If everyone could turn to Luke 11, I am going to read the first thirteen verses. We read in Luke 11:1-13:
And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
Today we are going to take a look at what the Bible says about prayer. We see in this passage the strong emphasis, the strong focus, that the Lord Jesus Christ put on prayer. Notice Luke 11:1:
…one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray,…
“Lord, teach us to pray.” We saw before that this is the role of the Lord Jesus, the role of God. God loves to teach. If we read the life of Christ, again and again, in just about every situation, He was teaching and He was instructing. He was telling people about the Word of God, and this is the great role of God Himself.
On the other hand, believers, the people of God, what do we love to do? We love to learn. We love to be students of the Word, to sit at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, like Mary, and just listen to the Words of Christ.
I do not know why, but most people study in their early days, during school or college or masters, in order to obtain a goal, and then they do not want to study anymore. They want to hit the books in order to get a degree. But once they have that degree, that college degree or doctorate or law degree or whatever it is, then they just want to do their job and they do not want to be all that concerned with continuing to study.
But it is the Bible student that can never can say this. He would never even want to say that he has learned enough, “Well, that is it! I have reached the point and come to the pinnacle of knowledge and truth, and so I do not have to study anymore. I do not have to learn anything further.”
Actually, it is the child of God who keeps reading and reading, and not just surface scanning, but he looks into the words. He opens up the Concordance. He goes to the Interlinear Bible and checks out, word-by-word, in many cases, what God is saying and how God has used that word in other places. The Bible student really is a diligent student. The true child of God, oftentimes, is a diligent student of the Bible.
If some of us had applied these types of tactics to other endeavors of our life in times past, we would probably be in a lot better place. We would probably be in a lot better place if we had diligently studied at school in secular pursuits, but this is alright because it does not matter at all. It does not matter at all because the main important thing in life is the Bible. This is the most important thing.
So we are doing the right thing and the correct thing in reading the Bible and in digging into the Bible. It is far better to study the Bible than to study anything else. It is far better to study the Bible than to study law. It is far better to study the Bible than to study medicine. It is far better to study the Bible than to study anything you can think of in this world.
The world does not see it in this way. The world will not agree with this. Where do they put the Christian? Where do they put the one who learns from the Word of God.? They put them way down on the scale. You are not going to be considered much in the eyes of the world if you do not make a certain amount of dollars. If you do not have a certain profession, you will not be considered much.
But we do not care what the world says. We do not care what the world’s idea is. They have proven themselves wrong by just about everything. We are concerned with the truth, and the truth is that to study the Bible is all encompassing and important in anyone’s life. To read the Scriptures, to dig into the Word of God, has tremendous value. For one thing, it is not vain. Everything else is vanity. Everything else will come to nothingness and emptiness, “but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.”
So we find that God loves to teach and God’s people love to learn. They love to learn something from the Bible. Even if it is not something new, to have an old truth reinforced, to have Scripture truth brought to memory once again, is a delight to each child of God who is capable.
Some believers are only little infants or babies when God saves them. But everyone who is capable of reading and studying, even some people who cannot read, love to learn, too. They can listen to someone teach, and as long as they are doing it faithfully, they also can learn.
So we find here a disciple coming to the Lord Jesus and asking a question, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Why would they have to ask that question? For one thing, we do not do it naturally. We do not pray naturally. It does not come to us in a natural way. We have to be taught. We have to learn how to pray.
If someone becomes a Christian, it does not automatically mean that they now know how to pray, that they now will pray in a right way and in a God-pleasing way. So it is a very good request to go to God, to go to Christ, and say, “Lord, teach me to pray. Teach me how to pray so that I can do it in a proper way.”
So Jesus is going to go on in this passage and outline the Lord’s Prayer. Furthermore, there will be more information given on praying.
There is a parallel passage to this in Matthew 6:5. It says:
And when thou prayest,…
This is where He goes into the Lord’s Prayer, so this is a parallel passage:
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Where it says, “that they may be seen of men,” this is a similar statement to Matthew 6:1. Let us read Matthew 6:1-4:
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
In both cases, Christ is making a point that when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites that desire to be seen of men. When you do your alms, again, do not desire to make a show and to be seen of men.
What is an “alm”? We do not really use that word too much today, but an alm is an act or a deed of mercy. This would be the historical idea of an alm or almsgiving. You could give money or you could do some type of act towards someone, normally the poor, and that would be giving alms.
We are helped with the spiritual understanding of the word “alm” because the Greek word is very strongly related to the word “mercy” or “merciful,” which has everything to do with the Gospel and with God’s plan of salvation. So we could understand it as, “Take heed that you do not your acts of mercy before men,” and acts of mercy are when we give someone the Gospel, when we share the Gospel.
