-We’re going to have some fun this morning! I know what you’re thinking, how could church be any more fun than it already is!? We’re going to play some trivia this morning, I’m going to put some quotes on the screen, and you need to figure out where it came from: Taylor Swift or the Bible. For any swifties in the room (first of all, I don’t need to know which era you’re currently in), but if you’re a switfie don’t shout out who it is right away, let people think about it! You all ready?
-What does Taylor Swift have to do with praying? That’s a great question! I would argue that Taylor Swift is meeting a perceived need that people have. Her most recent tour grossed over 2 billion dollars in revenue, and she has a cult-like following. No one was surprised when the football star proposed to the pop star! And I think Taylor’s music is unique because she actually is involved in writing it – it’s songs that come from her real life experiences (which is why her latest album wasn’t as good, she’s found her “true love” so the angst, tension, and turmoil from all her previous albums is gone, she no longer has needs to just “shake it off”)
-See I think Taylor demonstrates what many people think they want. She’s perceived as being true to herself, to speaking whatever’s on her heart and mind, and she matches that to catchy melodies! She writes from a place of honesty and vulnerability that should be a marker of our prayers to the Lord. The fact that her lyrics sound so much like passages of Scripture shows us that we need to come before God with a level of vulnerability that maybe we’re not used to.
-So far in this series, we’ve looked at the prayerbook of Jesus (which is the Bible), we’ve seen how we can use the Bible as the inspiration for our prayers. Last week we looked at the Lord’s Prayer and saw that prayer isn’t supposed to be a performance, it’s supposed to reorient our hearts to God. This week, we’re going to look at the need for us to pray honestly to God, and what that looks like.
READ/PRAY – Luke 18:1-14 (pg. 930)
-Before we work through some passages of Scripture, I want to remind you of a quote I shared a couple weeks ago that has served as the primary inspiration for this sermon series, as well as been challenging to my own prayer life as I’ve worked to grow in how I approach God on a daily basis.
-How often do we view Christianity threw this skewed lens of a personal growth project, where Christianity is the cherry on top of the rest of my life. The gospel message is there’s nothing you can do to save yourself, nothing you can do to earn God’s favor and merit, and unfortunately, the temptation for us all is to spend all our time and energy working to “prove” ourselves, to clean ourselves up so that God will be happy with us. And the reality is our best “good works” are viewed by God as filthy rags. Like imagine cleaning your bathroom, and then using the rag you used to clean it as an offering to God, and that’s how he views our attempts to try to be good by ourselves.
-John Gerstner (church historian, professor at Pittsburgh and Knox Seminary and mentor to RC Sproul) said this:
-Keep this thought in mind as we work through all these passages today. The gospel message is meant to free us from trying to earn God’s favor, the gospel message means we are accepted, but not by anything we can ever do. As work our way through these various texts today, you’ll see why we need to come before God honestly, transparently, with everything we truly are.
- God Already Knows (Matt. 6:8)
-The first reality I want to remind us of is something Micah brought up last week. See, the Lord’s Prayer takes place in a specific context, Jesus is intentionally contrasting incorrect ways to pray with the way God wants us to pray. The beginning of this section begins with Jesus telling the people 2 ways NOT to pray, which is where I want us to begin today. The first is a praying for a performance, praying to try to impress other people. You see this often in movies where someone is having a normal conversation, and then as soon as they start to pray they start using old King’s English! Thee, thine
-The second way we’re not supposed to pray is to not “babble like the Gentiles.” We’re not sure everything that entails, but because Jesus goes on to say “many words” we know it has some level of repetition. Now, repetition itself isn’t bad as we’ll see later, the problem is with pointless or useless repetition.
-Most scholars points out that 2 things are being cautioned against here: first is the superstition that the right words said the right way invokes a deity to pay attention to you. Part of the reason the Romans had so many “gods” they worshipped is because they thought that you had to the right words to get a deity to pay attention to you, and if you said it the wrong way they would ignore you.
