If you have a Bible, you'll want to have one. If you have one near you, you'll want to pull it out. If not, we'll be looking at just a couple of passages this evening, just a few verses, so it won't be that big of a thing for you, so don't panic. But it's a great privilege for me to speak with you this evening and the other Wednesday evenings of this month on the subject of prayer. And a number of you know that many years ago I wrote a book on prayer and called to pray with your eyes open, and that's where Ed stole the title for these Wednesday night things, okay? If you didn't know, that's where he got it. He thought, well, that was a clever way to put it. And that book is not about praying with these eyes open, okay, these physical eyes. And that's what people often think it means, but it's not what it means. It means the eyes of your heart open. And so it's just important for us as we start coming together on these Wednesday nights, I hope that we will all have an attitude of prayer can be something that can be very positive and very good for your individual life, for your family life, and for this local church. That's really gonna be our focus. It's gonna be on that level. We're going to be concerned with what's positive about prayer, what's a positive angle we can take on it. If there's one thing you feel guilty about in your Christian life, it is the fact that you don't pray enough. Is there anybody in this room that really feels like they pray as much as they ought to? Don't raise your hand if you believe that because none of us are gonna believe it, okay? All of us are gonna think you're really are messed up if you think you pray enough. I mean, you know, you may feel like, well, I'm praying as much as I can get around to, but I ought to be doing more than that. I mean, how do you pray enough for your children, for example? Does the amount of praying that you do for your children reflect the amount of love that you have for your children? Does the amount of praying that you do for your spouse reflect the amount of love that you have for your spouse? Does your amount of prayer for this church and its ministry reflect what this church means to you and how much you love it and how much you've benefited from it? See, those are kinds of questions. If you ask yourself, I think most of us would have to admit, well, no, I probably don't pray enough when you put it that way. And I'm convinced that one of the reasons we don't pray very much in our circles is because we have a very bad theology. How's that, how about that? Here it goes, are you ready for this? When I pray to receive John Calvin into my heart, one of the first things that happened to me was, I'll say that again, when I pray to receive John Calvin into my heart, one of the first things that left my life was prayer. And that has been the experience of countless people who have maybe been Christians and other branches of the church, other traditions in the church and then they come into this fold and they begin to understand and believe precious truths that we all believe like the sovereignty of God and the idea that God is in control of everything and that we are not in control of everything and that God's will will be done and that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. Those are the kinds of things that often will attract people to a church like this and it will be eye-opening because you'll look at the Bible in ways you never saw it before and you'll notice that this is very honoring to God and very glorifying to God and you'll be thrilled about it. It's great way to go. But once you get that notion in your head that God's in control and not people, one of the first questions that starts coming to your mind is this, if God is in control of everything then why do I need to pray? What good is prayer? If God has already ordained everything, what good is prayer? Why don't I just go do something that's a little more fun? Something that's a little more relaxing like watch a TV show or something. I mean that would make a whole lot more sense than praying since God's already ordained everything. I say that that's bad theology because the Bible has just the opposite view. The Bible's view is this. God is in control, not you. God is in control, not people. And that's precisely why you pray. It's because you're talking to the one who is in control. And so rather than being something that debilitates our ability to pray, our beliefs in the sovereignty of God ought to really encourage us to pray because God is the one who is determining how history goes, how your life goes, how your children live their lives or fail in their lives. God is the one who is in control of that. And God is the one who is in control of this church and what's going to happen in this church or not happen in this church. He is the one. Now what we tend to do is to talk to all the people around us who have very little power and very little influence, trying to get them to adjust things, trying to get them to fix their lives, trying to let us fix their lives. But the reality is is that we neglect talking to the one who really has the power to fix life. Are you with me on this? And that's the way the Bible thinks. It may not be the way you think at this moment, but it is the way the Bible thinks. The Bible thinks God is in control, therefore turned to Him with your needs. Rather than saying to yourself, well, since