We turn in the word of God to Luke chapter 11. Gospel according to Luke chapter 11. We'll read the first 13 verses of the chapter. This is the word of the Lord. 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 everyone 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 has 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, that is persistence, 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? There ends our reading of God's holy and inspired word. On the basis of that passage and all of the scriptures, we consider Lord's Day 45 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Lord's Day 45, it's on page 25 in the back of the Psalter. Question and answer 116. Why is prayer necessary for Christians? because it is the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us, and also because God will give his grace and Holy Spirit to those only who with sincere desires continually ask them of him and are thankful for them. What are the requisites of that prayer which is acceptable to God and which he will hear? First, that we from the heart pray to the one true God only, who hath manifested himself in his word. For all things he hath commanded us to ask of him. Secondly, that we rightly and thoroughly know our need and misery, that so we may deeply humble ourselves in the presence of his divine majesty. Thirdly, that we be fully persuaded that he, notwithstanding that we are unworthy of it, will, for the sake of Christ our Lord, certainly hear our prayer, as he has promised us in his word. And what hath God commanded us to ask of him? All things necessary for soul and body, which Christ our Lord has comprised in that prayer he himself has taught us. Question 119, what are the words of that prayer? Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Beloved congregation, in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Heidelberg Catechism is a course of instruction in the essential doctrines of the Bible. And it moves systematically through the doctrines of the Bible with the goal of impressing upon us that our only comfort in life and in death is revealed in God's Word. And that there are three things necessary that we should know in that regard and enjoying that comfort. We need to know, first of all, how great our sins and miseries are. We've seen the importance of that throughout. We're seeing it again here in Lord's Day 45. We will not pray acceptably to God unless we know our misery. We also need to know how we may be delivered from all of our sins and our misery. And we learn that we are delivered by Jesus Christ and through faith in Him. We come to receive Him and all of His benefits. And we will not pray acceptably, except we understand that our salvation is found only in Christ. And our prayer must be prayed in faith, and an answer must be sought for the sake of Christ our Lord. Important knowledge in the first section of the Catechism and the second section of the Catechism is now being applied in the third section of the Catechism. The third section of the Catechism is how we may show our gratitude to God for deliverance from all of our sin and miseries. And it's broken down into two main categories. We show our thankfulness by obeying God, living a new and holy life which is pleasing to Him. And we've finished the law of God. Now we're moving to the activity and the calling that we have to pray to God. And the catechism calls prayer the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us. It is the chief part. Now that can be explained in a variety of ways. One way to understand how prayer is the chief part of thankfulness is that if we are not praying, we are lacking the chief or the main element of a walk of gratitude. And thus it is a serious lap. A life of prayerlessness, therefore, can hardly be considered a thankful life. Prayer is necessary. Prayer is important. Lord's Day 45 gives us an introductory treatment to prayer. It begins by focusing on the question of necessity and asking the question, why? Why is prayer necessary and why does God require us to pray? And the answer gives prayer its proper place in our doctrine and in our life. Catechism then proceeds to the requisites or the characteristics of prayer which is acceptable to God and which he will hear. And instructs the child of God in the manner of prayer and in the one to whom we ought to pray and the attitude with which we pray. And we learn how to pray and are encouraged to pray by those. And then finally the catechism summarizes the content of our prayer, which is a wonderful summary because it's put in absolute terms. It's very rarely that we can speak in absolute language among us men because we are so fickle and we change so often, we fall short so often, but here the command comes from God and God calls us to pray for all things necessary. for soul and body. And that's what Christ taught us to pray for in the model prayer which we read from Luke 11 and in Question and Answer 119 and is also found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. So as we treat the Catechism's instruction, I want to convey this instruction in the Lord's Day, but I want to have an eye on The difficulty of prayer that we sometimes experience when I talk to the young people, and when I talk to the old people, and when I talk to everyone in between, it is not uncommon that God's people express a struggle with prayer. And there are all kinds of reasons why sometimes we're afraid to pray because of the guilt and the shame that we feel. Sometimes we're frustrated and overwhelmed and we don't feel as though we know how to pray. Sometimes we are discouraged and embarrassed because we have gone through a season of prayerlessness and we don't know where to begin again. There might be other reasons why we do not pray or we struggle to pray. And in light of some of those common hesitations, fears, and frustrations that we feel, It's my objective as I teach Lord's Day 45 to you this morning to keep things as simple