We are beginning the new year by praying together as a church. Maybe you are not sure of yourself when it comes to prayer. If prayer were a high school sport, you’re not sure you’d receive a “letter” on your varsity jacket for prayer.
Many of you have picked up the little book, 21 Days of Prayer. I hope you’re enjoying it and it’s making an impact on your prayer life. Many of you are receiving daily texts reminders to pray.
Find Hebrews 4 with me, if you will.
Prayer and Religions
Now, every faith has some form of prayer. Muslims stop whatever they’re doing 5 times a day to pray, as you’ll hear the wailing cries of prayer callers in many Asian cities.1 Incas and Aztecs went so far as to sacrifice humans in order to attract their gods’ attention. And millions of people who attend AA meetings pray to a Higher Power to stop their addictions. More people this week will pray than will drive a car or go to work, according to Gallup polls.2
Sermon Preview
1. An Appetizer for Your Mind: Six Facts about Prayers
2. A Meal for Your Heart: Jesus is More Ready to Hear your Prayers than You are to Pray
For the believers in the room, think of this as an appetizer that will be taken away in a few moments before the main course.
1. Five Facts about Prayer
1. There are 650 prayers listed in the Bible.3
2. There are an estimated 450 recorded answers to prayer in the Bible.4
3. The Bible records Jesus praying 25 different times during His earthly ministry.
Jesus made it a habit to pray.
Jesus praised God the Father during prayer (Matthew 11:25), and He gave thanks for what He had before feeding the multitudes with the fish and the loaves (Matthew 15:36). Jesus asked God for strength and guidance (Matthew 26:36-46). And He prayed for His closest friends, the Disciples, and their ministry (Luke 22:31-32; John 17). Jesus prayed in private (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16) and in moments of crisis (Matthew 27:46). Jesus prayed before big decisions (Luke 6:12-13). And Jesus made it a habit to pray both before and after miracles (Matthew 14:22-23; Luke 9:18). Jesus even prayed while hanging on the cross (Luke 23:34, 46). Even today, Jesus continues to pray for us. Jesus made it a habit to pray.
4. You can pray in any posture, the Bible does list five specific body positions where people prayed:
1. The Bible says David sat before the Lord (2 Samuel 7:18);
2. Jesus spoke about standing and praying (Mark 11:25);
3. Daniel kneeled when he prayed (Daniel 6:10);
4. Jesus fell on His face when He prayed (Matthew 26:39);
5. The Apostle Paul desired people to pray with their hands lifted up (1 Timothy 2:8).
I encourage you to try any and all of these over the 21 Days of Prayer.
5. Two Big Types of Prayer: Kingdom-Centered and Communion-Centered
You could collapse all prayer into two big categories: 1) Kingdom-centered and 2) Communion-centered prayers.5 Communion-centered prayers are where you experience God’s rich love, and you become aware of God's incredible peace inside your soul. Kingdom-centered praying is where you pray to make the kingdom of God a reality. Praying that you will be obedient to the King. Both are biblically wonderful, and they are not mutually exclusive. We need both Communion-centered praying and kingdom-centered praying. I want to focus on communion in prayer in the moments to come.
I want to convince you Jesus is alive and well and hears your prayers. With the appetizer behind us this morning, I want to tell you that Jesus hears your prayers, and He even wants to hear you pray. Again, I want to tell you that Jesus hears your prayers, and He even wants to hear you pray.
Today’s Scripture
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16).
What is the biggest challenge you have in your life right now? Maybe you even need to close your eyes to block out all distractions to answer that question. Health - for some of you, it’s to have someone’s name placed on a transplant list. Family/Marriage - a few of you are thinking about a relationship that needs to be fixed. Money – you are praying for a job to come through.
The Great High Priest invites you to bring your innermost thoughts to Him with the promise that His heavenly perspective will lead you to His mercy and grace. Draw near to God.
2. Jesus is the Priest I Need
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Hebrews 4:14).
The Bible calls Jesus a priest here.
