We have two readings tonight back to the book of Hebrews and then we'll turn over to Revelation chapter 8. And as you're turning there, I also invite you to turn to page 252 in the back of the Forms and Prayers book. And we'll start there with page 252, Lord's Day 45, as we begin our series in prayer. And there are some question and answers there. I'll ask the question and have you please respond with the answer. Again, this is page 252, Lord's Day 45. The question there in 116 is, why do Christians need to pray? Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. And also because God will give His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who continually and with heartfelt longing ask God for these gifts and thank Him for them. How does God want us to pray so that He will listen to us? First, we must pray from the heart to no other than the one true God who has revealed Himself to us in His Word, asking for everything He has commanded us to ask of Him. Second, we must fully recognize our need and misery so that we may humble ourselves in God's majestic presence. Third, we must rest on this unshakable foundation. Even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord as he promised us in his word. What has God commanded us to ask of him? Everything we need spiritually and physically as embraced in the prayer Christ our Lord himself taught us. And we'll close with that prayer tonight after the sermon, the Lord's Prayer, which is really an exposition of the Lord's Prayer. We're beginning here. Back to Hebrews tonight, chapter 4. verses 14 through 16, then we'll turn over to Revelation 8. Since then we have, this is verse 14, since then we have a great high priest who's passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And now over at Revelation chapter 8, last book of the Bible found on page 1223, just the first five verses. When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with the golden censer. And he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel. And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth. And there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. And there we'll end the reading of God's word tonight. Christians have the great privilege of coming, as we considered this morning, with boldness to the throne of grace and to talk with God. This communion between us and God is called prayer. That's what prayer is. It's talking with God. It's communicating with God. It's spending time expressing your heart and your thoughts to Him in a way, as we'll look at, that reverences Him and trusts Him and believes Him. That believers have the ear of God and are invited to cast all their cares upon Him because He cares for us. is one of the most remarkable blessings that we have in the Christian life it really is that we we don't give enough attention to yet we have to say prayer is one of the most neglected disciplines of Christians in our day even back in the 19th century J.C. Ryle once wrote yes few pray it is just one of the things assumed as a matter of course but seldom practiced a thing which is everyone's business, but in fact, hardly anybody performs. That's remarkable for a pastor to say that. Is it really true that the Christian community is not praying? And what would be the consequences of that? I mean, that's quite an assertion he made. What are the consequences of a prayerless Christianity? And is the church's mission today suffering because of it? is a lack of prayer tied together to a lack of sanctification can we say something like that how do we understand prayer and what place does prayer have and is it true that few are praying well almost universally today people complain of the busyness of their lives don't they families are pulled away from the dinner table to all kinds of events sporting events and practices and music lessons and I could go on and on and on and everyone expects everyone to be there at all these things. We have the best of modern conveniences and yet we run ourselves ragged with never-ending appointments, don't we? The restlessness of our age is an indication of priorities gone wrong. And we spend time, as one pastor told me years ago, Chris, people do and spend the time to do what they want to do. Nobody is too busy to do what they want to do. I think that's true. That's just true. We get to do and we get about doing what we want to do, even though we claim our lives are so busy. But we always seem to have time today to openly talk about all the problems in the world. don't we? Social media is not in want of Christians constantly talking. This is what we do. We talk. We talk about everything. And we express our disillusionment with the state of things constantly, don't we? We have a lot of words about that. We are good at talking about that. but what a privilege tonight to come back and say you have the great open door to talk to the one with whom it matters and to communicate with him i want to tonight consider and encourage us to pray frequently no one is a master at praying you hear the statement that some people are prayer warriors that's great but that's few what is a prayer warrior well tonight i want to consider that the the three sort of things that this um this passage and what we're looking at here in hebrews and revelation 8 and it's a few themes that we're developing through this that the heidelberg puts in front of us i want to consider this confidence that we are to have in prayer and then the consolation that we receive through prayer and the characteristics as the heidelberg here outlines them of true prayer so we'll look at that first