Of course, sometimes you are going to be seen. If you are on the street corner and you are handing out a tract, you can not avoid being seen; but this is really about blowing your own trumpet after doing it, “Oh, I handed out 500 tracts,” or “I handed 500,000 tracts out in my life. I have given out tons of tracts.” In saying these things, you are trying to boast and to make it sound like you have done something great, rather than having just simply done the task that God has given you to do as a servant. We are to occupy till He comes, so this is nothing that we should be puffed up about or prideful about.
For instance, we see a good picture of almsgiving in Acts 3. In Acts 3, we read about the lame man sitting near the Beautiful gate of the temple. We read in Acts 3:1-5:
Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms. And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them.
That is what an alm is. It would be giving him a coin or some silver or some money. That is historically what an alm would be. But God is going to give us the deeper spiritual meaning here. The lame man is expecting something of them, and then we read in Acts 3:6-8:
Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.
This is a beautiful picture of salvation. This is a wonderful picture of salvation where this lame man can now walk. God says in the Bible that we should walk in His commandments. He says this repeatedly in the Epistles of John. “I rejoiced greatly that I found of Thy children walking in truth,” that is, walking in obeying God’s Word.
Where are we before God saves us? We are spiritually lame. We cannot do it. We cannot keep His Word. We cannot keep His commandments. We try to rise up to walk in God’s Law and we fall flat. We try it again, and we fall flat again. If we are doing it under our own strength and under our own power, we are spiritually lame because our ankle bones have no strength.
When God saves someone, it is like this picture of this man rising and leaping and walking into the temple. Now he can walk in the Word. He can keep the commandments. He can do it God’s way. He is going to now demonstrate his love to Christ. As Jesus said, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments,” and he can do this because God has first loved him.
So this is what almsgiving is, and this is what is in view in Matthew 6. It has to do with sharing the Gospel and that we are not to do it to be seen of men. We are never to try and show ourselves holy or to show ourselves righteous by declaring, “I obey God’s Law,” or anything like that. We are to humbly, and as quietly as possible, obey God. When He says, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” we are not to attract attention to ourselves. The attention should be on God’s Word. It should be on Christ Himself and never on our self as an individual.
Then in Matthew 6:5, we read:
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
The Bible says a lot about hypocrites. For one thing, a hypocrite is not a saved person. The word “hypocrite” is found a few times in Job, and we will just look at this one place in Job 8:13, where it says:
So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish:
“The hypocrite’s hope shall perish.” This means that they have a hope of salvation, of eternal life, but their hope will perish with them. They are going to be destroyed at the end when God’s judgment comes, because they have lived their life as a hypocrite.
Also, if we go to Matthew 23 where Jesus is pronouncing judgment against the scribes and Pharisees, He says in Matthew 23:27-28:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
This is the ugly picture that Christ paints of the inner being of an unsaved person. Outwardly, in the days of the Pharisees, they had their robes. Many ministers and priests wear robes today and some have crowns on their heads. They are gloriously appareled in some churches and denominations. Yet if they are not saved, if they are not a true child of God, inwardly, they are spiritually dead, just like a crypt.
If you go to a cemetery, you will see that some people spend a lot of money to have a nice beautiful tomb. It is all nice and clean, a white stone or marble. But if you would open up the tomb and take a look and go in and see the caskets and open the lids, inside the caskets you are going to see what corruption is; you are going to see their bones or their remains or the residue of those individuals.
This is the picture that Christ paints of a hypocrite. A hypocrite is anyone who professes with their mouth, “I am a child of God. I am a Christian. I am one of God’s people.” But if they profess this and their heart does not match their profession, then they are not saved. They are “desperately wicked,” according to Jeremiah 17, and their hearts are “deceitful above all things.”
So Jesus is saying, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” These are those who outwardly appear righteous unto men, but this does not have to be a physical outward appearance. This could mean to put on an act of spiritual righteousness, of just saying the right words and understanding the correct doctrines, while inwardly nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, not one bit, since that person heard the Gospel and got involved in church activities or Christian activities. They have been singing hymns and attending church and even giving money, but all of these outward things do not mean a thing. They do not mean a thing, as far as salvation, if God has not given the gift of faith and saved that person. Jesus is really warning us. He is giving a very direct warning to everyone of us. This is why the Bible tells us to “examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith.”
The word “hypocrite” is derived from another Greek word that is found in Luke 20:20, and I think we will get the idea here:
And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.
