the book of Matthew. We're going to carry on our series in prayer this morning. We began two weeks ago. Look at this passage. and basically answering a couple of questions about prayer. And our goal is to spend a couple of months looking at this topic and how it is that we are to pray, and why we're to pray, and even what we're to pray. And we'll look at this passage. We'll look at a couple of Jesus's prayers, and maybe look at some of the prayers in the Old Testament as well, just to encourage our hearts and to kind of recover something that we began with as KC Bible Church. We began with a commitment to be a praying and a teaching church, and we want to recover that. and encourage all of our hearts to pray together as well as privately and individually. Martin Lloyd-Jones made the comment that prayer is one of the purest expressions of the Christian faith, and I totally agree with that. I think that's exactly right. When we pray, we are expressing our faith in the clearest and purest way. I believe that as Jesus is a Son of God, living His life here on earth as a man of prayer, and now seated on His Father's throne, He's interceding for us. He's praying for us. every day. It's a wonderful thing to hang on to if you're struggling, you don't know how to pray, and your heart just kind of breaks and you can't quite get the words out, to know that Jesus is interceding for us and praying for us every day. And his desire is for us to be a praying people. Well, let's read together Matthew 6, and we'll read from verses 1 to verse 18. It says this, and this is, as you know, as Jesus speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, His disciples are gathered in front of Him, and possibly crowds are further ways out, but He's speaking basically to His disciples, and He says this, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues 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 thy name. 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. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. Let's ask for God's blessing again, shall we? Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we come before you this morning and we would seek for your blessing. Father, we pray that the Spirit of God would speak to every heart in the room. And Father, we pray that as we open the word together and as we proclaim it together, Father, we pray that you would draw from our hearts worship as we would hear your word. Father, we pray too that you would provoke and inform our consciences. Father, we pray that you would encourage us in our faith. Father, we pray that you would bring forth fruit from this message, and Father, that you would work to bring out of us the fruit of the Spirit that lives within us. And father, we would consider, too, that there are some in this room that may not know you may have never been regenerated. And father, we pray this morning that you would work to make them alive, father, to cause them to be born again to a new and a living hope. And father, we ask you these things and we give you thanks in Jesus name. Amen. Well, the plan, like we started two weeks ago, is to kind of work our way through the text and make a series of observations about what Jesus teaches about prayers, and we're going to kind of apply those things as we go along. Really what we're doing in these two messages, the last one and this one, is kind of answering two questions with five answers. Okay, the two questions are these. What is prayer, and how do we pray? The first question, what is prayer, we answer with three things. Number one, prayer is the expression of our relationship with our Heavenly Father, and we saw that last time. Prayer is the commanded privilege of a disciple's life. You want proof of the fact that you are truly saved and you're born again is the fact that you have a prayer life as a believer. Thirdly, prayer is a rewarded discipline of the Christian life. God rewards and answers prayer. Well, in answer to the question of how do we pray, there's two things there. Prayer is to be offered in sincerity, not hypocrisy. And secondly, the practice of prayer begins in private communion with our Heavenly Father. So we'll look at the last three this morning. Prayer is a rewarded discipline. Prayer is to be offered in sincerity, not hypocrisy. And prayer begins in private communion. Are these all the things you could say about prayer in the Bible? And the answer, of course, is no, absolutely not. There are so many other things to say. The Bible says about prayer, if you want to learn how to pray more and how to inform your praying, I encourage you, open the Psalms, read the Psalms, because most of those were written as prayers and songs or songs offered in prayer to God. It's a great way to learn how to pray. But what we're doing is we're looking at this, and we're going to come at this part, and we're going to look at some other prayers of Jesus and other prayers in the Bible to learn and encourage our hearts in prayer. But before we dive in, I want to give you what one Puritan author said about prayer. I've been reading a little book by John Bunyan. Most of you may know the name of John Bunyan. He wrote Pilgrim's Progress, one of the... I think Pilgrim's Progress was the most printed book in human history aside from the Bible. So there you go. But he wrote 50 other books besides Pilgrim's Progress, and one was called A Discourse Concerning Prayer. He's a Puritan guy, wrote in old language. But he said this, and listen, it's very interesting. I'll break it down because it's quite complex. Puritan guys wrote in sentences that were like 30 feet long, right? So here it goes. He said, prayer is the sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart and soul to God, through Christ in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit for such things as God has promised or according to his word for the good of the church in submission with faith to the will of God. That's one sentence. That's the way those guys wrote. But listen to what he's saying. Prayer is a sincere. It means it's offered in sincerity, not hypocrisy. It's sensible. It's a response to what we hear and see and what we understand. It's an affectionate pouring out. Prayer isn't a dry mumbling, you know. It's a pouring out of the heart. It's an affection and it's pouring out the whole heart and soul to God through Christ in the strength and the assistance of the Holy Spirit. And we pray that God will help us to learn how to pray properly and well. Well, I want to make those three observations. Now, the first one we made last two weeks ago, just to recap quickly, prayer is based on a relationship with our Heavenly Father. And I want you to notice how Jesus describes God to whom we pray in the passage. He describes Him, I think it's I think it's ten times he mentions your Father who is in heaven, or your Father. He mentions the word Father over and over and over again. And God initiates a relationship that we are in as children of the Father. He's caused us to be born again, and He builds that relationship with us, and we carry on that relationship in ongoing repentance of sin and ongoing faith towards God. So prayer is based on a relationship with our Heavenly Father, and we're going to unpack that one a whole lot more next week, what that means to be in a relationship with our Father. Prayer is based on a relationship with God. Number two, prayer is a commanded privilege of the disciple's life. Look what he talks about in practicing your righteousness, and he mentions those three things, giving to the needy, prayer to God, and fasting from physical distractions. All those things are the practices of righteousness, and we as believers in Jesus Christ have been called and we're given things to do. We're to practice our righteousness. You're not just saved to go on living any way you like. It's not a biblical statement of the gospel. You are saved, not by good works, but you are saved to do good works. And that's what Jesus is explaining to his disciples. Listen, you're to practice righteousness, but there's a way in which you're to practice those righteousnesses. Disciples of Jesus Christ must practice righteousness. Therefore, all true disciples of Jesus Christ pray. That's one of the things that we do. It's one of the most beautiful things. You don't have to be able to even speak to pray. You can pour out your heart and soul without even moving your mouth or opening your lips. And every disciple of Jesus Christ, if you're alive, you can pray. And one of the things that God calls us to do is practice our righteousness and to pray. A genuine proof of discipleship is growth in the Christian discipline of prayer, but it's a hard growth. It's not an easy growth. I think I mentioned last time that every single preacher or pastor or theologian that's ever been asked, how is your prayer life? They all do the same thing. They all go, It could be better. And it's true. Every single one of us in this room wouldn't probably stand up and go, well, my prayer life is doing just fine, thank you. We all admit it. Our prayer life needs to grow. It needs to get better. And that's exactly what part of our life as a Christian is about. It's a commanded privilege of a disciple's life. Thirdly, prayer must not be offered in hypocrisy. And here's where we dive in for this morning. Notice what Jesus says in Matthew 6 and verse 5. He says this, First of all, what's a hypocrite? Well, hypocrites are simply actors. They're those who are not consistent in their integrity or their character. They're duplicitous. They're two-faced. They portray something on the outside that is inconsistent to who they are on the inside. You sit down and you flick on the TV and you put on a movie and you see a man there and he's going through some great torment or pain. Maybe he's a soldier in a war. Maybe he's an old ancient character from history somewhere, and you think, wow, what an incredible story about this person, or that person, or that circumstance, and you get caught up in the emotion, you're caught up in the story. But the reality is, if you pull back from the whole scene of what's going on, you would see cameras, and sound gear, and mics, and booms, and the blood coming out of the man's face is actually fake blood. It's all a portrayal. It's an acted thing out. You're not seeing what's really happening. It's all just hypocrisy. And that's exactly what Jesus is talking about. He's saying you must not be like the hypocrites. They're inconsistent to who they really are on the inside. In Matthew 23. Jesus talking about the scribes and the Pharisees, described them as hypocrites. And he described them like this. I'll give you three of the things he says. He said in 23 verse 3, for they preach, but they do not practice. Hypocrites have no integrity. They say one thing from the pulpit, but they do something entirely different outside of the church and community. They say one thing when they're in their prayer group or their Bible study group or they're in their work, and they're totally different at home. They're one person at home, but someone totally different at work. And one of the greatest struggles is you come across people once in a while and you say, why is the work person not the same as the church person? Why is there a total inconsistency there? They're hypocrites. There's no consistency to their character. In 23 in verse 5, Jesus said this, they do their deeds only to be seen by others. Hypocrites have wrong, sinful motives. At the very bottom, they are liars. They're doing it for one reason. It's not the true reason they stand up and