with the confidence and one of the things that we see constantly in the scriptures which is remarkable when god is acting and when god is doing things we see constantly that the lord was always using and listening to and it always seemed to begin with the prayers of his people as he accomplished his will on the earth. Not saying that his will is not accomplished apart from our prayer, but that he uses the prayers of his people to accomplish his will and deliver his people. That's everywhere in the scripture. How could anyone miss that? And with that conviction, we all need constant reminders that God loves the prayers of his people. That God desires of us to talk to Him. Not only does He desire it, He commands it. It's a commandment. Pray without ceasing. Talk to me. Come to me. Express your dependency. Express what's on the heart to me, says the Lord. Well, this morning we had this remarkable text, I think captures the difficulties of prayer we've been looking at in Hebrews. Why is prayer so difficult? And why are things so difficult when it comes to talking with God? These early Christians were facing all kinds of problems that they did not anticipate in this life. And one way what the author was doing here was encouraging them to handle these things and to handle them with a different perspective. We've all been considering that people go in one of two ways when life is difficult and things are hard. You either run away from God or you run to God. That's what Hebrews is saying, run to him. That's the benefit of coming boldly to the throne of grace. And why does he give us that kind of motivation? For he says, well, we don't have a high priest who's unsympathetic for what we're going through and is distant from us and hasn't lived this and hasn't learned obedience in becoming one of us in the incarnation. With every respect, he was tempted as we are, yet without sin. And that great truth of him becoming one of us and enduring all of this for us and being sympathetic, he invites us to come and calls us to come with boldness. He says, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. That's prayer. he's calling us to pray sure we come boldly to the throne of grace and worship and we sit and receive that word and one of the crucial responsibilities to also come is to come boldly and talk to him in prayer that's what the scriptures show us everywhere and he called us to consider jesus who in the days of his earthly pilgrimage offered up himself vehement cries and tears in prayers constantly to his heavenly father and what's most striking in that is how he encouraged these early christians and all of their sufferings and all their trials and all their difficulties by saying god will actually help you you can come with boldness and have direct access to god and his ear is inclined to you you know his ear is not inclined to everyone the scriptures are very clear God turns away his ear from the wicked but he turns his ear to the righteous his people this life is one of wilderness travel we've been looking at where God is testing us and God is trying us and one of the very purposes in these things is that we would learn dependency upon him and that's most expressed in drawing near to the throne in prayer I think if you were going through that wilderness um study in in um in exodus and you had that little scene where moses's hands were lifted held up because he couldn't do it and held up and the amalekites were attacking the enemies were attacking and when the hands went down they began to win and when the hands went up when he was in the posture he was praying and again prayer is not always like this nor do i think eyes should always be closed when we're in a dependent posture of prayer that was an encouragement of the lord's help to israel but what is required of us and that's where i begin tonight is really with this this point of having confidence in this and that's the single great motivating factor to prayer the reality is that one of the very reasons that we have trials and tests in life and difficulties in life is to bring us to his feet in prayer. I think the spontaneous cries of God's people in the valleys and when we feel alone and the cries that come what we call extemporaneously in the moment are some of the most powerful and wonderful of prayers you can give. We don't always have to have the coffee out and the prayer journal open. Life just doesn't always work that way, does it? well how do we consider then this confidence and prayer that he loves psalm think of psalm 116 that that are 16 that tells us that god even loves prayers when you're not sleeping on your bed in the night for some reason they always put me back to sleep but it's a good time to pray the lord is constantly calling us to come to him because we're needy and he has abundant help for us and encouragement for us so that we would know his strength and know his peace and know his help why do you need to pray i love what our heidelberg says because in all of our distresses all the needs all the anxieties we can go right to him and he is near to help us the lord is near to us, and He gives the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us through the avenue of prayer. So then think of what prayer is demonstrating. Prayer is demonstrating dependency upon Him. And to have dependency, you have to have confidence that God is here in you, and that God is for you, and that God has called you to come to Him. It's the strongest way you express trust. But to appreciate this, there has to be an understanding that it's God's gracious love in the gospel that drives us to prayer. I want to make sure we understand that point. That's why I appreciate the Heidelberg tonight. Why do Christians need to pray? Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness that God requires of us. This is your way of saying thank you to your Father for such an indescribable gift. I have to say that most approaches to prayer, as I began quoting the Ryle comment, puts us in the sort of guilt mode. I think for many of us we have felt guilty about prayer. We have felt that probably this is the one area of the Christian life where we have not been very faithful. And the assumption then comes back to this, that because of my lack of talking with God, I fall in and out of favor with God. So we treat prayer kind of like what the theologians call a covenant of works, do this and live. We approach prayer by a way of guilt. But the scriptures never do that. The scriptures demonstrate that prayer is something of a natural response to people who are hearing the word of God, embracing the word of God, responding in faith, like breathing. It's the natural response to somebody who says thank you for such a gift like that. Only a heart that's received grace and only a heart that understands the immense love of God shown in the gospel is driven to prayer. That's why worship is so important. That's why hearing the word is so important to remove the pollutions of the world you're exposed to every single week it has a deadening effect on life but it's this last statement i'm sure ursinus when he was thinking and they were drafting this he must have thought of hebrews 4 that god desires to give his grace and holy spirit to those who pray um this is one of the things that's being communicated when he says he desires to give you help and mercy and grace and time of need as the author of hebrews says here and that's where i want to move us tonight to think a little bit of how he's encouraging us to prayer as a means of helping us and receiving consolation and to know that that he's hearing us that's a point i want to i want to drive home tonight that's what the heidelberg also says here that's so wonderful we rest on this unshakable foundation even though we don't deserve it god surely listens to our prayer because of christ our lord as he's promised in his word well i want to just explore for a minute tonight what is happening when we pray i think that's the great question because we don't immediately see anything what is happening when we pray what is god doing when we pray well that's why i had us read revelation 8 tonight and it's a passage that i i find immensely wonderful in this book where essentially he's saying the author here john is i think taking even the words of jesus where he said men ought always to pray and to not lose heart and all the light of all the injustices of this world that that here he's showing and giving you a window into heaven as to what's happening when we come boldly to the throne of grace what's happening you'll notice in this particular passage of revelation 8 that seven seals are described in chapter 6 they're god's judgments on the earth all leading up to the final judgment to come and in that particular section it says fall on us and hide us from the face of him who's seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand the six days describing the great day of wrath? The sixth seal. And when you come to the seventh seal, we read, when he opened the seventh seal, this is Revelation 8, there was silence in heaven for about a half hour. What is that? Six seals, six told us the day of judgment's coming. Now, verse 1, verse completes the seventh seal. What does it say? All of a sudden there's silence. Verse chapter 4 described a throne fixed in heaven where Jesus is seated, ruling all things. And around the thrones are cherubim and seraphim and the angels. And they're all saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. But all of a sudden, as you come to Revelation 8, he's just capturing another moment here, another snapshot of something that's heavenly. And everything goes silent. Here's the struggle that Hebrews has been capturing. Where is the Lord? What is the Lord doing? All this persecution in earth, all this pain, all this suffering, all this misery, all this sin. And in heaven there goes for half hour silence. If you were to read through the Old Testament, when God's people prayed, one of the constant struggles of God's people in the Psalms was constantly, how long, O Lord? Why aren't you answering, O Lord? Where are you, O Lord? Where's the help, O Lord? It always seemed that God was not answering. Listen to the cries. Do not keep silent, O God. Do not hold your peace and do not be still, O God. Psalm 109. My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent. Why does it appear that you're silent when we pray? How long, O Lord? How long will you look on in the senses and do nothing? How long, Psalm 89, 46? How long, O Lord, will you hide yourself forever? how long this is where we struggle with prayer doesn't seem like anything happens seem like anything changes I mean I've been praying from this pulpit in the war in the Ukraine hasn't happened I think Revelation 8 captures that frustration here in Revelation all of a sudden everything goes silent for a half hour and what the old testament showed is that just before god was ready to act and ready to come and ready to deliver everything went silent zachariah 2 be silent all flesh before the lord for he's aroused from his holy habitation Zephaniah 1, be silent in the presence of the Lord God for the day of the Lord is at hand