Paul Washer "On Prayer" Matthew 6:9-11

[Music] let's open up our Bibles to Matthew 6 and I've really been torn between two passages one is to speak about prayer and the other is to speak about God's church and our necessity to do everything in the church according to his word but I know that you spent a great time this semester dealing with the word of God and its importance so I want to turn our attention to prayer to prayer as a matter of fact as I look out over you my greatest fear for you my greatest fear is that you will not

become men of prayer and if that is the case then everything else you've learned is lost I'm not trying to be sound spiritual or to say something that would be turned into a cliche but it is certain a praying man is a useful man useful to God even a man of limited knowledge who is a man who spends much time in the presence of God is a useful man to God and a pleasing man to God and so let's look at this passage on prayer in Matthew chapter 6 and let's start with verse 7 and

when you are praying do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do for they suppose that 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 pray then in this way Our Father who is in heaven Hallowed 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 do not lead us into temptation but Deliver Us

from Evil for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen let's go to the Lord in prayer father I thank you for this day and the grace that has already been provided in it I thank you for a sense of your Pres presence for the encouragement of your word I thank you Lord that we can stand here today based upon all that you've done in the past knowing that not one of all your good words has fallen to the ground undone that you are Covenant keeping God that even our faithlessness is

conquered by your faithfulness that all things come from from you through you return to you in Praise that not once have you done anything less than perfect good to your people and that your graciousness lord and faithfulness are higher than the heavens lord it's with that confidence today we stand Lord even to look in the mirror of your word would cause our knees to tremble but your grace manifested in Christ is our hope Lord we praise you and worship you we thank you Lord for your dealings with us in all our weakness in all our

failure you have been great so Lord help us strengthen us you know our going out and our coming in our getting up our lying down every thought and intention of our heart help us this day according to our need and according to your riches and Glory Oh Praise You Lord Praise You Praise You In Jesus name amen amen well let's look at prayer first of all look at verse seven and when you are praying do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do for they suppose that 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 here we see something that's often overlooked we see a problem within what's called Christendom and sometimes we look at a verse and we always judge that verse based upon the problem that we see in Christendom many times especially if you're as familiar as I am with Latin America and the Catholic Church you see this passage and all you can think about is um the repetition of the Lord's Prayer within Catholicism or the hail mares within Catholicism and the act of

winning some kind of favor through the repetition of meaningless words but if that's all we see in this text is a rebuke to the Catholic Church we're missing the main point of the text that all praying is based upon our knowledge of who God is do you see that the Gentiles were those who did not know God every thought that they had about God was wrong and mostly their thoughts about God were centered on this God is like me so that when we look even in Greek mythology what do we see we see basically these

gods are nothing more than men with a lot of power and so everything that the carnal mind would think about God would turn the carnal mind to wrong praying to wrong praying and so if you are going to be a man of God and a man of prayer you must first of all know God and there is only one way to know God and that is by being based founded renewed clarified cultivated by God 's word this is absolutely essential and this is one of the travesties that I see in modern Christianity not only the

fault of those who would be given more to the charismatic movement but even I see fault in those who would be more given to a bible-based or reformed or classical view of Christianity it seems like we have a Division I meet many people with almost no sense of scripture and with almost no sense of who God truly is according to the scriptures who are given to hours and hours of prayer I know many different people groups throughout the world especially in Asia that their lives the lives of the most simple believer in that fellowship may

be marked by an hour or two of prayer every day and yet their knowledge of God is so wrong and yet on the other side I know men who are brilliant they know their Greek and their Hebrew they not only have studied the doctrine of God but they know all the classical arguments with regard to God their theology is pristine but in many ways they're cold as a stone and hard as steel their lives and even their preaching and Ministries are almost robotic and lifeless generated by an intellect but not the power of God and