as possible. In some ways it was my goal throughout the week that I reminded myself I want to preach the simplest possible sermon on prayer while also giving you the instruction of Lord's Day 45. so that of all the barriers that may be there, understanding how to pray will not be one of them. Prayer is not complicated. Prayer ought not be viewed as something difficult, Prayer is not natural for us. Prayer is a spiritual activity that we can only undertake in faith. But prayer is not complicated. It's not hard. Your little children know how to pray. And thus, the theme of the sermon this morning is simple. Ask. the essence of prayer in the first place, the exhortation to pray in the second place, and the encouragement to pray in conclusion. Start with the essence of prayer. The Catechism assumes that we know what prayer is. You do know what prayer is. I don't need to explain prayer to you. You understand what it is. So the catechism jumps immediately into other points related to prayer. If we were to lay a foundation for ourselves then and give our own definition, we could begin in a variety of places. You could start with the common definition of prayer is conversation with God. Holy and spiritual conversation with God. Or one could speak of prayer as the activity of calling upon God, making an address of God, with a wide range of objectives, you could add, to praise Him, to thank Him, to confess to Him, or to bring supplications or petitions to Him. If you wanted to describe the activity of prayer, you could use all kinds of language that's found in the Bible, and even commonly used among us, such as crying, calling, pouring out our hearts, singing, humbling ourselves, seeking, pleading, beseeching, and even worshiping. All these words and activities are synonymous in some way with prayer. Many of these things are even mentioned in Lord's Day 45, or implied in Lord's Day 45. But there's one thing that the Catechism highlights with regard to the essence of prayer, and that is the activity of asking. The theme of the sermon is ask, because the essence of prayer is asking God for our needs. If your children, your little children ask you, what is prayer? You would give a faithful explanation of it by saying, prayer is when we ask God for our needs. I want to prove that asking is the essence of prayer. First of all, from the Catechism, the word ask is the word that is repeated throughout Lord's Day 45. Question and answer 116. In the middle part, God will give His grace and Holy Spirit to those only who with sincere desires continually ask them of Him. Question and answer 117. That in the first part, that we pray, from the heart pray to the one true God only who hath manifested himself in his word for all things he has commanded us to ask of him. Question and answer 118. What hath God commanded us to ask of him? The common thread through the catechism here is that prayer is asking God. It's the expression of a request. It's the making of a petition. And so prayer is asking. I also want to prove that the Scriptures treat prayer as asking. And hopefully, if your mind is going anywhere, it's going right to Philippians 4, verse 6, which is, be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And you all understand that that's what the prayers that we're called to utter are, making our requests known. And in Matthew 7, verses 7 and 8, which is the parallel of Luke chapter 11, which we read, we read Jesus teaching us to pray with that simple calling. Luke 11, verse 9, And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you. That's immediately following the request of the disciples. Lord, teach us to pray. And he teaches them the model prayer. And then he teaches them about the importance of importunity or persistence in prayer. And then he carries on the instruction and gives them that simple calling. Ask and it shall be given you. Jesus understands prayer as asking. And when we go to Matthew chapter 7, you'll notice that the instruction to ask is not even in the immediate context of the instruction of the Lord's Prayer. There's a break in between. And so that even highlights that when we read Matthew 7, verse 7 and 8, and Jesus says, ask and it shall be given you, we still know, we still know he's talking about prayer, making our requests known to God. We can also look at the words used for prayer in the Bible, and there are many of them. Petitions. Petitions are a request that we make to someone else. So also supplications, or pleadings, or intercessions that we bring a request with regard to someone else. Sometimes our requests are that God would give us something. Sometimes our requests are that God would deliver us from something evil. Sometimes our prayers are connected to requests in a different way, such that we have made a vow as we asked for something, and then we pay our vow when our request is granted. And even when we pray, seeking nothing, only seeking to worship or to praise or to confess, there is still an element of requesting in the activity of prayer. You can see that in those Psalms, one of which we sang at the first song tonight, when we pray to God, there is a request that he would incline his ear unto us, that he would hear our prayer. Every time we pray, every time we say, our Father, which art in heaven, There is an implied request that he would hear us and receive and be pleased with the words of our prayer and the meditations of our hearts. And if there's one more proof that can be added, probably the most powerful proof that can be added from the Word of God, that prayer is rightly understood as asking or making requests, it's in the model prayer itself. Because the model prayer, the Lord's Prayer, consists of an address followed by six petitions, six requests. That is prayer. If we understand prayer as asking, then we ought to be able to consider requests in light of the requisites of prayer given in question and answer 117. So first of all, the requests are, the requisites