-The second thing being cautioned against is one of my favorite stories in the OT, the story of Elijah in the showdown against the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Israel is being led by a terrible king named Ahab, who has led the nation to worship false gods, particularly the god Baal. Baal had 450 prophets that served him, meanwhile Elijah was the only prophet left of the one true God. So he challenges the prophets of Baal to showdown on Mt Carmel. The challenge is each group of prophets must prepare a sacrifice to their god, but the one true God is the one who lights the sacrifice on fire without any help. And he lets the prophets of Baal start, since there’s so many of them. He gives them hours to cry out to their god (to babble), and what’s the response? Nothing! Finally, Elijah starts making fun of them, and he’s ruthless! But on and on they continue, but no one answered because as Jesus tells us in Matthew, this doesn’t work. And maybe that’s been your experience in prayer: it feels like there’s no sound, it feels like no on answers, it feels like no one pays attention. It’s ok, the theme of this sermon is honestly. It’s ok to admit that it doesn’t feel like it’s working. This is why we need other Christians around us to encourage us! And that’s why a series like this is important: we need regular encouragement to continue praying!
-I like what Jonathan Pennington (NT Prof at Southern) says about babbling:
-A call for simplicity over rhetoric, clarity over piled-up repetition. What this tells us is that the focus is like Nike: just do it! Even if it’s a really brief prayer, just pray it! What God wants is communication with him, it doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out event. And why is that? This is the greatest news in the world for us: He already knows! We don’t need to worry about trying to get His attention, we don’t need to try proving ourselves to Him by finding some magical formula of words, He already knows everything we need, AND remember from 2 weeks ago that not only does He know what we need, but the other 2 persons of the Godhead are also always actively praying for us!
-Someone recently told me a story about a conversation they had with an unbeliever who was trying to argue that there is no evidence for God. The believer drew a circle and said, “imagine this is all the knowledge in the universe. How much of this do you think you know?” The unbelievers drew that black circle, and the believer said “Wow! That’s a lot more than I know! But look at how little you still know compared to the sum total of all knowledge. Don’t you think that it might be a problem to act as if you have all the answers to everything in the cosmos?” See, God does actually know EVERYTHING, including you. He even knows you better than you know yourself!
-That’s why sometimes God’s answers to your prayers are “no!” He knows far better than you do what you actually need. I love the way Tim Keller summarizes this point: If what we’re praying for is the right thing for our growth in the gospel, for our becoming what God wants for us, then he’ll give it to us. But we have to admit that we don’t know as much as He does.
-I have 2 2-year-olds in my house right now. One of the most used words from them is “PLEASE!” especially when there’s any candy in sight! Do you think me being a good parent means I should give them whatever they want? No! If it were up to them, they’d eat goldfish and candy for every meal! And anytime the stove is on, they run and grab a chair, push it right up next to the stove and try to “help” us with the cooking. They have no clue about the source of heat they’re trying to play with! Once again, Keller summarizes this idea well:
-So we need to acknowledge that God knows things we don’t, God is aware of things that we aren’t, which is why what Micah preached last week is so important. Half of prayer is recognizing who God is, and we have to start with Him before we can begin to ask Him to help us. But now let’s turn to Luke 18 to see a couple other concepts we need to learn about prayer:
- Persist in Prayer (Luke 18:1-8)
-This is in the middle of a section of Jesus’s teachings as He journeys to Jerusalem. Right away, Luke tells us the point of this parable, which means we don’t need to try to guess the point! Here, the point of this story is to: pray always and not give up.
-Previously we looked at the caution to not babble in prayer like the gentiles, that is don’t assume that God will listen to you if you pray for a very long time, but here we see a reminder to persist in prayer, to continue asking for God to answer.
-This story begins with a judge who doesn’t care about others, including God! In this town there was a widow, someone with no rights or privileges in society, someone who was easy for others to take advantage of. Unfortunately for this woman, the judge doesn’t care. But eventually he gets so tired of her that he gives in to her request and notice that he even knows that what she’s asking for is right: he’ll give her justice. If an ungodly and uncaring judge is that way, how would God, who is infinitely caring, respond to His children?
