Hello and welcome to this week's service at Westminster Reformed Presbyterian Church. We are located out of Prairie View, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. We are so glad that you decided to join us today. This is our next sermon in the series on the Lord's Prayer by Pastor Brett Malin. Our scripture reading will be Malachi 1 and Luke 15, 11-32. Our sermon text will be Matthew 6, 9-13. sought to say, in a number of contexts, that the Church, in general, the Reformed Church and the Evangelical Church, has largely failed at something, and that is teaching the people of God how to pray. As I've said previous times, when someone first becomes a Christian, what do we teach them? We teach them all kinds of things. We teach them to come to worship, we teach them read the Bible through in a year. Oftentimes people have their little pet issues, their particular soapboxes, so they want to teach people their particular views, their particular idea. It might be certain things that are particular to a denomination or to a particular church. particular person's hobby work. We want to get new Christians to understand and believe what we believe. But in all of that, often fail. Simply teach people. Maybe the most important, if not then one of the most important things that we do as Christian believers, and that is to pray. Not teach people. how to pray, and if you want to have very, very few people at a meeting, a meeting in the church, do you ever notice? Make it a prayer meeting. You want to make any other kind of meeting, there'll be plenty of people there oftentimes. The Bible says there'll be more people. Some activity with pizza, there probably will be lots of people there. Make it a prayer meeting. Oftentimes, it will be the most sparsely populated thing that the church does all week. Well, that may be the fault of the people of God. They may be at fault because they don't want to pray. It may be the church's fault because they have not taught them. And in not teaching them how to pray, they're saying, hey, come do this, come pray with us. Yet they have not been equipped. So I burdened for you over these next couple of weeks, I should say, few weeks, these next few weeks, eight or so, nine weeks, that I want you to be bold in prayer. I want you to learn how to do it. Certainly, no one is going to master prayer. I've never met a man who stands up and says, oh, you know one thing I've mastered is prayer. All of us have weaknesses in a number of areas, and I think one of our greatest weaknesses is Christians' prayer. So today we meditate upon the preface to the Lord's Prayer. The preface? This is how you should pray. I want to encourage you that by faith, by believing in Jesus, and by believing in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I want to encourage you that we have a Heavenly Father. You might think, well that sounds pretty simple. And in a sense it is. It's that simple. There's more to it than that. I take from the Bible, I take as the words of this sermon, the focus. Our Father, which art in heaven. Our Father, which art in heaven. First, thinking of Father, I'm going to just meditate upon that word Father with you. We have a Father. Why is it that God, the true God, why is it that God referred to as a father? Why is it that of all the things that Jesus could have said, father is the first thing that he says about how to pray. The reason is that he couldn't have used something like my master. He could have said something like, my king. Why? Because he is a master. We read that in Melchizedek. He could have taught us to pray, our master. He could have taught us to say, our king. Speaking of the royalty of the prophet, he's a master and he is royalty. He's a king. However, Jesus gives us something that is far more intimate than those. See, the thing is, a master oftentimes is someone who is distant, and a king is someone that we often hear about, but he is distant to us. But a father is close to us. He is near to us. He is nigh to us. He is imminent to us in ordinary circumstances. We do not have God as a Father in the same way that Jesus has God the Father as Father. This is why Jesus is naturally by nature the Son of the Father. It would say eternally the Son of the Father. Jesus Christ is the eternal begotten Son of the Father. So therefore there was never a time in which Jesus did not exist. He has always existed, and he has always existed as the Son of God. And so he is able to make a claim to the fatherhood of the Father. because he has stopped by nature. Psalm 2 that we sang, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. That which takes place at the incarnation and is also used to speak of the resurrection in Acts 13, 33. All of these things, the incarnation, the resurrection, have they're beginning in timeless eternity past if I can use language like that which I think I can Jesus says in John 10 30 I and my father are one it's not just saying there that I and my father are one in plans or purpose or anything like that what he's saying is In terms of our very being, in