We're going to be looking today at Matthew, chapter 6, verses 5 through 15. Matthew is the first book of the New Testament. I want you to open it up there, keep your Bible open through the morning, as we study together God's Word. And today I'm starting a new sermon series. If you've read my weekly update, you know that we're going to be talking, and John mentioned it in his prayer as well, about prayer for the next several weeks. Very, very, very important. Matthew 6, beginning of verse 5, just hold your place open. And let me ask you first before we read the Word of God to imagine two different people. Let's call them Person A and Person B. Person A, well both of them know the Lord. Both of them are Christians, both of them believe the Gospel. Both of them have had their sins forgiven. They are trusting in Christ. They're seeking to be used by God in the world and all of that, both Person A and Person B. Person A is someone who really loves to pray. Prayer is very, very important to Person A. So important that he can hardly imagine a day going by without prayer. Prayer for this person is the first resort when he faces various challenges. When he looks at problems in his life, when he sees needs around him, he thinks instinctively of prayer. He prays often. He doesn't necessarily pray long prayers. They're not necessarily eloquent prayers, but Person A really does sort of reflexively pray throughout the day. He prays for neighbors. He prays even for countries. He prays for his own country, for his own family. He even keeps a journal of prayer and notes it when answers to prayer come along. So long story short, Person A values prayer very much. It's a very important and vital part of his life. Person B, also a Christian, loves God, knows he's forgiven but has a hard time with prayer. In fact, Person B is just about ready to give up on prayer altogether. He gets very ashamed and embarrassed about himself when he prays. He knows his words are not right. And so he consequently has concluded a long time ago that God really doesn't value his prayers or listen to his prayers very much. When he tries to pray, it feels unnatural. It feels forced. It feels regimented. When Person B thinks about prayer, he thinks of it as a requirement of the Christian life rather than a gift of the Christian life. And so he's very frustrated. He feels pretty guilty actually. And the more he tries to pray and feels inadequate in prayer, the guiltier he gets and the less he wants to go to God in prayer. So he feels very defeated. He worries about a lot of things too. Because he doesn't really think that prayer matters very much to God. Long story short, Person B is intimidated by prayer. It's not an area of victory. It's an area of defeat. Definitely not a vital part of his life. Now you can change the pronoun from he to she if you wish. Which person do you resemble more? I'll ask it this way. Do you pray? Do you pray often? And do you enjoy prayer when you pray? I wouldn't be surprised if for a lot of us the answer is no. I don't enjoy it that much. And it's not an area that I really value. If you were to look at my time spent in prayer, many of us would say it's not a real priority. I'll be honest with you, there have been seasons in my life when my answer was I would be more like Person B. So for the next four weeks, we're going to think together about prayer. And I want to make it as practical as possible because John even hinted at this when he was praying. I think if we took a survey here, everybody would say we know a lot about prayer. I've preached about prayer a lot. We've read books on prayer. We know we've been told we've been lectured. You've got to pray. So what I want to do is be practical in this series. And I'm asking God to help us move from the Person B slot closer to the Person A slot. To be people who love prayer, who do it as a reflex instinctively throughout the day, we value prayer. Why is this important? Why is this important that we talk and think together about prayer? Well, for one thing, the scriptures teach us often that we should pray. Colossians 4-2 says devote yourselves to prayer. That is make it a habit, make it a regular, important part of your life. The first Thessalonians 5-17 says to pray continually. And the Bible tells us to pray for a good reason. For example, right here in Matthew 7, we're not going to look at 7. We're going to look at 6. But in Matthew 7-7, a very familiar verse of the Bible asks and it will be what? You'll find knock and the door will be open to you. What a great promise. James 4 verse 2, several of our staff just finished a series on James, right? And I don't remember if you looked at this one, but James 4-2 says you don't have because you don't ask God. So for these reasons, if for none other, we should be thinking and talking and challenging and encouraging each other about prayer. Look at what John Piper said one time. This is a powerful thought. Look at what he says. He says prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if you didn't pray. Now we're reformed and we believe that God has a sovereign will that will indeed come to pass. But friends, this is what the Bible teaches too. Not just Piper. Prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if you didn't pray. If you do not avail yourself of the privilege of bringing to pass events in the universe that would not take place if you didn't pray in his typical tactful way. Piper says you're acting like a colossal fool. Do you get what he's trying to say? Prayers cause things to happen that wouldn't happen if you didn't pray. And in light of that, why aren't we men and women and boys and girls of prayer? Not to pray is to miss one of the greatest blessings of the children of God. Here's where we're going for the next four weeks. I'm going to take us through parts of Matthew six. We're not going to look at it all the way through but most of it. And over the next four weeks, I want you to leave here each Sunday from church with another reason why some Christians and maybe you are intimidated or struggle with prayer. Today, we're going to look at