that we, of prayer that is acceptable to God, are that we from the heart pray to the one true God only who hath manifested himself in his word for all things he hath commanded us to ask of him. Yes, we must ask God for the things He has commanded. It is in perfect harmony with the first requisite. We pray to God, and when we pray to God from the heart, when we pray to God according to His instruction, we will be asking God according to His instruction. We also must consider the humility required of us. Secondly, that we rightly and thoroughly know our need and misery, that so we may deeply humble ourselves in the presence of his divine majesty. A request by its nature is humbling. We are proud people. Sometimes that pride manifests itself among us in our relationships, in our families, by our hesitation to ask for help or to ask for assistance. Why do we hesitate to ask for help? Because we're embarrassed. Because we're ashamed. Because when we ask for help, we're acknowledging, I have a need. I'm incapable by myself. I'm not able to do it. I need your help. Will you help me? Will you supply my need? We have a natural hesitation to ask for help because it's humbling for us to ask for help. The same may be said of our relationship to God and our life and our walk before the face of God. We hesitate to pray because to pray is to admit that we have a lack and we have a need for our soul or for our body. And we, by understanding prayer as requests, it is to lead us to pray with humility It also leads us to have not only a right view of ourselves, but a right view of God, because when we bring a request to someone else, it does give honor to them. I have a lack, and it's in your power to grant it. God is the only one to whom this worship of prayer is, and this honor of hearing prayer is due. And he who is majestic, should be approached with humble requests. Third, that we be fully persuaded that He Now, withstanding that we are unworthy of it, we'll, for the sake of Christ our Lord, certainly hear our prayer as he hath promised us in his word. And there we see the manner in which we bring our requests. We make requests, not on the basis that we are worthy of it, but on the basis of Jesus Christ and his righteousness, which is imputed to us. I also want to point out that making requests is consistent with question and answer 116. It's consistent with the second part, that He will give His grace and Holy Spirit to those who with sincere desires continually ask them of Him. He is pleased with requests and he requires us to pray and he gives us an answer to prayer. But then it's consistent also with being the chief part of thankfulness. Sometimes we turn ourselves in knots when we try to put those two things together because we think of gratitude as the response to a gift. And that's what it is. Gratitude is a response to a gift. And so we wonder how can a request, making requests, be a response? But the reality of praying in faith means that we may make our requests with gratitude. We may ask Him for these things and be thankful for them at the same time. And we can be thankful as we bring our requests because We are so confident that God will provide what we have need of. We have no doubt. Before we even ask, we know that He understands our need. Before we even make our request known to Him, we are sure He's going to provide. Assuming, of course, that we're praying in faith and praying, therefore, according to God's Word and not asking amiss. So long as we pray in harmony with His Word, we have no question and no doubt but that He will provide. But then in another sense, there's thankfulness in our requests, because all of our requests are the requests of children to our Heavenly Father. And when we call upon God as our Father, that is a response to the work that he has done and to the grace that he has shown to establish his covenant with us and to give us access in the name of Jesus Christ to his throne of grace. So even when we bring our request, hallowed be thy name, or give us this day our daily bread, by bringing those requests to him, we are expressing our gratitude to our Father for opening that way in Jesus Christ for us to come to him. The application that I want to close the first point with is very simple, and that's for us to be corrected from our thinking of prayer as performance, and instead think of prayer as petition. Prayer is not a performance that you put on for the members of your family, or for the children in your classroom, or for the friend that you go to visit. Prayer is not a performance that you put on for your own conscience so that you can feel better about yourself. Prayer is not a performance That you go up on a stage, as it were, and pray for your fellow believers, and on behalf of your fellow believers, so that you have to be thinking all the time, I wonder how they're receiving my performance. I wonder what they think about the words that I'm using. I wonder if they're going to criticize something I left out. I wonder if they're going to think that I overdid it in my plea to God on this subject. Prayer is not a performance for your fellow man, and it's not a performance for your God. Prayer is petition. Ask. To pray is to ask. So beloved congregation, Simply ask. Sincerely and humbly and freely ask, and it shall be given you. Our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us that this is the nature of prayer. When you pray, make your requests known to God. Consider for yourself how many of your fears and how many of your hesitations and how much of your nervousness and how much of your distress and how much of the intimidation that might keep you from praying is driven away when we remember that prayer is not a performance but petition. Just ask. In second place we turn to the same idea of prayer as asking and understand that this is also an exhortation for us. The biblical basis for understanding prayer as asking or petition is that Jesus Christ exhorts us and