You may know it's the custom, in case you're visiting us this evening, it's the custom of the Reformed churches that are Reformed according to the Word of God to summarize their faith in a book of questions and answers. We call that book of questions and answers a catechism. And it's nothing more than just a summary of what we understand God's Word to teach. And so this evening, what I'd like to do is read for you Lord's Day 46. I'll just read it for you, questions 120 and 121. And then we'll look at three passages of Scripture this evening, beginning in Mark chapter 11. And we'll look at Matthew and then a little bit in Psalm 115. Lord's Day 46, question 120. This is on the Lord's Prayer. asks, why did Christ command us to address God thus, our Father? The answer is, to awaken in us at the very beginning of our prayer that childlike reverence for and trust in God, which are to be the ground of our prayer, namely, that God has become our Father through Christ and will much less deny us what we ask of him in faith that our parents refuse us earthly things? Question 121. Why is it added, who art in heaven? The answer, that we may have no earthly thought of the heavenly majesty of God and from his almighty power expect all things necessary for body and soul. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, some of you might know, most of you probably don't. I have something of a disreputable past. I spent a number of years in the broadcasting industry, and for part of that time, I worked in a Christian radio station. And one of the things I did at this Christian radio station was to play what became to be known in the 1970s as contemporary Christian music. Some of this music that I was playing back then would not seem very contemporary today. One of the songs that I played was by a fellow who you may or may not know. His name is Doug Oldham. And he used to sing a song that said one of the lines of which said, I just entered into his presence. I hated that song. I hated that song and I refused to play it as much as lay within my power to make those kinds of decisions, if I had any choice. The reason that I hated that song was because I didn't identify with it at all, because I knew what he was talking about. I knew that he was talking about prayer. And I had never the experience of entering into God's presence in the sort of wonderful way that he described. My experience of prayer has always been, or most frequently been, exactly the opposite. Warfare, struggle, failure, death, and loss, mainly. Not to make it seem too grim. And I suspect, based on what I hear as a pastor and as a teacher, that I'm not alone. And one of the things I resented about that song was that it created such a false impression about the nature of the Christian life and sanctification and prayer. And it made me feel guilty, because this fellow seemed to have it all figured out and seemed to have a magical way to enter into prayer and everything was glorious and wonderful and I resented it and I felt like a failure. And as I say, as I suspect now over the years that I've sat with people and prayed with them and listened to them, that I'm not alone. And the tragedy about this is that what should be a source of comfort all too frequently becomes an occasion of doubt and frustration. And the great thing about questions 120 and 121 is that they actually provide an antidote for that. Questions 120 and 121 provide an antidote. Really, we should say God's word provides an antidote. So let's look, first of all, at Mark chapter 11, verses 20 through 24. And what I want you to get tonight is that prayer can be what it was intended to be. Instead of struggle, frustration, and failure, it can be what it was intended to be. And what it was intended to be originally was communion with our Heavenly Father through the Son and by the Spirit. It was intended to be communion with the living God, a personal, vital, intimate communion with the living God. That was what it was intended to be. And of course, if we don't experience that, there's a reason for that. And the reason for that is that we were created in righteousness and true holiness, as we confess in the catechism, that we might rightly know God, our creator, heartily love him and live with him in eternal blessedness. But we weren't satisfied with that, you and I. We decided to take the deal that was behind door number two. And that brought death and corruption. And there lies the source of the frustration and the struggle of prayer. But there is a way back to sweet communion. There is a way back to sweet communion, and that's what I want you to see tonight. And the first thing that we have to understand is the foundation of prayer. So if you look at Mark chapter 11, you see maybe what might seem like an unlikely place to get that foundation for communion with God, but it's there. Starting in verse 20, as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered. This is a fig tree that our Lord had cursed, withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered. Jesus answered them, have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that, just to finish the passage, so that your Father who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. This might not seem like a very likely place to go for the foundation of prayer, but let's meditate on it for a few moments and things will become a little clearer, I hope. The occasion of this instruction by our Lord is actually back in verses 12 through 14. If you go back to chapter 11, verse 12, you see scripture says, On the following day when they came from Bethany, he was hungry, and seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, that is in bloom, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it. Now you say, well, this isn't helping very much, Pastor, because it seems here that our Lord, it seems superficially, it's not true, of course, But it might be taken that he was petulant. Of course, that's not true at all. What happened here is that our Lord took occasion to make a point. He was setting up, as it were, this discourse that came later as they walked by. Our Lord Jesus knew what was to take place and he knew what he wanted to