Prayer

Introduction

Welcome, talk a little bit about me and what the next couple of months look like.

This moment is pivotal in my ministry, I have oftentimes wondered about how this day would feel about how this day would be. The closest thing I could compare today to is a young girl pondering her wedding day. What will it be like, but now that it is here, I started to wonder how does one start his very first senior pastorate position?

Being a senior pastor is the highest calling a man could have on his life. The job of shepherding should not be entered lightly and one that must be initiated by God.

I looked back on the first sermon I ever preached, and it was 10 mins long encompassed 18 verses out of 5 different books and I am glad that Main Street Baptist didn’t to my knowledge record it!

So, I know how I don’t want to start!

So, I did what every Christian should do I prayed about the issue! And that is exactly what God has laid on my heart this morning. I could not think of a better sermon to be my first as a pastor than prayer.

I understand that my success as a pastor does not matter where it is will rise and fall on prayer. I am at no point sufficient on my own to be a pastor, but thankfully God is!

I also realize that FBC Iola's success no matter who the leader is going to come down to prayer!

Prayer is a vital element or should be to our Christian walks with the Lord. You can pick up any Biblically based book on leadership or any issues and it will discuss prayer and the importance of it.

But here is the problem what should be the strongest points of our walks with the Lord has been contaminated by Satan.

Text

Our text today falls right in the middle of the greatest sermon ever preached. We call it the sermon on the mount.

Matthew 5-7

contains the most wonderfully crafted sermon. We could spend months diving into these two chapters, but we are going to be in Chapter 6:5-8

But before we read that understand that,

Jesus is fresh into the ministry, most likely at the foothills of the Northern Plane in Galilee.

His audience here is primarily his disciples, but others are listening.

The message of the sermon of the mount is simply you left paganism for kingdom life now live like it.

Therefore, one of the things he does in the sermon on the mount is talk about protecting yourself from piety or religion!

He talks about three things that can be mishandled, almsgiving (offering and tithe), prayer, and fasting.

Read Text

5 “Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray to stand in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you., 7 When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. 8 Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.

Don’t be like the hypocrites

The first three words alert us to a huge truth, Jesus assumes and expects that his disciples are going to be praying. That is why he says, whenever you pray but even again in verse 7 when you pray.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you should have a prayer life.

The first warning is to not be like hypocrites. V.5

This word means pretenders.

Hypocrites are pretending to be something that they are not. I call this group of people religious actors. They want to put a show on for the people around, acting like they have good intentions or that they have had genuine heart change but they in reality are walking in the way of the world.

Recall the parable of the pharisee in

Luke 18:11-12

11 The Pharisee was standing and praying like this about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I’m not like other people—greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth, of everything I get.’

Some have taken this too far to mean that we shouldn’t pray in public because

6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

They have also concluded that the man standing in the issue.

But Jesus isn’t worried about the location or the orientation of us when we pray.

Jesus was for public prayer,

1st Timothy 2:8

desiring men everywhere to pray but also Thessalonians telling us to not cease praying.

The location isn’t what’s making them hypocrites

It also has nothing to do with the position they are in when they pray!

Mosses 40 days prayed to God on his face for the rebellion of Israel.

The issue is the motivation of the prayer!

Praying for the show is wrong, that's what the Pharisee missed in Luke, look at me how good am I. The hypocrites of Jesus day are putting on this show of piety but in private they are lost.

But God sees what is in private, you can trick everyone around you, but you can’t trick God. He knows.

Illustrate

Think about this you and your family go on a cruise in the northern hemisphere. As you guys approach Greenland you start to icebergs spread out and they seem so little in this mass body of water. But anyone who understands icebergs or has heard the story of Titanic understands that what is under that water is massively different than what is seen.

God is worried about what is going on under the surface that no one sees but him.

Apply

So, the question is this motivates your prayer life? Do you only pray on Sunday when the teacher calls on you or at dinner when people are over or is it what people get to see when you pray and overflow of the prayer life you have when no one is around?