for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice. He's invited his guests and it shall be in the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish. Here's the point. What appears to be in prayer God not acting was in fact silence in heaven in anticipation that God is about ready to break out of there. And everyone knew it. tremble at the presence of the lord at the presence of the god of jacob he's coming say the scriptures now this is what i think jesus was saying when he said we ought always to pray and not lose heart when we don't see these things answered the way we want them to be answered the silence he calls it here is what the patience of the saints throughout history the vision itself was intended to be an encouragement that the silence that we feel the struggle that we face in prayer that God is not hearing notice what it says he's ready to come verse 2 and I saw seven angels who stand before God and they were given seven trumpets then another angel had a golden censer came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense so that he should offer it up with the prayers of all the saints. All the saints' prayers that rise up. All the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascended before God from the angel's hand. so what does john see an angel comes and he has a golden censer and he comes and he stands at the altar and it's the altar of incense right before the door to the holy place and it's incense when it burned filled up the most holy place where the throne was and it pictures this smoke as entering into the throne room of God. The incense altar is in heaven and the angel takes the censer full of incense and he mixes together with the incense the prayers of the saints and the prayers ascend into the throne room into the very ear of God. That's what's being captured here. Psalm 109. Do not keep silent, O God, of my praise. For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful have opened against me. They fought against me without a cause, but I give myself to prayer. All of our prayers, hear this. This is where I'm going with this tonight. All of our prayers, imperfect as they are, are represented here as receiving intercession. This is described in Romans 8. The Spirit intercedes with groanings. They receive intercession and through incense they are coming up all these prayers right into the presence of God around the throne and He's hearing your prayer. What is the Lord showing us? Every single cry of His people. Everything that we express in faith that comes from His church on earth, every cry that happens from His people, struggling, those who sigh over all that's happening in the world, those who are hurting over all the evil and injustice and affliction and suffering and pain and death, All those prayers are captured for you in Revelation 8 and pictured as coming right into the throne room of God as you have been given that access. And the Lord himself is hearing them. The Lord is seeing the struggle. He knows intimately all of your sufferings and pains and sorrows. and he's telling us something really important in Revelation 8. Dear children, I hear you. I hear you. The silence that you are seeming to experience on the earth is actually a preparation for my coming and answering you. The appearance that I'm not hearing, the feeling that your prayers don't get past the roof, the struggle that makes you feel like I'm absent, the powerlessness you feel in prayer doesn't determine it. It's not true. I hear your cries and I receive your prayers. What is the next thing that's said in Revelation? Well, then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth. And there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashings of lightnings, and an earthquake. You wonder why things are rough on the earth? God's answering your prayers. He's issuing forth His judgments from the throne based on your calls and prayers. Many of the judgments on the wicked, Romans 1, happen because He's answering. Why did I go through all that tonight? I don't think we have confidence in prayer like we should. Not only do you have confidence to come boldly to the throne of grace, but the scriptures are constantly telling you God's hearing your prayers and answering your prayers and giving consolation to the medium of prayer. You can come to somebody who actually listens to you. I mean, you might complain that your spouse doesn't listen to you very well. God actually listens. God actually hears. And we've been looking in Hebrews. He speaks to you through his word. It's not an absent relationship. And he does something. So that's why I think bringing it back down tonight, why does the Lord desire, What do we bring to him? What do we talk to him about? Well, did you notice what Heidelberg says? How many of you worry about many things? God doesn't want you to worry. He's told you not to be anxious about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God and he'll give you peace. What does God want you to pray about? Listen to this. Heidelberg's beautiful. All things we need for body and soul. Are you worried about your health? These things consume people. You have needs in the body. It's going to feed you. Do you have spiritual needs? You need to be sanctified in the truth. You need to be helped with sin in your life. Is there a lingering sin that's continuing to hold you back? He's saying, talk to me about it. Remember Paul's thorn in the flesh? Called it a messenger of Satan to torment him, harass him. He said, I prayed three times to the Lord to take it away. God answered, my grace is sufficient for you, Paul, for