In his sermon titled 'Prayer - An Appeal to Heaven,' Paul Carrington explores the profound privilege and power of prayer as taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically from Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 through 10. Carrington emphasizes that prayer is a crucial element in the Christian life, serving as a direct line of communication between believers and God, transcending earthly limitations. He discusses the historical context of prayer, citing biblical figures like Enoch, Noah, and Moses, who exemplified a deep communion with God. The sermon also highlights Jesus' teachings on avoiding hypocritical and heathen prayers, encouraging genuine and sincere communication with God. Carrington further explains the concept of God as Father, emphasizing the intimate and personal relationship believers have with Him. He stresses the importance of longing for God's kingdom and His will to be done on earth, urging Christians to actively participate in building God's kingdom. The sermon concludes with a call to embrace prayer as a means of aligning one's life with God's purposes and experiencing His transformative power.

Well if you could please open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6 where we'll be back in the Sermon on the Mount and this afternoon we have quite a topic, the topic of prayer and we're going to be looking at what the Lord has to teach us as citizens of the kingdom, what that looks like and how we have this great great privilege and what are the the points that really go into it. And so I'm going to read to us Matthew chapter six, verses five through ten. And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the street that they may be seen by men. Assuredly I say to you they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room and when you have shut your door pray to your Father who is in the secret place and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

And when you pray do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them, for your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. In this manner therefore pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Lord we have this grand theme here before us and Father we do pray that you would teach us how to pray to make our voices to be heard on high Lord that you would be pleased when we do pray and we ask you Father to come and just teach us, instruct us, help us. We are so thankful for this great grace of prayer that we have Lord to be able to approach you the maker, the creator, the sustainer of the universe and here we are Lord just flesh and bones but Lord you have called us sons and daughters and we are so grateful for that. We just pray you would strengthen us now and help us. Help us to learn and help us to leave this place encouraged to draw near to your throne of grace. Lord we ask these things in the name of your Son Jesus Christ Amen.

Amen. Well one of the more obscure flags in our nation's history, It's a beautiful yet simple flag. It was a pine tree off of a white background and above it in black letters you read these words, an appeal to heaven. I don't know if you've seen that flag before but it was designed by General George Washington's personal secretary and it was flown by his ships, George Washington's ships during the Revolutionary War. And the whole thinking behind this was this, that General Washington, he believed that although the colonists were going against a tremendous military force, at that time the greatest military force in the world, England, an even greater power sustained them in their quest for independence and freedom from oppression.

And how else do you wage war against such odds? The only and the best recourse that they had was to make an appeal to heaven and that was their faith that we can go directly to God who will fight for us. And you know since the beginning you go all the way back in your Bibles and really prayer has been the ladder between earth and heaven. When you look at men like Enoch, there's not a lot said about him, but it says that Enoch walked with God. And then you go a little bit further And you might meet a man by the name of Noah, who in the midst of debauchery, violence, apostasy, he was a man who found grace and he had communion with God.

And then you go a little bit further and you meet the patriarchs. And what a title Abraham had, the friend of God. We see how Isaac, before he married Rebecca, what was he doing? He was out in the field meditating and thinking about God and praying. And of course you can't really forget Jacob who spent that whole night wrestling with God.

An imperfect man but he wrestled with God. And even if you go outside of the patriarchs you find a man by the name of Job and he knew his God but he came to know him even greater after going through that tremendous trial. You remember what he said? I've heard about you by the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees you and I repent in dust and ashes. Moses, he communed with God.

He first met God at the burning bush, but all through the course of his life he had, you know, he met him on the mountain. He met him everywhere. He was always in communion with God. And you fast forward even further and you meet David. And we read a Psalm, we read multiple I think Psalms here today, many of them prayers lifted up to God.

