The heart of all true prayer. Mark this, people. The heart of all true prayer is an initial awareness that you don't even belong there to begin with. You see? I mean, you don't even belong in the presence of God.
You don't have one thing in and of yourself to commend you to him. Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. What's on your mind today? What are your concerns for your husband or wife or your kids, your friends from church, and others in your life?
There is so much to think about, so much you want to bring to the Lord. But is that all prayer is? Making requests? Bottom line: what is prayer supposed to be? What does God expect?
Are there any examples you can follow? See if you're approaching God's throne of grace the right way, both in what you say and the attitude behind it. as John MacArthur continues his study titled Elements of True Prayer.
So if you have your Bible close by, turn now to Daniel chapter 9. That's the basis for our study. And with today's message now, here's John MacArthur. When we study the book of Daniel again and again, chapter by chapter, we find unfolding in a very unassuming way. the marvelous traits of the character of Daniel.
And one of them has to be prayer. He understood that prayer was living in the presence of God, and nothing could change that. Not the threat of death. Not the threat of the loss of reputation or place. Nothing.
Prayer was a vital link with God. And so does Daniel pray. And as he prays, We find Eight. Elements of true intercessory prayer. emerging, flowing out of this marvelous prayer.
And as I say, they are not explicitly taught, they are implicitly found. They are not the purpose of the prayer, and yet they become for us a very good purpose because it helps us to see. what is included in proper intercessory prayer. It is generated by the Word of God. It is grounded in the will of God.
It is characterized by fervency. Number four, it is realized in self-denial. It is realized in self-denial. Verse 4. And I prayed unto the Lord, my God.
And made my confession.
Now, stop right there. The heart of all true prayer. Mark this, people. The heart of all true prayer is an initial awareness that you don't even belong there to begin with. You see?
I mean, you don't even belong in the presence of God. You don't have one thing in and of yourself to commend you to him. And so where does he begin? With that recognition. I made my confession.
Why'd you do that, Daniel? Because I knew that I didn't belong in his presence. And especially if I were to drag some sin there. Contrast that with the prayer of the Pharisee. In Luke 18.
Who says, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men. Why I fast and I give tithes and So forth and so forth. And God didn't even hear that prayer. in terms of an answer. A response.
Because it was self-righteous. Self-seeking, self-confident. And so Daniel begins with a recognition. That he doesn't belong there. I suppose Daniel, perhaps in his heart, brought up all kinds of things.
I'm sure he searched his whole life and found everything that stood between himself and God. Positive wickedness? Deafness to the divine voice. disobedience to clear and plain commands. Contempt of the sovereign lordship of God.
All of these things brought Daniel to the point of humility, and beloved, I tell you, humility is the only vantage point from which true prayer issues. The only one. When Abraham tarried before God, In Genesis chapter 18. He said this, Behold now. I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes.
I don't even belong there. Isaiah saw God high and lifted up in chapter 6, and he said, Woe is me. For I am undone. The Apostle Paul recognized the same truth about himself. He had no right to be in God's presence.
He was a chief of sinners. John saw the same thing, and when he saw the beauty of The revealed Christ He fell in humility. And Daniel understands this. Daniel understands that he doesn't belong in the presence of God. And so, before he can intercede for anybody else, he's got to make sure he's gotten himself in perspective.
If there's impotence in your prayer life, maybe it's because there's not self-denial there. And self-denial encompasses this, people. It encompasses you setting your will aside for God's will, right? And if you're in there trying to badge your gut into what you want for yourself, That's not self-denial. A prayer I've often prayed.
Goes like this. Oh God. I know that I often do thy work without thy power. and sin by my dead, heartless, blind service. My lack of inward light, love and delight.
my mind and heart and tongue moving without thy help. I see sin in my heart in seeking the approbation of others. This is my vileness to make men's opinions my rule, whereas I should see what good I have done and give thee glory. Consider what sin I have committed and mourn for that. It is my deceit to preach and pray and to stir up others' spiritual affections in order to beget commendations, whereas my rule should be daily to consider myself more vile than any man in my own eyes.
I don't really think anybody can ever minister to anybody else in prayer or preaching or anything else until they take the path of self-denial. Because you have to fight ego anyway. You might as well get rid of it at the beginning. And Daniel knew that. And so he dealt with that matter.
One of the Puritan writers wonderfully put it this way. Plow deep in me, great Lord, heavenly husbandman. That my being may be a tilled field, the roots of grace spreading far and wide, until Thou alone art seen in me, thy beauty golden like summer's harvest, thy fruitfulness as the plenty. of autumn. True intercession is generated by the Word of God.
