I am excited to bring the Word of God to you this morning. We're beginning a new series on prayer. It is in one sense a continuation on the series from Luke's Gospel. When we got to chapter 11 of Luke's Gospel, we passed over that teaching of our Lord Jesus on prayer, which we commonly call the Lord's Prayer, and it's teaching that on prayer that followed it, with the idea that we would take it up as a topic in the fall. And here we are. I know it's still summertime, but I bet many of you are ready for cooler temperatures, so we'll just say the fall starts now. Anyway, we will use both Matthew's Gospel, where the Lord's Prayer is found, and Luke's Gospel, where the Lord's Prayer is found, and kind of doing overlay. The Lord's Prayer is very similar. Matthew gives a somewhat extended version of that prayer, and he gives some teaching at the front end of it, whereas Luke gives a shorter version of the Lord's Prayer, and some teaching right after it. Matthew's beginning today, and through the Lord's Prayer, we'll use the extended version, and then we'll conclude the series with Luke's teaching at the end of Luke 11 after the Lord's Prayer. As we start this series, I want to call upon you veteran prayer warriors, and ask that you would be praying that God's blessing would attend this series, that God would give to each of us a spirit of prayer and supplication, that God would move in our hearts to humble ourselves before Him, that we would find His presence in such a way that our joy is evident, because in His presence is fullness of joy. The Christ would be raining in our hearts in such a way that His joy would be manifest in our lives. If you're a novice to prayer, maybe haven't really been successful in praying, maybe don't know how to pray, I want to ask that you would start with the simple prayer, God teach me how to pray. Help me to connect with you. The prayers I have been praying for us as a congregation, I have been praying about this series, and I will continue to. Some of my favorite prayers come from Ephesians and Colossians and Ephesians, Paul, praise, and I have been using this text as I pray for us. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to us a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance and the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us, who believe. I pray that Paul prayed in Ephesians 3 that He would grant to you, according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His spirit and the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints. What is the breadth and the length, the height and the depth and to know, the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up with all the fullness of God, even the voice of the Lord thunders, I am with you. Paul also prays in Colossians, and I pray for you, I pray that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. Yes, strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance and the light. As we read this morning the text from Luke's Gospel, it's chapter 6, verses 1-8, it is right in the middle of what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, a Sermon of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when Jesus gave the Sermon in some ways it was similar to the teaching or preaching of the rabbis of His day, in another way it was completely different. At the end of this Sermon Matthew tells us that when he was done preaching, when Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at his teaching for he was teaching as one having authority, and not as they're scribes. This teaching of our Lord Jesus does come with authority. He is the Lord of glory, the Lord who thunders from on high. Here what He says. Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your giving will be in secret and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner rooms, close the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do. For they suppose they will be heard for their many words, so do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. This is the middle of the sermon that Jesus gives on prayer. And as we look at it, I want to make three points. First one is that your practice of prayer is practicing righteousness. We'll look at that in a second. The second point is real righteousness prays for the right reasons or to put it shorter, although not with the R's. Motives matter. And then the third point is the right reason is relational that I may know Him. So that's what we want to look at this morning and we'll start right out with your practice of prayer is righteousness. How does that strike you? Do you know you practice righteousness? I mean, then that's what it said in verse 1. Beware of practicing your righteousness before men in order to be noticed by them. Practicing righteousness. He gives three examples. Two of them are recorded in the text I just read. The third one isn't. The first one is when you give to the poor. When you give alms. When you practice righteousness by caring for those who have not enough. And he talks about doing that. The third one is fasting. It comes in verses 16 through 18. And he says, when you fast, do it in private, not like the hypocrites who want to be observed by men. And the second one, the one we're looking at today has to do with prayer. It follows the same formula. If that bugs you, that I'm saying that prayer is practicing righteousness. Let me just tell you that in this sermon that Jesus teaches, he starts. Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your father in heaven, right? And then with alms giving or giving to the poor. He talks about doing it before men in order to be noticed by them. And if you do it that way, you have no reward with your father in heaven. He follows that same thing with prayer and with fasting, that same repetition of words. He's talking about practicing righteousness. And it's a little bit strange to us. We do not use that kind of language in our day. In fact, it's a little bit hard for us because often we hear teaching against it. There is a verse in the Old Testament where the prophet Isaiah was complaining about apostasy. There was no faith in God and he talked to them about having this empty form of religion. And he said, all your righteous deeds are as filthy rags and we take that. And we somehow confuse that we are in Christ and in Christ we are righteous. And we get confused about, well, what are our deeds? Are they righteous in God's side or are they filthy in God's side? And the scriptures talk about, blessed is the man who walks in righteousness. The psalmist will call upon God his righteousness and will call upon God's people to give sacrifices of righteousness. And Jesus's father according to the flesh, maybe it would be better said foster father and the husband of his mother Mary. Joseph was according to Matthew a righteous man. As was John the Baptist parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth. They were both righteous in the sight of God and this kind of language is used. For those who are theological, it's used in our shorter catechism. Right? Justification is what always comes to mind. Justification is an act of God's free grace whereby he pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in his sight. Only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. That's one kind of righteousness. The next one is adoption and the third question is what is sanctification. And sanctification is not an act, but it is the work of God's free grace whereby we are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness. So there's two places where we can get righteousness. And when we are righteous in and of ourselves, it's not a faith. It's the first one in the blank practicing prayer without a life of faith in Christ is not righteous. We had as our gospel reading Luke 18, Luke 18 has a teaching from our Lord on prayer. And after he taught about persevering in prayer and continuing to ask God, he tells us in verse 9. And he also told them this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. And you can usually tell those kind of people because it goes on and viewed others with contempt. And then we had that reading. Two men went up to the temple to pray when a Pharisee in the other tax collector at the Pharisee stood up and was praying to us to himself. God, I thank you that I am not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. Do you see? He is trusting in himself and looking at contempt with other people. And it goes off to tell God all his good deeds. And it's without faith and Jesus condemns it. But there is a righteousness which is by faith. We understand it taught regularly in church and PCA churches and reformed churches and biblical churches that we are righteous in Christ. And it's imputed to us in our justification that God declares us. We're righteous in a sight. It's not by what we have done. It's by Christ's righteousness only. I get that and you get that and good. But we need to see that Christ in you changes you, that Christ in you does good works, that Christ in you causes you to die more and more unto sin and to live more and more into righteousness. And so that if you have a righteousness that is trusting in yourself, that is self earned, it's we may call self-righteous. It's not righteous. We filled in those blanks already. Let's move to the other blanks and say practicing prayer by a life of faith in Christ is righteous. And the same God who sees us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us also sees us as righteous in Christ as we live our lives. And we see both, right? And God's no dummy. He sees too. The mindset on the flesh is death and the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. Romans 8 talks a lot about this. But the mindset on the spirit, all those who are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons and daughters of God by which we cry, the spirit helps our weakness because we do not know how to pray as we ought but the spirit intercedes for us with groaning is too deep for words. So even in our prayer life, it's a part of practicing righteousness. I'll quit hammering this. It's just it seems like it's so much contrary to a lot of the teaching we have today. I wanted to give some teaching to it that we are to grow in the righteousness of Christ Christ in us is to work in us the putting to death of sin and the living more and more into the righteousness of Christ. And prayer is one of those areas where we practice righteousness. It's not a prayer in and of ourselves that flows from ourselves. It is on the basis of faith. It is by faith. And I did put some verses in your Bible in your outline with this. First Peter 312, quoting the Old Testament says, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and he hears and his ears are attentive to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against all those who do evil. And then Habakkuk 2.4, this is quoted three times in the New Testament, once in Romans, once in Galatians and once in Hebrews. But here it is from Habakkuk, behold as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him. It sounds like the one who trusted in himself and viewed others with contempt, right? His soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith, practicing prayer by a life of faith in Christ as righteous. So number two, let me just ask this. So where's the faith? Where's the faith in Jesus' teaching in this Sherman? Why doesn't he come right out and say so? And my answer is he does, he just doesn't use the term faith and we'll look at it under points two and three. But he does use that word all the time. He calls us to faith, to believe, to trust all the time. And he does so in the context of prayer as well. But as he does it here, we see it in two points. First, in number two, real righteousness prays for the right reasons. In other words, when we're practicing our righteousness by faith in Christ Jesus, there's right reasons to pray and wrong reasons to pray or another way to say it is motives matter. And that comes right from our text. We'll look at that. Let me just give you the next fill in the blank. We are not to please people. That's not to be our motive. And we see that in verse five. And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites where they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, here's the motive so that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. And again, just the flow of the context that this is it. This is the main point that Jesus is getting across in this part of his sermon. Verse one, when you beware of practicing your righteousness before men, here it is, before men to be noticed by them, otherwise you have no reward with your father in heaven. Verse two, don't pray like the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets. Here it is so that they may be honored by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. We're with prayer. When you pray, I just read that. I won't read it again right now. Verse 16, it's not in our outline. But if we were to go with that third aspect of fasting. And when you fast, you are not to pray as fast as the hypocrites do. For they neglect their appearance. Here it is. So they may be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. Motive matters. We're not to be praying like the hypocrites. It's interesting how hypocrites are defined here too. I left out verse six, verse six with prayer, don't pray like the hypocrites. They love to stand on the street corners and in the synagogues and praying so that others will see them. Be impressed by their personal. He says in verse six, Jesus does. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room and close the door and pray to your father who sees in secret. So he corrects the motive there. And what he's suggesting is if you only pray out loud in front of other people and you don't have a private relationship, a private prayer life. That's just hypocrisy. If you say you're a Christian and you cheat on your spouse, that's hypocrisy. And we're comfortable with that because we know that's the big bad sin. But here it is in our prayer life. Don't pray. If we don't have a private prayer life, a secret prayer life. Pray to your father who is in secret. It's private. If that's lacking. And you make yourself out to be a mature, godly Christian. You are practicing hypocrisy. There's another way I think that hypocrisy comes out that way. I think I think I hear it. I think I've done it myself. I'm still tempted to it. It's when we're praying for someone. And we pray in such a way that we're praying that that person will be done. And we don't really give any thought to what gods will might be in the thing. It can be sickness. Learn to heal this person. You know, it's obvious that the person has not been healed as they declined in health for months, months, maybe even years and yet. And we know they want to be healed. And yet it seems like God is saying, no, I'm not going to. This is what's happening. And we want to make them feel good about the fact that we care about them and want them to be healed. And so we don't even think about what God wants. That's praying before men in order to be noticed by them to impress them. It's not just the flowery speech. I mean, God. I don't think that I don't think it matters if you, if your prayers flow with eloquence. Or you list and stutter before the face of God. If your heart is right with God, you may be someone who prays so much of the time that scriptures just roll off your tongues. And it sounds so natural. And people say, I'll never be able to pray like that. And you might not, but it doesn't mean they're a hypocrite. Although if they're doing that only in public, guess what? They're using their gift of order to impress. If that's all that it is. So it's the police people. It's the hypocrisy that Jesus says, don't do that. That's like you're having your own righteousness. Another way he tells us not to pray is in verse seven. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do. For they suppose they will be heard for their many words. So we're to pray but not impersonal or manipulative prayers, not impersonal or manipulative prayers. I use these words impersonal or manipulative as my interpretation of what Jesus is getting out in this verse. They think they'll be heard because of their many words. Don't pray like the Gentiles. He's talking about those who worship other gods. And so you can explore that. I did just a little bit. And I'm going to mention a few religions. Please don't think I'm picking on them. But I want to give examples. If Jesus can say, don't pray like the Gentiles. Let's just look at a couple and see what it is. Hinduism gives you a mantra. It's M-A-N-T-R-A. If you look it up on Google, M-O-N. Well, Google is pretty smart. They figure it out for you, but for me anyway. But a mantra. Do you know what a mantra is? It's a phrase. You say it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And over and over and over. That's a practicing of righteousness for the Hindu. I looked up. I googled Islamic prayer beads. And again, Google helped me. I did Islam prayer beads and it corrected me Islamic prayer beads. And it took me to, you know, that other great authority next to Google is Wikipedia, right? And if you go there, I found that many religions. Hindus have prayer beads. Muslims have prayer beads. Baha'i has prayer beads. The Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church, prayer beads, prayer beads. And the idea behind these prayer beads is, it depends, I suppose, on the various religions. But it's one of the primary reasons I saw was to let you know where you are. And you know where you are in the order of prayers. All right, I prayed this five times. Now I've prayed this five times or three times or whatever the number is that you're praying it and you can keep track