2.1 Priests in the Old Testament
Hebrews was written for believers who had a Jewish background. In the Old Testament, a priest was not someone who spoke to the people. Instead, he was someone who spoke for the people. Think about this: in the Old Testament, the priest always had his back to the people in the Temple, not because the people weren’t important to him. Because the priest’s job was NOT to preach, exhort, and lecture. Again, his job was not to speak to the people; his job was to speak for the people. His job was to get into their shoes. He was to feel their pain, bear their burdens, and repeatedly call out to heaven for them. The priest was to pray for them and to offer sacrifices for them.6 I tell you all this because the Bible says Jesus is our High Priest.
2.2 Three Characteristics of Jesus as High Priest
Hebrews 4:14 makes three statements about Jesus as our High Priest.
2.2.1 He’s Great
Jesus isn’t just a priest and a high priest; He’s a great high priest. Jesus is superior to all lesser priests. Later on, in the next chapter, Hebrews will tell us that Jesus is an eternal high priest. He’s in an entirely different order than all other priests.
Here’s why…
2.2.2 He’s the Son of God
Unlike all the other high priests that ever lived, Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead, never to die again. This is why the whole Old Testament system of the priesthood is over. Jesus is the final priest between man and God because He will never die. Our Great High Priest has an indestructible life (Hebrews 7:16). We don’t have a revolving door of high priests; we have one. We have a priest, and He is forever alive.
2.2.3 He’s Passed through the Heavens
Most high priests would enter into the Most Holy Place, the inner sanctum of the ancient Temple. Jesus doesn’t just enter into the Most Holy Pace; He enters into the very presence of God. Our high priest has the unique ability to penetrate into the very presence of God with His prayers.7 Nothing obstructs Jesus from entering directly into the throne room of God. You can be absolutely confident in Jesus. Why? Because He’s “passed through the heavens.”
2.3 Confidence in Jesus
What does this mean? I don’t need to pray to Mary. I don’t need to speak to any dead saints. I don’t need to talk to my deceased father, mother, or grandparents. I “have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God!”
If there’s an exclusive club downtown where you don’t get inside unless you drop somebody’s name at the door, and a trustworthy club member named Chloe assures you that if you mention her name, you’re in. What would you do? Would you get to the door and confidently say, “Mary, mother of God?” Would you get to the door and whisper, “Peter,” or “Pastor Scott?” No, you walk up to the door and tell the doorman the name “Chloe” with confidence. Use the name that “passed through the heavens,” the name of Jesus.
2.4 The Ascension
When the Bible says “passed through the heavens,” it is referencing the ascension of Jesus here in verse 14. It was at the Ascension of Jesus that Jesus transferred from Earth to Heaven. The Ascension of Jesus is the reason you cannot see Jesus with your physical eyes today.
2.5 “If Only My Eyes Could See Him”
The Bible says, in effect, “Because Jesus has ascended and passed right to the throne room, we should hold fast to our confession.” But our instincts tell us the opposite. Doesn’t it seem, with Jesus being gone, that God put His best player on the bench and out of the game?8
Yes, the “taking up” of Jesus does the opposite of what you’d think. Someone might say, “With Jesus gone, it seems to make talking to Him so much harder.” “If only Jesus were here on earth, that would make prayer so much easier.” If I could go over to Jesus’ apartment or His office and just talk to Him face to face – nothing could be better!
Can you imagine if Jesus were living somewhere on earth today? Imagine if Jesus were living somewhere in Israel even today. We couldn’t count the number of tourists and spiritual seekers who’d flock to Him. If Jesus were a physical body on earth, given His popularity, do you think you could make an appointment with Him this decade?
2.6 Frustrated
A really close friend called me late this week, and he was frustrated.