pray. These hypocrites in Jesus' time would stand in the street corners and they would pray great long prayers and expounding scripture as they go. You know, it happens sometimes. And people pray and pray and they're not really praying to God. They're not interested in what God has to say to them and God has to respond to them. They're just interested in everybody seeing how beautifully they pray. Hypocrites have wrong and sinful motives. In verses six and seven, Jesus said this about hypocrites. This is chapter 23, verses six and seven. They love the place of honor at the feast, the best seats in the synagogues, and the greetings in the marketplace, and to be called rabbi by others. Hypocrites desire glory for themselves and not for God. And Jesus is saying, listen, don't be like them. You're not to be like the hypocrites. They have a keen desire to be noticed by others, but they cared little if God notices and hears what their prayers really are. I want you to notice also what Jesus says about the desires of the hypocrite in verse one. It's kind of an implication, he doesn't use the word hypocrite here, but you can clearly see it there. He says, their desire is to be seen by others. In verse 2, the hypocrites sound the trumpet to be seen and heard, and therefore praised by others. Can you imagine going down the street corner, getting on a big trumpet, and you blow the trumpet like a madman, until everybody can hear this trumpet blowing, and they all come around to see what's going on. And when they're all watching, the hypocrite puts down the trumpet, and he lifts up his hands, he begins to pray. He's not interested in God seeing him. He's interested in everybody else seeing him. The desire is to be seen by others. In verse five, the hypocrites love to stand and pray in the public places of worship and in the public places of business, on the street corners of Jerusalem. It doesn't happen here so much. You don't see people praying out in the street corner, but you certainly see people praying in churches. That's a big challenge, isn't it? What's your motive in praying? When we stand up to pray, what are we really looking for? They care nothing to be pleasing of God. They care nothing for God's honor, God's glory and God's favor. Notice what Jesus says about the rewards hypocrites receive. In verse one, he promises that if we behave hypocritically, then you will have no reward from your heavenly father. Nothing. There will be no answer prayer. The heavens will be like brass, as the Old Testament says, and you will get no answer from God. In verse two, the hypocrites who give to the poor to be seen by others have received their reward. What's the reward? The notice of men. Oh, look at, oh, look at Rabbi Jehu, man. He's given out all of his money to feed the poor. He's done this incredible thing. Wow. And maybe they'll come and say, oh, man, that's a great job you did there. Look at the wonderful thing you did. The hypocrites desire to be seen by others, and they've gotten their reward, the praise of men. In 6 and verse 5, the hypocrites who pray publicly to be seen by men have received their reward, the praise and commendation of men. In verse 16, it's the same again. The hypocrites that fast in order to be seen by men have received their reward. They've gotten the accolades and the cheers of men. You think, what an absolute folly to waste your time and your effort to strive for the pathetic, shifting scraps of man's approval. One of the marks of the Hollywood news media age we live in is that today's heroes and celebrities are tomorrow's forgotten has-beens. Nobody remembers the actors, even from 10 years ago. The news thing changes so fast, and there's a new celebrity, a new important person in town, and he rises up, and he's gone. Next one rises up, and they're gone. They talk about, in politics, about news cycles. When you get a bad press, if you're a politician, just wait a couple days for the news cycle to come around again, and this story, this bad press will be gone. Don't worry about it. What an incredible waste of time to strive after man's approval, which is so fleeting, and it's gone. But the reality is, that the God who sees our prayer in secret, the God who sees the heart behind what we do, he rewards and he rewards go on forever. And when we get his reward, it'll last for all of eternity. How much better to strive for the reward that God gives. Don't misunderstand Jesus. These hypocrites are practicing their righteousness, but their righteousness, as the Bible says, is like filthy rags in the nostrils and the eyes of God Most High. The Bible says in Isaiah 64 and verse 6, all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment, like filthy rags, stinking rags. We had a friend, as some of you know, Heather and I did camp ministry for years, little kids camp ministry up at A place called Imodene Bible Camp, which doesn't mean anything to you. You might see us wear sweatshirts with Imodene on them once in a while. That's what that is. It's a Christian camp we're at. And there was a guy there who did a teens camp. And what he did was he came up to camp, and this is kind of gross, but he took a pair of white undies, right? And he went down to the river, and he dug a little spot right in the river, and he pushed those undies down underneath the riverbank like that, and he put the rocks back on top, and he left them there for about five days. Well, at the end of that five days, where that spot was, was right in front of the outdoor chapel. And so he gets all these teenage kids, right? And these kids are all, you know, made up perfectly, and their clothes are all just so in the hair, you know, just so, because it's teen camp, even though they're away from civilization, right? And you know what he did? To illustrate that verse about their righteousness as filthy rags, he turns around, walks down the river, digs under the rock, and he pulls this pair of white undies out. And they're, like, disgusting, right? And Jesus, in the Bible story, is saying, listen, our righteous deeds are like a polluted garden, like a filthy rag before God. God wants nothing to do with it. And these men, these hypocrites, are practicing their righteousness, but they're doing it for entirely the wrong motives, and their righteousness is like a filthy, stinking rag to God. Christian, let me ask you the really hard question. Don't you answer for yourself. I want us, all of us, to sit quietly for a moment and allow the Holy Spirit to give us the correct answer in our own hearts. Listen, are you a hypocrite? Am I? Why do we pray? Do we pray to be seen by others? