Okay, let's shift gears and we're going to talk about prayer. During the series of Knit and Join Together, our desire is to cast a vision for church life, particularly, and to try to define the kind of church life we're really praying for, working for, promoting as elders and desire to do various things to accomplish that. And one of those things is that we are a fellowship of prayer marked by prayer. And as you can see, I have an outline. There are six points that I want to cover.

First of all, the mystery of prayer. Second, the command to pray. Third, the way to pray. Fourth, our confidence in prayer. Fifth, a time to stop asking in prayer and the preciousness of prayer.

So I'd like to take each one of those in order to help us focus our attention on the kind of thinking about prayer and activity of prayer that we are praying that God really brings about in our church. And I want to direct you to two passages of scripture at the very beginning that speak of how critical this is and how beautiful this is. First is Matthew 21 verse 13, where Jesus went into the temple of God, and he drove out those who bought and sold in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold the doves, and he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." So the Lord Jesus, of course, was in his clearing the temple, was announcing that that temple is going to be destroyed. And he's talking about a prayerless temple that will be destroyed. A prayerless house will pass away.

And He is confronting those who have turned the attention of the people of the house of God on to things extraneous to God and the word of His grace. Now that happens really easy in our lives. It's so easy for us to distract our own minds, get all wrapped around axles that don't have to do with the heart of God. We get offended with each other, we get interested in all kinds of side issues, and we make them the main thing, and then there is no main thing that is at least defined by God. And that's what happened in the temple.

And so Jesus says, "'My house shall be called the house of prayer.'" It's the place of focus upon God. And we really pray that that is our focus when we come together. Another passage is in Acts chapter 2 verse 42, this first snapshot of the early church where they're gathered together and Acts 2 42 says that they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. So they had this kind of life where they engaged in all these various matters. It was steadfast engagement in these matters.

The Apostles' Doctrine, in other words, teaching, the instruction of the Word of God, fellowship, and that's just not, Fellowship in the Bible isn't just chit-chatting. It has to do with engaging one another in the things of God. It's fellowship with God and one another all at the same time. They are holy relationships. And then the breaking of bread and in prayers now in our church we make various opportunities to pray publicly we gather everybody together on Wednesday night We provide opportunity for prayer on Sunday morning and so there are scheduled times that we do this.

Now our Confession calls for prayer. The Baptist Confession of 1689 states it like this, prayer with thanksgiving being one part of natural worship is by God required of all men. So prayer is a matter of worship and then the confession says, but that it may be accepted it is to be made in the name of the Son by the help of the Spirit according to his will with understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, and perseverance, and when with others in a known tongue." And then the next paragraph in the confession says this, prayer is to be made for things lawful and for all sorts of men living, in other words not dead, not prayers for the dead, or that they shall live hereafter for those whom it may be known that they have sinned, the sin unto death. So prayer is designed to be governed by God, and the three kinds of prayer that we have in mind here are personal and private prayer, family prayer, and corporate prayer in the church. Those are the three kinds.

And so I'd like to begin with these various elements of prayer. First of all, the mystery of prayer is that our spirits are prompted to prayer. And this is a blessing from God. God, by his spirit, moves us to pray, and we need that help. That's why we read in Romans 8.26, likewise the spirit also helps in our weakness, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. So there is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives helping us in our weakness to pray. We don't know what we should pray for, but the Spirit, the Spirit helps us, and it helps us in two ways. First of all, the Spirit of God illuminates, it illuminates the Word of God, and Secondly, the Spirit of God actually prays prayers that we don't even know that we should pray.

It seems that the Spirit of God takes our hearts inclinations, things we have a hard time communicating, and the spirit communicates those things to God. So we receive an enormous amount of help. Our spirits are prompted to pray, and God actually prays in our place, in our weakness. Think of the kindness of God. You know, our spirits are dull, our you know, our affections are for worldly things and so we're dull.

And God comes to us in the person of his spirit and helps us in our dullness. Have you ever felt dull in prayer? But think of the kindness of God. Even while you're so dull in prayer, there's somebody who's not dull. For you, for me.

It's amazing that God would be so kind to do such a thing. So there's a miraculous work that goes on in prayer, both in prompting us to pray and also to help, sort of like boosting our prayers. Every Christian has a prayer booster that clarifies and strengthens the argument of the heart. It's amazing. And then the second is the command to pray.

So not only is there a mystery of prayer, which really is a blessing, but there's also, there are commands to pray. We know that we're commanded to pray without ceasing, But I think when we think about the commands of prayer, we should recognize that our impulses to pray aren't enough. The impulses that the Spirit gives us and things like that are helped along by the command to pray. In other words, we shouldn't just wait until the Spirit gives us impulse. We should pray because we're commanded to pray.