He was upset on several fronts. And he’d been experiencing this frustration for some time, so it’s been building up over time. My friend had been struggling with some really important decisions. That’s when he burst out, “I’ve been praying, and God isn’t answering.” It seemed he just stopped short of saying, “I don’t know what good it is to pray.” Paul and Jill are the parents of six children. One of the six, Kim, had been diagnosed with Autism. The family had struggled with Kim’s Autism for years as she had gone to speech therapy for some five years with no success. While away on vacation in the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Paul was walking down from the campsite to their Dodge Caravan when he noticed his fourteen-year-old daughter, Ashley, standing in front of the van, tense and upset. When he asked her what was wrong, she said, “I lost my contact lens. It’s gone.” Father and daughter looked down at the forest floor, covered with leaves and twigs. There were a million little crevices for the lens to fall into and disappear. Paul said, “Ashley, don’t move. Let’s pray.” But before he could pray, his daughter burst into tears. “What good does it do? I’ve prayed for Kim to speak, and she isn’t speaking.”9
Many of you have had this same feeling: you pray, and nothing happens. We want to see Jesus nod His head when we ask Him something. We want to have a cup of coffee with Him and receive direct verbal contact. Even if we got a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” from Him. Anything.
2.7 Hold Fast
The Bible wants you to “hold fast our confession” and the idea there is to cling to Jesus in prayer here. And here’s why. Yes, the ascension means you cannot see Jesus with your eyes. But the ascension means you have greater access to Jesus than if He were walking around as He did for around 3 years. The ascension takes who Jesus Christ was and what Jesus did and releases it into your lives with all of His healing power.10 This is overly simplistic, but think of an atomic bomb that has gone off, and the radiation cloud moves up into the atmosphere. If a bomb were localized, the damage wouldn’t be severe. But when a nuclear bomb’s radiation cloud goes high into the atmosphere, the damage spreads exponentially. Where a bomb brings destruction, Jesus brings healing to His people. Had Jesus only been local, His effectiveness would have been limited. Had Jesus remained human only and not ascended, your access to Him would have been limited. What seems to be an issue is really an advantage.
2.7 Hold Fast
Again, the Bible wants you to “hold fast our confession,” and the idea is to cling to your confession that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is a priest who has His back to us so He can represent our needs to God. He’s “passed through the heavens,” so there are no obstacles between God and Him. For all these reasons and more, hold fast to Jesus!
2. Jesus is the Priest I Need
3. Jesus Understands Me
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
Here is a second reason, why you should really pray: Jesus sympathizes with your every weakness.
3.1 Sympathy
The Bible uses a double negative in verse 15, but here’s the message:
Our high priest can feel with us in our weaknesses, because He has been tempted in all respects as we are.11 1) Jesus was tempted in all the kinds of ways we are; 2) He never gave in, and He never sinned – not even once; and 3) He is sympathetic with us in our weaknesses.
Somebody objects, “What a minute! How could Jesus know what I’m going through? He never sinned even once.”
CS Lewis’ insight is helpful here:
“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of the win by trying to walk against it, but by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.… Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.”12
3.2 Jesus Knows Your Battles
Whatever you face in life, Jesus faced, too. He was tempted just like you are.
Jesus was tempted to lie (to save his life)
He was tempted to steal (to help His poor mother when His father died)
He was tempted to covet (all the nice things that Zacchaeus owned)
He was tempted to dishonor his parents (when they were more strict than others)
He was tempted to take revenge (when He was wrongly accused)
He was tempted to lust (when Mary wiped His feet with her hair)
He was tempted to pout with self-pity (when His disciples fell asleep in his last hour of trial)
He was tempted to murmur at God (when John the Baptist died at the whim of a dancing girl)
And He was tempted to gloat over His accusers (when they couldn’t answer His questions).13
There is not one battle you’ll face in life that Jesus doesn’t understand.
3.3 He’s Praying for Us
By virtue of Jesus’ exalted position and His direct access to the Father, know this: Jesus pleads our case before the throne of God: “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). My believing friend, there is no one in your corner like Jesus Christ. You have a sympathetic friend in a really high place.
2. Jesus is the Priest I Need
3. Jesus Understands Me
4. Draw Near to God
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
4.1 Throne of Grace
I love that the Bible calls the throne of God, the throne of grace. God grants His children tremendous freedom to come to Him. Christ’s followers have a backstage pass to God Himself.