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you want to be seen by when we pray, when you pray, when I pray, and whose glory are we truly seeking? Listen to what Jesus said. Matthew 6, verse 5, you must not be like them. Jesus' desire for his disciples, for you and I, is to be like him, to be like Jesus. Jesus said in Matthew 10, 24 and 25, A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. In Luke 6 and verse 40, a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. We are called Christians because we are to be like our Savior, our Lord, our master, and our teacher. We're to be like Jesus. We're to respond the way Jesus responded. We're to pray with the way Jesus prayed. Notice when Jesus prayed, where'd he pray? He often went to mountaintops, to lonely places, out in the desert, far away from people, even the garden get salmon. He took his friends close by, but he still went a stone's throw away. He still went alone to be with God. Why? Because he desired most of all for his father's love and his father's communion in those moments. We are called Christians because we are to be like our savior, our Lord and our master. Jesus taught us to pray so that we would be like him enjoying the same intimate communion that he had with his father. He wants us to have it as well. Therefore, since we must not like be like the hypocrites and the opposite must be true for us, we must pray in sincerity. We must pray sincerely. Listen to what John Bunyan said again. He said part of the exercise of prayer is sincerity. being sincere in the things that you ask for, without which God looks not upon it as prayer in a good sense. In other words, without prayer, God does not receive insincere prayers. You offer a half-hearted prayer to God, you're talking to the ceiling. God's not listening. God wants us to pray with all our hearts. Listen to what Jeremiah 29 says. He says, then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me. Listen, when you seek me with all your heart. What God wants from us is sincere prayer, is prayer that's poured out, that just exposes everything. Remember what Bunyan said, I think it was, back in the beginning? It's the pouring out of all of our heart and our soul to God, getting on our faces before God, either literally or physically, and pouring out everything in our hearts. If we're angry at God, there are time when to say, listen, I feel angry, and express that out to God. Be real when we pour it out with all our hearts before the living God. That's what he wants. You think that's, I'm joking, read the Psalms. Listen to some of the ways the psalmist speaks to God. You think, wow, it's almost disrespectful, but the psalmist in pouring out his heart and God inspired him by the power of the Holy Spirit to write those words and record them in Holy Scripture for us to see and realize that what God wants from us is to be absolutely sincere and real. In Hosea 7, 14, we have the exact opposite of Jeremiah 29. He says, They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds for grain and wine. They gash themselves. They rebel against me. That prayer is not in sincerity, but it's a pretense. It's hypocrisy. To pray in sincerity is to pray with the whole heart. To pour it out before God. By the way. How much does God know about you? Everything. Who said it? Good on you. Everything. How much do you know about yourself? As much as God or a little less than what God knows? A little less. God knows more about you than you know about yourself. So if you go on your heart before God and think, well, I'll say this to God because that's what he wants to hear, and it's not really what I think, but it's what God wants to hear. Does God know that that's not a sincere prayer? Absolutely. How do you impress God? God doesn't look down and say, oh wow, there's Leah. Wow, that's so impressive. Look at the way she's praying. Sorry Leah, I didn't mean to pick on you. He can't impress God because God sees right through the words and right through what's coming out of your mouth. He sees right down to the depths of your heart that not even you can see. And he knows what's sincere and what's real. He knows what's driven by faith and love. He knows what's just words offered in random spattering out words, rattling them off. And God desires from our hearts to be sincere in prayer, to pray in sincerity, to pray with the whole heart, to pray in absolute honesty before God. You get the Psalms again, you'll see how brutally honest they are with God when they pray. So prayer is based, number one, in relationship with our Heavenly Father. It's based, it's a, sorry. Prayer is a commanded privilege of the disciple's life. Prayer is to be in sincerity, not hypocrisy. Somehow in my notes, I got those two reversed, so my note actually says, prayer is to be in hypocrisy, not sincerity, but that's not it at all. It's actually, prayer is to be in sincerity, not hypocrisy. God wants us to be sincere. Fourthly, prayer is a rewarded discipline of the Christian life. Jesus