my strength is made perfect in human weakness and what did god how did he answer paul he may not have changed the circumstance at the moment but he changed his whole perspective therefore i will rather rather gladly boast in my affirmatives and reproaches and needs and persecutions and sufferings and distresses and afflictions for christ for when i'm weak then i'm strong he change his whole perspective on the thing through prayer i love then thinking just for a moment to close what are the characteristics of true prayer well heidelberg 45 is beautiful first you should pray from the heart you know i said this morning god wants the heart that's not just a goofy saying that that's that's for real god god wants sincerity from the heart when you talk to him and to call upon him the only one, call upon the one true God only as he's revealed himself in his word for all that he's commanded us to pray. We're going to be studying what prayer looks like. He's given you a whole map for prayer in the Lord's Prayer. Pray from the heart. You get to talk to your heavenly Father. I love that the Heidelberg says according to his word. You know, when people say, And we have all said it, you know, I just don't know sometimes what to say or I don't feel like praying. Luther responded to that one time and said, that's no excuse. You can just pray the Lord's Prayer then. He gave you an inspired one. But I would add to that, he gave you 150 inspired ones. The Psalms are the prayers of his people. Open the Psalm and pray it. It will be your best prayer experience you've had. I promise you. I was reading Psalm 133 the other day. Just the way that psalm is constructed, the beauty of it, all the ground it covers, it didn't take long. Pray. Pray the Word. And use it personally, speaking. Talk to Him from the heart. Second, pray because, well, sin is constantly hardening your hearts. And sin is incredibly deceitful and we go out into the weeks and we are just polluted by this world. And it's amazing how deceitful this world is and life is and the human heart is and how quickly we drift. And he wants you to come and recognize that prayer is the great avenue where you can come humbly and recognize your constant need. That's what the Heidelberg says here beautifully. Recognize our need and misery so that we humble ourselves in God's majestic presence for help is the intention. Because of sin, sin is disruptive. Sin brings a lot of guilt and pollution and sin wrecks things. And sin will ruin you. What do I do? Pray to Him. That's what He's saying. As I said, sin either keeps us from prayer altogether or the approach in prayer will be selfish and will not deal with the issue at hand. We have to recognize our great need constantly for the Lord's mercy and help. And finally, coming full circle, to recognize and trust that He hears us and that even though we don't deserve it, there's an unshakable foundation that He's going to hear our prayers because of Jesus, our sympathetic high priest. He didn't go through this for nothing. He went through this to be the author of your eternal salvation and who in the days of his humiliation suffered a great deal and himself prayed for you, John 17, prayed and he was answered in the resurrection. Think about that. So this is the confidence that the Lord wants us to have and there's a great promise I think as Paul said when he said when we're full of anxiety and we're full of distress when we pray to the Lord and we come to Him with thanksgiving according to how He wants us to pray and we cast our burdens upon Him. He says something very beautiful. There's a promise made there and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That's a promise. draw near, pray, cast your burdens upon me, I care for you, I'll do something. The peace of God that surpasses all understanding will set a garrison around your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So as we take up again this study in prayer, consider how important it is for the Christian life and sanctification, and how necessary it is, as the Heidelberg's emphasizing tonight how helpful it is how wonderful it is to have this fellowship and access as we have seen today twice and may i encourage you that this beautiful ongoing dialogue between your you and your your god and the peace that he gives you through jesus christ be something that you learn to enjoy in this life something that this fellowship that you learn to treasure in this life and the lord has promised two times today that he will receive your prayers because of Christ let's pray heavenly father what a wonderful encouragement to pray we confess lord we don't pray as we should best that our prayers have come with a lot of lack of confidence and trust we've not humbled ourselves before you as we should we've not expressed dependency and and we've had so much good example of prayer in the scriptures and encouragements to talk to you because we have a sympathetic high priest as you've assured us with today so give us Lord great confidence in prayer help us to pray motivate us to pray give us more strength by your spirit to pray to put down sin in our life to lead a sanctified and holy life and to treasure this great communion that we have and access with boldness to come to the throne of grace knowing that our prayers are ascending right into heaven and that you're hearing them and answering them according to your perfect timetable. Thank you for blessing this congregation today. May we go out into our weeks with great joy saying it was good to be in the house of the Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.