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02.08.09

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

SERMON SERIES: QUESTIONS FOR GOD

SERIES 2: WORSHIP, PRAYER & ETERNAL LIFE

PART 2: WHOSE PRAYERS DOES GOD HEAR?

ISAIAH 58:1-10; LUKE 18:9-14

• The Power of Prayer
• Answered Prayer
• Christians are people who believe in the power of prayer
• Prayer is the means by which we communicate with God, and it’s one of the means by which God communicates with us
• The word “communicate” shares its root with the word “communion”
• Communion literally means “mutual participation, an act or instance of sharing.”
• When we pray, we are not only communicating with God, we are also communing with God and God with us
• We are sharing with God our needs and concerns and God is sharing with us God’s will, God’s power, and God’s love
• Prayer gives us the opportunity to have a personal audience with God
• Through prayer, we get to know God better
• It’s one of the tools we have to develop a personal relationship with God
• There are many stories we could share about our personal experiences with the power of prayer
• One example would be the improvement Doris has shown in the two weeks since she was hospitalized
• We all know that she could have lost her life that Sunday afternoon, but through the quick response of the EMTs, the healing power of God working through her doctors and nurses, and the prayers we have been offering on her behalf, she is on the road to recovery
• For this, we give thanks and praise to God

B. Unanswered Prayer

• There are also many stories we could share about times when our prayers seem to go unanswered
• The sick loved one we’ve been praying for doesn’t recover and passes away
• The personal crisis in our life gets worse rather than better although we’ve been praying about it every day
• We pray for peace in our communities and around the world, yet violence continues in our streets and warfare and natural disasters continue to destroy the lives of innocent people
• Sometimes we are convinced that God hears and answers our prayers, while at other times we wonder, “Does God not care?  Is God not listening?”
• The Bible has much to say on the subject of prayer, so much that it would be impossible to touch on it all in one sermon, one essay, one book or in volumes of books
• What we do know, and what we can say with confidence, is that God does hear the prayers of the faithful
• God knows our thoughts before we think them and our words before we speak them
• God knows our needs better than we know them ourselves
• We know that through Jesus Christ we have direct access to God and we are given the privilege of having a loving parent/child relationship with God
• Still, we wonder why it seems that some of our prayers get answered while others don’t
• Our “Question for God” this morning is “Do answers to prayer come to us all as God loves us all?  What about the unsaved?”
• I have summarized this question in the title of this sermon: “Whose Prayers does God Hear?”
• This is a difficult question because we can’t presume to know the mind of God
• Logic tells us that since God created all people and God loves all people, God would hear the prayers of all people.
• Yet, we know that God requires faithfulness, we know that God desires us to love God as much as God loves us
• We know that we, who believe ourselves to be people of faith, don’t always get our prayers answered (at least in the way we want them to be answered)
• So this is a legitimate question: “Whose prayers does God hear?”
• God’s Requirements for Answered Prayer
• Israel’s Complaint
• As we look at our Scripture texts today, one thing that is apparent in relationship to prayer is our attitude
• Our attitude in prayer is a factor in God’s response to our prayers
• Isaiah’s words were spoken to the people of Israel
• Israel believed they were God’s chosen people—and they were
• But Israel also believed that, as the people of God, they had special privilege
• They believed that they were not guilty of sin because they were God’s people
• The believed that they were superior to everyone else because they were God’s people
• They believed that they could do whatever they pleased as long as the followed certain ritualistic practices in their worship because they were God’s people
• And they believed that they did not have to live according to God’s will and God would continue to love them forgive them, and hear their prayers simply because they were the chosen people of God
• In Isaiah 58, we hear an interesting complaint against God by the people of Israel: God was not listening to their prayers
• Speaking through Isaiah, God says that Israel seems eager to know God’s ways, but not so eager to do it
• They ask God for just decisions and want God near, but they fail to live up to the demands of justice
• Israel was faithful in the ritualistic practices of their religion, but there was no evidence of faith in their lives
• One of those ritualistic practices was fasting, and fasting is a form of prayer