God does both. He helps you and he stimulates to pray, but if you don't have that stimulation to pray, pray because you're commanded to pray. I think that's the idea. And, you know, whether we have the impulse to pray or not, we have an obligation to pray. And that's why the Lord Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, and it's why there are commands to pray.

I think that we should recognize that this is also a kindness of God because God not only ordains the ends of prayer, he not only makes promises that he will answer prayer, but he also ordains the means of what he has ordained and prayer is one of those means. And he brings about his will by commanding his children to do things and he uses his commands to carry out his sovereign will. This is remarkable and again that's the mercy of God. He's carrying, he's causing all things to work together for good and he's going to use you in the process. He's gonna give you an impulse to pray first, and he's also gonna command you to pray to get you out of your slumber and to pray.

But he's using it for the causation of everything good in the world. And so you know you have various commands to pray in the Bible. One of the one of the most famous ones is in 1st Timothy 2 where the Apostle says to Timothy who's the pastor in the Ephesian church, he says, therefore I exhort first of all that all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence." So we're commanded to pray and and he gives specific kinds of people to pray for, and why we should pray. The final reason that he gives to pray, for us to pray in this passage, is found in verse three, where he says, For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. Why?

Why is it good? Because he desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth for there's one mediator Between God and man Jesus Christ the righteous So not only is there command to pray, he also gives the reason to pray. And the ultimate reason is that there's a mediator for fallen people. They can have a Savior who will care for them and share their hearts with God and God's heart with them through the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. So there are reasons to pray, but the truth is the command is critical.

In Matthew chapter 6, you find the Lord's Prayer. And the Lord Jesus says, don't pray like the hypocrites, but pray like this." So it's another command to pray. But don't pray for self exaltation. Don't pray to show off. Or What often people do is they don't pray because they sense that they are showing off.

But there's a way to pray, and Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray. Interestingly enough, when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray there in Matthew chapter 6, he ends the whole discussion with a pretty startling principle, and It's the principle of forgiveness. And he addresses the problem of praying and yet not having forgiven those who've wronged us. And so he ends with this, for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses." So he is addressing prayer in the midst of unforgiveness in your heart towards someone else.

So prayer should be a stimulus for forgiveness. We shouldn't pray without forgiveness. If we have not forgiven our brother then we should not be praying. Go forgive your brother. Go get that done and release the poison and stop the rancor and pray." And he, you know, I think that this matter of the farmer, I think, is helpful.

The illustration of a farmer who has crops and they grow, but the farmer must do something. And that has to do with the command of prayer. God does cause the increase but he commands us to be involved in the harvest by doing our part. So we have to recognize his command to pray. So where have we gone?

First of all, God stimulates us to pray. It's an act of mercy. And not only does he stimulate us, he comes alongside and helps us. And then he commands us to pray so that we'll pray more. And then next, he gives the way to pray.

And I wanna speak of this in terms of our mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ. Because God would have us pray only the way that he has revealed us to pray. And he has revealed that we pray according to our mediator, Jesus Christ. And we cannot simply pray as we wish. We need an introduction.

We need someone to hold our hand as we pray. And so we need a mediator to hold our hand. There's wonderful imagery in the Bible about how God deals with his children. In Isaiah, we read that he holds your hand. In Deuteronomy, we read that he carries you, like a father carries his son.

In Psalm 139, we read that he puts his hand on your head, and he hems you in behind and before. And all of these things I think are related to the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. And he holds your hand and he takes you to the throne of grace he he takes you before God himself and you can stand before God because he is with you and This is the only way that you can stand before God. It matters how you come before God. You need an introduction to come before God.

You don't come on your own. You come only with Jesus Christ, your mediator. And so You might just think of your times in prayer as actually being held by the hand of your mediator and brought into the presence of God, because there's only one way, and that is through Jesus Christ. The Bible says that he must bring us to God. It's Jesus that brings us to God and it's like that in salvation as it is in prayer as well.

You know, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me, this is the mediatorial, sacrificial work of Jesus Christ. And maybe an example, a more common example might be an illustration from our government. If you wanted to get to the President of the United States or if you wanted to go see the Queen of England, there's a rigorous process that you must follow. You just can't go and talk to the president.