it always because of this lack of prayer a lack of prayer what you need to understand is what I was telling the group this morning is that Christianity is much more than Doctrine but it's not less than Doctrine but it's more than Doctrine it is a relationship with God and that relationship is cultivated not only in the clear study of God's word but that Rel relationship is cultivated down on our knees in prayer you look at the great men of history Spurgeon who was mentioned here and I I always tell people especially who've done biographies

of Spurgeon I say you better be careful I read your biography when you get to heaven spurgeon's going to have words with you because you attributed everything Spurgeon did to his mighty intellect in his photographic memory I said I don't care how Mighty your intellect or how great your memory you can't do what Spurgeon did nobody can do that it's God working through Spurgeon who's able to do that I mean I have read more spur more Spurgeon sermons than I could even number I mean the dust of his stuff is gold his introductions his sneezes

it would take me 40 years to be able to clarify even a sneeze from that man to get it all down on paper and yet many times he would spend his day on Saturday in the study and have nothing left over but crumpled paper all over the floor and walk up to the pulpit crying out I believe in the Holy Spirit how did he do that how did he do that I want you hold your place I normally don't do this but hold your place in Matthew and go over to acts for a second the

book of Acts chapter 1 verse 1 the first account I composed theopus about all that Jesus began to do and teach now why did he say about all Jesus began to do and teach he was talking about the Book of Luke the The Book of Luke he was writing what Jesus began to do and teach which means what the book of Acts is what Jesus is continuing to do it's not the Acts of the Apostles it's the acts of the Christ through the apostles and that's Ministry my dear friend that's Christian Life my friend and

that's the difference between between being a useful servant and just a very very smart man who's been well trained that is the difference that it is Christ working through us your prayer life must be based upon a Biblical understanding of theology proper who is God what are the works of God how does God work you must know all that your prayer life must be based upon it but you must have a prayer life you must have a prayer life and it must be a Biblical prayer life founded upon the knowledge of God people often ask

me they say well how do you learn to pray I was asked that this morning at the prayer time how do you learn to pray well how do you learn to write a bicycle is one of the things I will always ask you get on a bicycle and you ride but now we all know that in Christianity that can be a little dangerous so how do you learn to pray two things things you go into the scriptures and I'm not saying that you go into the scriptures to memorize all those prayers and then pray them

word for word I'm saying this you go into the scriptures you make it a life practice of studying the word of God studying the word of God studying the prayers that are founded in scripture whether they be the prayers of Psalms or the great prayers of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians and Colossians or the great prayer of Jesus in John 17 you you just read and read and study and meditate upon the word and dig deeper into the word until what happens you develop the mind of Christ your mind is renewed biblically so that as

you are practicing prayer you pray biblically I love this illustration when I was very very young there was a passage I never could understand and that is why did Jesus take the mud and put it on the guy's eyes and all that sort of thing and I never could get an answer from anybody and then I happened to open up the commentary it's not really a commentary it's a series of sermons by Alexander McLaren and what he wrote there made me weep and I thought wow that was beautiful so I began to read Alexander McLaren

over and over and over until I begin to realize something my thought process the way I'm connecting phrases even my logic is beginning to look like Alexander McLaren another thing happened to me also when I was very young I started listening to uh RC Sproul which can be a very dangerous thing I started listening to RC Sproul and the first thing I listened was a thing that literally it's the only time in my life it was in video and it was the Holiness of God they didn't have DVDs back then it was video and I

remember sitting there in a chair in Peru I was about probably 27 years old and I turned it on and the from the moment he had me and then about 10 minutes later I noticed I was almost leaning out of my chair and within about 15 or 20 minutes I was on the floor and I stayed there and it's the only video series I've ever gone through where I went through it basically most of the time on the floor and then I started listening to other things of his you know what I began to realize