He was a man of deep prayer and of course the prophets, you know, who were more violent in their appeals to heaven than the prophets as they labor to intercede for their people and to bring the message of God. And you know, even when they were abroad, you had Hebrews who were sent abroad into distant foreign lands, but you had men like Daniel praying and you had Nehemiah, we heard about his aero prayers, he just would be calling upon God constantly. And then you come to the New Testament and how else do you account for the spread of the early church But through the preaching of the word, carried along by prayer and the power of prayer, and you begin to see as acts unfolds that prayer is really the engine that sustains the Apostles and those early Christians as the church found its footing in those early centuries. And of course no one was more active and no one was more prevailing in prayer than the Lord Jesus Christ himself when he was upon the earth. But even now, what does it say about him that he ever lives to make intercession for us?

In other words, to bring us before God interceding for us. And so, you know, men have found this thing of prayer as really the most essential thing in the Christian life. Just a few men who made these these comments you know men like Spurgeon he says all of our perils are nothing so long as we have prayer Luther he said this that to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing how essential is prayer and then Thomas Watson prayer delights God's ear It melts his heart and opens his hand. God cannot deny the praying soul. And I always love to read letters.

How can you talk about prayer without talking about George Mueller? But he wrote a letter. So here's George Mueller in Bristol writing a letter to his friend, younger friend Hudson Taylor, somewhere in inland China. And he's giving him all sorts of advice. These letters are like gold, but one of the comments he makes, he says, now Young Hudson, he says, now in your case with all the many millions of idolaters around you, the temptation is to be overpowered by the immense quantity of work to be done, to the not minding sufficiently of your own soul.

But this would only lead to loss. No amount of work can make up for the neglect of meditation in the Holy Scriptures and for the neglect of prayer. How central it was and even coming into our latest, I guess the last century, you know Bethann Lloyd-Jones, Martin Lloyd-Jones' wife, she would often be asked questions about her husband And you know what she said? She says, no one will ever understand my husband until they realize that he is first of all a man of prayer and then an evangelist. So prayer, No matter what you find, all types of different men living in all different types of countries, going through all different types of trials, but the common denominator of all men and all women really, useful to God is that they pray.

Not as a last resort, but it's something that they do in all seasons. And again, they know this as an appeal to heaven, calling on God because they need God. That's really what prayer is. And so here we have, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ and he's speaking about this matter of prayer. And in these opening verses on prayer, he's seeking to help us to identify and avoid two ditches that are so dangerous and perilous to us.

The first one is the the ditch of the hypocrite and the second one is the ditch of the heathen. But look at this, what he says in verse 5 speaking specifically of the hypocrites and he says and when you pray you shall not be like the hypocrites the actors those that put on a display for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men. Assuredly I say to you they have their reward." You know, when you look at this, it's staggering to think of how crafty we can be, you know. The knack of the human heart. And what do I mean by that?

Well, to turn what should be and ought to be really the most humbling act, you know, prayer. Often you associate prayer with bowing down or looking up or calling out for help, humbling yourself, making requests. But how crafty we can be that we can even turn something like that into a vehicle for self exaltation. And the Lord, He's revealing the fact that the living God, He is not going to be mocked by such exercises, such performances as these. What does He say?

He says, congratulations when you pray in such a way, You have your reward. You prayed for men to hear and they heard you. But what a terrible trade-off isn't it? Because do men have the power to answer prayer? You know, I think of it like sparks.

You sit outside at a bonfire and you see those sparks that they fly up. They seem to fly up, but they never reach heaven. That's kind of the idea here of these types of prayers. They don't go and accomplish anything really. And so what is the Lord doing here when he's speaking of prayer?

He's piercing the motives and he's revealing the corruption that existed in the hearts of the hypocrites and can also exist in our hearts because they're after one thing that they may be seen by men. That's what they were after. And so what is he doing? He's calling us to this true heartedness, to this sincerity that we ought to have when we're citizens of the Kingdom of heaven. We're not needing now to have affirmation from other people to be thought of in another way because we know that we're sinners just saved by grace.

And he's calling us to what prayer was always really intended to be which is communion with God. And so he goes on and he says, but you when you pray go into your room and when you have shut your door pray to your father who is in the secret place and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And what he's what he seems to be doing here, he's just talking about the idea that there shouldn't be ostentation in your prayers or fancy words or any false piety. And this is not a rebuke of public prayer, but against hypocritical prayer, prayers that are again being done to create an impression that isn't really there. That I'm walking with God and I'm close to God when really we heard actually in our time of reading this morning of this idea that we can actually draw near to God with our lips but our hearts can be so far from him.