of how many times you've prayed that prayer. It just seems rather impersonal to me. And I think that's what Jesus is getting at. I hear Jesus teaching this not merely as someone who's been in the synagogue every Sunday of his life or temple, you know, gathered with the saints, if you will, worshipping in his day. But I get this as the Lord of glory who hears all the prayers of all the people throughout the whole world. And in that way, I hear him saying, don't pray like this. It's offensive. Don't pray as the hypocrite. It's offensive. And don't pray like the Gentiles this way. Don't pray in an impersonal way. Don't pray in a manipulative way. I think one of the ways is Christians that we fall into a manipulative and somewhat impersonal way of praying is when we have this notion that if we get more people to pray about it, God will give it to us. And so we don't just ask our friends to pray, but we want our friends to ask their friends and their friends and we want to have a pyramid of prayer so that God will do what we want. And that seems manipulative and impersonal, especially when Jesus says not to pray like the Gentiles and then says, because your father already knows what you need before you ask him. So motives matter. If we're going to practice righteousness, if we're going to walk by faith, a life of faith in Jesus Christ, as it's expressed in prayer, a righteousness that is expressed in prayer, it has to be by faith. And our motives matter. We have to pray for the right reasons. We can't just be hypocrites and try and please people, or like those who do not know God impersonal and manipulative. We need to pray for the right reason and that brings us to the third point. The right reason is relational. In this section of the Sermon on the Mount from chapter 6, verse 1 through verse 18, where practicing righteousness in terms of bombs giving prayer and fasting as mentioned, Jesus uses the term your father eight times. It's more than any other chapter in the entire Bible, your father, your father, pray to your father. I'm told that this was just never practice in the church or among the pious Jews at the time that Jesus was a rabbi walking planet Earth. The idea, the concept of God's father was certainly in the Old Testament, Malachi. If I am a father, where is the honor do me? We looked at that recently. Israel is my first born son, let my son go that he may worship me. God has certainly talked that way. And in Jesus' prayers that are recorded in the gospel, he always prays to his father. My father is one of the favorite ways he likes to talk about God. It's one of the things that almost got him stoned for blasphemy and eight times in telling us to practice our righteousness in a way that pleases God. He does so in terms of our relationship to our father. It's 11 times in the whole sermon, your father. It's relational. We are relational beings. When Jesus created or when God created the heavens and the earth, he made man and before he made woman, there was Adam and he named all the animals. There was, you know, the he beaver and the she beaver and the he elephant and the she elephant and he, not unicorn, but you get the idea. All these made it animals. And it says, but there was no one suitable to old Adam, young Adam. And God said, before the fall, it is not good for the man to be alone. I'll make him a helpersuitable. Now, those first few chapters of Genesis are all kind of talking about creation and the fall and earlier than that, when he created us, he made us male and female in his own image. And I think about that in the beginning of Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, father, the hour has come. My death has come. Glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world began. And there's that image of a God who communicates within itself. There's this glory of the father and the son and the spirit in holy community before creation. And he makes us in his image to communicate. My children is just aside, it's illustrative of coming back to relational, but my children have had major milestones this year. They both graduated in June, Elizabeth, with her masters in education, Paul with his bachelor's in electrical engineering. August was a banner month. My daughter interviewed on Skype via Skype on a Thursday and was offered a job on the basis of that Skype interview, still marveling at technology and how it's changing us. But nevertheless, that was on a Thursday. The following Monday, she was moving going to Gastonia, North Carolina to find out where the school is in finalized stuff. That Monday, my son interviewed and was offered a job in his chosen profession. And they both moved out in the month of August. What's ironic to me is my daughter is an extrovert. She loves people, loves to be with people. And she's living in an apartment all by herself. And my son who's a social introvert, but an introvert is living with two roommates. And I think my daughter will struggle with loneliness, and my son will struggle to get along with his roommates. And not because of my son or his roommates, but anyone who's ever lived in a family, in other words, if you have a mother or father that raised you or foster whatever if you've lived in some sort of family unit, there's frustration and communication problems. Because all of communication, all of relations are messy, even our relationship with God is messy. When we learn to pray, he will challenge us because our will and his will are not always the same. But praise God, he's sovereign and we're not. Because he sent his son, you talk about a messy relationship, he sent his son, we killed him. And God raised him from the dead, and it's through faith in him that we can be reconciled to God. The very one we killed is our righteousness. The very one we killed who God rose from the dead has given us his spirit so that we can cry. And if we're going to make any progress in prayer at all, it will be relational, and we will talk to God in a personal, relational sort of way.
