Praying to Honor God

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Transcript:

Well, last Sunday morning, I attempted to answer for you the question, what is prayer? And for all the time I spent talking, it basically boils down to prayer is a conversation with God, no more and no less. Well, today I began trying to unpack some things about why do we pray.

And when I sat down and made a list of all the things I could think of about reasons why we pray, I came up with 10. And don’t worry, you’re not going to get all 10 today. As a matter of fact, you’re just going to get one today.

You have to keep coming if you want all ten. But we’re going to start looking in Psalm chapter 86 about one of the reasons why we pray. And it made me think about other relationships, not just my relationship to God, but other relationships in my life.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been very close to my grandparents, and still am. And I’ve always known I could call them and ask them for just about anything, and they’d do their very best to help me. I remember when I was about five years old.

We came home from church one Sunday, and after lunch, went down for a nap, and I got up from my nap, which was a no-no, and I got into my mom’s craft stuff, which was a no-no, got into the glitter, which was even a bigger no-no, and spilled it all in the carpet as I was playing with it, and I just knew I was going to get beaten to death as we were headed out the door for church that night, and they discovered the glitter. And so I called my grandmother. I called my mom’s mom at home, And I said, can you tell my mom not to get on to me?

Well, she called my mom waking her up from her nap and told her, don’t you get on to him. He’s as sorry as he can be. Don’t get on to him.

And you know what? I knew I could call her and she would help me. Now, I was threatened.

Don’t you ever do that again. Don’t ever call your grandmother to get you out of trouble. But I knew, even as a young child, I could call my grandmother with whatever I needed and she’d help me.

Today, I can still call my grandfather and ask him whatever I need to. And he’s glad to help. Call him up and say, Papa, I rewired this lamp and it exploded.

What did I do wrong? And he’s glad to help me. And I can always call them and depend on their help.

But you know, sometimes it’s nice and I’m not as good about it as I try to be, but sometimes it’s nice to call them when I don’t need anything. Sometimes it’s nice to call them just to talk to them. Sometimes it’s nice to call them because they are my grandparents.

And folks, if that’s the case, if we ought to, and I know those of you who have grandkids, probably wish they’d call you more often when they didn’t need anything. Am I right? Not that you’re not willing to help them, but it’d be nice to hear from them when they didn’t need anything.

If that’s the case, then how much more true is it that our Heavenly Father should hear as glad as He is to help with our needs, as glad as He is to take care of us, how much more is it the case that our Heavenly Father should get to hear from us when there’s no motivation behind it that we need something. That doesn’t make it wrong, again, like I said, to ask God for things. That doesn’t make it wrong to ask God to meet our needs.

But sometimes we need to pray with the motivation and for the reason to honor God. And you know what? Our prayer does honor God.

And until I started this series, I really didn’t think about praying just to honor God. Of course, we want to praise Him. Of course, we pray for thanksgiving, not the meal, but we pray to give thanks the way the Bible tells us to, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus concerning you.

We pray to confess our sins. We pray to do all of these things, but it had never occurred to me that we ought to pray because it honors God. Our prayer does honor God.

You may say, how? Well, let’s look at Psalm 86. We’re again in another prayer of David’s that’s recorded here in the Psalms. Starting in verse 6, it says, Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer, and attend to the voice of my supplications.

Now, supplications means petitions or requests. So eventually in the course of this prayer, he does make a request to God, but we don’t even get into that today because he spends time, before he even asks anything of God, he spends time in praising God. He spends time in adoration of God.

And as a matter of fact, by the time we do get to supplications in verse 11, he’s asking him to teach him his ways. So he’s praying that God would be glorified in him learning how to walk after God, how to follow after God. So what we see here is not really David asking for things at this point.

But he starts out with this adoration of God. And I don’t know if he found it somewhere in the Bible or if he just thought it was a good idea, but one of my pastors when I was growing up shared an acrostic that has always stuck with me. And he said, you know, we get in this habit of just going to God with our grocery list, so to speak.

