, to call God Father. let alone when you understand that your Father is not just any old God. He is our Father in heaven, it says, right? God is transcendent, and He's above all things. He sits enthroned over all His creation, including over all the most powerful of the supernatural created beings. As such, He's powerful to hear and to answer our prayers. Who can thwart Him? But being in heaven means he's also holy because that's what transcendence is. The catechism summarizes this preface, the very beginning of the prayer, our father in heaven. By teaching us to draw near to God with all holy reverence and confidence as children to a father able and ready to help us, is that how you approach God? with all holy reverence and confidence as his children to a father knowing that he's able and ready to help you. That's what you think about when you pray our Father in heaven. You're not supposed to just say that prayer rote. You think about it when you pray it. It's important to point out that as we pray this introduction, we align ourselves in prayer with God by recognizing that he's not like us. But also, as the catechism teaches, that God would enable us and others to glorify him in all things in which he makes himself known, and that he would dispose all things to his own glory. Notice then how the prayer already causes us to conform to God rather than causing God to conform to us just in saying our Father who is in heaven. This reminds me of a popular saying that seems to trace its roots to Kierkegaard. Speaking about confessing sin, he wrote this, prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who offers it. God already knows everything you need before you ask it. He knows your heart. There's nothing you can say that will take Him by surprise. And He has already ordained the end from the beginning. So prayer isn't changing Him. But we are not like God, are we? We do not know His thoughts in and of ourselves. He has secret things that belong to Him. The future is unknown to us. So in praying like this, we're learning to align ourselves with the one whom we are not naturally in tune with by recognizing and affirming the truth about Him and ourselves. Hence, prayer is a means of grace that changes us by conforming us to who He is. Second thing, I want you to notice the corporate nature of this prayer. Our Father. Friends, this prayer is a public and communal prayer. And likely, it is among those prayers that the earliest Christians in Acts devoted themselves to praying. Why wouldn't they? After all, it's been one of the central focuses of books on prayer from the time of Tertullian origin in Augustine in the early church, to the Reformation in Luther's catechism or the Baptist catechism, to Puritans like Thomas Manton and Thomas Watson, to modern Christians like Arthur Pink and G.I. Packer and Brian Chappell. All have written on the Lord's Prayer. as something that will help us together. Let's keep going. Think about the petitions now. So there are six petitions. The first being in the imperative, hallowed be. To be hallowed means to be holy, sanctified, set apart, and thus transcendence. But because he is holy, God is good in all that he is and does. He's not an evil God. He's the only good God. And because He is your Father, you can trust this God when He answers your prayers, that it will be only a good answer, whatever that answer may end up being, even if you don't like that answer. But hallowed here is an imperative verb. It's a verb of command. And as such, it is a petition. Well, petitions teach us that we can entreat God. Synonyms of that word include implore, beg, plead, ask, request and pray. And so to say hallowed be is therefore something that we are asking God to do. Think about that. You're not acknowledging that he is hallowed, you're telling him to do this. But what in the world would that even mean? What are we asking? Well, we're asking him to hallow his name. Brian Chappell rightly explains, by requesting that God honor his name, Jesus teaches us to ask God to make all creation recognize and revere his holiness. So, of course, included in creation is the one praying. So, in the same breath that we request God to make his name holy everywhere else, we also ask God to make our own hearts honor him. Now, as true as this is, there's actually more that most Christians miss here. For the name of God is not the letters printed on the page. This is not magic. This is not Kabbalah, where we're doing Bible codes or Gematria with the name. The name of God is God, and the name is Jesus. Our Savior tells us, I have manifested your name to the people. It's not merely that we pray in Jesus' name because he's the only way to the Father. But it's that Jesus is the name because he is one with the Father. So in asking God to hallow his name, you know what you're actually asking him to do? You're especially asking him to make Jesus known to the world as the Holy One of Israel, the Savior, the Divine Warrior, and the Prince of Peace. That's the first petition. The second one is this, your kingdom come. Catechism is on point here. It says in the second petition, we pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced. Ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened. So I want you to notice there's competing kingdoms and they are not America versus China. The kingdoms of men are all the kingdoms of Satan and the gods for they were given to them. But out of all nations, God is now making for himself a holy nation and a royal priesthood, people who actually still live in the earthly kingdoms, bringing both the law and the gospel to them, transforming them for the better, but not confusing the two. This makes us a peculiar nation. We do not have geographical boundaries because our citizenship is The third petition is very similar. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, this idea is actually ancient. Earth is a mirror of heaven. The pagan phrase was, as above, so below. Hence, what I said a moment ago about Christians transforming culture, it's inevitable, even though we do not confuse the two kingdoms, because heaven and earth are becoming like each other. Ancient peoples understood this concept so well that they actually created nearly all of their megalithic temple complexes to emulate the heavens on earth as they aligned themselves to the gods. But we Christians are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit dwells in the midst of people. And thus, we are praying here particularly that through his church and his people, God would bring his kingdom down to earth right now through us. You understand that? The Catechism summarizes that God by His grace would be able and willing to know, make us able and willing to know, obey and submit to His will in all things as the holy angels do in heaven. So you're actually praying in every one of these things that you be changed as you pray it. The fourth petition is, give us this day our daily bread. This one is tied to our needs, which God knows before we ask him. Bread is certainly a figure of speech. It's a figure of speech for everything that we need, including food and shelter and life, everything. It isn't focusing on our wants or our pleasures, like eating dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse every night. That'd be nice. Or having, I didn't even know this was a thing, Krispy Kreme's golden donut valued at $1,685. Yes, you can go buy one right now. That's not what you're asking when you pray for God to do this. The Psalm says that God will give you the desires of your heart. People take that out of context. The verse begins this way, delight yourself in the Lord and he will do this. And in this way, our desires are realigned to his, so that what we ask is increasingly his will for us rather than our will, thus tying us back to the previous petition. Remember what Jesus prayed? Not my will, but yours be done. Thus leading him, in fact, to his own death on the cross. It's also specifically, though, focused on food, which we need to renew and regenerate our bodies in the physical realm, This is of course physical food, but we also need spiritual food and Christ himself is our meat and our drink because he is the living water and the manna from heaven. The manna is a particularly good case study because it was actually the daily provision of the Lord in the wilderness where there was no food to feed his people every single day for 40 years until they entered the promised land. God loves you and provides for you, so ask him and he will provide, even if it is his will that you starve to death, as has happened in fact in millions of Christians over the centuries, because when you pray, your spirit will be overflowing with God's grace and mercy and peace. The fifth petition is about forgiveness. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So this one deals with confessing something that's absolutely vital in prayer. A debt is an obligation that you owe. Now, curiously, Luke actually has a different word. He has the word sins. A sin is a moral disobedience that you've committed rather than a debt that you owe. But the two can be interchangeable, and sometimes one can lead to the other. The Catechism says we pray that God, for Christ's sake, would freely pardon all our sins. But it knows the rest of the petition as well, which many people seem not to want to think about, which says, as we forgive others, remember that part? It teaches us that we are rather encouraged to ask this because of his grace, we are enabled from the heart to then forgive others. The point here is, again, that this prayer is a means of grace. That's why I'm preaching this sermon and that's how I'm trying to preach it to you. We know that God will forgive our sins because he tells us in many places that he will in the Bible. This in turn must make us ready and willing to forgive anyone what they have done to us. How many times? An astounding seven times! Peter thought, no, 70 times seven. And then some literalist will say, okay, so 70 times seven plus one, I don't have to forgive? You get the point. People find it very difficult to forgive others. The point of the prayer is to cause us to see that God has forgiven us infinitely more than we can ever forgive someone else. Because we ourselves are finite and wicked creatures, and so any offense against us is a finite offense. And probably often justified. But an offense against a perfectly holy God is an infinite offense that's never justified. Yet God in Christ can forgive me all of my sins that I commit against him once for all? How could that possibly be? And only in dwelling on your own depravity and the condition God has forgiven you can you find the grace to forgive others properly and from the heart. And in the prayer, this is exactly what we're asking God to do in us. The last petition is, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, or better, from the evil one. Evil actually stands here as a substantival adjective. You've heard of the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Those are adjectives that are standing as nouns. And so as such, it very well represents not just evil things that happen, but evil that comes from the father of lies, the enemy of our souls, Satan himself, And so prayer is now turned into a weapon against Satan. Now God does not tempt anyone, as you might maybe think. Lead us not into temptation. God doesn't tempt anyone. But as James says, each one is led astray by their own evil desires, which then gives birth to sin. But God does test us. And the word in Greek is the same. It's very probable that this petition is not to be read as an isolated proverbial statement devoid of context because the testing of God in the Old Testament came to Israel in the wilderness at the exact same moment that he gave them the bread of heaven. Very same story, Exodus 16. It says, the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled and wanted to die in the wilderness. So the Lord said to Moses, behold, I'm about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. The bread from heaven was the manna, and we've just seen how that's tied to the fourth petition. So thinking about this connection in the Old Testament, we can now understand the meaning better. The proverb says, remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me. An example of why he might want God to spare him from poverty is not just because it's unpleasant, but because it may tempt