Are we praying in Sunday School more than we pray for Sunday School, are we praying with our students but not praying for our students?

Because if that is why we pray Jesus says you have your reward, people will see you and think “O they are good Christian” but if we want to have eternal rewards if we want to make some real commotion in Iola for the Kingdom then we must be a people who pray, we must bathe every decision we make in prayer, we must pray not for looks but because it is so much a part of who we are in Jesus.

So, first Jesus warns us to not be like the hypocrites then he warns us not to be like the gentiles. Verse 6-8

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 6

7 When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. 8 Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.

Now working with students forever and having kids I can already hear the questions they would ask,

so, we can’t pray long prayers?

So, we can’t pray for anything cause God already knows what we need?

No to both those, Jesus is pro-long prayers, think about the Garden where the disciples fell asleep because Jesus prayed to the father so long, and not only once not twice but three times for the same thing.

Jesus understands that God inside His will gives to those who ask.

So don’t miss how important prayer is because of these don’t clause, Satan would love to see prayer minimized in the lives of followers.

Jesus is saying through what prayer is versus what gentiles had made it.

Now gentile has a couple of meanings

non-jews

an unrighteous person with no hope of salvation.

Prayer inside the gentile world fails to measure up to what God asks for.

We can find stories within the bible of people praying for 6 hours to false gods, the scribe praying for like 9 hours in Mark.

Gentiles think of prayers as only effective if long,

1st Kings 18:26

26 So they took the bull that he gave them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “Baal, answer us!” But there was no sound; no one answered. Then they danced around the altar they had made.

The gentiles of Jesus' time believe God hears and He answers but does so according to their wordiness.

So gentiles are crafting these lofty long prayers so that God will hear them and grant them their request.

Jesus says don’t do that because God already knows what you need before you ask?

Illustrate

A story about Hailee coming upstairs the other day and persuading me. She was so sweet and nice. She told me how the diet had me looking so slender and the workout had me looking very strong. She kept going and I was like a rather loving boy. But then she asked for something, I should have known that she was trying to butter me up but I thought well that is true and maybe she is trying to nice. But it was this long discourse to try and get what she wanted.

That is what Jesus is warning us against useless babble thinking that it will persuade God to grant us what we want?

Apply

The truth is we don’t know what is best for us at times, and we are so limited in what we see and can understand that God who is all-knowing gives according to His will. So our prayer shouldn’t be a request line but a time to express our need and desire and dependence on God. It is about changing us, changing our will to look like His, Making our values look like His values. It's a time of fellowship with the Lord not a time of bartering or convincing.

Closing

Some of you may be sitting here or listening online and God is talking to you. I said earlier that Satan is seeking to destroy the very communication that we have with God. But this isn’t something new. Satan initiated an all-out war in the garden when he tricks Adam and Eve. Ever since that moment death entered the world, bringing with it destruction and suffering separated us from God. Luckily God knew and was already at work for you and me. Jesus Christ came and stood in my place and your place some 2000 thousand years ago. Making payment for our sin and defeating death once and for all. Now he patiently waits to allow all to have time to repent.

The Bible teaches us in

Romans 10:13

everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved! Just as our walks with the Lord should be bathed in prayer, entering into a relationship with Him starts the same way. Calling out from where we are and asking God to save us, Jesus has already done the work, but we must accept it.

If you want to know more, I invite you as soon as the band starts to come up front and let us talk more, if you are online call a friend you know, that knows and loves the Lord, then call the office Monday and let us know.

Others of you may be here and know that your prayer life isn’t what should be, you may fall into one of these categories or possible prayer has been tossed the wayside, I challenge you today to stop letting Satan steal from you, communicate with the Lord is amazing, talking with the father is a gift to be cherished.

I said I can't think of a better way to start my ministry as your senior Pastor than talking about prayer, we are going to close this service in one last song, I am going to be right here, I invite you to join me in prayer.

That God would use us, that God would move us, that God would prune us, praying for Iola that they would be ready for the Gospel and that we would be faithful with the Gospel, would you join me in prayer?