|
Introduction:
An
American evangelist was traveling through South Africa with a
local preacher. As you may know, cars in South Africa are not
always very reliable and theirs broke down between villages in the
Serengeti. The two men decided they could walk and only be an hour
late to their meeting and still have time to teach the villagers.
As the American preacher started to walk away, the local preacher
pulled out his duffel bag and started to put on some tennis shoes.
The American was surprised since the man had been wearing hiking
boots. “Why are you putting on those shoes brother?” “This
is in case a lion attacks. It will be easier to run.” The
American laughed, “Lions…are you serious?” “Absolutely,”
was the reply. “Now brother,” the American said, “if a lion
attacks, you won’t be able to outrun it.” The local preacher
glanced at the Americans casual dress shoes and said, “Brother,
if a lion attacks, I won’t have to outrun it. I’ll only have
to outrun you.”
Isn’t that the way of a lion? When hunting, it doesn’t seek
out the fastest zebra in the pack It doesn’t go for the
strongest buffalo in the herd. It doesn’t search for the largest
antelope in the group. It preys on the weakest, the slowest, the
easiest. I
Peter 5:8 reminds us our adversary is a lion seeking to
devour us. He is not different than the actual lion. He is looking
for our vulnerabilities and when he finds them, he’ll attack.
That is why what Ephesians
6:10-13 says is so important. We are the weak ones. If
Satan attacks us, we cannot possibly withstand. However, God is
too strong for him. On our own, we can’t win the fight. However,
when we are standing in the Lord’s might, we have a strength
Satan cannot assail no matter how hard he tries. Therefore, Paul
encouraged us to put on the Lord’s armor. As he concluded the
armor he added one often overlooked part of our battle. He said we
must be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and
supplication” (Ephesians
6:18). Prayer is the means by which we connect to God so
we can win the battle. Therefore, we’ve been taking a special
look at prayer this year. We’ve been looking at the Psalms
to learn from those masterful pray-ers how to pray as they did.
We’ve noticed their view of God, their thoughts about
themselves, and even how they saw
prayer. Now we need to recognize
that for the psalmists, prayer wasn’t something done in a
vacuum. Rather, the psalmists saw prayer as something they had to
prepare for. They didn’t believe just anyone could pray just
whenever they wanted. Let’s examine what preparation the
psalmists believed went along with being able to pray. Discussion: I.
The
psalmists prepared to pray by studying God’s
word. A.
Psalm
1 stands
as an introduction or preface to the entire psalter. Before anyone
reading the Psalms even gets to see a prayer, he learns, “Blessed is the man…whose delight is in
the law of the LORD,/and on his law he meditates day and night.” B.
In Psalm
40:8, the psalmist explains one reason God
listened to His praying was because “your law is within my
heart.” C.
Psalm
19:7-11
and all of Psalm
119 stand as huge testimonies
regarding the psalmists’ relationship to God’s word.
God’s word was more desirable than honey and gold. Given the
choice between God’s word and money, the psalmist chose God’s
word. D.
Isaiah
66:3-4 drives this point home. How can we
possibly expect God to listen to our word, if we refuse to listen
to His. E.
This relationship to God’s word laid the foundation for
coming to God in prayer. II.
The psalmists prepared to pray by
living God’s word. A.
The psalmists were not Gnostics
believing as long as they knew God’s word they could live how
they wanted.
Rather, they recognized that if they gave themselves over to sin,
God would not listen. 1.
Psalm
26:1—“Vindicate
me, O LORD,/for I have walked in my integrity,/and I have trusted
in the LORD without wavering.” 2.
Psalm
66:18—“If
I had cherished iniquity in my heart,/the Lord would not have
listened.” B.
Don’t misunderstand; the psalmists recognized the prayer
of confession (cf. Psalm
51). They recognized the place for the disobedient to come
and lay their sins out before God and seek forgiveness. C.
Nor did they take this to mean only the absolutely sinless
could pray. They did not believe we could earn the right to pray
by our personal holiness and righteousness (Psalm
130:3). We
would all fail if that were the standard. They would not examine
their day and say, “Oh no, I sinned today, I can’t pray.” D.
Rather, the psalmists understood that they could not sin
with impunity and think their prayers accomplished anything. They
understood that they could not walk their own path and expect God
to come into step with them. They understood that if they
discarded God’s will for their lives, their prayers would
accomplish nothing. III.
The psalmists prepared to pray by
having a broken and contrite heart. A.
While the psalmists saw the need to
live by God’s word, they recognized they had failed to do that.
In a moment, we’ll learn something about sacrifice and prayer,
but for now we need to see that the psalmists did not simply think
killing an animal fixed everything, giving them the right to pray.
Psalm
51:17 declares the insufficiency of animal sacrifices, claiming the sacrifice God truly
wants from us is a broken and contrite heart. If our hearts are
not broken, the breaking of an animal’s neck does us no good. B.
Psalm
51:1-12 demonstrates the outpouring of
such a broken heart, admitting the horrendous nature of its sin
and recognizing it can turn nowhere but to the Lord. Psalm
32 is another demonstration of such brokenness. C.
We need to see this in its proper place. The issue is not
really that we need to check “broken and contrite heart” off
our list of things to do in order to pray right or God won’t
listen to us. The real point is without a broken and contrite
heart we won’t pray consistently or properly. The proud will not
pray. They do not recognize their need for God and, therefore,
they do not recognize their need for prayer. IV.
The
psalmists prepared to pray by surrendering to God. A.