calls us to ask in Luke 11 verse 9. Ask is not He's not simply stating that prayer is asking, that's implied. What He's doing is calling us to pray, exhorting us to pray. Ask and it shall be given unto you. So what God is requiring of us is that we bring our petitions to Him. Prayer is an activity which God and our Savior Jesus Christ requires for us and therefore is necessary for us. Let me prove that prayer is necessary from the catechism first of all. That's the explicit objective of question and answer 116. Why is prayer necessary? The catechism implies prayer is necessary. The answer tells us why, for two reasons. One, because it is the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us. So it's necessary, therefore, according to God's command. The second reason that prayer is necessary is that because God will give His grace and Holy Spirit to those only who with sincere desires continually ask them of Him and are thankful for them. So this means that prayer is the God-ordained means or way that He would have us seek and request His grace and Holy Spirit. And in response to these petitions, continual petitions for His grace and Holy Spirit, He provides. And He provides continually. It's the God-ordained means whereby we seek and request. And this is the means God appoints because this pleases God and glorifies God. If it were not so, we would not be exhorted to pray. If our requests for His grace and Holy Spirit and for all things necessary for body and soul was not pleasing to God and part of the way or the means whereby we seek these things from God, God would not call us and exhort us to pray. We also find these calls and exhortations to pray in God's word, not only in Luke 11 verse 9, ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you, but also in passages such as Psalm 50 verse 15. Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me. Notice where that verse ends, Psalm 50 verse 15. It ends in our glorifying God. And it's connected inseparably from calling upon God. Calling upon God for deliverance in the day of trouble will tend to His glory. To go back to Luke 11 verse 9, one other point about those three exhortations, ask, seek, and knock. Ask, seek, and knock. Each one of them is connected to a corresponding consequence. Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. And there's the basis for the catechism pointing out that God gives to those only who ask. God connects his provision with our request for those things. So whenever we come to read and hear the commands of God's word, including those which come directly from our Lord Jesus Christ, we ought to receive those exhortations with the utmost seriousness. We should not read the verse that says, ask or call upon me and then refuse to pray. refuse to ask. God is sovereign. He does whatsoever He pleases. He made us for Himself. He redeemed us by the blood of His own Son. And He has expressed His will. His will is our command as those who belong unto Him. We may not, beloved congregation, hem and haw, morning and night, day by day, whether we really need to pray, whether it's really necessary to pray. We should not doubt and question whether we are called to pray. And I don't hear that in this congregation. That's the explicitly proud and hard-hearted response, a denial of the necessity of prayer. More common, more natural for us is the dull and lazy response, in which we neglect prayer. And we are unfaithful in the call to prayer. And if we are willingly ignore the call to pray, then we must repent and seek God's mercy for that ingratitude. And when we understand our own depravity and sinfulness, then we ought to make a main subject in our prayer, the petition, the request that God would give us a heart that loves to pray. So, the application of the exhortation to pray is easy enough for you to figure out. It's to issue the exhortation to pray. Beloved congregation, ask God for your needs. Ask Him. Make your requests known to God. And when you hear the call to prayer, you know that these commands are not a burden for you. These commands are wonderful and delightful because they come in the context of God's covenant. This is the call that God our Father gives to us, His children. Ask me. Ask me for what you have need. Don't wander when you're lost. Ask me for direction. Don't go hungry and refuse to call upon me for food and for drink. Ask me. Ask me for these things that I have promised to you. Think about the way you teach your children to interact with you and to relate to you. When your children have a need, when your children are too weak, when your children are too small, when your children need help and they're overwhelmed, what do you tell them? Come to me and ask me for help. I want to help you. And a father is pleased with the prayers of his children. freely bring your requests. Don't be anxious, but pray. Beloved congregation, ask for God's name to be hallowed. I exhort you to do so. I exhort you to ask for God's kingdom to come, to ask for God's will to be done. And when you are afraid, dear brethren, then ask for confidence. And when you are overwhelmed, then ask for refuge. And when you are discouraged, then ask that God will strengthen your resolve. And when you are sick or wounded, then ask for healing to be restored. And when you lack wisdom, make known your request and desire for a liberal distribution of that wisdom that's from above. And when you are laid low by your guilt, the guilt of your sins and sinfulness, then ask God for forgiveness for Jesus' sake. And when you are weak and you are weary in the Christian life, the struggle, the spiritual warfare which we are called to wage, then ask for His grace and Holy Spirit. And when you are hungry, ask for food. And if you are thirsty, ask for drink. and make your request known for yourself and for your family members. I exhort you to make your request known regarding our church, our congregation, our denomination. Ask for qualified office bearers. Ask