promises no reward from our Heavenly Father for hypocritical practices of righteousness. That's 6 in verse 1. But in verse 2, verse 5, and verse 16, Jesus promised that hypocrites have received their rewards. The hypocrites, they get something. They just get the praise of men, which is here today and gone tomorrow. But in verse 4, verse 6, and verse 18, Jesus promises us this, that our Father will reward us for the genuine practices of righteousness. In our case, it's prayer. God will reward our prayer. But check this out. The reward is not because God owes you anything. You don't think, well, you know what, I'll pray for two hours, and that way God will have to answer my prayer. You just put God into a contract, and nobody puts God into a contract. God initiates covenant arrangements, but you can't force God's hand. You know, if I fast all day today and tomorrow, and you know, if I don't watch TV, and if I don't read any other books, I just read the Bible, and you know, if I pray for two hours, then God will have to answer my prayer. No. God doesn't have to answer your prayer. The beautiful thing is that God promises to answer your prayer, and God does reward prayer. Well, what are those rewards? It's worth looking at. God does answer our prayer. In Isaiah 65 and verse 24, this is what it says. Before they call, I will answer. While they're yet speaking, I will hear. Isn't that cool? when you're still praying in sincerity of heart, asking for those things according to the promises of Scripture, according to what the Word of God said. God is already answering those prayers. He's already bringing them back to you. And He does that because God is omniscient. He knows everything. Listen to what it says. This is A.W. Pink. He said this, God knows everything possible. everything actual, all events, and all creatures of the past, the present, and the future. He is perfectly acquainted with every detail in the life of every being in heaven, in earth, and in hell. Nothing escapes His notice, nothing can be hidden from Him, nothing is forgotten by Him. Isn't that incredible? God's knowledge is absolutely infinite. He knows all things possible and all things actual. He knows every event. He knows every person, every detail. The Bible says He doesn't forget. He chooses, in regards to our sins, not to remember them. But He doesn't forget like an old man that kind of goes, oh, yeah, I forgot about this or that other thing, right? No, God chooses not to remember those things, but God's knowledge is absolutely perfect and infinite. That's why we can pray, that's why we can pray and God can answer while we're still speaking. Now God often, not always, He waits to hear us ask Him before He supplies. There are promises that God made us in scripture that we can claim. I'm not talking about prosperity gospel, don't think for a second that's what I mean. What I mean is going into scripture and looking at the promises God made us, we can claim those. And there are things that God longs to give us and he's simply waiting for us to ask him because when we ask in faith and he answers that prayer that's a response to our faith, it builds and increases our faith. At the same time, sometimes God waits. for a period of time before he answers the prayer that we've already made. You say, why would God do that? Well, the same reason. God is building our faith. Who here, just this little side note, who here has a prayer journal? I've got one. Can I make an incursion to y'all? Go out, get one of those little notebooks, a little elastic thing, one that they call, little black notebook or a little blue or pink or whatever color you want. And in there, make columns, the dates that you asked, the prayer item, and then the date that God answered it. I had the incredible thrill this week of answering, saying three prayers that were answered. Put the date down and gave thanks to God. I could see when I began to pray and when I finished. I've only been doing it for a month or two. But I tell you something, it was such a joy to look down, as I go through my list the next day and come across, oh, I don't have to pray for many's job anymore. Man, he's got a job praise the Lord. I don't have to put my brother in case somebody didn't know all the charges against him were were dismissed and reversed. And I got to sit down and give thanks to God and tick that off my prayer list that God answered that prayer. And sometimes God makes us wait before he answers prayer because he's building faith in us. George Mueller, you heard that name? The famous guy with the orphanages back in the 1800s? He prayed for 19 years for a man to get saved. And I believe the story goes the man got saved that is at George Mueller's funeral message. And he got saved. God answered his prayer. For years, sometimes we pray and we pray and we pray, we wonder why God waits, but God does answer prayer. God rewards by answering prayers in his omniscience. In Jeremiah 29, verse 12, you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. God rewards by hearing sincere, heartfelt prayers. God hears you. Even though at times you may think, does God even hear us? Is God interested? The promise of scripture is that God does hear us when we pray. In Hebrews 11, verse six, it says this, without faith, it's impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. God rewards by answering the diligent prayer of those who seek God. How quickly do we promise to pray for something? And we pray for a day, maybe two days, maybe a week. And then we, oh, I guess the answer is no. We just kind of leave off. Remember the parable about the Luke 18, about the persistent widow who persistently badgered the judge to get what she wanted. And finally she got what she wanted because she would not give up. And she was persistent in her prayer life. Listen. Sister, you've been praying for months, even years, for something in your life. God hears you. He has not forgotten. Keep praying. He will show you His answer. Not only does God answer prayer, he also gives us infinitely more than just what we ask for. In Ephesians 3.20, you probably know this verse, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church. Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 7. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Not gonna be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. And the one who seeks finds. And to one who knocks, it will be opened. Listen to verse 11. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? And I thought for years that ask and seek and knock were synonyms. They're actually stages or progressions that the believer experiences in the practice of prayer. We ask for things in accordance with God's will, in accordance with the promises of scripture, in accordance with what God wants us to have and God delights to give us. in his own time, the things that we need, the things he wants us to have, but we're also to seek. He says, ask and seek and knock, right? So seek is a second thing. And it has a connotation of seeking God's face, to seeking the relationship. When we seek God, we come to know God. So prayer isn't just about getting the things that we want or that God wants to give us, the things that we need. It's about building a relationship. Prayer is based on a relationship with the Father. And in seeking God, we get to know him and spend time with him and build that relationship up. We also, we knock, right? He says, I seek and knock. Knock has the idea of knocking on a door so you can come in and the door is closed. And there's fellowship between God and man. That's what God wants for us. He could give us all the gold in Fort Knox like that. He could solve every problem in this room without twitching. He could meet every need. It could solve every problem. He could fix every difficulty, whatever it is you're facing. But you know what God wants from us and wants with us more than just to give us all the things that we want or need and could ask for? He wants an intimate relationship, a fellowship with himself. That's what God wants with us, to build that relationship. And God answers prayer. Sometimes it takes years, and sometimes it takes seconds, and sometimes the prayer answered is before you even finish praying for it. Like when we were praying about the space to have a church way back, and I was praying about the other building, and literally the email was being written as I'm praying to tell me that the room was available, and God was already answering a prayer before I'd even finished praying for it. It happens. We ask and we seek and we knock. Prayer is infinitely more about getting the things I want. Prayer is about a relationship, developing a deeper relationship. It's also about fellowship with God. God also gives us peace in prayer. Not always the things we ask for, but God does give us peace that gets us through. In Philippians 4, it says this, the Lord is at hand. 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. God, our Heavenly Father, rewards our prayers. Prayer is about God. It's all about Him. It's not about us. We have to get a hold of that. Number five, the last one. Prayer begins in private. Look what Jesus says in verse six. He says, 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. Jesus' first positive command, he says, don't like the hypocrites, first of all. And now in a positive sense, he says, regarding prayer, that it must be the practice of private prayer comes first. It's also the example of some of the great saints of God in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Abraham, alone at night, prayed with God regarding the promised child. And God said, look up in the sky, Abraham. And before the cities were around, can you imagine being out in the Middle East on a clear night when there was no cities and no electric lights, nothing but just firelight, and Abraham walks out of his tent in the night air and he looks up at the stars. He would have had the most incredible view of the stars, unobscured by any pollution or anything like that. And God says, go ahead and count them, Abraham. And they're alone with God face-to-face. God and Abraham, he sees the promise of God and the stars above him, but he's alone with God. It's Jacob. Remember Jacob's story? He's going to meet Esau. He has all these flocks and herds and camels and sheep and goats and wives and maids or whatever they were, and all these kids, and he keeps sending them off in waves ahead of him. 400 sheep this way, and 400 goats that way, and 400 camels, and he sends them off, and he takes his family, he breaks his family into parts, he sends them all away. And when Jacob is totally alone by himself, a man comes to meet with him, and Jacob wrestles with that man all night long. Paul Washer asked us a great question at the conference. He said, how many of us as pastors and teachers have spent the night wrestling with God to know God's will for our church and our ministry and people in our church? That's a very convicting question. How many of us, as the people of God, have spent a night alone wrestling with God? Jacob wrestled all night long with God. And he would not, like the man said, let me go for daylight is coming. And Jacob said, no, I won't let you go until you bless me. And there's a great promise, a great truth in that statement. How many of us have laid hold of God and said, I want this, I need this for my life. Father, I believe that you want to give it to me and I've hung on to God and clung to God and pleading that God would bless us with whatever it is. And you know what? God delights to answer those prayers too. That widow, she was