I'm starting to stound like that man I mean I could I could tell my train of thought in dissecting things was starting to almost mimic him without even trying my words my phrases my thoughts the way I looked at certain things were beginning to be changed and transformed by listening to that man now how much more the word of God I have friends and I shared about this this morning and I think they're deadly wrong they're so afraid of the subjective which we ought to be cautious about the subjective but they've come to the point

where if they spend an hour in prayer they spend an hour reading the prayers of the Bible they they don't pray they just read the if they if they've got a problem they go to a certain place in Psalms where that problem is found and they read those prayers so that they will not be in error well that in a way that's good in a way that's that's not good at all that's not what praying is but then I have other friends that pray a lot and there's no biblical basis for their praying that is

error all so what should we do Romans 12 1 and 2 we are renewing our mind so that we begin to think as God thinks and we begin to pray God's will we begin to understand and we come to this balance of passion and biblical Authority now I want us to go on he says and when you are praying do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words I've often noticed something and again there's a balance here most of what you find in Christianity

is that Christianity is like walking down a very narrow path and there's a deadly ditch on both sides a deadly deadly ditch I've noticed that that some people I will I remember this when I was a brand new Christian I would talk to the person I would talk to them and they would talk normal will talk and then I'd sit down at church and they'd go up the pulpit and this completely different voice would come out completely different wordings would come out everything I mean I was wondering were they possessed what happened did they Channel

somebody from the 16th century why did all this happen well part of that is immaturity yet at the other side we also ought to recognize that when we pray pray we are in a sense talking to a friend that language can be used we are talking to a father that language can be used but we are talking to the Lord Of Glory and when I see this meaningless repetition I'm reminded of Ecclesiastes and a few other places where it warns me I need to be very careful when I come into the presence of God now

there's a way of looking that first of all me let me give you an idea let's imagine a child who they may come home from school one day and they come up to their father who's very inconsistent and they say look father what I drew in the second grade and the father looks at it and says that's wonderful gives him a hug but the father's unstable the next day the father's having a horrible day so the child comes up and says look father what I drew and he slaps him across the room that child has

a fear of his father but that's not a correct or a Biblical fear and that's not the kind of fear we're talking about with the Lord Lord we're talking about a deep enduring reverence founded upon what we know about him so that when we come into His presence it's not that we have to necessarily go into 16th century language but when we come into His presence you know the man who's praying knows he's praying to someone who is that someone who is different than everyone else Young men listen to me I've heard this in your

generation and I'm sick of it I don't want to hear it anymore come up to the pulpit and go oh God we just want to come to you it it's like this nonchalant attitude with regard to God that tells me you do not spend much time on your knees or either you do not spend much time in scripture you enter into his presence with great care not because there's something wrong in his character but because of who he is just the possibility of you being able to use his name is the greatest of all privilege

remember this remember when Jesus would do certain Miracles and the demons would recognize and say he's the Holy One of God and what would he say shut up it was not just because he didn't want to make himself known in that way to the world they had no right to use that name name no right to speak that way not to him so when we come before him be very careful of your language be very careful that you don't fall into it's just like when sometimes I've gone to some charismatic churches and I've noticed that

everybody speaks in tongues the same way as their Pastor I've also walked into some Evangelical and reformed churches and noticed that everybody's kind of adopted the same way of Prayer and maybe it's because the only type of praying they really hear is in their own church and they're not doing a whole lot alone with God young men listen to me you're here at this place and because you're here I am assured that you are going to be given the scriptures I am assured that you're going to be grounded I am assured that they are going

to push you at times even to the point of breaking with regard to hermeneutics and ex aesus and Theology and church history and I praise God for that but you're not going to be worth two cents unless you pray unless you walk with God on your knees please believe me this has been the mark of men of God down through the centuries of the church they knew their God not only theologically not only intellectually but they knew him relationally in prayer remember this there is a reason why in the Bible men of God are called

men of God and they're not called men of the people it's not because they do not love the people they spend most of their time and thoughts on God you've heard the saying that he's so Heavenly minded he's no earthly good well the saying could be today we're so Earthly minded we're no Heavenly good spend time on your knees cultivate a life of prayer Charles Spurgeon was Charles Spurgeon he would tell you if I've read him correctly because of his prayer life he would of course first acknowledge the grace of God the Providence of God