Again George Mueller says it like this, he says public prayer will never make up for closet communion And I think that's really the idea here is that as people, we ought to be people of prayer, not just maybe when we gather only, but it's a course of our life. And so that's how he deals with the hypocritical prayer, but he's not done. He goes to the other ditch and he deals with the heathens and he says, and when you pray do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. And so this is again that other ditch. But what marks a heathen?

If you think of the word heathen, really the word that comes to my mind is ignorance. A heathen is someone who is ignorant about God. You remember when you go to Athens in the book of Acts and what do we find? But we find an altar that was raised up to the unknown God. That's what they were doing.

And in the heathen mind, you know, their gods are really little more than powerful men. And oftentimes not even very moral. You can read about men in the Greek anthology. You've got men like Zeus, and you've got Bacchus, which is the god of wine and pleasure, debauchery. You've got the god Apollo and female goddesses, Aphrodite.

The list goes on and on, but what's interesting about these gods is that they're oftentimes very capricious, they're unstable, they're given to fits of rage and they constantly, they need to be placated. You never quite know where you stand with these false gods, which are really just demons or idols. And of course you go all the way back and you can remember Elijah's day. You remember when he was there and he confronted that massive throng of the the ball worshipers, the priests. And you know what it says about them?

Is that they called on ball from morning until afternoon. Vain repetition, just calling out, even going to the point of cutting themselves, doing everything to try to make this false god pay attention to them. They were persuaded that a waterfall of words without meaning would somehow prevail on this God which was no God at all. And then you can go to the Ephesian riot also in the book of Acts when when there they were Paul was preaching and the silversmiths got all upset and they stirred up the crowd and the riot broke out. And what happens?

But that everyone starts screaming out, great is Diana of the Ephesians for two hours. Well what's comical about this whole occurrence is it says a little bit later on it says most of the people did Not even know why they were there. Hey, what are we shouting? What's going on? But they just get carried away in this tumult and this is what we're called to not be a part of but to To use our mind our hearts Sincerity don't be like the heathens, You know, it's so amazing that even in our day, forget all the days gone by, but you know Muslims, they pray, wrote prayers five times per day.

The same thing five times a day. The call to prayer goes out. But not only do the Muslims do that, it might have occurred to you that the Roman Catholics, they also do this. They have something called the Rosary, which you've probably heard of, and they've got 50 beads on there that are dedicated to 50 Hail Marys, but there's also six beads on there, and this is so ironic, that are word for word, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. And they're literally saying, doing the thing the Lord is saying not to do here.

They are just saying the same thing over and over, but using the prayer the Lord said, don't do this in regards to. And so this is really the danger. He's doing something though so beautiful I think here, and he's reminding them, but when he looks at the hypocrites on the one side, and he looks at the heathen on the other side, what is he doing? He's painting this amazing and beautiful portrait, reminding them of who God is, and what his nature really is. He's utterly unlike the pagan gods on the one side, and he's not the God that the hypocrites pretend to call upon.

This is what he says in verse 8. He says, Therefore, therefore, as a result, because the true and living God is different, do not be like them. He says, your God, he says basically there, the one who knows all, he's already even acquainted with all of your needs before you even ask him. And then he gets into this what's often called the Lord's Prayer, the model prayer, and he says in this manner therefore pray. And this is really this teaching on how can we appeal to heaven, How can we make our requests to be heard on high?

Again, it's a model prayer. It's just designed to express the way in which we are to pray. It's not the thing that we're to say every single time we pray, but there's certain categories here that are so clear. And again, we don't want to just be tied to precision in terms of let's use these words, but what can we learn? What lessons can we take as we look at this model prayer here?