terms of our very essence, I am the father of one. And isn't it interesting that when Jesus was going to the father in prayer, before he was going to go to the cross, he calls upon the father, he says, Father, not Mark 14, 36. He goes on to say, all things are possible unto thee. Take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou will. There he is calling upon God the Father with that intimate name Abba. Calling upon the Father. and saying, you can do all things. You have the power to make this cup, the cup of God's wrath and vengeance that he is going to drink upon the cross. You have that power to take that away from it. Yet, in submission to the will of the Father, he says, not what I will, but what you will. Jesus. We are not naturally the children of God. We are not that by nature, because then we would have some sort of divine essence to us, and we do not. So in what sense can we make the claim to children of God? On what basis can we do that? We can only do that on the basis of adoption. You see, the case with us is, we would say, we're born into this world, and in a sense, we have three fathers, and none of them are God. your three fathers that are in different senses your father versus your natural born father whoever he is natural born fatherhood but also there is the first Adam who in a sense is your father and he sinned and he fell against God what did he bring by that he brought Everything that we experience, death, and destruction, and plague, and disease, and anxiety, and disappointment, all of these things are the result of our first father, the first Adam. So you have another father. According to John chapter 8, because you're born naturally in rebellion against God, Therefore you have Satan as your father. He is the father of lies. You must forget about him. You must forsake his ways. You must call upon God the father. As your father, you must then be adopted into the kingdom of God and adopted into the family of God. Ephesians 1.5 says that He predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ Himself. We've been predestined to be adopted into the kingdom of God, the family of God, in union with Jesus, with the Father as our Father. And we, like Jesus, and in union with Jesus, called him Abba that is called him intimately father Galatians 4 6 tells us that because he our son that is by faith of course God sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts crying Abba father and Romans 8 15 says that you have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba father Adopting us out of the family into which we are born the family wherein Satan the deceiver and the accuser is our father Makes it so that we have the father First person of the Trinity as our ultimate father pray this assumes that we have him as our father. To pray this assumes that we have adoption as sons and as daughters. What should we take away from this? Just meditating upon father. Notice what Jesus says. Father. He directs us to pray to the Father. I think he teaches us something that's very, very important in this. He teaches us that because of the grace and the mercy and the love that we have received, because of that, we have God as our Father and we have God the Father as our Father. Therefore, ordinarily, our prayers should be pointed heavenward to the Father. ordinary way of prayer. Now that's not to say that we would never, or we would sin by praying to the Son, praying directly to Jesus, or even in a sense to the Holy Spirit, although the Holy Spirit was never commanded to pray directly to the Holy Spirit. Ordinarily it is through the Father in union with the Son and with the help of the Spirit. Different forms of that. That is our ordinary manner. People say, well, where does someone pray directly to Jesus? Well, in a sense, in the Gospels, anytime anyone ever talks to him, first of all. But if you want something that's more explicit, Stephen speaks directly to Jesus. He appeals directly to Jesus when he is going to be martyred. He does that in Acts chapter 7. If you want the direct, direct proof text for that. So each member of the Trinity is fully divine, fully God. But ordinarily we ought to pray that Jesus is taught us through the Father. But also, He is our Father. He is our Father. We own Him as such because He owns us as children. He owns us as adopted sons and daughters if we're trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and trusting in the Father's grace and mercy and love. Colossians 4 says, continue in prayer. he says that basically in the plural you could say continue everyone in prayer and watch with the same in the same with Thanksgiving or in Acts chapter 12 verse 5 Peter therefore was kept in prison but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him going on is Jesus He is, well, backing up. Peter is in prison. What happens? The church says, hey, we need to pray for Peter that he would get out of prison. But we have to believe that what we are praying, that it is according to God's will. We need to hope and pray that it will be according to his will. We need