Okay? There is a sequence of events and there are introductions and there's structure to it and there are various intermediaries that need to be consulted in order to see the President of the United States or the Queen of England and there is a there's a formal way to approach the President of the United States and there's there's a way to dress as a way to act and there are various intermediaries before you get to it. And that's the way it is with God, except we have one mediator. There's one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ, the righteous. And so in Hebrews 10, we read about this.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest By the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, Which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. So God gives an intermediary who holds your hand, but he washes you and He clothes you before you get there. What a blessing that is. You know, nobody ever came before God pure except having been washed by Jesus.

You know, you might think, well, I can't pray. I have such a bad attitude. Well, he will wash you. Your high priest will make sure that you're washed before him. And literally, living water, which brings up all this imagery of the woman at the well that we've been engaging with recently.

Now, you can pray, you can use words and not be praying to anyone at all. The Muslims, when they pray, they're not praying through the mediator, Jesus Christ. Roman Catholics who are praying through saints, they're not praying, they're not praying to God because they do not have the right mediator. And using words might make you feel better. You know, praying your heart out might give you some sense of relief.

That's psychology, okay? That's not true spirituality. But if you pray with a mediator who is Jesus Christ, who washes you with pure water and clothes you in the robes of righteousness, then you can pray. And actually have your prayers heard. And you know, in terms of the way that we pray, I think one of the most helpful sort of structural matters to help us to pray is this acrostic, ACTS.

But there's more than that that I'd like to bring up. There are two critical ways to pray that I just want to recommend. First is by just thinking through this acrostic, ACTS, Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. It's a wonderful process to make. And you begin with God.

Prayers should begin with God. And then the other would be to pray scripture. Don Whitney has written a marvelous short book about praying scripture. I'd highly recommend you read it. It's, you know, praying scripture has helped me so many times when I really didn't know how to pray, and I felt, you know, listless and unclear about what to pray for.

But praying the words of scripture is such a comfort. You know you're on the right track when you do that. It's another way that the Spirit helps us in our weakness. God has said that the words of, His words are Spirit and our life. And so when we pray the words of God, we are praying the words of the Spirit at the same time.

And so I think it's helpful to walk through those two different ways of praying. And then, fourthly, our confidence in prayer. In 1 John 5, 14 and 15, we have these wonderful words that Dwayne made into a song, one of my favorite songs. Now this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him.

What a blessing it is to know that we can have confidence in prayer. We can proceed with a sense of confidence in God. And as we're praying the promises of God, as we're pleading with our hearts before the Lord, as we're confessing before the Lord, we can have confidence in prayer. And then fifthly, there's a time to stop asking. And I want to draw our attention to 1st to 2nd Corinthians 12 verses 7 through 10.

And the Apostle Paul seems to indicate there's a time to stop asking. He had a thorn in the flesh, he had some affliction, we don't even know what it was. God gave it to him to reveal his pride and his self-sufficiency. And he cried out to God to remove it, and God wouldn't remove it because God wanted to continue working on his pride. And so it seems that He stopped asking God about that, because he recognized why he had the thorn in the flesh.

Here's one thing I think we should say. We do not go in prayer to demand of God. We do not go and claim things for God. This whole idea of naming something and claiming something is completely contrary to scripture. We make our requests before God.

God is sovereign. He is the one that has ordained all things that are good. We pray according to his will. And we should have no confidence to demand things of God. To make our requests known to God, not our demands to God, not to pray according to our perceptions and our prejudices and our lusts.

James addresses this very clearly. There's a wrong way to pray. And so there is a time to stop asking, and there are things that should not be asked and that has to do with making demands upon God who's wiser than we are. And then finally I just want to address the preciousness of prayer in Revelation 5 verse 8. We encounter some imagery about prayer that we begin actually finding in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, prayers of the saints were illustrated by incense. The incense that was burned in the temple was symbolic of prayers being lifted up to God. The sweet aroma of prayers. And in Revelation chapter 5 verse 8, we have another image of this And we read this, and when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And here you have these bowls that contain the prayers of the saints, and it bears witness to the preciousness of the prayers of the saints.

There's a particular value that God places in the prayers of his people. They are precious to him. They're so precious to him that he gives them a booster to come. And that's the work of the Holy Spirit. And these prayers come up to him like incense.

You know, prayer is like the incense of the acknowledgement of the sovereign will of God. When you pray, you're acknowledging that you're not sovereign. You're acknowledging that only God can do whatever needs to be done. You're acknowledging his wisdom. You're acknowledging his power.

You're acknowledging his presence, that he's real in the world. Prayers are precious, I think, to God because the very act of prayer says something about your heart, that you value him, and that you think that he is the solution and that you don't think you're the solution. And so they're very precious because they they bear witness to God's omnipotent power and his sufficiency. Okay so I'd like to just make some applications from this. And the first has to do with prioritization.