Grounded in the will of God, characterized by fervency and realized in self-denial, and fifth. True intercessory prayer is identified with God's people. It's identified with God's people. You'll notice that He says, I prayed unto the Lord my God, verse 4, and made my confession. He starts with himself, but he doesn't stop there.
Watch. Verse 5, we're going to move quickly. We have sinned. Verse 5. Verse 6.
Neither have we hearkened. Verse 7. Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces. Verse 8, O Lord, to us belongeth confusion. Verse 10, neither have we obeyed.
Verse 11, yea, all Israel has transgressed, and thy curse is poured upon us. And because at the end of the verse, we have sinned against him. Verse 12, he spake against us, our judges that judged us. And verse 13, us, our, and we. Verse 14, us, we.
Verse 15, we and we have done wickedly. Verse 16, our sin, our father's, a reproach to all that are about us.
Now listen. True intercessory prayer identifies the one praying with the people being prayed for. It's a tremendous thing. Paul had it when he said, praying always for all saints. And then he added in Ephesians 6:19, and pray most of all for me.
The focus of our prayers, beloved, is to be on others. After we've taken care of setting ourself aside, You go into prayer. And you realize, first of all, you don't even belong there, but the Word of God has called you there. And you seek the will of God, and you set your own will aside, and then you pour out your heart on behalf of others. And Daniel sees himself bound up with others also.
It was true of those in Israel. that they saw themselves as a part of the total entity. And I believe that's true in the body of Christ, don't you? I think it's very clear. That when you study 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
You find that we're all one body, aren't we? And when one member hurts, The whole body suffers. And when one rejoices, the whole body rejoices. I have to be identified in the sins of the church. I have to encompass myself in that.
1 Samuel 12, 23 puts it to us simply. God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to what? Pray for you. And I learned a long time ago that the focal point of my prayer life is not me. I start recognizing God's will, I get me out of the picture, and I start praying for you.
See? And there are in Christianity today around this country and the world Christians who are missing the boat in prayer because all they've got in prayer is I, me, mine. And they're not embracing the needs of God's people. Paul always prayed for others. And we embody the whole picture.
Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation. There's a sense in which we encompass one another, that prayer is not a private personal exercise for us to get God's goodies. See.
But that's what many, many people think it is. And it isn't. Galatians 6:2 says we're to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. And what is the law of Christ? The law of Christ is a new commandment I give unto you that you love one another.
In Philippians 1, Paul says, I'm always praying for you. In Colossians 1, he says, I'm always praying for you. In Philemon 4 and 5, I'm praying for you. And then he recalls in 2 Corinthians 1:11, you also helping together by prayer for us. And it was mutual.
I pray for you, you pray for me. then neither of us gets selfish, right? That's the way the body functions. We should learn that and learn it well. We are to pray for those in authority over us.
Pray for leaders. Pray for those in need. And Daniel saw his people. And he gathered his people in his arms. But you know what's something wonderful about Daniel?
He included himself in their sins. He included himself in their shortcomings. He included himself in their foibles and their failures and their follies. He encompassed himself in his prayers. It was we and it was us, not them.
I mean, he didn't stand apart as if he were self-righteous. A self-righteous man would repudiate such an identification with chastened sinners. And you could say, well, Daniel had every right to stand up and say, boy, am I ever glad that I'm not a part of that bunch. I mean, I've been really true for over 80 years. I've been hanging in here in the palace and doing my thing.
And I'm, remember me, I'm the guy with all the visions. I'm the guy that shut the mouths of the lion. I'm the guy that. overcame Nebuchadnezzar. And so forth.
You could get pretty high and mighty. And there are people who are so self-righteous they won't identify with the sins of others, but not Daniel. He embraced them because they were his people. And he knew he was a sinner too. And he knew he had failed to.
and he wasn't ashamed to identify himself with their needs. Daniel sees, as did all the Jews, the solidarity of the people of God, and we are to see it in the church, the body of Christ as well.
So Daniel passionately interceded for his people. I see this with Paul in Romans 9, where Paul says that he prays so much for the salvation of Israel that in their being saved, he could almost wish that he himself would lose his salvation if that were necessary to get them saved.
So concerned is he about others. What a marvelous and thrilling example. The secret of intercession. You want to know it? One word?
That in your prayers, You say We We Not I.
So that your prayer, watch this, is not so selfish. as to be directed toward you no matter how it affects anybody else. But that you're really praying on behalf of what is best for the whole body of Christ. We. Prayer then is generated by the Word of God, grounded in the will of God.
Characterized by fervency, realized in self-denial, identified with God's people, number six, strengthened in confession. Strengthened in confession.