reason number one. Why do some of us struggle with prayer? Why is it hard? Why is it a duty rather than a delight? Today, I want to say that if you're a follower of Jesus and you're not praying or not praying very often or prayer is a source of angst and embarrassment, it might be because your God is too distant. That's reason number one. We're going to look at today. It might be because your God, your concept of God, let's put it that way. Your view of God is that he's way too far off, way too distant. So with that in mind, let's look at Matthew six beginning in verse five. Jesus, this is part of the sermon on the Mount. He's talking to his disciples and he says, and when you pray, notice he doesn't say, and if you pray, but when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full, but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, don't keep on babbling like pagans for they think that they'll be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them for your father. Know what you need before you ask him. This then is how you should pray. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. This is God's word. This passage says to all followers of Jesus. No matter who they are, no matter how many times they mess up, this passage of God's word says God loves you and he loves to hear your voice. How can I convince you of that? I can show you I hope three things today from this passage. First I want to show you that God's your father. Secondly that your prayers matter to him and thirdly that the greatest proof of that is Jesus. So let's dive in. First of all, we're talking about people who struggle with prayer and feel that God is too distant. So the first thing we learn from this passage is that if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, God is your father. Six times in this passage that I read Jesus refers to God as your father, verse six, verse eight and of course, verse nine, we said it earlier today when we recited the Lord's Prayer that says our father, our father in heaven, how would be your name? And there are other times too. Six times in this text, God is your father. Now for a lot of us, this truth is so familiar that it's lost, it's luster, right? I mean, you know if you've been a Christian for any length of time at all, you know that you're supposed to look at God as your father. But for the disciples of Jesus who were listening to him speaking at this sermon on the mount, the idea of God being our father was absolutely stunning. God is called father fewer than 10 times in the whole Old Testament. That's interesting, isn't it? In the whole Old Testament, 39 books, God is called your father less than fewer than 10 times. But in the New Testament, once you cross over into the New Covenant, we might say it's over 250 times. I counted them yesterday in my concordants. God is your father. See, under the Old Covenant, the message to people over and over again was don't come too close to God. Do you remember when God gave the law to Moses on Mount Sinai? And he said, Moses, you tell those people to stay away. Don't come too close to the mountain or my wrath will burst out of them and kill them. But under the New Covenant, the emphasis changes. In fact, if you read the book of Hebrews, the author of that book takes such good care to contrast the old covenant with the New Covenant. And one of the things he says about the New Covenant is that the emphasis is drawing near in Hebrews 10, for example, it says, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith. Paul in Galatians 3.26 says that you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. You're not just his servant. You're not just a follower of God. You're a son or a daughter of God. He's your father over in Romans 8. He says, you've received the spirit of sonship. And by him, we cry. Abba. It's a baby's cry. I've got a couple of little grandchildren under one year of age. And the first thing out of their mouth probably is going to be dada or something like that. Babies usually love daddy's more, right? I better not say that. But Abba is is Aramaic for daddy. It's just a baby's cry to his or her father. See, in the New Testament, God's the same holy God that he ever was. But now more than ever, he invites people to come close to him to draw near to him, to touch him, to talk to him. He was so close that he became one of us. So what does a good father do? He helps his kids. He teaches his kids. He encourages his kids. He disciplines his kids. And those are the things that God does for his children. So, look, prayer is simple. It's just the conversation of a child to his or her father in heaven. It's a child asking his or her father for help. I love how the Westminster can shorter confed the Westminster shorter catechism is one of the documents that we Presbyterians hold dear. There's a question in there. It says, what is prayer? Notice the answer. Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God. It's simple isn't it? An offering up of our desires to God for things agreeable to his will in the name of Christ with confession of sins and acknowledgement of his mercies. But the element I want you to catch there is that prayer is telling God what we want. Isn't that what children do with their daddies? Good daddies. Give their children what they desire. That's what prayer is. Help me father. It's too much for me. Show me what to do father daddy. I need to know how to talk to this person. So, give me strength to say no to sin today. See, if you're a follower of Jesus, that's the way you talk to God. And some of you aren't doing it. And the reason might be because you don't really get it that Jesus is your brother and God is your father. Some of you feel and live like an orphan. You're going to hear more about the Mexico trip. But let me just tell you one thing that really struck me when I was in Mexico in this little village. It was called Kintana Roo. And there were dozens and dozens of children walking around. And we invited them. They came to a vacation Bible school program that we did. And it was really striking to me how few daddies were to be