to know the Bible well enough to know what God's will is. pray for particular things particularly, and to believe that God will bring it about. That was the error of the church in Acts chapter 12. What happens? They're praying for Peter without ceasing. That's not to say that they just had one person. There's a cycle of prayer. The way I take it, I think I'm right in that. at any given time, as best they can. What happens? He gets out of prison, he comes to visit them, and they don't believe that he's real again. The thing they're praying for, when it takes place, what happens? Oh, they don't believe it. We must pray in faith. We must pray in belief. We have a heavenly father, a father who is our father. Let me just say this before we move on, on this word our, our father. God did not intend for us to pray alone only. God intended for us to pray together. Now he does say, Jesus does say, that you don't go into the streets, blow a trumpet, and then pray in front of people. You do not pray intending to be heard, intending to be seen, so that everybody will say, isn't he great? Look how righteous and holy he is. Jesus says, go into your private place, and you pray in a place where your Heavenly Father sees you and other people do not see you. There is a place for individual prayer for the saint, for the child of God. But also, this Our Father implies that we come together to pray. Oftentimes, even as Christians, we are We are afraid to pray in front of other people. We're afraid to pray with and for them. Especially the with part. Because we have this idea, and I think it's embedded in our culture. I don't know. Keep that to yourself. Keep all that stuff in your own house. Don't bring that into the public in any sort of way. I think it causes us to fear. even doing so in front of and with our Christian brethren. So we need to acknowledge that we have a Father, and ordinarily direct our prayers to Him. He is our Father, and we must own Him together. May every single Christian family make their own house a house of prayer, where they pray together. May every church Christians come together and they pray with them for one another and they cast aside any even sliver or instance of shame that would inhibit them. But also we have a heavenly Father. We have our Father who is in heaven. Let me just speak of the importance of earthly fathers before we contrast that with the Heavenly Father. You might know, some of you might know, I teach classes with Divine Hope Reformed Bible Seminary. That is a seminary, more like a Bible college, and we have seminaries in Illinois and Indiana, and that's what, obviously, I was doing before the coronavirus and everything that transpired from that. I've taught a number of topics, a number of There was a time when I was teaching through the Ten Commandments because we were working through the shorter catechism. Now the way I teach is not to just get up and lecture. It's not a monologue like it is a sermon. I'm a little bit more Socratic and this is what I mean by that. I pose questions. I ask questions. I defend certain theses, and then I interact with the class, and I get them talking. What I tell them is this. This is no safe space. Okay? I say that this is a safe space, but it's not a safe space. It's not a safe space. many universities and colleges, where these young people, who are allegedly adults, have to go and color in coloring books because they feel that they lost an election, or they heard something that was so offensive that they have to go to a separate place. That's not the sense in which I make a class into a safe place. This place is not safe if you have wrong opinions, because the men in my classes will tear you apart, and so will I, if you believe things that are not defensible. Okay? I'm trying to give you the idea of the environment. You can't attack people. You have to respond to position and deal with ideas. You don't attack people. Trust that you get the idea. Well, we're working our way through the Ten Commandments and I'm envisioning how things are going to be in these classes. Here's what I think. I think, okay, well, I'm in a class with guys who often have kind of a Baptist understanding. people who have, most of them, been convicted of murder, some think, hey, you know, the difficult times we're going to have, the Fourth Commandment and the Sixth Commandment, those are going to be the most amount of time. Here's why. Of course, I don't need to say anything about the Sixth Commandment. Thou shalt not murder. Sticky issue. dealing with men who have been convicted of it, and many of them have actually committed it. Then also, the Sabbath, and how does that apply? Well, we know our, we love and appreciate our Baptist brethren, but because of their view of dispensations and their, they don't have a view of God's word that brings unity to it, having application for us today, and that the case, according to the Bible, is that from the time of creation until the New Covenant, the seventh day was the Sabbath day. But with the resurrection of Jesus, now we have the first