Now we've already seen that Daniel had Personally, he denied himself in expressing his confession. And if you look at verse 20, he says, And while I was speaking and praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people, Israel, see, there's that identification again. He says, Now, when I was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people, it's so wonderful that he didn't just become a critic and say, Boy, I'm the only righteous one, I'm the only guy out here doing it right, and just damn everybody else and drag them all before God to be chastened and judged. No, he knew that he was a sinner too. And so this whole prayer is really confession.
This is an absolute When God is at work in a life, and I want you to listen to what I say. When God is at work in a life, Repentance and confession becomes the norm. The norm. In fact, listen, the more devout your soul is, the deeper your love for God, the higher your standard of holiness. The truer your commitment to Christ, the greater will be your sense of sinfulness.
Now, if you think that as you mature as a Christian, you'll get less and less sensitive to sin, it's just the opposite. The more you mature as a Christian, the more sensitive you become to sin. The closer you get to God, the more heinous it becomes. By the time David had matured and committed the terrible sin that he committed. Poured out his heart in Psalm 32 and 51.
It was so evident that sin literally destroyed him. It just crushed him because he knew so much and he had walked with God and he was a man after God's own heart. And then when he committed that awful sin with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah, it just tore him to ribbons. And he poured out that marvelous Psalm 51 when he says, Oh, wash me. that I might be clean, purge me.
He hated it. Paul had this. In Romans chapter 7, when Paul really understood the law of God, and when he understood what the law of God was saying and what the standards of God really were, it was then that he said, I saw myself, and sin revived, and I died, it slew me. Confession is the daily part of the life of a godly man and a godly woman. And it was a part of Daniel's prayers, the confession of his sins and the sins of those people.
who were all around him. In Jeremiah. Chapter 3, chapter 8, chapter 14, and in the first chapter of Lamentations, which is written by Jeremiah, in all of those four places, Jeremiah cries out in confession to God as he senses the imminence of coming judgment, as God is about to move, as God is about to interject his presence in the human stream. Jeremiah, in sensing the presence of God, starts wanting his heart washed. The nearer you get to God, the dirtier you feel.
And the classic, as I mentioned earlier, is Isaiah 6. When he said, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple, and the angels were there, you know, and holy, holy, holy, and the seraphim and all. Oh, woe is me, he said.
So intercession is strengthened in confession.
Now, let me just read through this because we don't need to spend time on every verse. It's repetitive. Verse 5. We have sinned. and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled.
even by departing from thy precepts and from thine ordinances. And there he says four things, really. We have sinned. That's one word that means to miss the mark, to wander from the path. We have committed iniquity.
That means to distort or to act perversely. We have done wickedly, that means to do something wrong that you know is wrong, premeditated evil, and we have rebelled. To defy authority. He gives you four different terms for sin in the Hebrew. To miss the mark, to distort, to do known wrong, and to defy authority.
And he says, We're guilty of every way you cut it. We have departed from your precepts and from your ordinances. And when we departed, we didn't come back. Verse 6: We have not hearkened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name. To our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and all the people of the land.
We didn't listen to your spokesman either. We went our way unheeding the call. Oh Lord. Righteous. belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion.
Now, go down to verse 8. We'll come back to that verse. O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face. What is that? It means shame of face, better way to translate it.
They were shame-faced. Their hearts were filled with shame, and it showed on their face. The north was gone into captivity under Assyria, never to return. The south had been carried away, and our faces are covered with shame. Our kings are ashamed, our princes, our fathers, because we've sinned against thee.
Well, it just keeps coming, confession. Verse 10. Again, he says, and in our sin we didn't respond. Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God to walk in his laws, which he has set before us by his servants, the prophets. Again, he says the same thing, and we don't listen to the prophets either.
We don't heed. We don't hear. And he sums it up. He says, all Israel, verse 11, has transgressed thy law. Even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice, therefore, the curse is poured upon us.
And the oath that is written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.
Now God gave them curses. Deuteronomy 28, 15 tells us that. God gave them curses. You disobey, you're going to get it. And God keeps his word.
He keeps his positive word and his negative word. And the shame and the judgment came because God said it would if they didn't obey, and they didn't obey, and it came. And I want you to note in verse 11 that one of the truest elements of confession, and mark this down somewhere. One of the truest elements of confession, it is always in true confession, is that when God chastens you for sin, you accept the responsibility for that chastening and never blame God. There are people who want to blame God.
Just like Adam, he said, the woman you gave me. I didn't ask to be married. I woke up one morning and I was married. You gave me this woman? Why did you sin?
The woman you gave me, you did this. I didn't even know what a woman was. And I woke up and I was married.
Now you're going to hold me accountable for this thing? The woman you gave me. Pass the buck to God. In the book of Revelation, chapter 6 is the Holocaust breaks loose in the tribulation, the people blaspheme the God of heaven. We don't deserve this.