Just going to God and asking him for things and never thinking about any of the other things that we’re supposed to do in the course of prayer. And he encouraged the church when I was a child to pray according to the acrostic acts, like the book of Acts. Adoration, which means spend time praising God.

Confession, we know what that means. Thanksgiving, giving thanks to God for the things that he’s done. And then supplication, bringing our petitions and requests to God.

Now, again, I’ve never found where it says that in the Bible, but it’s a pretty good practice from my experience. But before he says here, listen to the voice of my supplications. Attend to the voice of my supplications.

In other words, Lord, hear my requests. Be willing to hear those. But he doesn’t launch immediately into the request. He says in verse 7, In the day of my trouble, I will call upon thee, for thou wilt answer me.

And at this point, he’s still not even calling upon God in trouble. He’s not saying, God, I’m in trouble, help me out here. He’s still praising God and saying, I know that when I do need you, I know that when I am in trouble, I can call on you and trust you to take care of me.

He says in verse 8, among the gods, there is none like unto thee, O Lord. Now, many times in the Bible, when it makes reference to other gods, people have taken that and twisted it and tried to make the Bible into some polytheistic document where even if God is at the, even if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the father of Jesus Christ, even if he’s at the top of the pantheon, there are all these other gods who are lesser than him. And that’s called henotheism.

There are multiple gods, but we only worship the one. Folks, that’s not true. There is no other God.

And when they refer to gods in the Bible, they’re referring to these false idols that people put up in their minds. In the minds of the people of this world, there are other gods, but that doesn’t make them true gods. It doesn’t mean they really exist. And so he says, among the gods, in other words, among all the other things that the nations of this world worship, there is none like unto thee.

People can search to the ends of the earth for something else to worship, and there’s nobody like our God. neither are there any works like unto thy works. Not only is there no other God like our God, but nobody does the things that our God can do.

Folks, I desperately want to pray like this. All nations, verse 9, whom thou hast made, shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name. Now in David’s day, just like in our day, there were plenty of people running around worshiping everything under the sun, and in fact, worshiping the sun too.

And so he’s not saying that everybody right now is going to worship you. He’s not saying there’s immediately going to be revival and everybody’s going to understand the truth and do what’s right and worship the one true God, just like in our day. People run around worshiping everything under the sun.

There are any number of churches even in our community today preaching false Christs, and I don’t say that just because there are other denominations or other groups, but because their Christ is not the Christ of the Bible. There are any number of groups today in our country worshiping other gods, whether it be the Hindu gods, whether it be the Allah of the Quran, who is not the same as the God of the Bible, or worshiping stuff, worshiping celebrity, worshiping you name it, people will worship it. You name it, people will worship it.

Had a lady one time tell us when we were knocking doors, and I may have shared this with you before, and asking her the questions from Evangelism Explosion. If you were to die today and stand before God and have him ask you why he should let you into heaven, what would you tell him? And the woman said, well, I’m a Buddhist. I believe I am God.

So I would tell him I’m just like him. Folks, I know me. I’m not God.

You know yourselves. You’re not God. But if people can be deluded into worshiping self, then they can be deluded into worshiping anything.

But you know what? In spite of all the false worship that goes on, that has gone on since the beginning of time, and that we’ll go on until Jesus Christ returns again. We can be assured, as the Bible says, that one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And David looked forward to that same day, saying, All the nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name. There will be people in the last days who have been saved out of every nation, tribe, and tongue by the blood of Jesus Christ. and we all together will stand before him and give him the glory he deserves. He says in verse 10, For thou art great, and doest wondrous things, thou art God alone.

And while he goes on later to pray and ask God things, ask God four things, I should say, for example, in verse 11, where he says, Teach me thy way, O Lord. Unite my heart to fear thy name. He’s still asking for things that glorify God.