Well, what the Lord Jesus does is he starts by looking at God and turning attention towards God your Father. You know I was looking at this here, our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name. I want to spend just a few minutes on those four words, our Father in heaven. You know, how foreign this word father would sound on the lips of the hypocrite who has God at a distance, but also on the lips of a heathen that fears all their gods. There's no such thing as a relationship.

And you know, in the Sermon on the Mount it's the first time, just actually in the previous chapter, where this whole idea of God as Father actually becomes the norm. So that now when we pray, I mean you hear the prayers every single time we gather, either on a Wednesday or on a Sunday morning, and we call him Father. But up until this point, God was at more of a distance in a sense that people didn't have this closeness, at least in their praying to God. There was a bit of a distance there. And so this idea of drawing near to God and calling him Father was such a difficult thing to conceive of.

You know, when we were in Turkey, Melinda had a friend, her name was Yasemin, and she came out of Islam and she became a Christian, loved the Lord, but she confessed, she said, I had such a hard time in those early years calling him father. As though I was treading on ground I had no right to be on because this whole idea of this Allah and this fear of This God who's not your friend? Just it had so colored her way of thinking about God and then not having a good father It made it so difficult, but she eventually came into this place where she was easily able to call him father. But we take it for granted, but it's a beautiful, amazing grace and privilege that we have, the very fact that we can say father. And we're speaking to the one who created the whole universe.

You can't get an audience with the president, but you have always an audience with the God of creation. And so the Lord is countering this view of God with this most revolutionary one that in the kingdom of God, God is your Father. The nature of heathen prayers, what does it imply? It implies that God is not good, But the citizen of God's kingdom knows God as good. And then of course the nature of heathen prayer implies that God is small, but notice what Jesus says.

He knows what you have need of even before you ask. He knows everything and more than you could ever imagine. And so this God that we come to is all-knowing and all-powerful. What are the ramifications of calling Him Father? Well, by calling Him Father, what are you doing but identifying yourself as a child?

You're his son, you're his daughter. By calling him father, you're speaking of relationship. You know, remember the fellowship that our first parents enjoyed in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day? But that was all lost, and it was lost to the vast majority of humanity for thousands of years. With the first sin, everything else was was broken, death entered, we got the curse, we've got disease, we've got suffering, all of these different types of things.

Life was basically a veil of tears. But now it's restored. You actually have fellowship and friendship. He's Father. By calling Him Father, you speak of nearness.

Not a God who is a far-off, but He's a God who can be known and wants to be known by you. And heaven is always open, as I was just saying earlier, your heavenly Father is available. You wake up in the middle of the night, you're on the other side of the world, you're in the worst of circumstances, heaven is open. And he wants you to know that. He's always available.

By calling him father, one of the most beautiful things you speak of is adoption. But not an adoption of innocents, you know, cute little babies. No. But adoption of corrupted enemies. Now made sons, now made daughters.

Children of wrath by nature as the scripture tells us, but now turned into heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. It's really the most scandalous thing to think of. And by calling him father, what do you do also, but speak about those around you? Because if God is my Father and He's your Father, what does that say about you and I, but that we're brothers and that we're sisters? And it should condition the way that we think about each other and talk to each other.

We're part of a new family. The one that you have on earth is going to end, but the one now that you're a part of, it will never end. It goes off into eternity and never ceases. So think of these things. The next time you pray and you utter those words, Father, give some thought to what you're saying and the privilege that's afforded to you here.

When we talk about this and where is our Father? He says our Father in heaven. And of course here we are on the earth but our Father is in heaven And it doesn't mean that God is confined to heaven and he can't get out of heaven. No, that's not what he's saying here. But he's giving us something to think about, I think, and I'll get to it in a minute.

And I mentioned this on Wednesday, but you know when those churches of Asia Minor were there, going through all the ups and downs that travail within and without. They were wracked by sin. They had compromise creeping in. They were fearful. They were being persecuted.

All these different things were happening. The antidote that God gives is this, that a window was open in heaven. And not only that, but then the Lord gives a perfectly, just a view of himself that was so, so beautiful. This view of heaven, and there you see God on his throne. And it describes some of the beings and all of that.