persistent. She would not give up. Jacob would not give up until God had blessed him. My question, It was Daniel too, you know, he went to his upper room, not his inner room, but his upper room, and he prayed regularly alone with God, and finally the greatest example of all is Jesus himself, when he goes alone with God into the Garden of Gethsemane, and there he prays in a great agony, and he wrestles with the Father, if you like. The question must be asked, why do we begin with solitary prayer? Why not start with group prayer? Wouldn't that be easier? And the answer hits at the heart of the matter. But when we come together to pray as a group like this, there's always the temptation to pray so as to be heard by other men, right? We use the longest, fanciest word. We use all the eloquence that we can summarize. Why? Because God needs eloquence? No, but we are somewhat attuned to what other men are thinking when we're praying. We're sinful men. That comes into it. When we come together to pray, there's a further temptation to spend more time talking with each other than with God. It happens, right? We're all guilty of that. We get together for a prayer meeting, and we spend 95 minutes discussing the prayer requests and five minutes actually praying about them. But you know what? When you come to be by yourself and come face to face with God all alone, we come with the intention of meeting with God. We come with a desire to be heard by our Father and Him alone. We come unnoticed by men. Look what he says. You shut the door. Why? So you're totally sealed in with God so that there's just you and God and none can see what you're doing. We come to be noticed and seen by one person and one alone. We come to be face-to-face with our Heavenly Father. And you know what, as I thought about this all through the week and just kind of batted around how to explain this and how to expand on it, the one picture that came back over and over again is the Old Testament tabernacle. So if I can take a little bit of a detour, I'll bring it back in a minute, but it's like this. Imagine a tabernacle building, you know, it's got the great big courtyard and the tabernacle building itself inside. And in that courtyard, outside the actual building, the tabernacle is the world. They're unbelieving and they're separated from God. They're oblivious to all the beauties of the glories inside that tabernacle. And inside the tabernacle, the holy place, it's called, is the work of ministry. There is a lampstand on one side. and it's constantly filled with oil, and the wicks need constant attention and trimming, and the lampstand reminds us of the work of the Holy Spirit shining forth the Word of God, enlightening up the whole interior. In case you didn't know, the tabernacle on the inside had boards that were overlaid with pure gold lining up, and they went about 15 feet up, which is what five meters up to the ceiling, and the whole surface is overlaid with gold, and the lights of that candle would have reflected and flickered and glowed over the entire inside of that beautiful... It would have been incredibly beautiful to see that. But those lamps need constant filling with oil, and the wicks need trimming, and it has to be kept burning nicely, and the table on one side has all these loaves of bread, 12 loaves of bread. And those loaves of bread were eaten by the priest and replaced, and eaten by the priest and replaced. And it was a constant work of replacing and replenishing those piles of loaves of bread. And it all speaks about the communion that God has with man, as man and God eat together in the presence of a living God. And then finally there's the altar of incense, and it's right in the center of that holy place. And it's right opposite the Ark of the Covenant, but the Ark of the Covenant is separated by a veil. You remember the story of Zachariah, right? Zachariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist's parents. Zachariah is chosen by lot. He gets that supreme privilege once in his lifetime, not as a high priest, but as a regular priest to go into the temple then and to offer the altar of incense and to burn incense on that altar. And he would go in there and he'd take all this the coals, and he would spread the coals over the whole surface of the altar, and he'd take handfuls of incense, and as he would pray, he would crumble this incense over those coals, and the smoke of that incense would rise up before God. And it speaks of prayer rising up. And outside the temple, all the people of God, they're listening, they know what's happening inside, and they're praying outside, and Zechariah is praying inside. But when you went through that veil, Once a year, high priest by himself and not without blood, there inside the holiest place of all is the Ark of the Covenant. And the Ark of the Covenant sits there in this great big gold slab on top of it, and angels hammer out the gold slab standing above it, and their wings are all spread out wingtip to wingtip. And right over top of that middle space, the Shekinah of God's glory, it's the effulgence of God's presence sits on that mercy seat. It's the only seat in all of the whole building, and there God's glory rests. And Moses has promised something incredibly important. God said to Moses, when you build that tabernacle there above the mercy seat, I will meet with you. You know the story? Moses comes down the mountain, and he goes way off from the camp of Israel at first, and he builds a tent. And it's a tent of meeting. And Moses goes into the tent, and he communes with God as a man, and communes with his friend face-to-face, Moses and God speaking to each other. And what got through my head as I was thinking about what he said, when he said, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father, who sees in secret, is