seen. At all. The fathers, the men that we saw in Kintana, were generally sitting around doing nothing back in their house or out in the street talking with some other guy, very disconnected from their children. And I looked around the circle of these kids. At one time we had counted 80 children. And there were a bunch of moms sitting around delightful women carrying the weight of their family and not a daddy anywhere. And they weren't at jobs because they don't work as far as their fathers were concerned. They were orphans. And then what was so cool. This was a family mission trip, right? And there were dads there like J. Roby and Vic Godleski and David Bradley. And it was so striking to see these men with their kids. Many times I would just catch their daddy walking down the street, arm around the shoulder of their son or daughter. Just talking. Just hanging out. That's what we have the privilege of as followers of Jesus. God's our father. First John 3.1 says, how great is the love the father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. The father embraces you. Listen. The father embraces you with the same affection with which he embraces his own son, Jesus Christ. Prayer then is your legal right as a son or daughter of God. Get that in here. Get that in here. And your prayer life will never be the same. So the first thing we're seeing that if God is too distant for you, you need to know that God is your father. The second thing I want to remind you about is that if God is your father, your prayers matter to him. If God is your father, your prayers matter to him. Look at verse 6 with me in our text. Verse 6 says, when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Notice it says to go into your room. Now that word for room, it's a unique Greek word that talks about not just any room in a house, but an interior room with no windows or room that's inside the house and doesn't have any windows so that when you go in this room, you're shut up with God. God says he wants you to be shut up with him. Just you and him. He welcomes you into his presence in prayer. And this is where your faith in the gospel has to kick in. I know how it is for some of us and I'm exhibited. We sit down and we get ready to pray and all of a sudden we start thinking about how unworthy we are. Can anybody identify with that? How you've failed God, how you don't love God enough, how you've just sinned not long ago, how you don't tell others about Jesus enough, how you've given into temptation recently. And all of these thoughts come into your head and you just think you are just a total scumbag in the eyes of God. Couldn't get any lower than you. Some of you have had that experience in prayer. Some of you, that's your only experience in prayer. And that's why it's so difficult to pray, but the gospel says you've been adopted by God into his family. Your royalty, you're justified by faith in Christ, you're a son or daughter of God. You've been washed in the blood of Jesus. You've been pronounced clean and righteous, filled with the Holy Spirit. You know what? You are an absolute delight to your father. He can't wait to talk with you. My wife and I got a thank you card after our family vacation from my three grandchildren in Mississippi. And they found this card that when you open it, I guess, you can record your voices on it. You ever seen these? And so this card had the voices of Tyler, Evan and Tate. We opened it up and each of the three grandkids that we love so much just thanked us. I open that card all the time because they are a long way away from me, but I love to hear their voices as how God feels about you. He opens that card all the time. That's your prayer. See? So when you pray, when you pray, you're open in your card. And God just loves it. See, do you realize this is how God feels about you? Look at Zeff and I, a 317, a verse that many of us have memorized because it's so, it's so precious. The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. Do you believe that? It's true. He takes great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. That's how God feels about you, beloved. All the time, even when you have failed him, even when you don't feel like being with him, he feels like being with you because he's a welcoming God. I want you to remember that phrase that God is a welcoming God toward his children. He is for you. He wants to be your partner in the challenges and the problems that you face. He wants you to unload on him. We carried buckets of cement up to the top of roofs and poured cement over these roofs that we made down in Mexico. And as we lifted the load of cement up to the guy on top, we were able to let it go. And that's what God wants you to do in prayer. Unload on him. Lift up that heavy burden and let it go because he cares about you. Depend on him because your prayers matter very, very much to your Heavenly Father. Do you need proof? Do you need proof of these two truths that we've talked about that God is your Father and that your prayers matter to him? Jesus is the proof. Jesus is the foundation of prayer. Let's talk about that for a few minutes as we get ready to close. See, the issue in Matthew 6, and I didn't tell you this earlier, but I'm telling it now, the issue in Matthew 6 boils down to what makes you right, quote unquote. You see, everybody in the world is trying to get right. Now, they may not say it that way, but it's true. Every single human being you are going to see this week is trying to make it right. Either he's trying to get right internally with him or herself or get right with other people, establish a righteousness that is with others in the eyes of others. Or at the deepest level, people are trying to get right with God, even the God that they hate. They really have this deep down need to be or be found right. And in this chapter, Jesus says that a ton of people turn to religion to establish their righteousness. Let me show you what I mean. In verses 1 through 4, I didn't read this passage. But in the opening verses of chapter 6, Jesus is talking about these religious people who try to get right by