He's already in control, I don't need to bother with it. No, quite the opposite. Now, I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, a small little mountain city of about 100,000 people, and I grew up in the days when there was this radio request line show. I know if you're below the age of 45, you don't even know what that is, except Casey Kasim had one that was like worldwide, so people calling from Tokyo in places like that. But in my day, it used to be, W-R-O-V 1240 on your AM radio dial, and it was the kind of thing where you'd call up, and in those days, that meant you did the rotary phone, and you do all the numbers except the last one, and he says, okay, the third caller, the third caller will have a request, and say you drive the last number, and then you push it back to speed it up. You remember how used to do that, everybody? Some of you are old enough to know what a rotary phone is, okay? And we love to do that because you would get to find out who was dating whom, who had broken up with who, where the football team was going to be that night, where the fight was going to be after the football game, those kinds of things, you get little messages on the radio request line. But I can tell you something that as exciting as that was as a radio request show, if I had run into those DJs at the shopping mall or walking down the street of Roanoke, Virginia, if I had bumped into one of them, I would not have recognized them because I didn't know them. I had never engaged them, and none of my friends had ever engaged them. We would not have recognized them. We knew them on the radio request show because we say, I wanna hear, I wanna hold your hand by the Beatles and they'd go click, that was it. That's your interconnection with the DJ at that point. That's all of it. But we never knew them personally. We never understood who this person was and could not have interacted with him. We could not even have recognized him. Unfortunately, that's the way a lot of us pray. It's like a radio request line, where you call into God and you go through the things, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this, and I wanna hear, I wanna hold your hands by the Beatles and Jesus' name, amen, click. And that's okay for a radio request line, but it's not okay if you want your prayers to be any more than just a rote, automatic, get it done as fast as you can and feel nothing from it and have no pleasure in God or receive any blessing from God for what you've done. But think about how much your prayer life looks a lot like a radio request line. You know what it's like. You've gone the whole day, you still haven't prayed, you're getting ready to fall asleep in the bed and you say, oh my, I haven't prayed all day. I better hurry up and pray about the things I gotta pray for. And so you run through your list, God bless Susie, God bless my husband, God bless my wife, God bless kids, God help me get up in the morning, I'm in, you're gone. That's a radio request line. I wanna suggest to you tonight a way to ask for things from God that goes far beyond a radio request line. And in fact, it's a way to pray that can so engage you with God that you will find yourself not trying to avoid prayer but actually trying to find the time to be able to pray in this way. And I've seen it done so many times and I've seen it radically change people's prayer lives so many times that I can tell you that if you will at this moment seek the Holy Spirit's filling and seek His leading as we look at a passage in the Bible, I think you'll discover it to be true for yourself too because everybody in this room has something that weighs heavily on your heart and is something that you really feel that you need to be able to engage God about. And a radio request line just isn't good enough for that thing in your life. And you wish you knew a way to connect to Him, a way to be energized by His blessing, a way to be confident that He cares about you and that He's listening to you. The passage we're gonna look at is in the Old Testament, of course, because that's Jesus Bible. Exodus chapter 32, I teach Old Testament if you didn't know that. You call it the New Testament, I call it the appendix, but it's okay. So we're gonna look at Jesus Bible tonight and Exodus chapter 32. And what I want to do is I want to tell you what's happening in this passage before we actually look at what it says. You've seen it in the movie if you haven't read it in the book. Moses has gone up on top of Mount Sinai to receive the 10 commandments from God. And while he's up there, God looks down and he notices what Aaron and the tribes of Israel have done. They have made the golden calf, yes? And they started reveling, reveling around the golden calf and worshiping the golden calf. And what happens in this passage is God has noticed this and he's talking to Moses on top of the mountain about what he's going to do. Look at verse seven. Then the Lord said to Moses, go down because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and it's sacrificed to it and have said, these are your gods or this is your God-o-Israel who brought you up out of Egypt. I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you Moses into a great nation. You got the picture? God's mad. And basically he says to Moses, Moses, get out of the way because I'm going to destroy these people and I'm just going to make the nation out