teach them. He knew what they needed to understand. And so he cursed that fig tree and then he used it as a sermon illustration. So what should we get from verses 12 or 20 and following? Peter saw it and he said, look, the thing that you cursed has withered and he seemed somewhat surprised. And our Lord says, in effect, don't be surprised. That's the kind of power that I have. I'm able to speak and make things happen. You need to have confidence in me. You need to trust. You need to know the kind of God that I am. You won't understand it just now, Peter. You're not capable of understanding it just now. But when I'm ascended, when I'm glorified, when the Holy Spirit has been poured out, then you will have a clear understanding of what the Spirit will cause you to understand the meaning of this episode. And you'll see your doubt, your unbelief for what it is. And that unbelief will be replaced with faith. What is faith? Faith is confidence. At the end of the day, the bottom line is faith is confidence. Faith trusts. Faith believes that what God says is true. And it's so true that one is willing to act as if what God says is true. Well, I used to teach swimming. And one of the things that was hardest to do was to get children to jump into the pool. And I used to say, trust me, I do this for a living. I'm a lifeguard, I'm a swim teacher. I promise you won't drown. If you start to drown, I know what to do. It'll be okay. And it was hard to get kids to believe. You have to trust. How do I know when they finally trusted that what I was saying was true? It was when they jumped. And when they stood on the edge and didn't jump, then I knew they didn't believe me. And when they jumped, then they found out that it was true, that I would catch them. I didn't drop them. They wouldn't drown. Everything would be all right. And in a few days, they would actually be swimming on their own and jumping on their own, and everything would be great. They would be safe, and they would be enjoying themselves instead of standing on the edge, wondering what bad things would happen when they jumped. That's the nature of faith. It's to trust a word that comes from outside of you that you haven't yet experienced, and to know on the basis, really, of sheer authority that it's true. We have to trust on the basis of sheer authority and on example. But here Jesus calls his disciples to trust him on the basis of his authority, which he has demonstrated for them in the cursing of the fig tree. And then look how he describes the nature of faith. Verse 22 or 23. Truly, and whenever Jesus says this, he says, Amen, Amen, I say to you. That's whenever Jesus says, Amen, Amen, I say to you. It means pay attention. I'm about to tell you something very significant. Whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, and does not doubt, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. You say, who knew that Jesus was a Pentecostal? Well, he isn't, really. Our Pentecostal and charismatic friends misunderstand the nature of our Lord's language. I don't blame them entirely, but Jesus was using a rhetorical device, which is known as hyperbole. And he does that a lot. And in so doing, he was really just following the example of the Old Testament prophets and God himself speaking through his people, through his prophets. This is hyperbole. How do I know it's hyperbole? Well, in the whole history of humanity, were this to be taken absolutely literally, then somewhere, sometimes, someone would have had sufficient faith to cause a mountain to move. And to the best of my knowledge, it's never happened. And from this, I begin to deduce that while in the absence of any moved mountains on the basis of someone's prayer, I take it that something else must be going on here. Well, what else is going on here? Hyperbole. Jesus simply means to say by virtue of hyperbole that things that you wouldn't expect to happen are possible when you call on God in faith. The beginning of prayer is faith. You can't call on God unless you trust him. You say, but how do I know I can trust him? Well, you start with his word. But then you also think about what he has done. Has God done what he said he would do? Did God say that he would save his people out of Egypt? Yes. Did God save his people out of Egypt? Yes. In a surprising way, through the Red Sea, on dry ground, after the plagues. But he did what he said. Jesus said, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again. Did he do what he said he would do? Yes. They went to the tomb, children, early on Sunday morning, just like this morning, and they looked inside, and he wasn't there. And the reason he wasn't there was because God had raised him from the dead. God always keeps his promises, and he's given us example after example. And I bet if you ask some of the older saints in this congregation, some of those with white hair or no hair, they would tell you, you know, God has been very faithful to me and to our family. That he's met our needs in surprising ways, time and again. You can trust God. Now, I didn't say it was easy. It's so easier to trust God in prayer than it is for a child to jump off the edge of the pool into the arms of the swim teacher, but it can be done. God the Holy Spirit helps us. It's more of a struggle than the song suggested, but it can happen. And it begins to happen when you become convinced that what God says is true. And it's true whether I feel that it's true or not. This is the great error that we often make. we substitute our feelings for the truth. Your feelings are not necessarily the truth. I was just reading this afternoon a little treatise by a great Dutch Reformed theologian, Gisbertus Fouchis, who was writing about spiritual desertion, and he was analyzing spiritual desertion. And what he was describing was the way we feel, the way we experience the absence of God sometimes and why that happens. sometimes God withdraws his sense or our sense of his presence and you know what I'm talking about there are times when you feel you know God's presence in an intimate and powerful way and then there are times when he seems to be more distant well the truth is nothing has really changed God is no