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Welcome to Gospel and life. We all know there's a big difference between knowing about God and actually knowing God personally. To know anyone, you have to spend time with them. If you're a Christian, prayer is essential to have a deep relationship with God. You won't be able to know yourself, know God, or grow in your relationship with him without prayer. Join us today as Tim Keller teaches on why prayer is such an essential part of life with Christ.

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We're looking at the Lord's Prayer. We're looking at Jesus. Model for prayer. Jesus teaches us how to pray. Let's read in Matthew 6, 5, 15. It's printed in your bulletin. And when you pray, he says, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. This is God's word, the first thing that Jesus tells us to get to in prayer. Once we've addressed, once we know who we're talking to, our Father who art in heaven. The first thing we're supposed to address in prayer is hallowed be thy name. That's the first thing that comes up. What does it mean to hallow? Well, it's an old, you know, it's interesting. It's an old word. It's an old English word. It's never used virtually anymore in everyday English. But it's interesting to see that the new international version, the translators, the translation that we print, though it tries very hard to be up to date, still uses that old word. And I think it's a great idea because we don't quite have an equivalent to hallow. Something means to treat it as sacred. And ultimate. So we don't really have anything. Can you think of some other word, a single word? To hallow something is to treat it as absolutely sacred and ultimate. It means to seek to make something your ultimate concern, to make it the most important thing, to make it the most crucial thing, to make it the most sacred thing, the ultimate thing of your life. To make it the supreme beauty, the supreme aim of your life. To hallow something. That's why we have to use the word. Jesus says this comes first. And it comes first because not only should all prayer be about this, but I want to show you that life should be about this. To understand what it means to praise God, to adore him, to see him and speak to him as the all important one. Praise and adoration is really what life's about. Let me show you. I think the text teaches us many things, but let me just. With you, look. The text teaches us the necessity of praise, the primacy of praise and the anatomy of praise. I give three words it might be easy to remember to help us move through the outline of remarks, the necessity of praise, the primacy of praise, and the anatomy of praise, which let me show you the necessity. Jesus shows us that not only is praise absolutely necessary if you're a Christian, but praise is inevitable for anybody. He starts off by saying, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. Now, right off, we tend to think of hypocritical people as people who are living blatantly double lives. But I think Jesus is talking about hypocritical prayers. Prayers, okay, because a hypocrite is someone who's not consistent. And he's talking about a kind of prayer that's not consistent. It's done out in the open, but it's not done in secret. Why? Well, now be careful. He's giving us a case. He says there's a kind of person. He knows that the thing they most want is a claim. They want to be seen as spiritual people. Therefore they only pray when they're getting what they really want. When in the secret. Of course, they get no acclaim for prayer and therefore they don't pray. But he's using a case. But let's extend it to see the principle. There's a kind of prayer. There's a kind of person, he says, that only prays when your ultimate concern is at stake. Think there's a kind of prayer that only happens when your ultimate treasure is at stake, when the thing you really want is at stake. And he says the way you can tell true prayer is the thing you most want is God. You want to just enjoy him, you want to adore him. He's the supreme thing of your life. If that's true, then you'd be praying all the time. But do you only pray when you're in trouble? Have you noticed that when things go bad, you get back into your quiet times? You get back into your devotions, Things are bad, things get better and you stop praying. What's going on? That what you're really doing in secret is not adoring God, but you're adoring something. What you do in secret tells you who your God is. William Temple, Archbishop William Temple, says your religion is what you do with your solitude. He's really saying the same thing Jesus is saying here. He says the way you find out what your ultimate concern is, the thing that you'd really adore, the thing that really makes your life go, is to see what you do in secret. When you're alone, when there's nothing that you have to do, what do you think about? Do you think of owning your own apartment? Do you think of owning a second, you know, a beach house? Do you think of beauty? Do you think of falling in love? Do you think about business success? Do you think about professional acclaim? Do you think about achievement? Do you think about particular hobbies? Do you think about certain things that bring you comfort? What do you think about when you don't have to think of anything else? What do you do with your secrets? What do you do with your secret time? Your secrecy. Jesus says that's what you adore the most. If the thing you adore is not God, then you'll only pray when that thing is in jeopardy, when that thing is at stake. And therefore you will be an inconsistent prayer. You only pray sometimes. Only when things are in trouble. Do you only pray when your family's in trouble? Do you only pray when you're in financial trouble? Do you only pray? Look, you will always pray when the thing that is your greatest treasure is at stake. Jesus says the consistency of your prayer life will tell you who your God is. That's why we talk about the necessity of praise. Everybody praises, everybody spends their secrecy praising. But if it's not God, then you'll find that you're only praying sometimes when the thing is at stake. Let me put it this way, because I want to move on quickly. It's not the most important of the points, but I'll tell you something. This is the one that has been going through my heart. I'VE been very convicted. As I look at this, I pray and I think it would be very bad for the church and probably for the, for the equipment if I got struck with lightning during this sermon. There's always a possibility of it, especially on a point like this. Jesus is saying the most unmistakable way to tell that your Christianity is real, that it's not just a matter of external forces that it's really become because you've been touched by God himself. Look at your secret prayer life. Do