They are feigning themselves “just men.” They are going to where Jesus is speaking and they are going to act just like His disciples, just like those who know that He is the Messiah, who believe that He is the Son of God and who are very interested in everything Christ has to say. These men are going to pretend to be true children of God. This is the picture, but they are spies in this case. They are very much aware of what they are doing. They are acting. They are pretending to be something they are not, and that is the hypocrite. The hypocrite may not be consciously aware of it, but this could be what is going on in his life. In this case, they were conscious of it; but that is not always how it is.
Let us go back to Matthew 6. First, in answering the question of how we are to pray, we see that Jesus tells us how not to pray. We are not to pray to be seen of anyone and to try to make points with anyone. Prayer is a very individual thing. It is a one-on-one thing with God. It has to do with our relationship to God.
I know parents can vouch for this. We tell our children all the time to pray, pray. Then it seems that, a lot of times, they do not do it until we gather the family together and pray as a family. Well, yes, this is prayer, to some degree, but God desires of each person that they pray. Whether it be a young child or an old man or a woman or someone who is middle-aged or a teenager or a young man, God is desiring of every individual that they pray. He desires that we pray and that we talk to Him.
So it says in Matthew 6:6:
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Here God is giving us direction. They asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” His response was, “Enter into thy closet.” You could do this literally if you wanted to. There is nothing wrong with that. If that is the only place where you can find some peace and quiet in the house, then go jump into the closet. But, of course, you do not have to literally do this. He is basically telling us to just get alone.
It is also true that we can pray anywhere. We can pray in the car going to work. We can pray at lunch. We can pray on the way home from work in the car. We can pray at any point, at any time of the day, but we should never think that this means that we can defraud God, that we can take time that should not be given to prayer.
Let me give you an example, because I fall into this trap. In the morning, I only have so much time to get ready before I go to work. What I have done sometimes is gotten up later, taken my shower, read a quick Psalm, and jumped into the car. I have a half-hour drive to work, so I pray during that half hour. I think, well, this is taking care of it because I prayed. And that is true, but I am also stopping the car, I am also going through lights, I also have to pay attention to the other cars on the road, so there are distractions.
Actually, at some point, we should get alone where there are no distractions, where there is nothing that we need to do or to think about, where there is nothing at all except us and God. We might live in the city and that might be noisy. We might have noisy neighbors that we can hear through the walls. If so, buy earplugs. Put earplugs in your ears and go somewhere in your house and get alone.
Let us look at the Lord Jesus in Mark 1:35. Remember that He is our supreme example. He is the One that we want to follow, and it says in Mark 1:35:
And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
He got alone. This is the “closet.” It is a “solitary place” where there is no other racket, no other noise. We live in a world full of distractions, so turn off everything. Have no radio on in the background, nothing but silence when we pray. We pray to God and we pray for all of our needs and desires. We cast our cares upon Him. We pray for His help. We pray for salvation. We pray for the salvation of others. We pray to get us through the day. We pray for strength to keep His commandments. We pray for the ones troubling us in our life. We pray for our financial needs and difficulties. We pray for everything that is causing us to be burdened or anxious or troubled, and we just try to pray and cast our cares on Him as much as possible.
Of course, to the degree that we do not do this, we are going to be troubled. We are going to be burdened, we are going to be anxious, and we are going to experience all of the difficulties that go along with trying to bear it ourselves.
So Christ is our example and He is eternal God. If He desired to get alone and pray, how much more do we need to make sure that we find time to pray?
Let us also go to Luke 6:12, where it says:
And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.
So He got up early before morning and now He is continuing in prayer all night.
There is a great importance to prayer. There is a very great importance for each one of God’s people to pray and to talk to Him in prayer, to go to Him in prayer.
All through Christ’s ministry, we read that He was praying, even when He entered into the garden of Gethsemane and was under the wrath of God as He began to pay the penalty for the sins of His people.
We read about this in Matthew 26:36-39, where it says:
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
And we know that Jesus went into the Garden and prayed the same prayer three different times.
This is related to what we read in Jonah 2 after the whale has swallowed Jonah. (It is Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah.) We read in Jonah 2:1-9:
Then Jonah prayed unto JEHOVAH his God out of the fish’s belly, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto JEHOVAH, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O JEHOVAH my God. When my soul fainted within me I remembered JEHOVAH: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving;…
We see here a picture, an historical parable of Jonah. And Jonah is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ as he is swallowed up by the whale and is in the whale’s belly for three days and three nights. Remember that Jesus said in the Gospels, in Matthew 12, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” So Jonah is a picture of Christ suffering the wrath of God, the equivalent of an eternal destruction for all those He came to save.