• Fasting is a spiritual discipline intended to help us focus our attention away from ourselves and onto God
• It’s a means to help us better know the mind of God and better understand the will of God
• But Israel was making a mockery of it
• Instead of using it to focus their attention upon God, they were using it to get others to focus their attention upon them and to get God’s attention
• Instead of seeking to better know God and do God’s will, they were using it to glorify themselves
• Israel’s complaint about fasting is really a complaint about prayer
• They were following the prescribed rituals, but they weren’t getting the desired results
• At issue here is a question of intent: they were trying to manipulate God to get God to do what they wanted
• They saw themselves as “faithful” people, yet their prayers remained unanswered
• What they failed to see is that religious ritual does not equal faithfulness to God
• Our Reaction and God’s Response
• I think we are often guilty of the same
• We equate faithfulness to God with attending church on Sunday, following a prescribed liturgical formula, reciting certain prayers in a certain fashion, singing the traditional hymns of our ancestors, and listening to God’s word read and proclaimed
• Unless that practice changes our life, we are not being faithful to God
• If our relationship with God is only a casual relationship, if that relationship with God doesn’t impact the way we live, then we are not people of faith, no matter how “religious” our practices are
• And if we are not people of faith who are willing to live life God’s way and do God’s will, then we can’t expect God to hear and answer our prayers
• In verses 6-10, God responds to Israel’s complaint
• What God says is this: true fasting—true prayer—is demonstrated in the actions of faithful living, putting into practice what God wants us to do
• It’s demonstrated in faithfully doing God’s will instead of seeking to get God to do our will
• It’s when we are willing to put God first and do things God’s way that our righteousness will shine as a witness
• It is then that God will hear and respond to our prayers because what we seek will not be motivated by selfishness; it will be motivated by our desire to fulfill the will of God in our lives and in the world
• Jesus said it best in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Not my will but yours be done.”
• The Pharisee and the Tax Collector
• In his parable recorded in Luke 18, Jesus gives us the examples of two people at prayer
• The Pharisee was not really praying to God, he was praising himself
• He only invokes the name of God once in his prayer—to thank God that he wasn’t like others
• The Pharisee considered himself a “religious” man because he was faithful in his ritualistic practices, but he was misguided in his faith
• The tax collector was one of the lowest creatures in human society and was hated by his fellow Jews because he worked for the oppressive Roman government and because he stole from his own people
• Tax collectors did not receive a wage from Rome
• They made their money by overcharging people on their taxes and lining their pockets with the profits
• This tax collector, as he prayed, could not even bring himself to look up to heaven
• The best he could do is beat his breast and say, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.”
• It is this attitude of humility that Jesus praises
• One who recognizes his/her rightful position before God and casts himself/herself on the mercy of God is the one whose prayer is heard
• Many Christians believe that this prayer—the prayer of repentance—is the first prayer God hears, but without that prayer of repentance, God turns a deaf ear to the rest of our prayers
• Barclay’s Commentary on the Parable
• In his commentary on this parable, William Barclay notes three lessons this parable teaches us
• First, no one who is proud can pray
• Pride get in the way of seeking and doing the will of God
• When our attitude in prayer is pride, we seek to get God to do our will rather than seeking to put ourselves in a place where we can do God’s will
• “The gate of heaven is so low,” Barclay says, “that no one can enter it except on their knees.”
• Secondly, no one who despises another person can pray and expect God to answer
• We must always remember that in the eyes of God, we are no better than anyone else
• We are just one of that great company of sinning, suffering, sorrowing humanity, all kneeling before the throne of God’s mercy
• Thirdly, Barclay says that true prayer comes from setting our life beside the life of God
• The question is not “Am I as good as others?”
• The question is “Am I as good as God?”
• It all depends on what we compare ourselves with
• When we set our lives beside the life of Jesus and the holiness of God, all we can say is “God be merciful to me, the sinner.”
• In the end, it’s God’s decision whose prayers God hears
• That’s God’s place, not ours, to decide
• But God will always hear the prayer of repentance
• God will always hear the prayers of the faithful
• God will always respond to prayers that genuinely seek God’s will