you pray consistently in secret? And do you praise God in secret? Do you spend lots of time consistently praising and enjoying God? Here's why. People see you coming to church. They see your moral behavior, see there's all kinds of other very external and even selfish rewards for almost every other part of Christianity. I know that there's people who come into Christianity because they just want to be included in a supportive group. I know there are people who come into Christianity simply because they love the superiority of feeling like they've got the truth and nobody else does. I know there are people who come into Christianity because they feel so emotionally needy. They just need something, anything, and they never really go underneath and say, is this true? And they never really give their heart over and they never really meet God. And as a result, they come in, they seem very active, all on the basis of externals. They need a supportive group. They need something to cling to. They like superiority, the feeling that I'm on the inside. And they'll be there for a while. The Bible talks, Jesus talks about it elsewhere. They'll be there for a while and then they'll suddenly leave. Something will come up in their life and their Christianity will all fall apart. Why it was all a matter of externals. Well, how do you know if you're not deceiving yourself? Here it is in secret. What do you do with your solitude? Do you pray regularly? Do you love to pray? Do you praise? Do you adore God? Is this the thing that keeps you going? Or do you spend your secrecy daydreaming about other things that really obviously, inevitably are more important to you than God? Then your religion is a matter of externals and you really don't have the power that Jesus is talking about. As I will show you here next comes to those who make adoration of God, the primacy of their life. Okay, so there's the necessity. You've got to praise, everybody praises in their secrecy. But it's absolutely necessary that Christians refine and distill and get assurance for their Christianity because They have a very, very dedicated and full and flourishing secret praise life. Now, secondly, the second thing we're taught here is the primacy of praise. You know, clear sky, I guess it's all right. Let's move on. The primacy of praise. This also teaches us, Number one, hallowed be thy name. Before you get to what, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts. You get into praising God before you get into asking God for things in the world. That's petitionary prayer. I'll call it petition. That's where you say, give us this day. I have all these needs. You're told to go to praise before you go to petition. Not only that, you're told to go to praise before you go to confession. Forgive us our debts. And it's not just first mechanically, it's first organically. It's not simply a matter of God has given us a mechanical set of steps that we're just told, first praise and then move on to petition, then move on to confession. No, it's first because praise is supposed to frame the others. Praise is the context for the others. Praise is to dominate and saturate the others. Praise is to dominate, not just all of prayer, but it's to dominate all of your life. Why? Because petition means how you look at the world, and confession is how you look at yourself. And Jesus is saying, all the problems you have in relating to the world or relating to yourself are really problems of adoration. If you don't hallow God, if you hallow anything more than God, the problems will show up in petition and they'll show up in confession. But the problems are really prior. Now, let me. Let me show you. Let me show you. When you do petition, you're saying, I've got needs. When you're doing confession, you're saying, I've got problems. But problems that come up in both of those areas are, first of all, problems of adoration. Let me show you. For example, as a pastor over the years, I've continually come up with a problem that people have thrown in front of me. And for a long time, I was always baffled. And everybody seems to be baffled. There's people who say, you know, I know that what I've done was wrong and I have repented. I've asked forgiveness to God. I've asked forgiveness to people, and I know that maybe God has forgiven me, and I know that others have forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself. I can't. Well, that used to stump me for a long time. Then I Began to understand, I think, the Lord's Prayer. What do you do with your secrets, your secret time? What is it that you hallow the most? What is it that you adore the most? Is it success? Is it sex appeal? Is it comfort? Is it approval of people? Is it a love life? Is it your family? What is it that you most hallow that will completely control your view of yourself? And confession will be completely driven by that. You'll only feel like you failed if you failed one of these things. And you'll feel like you don't need to confess if you have not failed one of those things. In other words, what you hallow, what you adore completely affects. And if you hallow anything more than God, it will distort your view of yourself and it will distort confession so that it is nothing but filled with guilt and frustration. So when somebody says, I can't forgive myself, what you mean is, I hallow something more than God and it won't forgive me. I violated it and it is more important than God. I know God forgives me, but it won't forgive me. Example, many years ago, I remember counseling a man who actually had been unfaithful to his wife. And boy, he admitted it. He showed some repentance. His wife forgave him and received him back. Okay, the people around him forgave him. We sat down. I was his pastor. We sat down and we talked about it. We went through the scripture. And he saw that, yes, this is possible, that God can forgive. Look how God forgave and continued to use other people who did the same thing. But he says, you know, though, pastor, I can't forgive myself. And as we dug, here's what was really wrong. He came from an incredibly prudish family who saw sexual sin as worse than any other kind of sin. Now, that is not at all what the Bible teaches. The Bible says sexual sin is sin. So is paying unfair wages, so is gossip, and so is pride. I mean, the Bible does not make these distinctions between sins. But he came from an incredibly prudish family. And the fact that he, even though his parents were dead, he had disappointed his parents. And he says, I could not forgive myself. His problem in the area of self image, you say, well, this guy just has a bad self image. Yeah, this guy hates himself. Yes, he needs to repent. No, his problem is prior. He needs to demote his parents from the place that they are. He needs to get them out of the holy place of his life. He needs to get them off the throne.