the giftings of God yes he would but if you had to wrench out of him a reason a human reason something he could put his finger on it would be prayer Dear Miss Bethany Bethany Jones Martin Lloyd Jones's wife he she says you cannot understand my husband as an evangelist or an Expositor unless you first understand first of all above all things that he was a man of prayer a man of prayer prayer does something to a man that makes him able to speak God's word with authority have you ever noticed that some of the

greatest preachers that have been used in a way to impact the world have not been the smartest and they have not been the most eloquent they have certainly not been the most cultured but there was something that when they spoke men knew it was God and they were driven to repentance to Faith to Assurance to righteousness to Holiness you take all those men you will find variations in Doctrine and practice but the one common denominator you will find among those men is prayer prayer they dwelt with God now he says verse 9 pray then in

this way Our Father who is in heaven Hallowed be your name here is the perfect if you could say such a thing the perfect psychology of prayer the perfect approach to God he is our father have you ever sat for an hour or two or a day and just went through scripture with regard to he as our father he should be nothing to us but executioner do you realize that he should be our executioner but he has made us through the death of his own son the execution of his own son he has made us

Sons there's enough truth in that for a lifetime of piety for a lifetime of devotion for martyrdom if necessary just in the fact you can call him father but I've heard so many people today take this idea and I'm not an Arabic scholar but through my studies I've come to realize that many people are using this idea of ABA father in a terribly wrong way I hear young teenagers walking around going oh it means we can call him daddy I don't think it means that I think it is a term of endearment but not a

westernized term of endearment it is a delightful wonderful term of endear M but it does not lose its Majesty or its respect or its reverence or its human humbling that I can call him ABA that I can call him father it's a wonderful thing a beautiful thing that I can approach his throne of grace boldly and yet at the same time I must never forget that my father is the Lord in heaven I'm reminded of a a picture very famous black and white photograph of John F Kennedy while he was the president of the United

States He Could Be deemed the most powerful man on earth that is true and to go into his office for some even foreign dignitaries would have been a frightful thing and yet there's a picture of him seated at his desk and you can see the other side of the desk the photographer is over there and it's coming toward his desk and of course there's a big hole in the desk where his legs go through and right there by his legs his little son is playing with some toys that in a small way communicate something of

what we have here he is our father but the greatest respect now let me say this also if you study the men of the Bible their wrestlingslaps God and this idea of boldness they go hand in hand I have seen men and children and teenagers approach the throne of God with almost no sense whatsoever no sense of fear and be bold and it was rude and yet I have read in the scriptures in the pages of church history and I have seen myself men who approached god with such a reverence it would cause your own

heart to tremble and yet with that reverence they came before him so boldly that if anyone else had done it you would have thought it irreverent and this balance of reverence before God and boldness to literally wrestle with deity these things go hand in hand and they only Belong To The Man or the woman that spends copious am amounts of time in the scripture and on their knees on their knees this is as necessary as your ex of Jesus it doesn't take the place of it but it is just as necessary let me say this

young men I don't know you but I know young men like you you that have come out of places like this and they've got everything in their head and their preaching wouldn't cause a feather to be moved they are proud of their polished Exposition they are proud of the knowledge they possess they are proud that they are are not like other men who know lesser things and yet there's no sense of the power of God in their life and I'd rather hear a circus clown Proclaim some sort of funny chant than to sit under their

preaching though it be quite polished and correct there is more to preaching than just your intellect it is a work of God and that fire that is needed to teach and Proclaim and live is something that at least in part is birthed in the presence of God In Prayer you are going to face so many horrible things out there and as the years go by in this country there is no telling no Prophet could utter what is going to face some of you and it will not be human strength it will not be the arm

of the Flesh and it will not even be your coll laborers who are going to be able to pull you through God will not allow it if you belong to him he will allow no one to take his glory he will not allow no one to take his place if you are truly going to be a man of God then you will be a man shut up to God and he will have it so that he alone is your greatest source of strength and that is going to come through prayer one of the greatest and