But folks, before he even gets into the supplications, he says in verse 6, Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer and attend unto the voice of my supplications. But before he even gets into those petitions and requests to God, he begins by praying just in such a way that we’ll honor God. Sometimes we see no power in our prayer lives.

And I’ve shared with you already a number of reasons over the last few weeks why that might be. Why we just pray and we take God our grocery list, and sometimes the things are met that we think we need or the things we ask for. Sometimes, sometimes we feel like there’s just no power in it.

Sometimes we feel like there’s no connection in it. Maybe sometimes we need to spend time in prayer just to honor God, just to honor God. So about four things that I see from this passage this morning about praying to honor God.

First of all, prayer honors God because it is an act of submission to Him. Prayer honors God because it is an act of submission to Him. When done correctly, it’s an act of submission to Him.

Folks, even by the fact that we are praying, even by the fact that we’re praying, acknowledges that He is superior to us. Think about it in our own human terms, in our own human relationships. When we have to humble ourselves and ask somebody for something, for example, if you have to go and ask your boss permission, I remember when I used to work at the county and they had very rigid rules about work schedules and compensation and all that, and it was nothing like when I had worked in the private sector.

I would have to go and ask my bosses when Christian was pregnant with our first child and was scared to go to the doctor by herself, if I were to work through lunch, could I take off early and take her to the doctor? Or if it takes longer, I’ll work through lunch all this week. And I really knew that, strictly speaking, I was not entitled to that at all, and it was going to be out of the goodness of her own heart if she let me.

But she was my superior. I couldn’t just waltz in and say, hey, this is the way it’s going to be. No, I had to come to her and say, could I please do this?

And folks, just by the very fact of us humbling ourselves in such a way that we pray to God, we are acknowledging that He’s above us, that we require things from Him, or we need things from Him that we’re not entitled to. Does that make sense? Or when you see somebody, and they still do it today, when you see somebody going before royalty, and they bow, or they curtsy, they’re acknowledging that they’re in submission to that person, that they are subject to that person.

Folks, when we bow our knee before God, even if we don’t physically bow our knee, we’ll get into this later on in the series, that we can pray without bowing your knee and closing your eyes. Those things are helpful, but if you’re not in a position where you can bow your knee, if you’re not in a position where you can close your eyes, I like to pray when I’m driving, and that really doesn’t, that’s not a good idea if you start closing your eyes to pray while you’re driving. You really need prayer at that point.

But folks, when we humble our hearts before God, whether it’s to go and honor Him or whether it’s to take our petitions to Him, even just humbling ourselves in that way is an act of submission to God. He’s the one who commands, and we’re the ones who petition. We need never to forget that.

A lot of times people will go to God with their prayer requests, with things that they want, and they’ll start making deals or saying, God, you owe me this. Folks, God does not owe us a thing. God doesn’t owe me life.

God didn’t owe me salvation. God doesn’t owe me the food that’s on my table. Folks, God doesn’t owe me.

Every good thing I have is because of his goodness, and he’s done in spite of my sin. All I deserve from God was death and hell because of my sins. He’s the one who commands, and we’re the ones who petition.

And folks, whatever we pray for, whether we’re coming to him in confession of our sins, whether we’re coming asking him things, Folks, just the very fact of praying honors God because we’re in submission to him. And we see this because he says, Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer, and attend the voice of my supplications. The tone of it here is not demanding that God listen.

When he says, attend the voice of my supplications, it’s not done as though the tone of voice here is, listen to me. It’s done as though the tone of voice here is, Lord, listen to me, as my son would do if he’s tugging on my pant leg and trying to get my attention. Folks, he’s the one who commands, and we’re the ones who petition him, and we should never get those two accused.

Second of all this morning, prayer honors God because it acknowledges our dependence on him. It acknowledges our dependence on him. He says in verse 7, In the day of my trouble, I will call upon thee, for thou wilt answer me.