for faithful ministers and more of them. Ask for compassionate deacons. Ask for godly mothers to be raised up and to be preserved, and for godly fathers to be faithful in their calling. Ask for children of the covenant and for the promises to be applied unto them. Ask. Pray. And if these exhortations come to you in a season of prayerlessness, then hear these exhortations as an admonition and a rebuke Pray to God. That's the calling God gives us. It's an activity God requires of us. It's the chief part of thankfulness. Put away your anxieties and your cares and don't be intimidated or afraid. Humble yourself in your pride. Ask and it shall be given you. Even as we are exhorted to pray, by that same token, we ought to be encouraged to pray. When you ask and bring your requests to God, You ask with the confidence that your prayer is acceptable to God and that he will hear it. Let me prove that catechism would have us encouraged to pray. First of all, by in question and answer 116, the reason God gives us to pray includes a promise. Prayer is necessary, in second part, because God will give. God will give his grace and Holy Spirit to those who ask them of him and are thankful for them. God will give. And then in question of 117, what are the requisites of prayer which is acceptable to God and that he will hear? There's encouragement implied there, clearly implied, because there is such a thing as acceptable prayer. And there is such a thing as prayer that God will hear. And then if we take into account those requisites, those requisites are not barriers for us. It's not as though we have a desire to do a certain activity in our earthly context and we go to a certain institution and we want to maybe have this job or do this fun recreational activity and we say, well, am I allowed to do it? And there's all kinds of different requirements that we must meet. You must be this tall to ride, for example. You have to be that tall, otherwise you can't. There's no barrier here. There's no barrier in the requisites for prayer. There's instruction. So that we might be led to pray as children. When you read that word requisites, maybe you think that way. You better check all the boxes, or my prayer won't be heard. That's not the idea. This is instruction for the child of God, who knows his misery out of the law of God, who is joined and grafted into Jesus Christ by a true and living faith, and who has his righteousness, and who knows the God of heaven as his Father. And it teaches us the manner in which we ought to pray. Pray from the heart. That's not a barrier. Pray to the one true God only who has manifested himself in his word. What that basically means is pray to the God who has revealed himself to you. That's not a barrier. Pray for all things he hath commanded us to ask of him. Well, that's an exceedingly broad range. Everything we need for soul and body. That's not a barrier. Pray humbly. We know that. We are sinful. in ourselves and not worthy of an answered prayer. It's not a barrier. Pray before God's majesty with gratitude. We may say we know this God and we know his greatness and glory. Pray being fully persuaded that he will answer. Well, that's the prayer of faith. That's the only way of access we have unto God. The prayer of faith which is uttered in Jesus' name. None of the requisites of acceptable prayer give us the message, you shouldn't be praying so much. You should be more hesitant to pray. All of these requisites ought to be an encouragement to us. In the same way that we may very well teach our children, there's a proper way to bring your requests to me as your father or as your mother. There's a proper attitude that you should have and there are proper things that you might ask for and things you might not ask for. But whenever we teach them that proper way, We do our utmost to make plain to them, I want you to come to me. So the scriptures and the catechism's presentation of prayer stands in stark contrast to the way that we sometimes think about prayer as performance. Or the way that we foolishly make barriers for ourselves because we compare ourselves to this person to that person, to this person who has a way to use language and make such a beautiful and poetic prayer, to this person who has such a capacity to speak really to the heart of the needs of those who are present. And we think, I can't pray like him or I can't pray like her, so I don't dare pray. Put those barriers away. That's prayer as performance. Or maybe we're hesitating not because we're thinking about other men and women, but because we're afraid of God, and that's faithlessness. We're afraid that He won't hear us, because we've committed sin, or continued in sin for a time, and we think, I can't go back to my holy God. Well, of course you're going to think that way if you're not thinking about access to your Father in Jesus' name. Pray in Jesus' name, the one who died for you, whose blood washed you clean, and make your requests known to him. If you find yourself asking, how could he ever hear me? Why would he ever answer me? How could I dare make this request known for forgiveness for this sin or that sin or all my sins? The answer to every hesitation and fear is found in Jesus Christ. Because of Him, we're encouraged to ask with confidence. Through Him, we're able and willing to ask, having access and having a renewed desire. And for the glory of God and Jesus Christ, we do make our requests known to God, expressing our gratitude to Him. Amen. Our Father, which art in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy faithfulness to us. We thank Thee for the freedom that we enjoy to make our requests known to Thee. We pray that we and our children might speak freely and pour out our hearts and that Thou would use this word to move us into a season of rich, prayerful fellowship with Thee as individuals and as families and as a congregation. And we pray that thou will hear us. That is our request for Jesus sake.