of you. Now, if you and I had been in Moses shoes and God said get out of the way because I'm going to destroy them and I'm going to make the nation out of you, what will we have done? That's what we oughta done. Go right ahead, Lord. They're totally depraved centers. They're lucky just to have been breathing all these years. Right? We know they deserve it. And we know also we deserve to have the nation made out of us because we may be bad, but we're not as bad as they are. Okay? So that's what we would have done. We would have stepped out of the way and said, okay, God said so and I guess I have to be an obedient child, so I'll do it. But the funny thing about God is throughout the Bible, God uses what we often call in parenting reverse psychology. You know how that works with kids. Right? Yeah, go ahead, jump off the roof. See what happens. That kind of thing. God does that in the Bible all the time, too. He'll tell people to do something in order to get them not to do it. You know, with me on this, it happens all the time in the Bible and this is one example of it. So what God says to Moses is get out of the way but what God's really wanting to see is is Moses is going to stand in the path and get this thing fixed or not. And notice what Moses does. Take a look. At verse 11. But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. Instead of getting out of the way, Moses stood in the path. Can you imagine how risky that was? You know, you and I are quick to give up on things, simply because in God's providence it doesn't look like it's working out. Have you noticed that? I mean, God done open the sky up and speak to us and say, stop it. Instead if it just gets hard, we sort of figure God didn't want it to happen. And so we give up on it. We get out of the way. We just let things go in some other direction. That's our tendency. It really is our tendency, especially in our day to day in this country where we expect everything to have instant results and instant benefit and that kind of thing. And so if providence just looks as if God wants things to go into certain direction, we'll just say, well, go ahead Lord, I'm submissive. But this is not just providence. This is not silent providence here. This is God speaking to Moses. And he speaks to him and Moses gets in the way and says, wait a minute. Now, that shows a lot of courage on Moses' behalf, but it also indicates to us, it's the kind of courage you and I need to start having. The book of Exodus, you might be interested in knowing this, the book of Exodus really does exalt Moses as the great leader of God's people. And almost every single thing Moses does in the book of Exodus is a model for what the people of God are supposed to be like and how they are to adore him and how they are to follow him in generations to come. And so when Moses stands in the path and says, wait a minute. I know you say to get out of the way, but wait a minute. Let's talk about this. This is very instructive to us because when you and I face difficulties like all of us are, and it feels as if providence is pushing things in one particular direction, you're not always called upon to give up and just sort of submit to providence. What you are called upon to do is to get in there and seek the favor of the Lord, your God. And what I'm interested in that's looking at tonight is how Moses did that. How Moses did this. What did he do when he saw what was going to happen and he knew how very important this was, how critical it was, it wasn't a small thing, it wasn't like a common cold. He said, oh Lord, please take away my cold. No, this is the destruction of the whole nation. So what did Moses do when it came to that kind of praying? What Moses does basically here is he uses every single ability he has to present a strong case to God for why God should spare these people. He basically presents a case much like a lawyer would argue before a judge. He pleases with God, not by saying please, please, please, please, please, but by giving reasons why God should not destroy the nation of Israel. That's how engaged he is with God. He actually talks to God and seeks to convince God of what he's looking for and what he wants. And as we'll discover, God listens. Now what I want to do is to look first at what Moses says to God and how he presents his case before the Lord in humility and in submission, seeking to get God to spare these people. Listen to what happens beginning in verse 11. But Moses sought the favor of the Lord, his God. Oh, Lord, he said, why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought up out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? The first thing Moses does is he appeals to God on the basis of God's love for the people of Israel. He says, Lord, why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought up out of Egypt with a great and mighty hand? And we know that the focus is on this idea that Israel is God's people because of what God had just said to Moses in verse 7. Did you notice it? Look at verse 7. Look at what God says to Moses. Then the Lord said to Moses, go down because your people, Moses, whom you, Moses, brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt. And now Moses is saying to God in verse 11, they're not my people, they're your people. I didn't bring them up out of Egypt. But if you brought them up out of Egypt, it's like when your kid brings home an F, you