most powerful prayers for this weak man in all my arsenal when everything is falling apart when the attacks are Beyond number when you cannot sleep is to get up in the night watch to get on your knees in that lonely place and look up and have all your fears torn Away by Just Two Words looking up to God and saying you know you know you know this kind of relationship ship must be cultivated it must be developed and we can do this the easy way or we can do this the easy way because for God

both ways are easy you can do this through just recognizing the truth that is proclaimed to you in the word that you need him in prayer you need him prayer is life you can learn that from the scriptures or you can learn that from his heavy hand of Providence every trial that we face on the largest scale it may be to advance his kingdom and all sorts of other works but on a personal scale every trial you will face will be simply this to show you your weakness your inability and to blow you back to

the great source of all strength it is not a humble thing Brothers for you to deny a work or to deny a calling or any other thing an opportunity because you simply look at yourself and say I'm so weak everyone is weak no one can do these things who is sufficient Paul asked for these things absolutely no one it is only God and that power and that anointing and that strength comes only through copious amounts of time with God in his word and on your knees and sometimes both things at the same time God always

chooses the runt of the litter if God's called you into the ministry I already know something about you there's something terribly wrong with you there's always the Gideon's call he uses the weakest so that in the end everyone is assured that it is the power of God and not the wisdom or eloquence or intellect of a man the power of God and that is the word of God and that is the gift of prayer that God has given us now he goes on and he says pray then in this way is there any other place

where that's done pray then in this way how do we pray this way and we don't have the time to go through this but we're going to brush our way through it as fast as we can says pray then in this way Our Father who is in heaven Hallowed Be Your name your kingdom come your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven There is not only a prayer do you know what we have here maybe clearer than any other passage in the scriptures we see the Heart of Jesus Christ we see what

consumed Jesus Christ this was his heart what is it look Hallowed be your name what does that mean there's there's just no real way to point out with the Precision we need what's going on here it's that your name be made special that your name be separated from all other names that all other names be in one category and your name be in a category all to itself all throughout the world that there' be no name higher more revered more respected not only in degree but in categories not just saying that they would put you

in the group with men's names and then just put you at the highest he's saying that they would take you out of that category put you in another category all to yourself in their hearts that was his passion that's what drove him and we see it all through scripture my name will be great among the nations from the rising to the setting of the Sun that is what's got to drive you I am so sick and tired and I can see it when a guy finished is preaching and he's happy with himself because it went

well because he could speak with some clarity and people thought he was intelligent the only way you should come out of a Pulpit satisfied is if because of that sermon that work that day the name of God was made greater and if it's not it doesn't matter because the goal to all this is not your proper ex of Jesus that's a means the goal is that he be glor glorified and if he not be glorified you cannot be satisfied cuz this is what drives you his name I sometimes ask missionary candidates I say have you

ever passed a night in your room walking back and forth going this people group it doesn't have the gospel this people group doesn't have the gospel they need the gospel they need the gospel I can't sleep they need the gospel and I've had many missionaries tell me yes then I say let me ask you this have you ever passed a night not being able to sleep because you were saying this his name is not hallowed in that place his name is not hallowed in that place I can't stand it his name is not hallowed there

you see the difference it's more than just a Nuance because when you go preach on the streets and I hope that some of you do everyone in a while you walk out on that mission field and you preach on the streets and for the first five minutes everyone's coming around thinking wow this kind of neat and then the devil always raises up somebody who starts screaming at you that you're the demon all those people turn on you and they take your little megaphone and your pulpit and your tracks and throw you out on the street

it's going to take a lot more than love for people for you to pick up all your stuff and walk right back in that Plaza and preach again it's going to take this his name must be hallowed here that's the kind of attitude that makes hell tremble care for men absolutely give our lives for men but there's something greater than this his name hallowed thy kingdom come thy will be done so totally and completely connected we want to go back even as far as Genesis in some awkward way we can even see that there in