day of the week, and we call that the Lord's Day according to Revelation. one hand, okay? This, our Baptist brethren, say, no, no, that's, that's legalism, no, that's a different dispensation and all that, they're just confused. Here's the thing. I love, love to pick apart those arguments, why? Because I used to make them myself. God has given the fourth commandment to have application to us in the new covenant, and that is the first thing of the week. And I can show you all the places where that's the case. So here's the thing, I'm standing back and I'm thinking, all right, we're gonna spend a lot of time on the fourth commandment, we'll have to dismantle the dispensational understanding, and really it's a commandment-breaking understanding, we'll go to the honor thy father and thy mother, we'll spend a brief amount of time on that, and then we'll go on to murder, and that's gonna be a little bit of a sticky wicket, And then we'll be able to go on through the other commandments. Stealing might be, but even guys in prison understand, and I'm not gonna defend, okay, stealing and coveting, all these things, lying and these sorts of things. And to my utter astonishment, I shouldn't have been astonished, we spent, I think, three and a half hours dealing with the fifth commandment. Why? Because these men, most of them, coming from broken down homes, absent fathers, with poor fathers, with mothers who did not know who the father was, with brothers and sisters, all of which come from two, three, four, five different fathers. Here's what you have. You have, in the urban community, total decimation of the father and of the family, and now there's such a wreck. The family is such a wreck, and so many people are paying the consequences of it. What happens when you don't have a father in the home? So many times, especially men, were looking for him elsewhere. Find him on the streets. Find him on the streets. A strong figure. If they end up doing anything for him, tell him you are even murdering him. The importance of an earthly father. It ought not to be underestimated. Ephesians 6, 4 says, And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. There are so many ways that fathers can provoke their children to wrath. I've already spoken about some of them that can do so by being absent, by being irresponsible, as I've spoken about. Within a Christian community, we can have fathers and we can be fathers that fail in many ways. We can be present but still very, very absent. And we can be those who lash out. There's never that sense or that tenderness and that intimacy. He seems more like a master than a father. And these can be very difficult situations. As fathers, we must be humble. We must go through them. We must tell our children of our errors. We must say, please forgive me the ways that we have failed our children. But we must be strong. And we must be loving and caring. And we must be their protectors. And we must be their shield. And children who have fathers who have not been perfect and none are perfect they must be merciful to their fathers as well even when their fathers have provoked them to wrath they should forgive as their heavenly father has forgiven them so each and every earthly father fails I have failed and so has my father and on and on going through our first father who is the first Adam. Whether you find yourself in a Christian home with an imperfect father, or whether you find yourself in that sort of urban city situation where the family is a total disaster, you have a perfect heavenly father. perfect Heavenly Father who succeeds in all things, who is in all things merciful and gracious and shows His love in the most wonderful, perfect way, He sends His own Son. He could not have given anything more. He gives to the max, giving His own Son as a sacrifice for you. He goes further than that by giving you the Holy Spirit. Do you question the Father's love for you? You can say that he has given you all things if you have faith in the Triune God. He has given you all things, the Father has, because he has given you the Son and the Spirit And if one has the Father because he has the Son and he has the Spirit, then what do you lack? You have all things. How should we honor the Father? How should we honor the Heavenly Father? Well, the people of Malachi today teach us how not to. Now with I 1-6 says, a son honors his father. God says, if then I be a father, where is mine honor? People are questioning God's love. They're questioning his mercy and grace. And then they're sinning in the gravest way. Because they think, you know what? we should bring some sort of sacrifice to God. But they bring the weakest animals to the flock, of the flock, to the Father. They bring the blind, and they bring the deaf, they bring the weak. They're supposed to bring the fast. Now, Guy 1-8 says, and if the offer the blind purse sacrifice, is it not evil? Rhetorical question, but we're gonna answer, yes it is. And if you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor. Will he be pleased with it? Basically they're saying