know, and you say, your son, your son got another F. That's what's happening here. Moses is saying, I didn't bring them out of Egypt. They are your people. It was your mighty hand that did this because Moses knows something about God. And that thing that he knows is that Israel was the apple of his eye. Just like we know that the body of Christ, the church, is the apple of God's eye today. That God has special love for his covenant people. That means you. That means IPC. That means your family. That means all the people that you know who bear the name of Christ. They are the apple of his eye, just like Israel was in those days. I can't tell you how many times in ministry I have gone to hospital rooms where a young child has been in the bed and near death, in fact, on several occasions, and praying with the family and praying this way. Lord, this is your child. Please show love to this child of yours. This child is baptized in your name. This child is a part of the body of Christ. Please show your love for your people. And Lord, these parents who are here today, they are your children. They are your people. Please show your love for these people by healing their child. You see the reality is that if you cannot support your request, that is, if you can give a reason for why you're asking for what you're asking for, by appealing to the fact that it will show God's love for his people, well, then maybe, at least just maybe, you shouldn't even be asking for it. Do you want to ask for things that don't show God's love for his people? Is that what you want to do? Of course not. So, the next time you ask God for something, come up with a way, come up with an idea of how this will demonstrate God's love for his people. Tonight, one of the members of this church, an elder in this church, in fact, yes, is going under the knife. At this moment, he's on the operating table, having a liver transplant. Now, it seems to me that as members of this church, you ought to be concerned about one of your elders being on an operating table receiving a liver transplant. Yes, would you not say that's fair thing to say? Yes or no? Okay. He's an elder of your church. He's responsible before you, before God. And he's on the table now getting a liver transplant. Now, what I want to say to you is this, rather than simply praying, Lord, please take care of him, please make everything okay, tell God how it will show love for him and how it will show love for his family and how it will show God's love for this church if God will answer your prayers and raise him up from that table. Plead with God that way because that is the way you engage your God. Your God wants you to talk that way to him. Not simply to pop the radio request line. Let's go home and go to bed, but he wants you to pray, Lord, if you will do this, this is how it will show your love for your people. That's the first thing Moses does, but he doesn't stop there. Look at verse 12. Moses says this to God, why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountain and to wipe them off the face of the earth, turn from your fierce anger, relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Do you see now how Moses' eyes have turned away from Israel and they turn toward someone else? Who is it? The Egyptians. And basically this is what he says, he says, Lord, if you destroy these Israelites, the way you're talking about it, the Egyptians are going to laugh. They are going to mock me, they're going to mock Israel and they're going to mock you. What kind of God brings his people out of Egypt only to destroy them in the wilderness? That's what Moses is saying, the enemy, the evil empire of the world in that day will laugh and mock and scoff at you, God, if you allow this to happen. Now why could Moses pray this way? Was it because he could outsmart God? No, of course not. Was it because he could inform God of things that God didn't already know? No, of course not. I mean, isn't it true that somehow God would have worked it out so he could get glory even if he destroyed those people? Yeah, it would have happened that way. So what's Moses doing? Moses is pouring his heart out. He's like a child talking to his father or his mother, and he's pouring his heart out. And he's saying, I know something about you, God, and the best I can tell this would not bring you maximum glory, but if you will do this, it will maximize your glory. You see, Moses knew something about God that you and I often forget, and that is that God is in the business. He's in the business of bringing glory to himself, and he likes it when his people are interested in his glory. Now, a lot of you in here run your own businesses, and you might have all kinds of reasons for having your business, all kinds of philanthropic reasons and good wholesome reasons, you know, God bless us and all that kind of thing, but there is one reason why you run your business, isn't it? There's one bottom line you've got to meet or you don't get to keep on having your business to do all the other wonderful things you do with it. What is that bottom line you have to do? Make money. That's the bottom line for God. Not making money, of course, but bringing glory to himself. Now, think about those things you normally pray for. You know, the things that are important to you, maybe your children, maybe your church. Can you imagine that if God doesn't bless and doesn't answer your