creation that Adam was to go out and what was he to do subdue the Earth in his own name absolutely not he was the vice Regent he was under the governance of God and he was to go out why subdue the Earth and bring it within everything that God would want we have that same sort of thing today not politically not militarily how through the gospel through the gospel this gospel that it be preached but there are so many goliaths out there so many goliaths that you cannot do it let me ask your question you

know all the passages that talk about mountains being cast into the sea that if you believe all things are possible when you teach those passages do you spend most of your time just teaching how when other PE people teach them they're wrong they when when the charismatics use this text it's wrong well when they do it is wrong but what does the text mean and do youd apply it to your life I've seen so many guys so into the sovereignty of God that they run into just a small problem they go well it must not

be the will of God everything is a problem everything is a battle if you are seeking to expand this Kingdom for God's will to be done for his name to be hollowed you are going to spend a lifetime fighting and those battles are not carried out primarily in the Pulpit Pulpit is cleanup time those battles are carried out on your knees on your knees not your wisdom in counseling not your power of eloquence but on your knees the Muslim wall right now can it fall of course it can fall is it a Goliath absolutely can

it come down absolutely I don't want anyone going out from this place with some sort of mentality that the world's just going to get worse and then we're all going to be somehow sucked out of here the world may get worse for a time and we are getting taken out of here but I want you to walk out thinking this gospel is powerful and God truly desires for his name to be great among the Nations and we have been called to participate in that and it is done through Proclamation but it is also done that

Proclamation as Spurgeon says is given Wings on our prayers on our prayers and you ought to spend so much time with him that there is a consciousness of God in your life that you begin to cultivate this idea of praying without ceasing it doesn't mean that every moment of your life you're mumbling a prayer to God that's not what it means it just mean it's it's habitual prayer that every circumstance of Life prayer is not the last resort it's the first thing on your mind that's an everything oh that you would see yourself elves as

holy and completely inadequate for every good work and that you would see the word of God as able to make you adequate and that you would see that prayer results in the working of God in a supernatural unexplainable way and that all this is yours as a minister of Christ to tear down strongholds to take down Goliath to do a work I finish with an illustration that I gave this morning because it's so important and it's this you see all of Israel gathered to the battle lines and there's a Goliath out there and what are

they all doing they're paralized why there's one man standing out there who's bigger than one of us they're paralyzed that shows no faith in God no Zeal for God no understanding of the power of God and all of a sudden a young man coming from a Sheepfold walks up to these soldiers and says what are you talking about well don't you know know what look out there in the field he looks out there in the field okay what what are you talking about well that Goliath you're you're telling me that one man has cowered the

armies of God now that's the way I want you to be what do you mean it can't be done what do you mean but now understand this second part which is so important the immature man will say it can be done let's go do it let's just do something something's better than nothing let's just throw ourselves into some activity that is not maturity what is maturity not passiveness not just waiting run but where do you run to the throne of God and you wrestle not with Goliath you wrestle with God you meet with God you

cry out to God and when you begin to see God answer prayer and you begin to see God move you follow him you follow him in the scriptures in the circumstance of what he's doing you follow him there is nothing too big we are the weakest of all men called to take down the greatest of all Giants this is what we do but we don't do it with carnal means we don't do it with eloquence we don't do with church growth strategies devil laughs at all these missionary ideas that come forth every three months we

do it by the proclamation of the word of God and copious ongoing enduring preserving believing prayer I will not let you go until you have fulfilled your promises let's pray oh Father please take this please spark a heart and all of us Lord spend time with thee what greater evidence oh Lord could there be that we are yet glorified that we would have to practice discipline in order to spend time with you are you not beautiful you are Lord but our hearts are dull let all the vain things that charm us most Lord let them

be seen for what they are in your light nothing worse than nothing I pray Lord one thing for these men that you would give them an unusual enduring desire for your son and for your son's glory in Jesus name amen