But as I mentioned, that before this throne, there was the sea of glass. And the opposite of all the upheaval, the struggle that we go through here on earth, God is undisturbed. God is sovereign. He's in utter and total control. That's one of the great antidotes to our anxieties and troubles because we're calling upon him as our Father who is there.

And so when we see him in heaven, what does that mean? He's up, he's above, he's majestic, he's exalted, he's full of power, he's over all, he's unmoved by all the things that we are moved by, all the wranglings of politics, what's gonna happen next week or next year? None of that moves God. Though He is the mover, He's the one moving all the pieces on the chessboard, He's unmoved. Whether kingdoms rise or kingdoms fall, God is unmoved and he reigns and he does whatsoever he pleases.

He's unassailable by his enemies. Do and say what they will, but we read in Psalm 2 that he who sits in the heavens shall laugh and have them in derision." And this is our confidence. They can gnash their teeth until their teeth fall out. What does he say? Yet, yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.

See this is the God that we we come to. Our Father, as close as he is, as familiar as he ought to be, he's also in heaven all-powerful. It's almost a bit of a paradox, but this is what the Lord is teaching us about our Father in heaven. And he says, hallowed be your name. The meaning of this petition is very simple.

Really, his name is to be regarded as holy, as being in an entirely different category than everything else. When you think of God, that's how we ought to think. He is our Father, yes, but He's also utterly sanctified and separate from us, And so we ought to esteem him as such when we approach him. And so he tells him this here, that he, really the request here is that may your name be received by all people with the due honour it deserves. That's what Jesus is saying.

Hallowed be your name. And of course this honor is so beautifully captured. I look at Romans chapter 11 where Paul is writing after marveling at all that God has done in the gospel. And look what he says, look at the awe that he approaches this with. Look what he says, oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor, or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him. For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things to whom be glory forever and ever amen hallowed be your name and so here we are at this junction here after acknowledging him as as your father and acknowledging where he resides, calling him holy, what is the primary interest that the Lord Jesus has before even our own needs? Will we meet that in our next verse? It really encapsulates really the entire reason that the Lord Jesus came to the earth.

What does it say in verse 10? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And really there's two things here that are important really to point out. Your kingdom come, and you know I found this kind of convicting. Do I long for the consummation of the kingdom when Christ finally comes back, you know.

You remember Simeon, when there he was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and when he finally saw the Lord Jesus as a baby coming in, He says, now let your servant depart in peace. This was a man who was longing for the kingdom of God. Do we long in the same way for the return of Christ? Your kingdom come. You remember the souls that are under the altar in Revelation, what's their question?

How long, O Lord? How long? You know, think about what happens when Christ comes back. The curse is going to be lifted entirely. The earth and all creation is going to be restored.

You're going to be clothed upon bodily resurrection with a whole new body that will never see corruption. You'll have fellowship with God. Not faith will be unnecessary because you'll see him face to face. All other powers and dominions that we know on this earth are going to be stripped away, laid bare. And So this is one of the aspects.

Do you long for his kingdom to come? But there's another aspect also when we say, your kingdom come. And that is, his kingdom in a sense has already come, hasn't it? Jesus said that. That the kingdom is among you, that he has come.

He's the king. And he's sitting there at the right hand of God. And so while we wait for the final consummation, we demonstrate our longing by participation in the Lord's great commission. The idea is this, is Christ's preoccupation, you know, captured here in the prayer, also your preoccupation? Ask yourself that question.

And what do I mean by that? Well, what he's praying here, your kingdom come, that your kingdom, he talks about it being that little mustard seed, and it starts off but then it grows to be the greatest herb in the garden. This is what he's talking about, the enlargement of his father's kingdom here on earth, and that God would implant his knowledge and fear and love in the hearts of as many as far and wide as can be done. And so men and women cannot pray your kingdom come without really considering your part in the building up of the kingdom? You even said every time we have our church covenant, you know, the idea being that we are to engage both locally as well as to the othermost parts of the earth to see and pray and hope, oh, that his kingdom would come, that more and more and more people would come to a knowledge of the truth and would become worshippers, that God may receive the glory due to his name.