him to steal and therefore dishonor God. And yet at the same time, he doesn't want too many treasures because he will be tempted to become prideful and preoccupied with earth rather than heaven. The chief graces that are in mind here seem to be contentment and gratitude. Brian Chapel explains the trials God uses to build up our faith. Satan tries to hijack and uses temptations to tear down our spiritual commitment. Now, we don't have time for a whole lot more today, unfortunately. It would be great to run through things like the types of prayers we can offer. I've mentioned them already as they form an acronym. The acronym ACTS, Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. Adoration is prayer that simply revels in all that God is. Confession deals with bringing our sins before him. Thanksgiving is thanking God for whatever he brings into our life, whether we wanted them or not. Supplication is in treating him, especially for the things we need, whether they're physical, spiritual, emotional, familial, ecclesiastical, national, or whatever. But my point today is that each must be informed by God's word so that they can become a means of grace to you. In Romans, Paul says, we do not know what to pray for as we ought. Arthur Pink, who wrote a book on the Lord's Prayer, has another book that's called Gleanings from Paul, Studies in the Prayers of the Apostles, where I think his chapter headings alone are worth mentioning, because they teach us what to pray for. When we study the Word, we find that we, following these chapter headings, offer prayers of praise, prayer of hope, prayer for peace, for insight, for week of brothers concerning tribulation, pray in affliction, we pray of benediction, we pray of gratitude, for faith and knowledge, for understanding, for spiritual apprehension, for appreciation of Christ's triumph, pray prayers of adoration, for inner strength, for Christ-centeredness, for comprehension of God's love, of doxology, of discerning love, for fruits of righteousness, for a worthy walk, for long-suffering, for joy and thankfulness, for brotherly love, for sanctification of your young saints, for persevering grace, for comfort and stability, for love towards God, for patience, for one another, and for worship. And again, to do this rightly, you must know God's word. To do this biblically, you must call upon the name of the Lord, our Lord Jesus, and conform your own thoughts through your prayers to God's will as it's been revealed in any of those subjects of the scriptures. calling upon God to act according to his covenantal promises in them all. And in this way, we ground our prayers in the word even as we pray that the word would be made effectual in our lives. Now to conclude this, I wanted to give a couple of examples of individual and family prayers that might be helpful as ways of thinking about what I've just said and then consider the act of corporate prayers together. In 1997, I took a tour through the famous churches of England with Janelle. In all of them, there were hourly prayers that were offered publicly for things like the Queen, I assume now the King, for country, for England, for the church, for missions and other things. They did this every hour over the loudspeaker. It lasted about five minutes. Paul says we are to pray for all people with supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for kings and all who are in high positions so that we might lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. We should be praying and conforming our prayers to what God has said about these things. For example, he goes on to say that God desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. When we pray for salvation of, say, our children or our friends, to pray God's word back to him in this way is not merely to say, Lord, if it's your will, please do this, but rather it's even more bold. It's to plead with God that he has told us that he desires this, so please act upon it. Understanding this is to bring heaven down to earth from our discussion in the Lord's Prayer, and so this would therefore involve a couple of things. It first means that we are conformed to God's will through the prayer by believing it to be true because He said it. Oftentimes I think we struggle with these kinds of things and it affects our boldness in prayer. The same application can be made for what God has said in His Word about anything. Whether it's healing our infirmities or giving us our needs like income or a job or whatever it is. Believe God's word when he tells it to you. But second, it means that as a means of grace, it changes us so that we can become an instrument through which this might occur. Praying for the salvation of a president is one thing because you're never gonna have the ability to impact that guy personally. But for your children, your best friend, that's entirely different. And in praying this knowing prayer as a means of grace that changes us, it follows that we become part of that means of grace through which this end is brought. So we learn ever more about Jesus and how to answer people's questions. We teach our children about Christ. We give answers for the hope that's in us. We go to doctors and we find cures out there that they don't know about. We go and we help the poor. We adopt children. We do any number of things as a reaction to our own prayers as we're conformed to God's will. I'll tell you a little story. There was a time where my uncle, my dad's brother, was heavy on my mind. And so I decided to start praying for him. And then I felt the conviction, I need to go tell him about Jesus. And so that's what I did. And it took a few years for the right moment to come up. He was in the hospital and I just looked at him and I just said, Norman, you just had a heart attack, man. Where are you going? And I was like, I was in his face about it. And it was like, God humbled him immediately because our responsibility in this is not just to pray, but to work and act as a means of grace for other people. And I think that in this way, prayer becomes something that we are able to do without ceasing, because we recognize that our entire life becomes a life of prayer. I'll tell you another story. I became a youth pastor