By the way, when we are talking or thinking about Jesus suffering the equivalent of an eternal damnation, we used to think that this meant that He died the equivalent of all those He came to save spending an eternity in hell in conscious suffering. As we are beginning to learn things from the Bible about how God’s eternal judgment really is, we are learning that God is going to destroy man and that man “shall perish for ever like his own dung” or that man is going to cease to be, that he will be annihilated on the last day.
But some people look at the account of Christ in the garden, or the information that we have here in Jonah where Jonah is in the whale’s belly, or all of the passages that deal with the suffering of Christ as He is under the wrath of God, and they say, “Look, He is not destroyed. He is not annihilated. He did not cease to exist, so how can we say that He is paying a penalty that is equivalent to annihilation?”
Well, we say this the exact same way that we used to say that He was paying the penalty that was an equivalent of an eternal damnation for those who would have been in hell forever and ever. That is, who understood how Jesus could begin to suffer in the garden on Thursday evening and say on the Cross, “It is finished,” and in the space of those hours pay the penalty of an eternity in hell for all those He came to save?
What did we say? We said the same thing. Who could understand that? None of us understand it or used to even understand it. We used to say that He could do it because He is God. He could do it because He is God and He did it in the space of hours. But how could He be annihilated? How could He be destroyed forever?
He could do it because He is God, and that is the great victory. That is the wonder of the resurrection. He rose from the dead. Because He was God in the flesh, He was able to pay the penalty, the equivalent to whatever the Law demands. The Law says, “For the wages of sin is death,” so Jesus paid that penalty and was victorious through it. There is no problem at all. There is absolutely no problem in understanding that Jesus paid the penalty that God requires of every man.
Yes, but some people point out another verse, and t is good that they do because we need to think about these things and we need to harmonize these things. In Mark 13:32, it says:
But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
What is the problem with this? We used to understand this to mean that at the time Jesus is making this statement, mankind had not experienced the wrath of God, which is the final judgment. Neither had the angels. They had not been cast into hell. Neither the Lord Jesus, because He had not yet gone to the Cross.
We know that we have to understand this as experiencing judgment, because it cannot relate to not knowing the time. But if man is destroyed, if he is spiritually dead and when he dies physically he goes to nothing and is “like the beasts that perish,” then does this not mean that he experienced the judgment before what is being said here in Mark 13:32? Do you see the problem?
Actually, no. The judgment that is in view is the “second death” of the “lake of fire.” So, yes, man has lived and died. Even up until the days of Christ, when they died, if they were unsaved, they did cease to exist and they went to “the blackness of darkness for ever,” but their remains were still upon the earth. And God makes a special point of this. On the last day, October 21, 2011, He is going to gather up the whole world and all “the works that are therein,” all the people who were professing to be Christians but never were, whether they are alive on the earth at that time or they previously had lived, and He is going to throw them into the “lake of fire.” The earth and everything will be burned up and melt with a “fervent heat.”
This is the “second death.” This is the judgment that no man had experienced that we read about in Mark 13:32. The angels also will be destroyed at this time. Likewise, at the time that Jesus is saying this, He Himself had not yet paid the equivalent of this penalty. Until He entered into the garden of Gethsemane, He had not begun to pay the price. So we see that as far as the Lord Jesus is Christ is concerned, there really is no difficulty in understanding how He paid this penalty of perishing forever for all of His people.
Let us go back to Luke, and we will just take a look at this quickly and finish up. Lord willing, we will look at this again at another time. In Luke 11:1-2, we read:
And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
“When ye pray say, Our Father which art in heaven.”
You know, it is amazing, the nature of man, the nature of people, us. It is amazing how excited people get over the possibility of meeting a sports hero or a movie star or someone who is famous and renowned. Whether it is a president or a senator or someone like that, people get so excited. They stutter. They are nervous before the person. They just do not know what to do.
Then how can it be that when we go before God, it is like nothing? It is like nothing to many, many people—God, the Almighty, the Everlasting God who is “Lord of lords, and King of kings.” He is the all-powerful God of the Bible. He is the Creator, the infinite I AM, the Alpha and the Omega, the God who speaks and brought the whole universe into being, the One who says that we can go to Him any time of any day and we can call Him “Father.”
We can go to Him and we can say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” and this is a wonderful privilege. It is a wonderful blessing that He has given to anyone who will go to Him. But remember, “Hallowed be Thy name.” He is holy. He is an infinite God. He is a great being, so we should go respectfully and humbly.
The fact that we go at all is bold, but we should go as it says in Hebrews 4:16, where we read:
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Jesus is that great example “in time of need.” As He was suffering the wrath of God, He prayed. Also, in Jonah it told us that he offered thanksgiving in those three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, which is a picture of Jesus suffering under the wrath of God. He went through it and He endured it with prayers and thanksgiving.