And the appeal that we want to make is prioritize prayer, prioritize private prayer, prioritize prayer in your family and prioritize corporate prayer in your life. All three of those things. Heed the command, obey the command to pray, privately, in your home, and in your church. You know, my practice, my most desired practice at night when Deborah and I go to bed is to read her a psalm and then to pray. And often you know I find you know I I'm listless and I lack motivation and and so I might I might not we might not pray.

We usually read, but sometimes, I just let the prayer go by. Sometimes we fall asleep fast. But prioritizing prayer is really critical in whatever venue you have in your family. And then in the church, we just urgently want to just encourage you to come to prayer on Wednesday night. We know some of you can't.

If you can, please come. Prioritize it. God regards the prayers of the saints even even the most simple, even the most unemotional. He values prayer. He values prayer from the heart.

And to fill up the bowls of prayer of God. The preciousness of these prayers is critical. Secondly, I want to encourage you to pray during our corporate prayer times. Here's the reality. It's a reality that I think I've observed in every church.

Only a small group of people pray. I think that's bad. Okay? It happens here, but guess what has happened in every church I've ever been in? Only a few people pray.

Let's not let that be true here, and you know who you are. Go pray. Start praying, okay? Pray corporately. Now if your heart is wicked, and you've not forgiven people, and you're living a double life, then please don't pray.

But if your heart is sincerely directed toward the Lord, let the incense float into the bowls of prayer that God keeps in heaven, pray. You know, it's usually only a small group of men who pray on Sunday morning. It's usually a small group of people, a little bit bigger group, that pray on Wednesday night. We just want to encourage you to let it loose. Third, women.

Women can pray. The way that we and children can pray. Women and children can pray. And let me nuance this a little bit here. Our understanding of 1 Corinthians 1434 is that women should not pray during the meetings of the church.

The Apostle Paul, we think, makes that very clear in 1 Corinthians 1434. So we don't want women to pray during our Sunday morning services. Now, you have to ask, what is the meeting of the church? People draw that line in different places. We've drawn that line in the Sunday morning worship service.

It might sound strange. It might sound, you know, not presumptuous, but there's a word I'm looking for. You know, it might sound contrived, but you have to decide. If you believe 1 Corinthians 14, 34 applies to some kind of gathering of God's people you have to define that gathering and we've defined it for Sunday morning so when we break up for Sunday morning our understanding of the elders the way we're doing it and we're not saying this is the only right way to do this, but it's the way we're doing it here. Women can feel free to pray after that.

Like when we meet in the afternoon, we allow women to pray and ask questions and things like that. Same thing with Wednesday night prayer. We don't think it's the meeting of the church where the Lord's Supper and the preaching of the word are observed. So we think that's OK. So we invite women to pray.

If you're not comfortable praying, just understand you're invited to pray if you like. And then children, can children pray? And there are a couple things I'd like to say about that. Yes, children can pray. You know, often out of the mouth of babes comes the wisdom from heaven.

You know, our view is that children just need to be shepherded through that process. If you think your child is praying boastfully or just mouthing words, then you can minister to that child, help them understand what they're doing. You might with a child say, no, we don't want you to pray for a while. That's fine. But it is, we think it's legitimate for children to pray.

If their hearts are lifting up thoughts that are like incense to heaven, let them pray. If they love Jesus, let them pray. Jesus said, let the children come to me. So it's good for children to pray, but children are sinners too, and they might need some instruction, and they might need parents to restrain them a little bit. So we think that works as well.

So there you go. These six things, There is a great mystery in prayer. God extends so much mercy in prayer by helping us in our weaknesses. Secondly, we are commanded to pray. He's so kind to us that He would take us out of our natural inclinations and give us a reason to pray because he commanded it.

And then thirdly, there's a way to pray through a mediator. He's given us a mediator. The love of God runs through every aspect of the doctrine of prayer. He gives us a mediator who will speak for us and and then fourthly we can have confidence in prayer and then fifthly we can also recognize that there may be a time to stop praying about something, and then sixthly to recognize the preciousness of prayer. You know, the fingerprints of the love of God are all over the doctrine of prayer, and so we should pray.

We should be a praying people, a fellowship of praying people. You know, God has it so that the church, it's a fellowship of love, it's a fellowship of singing, it's a fellowship of learning, And it's a fellowship of prayer. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you that you've structured such a marvelous family with such good things to do. And now Lord, we pray that you would help us to give our whole hearts to those things.

Keep us from being distracted from the things that would pull us out of meditating on these marvelous manifestations of your love and that we would be a praying people. Amen.