Now at this point, he’s not actually asking God for help. He’s not actually asking God for protection, but he’s praising God. He’s talking about God’s faithfulness and God’s positive attributes in saying that I know when I do have trouble.

I know when I am in peril, I can turn to you and ask you to help me, and I know that you will answer my prayer. I know that you will answer my prayer. And in that, folks, he’s acknowledging that there are times he’s going to need things from God.

There are times he’s going to be in the midst of trouble that he can’t get himself out of. Folks, we all at times get in the midst of trouble we can’t get ourselves out of. Sometimes it’s illness.

Sometimes it’s financial trouble. Sometimes it’s problems of our own making. but we all eventually get in peril that we can’t get our own selves out of.

At that point, we are completely dependent on God. No matter how much we try to fix it, we just make it worse. Stop trying to fix it and pray to God about it.

But you know what? It’s not just times of trouble when we are dependent on God. You notice in the model prayer, which we’ll look over at a later date also, Jesus tells the disciples to pray, Give us this day our daily bread, asking God, Give us just enough to get us by today.

Not enough to make us rich, not enough that we can lay up bread for a hundred years in a storehouse, but give us today our daily bread. Folks, we are utterly dependent on God for everything. This goes back to what I was talking about, about not deserving, not being entitled to anything that we have.

And I know this thought sometimes is offensive to us, because we think, well, I’m a self-made man, I’ve worked for everything I’ve got. Folks, there’s a God in heaven who gave us the strength to go and work for the things that we have. I’ve never seen the movie myself, but I’ve heard about a movie with Jimmy Stewart in it, who I typically have liked his movies, but where he’s a farmer of some sort, and they go to bless the food, and he says, basically, again, I’ve not seen the movie, just been told about it, but he says, basically, well, Lord, we planted the food, we watered it, we fertilized it, we did all this, we harvested it, we made it, but I guess we’ll thank you anyway.

Folks, that’s the wrong attitude. You know what? So what if we did plant the food?

God made that seed. Even if it came from a plant that we grew, God made that seed because God designed the DNA that was in that seed. God designed the soil to be able to grow the things.

You know, God put the sun there to be able to give light. God designed photosynthesis to take place inside the plant so it could make food out of sunlight. I still don’t completely understand that.

They can make food out of light. And God gave us the water. And God has given everything that was necessary for life.

And God has given, when we have it, God has given us two legs, two arms, and a back to work with. God’s given us a mind to think with and figure things out. So yes, we may do some work, and we may have some stewardship involved, but folks, ultimately, we are utterly dependent on God every day.

If God were to, if God were simply to will it, our hearts wouldn’t beat any longer. We wouldn’t breathe anymore. God gives us every breath we take.

God gives us every heartbeat. God gives us the Son and everything else that sustains life. It’s a gift from God because of His goodness and not because of anything we’re entitled to.

And by merely, even if He’s not asking for anything at this point, by merely praying to God, an act which we use to bring our petitions to God and admitting that He does have needs by saying, when I am in trouble, I know I can call on you. He’s admitting He’s dependent on God. And sometimes when we pray, we need to keep in mind He’s not just there to fill our grocery list. He’s not just there to meet everything that we want to have happen, but that we’re speaking to someone on whom we are completely dependent.

I’m not saying that to make us afraid of God, although I do think fear of the Lord is a good thing. I’m saying that so we will be thankful and we will have a desire to honor Him. Because every breath we take, every heartbeat we have is a gift from Him.

And if that alone doesn’t give us a reason to honor Him, well, we’re just pretty ungrateful. Even if that weren’t enough for us to honor him, folks, our eternity also is dependent on God. We didn’t do a thing to earn salvation.

As a matter of fact, we did everything necessary to earn death and hell and separation from God, and yet not because of anything we earned or deserved, God in his goodness sent his son to pay for our sins and be the provision for our salvation. Folks, everything we have in life or in eternity is utterly dependent on God’s goodness, And that gives us reason, should give us reason to honor God. You know what?

