All right, well done. Lead on, my dog. Well, good evening. I look forward to having the honor and the privilege to be bringing the word of God to you. Now, if you know me, I love church history. and the better you know me, you'll find out that I really love Martin Luther. So if you look over at our beautiful Christmas tree, I don't know if you decorated that, but they did a really good job. There's no way to prove this, but legend has it that Martin Luther was coming home on a very cold night in December, and he looked through the trees, because he's in Germany, so he had the black forest, and known to be very cold in Germany. And he looked through the trees, and he saw the stars shining through I wish there was some way I could bring that into my home so Katie and I could enjoy that. So what he did was he designed little candles that they would light and they would put on the trees. And that is why we have lights on our Christmas trees, thanks to Martin Luther. And so you may ask, what does that have to do with the sermon tonight? It has absolutely nothing to do with the sermon tonight. But I can't preach without talking about Martin Luther. If you would turn to Matthew 6, we'll be reading verse 5 through 13. And tonight we're gonna be talking about Christian's life regarding prayer. And what does that mean for a Christian? And as you're turning there, I'd like to ask a little question you can answer in your head. What did the Lord Jesus and Peter call John, John's disciple Polycarp, his disciple Athanasius, St. Nicholas, Patrick, Augustine, Wickliffe, Us, Luther, Tyndale, Knox, Calvin, Spurgeon, J.C. Ryle, and R.C. Sproul all have in common. And it's that they prayed more than they wrote. Their prayer life was the most important thing to them. And I preach on prayer, and I know it's a little dangerous for me to preach on prayer, because I don't want you to think that I have it all figured out. I want to be very straightforward. I have a lot to learn. And so, no, I do not have the Christian prayer life all figured out. I doubt I ever will. But as Staubitz said to Luther, oh, there we go. I can use Luther in my sermon. As Staubitz said to Luther, we preach best what we need to learn the most. I want to just point out that our prayer life, in many ways, is the spiritual life support to a Christian. In many ways, prayer, I would say, is the threshold, or more modern language, the doorway to what the Christian would say is agape love, or unconditional love. And I don't believe there's any better way to show a brother or sister in Christ that we love them more than to say, I'm praying for you and truly mean it, like truly stop and pray for them. Many times, someone would just flip and say, hey, I'm praying for you, and they never think about it again. I think it's a good practice sometimes, as I have a very good friend of mine, Dwight, And it does that to me, I feel loved and I just feel as though the Lord Jesus' love is coming through to wipe onto me. There's also no better way of loving our enemies, because if you have a true enemy who truly hates you and those you love, it's almost impossible to come and actually love them, unless if you pray for them and pray for them regularly. And not pray as a weaponized prayer, a true prayer of I want to genuinely see them to come to love the Lord. And I want to genuinely see if there's any way that I can possibly come to truly love them before this person and I have to die and go before the throne of grace. There are different methods of praying. And unfortunately, we as Baptists, we seem to have a bad habit of criticizing different methods of prayer. And I would caution us against that. I would warn everyone against judging other people and other denominations on their methods. Prayer can be public. It can be used privately. It can be used as a simple conversation between you and the Lord. It can be in the form that the congregations such as the Anglican churches use it in a liturgical fashion. And it also can be used in books such as the Common Book of Prayer that can help us with our devotions and during our church services. In Matthew 6, and we'll start with verse 5, and I'm gonna read from 5 to 6. And this is Jesus saying, that when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. There are some Christians, well-meaning Christians, who take this verse and they like to say it's wrong to pray in public. That cannot be correct because we see that Jesus prayed publicly when he fed the 5,000. It says in the scriptures that he gave public thanks. We also see Daniel when he prayed to Yahweh after King Darius made it illegal. Yes, Daniel went to his room, but Daniel was public enough and he was not ashamed of his prayer that others heard and turned him in. And, of course, that's when he was thrown into the lion's den. Again, I would argue against that argument, and it's more in the puritanical movements of the Reformed faith, where no, I would say this does not mean you cannot pray publicly like if you're in Cracker Barrel and you pray to bless your food, because that's not what Jesus did. And so, I know I'm just going to leave it there. I'd like to explain what exactly does this mean. In a good example, I actually have three examples of what I've seen in my own life. And I would say this means as far as someone who's more politically motivated when they are praying and should not be the same as the Pharisees. This is rampant in the political movement when someone uses big words in a political group in