simply this. The Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, has gone behind the veil with his blood. For once and forever, the blood of the lamb has been sprinkled on that mercy seat. We often think about the Ark of the Covenant like a beautiful gold box. It would have been covered in blood. dried blood from thousands of sprinklings of blood on that box. And Jesus went once for all in the presence of his father and his blood was given as an offering for our sin. And you know what the point of the whole thing is this? The reason for a long sidetrack is this, when Jesus commanded and taught us, his disciples, to go into our closet and shut the door and pray to our father who sees us in secret, he's telling us that our father in heaven welcomes us into his very holy presence. The same infinitely holy presence that rested behind the veil in the Holy of Holies, that's there. We have the unspeakable privilege of solitary fellowship with the God of the universe that the Holy of Holies, once guarded by a veil, accessible only through blood, only by a high priest, and only once a year, now can be entered into any time we want. All of us have the freedom and the privilege to go behind the veil, if you like, and enter into that space with God and be alone with God and commune with God as a man communes with his friend. We have the same privilege as Moses did. And Jesus said, When you pray, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. The practice of our righteousness in prayer, it starts. It must start with private prayer in the very throne room of God, because that that place there is where we develop the intimacy of God with men. You want to know the Lord? Really know him. That's where it happens. face-to-face with God in a private place like that, pouring out your heart before God. It's there, face-to-face with God, that we hear Him speak. It's there, face-to-face with God, we can pour out the very depths of our soul into the hands of our Heavenly Father, and we can know, really know, that we are heard. We can receive the peace that's beyond our understanding. People of God, what's stopping us? Man of God, Why are you? Why am I so slow to go in and speak with our heavenly father? I can't remember who I was. I was reading and he said that he was so slow to go in for unexplainable reason. But once he got there and he began to commune with God and there was that fellowship that was building that relationship with God in that private place, he was so slow to leave. Once he got in there, he didn't want to get out again. Woman of God, why are you so slow to enter that wonderful place? Remember Susanna Wesley? So you heard about him a couple weeks ago, Susanna Wesley, who would, with her, what, 12 kids or something like that? And she would sit in her kitchen and she would take her long apron and she would pull it up over her head like this. And her children were taught, when mom sits on her chair with her apron over her head like that, you don't interrupt mom because she's praying. And they were reminded with the wooden spoon that they were not to interrupt her. And in a neat sense, it's cool, isn't it? She went behind the veil. In a really cool sense, she put that apron over her head. And there she would speak with God and she would wrestle with God and she would pray for every one of her children, her husband who was away preaching. Woman of God, why are you so slow? Why am I so slow? Young people, little kids, Kaylee and Rachel and Jamie and Savannah, you know, little sorry, Savannah and Emmy and all of you. Listen. God, your heavenly father delights to hear you pray. You go with mommy and daddy in your room at nighttime and you get down your knees to pray, you know, God hears you. I promise you. Jesus loved to have the little children come close to him that he might bless them. And he heard them pray. He will not send you away, little one, young believer, you knew in your faith in Christ, it feels like you don't have the right kind of words to say, you know how to get things out, it just seems kind of awkward and stunted. And and you know what to say, listen, God knows the thoughts and intents of your heart. And he speaks the language of your heart and the love for him. Go into your closet and pray. You see, I don't even know how to start praying. That's a good thing to tell the Father. Lord, I'm here. I want to pray. I just don't know how to start. Lots of practical helps for that. Pick up the Psalms and read the Psalms and turn the expressions of the Psalms into prayers as you respond to God in those moments. Pour out your heart and soul in His presence and He will give you peace beyond all understanding. So what is prayer? Firstly, prayer is based on a relationship with our Heavenly Father. Secondly, prayer is a commanded privilege of the Christian life. Thirdly, prayer is a rewarded discipline of the Christian life. God rewards us by hearing us when we pray. God rewards us by answering our prayers, our diligent, persistent prayer, and God delays His answers sometimes to build our faith. How do we pray? Two answers among many, many answers to that question. We pray, number one, in sincerity, not hypocrisy. And number two, we pray, we begin with private prayer. In your closet, your room, your car, your office, as you walk along the road, as you go for a walk in the woods, if that's what you want to do, whenever you're alone with God, you can shut out the world and there you can speak with God face to face. Pray to your heavenly father who sees in secret and he will hear and reward you. I'm gonna just take a few minutes. I wanna invite the guys if you'd like to, some of the men to stand up and just lead us as a church in prayer. And then when we're done that, Wes is gonna lead us in one more song and we'll have communion after that.