Sometimes we need to pray and praise Him and honor Him for the things He’s done. Third of all this morning, prayer honors God when we praise Him for His nature. When we praise Him for His nature.

Now, we’ll talk a little bit more in just a minute about praising Him for the things that He does, praising Him for His blessings. That’s natural. When we talk about praising God, we seem to think about, well, the things He’s done for us. But you know what?

It’s like a little child. If you ask them, why do you love mommy? Well, I love mommy because she feeds me.

I love mommy because she reads me stories. I love mommy because she washes my clothes. They might say that.

You know, that doesn’t work so much when you get older. Now, I’m thankful for the things that my wife does for me. She didn’t this morning, but normally she irons my clothes on Sunday mornings.

Never have asked her to do that. She just volunteers. She cooks for the family, and I’m grateful for that.

She keeps the house up. I’m grateful for that. But you know what?

If I were to say to write her an anniversary card and say, I love you because you ironed my clothes. I love you because you cook. I love you because.

. . What woman wants to hear that?

Anybody? I mean, yeah, I’m sure you’d like to hear thank you every now and then, but what woman wants to hear, well, I love you because you do stuff for me? Because the implication there is, if you didn’t do stuff for me, I wouldn’t love you.

Folks, my wife deserves to hear that I love her because of who she is. And I do, by the way, just so you know. Folks, we need to grow up sometimes in our conception of why we love God and why we praise Him.

It’s good, as we’ll talk about in just a minute, to praise Him for the things that He does for us. But sometimes we need to praise Him just because of who He is. Just because of who He is.

Verses 8 and 9 here say, Among the gods there is none like unto thee. First of all, He’s real. And none of the other gods that this world worships can compete with that. He’s alive.

I always loved that scene in, well, it’s not really a scene, but that scene in Elijah’s life when they’re praying. They’ve got the competition at Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and they decide that to prove to Israel who the true God is, they’re going to have a contest, and they’re going to put wood on the altar, and they’re going to put an animal on the altar, and they’re going to pray, and whichever deity sends down fire is the true God, whether it’s the God of Abraham or whether it’s the God Baal. And Elijah even stacks the deck against the true God by dumping water all over his altar that he’s built. And they’re praying and the prophets of Baal pray all day and all night and nothing happens as we would expect.

Nothing happens from this false God. And I love the way Elijah kind of mocks them. Says, maybe your God is asleep.

Maybe he, I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember exactly everything he says, but maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s talking to somebody. Maybe he stepped out to get a sandwich.

Maybe he’s on a phone call, that sort of thing. He didn’t talk about sandwiches or phone calls, of course, but mocking the fact that he’s not going to hear you and answer because he’s a false god. He’s not real. He’s not alive.

And yet he called out to the God of heaven. He called out to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and fire came down and not only consumed the water, but consumed the beast that they’d put on there and consumed the whole altar. Folks, the other gods of this world that the world worships are powerless.

I’m here to tell you it’s not because they are asleep or because they stepped out to take a phone call because they’re not real. You may not want to blow the, you may not want to burst the bubble of some of the people around you, but they’re not real. Even the tangible things that you can touch and feel, the gods that people worship, money. I mean, it’s real, but in terms of being a god, it’s not real. Can’t do anything for you. So he says, among the gods, there is none like unto thee.

First of all, he’s real. He’s alive and he’s powerful and he’s all-knowing and he’s good and he’s loving and he’s just. and he’s righteous. There’s none like unto thee. Folks, even if we could invent, even if we can invent a deity in our minds, which is where they all come from, if we’re honest, if we could invent a deity in our minds that had all the attributes that we would want a deity to have, he still wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to the God of the Bible.

He says, there’s none like unto thee. Neither are there any works like unto thy works. Nobody else can do the things that God can do.