This is exactly as God tells us in Philippians 4:6-7, where we read:
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
And so there is nothing that we cannot take to Him. There is nothing that we can not bring to the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer, that we cannot approach Him with. Whether it is our need for salvation, whatever it might be, our desire is to go to God and to pray to Him. For one thing, we are talking to Someone who can do something about it. He has the power, He has the ability, He has the strength to answer prayer.
Of course, if God never answered prayer, there would be no sense in going to Him and praying, “Lord, have mercy on my sister, have mercy on my father, have mercy on my mother.” If God never answered prayer, what would be the use in doing this?
But we know, as we read the accounts in the Gospels, when people would go to Christ for sight, the blind would go to Him to see, or the deaf would go to Him to hear, the lame would go to Him for healing, whatever it was, every time, 100%, He heard and He answered. He gave sight to the blind and ears to the deaf and He caused the lame to walk and He cleansed the leper every time.
I am not saying that if we go to God in prayer, He is going to hear everything we pray. That would not be true. But God, in showing us the character of the Lord Jesus Christ, is showing us that He is a God who delights in mercy. He is revealing to us, through the Gospel accounts, that He does hear His people’s prayers.
So we should be encouraged. This is one thing we can learn from this. We should be encouraged to go to God and to pray and pray for whatever our needs are.
1st Question: You were mentioning about prayer and when people pray sometimes. When I pray, I pray for my food in front of people. Is there anything wrong with that?
Chris: No, there is nothing wrong with that or if we are in a restaurant, which is a public place. No, we are not doing it to make a scene. It all has to do with what is going on in our hearts. If we have developed this habit, we should pray before each meal. Then actually, it is a test when we go out to a restaurant and they seat us right in the middle of the floor. We are not in a booth that is off in the corner. We are right there in the middle of the floor. This is actually more of a test, where we want to keep doing what we have been doing at home. We want to thank God for the food. The idea is if I am in a restaurant and I want everyone to hear me praying, I am going to notch it up a couple of notches and be louder so that everyone around me can hear. Then we are probably doing it wrong.
2nd Question: Is praying on the bus wrong?
Chris: No, remember that God tells us, “Pray without ceasing.” So pray wherever and whenever you can. But do not forget to try to get alone. Getting alone may be closing our eyes within a group of strangers and where no conversation is going on. They do not know us. In that way, you can isolate yourself. So there is nothing wrong with that.
3rd Question: There are different kinds of prayer. There is prayer that the Hebrews do and prayer that the Muslims do. Does God answer those prayers?
Chris: People pray for a lot of things. When people who do not know God get into trouble, they pray, “God help me!” I do not know how God works through all of this. We do know that anyone can go to Him. Anyone who is a sinner can go to God and they can pray. Now to go to God and pray, “Oh Lord, I want a big house and two cars,” God is not going to be interested in that. The course of events in life will work out in that area. But if anyone goes to Him and prays, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” like the publican in Luke 18, anyone can pray that prayer—a Muslim, a Jew, a professing Christian—anyone can pray that prayer, even someone who has nothing to do with anything.
4th Question: I know that you cannot pray for a car or a house…
Chris: Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 6 that we have been reading. He goes on to say in Matthew 6:31-33:
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
He is letting us know that as far as financial things or taking care of bills and food and clothing, we can pray. If we are troubled, if we are anxious about something, go to God and pray, “Lord help me to cast this on You. Help me to trust You with all my heart in this,” and we can leave it with God in that way.
5th Question: Please read Joel 2:28-30 and hone in on “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come.”
Chris: Let us read these verses. We read in Joel 2:28-31:
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of JEHOVAH come.
I am not ready to respond to this because I previously had done a study on the “sun, moon and stars” and I found that a lot of correction needs to take place. So I am still looking at this.
6th Question: Please compare Revelation 18:21 with Matthew 18:6 and Exodus 15:4-5.
Chris: Revelation 18:21:
And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
Compare that with Matthew 18:6:
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
And Exodus 15:4-5:
Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.
God is using the figure of being “cast into the sea” to represent His judgment and eternal destruction. It is a picture of the eternal destruction of the wicked as they are under His wrath and will be destroyed forever. Pharaoh and his host would be typifying Satan and all of his emissaries, all those in the kingdom of darkness. Also in Revelation 18, the church that is under the power of Satan is also being judged and cast into the sea. The verse in Matthew, which spoke of offending “one of these little ones,” is pointing to the true child of God, one of His elect, and those that bring other kinds of gospels. It is going to be a horrible judgment for them. That is really what the Lord Jesus is saying there.