front of thousands or even a smaller group where they weaponize their prayer and they send in the battle against their political enemy. And this is not honoring at all to God, because number one, it's not loving, it's hurtful, and it does not show the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's also selfish, because these people are either trying to get your vote, or they want you to vote for their political candidate. And so the Lord Jesus is cautioning us against that. You may relate more to an example, there's a university about three minutes from here where everyone and their brother loves to pray. Unfortunately, since I was there for about 10 years, I saw a lot of empty prayers in this campus that I love. And yes, the Lord Jesus, I believe, is there, and he works through Liberty University. But if you were to ask the professors and other brothers and sisters in Christ, they will definitely explain that, yes, there are many students who pray for the purpose of getting attention, to showing everyone around them how spiritual and holy they are. And this is, of course, not honoring to the Lord because it's done with the wrong motive. It's done with the purpose of, look at me, you know, I'm trying to impress this young lady, so I'm just going to be extra spiritual, or this young lady's going to try to impress this guy over here, so she's going to raise her hands really high, and she's going to get very emotional and cry, and it's done with the wrong motive. Old pastors and young seminarians, sometimes we love to use long-winded sentences and words in order to be seen and heard by others to gain their respect. And this, of course, is the same. It's the hypocrisy that Jesus Christ is warning us about. And of course, it's not just pastors and seminarians. We have more of an opportunity to pray in front of others. But there are many young men, I think definitely in the Reformed faith, that loves to show how much theology they know, so they use fancy words. And that's definitely what the Lord Jesus is saying the Pharisees do in the market corner. He's saying, don't do that. When we pray, our hearts to be completely set on our worship, and most importantly, on our communion. Not on ourselves, but on the Lord Jesus Christ. Prayer is communion with the Lord. It's a very holy and special moment. And so it's not to be for the selfish ambitions or the selfish motives of the individual. I also want to point out that Jesus is advocating to his disciples that they should not just have a public prayer life, because that's no good. He wants us to have a private prayer life. And it's in private that we grow closer to the Lord. So we can come to church and we can be with our friends publicly, but if we are in our homes and our prayer lives and our devotion is not there, we're not truly living the way Christ wants us to live. And so he's telling his disciples to go in, shut the door, pray to your Father, who is in the secret place. R.C. Sproul wrote a hymn that's one of my favorites, and one of the things that R.C. wrote says, those who dwell within his most secret place. is never far from his blessed grace. And I was happy to hear Pastor Ernie when he was preaching this morning. He talked about the excitement and confusion of Lucifer and the devil. He talked about how when Jesus prayed, he went to the garden and he was by himself. It was peace. It was quiet, and that's where he chose to commune with his father. And so again, the Lord Jesus wants you to have a personal close relationship with him, with the father, and the best way is to have a private prayer life with the Lord Jesus. In verse 7. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." Now the New King James, which is what I'm preaching from here, and the only reason I chose that because that's what I grew up with and it's what I'm most comfortable to preach from, I probably would say the NASB or the ESV is one of my favorite translations, but I'm used to the New King James. But it uses the word repetition here. I would actually prefer, because I think the original Greek word is closer to something that's like futile babblings. And so you could read it that instead of vain repetitions, empty futile babblings. And many people that are King James only or New King James only would use this to say that it's wrong to use any liturgical form of prayer because that would be repetition. It would basically be saying it over and over again. I would caution everyone against saying that any form of biblically-based liturgy is futile babblings, because you're talking about the Holy Word of God. And I can't think of a better way to pray if you're repentant and you're lost than using Psalm 51. And so I would definitely say that I find the form of worship in the Presbyterian Church and the Reformed Anglican Church to be very beautiful and biblically based, even though it's different than what we are used to here. And I think it's sometimes good to practice that. In fact, I have the Book of Common Prayer and it has definitely helped me in my morning devotions and morning prayer to use. So again, I just would caution us against that. What is Jesus talking about? When Jesus was talking to his disciples, it's important to point out that in the ancient times, ancient pagans would chant and use spells in their worships. That is very dangerous because it was satanic, and it opened the gateway to a lot of satanic influences. The modern pagans would do the same as far as Wiccans. That would definitely be repetitive and vain babblings. It's dangerous. If you were to listen to a Muslim prayer call, and I'm not saying I listen to Muslim prayer calls all the time, but we have all heard Muslim prayer calls where even though they use different tones in their music, they're pretty much saying the same thing over and over. Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, and that's how they call people, and they say that over and over and over. And so they're just repeating, God is great, God is great. And it doesn't really mean anything. Yes, God is great, but it's empty. It's a babbling. And of course, we can use the example of chanting to dead men instead of going to God, such as the Litany of the Saints, which sound like St. Athanasius, pray for me. St. Peter, pray for me. St. Jude, pray for me. St. Cecilia, pray for me. All you holy men and women, pray for us sinners. Another thing would be the Hail Mary, which is even More dangerous because the first half of the hail Mary is actually from the scriptures hail Mary full of grace The Lord is with you blessed. Are you among women and blesses the fruit of thy womb? That's straight from Scripture Unfortunately Rome then takes it and they made up their own saying Holy Mary mother of God pray for the sinners now and at the hour of our death That's not only idolatry. It doesn't mean anything. It's a vain babbling and And Jesus is warning us against such pagan practices that we should take very serious. Now, I know none of that applies to us here, but what does apply to an evangelical today? And honestly, the more I prayed about this over this week, I would have to say the empty, not all modern age praise music is empty, but there's a lot of it out there that I would say is vain babblings. And you can see people who are caught up in these empty praise songs. that would transfer over into their prayer life, which then transfer over to the fact that they have no theology. And in the end, it's hard to tell whether or not they are saved or not. I'm not saying we're judging them. I'm just saying it's not a very safe place to be. I would much rather have someone be sat in their biblical truth and in a healthy prayer life. So when a Christian prays, Jesus is saying that needs to be meaningful, it needs to be biblically based, and it needs to be centered around the communion with our Lord Jesus Christ. In Luke, the disciples came to Jesus and they said, teacher, rabbi, teach us to pray. Now, I know this might be a little bit different than we're used to, but Pastor told me I had to preach out of the Bible, so I searched, and I can't find this against the Bible anywhere. And so I'm going to ask you to, if you would, just take a few minutes with me, really just a few seconds, and join me in the Lord's Prayer. And since we're all on the same page, let's use the pronouns thy, as well as the word trespass and trespasses. And when we pray, I'm going to ask you, let's not just recite the words as if we are reciting a poem, but let's all come together as broken sinners, repentant sinners before the throne of grace, and truly mean the words that we are going to pray. Is everyone ready? Let's bow our heads and I'll lead us. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. What did you notice about the Lord's Prayer? Now, actually, I stole this idea from Reverend Burke Parsons, who is the senior pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel. He took R.C. Sproul's place when R.C. went home to be with the Lord. And when he was preaching at Ligonier, and if you haven't been to Ligonier, I can't recommend it enough. It's a blessing to Christianity, to the church. But when we were at Ligonier, he actually had us do this. And he asked us the same questions. And Dr. Parson pointed out four points in his sermon that I wrote down, and I said, sooner or later I'm gonna need this, and I was glad because I found the paper I wrote it on. And I wanted to share it with you guys. And the first point, which I just find it was a beautiful sermon, the Lord's Prayer is simple. And yet we can truly and sincerely pray this 30 second prayer and be freed from all guilt. He pointed out that many Christians feel guilty in their prayer life because for some reason we think that we have to have this long prayer that has to be a chore. We have to get up in the morning and kneel down and pray this long prayer, get this long list. And yet he was pointed out to us that the Lord's prayer only takes 30 seconds. Number two, this is the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. It's the framework to all prayer, as well as a prayer in and of itself. Number three, Jesus did not use complicated words, and yet the words and the phrases, the theology and the concept has such depth and meaning. And number four, the Lord's Prayer is not centered around ourselves, but Jesus focuses on the will and the sovereignty of God the Father. And so now, I would like you to come along with me and we're going to break down the individual sentences and words of the Lord's Prayer. We'll exegete this together. And it starts off, the Lord Jesus said, our father who art in heaven. Now, I understand not everyone has come out of a stable home. And so there are some of us, unfortunately, who have broken homes. So the term father may have left a bad taste in their mouth. However, the Lord, when he created the family unit, It was God's intent that a father is the very first authority we have in our life. It's an authority that loves us and cares about us and