This ought to be a preoccupation of the Christian, the one who knows God, the one who's a part of this kingdom. And this flows, all of this flows into this next petition where you've, and I'll end here, he says, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so as God's kingdom comes and more worshipers come out of the woodwork, so to speak. I remember I met with one missionary and it was very, this was an older man and you know he had been on the field for a while, and he says, you know, the people that we have preached to, many of them have come to a knowledge of the truth. And we're so grateful for that.

But he says it's going to be another 10 or 15 years before we start seeing the outworkings of what they believe in their lives. In the sense of marriages being transformed and child raising being transformed. He's a wise man knowing that there's so much stuff that you carry in, and it's going to take a long time when you have never even seen Christianity in action, in practice before. But the question that every worshiper really, wherever you are in the world, must come to ask himself or herself at whatever point in their life is, how now shall I live? How now shall I live?

You see, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The pursuit of God's will becomes preeminent now to that new believer. How should I live? How does he want me to live? The prism that you begin to make decisions by is God and His Word.

And we've seen glimmers of this haven't we? When you you look throughout history or even in the history of our own nation where men have asked that question, we've seen such beautiful outflows from that. You know, you look in places where the gospel is gone, cannibalism gives way to brotherhood. What a transformation. And that wasn't that long ago in some places.

Practices like Sati in India where you have the bride burning when the husband dies, they're now seen as barbaric because of the knowledge of God. Slavery becomes an affront to the image of God in men. And I hope and pray things like abortion and fantaside as well will give way to adoption, to life, to recognizing that everything, every creature no matter how small, every human no matter how small, bears the image of God and is worthy of protection. And so he says, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When I read this, isn't it amazing the only place out of order in all of creation is this place where man inhabits earth?

In heaven all those angels they do the will of God. You even look at creation and even the creatures, the birds, and you know they do the will of God. And all we see here on earth is a lot of corruption. But I do want to say, as much as there is corruption on this earth, to also just look around you and see how much, because of Jesus, how much has been set right. That otherwise would not have been set right.

You go back 2, 000 years when there was no glimmer of Christianity outside of certain pockets and the life people led, the way women were treated, all of these types of things, entirely different. But because Christ has come, we actually see a different, yet we long for so much more, don't we? We want to see him work more and more and more. And so the Christian asks, what does God want us to do? What should we be about in terms of building up his kingdom and what are the things that he wants to see torn down.

That becomes the preoccupation of the Christian and we're to work to these ends. And so just in closing, let us just simply looking at these verses, It's so simple, but let us be sincere, knowing the God to whom we pray as Father. No need to create impressions. He's your Father. No hypocrisy, but also, He's not a stranger, strange God like the heathens have.

He's not a God that needs to be placated, but you're a child, you're a citizen, joyfully in this kingdom. And then our Father, He's in heaven. Though He's near, He's also far and He's over all. And he's highly exalted at the same time. And then of course that thought, long for his kingdom.

Both for the coming, long for Christ to come. And while you're longing, what does Jesus say? But occupy. Occupy till I come. Well let's pray.

Lord we do so thank you for the teachings of our Savior. We do pray Lord that you would help us again just to pray. Lord we pray even for quiet times when we're before you on our faces, Lord, that you would take up our prayers. Lord, when we gather as a body, Lord, that those prayers would reach up to your very throne. Lord, we need to have our prayers heard on high.

We pray that we would be done but with hypocrisy. Lord we pray that we would be done with slavish fear like the heathens but just Lord revel and be thankful for all that you are doing and all that you have done. Lord what a great thing you've given us in prayer. This ladder that we can climb from earth to heaven to make our requests. No, no matter how small, no matter how large Lord, you tell us to bring them all.

You tell us to cast all our cares upon you because you care for us. So Lord we thank you for these things. We just pray that you would send us out into the rest of this week Lord to honor, to glorify your name, to build up your kingdom. Lord to pray that your will would be done here on earth even as it is in heaven. Lord we we love you and we thank you.

We worship you in the name of your son Jesus. Amen. Amen. All right well we are dismissed.