farther when you don't feel him than he is when you do feel him it is we who change. We are the mutable ones. We are the ones who are fickle. We are the ones who sin. We are the ones who disobey. We are the ones who put up obstacles. We are the ones who drift. We are the ones who become distracted. God never changes. He's always there. And the moment you turn in faith, trusting, believing, and call out to him, call his name, and you say, Father, I need you. He hears you and he's as close to you as he was in the moment before when you before you called out to him. So the foundation is trust, is confidence. And Jesus has given us every occasion. The second thing we have to know to understand prayer and for it to become the kind of communion that it was intended to be. is that we have to understand that our Father is faithful. So look at Matthew chapter 7, where we see Jesus describing how God is our Father. Matthew chapter 7, we can really start in verse 7 to get the whole section here. Matthew 7, starting in verse 7, And ask, our Lord says, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. This is a promise now from God. And the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks, to the one who knocks, it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, How much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Now, Jesus is assuming for the sake of the analogy of a typically loving, benevolent, concerned father. To be sure, just to dot our I's and cross our T's, there are fathers and we know of them and you may have had one who wasn't like this father. And I understand that and I know it's difficult. And I know when I go on to talk about fathers in general, you may say to yourself, well, that wasn't my father. And I understand that. But Jesus is assuming a sort of typical concerned father. And even if your father wasn't this way or wasn't this way all the time, the truth is most fathers most of the time are this way. The fathers, most of the fathers that I have known, not all, to be sure. Most of the fathers I've known, and I'm sure the fathers represented here in this congregation, would do anything for their children. And children, you know that too, don't you? You know your daddy loves you. He loves you with all your heart, with all his heart. He loves you more than you could possibly understand. You probably won't know how much your father loves you until you're very old, and maybe when you're a father or a grandfather yourself, you'll start to understand how much your father loves you. But he does. And that's why he gets up every day, six days a week. Not on the Sabbath, of course, unless he's a fireman or a policeman or a doctor or something like that. Six days a week, he gets up and he goes to work so that you can have, as we used to tell our children, toys and oatmeal. Little did I know it would make them feel guilty about eating oatmeal and having toys. I didn't mean that. I was just trying to explain why daddy has to go to work all the time. Your daddy goes to work because he loves you. He wants you to have the things that you need. And if you really need something and you ask him, he will do what he can to get it. Now, he might not be able to give you everything you want, and everything you want might not be good for you. And if your dad says no, it's because he loves you and he wants the best for you. And even when he makes a mistake, he's trying most of the time to do what's best for you. And if that's true of an earthly father, how much truer is it of our heavenly father, Who never makes a mistake. Who always loved. Who never loses his temper. Who never sins. Who never changes his mind. He's never selfish. He's never arrogant. He's never blind. He's never stubborn. He's always gracious. He's always kind. He's always patient. He's always loving. His decisions are perfect in every way, even when we don't understand them. And that's why our Lord Jesus describes God as our Father and speaks of our Heavenly Father. There are three persons in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And here the Son, who is the eternally begotten Son of God, is telling us what His Father is like. Which of you, if His Son asks for bread, will give Him a stone? Which of you, if his daughter asks for the keys to the car, gives them something ugly, painful, and disgusting? I don't know. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts, if your father knows how to give good gifts, earthly father, how much more your heavenly father? How much more will he give you? And how much more has he given? Your earthly father can give you quite a lot. a good house, a roof over your head, clothing, school clothes, books, computers, phones, all kinds of things that are important in this world. But your earthly father can't save you. Your heavenly father can, and he has in his son. How much more does your heavenly father love you than your earthly father? Well, your earthly father would lay down his life for you. My father did for me. He didn't have to give it, but he was willing. When I was just a little boy, an infant, days old in the hospital, I was going to die, and they actually hooked me up to my dad so that I would have blood. I needed a blood transfusion, and we were hooked up together. And they sat by a little box, and they watched me for days and days, praying that God would keep me alive. But the Heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son into this world, took on human flesh, born of a woman, obeyed on our behalf, took our abuse. He came for us and we abused Him. We reviled Him. And He came nonetheless, endured all of our abuse, all our reviling, never sinned, always loved his father, always loved us, laid down his life for us. For God so loved you sinners that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish and have everlasting life. That's how much your heavenly father loves you. How will you not call in prayer, in earnest prayer, on the name of him who sent his only son? I didn't say it was going to be easy, but that's your second incentive, that your heavenly father is so faithful to you that he sent his only begotten son. And when you call on him in the name of his son, he hears