-And it ends with Jesus asking the question: when He comes back, will he find anyone with faith? Because it requires faith to persist in prayer, to continue asking God and not giving up.
-So persistence is different than babbling! It’s a continual pleading with God to answer your requests, and it forces you to trust in His plans for you, plans that are for your good and growth in the gospel message. Persistence if you are being honest with the Lord, that what you’re asking is something you desperately need Him to respond to. Persistence is working to bring your feelings in line with God’s will for you, it’s a reminder that you’re not in control and He is, which is where He turns next:
- Get God Right (Luke 18:9-14)
-What is your attitude when you pray? What does your heart tell you when come before the Creator of the universe? Because this story gives us 2 heart attitudes to approach God with: either self-justifying or understanding that your justification can only come from God.
-We view the Pharisees today as the opposite of how they were seen in the 1st century, they were the “good guys” that everyone looked up to! Jesus knew they were trying to pursue righteousness, He says so in Matt. 5:20. The problem was they thought righteousness came through external obedience, compliance to a list of specific rules, but Jesus tells us the externals were only there to work to transform their hearts. And for us who are living on this side of the cross, our righteousness does surpass the Pharisees, because when God looks at us, He sees Jesus’s work, not ours! That’s why what matters for honesty in prayer is looking in the right direction, which the Pharisee doesn’t do. The Pharisee is only comparing himself to other people, and we tend to only compare ourselves to people we think are worse than us, and then we excuse anyone we think is better than us! See, if we come to God in prayer comparing ourselves to others, our view is always going to be skewed.
-We’ll be looking at this at the end of February, or you can go listen to a whole series through it that I preached in 2021, but the book Amos has a story that tells us how we’re supposed to compare ourselves. In Amos 7, God appears to Amos and pulls out a plumbline. If you’ve never done any building, a plumbline is a straight line that ensures the building is built straight. God says His plumbline or standard for people is completely different than the one the people are using. But if everyone is walking around with a skewed view, we’ll look at God’s standard and say He’s wrong!
-The Pharisee thinks he’s superior to everyone else because he’s using the wrong plumbline, the wrong standard. He needs to look at his own heart in comparison to God (who’s perfect).
-In prayer, we need to understand that our thoughts and feelings aren’t always true, just like this Pharisee! He feels superior to the tax collector, but his feelings aren’t matching up to reality.
-Kyle Strobel summarizes this concept well: One of the most frustrating things I see when talking to people is assigning motives to others without knowing the full story. You assume the worst about someone who you view as hurting you but assume the best about your intentions. I see it in marriages, in friendships, with coworkers, so when we come before God in prayer, we’re forced to deal with our own issues instead of continually blaming others for our responses. Chuck Swindoll (long time pastor) said it this way: Prayer is what helps us realize our 90% contribution to what’s going on in our life!
-One last thing I want to point out about the Pharisee is that true prayer will result in life change. Notice that the Pharisee is using the life change to try to attain righteousness, he’s turned things upside down! Fasting and giving a tithe (tenth) are good things for you to do, but they don’t make you more righteous. You do them in order to draw closer to God, not to try to force God to respond to you, this is another form of “babbling”
-In contrast, the tax collector wouldn’t even look around him, he knew who he was compared the perfection that is God! He admits that apart from God’s mercy and grace there’s no hope for him. He could fast 7 days a week and give 100% of what he makes, and it won’t help him climb any closer to God. This man is at the place where he can begin to pray honestly!
-And here’s the best news about praying honestly, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you that have been coming here for any period of time. The gospel doesn’t leave us to wallow in self-pity when we realize we stand convicted. Once again, Kyle Strobel summarizes this well:
-Friends, everything within us works to self-justify, to clean ourselves up before we come near to God, but the reality of the gospel is that we can’t! That’s why the gospel is such good news: it’s not up to you; it’s in God’s hands. Jesus is telling us: the path for anyone who wants to follow him is through humility, which CS Lewis says isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking about yourself less. It’s stopping worrying about what others think of you and finding your identity only in Jesus, the only one who can actually meet you where you’re at and provide everything you need to fully live as a human in the world He created.
Pastor Mike's Musings 