People say, how can there be a God in the world? Why, if there's a God, why is there all this disaster? If there is a God, boy, he must be some kind of a crummy ogre. You see, they're not willing to accept the fact that there are evil consequences in the world because the world is filled with evil deeds done by evil men. who bring those consequences on themselves.
One of the truest elements of confession. Is that Therefore, the curse is poured upon us and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God because we have sinned. It's our fault. We admit it. And verse 12 says, He confirmed his words.
Which he spoke against us, and against our fathers that judged us, by bringing on us a great evil. For under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem. Nothing has ever happened in human history to match this. as disastrous as the captivity of the people of Judah and Israel. And he says, nothing like this has ever happened, but it has happened just the way God said it would.
He wrote it in his book this way. He said, if you don't obey, you're going to get it. And we didn't obey, and we got it. And we don't blame God. Verse 13, as it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil has come upon us.
He keeps going back. He says, This is what it said in the book. This is what it said in the law of Moses. God already told us this. We had fair warning.
Listen. When you sin and things go bad in your life, don't blame God. It's you. It's you. God doesn't accept that responsibility.
Don't curse God. Don't question God. Sin brings its just reward. It is written in the law of Moses, verse 13: All this evil has come upon us. Yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand thy truth.
Now listen to that. He says, even when the pain came, We still didn't get it straight. We didn't confess it. We didn't seek forgiveness. We didn't turn repent.
Therefore, hath the Lord watched upon the evil and brought it upon us. For the Lord our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth. For we obeyed not his voice. Do you see at the end of verse 14? The Lord our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth.
Now, beloved, I can't emphasize enough that is the truest element of true confession: that all negative circumstances that you receive, All of those chastenings that come from sin are received as. Things deserved. For sinfulness. Oh, what a mature perspective that is. I just want to close by reading verse 15.
And now, O Lord our God, who hath brought thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand. And hast gotten thee renown. as at this day We have sinned. We have done wickedly. And he sums it up.
Listen, beloved. Through intercessory prayer. is generated by God's Word. grounded in God's will. characterized by fervency, realized in self-denial.
identified with God's people and strengthened in confession. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. Our current study is called Elements of True Prayer.
Well, today John talked about having the right attitude when you pray. Certainly attitude is crucial when you're approaching the Lord, but the words themselves still matter. We received a question along those lines on our QA line a while back. Let's hear that question now, and then you'll hear how John answered it. Hello, Pastor John.
My name is Ed. And I have a couple questions. The first one is How do I pray? I don't feel My prayers work. I don't feel my prayers.
I connect with my brain. And the other question is... Whom do I pray to? Am I praying to Jesus? Am I praying to God?
Thank you so much.
Well, thank you, Ed. And let me answer the second question first. To whom are you to pray? Is it to God the Father? Is it to God the Son?
Is it to God the Holy Spirit? The answer is yes. Of course, you can speak to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of them is fully God. Each of them is to be worshipped, one God in three distinct persons.
And each are worthy of our adoration, each worthy of our praise and worship. And prayer is primarily worship. And maybe Ed, that would be the thing that helps you the most. Prayer is the purest form of worship. What do we mean by worship?
We mean acknowledging to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit what is true about their nature and their work. and thanking them for both. Prayer should begin with worship. That is the purest form of worship. When you, as an individual, communicate your heart to God.
And then you can pour out the requests. that are on your heart. That you have need of in your life and in the life of the church. You start with Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, and then you come to Give Us, Give Us. And it's all an act of faith.
You may not see an answer. but trust God is answering. That's right. Friend, perhaps you can relate to that frustrating scenario. You think God doesn't hear what you say, and so you struggle to pray.
To help you get past that struggle and pray the way God intends, download John's current study, Elements of True Prayer, when you get in touch with us today. All four sermons from Elements of True Prayer are available for free in MP3 and transcript format at our website, gty.org. In fact, all of John MacArthur's sermons, more than 3,600 messages, are free. Take advantage of all that free content at gty.org. And keep in mind that we're able to offer these downloads for free.
And to broadcast on hundreds of radio stations each day because friends like you support us financially. When you give, you help get sound Bible study resources into the hands of people like you all around the world. To express your support, write to Grace2U. Box 4000, Panorama City, California. 91412.
or call 8005 GRACE. That's our phone number one more time, 8005 Grace. And thank you for your faithfulness to pray for grace to you. That's really the most critical way you could partner with us.
Now, for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a rather difficult question. since God is sovereign over everything. why ask him for well, anything? Can you change God's mind? Consider that tomorrow as John MacArthur looks at the purpose of prayer.
Be here for another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time on Grace to You.