Nobody is as powerful or as wise to be able to do the things that God can do. And I’ve told you before, a lot of people, as they start to study science, as they look into the intricacies of the cell and the chemicals that make up the cells and the bonds between the chemicals, they become convinced of evolution, they become convinced of atheism. The more I look at the intricacy of life, I’m convinced there has to be a God because I don’t see any way possible, I don’t see any way possible that all of this stuff, all of this design came about by random chance.

As a matter of fact, a famous evolutionist named Julian Huxley said that the mathematical probability of life coming about through evolution, he still believed it happened, but the mathematical probability of life coming about through random chance and evolution was 1 followed by 3 million zeros. The problem is the number of bacteria that exist on earth, the number of single-celled organisms on earth, is only 1 followed by 30 zeros. So there’s not even a 1 in 100 chance that any particular bacteria could evolve into the next thing to say nothing of all of it evolving into the diversity of life that we have before us today.

The mathematical probability alone is staggering, and the intricacy of life speaks to the fact that there’s a designer on the small scale. Nobody does the works that our God can do. And on a grand scale, looking at the whole universe, nobody can do the works that our God can do.

You think about how life has been placed on this planet, and of all the known planets that scientists have looked at, they still say there’s a chance for life being on other planets. You know what? Maybe there is.

I don’t believe there could be intelligent life on other planets because then you run into problems with the atonement. But, you know, let’s say bacteria exist on some planet elsewhere. God put them there for whatever reason.

Even if that’s the case, that doesn’t change the fact that our planet to have complex organisms and to have intelligent life is placed in just such a way to make that possible. And God put us just far enough away from the sun that we wouldn’t vaporize. And he put us just close enough to the sun that we could have liquid water, that there would be enough radiation from the sun to support life.

If it was any closer to the sun, the earth couldn’t support life. If it was any further away, it couldn’t support life, and it’s just right in where it needs to be exactly. Folks, I have trouble believing that happened by accident.

All the things that have occurred, and we look around and we see the stars, and the Bible said, even before they discovered radio waves, the Bible said that the stars sing, the heavens declare the glory of God. Folks, I believe it’s true. Nobody, whether it’s on a small scale or on the grandest of scales, nobody can do the works that our God can do.

And we look at the Bible and we see all of his attributes, not just the ones that are popular to talk about, the love and the mercy, but folks, we also see the justice. We see the righteousness. We see his power.

We see his unlimited understanding. And we could read through page after page after page of the Bible. We could flip it back to the beginning and start all over and never run out of things to praise God for about who he is, about who he is.

And sometimes it’s good to spend time in prayer praising God for who he is. Last but not least this morning, prayer honors God when we praise him for his blessings. Now, I may have made you feel guilty.

I hope not. But I may have made you feel guilty if we go to God and just thank him for the things that he’s done for us. There’s nothing wrong with doing that.

We just don’t want that to be the only thing that we praise God for. We want to praise him for who he is. But there’s nothing wrong with praising God for what He’s done for us.

As a matter of fact, there’s something wrong if we don’t praise God for what He’s done for us. As the Bible says here in verse 10, For thou art great, and do us wondrous things, thou art God alone. He has done, ladies and gentlemen, wondrous things.

It grows out of His nature, who He is. And because of who He is, He does the things that He does. And He has given us abundant blessings.

And you may have walked in here this morning feeling like all the troubles and struggles of life, maybe you don’t have a lot to feel thankful for and feel blessed about. And folks, we all have difficulties and we all have struggles, and I don’t mean to minimize or trivialize anything that anybody may be going through. But if you don’t feel blessed this morning, think about all the things that God has given us that we don’t deserve, some of which I’ve already talked about this morning and won’t belabor the point too much.

But he’s given us everything that we need to sustain life on this planet in a general way. He’s given you breath, He’s given a heartbeat. Even if it’s strong this morning, or even if it’s weak this morning, even if it’s out of rhythm, He’s still giving you a heartbeat.

Folks, we have a lot to praise God for. He has done wondrous things. He’s done things that we don’t deserve, never could deserve, and never could earn.