that you could, at that time, give up your flock to pay your taxes, okay? What a test that must have been. You offer to the governor, as your taxes, animals. And you offer to God, animals. And the quality of the animals that you offer shows how much you honor God as follows. What we have is much easier, don't we? We have it converted into dollars. which are ever inflating, but we won't go there. Another discussion. For another time. And the government just takes it right out before you even see it. Another discussion. I'll not step onto that soapbox. I'll seek to be strong in that. But notice this. We can stand back and say, ah, but look at them. They're offering relief. They're offering the pathetic. But what of our prayer life? Do you offer to God the Father the weak and the blind and the deaf portions of your day? Do you offer the weakest of sacrifices in prayer to your Father? Though we may not be sacrificing animals or bringing them to the government and to God-like They were in the Old Covenant. There is still a lot of application here for us. How often we give all of our time to the government and what it's going to take from us and the jobs and careers and hobbies and all of these things. And then, if anything, we give to the Father And if that's you, then you need to repent. Begin anew. Begin to pray. And to seek the offer of your best to the Father. Understanding that it will be weak in comparison to the perfect sacrifice of the Savior. But wait, may we not. to weep in our attempts. May we seek to be bold and strong as we go to God the Father, and seek to offer Him up the best times. And may we give to Him, not at the expense of everything else. May we make an offering of prayer to the Father, to write and the dishonorable to him. We read the story from Luke chapter 15, prodigal son, prodigal son. What happens there? One son says, hey, give me my part of the inheritance. I'll take that now. Ordinarily that happens when the father dies. I'll just take it now and goes off The other brother said, he spent it on a riotous living. I think that's what the narrator says, riotous living. The brother says, he spent it on wars. Amazing. There he's hovering the pig's loft, the world's pig's loft. He has reached the bottom. He says, I'll go to my father. He goes to his father. wanting simply to be a servant. I'll call you master. I'll be your servant. Forget about the relationship that we once had. And God, or the Father, lavishes upon him everything. Well, the other brother's very, very annoyed by that. Because he thinks, I've done so much good. I've done so much good for you. And look what you do. You do nothing for him. You do nothing for me. You do everything for this son of yours. I want you to say, you may find yourself today as that younger brother. You may find yourself today as that younger brother saying, I'll just be happy to be a slave. I'll just be happy to have him as my master. Oh, what will you do? I hope that you'll go to him. I hope you'll say, my father, our father, and know that by faith, he receives you as his son or as his daughter. Why? Why should you go to him? It is because he is looking for you. And it is because he is waiting for you. That's why. And because he is loving and merciful to his people. You may find yourself, like the older brother, feeling as though you're doing all right, The feeling is though, you're doing okay, you're serving well enough. You may find yourself looking at others who God seems to be far more gracious to. You find yourself, as one who says, you know what, he's just pouring blessings upon that person. He doesn't deserve it, and she doesn't deserve it. Why is he holding out on me? And if that is you, and if you find yourself in that place today, then know that the Father is calling you in to the feast as well. Indeed, he's calling you to the great feast, the feast of the Son of God on the last day Whichever you find yourself, know this, that you are invited into communion with your Father, communion with the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. But know this, God does not set his love upon you because you pray. That's not why you should pray. Or because you pray often, or because you pray well. God set his love upon me for whatever reason beyond my understanding. Deuteronomy 29, 29. The revealed things belong to us and to our children. Secret things belong to God. Why did he choose me? Why did he choose you? We don't know. These are things that we cannot dissect. These are things that should bring us to God's sovereignty. These are things that should bring us merciful, gracious, and know that God will not ultimately cast you off because of your failures. The Father looks for you to call upon Him in faith. And He, the Father, is waiting for you, Christian. Call upon His name. That's great. Thank you for tuning in. Please review our Facebook and YouTube pages for further teachings. We pray you will join us next week. If you are interested in or have questions about visiting us in person, please contact us at secretary at wrpc at gmail.com. Thank you.