someone who would lay down his life for his son and daughter. And so the first word basically sets God up as an authority figure that loves us and cares about us. We can come to him when we need him. Next is, hallowed be thy name. Hallowed be thy name. The name of God is set apart from all others. This is one of the reasons why I love the book of Isaiah. And yes, that's the way you say it, that's the real way you say it, Isaiah. So one of the reasons I love Isaiah is because in the Old Testament, when you have the fall and then you go through exodus, there's really no clear communication to Israel about who the Lord Jesus is, until the prophet Isaiah comes. And then suddenly, in a very detailed explanation, we have an explanation of who the suffering servant is, who the Redeemer is, who Jesus Christ is. And this is given to Isaiah for the very first time, and suddenly it's very clear that the suffering servant of Israel is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And it's laid out what he will do. Very interestingly enough, when they found some of the original text over in Israel, the book of Isaiah was one of the books that they found, and it showed that nothing had changed in over 2,000 years. And so we have proof that the prophecy not only did not change, but it came true. And so it's evidence of Jesus Christ. But in Isaiah 6, Isaiah has a vision. And in the vision, he sees in the throne room, and it's Jesus Christ on his throne in a majestic setting. He has seraphim around him, and it says the train of the robes filled the temple, showing that he was a king. And the seraphim say to another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. R.C. Sproul points out that the holiness of God is the only attribute that's ever elevated to the third degree of repetition. And what that means is it's the most important attribute of God. Because instead of using an exclamation point, the Jews would repeat it. And so they didn't say, God is wrath, wrath, wrath, or God is love, love, love. It says that God is holy, holy, holy. And so R.C. liked to say that the holiness of God was at the pinnacle of the pyramid of all the other attributes. So God is a God of anger because he's holy. God is a God of justice because He's holy, and God is a God of love because He's holy. And so we see here the Lord Jesus immediately saying, It's also a good reminder of why we should never use the name of God or the Lord Jesus Christ in vain. especially the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it's not just that he is the holiest name, but because the name of Jesus Christ has the power to save. That's one of the reasons why it's so wrong to blaspheme and take that so flippantly, because it's a sacred name. It has the power to save us of eternal separation, or rather damnation, from God. And so, I don't know, I feel like that's something especially we as Americans really need to be careful of, because I hear it all the time, no matter where I'm at, even in a church setting. It breaks my heart. Hallowed be thy name. Next he has, thy kingdom come. It is natural, I believe, for us Christians to be homesick for our true home, which is the heavenly kingdom. It's natural for us to be tired of the sin around us and the affliction and the sickness, and it's natural for us to pray for the Lord Jesus' kingdom to come. I also believe that this serves as a reminder not to live for this world, but we need to pray for thy kingdom to come. It is the future, and as a Christian, it's our hope, is to go home to the kingdom that is coming. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Submitting ourselves to the will of God, and I say this, I'm only in my 30s, so I'm not trying to be an arrogant young man, because I know someone who's older than me knows this much more than I do, but I've also learned this in just my short time here on this earth. Submitting to the will of God is very hard, especially when you think you know better than God. But it's unnatural for anyone, especially a Christian, to live outside of God's will. And so we should continually each day pray for thy will to be done, for God's will to be done. It's not easy. It's hard. I know that. As a Christian, we would desire nothing else. And honestly, I feel that when we do push against God, we find out it could be 10 years later that, oh my word, I am in a situation. I didn't ask for God's will to be done. I just was blind to ambition, and I pushed through, and I've really messed up. And God, can you now forgive me? Get me out of this. I want your will to be done. And so, again, the Lord Jesus says, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's also showing God's sovereignty. Heaven and earth is everywhere. He ain't saying your will will reign supreme no matter where we're at, on earth and in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Here, I believe that we see the kindness of God and the kindness of Jesus Christ. So while we are recognizing the glory and the majesty of God, and know we're not to be selfish, Jesus says it's okay to ask for your daily bread. It's okay to have needs. He recognizes that. And it's not wrong to ask God for your needs. In Matthew 7, 8, which is the next page over, you don't have to flip there, basically says we actually let me flip there sorry you don't flip there I got it in Matthew 7 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. And so Jesus is telling you it's okay to ask, as long as you seek the will of God. So be in the will of God, seek the will of God, and you say, brother, how do you do that? You need to be in the word of God, so you know what the will of God is, and you need to be in prayer. The next is very important. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Honestly, I could preach sermons on this. In fact, I believe there are many theologians who have volumes on forgiveness. And we're only going down to verse 13, but if we glance at 14 and 15, we have a frightening warning from Jesus Christ. It's very clear that there is no mistaking what he's saying when it comes to forgiveness. And he says, if we do not forgive, God does not forgive us. Someone who is unforgiving and unloving does not have love in their hearts and therefore they do not have the Holy Spirit in your hearts. When you accept the Holy Spirit, or rather when the Holy Spirit comes into our life, there's a change that's going to take place. And the love of God is going to be just a natural reaction that you're going to have. 1 John 4 is full of warnings about not loving our brothers and sisters. And in verse 8 of 1 John 4, it says, He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. You can't mistake that. There's no mistaking that. You don't love, then there's no God in your heart. That's a frightening thing to actually think about, something that we should take very serious and pray about. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." This is something that I think many of us who follow some of the Reformed pastors have been thinking about. And I'm talking about there's a leader in the Evangelical Reform movement that gave in temptation with one of his younger students a few months ago, and it shook the church to its core. It definitely shook me to its core. It still does. It's hard for me to talk about. In response to this incident, John MacArthur had to come out and give a statement about one of his best friends, and he said that as the end times approaches, Jesus is going to purify his church. We need to be begging the Lord to deliver us from evil, and we need to never let our guards down. If someone like Steve Lawson can fall, we can fall too. However, it does mean that just because Steve Lawson fell into this sin does not mean that we will. The Lord's prayer is not to Steve Lawson, it's not to Sproul, it's not to Luther, it's not to Polycarp. It's to God, our Father. And so we can rest assured if our minds and our thoughts are not focused on men, although it's perfectly okay to study these men, but understand these men are sinful. And so we need to focus on Jesus Christ just like Jesus is teaching us through the Lord's Prayer. The Word of God talks about the devil walked about like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour. And it's comforting to know that we can trust the Lord when giants and leaders fall. We truly do need to be praying that the Lord Jesus guard us from temptation, and we should not go looking for temptation ourselves. If you were to know some of the background story, I imagine there was a lot of probably not very smart moves on the part of some of these men who we look up to. So lead us not into temptation, Father, but deliver us from Satan, the devil. And Jesus closed with, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Now, when you sit down and you actually do word studies on this very last sentence, it's really a beautiful verse that Jesus leaves us with. It says, for thine is the kingdom. The kingdom for a Christian is the future. So for thine, Lord, yours is the future and the power, meaning the authority. So for yours, Lord, is the future and the authority. And when you look up glory, it means achieved honor. God has achieved the highest honor of all. So for thine is the future and the authority and the achieved honor forever. Amen. And so, I didn't want to take too long. I know the pastor said I could preach as long as I wanted. I didn't want to do that to y'all tonight. So, I want to leave you with the fact that a Christian's prayer life is not a chore. It is, in fact, communion with God, our Father. And it's a communion that should flow naturally to the Christian. And it should even be easier than talking to your earthly parent or your best friend. It's talking to a heavenly Father. who created you and he sent his son of the world to die for you. And you think about what happened on that day when Jesus hung on the cross. The Trinity was ripped apart. It was a very unnatural, painful process that happened. And yet God loved you so much that that's what he was willing to do. And so it should be easy to have a conversation with a loving, gentle, eternal father. So, Pastor, would you like to close us in prayer? I can close. Sounds good. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we come before you and we do ask you to keep us steadfast in our prayer life, keep us steadfast in our devotions, help us to get to know you by praying to you and by reading your Holy Sacred Word. Father, we thank you for the time when your son hung on the cross, and the Trinity was separated, it was divided in two, and Jesus became guilty of every sin that the church ever committed. We may never truly know what you went through that day, but Father, we thank you, and we praise you, and we thank you for the gift of eternal life. Be with us as we go back into the world and help us to be a light to those who are lost. Help us to love one another, not just here, but our brothers and sisters around the world. For it is in his holy name we pray. Amen.