I know on earth we have good dads and bad dads and even good dads are not perfect dads, but God or our father is the perfect dad, perfect love, perfect patience. If you've been quiet in relationship to him for however long and you begin to talk to him, he will smile. If you talk to him with stuttering and stammering but you're talking to him personally, he'll understand that he will move towards you, and that's what we want. That's what our Lord who preached with authority, wanted and wanted for his people. Now I've got to take just a moment, as I guess the end of the sermon, let me give you some practical application. If you want to pray, I have created a devotional guide, the Lord's Prayer, daily devotion, it starts with a little letter from me, and then it's day by day. Designed for adults, I think a junior high student can use this for profit and benefit. For many it may be a struggle at junior high level, but certainly above that. If you have children that are younger than that, I want to recommend that you use the teaching on the Lord's Prayer for me, the shorter coutochism, these are in the track rack, brochure rack, whatever you want to call it, on the wall across from the ladies room. If your children are just starting first grade or yet, but talking, either from talking to starting first grade, there is a catechism for young children. Just start here, they talk about prayer, it's at the end of the catechism, and just one a week, and the devotional guide is in there. If I don't know if we can do this, Linda, can you put the church website up on the overhead for us? If you do not have a copy of this, you can still ask, there's a sign up in the foyer for that, and you can ask and we will give you a copy of this. If you go to the web page, there is something very early on that says the Lord's Prayer, and I don't know if we'll be able to see that or not. You won't be able to see it, but on your computer it becomes much bigger. Anyway, it says the Lord's Prayer on those green check marks up there, it says the Lord's Prayer, and it will take you right to it if you click on it. There was another one, but that's close enough. Right there, or right down there, and you click on it, and it will take you to note from your pasture, and then if you scroll down to the bottom, after reading the letter, of course, you'll see the downloads, and you can download it as a word document or in what's called PDF. Just try one of them, if you need help, call the office, we'll help you talk you through it, and you can download your own. If you're an electronic type person, I do my devotions online. I'd recommend you, if you have word, do it in word, and just download this and just fill in in a way you go. It's all on print. It follows the themes that we'll be looking at this fall, and I want to encourage it to you. You will face some challenges on page 12 of your bulletin. You have some practical application things I'm saying, use this as a practical application. It's a study on prayer, and each devotional lesson ends with encouraging you to pray. But these are the challenges you'll face, finding time, staying consistent, getting distracted. You know how it is. You start to have devotions in the phone rings or something happens all the time. It seems like something distracts us. Containing the right motives is a challenge as well as needing to confront things in your life. You start talking with God. He will show you his beauty. He will accept you, and he will show you stuff. I love the way my wife says it. He loves you so much. He'll accept you the way you are. He loves you too much to leave you that way. So here's some practical things that will help. Enter a appointment to your calendar or phone or whatever you use, and just mark off the time like you would any other appointment. And say, God's my most important appointment, and I'm going to do that. Use the time, you know, the alert or whatever it takes, and mark off the time. Prepare for it by going to bed a little bit earlier, using a alarm clock and not the snooze button, getting all the way out of bed and fully awake. I find coffee helps considerably. The only problem there is do not confuse the Holy Spirit with caffeine. But awake is good. All right, pray with someone. If you're married, part of your private prayer life should be with your spouse, I think. By the way, in this praying to your father who is in secret, he's not at all saying we shouldn't pray in the worship service or with other believers. In fact, when he gives the Lord's prayer, it starts our father. Okay. And when I realized that I should be praying with my wife to lead her, and that if I spend more time there than privately, that was okay because I was still talking with God. It was just phenomenal. You know, one of the problems we have, I don't know where we came up with this, every eye closed and every head bowed. May help with distractions, but it puts me to sleep. I like to pray with my eyes open in my head up, or really doesn't matter. I also like to kneel. But I pray, I like to pray out loud, and I love praying with my wife because I find it's hard to pray to a God who's invisible, response is always in the written word. His spirit does move in our hearts, I know. But it really will help a lot if you pray with your spouse, and if you pray out loud. And find someone that will help keep you accountable or ask how it's going or that you can pray with. Start each appointment by asking God to help you with motives and goals and expect God to show up and to show you his glory. These are some practical steps that will help you with this. Let's pray. We thank you Father for this time, and we ask your blessing on this series. And God thank you that you are our Father, a loving Father, a good Father, patient and compassionate, slow to anger. Grant us to learn to talk with you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.