This ties in to the point about the
psalmists’ belief that God was their rock, their fortress, their
strong and mighty tower (cf. Psalm
18:1-3). We do not need to develop that any further. B.
I bring it up because this absolute trust was in place
before the psalmists prayed. Because the Lord was their rock, etc., they prayed. They
trusted God, so they prayed. More than trusting God, they
surrendered to Him. They saw their lives as in His hand. C.
Psalm
31:5 provides the picture, “Into your hand I commit my spirit.” That is,
“I trust you. I’m just going to do what you say, follow where you
lead, go where you guide. I expect You to protect me by that
surrender.” D.
If we wish to pray like the psalmists did, we must have
this same sense of surrender. I cannot emphasize it enough. Prayer is only useful for
those who are willing to give themselves completely and
whole-heartedly to the Lord (Psalm
119:2, 10). E.
Again, this is not an issue of getting all our prayer ducks
in a row to convince God to listen to us. The fact is if we do not
surrender our lives to God, we won’t pray. Oh, sure we may bring
to him the really big things that have us totally flummoxed. But
we won’t pray consistently. V.
The psalmists prepared to pray by
offering sacrifice A.
As stated earlier, the psalmists
tied sacrifice to prayer. While the other points we have discussed
are all truly important, it is this one that makes prayer
effective for us. 1.
Psalm
5:3—“O
LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;/in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you
and watch.” (This is offering a sacrifice to have access in
prayer.) 2.
Psalm
54:6—“With
a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you;/I will give thanks to your name, O
LORD, for it is good.” (This is a promise to sacrifice when God
responds to the prayer.) 3.
Psalm
66:13-15—“I
will come into your house with burnt offerings;/I will perform my
vows to you,/that which my lips uttered/and my mouth promised when
I was in trouble./I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened
animals,/with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams;/I will make an
offering of bulls and goats.” (This is the fulfillment of
sacrifices promised while praying.) B.
These few psalms demonstrate what the Old Testament had
already established by revealing the practice of God’s people. 1.
In Genesis
12:8, Abraham built an altar and called on the name of the
Lord. 2.
In Genesis
13:1-4, Abraham had traveled to Egypt because of the
famine. When he returned to Canaan, he went
to the altar he had previously built in order to call on the Lord. 3.
In Genesis
13:18, Abraham moved to Mamre and built another altar in order to call on the name of
the Lord. 4.
In Genesis
26:25, Isaac followed Abraham’s example and built an
altar in Beersheba in order to call on the name of the Lord. 5.
In Genesis
33:20, Jacob built an altar in Shechem. In the Genesis
context of altars, this was presumably to call on the name of the
Lord as his fathers did. 6.
In I
Chronicles 21:26, David built an altar to call on the name
of the Lord to seek relief from the judgment over the unlawful census. 7.
In Isaiah
56:7, God said there would be altars and sacrifice at His
temple because His house would be a house of prayer. C.
Why was prayer tied to the sacrificial altar? Because, as
said above we prepare for prayer by living God’s word. But
we’ve botched that. We’ve failed at keeping God’s laws for
us. Isaiah
59:1-2 demonstrates the consequences of this failure by
explaining that our sins separate us from
God so He does not listen. Something must atone for and remove sin
if we want to pray. D.
Here
is the all-important point for us. According to Numbers
28-29, God’s servants in the Old Testament offered more
than 1200 sacrifices a year not counting all the personal
sacrifices to atone for their sins. Yet, Hebrews
10:1 shows those sacrifices actually didn’t work.
Something needed to be done with those sins anyway. That is why
the statement of John the Baptist in John
1:29 is so important. As he saw Jesus, he proclaimed,
“Behold, the Lamb of god, who takes away the sin of the
world!” E.
The
Old Testament prepares us to see that without sacrifice, we cannot
come to the presence of God and lay out our petitions before Him.
Even if we have a broken and contrite heart, our sins still
separate us from God. We are guilty and unworthy to come into His
holy presence. But sacrifice bridges that gap. Sacrifice is what
cleanses us and allows us into God’s presence. However, animal
sacrifice doesn’t really do the trick. God had a plan all along
that those sacrifices were pointing to. That plan is Jesus Christ.
He was the Lamb through whose sacrifice we are able to come into
God’s presence and pray. As Hebrews
10:19-22 demonstrates, we enter the holy places by His
blood. Do you see what this means? Prayer is not for everyone.
Prayer is the privilege of God’s child, forgiven by the blood of
Jesus. Prayer does not save. Prayer is for the saved. F.
If you want to be able to pray, you
need to prepare. Yes, you need to study your Bible. Yes, you need
to strive to obey God’s will. Yes, you must have a broken and
contrite heart. Yes, you must put your trust in God. But none of
that is worth one whit if you aren’t in Jesus Christ. This, of
course, forces us to ask—are you in Jesus? Have you been
baptized into His sacrificial death (cf. Romans
6:3)? If not, despite all the emotional comfort your
praying may be doing for you, it is not connecting you to God. Conclusion: Prayer is not an activity in a vacuum. It is not just something anyone, anywhere, at anytime can do. No, we must prepare for prayer. But we do not prepare for it by putting on certain clothes, arranging our Bibles a certain way, getting out prayer effects likes rugs and rosaries. No, we prepare by entering Jesus Christ and surrendering ourselves to His will. Are you prepared to pray?
Glory
to God in the church by Christ Jesus
|
||||||||||