your prayer for the sake of his son. He hears your prayer for the sake of his son. Have you never in your life children called out to your dad and dad just didn't hear you? or called him up and he had his phone on silent. God always gets your calls, as it were. He always hears your prayers. When you call up the stairs, as it were, he isn't asleep. Your dad might take a nap. He might not hear you. Your Heavenly Father always hears you, always answers, not necessarily in the way that you want, but he always hears. As Calvin said, he's more willing to hear than we are to pray. And there's a third thing that we need to know and to understand, and that gets us to Psalm 115. There's a third thing we need to do, and that is we need to change our frame of reference. We need to know our foundation, which is confidence. We need to know that our Heavenly Father is faithful, and we need to have a proper frame of reference. And this gets us back to question and answer 121. Why is he a Heavenly Father? He's described as our Heavenly Father because God, the God who hears our prayers, is not like the gods of the nations. And that's the point of Psalm 115. Why should the nations say, where is their God? And the answer is in verse 3. Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases. And then as we sang tonight and as we already heard in the call to worship, Psalm 115 makes a wonderful and even humorous contrast, right, between the gods that we make with our hands and with our minds. Calvin says our hearts and our minds are idol factories. Outside of grace, outside of Christ, what do we do? We fashion idols. And what do we do with those idols? We worship them. Now, children, you might not see people actually bowing down to idols in Escondido or California or in North America. But there are places in the world where it still goes on and you give it a few years, it'll probably go on in North America. It probably is going on somewhere, just not easy to see. But it does happen in places. And more than that, there's lots of idol worship in North America that we might not see it out on the streets. We might not see people bowing down, but there's plenty of it. Take away some people's credit cards and see what happens. Not really, but you know, you get my point. Their confidence, their whole self-identity rests in their ability to walk into a merchant and take out a piece of plastic and hand it in, buy things. And if that was taken away from them, what would they be? So there are lots of idols. Tim Keller, a reformed pastor in New York City, has talked about idols of the heart, and there are lots of those. But here the psalmist focuses on idols of the hands that become idols of the heart, things that we make. We have a nasty tendency after the fall to worship those things that we make. And, of course, the psalmist mocks our foolishness in worshiping things that we make. They're the work of human hands. God's not the work of human hands. God just is. We are the work of his hands. But do you see what our tendency is? Our tendency is always to reverse things and to worship the creature rather than the creator. They have mouths, but they don't speak. They have eyes, they don't see. They have ears, they don't hear. They have noses, but they don't smell. They have hands, but they don't feel. They have feet, but they don't walk. They don't make a sound in their throat. And, you know, as we read this, as I read this for the call to worship, I thought, Ah, God has ears, not literally, but ears to hear, metaphorically. He has hands to save, right? He has feet to come when we call. He has a throat, as it were, whereby he can speak to us, right? In his holy word, God is not silent. And, of course, we all know that. As you've heard many times, there are no atheists in foxholes. Out here, we could change that to say there are no atheists in earthquakes. Wait till there's a seven-pointer and everybody's pious. What's the first thing people say when the earth starts to shift and it doesn't stop shifting, right? You're thinking, well, we've had these a few thousand times, no big deal. And then it really keeps going. What's the first thing people say, oh, Lord, save me? You remember when the power went out a while back? Three million of us were without power and how helpless we were. How scary that was. Think, how long is this going to go on? You see how weak and frail we are and how foolish and blind. We don't go to God in part because we don't appreciate his glory, his transcendence, his majesty, the fact that he lives as it were, as it were, in the heavens. He's not a creature. He's not anything we've made with our minds, our hands, or even our imaginations. That's why we don't make pictures of him. Because he can't be pictured. He's pictured himself in his son, Jesus Christ. That's how he's pictured himself to us. That's how we know him. And that's how we come to him. If we're going to commune with God in prayer as he intends, we have to have the proper frame of reference. We have to know that he is the God who is able to do as he wills, who does as he wills, and who wills to hear our prayer. He loves you and he's able to hear because he's not a creature. He's the creator and the redeemer. We were, congregation, created sons and daughters of the Father, But we rebelled and we became by nature objects of wrath. The only begotten Son who has restored all of those of us who believe in him to the status of sons. The highest status you could have in the ancient world was the status of firstborn sons. That is what we all are. We are his children. That's the good news, the glorious good news. and he has come to the orphanage of this sinful world and he has chosen you and adopted you because he knew you and loved you from all eternity and he adopted you in Jesus Christ. He's taken you to himself and he has said, you are my child. What do you want? And when you go to him tonight, you're sitting at table, Praying before bed, maybe on your hands and knees. You go to him as his child, adopted in Jesus Christ, loved from all eternity. Because in Christ, his son, he does hear us. He will hear us. And he will answer to our good and to his glory. Amen. Thank you.