many years ago, and a guy started teaching on prayer, and the very first question he asked in this whole room of people was, how many of you people think you pray enough? Nobody's hand went up except mine. Now you look at that and you go, that's the most arrogant thing I've ever heard in my life. How could you possibly think that? And I looked at him and I said, Paul says pray without ceasing, doesn't he? Now I said, it's not that I think that I pray formal prayers enough. I don't think I do that. But I try to make my life an act of prayer to God. You can pray without ceasing. Paul tells you that you can do that. That would mean in one sense you actually can pray enough. And this is not about guilting people into praying more. It's about learning what it's like to have a relationship with your Heavenly Father. Second, we do this together, especially in worship, in corporate prayer, but also with one another on occasions because prayer is a corporate activity that God uses with his church to be a means of grace for her. It's profoundly disturbing that churches are no longer praying more than a few seconds in their services at best, or are using prayers in manipulative ways rather than taking the time to really enter into prayer together, to call upon God's name, to remember his covenant in all these many different ways. What would God do if we actually believed this was a powerful weapon? There's an old song that was written by the Levin brothers in 1956, which I first heard through Mark Knopfler's nodding hillbillies. It goes like this, in the land across the sea, there's a job for you and me, though our presence there may not be found. We may stay standing there on the battle line and pray. We must never lay our weapons down. We don't have to be a soldier in a uniform to be of service over there. While the boys so bravely stand with the weapons made by hand, let us trust and use the weapon of prayer. Paul concludes his armor of God discussion in Ephesians 6, that we put on the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. The context is the armor of God's supernatural warfare. It seems reasonable since the Spirit is repeated and given all that we've said that praying in the Spirit is somehow intimately linked with the sword of the Spirit, God's Word. And as such, this is an offensive weapon. One through which we are able to stand against the schemes of the devil because we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. There's a fascinating example of this in the Targum of the Aaronic Blessing. I just told one of my good friends about this and he was blown away. He couldn't believe this was actually there. The Aaronic blessing is what we'll say at the end of many of our worship services. The Lord bless you and keep you. Make his face shine upon you. Lift up his countenance upon you. The Targum is again an expansion of the scripture to try and teach the people in Jesus' day what the scripture meant. And this is what it says. Speak with Aaron and his sons saying, thus shall you bless the Israelites. while the priests spread their hands upon the pulpit. The priests shall speak to them, may the Lord bless you and guard you in all your endeavor from the demons of darkness, from the frightening demons and the midday demons and the morning demons and the destroyers and night demons. May the Lord make the graciousness of his countenance shine upon you in your study of the law and reveal to you obscure things and protect you. May the Lord show the graciousness of his countenance to you in your prayer and give you peace in all your space. And they will place the blessing of my name upon the Israelites and I by my word shall bless them. Don't ask me where it gets those. I have no clue. But the fact that it's there is wild stuff, and it shows you that prayer is a weapon in the supernatural realm. Using this weapon, we are able to strike a deadly blow to the enemy. And that ought to encourage you all the more to pray, even as you see the day approaching, especially when you are now better able to understand what that weapon is as one of God's chief means of grace for you to change you not to change him, praying in the name of God, praying his very words back to him, such as the Psalms, to remember all this promises and for asking him to answer them according to what he has spoken about in his holy word. That's a big responsibility on you to not just pray, but to go to the scripture and start learning what it says so that you can pray his word back to him. Let's go to him in prayer and ask him to bless what we've just heard. Holy Father, this is a very important subject because it is a means of grace. And I think that there is much abuse of prayer in this world. And you're gracious and you hear our abuse. You work through our abuse of prayer in ways that are according to your will. But Father, for this to be truly helpful and effectual for your people, We need to know that this is a way that you give to change us. It's a means of grace of transforming us more into the likeness of Christ and conforming our thoughts and our minds and our wills into your will so that especially when we have supplications and our hearts are crying out for an answer to prayer like Habakkuk, we would learn what your will is and we would conform ourselves to it so that we are not frustrated or upset or angry that you don't answer us the way that we want. but rather that you would show us that being conformed to the image of your Son might very well mean that we suffer, we might even die on the cross as Jesus did, because that's your will for us, but it's for our good. Whatever it is you bring into our life, and you brought so many gracious blessings to us, we would pray that you would continue to do that so that we might live quiet and godly lives in this world. But help us, Lord, to know how to pray better. Use this as a means of grace because it is actually the proclamation of your word in preaching, which we've also looked at as a means of grace. It's a double means of grace. How gracious you are and kind to us and coming to us and meeting with us when we meet together. Use these things for your glory and for our sanctification, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.