prayers, that it will bring shame to his people, and bring shame to his cause, and that the world will stand up and mock? And can you imagine that if he will answer your prayer, that it will bring him glory? If you can imagine that, if you understand that that's the case, then tell him. Tell him how it's true. Tell him how your next door neighbor will sit up and say, well, I never knew that about them, and I never knew that about their God. Tell God how the people around you here in Memphis will look at independent Presbyterian Church and say, well, my goodness, something good must be happening over there. They're not all crazy over there at IPC. Something good's happening. They'll honor God when he answers your prayers for this church and for your family and for your individual life. And if you cannot tell God how it will bring him glory, then maybe you shouldn't even be asking for it. Do you want to pray for something that won't bring him glory? So spell it out. Tell him how this is the case. And what you'll discover is you will find your heart and your mind engaged with God in ways that has never been engaged before as you ask for things. So the first kind of reasoning you can give God is his love for his people. It will show love for your people, Lord. The second kind of reasoning is, it will bring glory to you in the world. The unbelieving world will sit up and notice and they will honor you and they will praise you for what is happening to us. But then there's a third thing that we can see here that Moses does. Listen to what else he says, beginning in verse 13. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And it will give your descendants all this land, I promise them, and it will be their inheritance forever. Do you see what he's talking about now? He's talking about God's promises, isn't he? He says, Lord, you given your word. You gave your word to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that they would have many descendants. And here they are, they're right there at the foot of the mountain. Now, when you talk to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you didn't talk to them about destroying all of them and making a nation out of me. That's not the way it was supposed to be. That's not the way anybody ever thought about this before. Instead, the multitude that's there at the foot of the mountain is the seed of Abraham. Please remember your promises. Now, we have a terrible plight in the American church today. And it's one that I think is just wreaking havoc in many different ways. And it is this that we somehow have begun to believe in America in the American evangelical church that God has promised faithful Christians that they will all be wealthy and happy and never have any problems. Well, that's not true. That is simply not true. But there are things that God has said to us and that create expectations for us. Things like His church will not fail. Things like He loves His people. Things like He wants His gospel to go forward with power and with effectiveness and unhindered throughout the world. Things like the body of Christ will display His glory in the world. And these are things that God has promised us in the Bible. And when we pray to Him, we ought to be able to support our requests by promises that God has given to us in the Bible. Those little children in those hospital beds, I often will talk to Jesus about the times that He held children in His arms. I'll say, Jesus, this child is just like that child you held in your arms that day. Do you remember how that felt, Lord Jesus? Do you remember how that felt? Do you remember the pity you had on those people who were hungry that day? Have pity again. Love this child, the way you loved that child 2,000 years ago. Talking to Him about things that indicate His character and His promises and things He has said in His Word that give a basis for what you're asking for. I mean, do you want to ask for something that's against the Word of God? Do you want to ask for something that has no grounding in the Word of God? I don't think so. So here we are, all of us having things that are important to us, and we've got to get to the point that we can start asking God for these things in engaging ways. And that means coming up with reasons for this, ways of talking to God about why we need these things. Do you remember the three things that Moses does here in this passage? He responds to God by saying, first, they're your people and you love them. Please show your love for your people. He responds to God's second by saying, Lord, this is not going to bring you glory. They're going to mock you. They're going to laugh at you. Do something that will bring you glory. And then the third thing he says to God is, remember your promises and apply your promises to these people in grace and in mercy. Now, what was the effect of all of this? You might say, well, you know, that didn't do any good. Case to Ross to Roddars, they already told me that everything is predestined and fixed. Right? Well, I believe it's all predestined and fixed too, but I also think that's irrelevant at this point because look at what Moses himself writes at the end of this story, verse 14. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. What did the Lord do? He relented. He didn't do it. Some of you know that I was a pastor for a while and about five years and I did many terrible things. I was young. I was only about three years old, I think. I'll never be a pastor again because I did so many terrible things. But there was one thing we did write. One thing. About every six months or so, the elders and deacons would come together on a Friday and we would fast all day Friday and into the night on Friday night and after work we'd get together. And what we would do is take legal pads of paper and we would always have one request for our church, one particularly important request for our church and we take these legal pads and we would write the request across the top of the page. And then the first page we would write God's love for his people. Flip the page. God's glory in the world. Flip the page. God's word and his promises. And then we would brainstorm as to how if God would answer our prayer, it would show his love for his people. We start writing these things down little notes. You know, you come up a 20, 30 ways, it would show God's love for his people. Then we go to the glory of God in 20, 30, 40, 50 ways that it would show God's glory in the world in 20, 30, 40, 50 ways that the Bible supports this request. And we go to bed on Friday night with these legal pads filled up with little notes explaining how this is going to go. The next morning we get up early in the morning like five o'clock in the morning and we start praying. And rather than just going through those lists, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like that every one of those lines as an elder would take it or a deacon would take that line became a paragraph in his lips. As he poured his heart out to God, explaining to God how it would show his love for his people if he would answer this prayer, how it would show his glory in the world if he would answer this prayer. How it would indicate that he was keeping his word if he would answer this prayer. And we go through those lists and friends we would pray for five or six or eight hours without stopping without even realizing it. Now you know in Bible days, they prayed for days and days and days without stopping. You know this, don't you? And what I want to know is when was the last time we even prayed a whole morning without stopping? You want a way to do that? You want a practical means for doing that? Then look at this passage. And when something in your life is so important that you feel like you'd like to spend a whole day praying about it, follow that example of taking those little notes, writing out for yourself, how it will show God's love for his people, how it will show his glory in the world, how it's going to go. The glory in the world, how it will show the fulfillment of his word and you will find yourself engaged with God in a way that is very life changing and very effective. Now I can't promise you this, but every single time our elders and deacons got together and did that God did unbelievable things every single time. I can't promise you who will always do that, but I can promise you this, if you can pray that way, you won't find yourself wondering whether God's listening. You won't find yourself wishing you could do more. You will be able to spend your heart on these matters. And you will also be able to leave with the confidence that you have given your true sacrifice on the behalf of those for whom you're praying. And as we begin this month of reflecting on prayer, I hope you'll take that little lesson home with you tonight that you know the next time I ask God for something, I'm not just going to ask him for something, I'm going to give him a reason. And I'm going to make a short simple, then I have to be elaborate just a little reason. And there are three main reasons that we saw in this passage, remember what they are. Number one, God's love for His people. That's right. Number two, God's glory in the world. Number three is promises. And if you can just begin to pepper your prayers with those kinds of thoughts and those kinds of reasonings, you will find your prayer life transformed. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, how we adore you and honor you for the man Moses and how you led him by your spirit to mediate on the behalf of your people. We bless you for this Lord, but we are people who live in this day. And sometimes Lord, we confess to you, we are not engaged when we pray. And we don't know how to be engaged when we pray. And so we're praying this now. We're asking you to show your love to this church in a special way by simply not allowing us to forget what your word has taught us here. And to put it into effect because we need your Holy Spirit to do that because we can't hold on to these ideas on our own. And Lord Jesus, we're also praying for this because we do want Memphis to sit up and take notice. Not of us, but of you. We want them to honor you. We want them to glorify you. And we know that if we as your people became the kinds of people who prayed like Moses, then you would be honored before the world. And Lord Jesus, we also pray for this because every time your disciples ask you to teach them how to pray, every time the early church sought the leading of your spirit in this matter, you answered. You gave us the Lord's prayer. You taught your people how to pray throughout the whole first century. And so now we're coming to you asking you to do the same today in the 21st century to independent Presbyterian church. Teach us Lord how to pray like Moses did. Amen.