letting other people see how generous they are. So it says in verse 1, that they do their acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them. They give money to the needy. And verse 2 says that they announce it with trumpets so that people will admire and honor them. You see that? And then in verse 5, which I did read, Jesus says that some religious people try to get righteousness by letting other people know how well they pray. And so they love Jesus as they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. And in verse 7, he says that other people get right quote unquote by babbling like pagans in prayer. They repeat things over and over again, Jesus says, for they think that they'll be heard because of their many words. And then in the next section, verses 16 through 18, which again, I did not read, Jesus goes on to talk about some people who get right by letting other people know that they're fasting. So they put on long faces and they act tired and bedraggled so that people will know that they aren't eating any food. In other words, do you see that all of these verses are sort of tied together by one theme? And that theme is that many people try to find acceptance with God or happiness or fulfillment in life or a place in this world through some kind of self-salvation program, by self effort, by working for it in some way, by achieving a reputation, by looking good before other people. So now let's bring this back to what we were talking about. Do you feel that way about prayer? Maybe you think that you have to do something or be something special for your prayers to count. Maybe you have to feel a special closeness to God or some ecstatic emotion or else God is not going to listen to you. Or maybe you have to pray. Maybe you think you have to pray for a certain length of time. I was exposed to that teaching when I was a brand new baby Christian that if you don't pray for half an hour, you haven't really prayed. Maybe you feel that way. Or maybe you think you have to use a certain pattern for prayer or use just the right words or else your prayers are not legit. What is Jesus teaching us in this chapter? He's saying that any effort to achieve salvation on your own or to win God's approval on your own or to base your standing with God on building a record of your own is fruitless. All these people he's talking about in this chapter have already received their reward he says in other words they may get human recognition. They may get you know on the front page of people magazine or something like that but they don't get God's recognition because God rewards people on a totally different basis. Look at verse 12 you'll find out what the basis is in verse 12 part of the Lord's prayer is forgive us our debts. You see how different that is that different ethic that different way to be accepted by God is not by being somebody it's by being forgiven by grace. See the gospel says that you're in incredible debt to God and your only hope is that God will graciously wipe away your debts. He did that at the cross. You are accepted by God not because of what you do but because of what Jesus did for you. Nothing in my hand I bring simply to what I cross I clean. So righteousness is something that God freely gives you. He freely and graciously bestows it upon you his child and nothing will ever happen to diminish your rightness. If you've put your faith in trust in Jesus you are accepted and you are forgiven not because you love God but because God loves you. And if you will simply get hold of that you'll pray like you've never prayed before prayer will become a blessing not a burden it will become a delight not a duty. So let me leave you with some practical suggestions I'm going to go through these really fast five things I want you to take away today and hopefully one more maybe more of them will help you first suggestion based on all what we've talked about is in prayer talk to God and call him father. Maybe some of you think of him as Lord or God or maybe you say Jesus or something like that call him father he's your father he's your daddy sometimes I'll say Abba help me. Secondly before you pray think about one of the promises of God and it will help you to think of God as not distant but close. For example here's one in Ephesians chapter three it says in Christ and through faith in Christ we may approach God with freedom and confidence. Why not meditate on that for a few moments before you start talking to God because it'll encourage you to know that he's close. Thirdly tell God what you want don't hold back. Fourth ask somebody to pray for your praying have you ever thought of that ask a friend say friend I'm working on prayer I could use your prayers and fifth and finally don't judge the effectiveness of your prayers by your feelings. You know just because you don't feel this ecstatic closeness to the Lord doesn't mean he's not close and some of us get off on that because we don't feel right and so we let those bad feelings keep us away from prayer. Do you feel an ecstatic emotion every time you talk to a friend probably not don't expect to have it all the time when you're talking to God. Instead of trusting your feelings believe the gospel God is your father Jesus is your brother listen your prayers matter to God because you do let's pray father maybe there's someone here today who wonders if he or she is your child. And I would simply pray first for that person who may wonder if you are his or her father Lord would you come into that person's life may that person today acknowledge that he's a sinner that she needs Jesus Lord I pray that today that person will go home and ask you for the very first time in his or her life to come into his life her life in a real way. So that this person can know that you are our father and for everyone else Lord I pray that we will begin to experience prayer in some new ways we pray that Lord you will remind us of your fatherly love and closeness help us to believe the gospel when we pray and to know that we are dear to you because you've adopted us into your family and we ask this in Jesus name Amen. Amen.