4.2 Confidence
“Let us then with confidence [not hesitation, not reluctance, but with confidence let us] draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
The Bible says you can be confident to come near to Jesus in your time of need. The Bible says you can open up your innermost thoughts and just spill them out on the ground before Jesus. He’s not going to look at you like, “Oh gross!” He’s not going to laugh at you or mock you. Instead, He’s saying, “I remember the pressure when I faced something like you’re facing.” Draw near to God.
4.3 EV Hill’s Mother
When I was a young man, my grandfather would turn on TV preachers when I was at his home. We watched an African-American preacher named EV Hill. Hill tells a story about prayer that you need to hear. Hill grew up extremely poor, and his mother wanted him to go to college.
Hill’s mother, who he called “Momma” all his life, took him to the Trailway Bus station as he was leaving their hometown of Sweet Home, Texas.
“Momma” bought the ticket for the bus. “She had got me a dark suit, a couple pairs of blue jeans and shirts. She wrapped a rope around my suitcase, and drew out $5 from her purse, gave it to me, and said, ‘Now go on to school; the Lord will make a way.’ And just before I boarded the bus she said, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ I can still see her waving goodbye as the bus pulled out of the station.” Hill said he splurged on the way to college, and got to campus with only $1.83 left. He said he went straight to the registrar’s office and got in line. “The first thing I saw was a sign that said, ‘$83, cash, cashier’s check or money order.’ And the devil said, ‘Now which one do you have?’ Then I heard my momma saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ The devil said, ‘Don’t be stupid; get out of line. This is no prayer meeting, … With all due respects to your momma, she ain’t in control now.’ And again, I heard my momma saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’” So I just stayed in line and kept easing on up. I was one up when the devil said, ‘You’re next. What are you going to do now with just $1.58?’ But once again I heard Momma saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’ So, I moved on.
I was just about to step up when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Dr. Drew said, ‘Are you Ed Hill?’” I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He said, “Get out of line.” Here, I had come all this way just to be denied my place. But he said, ‘Son, didn’t you get our letter? We’ve been trying to contact you. We are giving you a four-year scholarship. It will pay your tuition, room and board, and give you $35 a month for spending money.’”
“And once again I heard my momma say, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’”14
4.4 Find Grace
The farthest galaxy we have ever discovered is 13.4 billion light-years away.15 The deepest hole is an abandoned superdeep borehole in Russia that reached 7.5 miles below the earth’s surface.16 God's love reaches from the zero gravity of space to one thousand times the atmospheric pressure of the deepest sea. His love goes beyond the boundary of time and the border of space. You can find grace and mercy when you pray. Draw near to God.
4.4 Prayer
Father in Heaven,
There’s no way for us to understand this supernatural love your Word speaks of. It’s on a whole other love and as strange to us as esoteric theoretical physics. We need you here in our mind and in our spirits. Quiet us and focus us. We are praying for spiritual breakthrough that is a hinge moment for our lives. Drown our minds in your presence. Flood our spirits and souls with you in the moments to come. We need you to enter in to us at this moment. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
EndNotes
1 The Muslim prayer crier is known as a muezzin.
2 Philip Yancy, Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 13.
3 https://web.archive.org/web/20220811231826/https://www.gospelpedlar.com/articles/Christian%20Life/Prayer.pdf; accessed January 7, 2025.
4 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-should-know-about-prayer-in-the-bible1/; accessed January 7, 2025.
5 Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Dutton, 2014), 1-2.
6 Timothy J. Keller, “The Sympathy of Jesus,” The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
7 Donald Guthrie, Hebrews: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 124.
8 Tim Chester and Jonny Woodrow, The Ascension: Humanity in the Presence of God (Geanies House: Ross-shire, 2013), introduction.
9 Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2009), 13.
10 Tim Keller, “The Ascension,” sermon transcript, Logos, May 18, 1997.
11 Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1993), 268.
12 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 1980), 142.
13 John Piper, “Draw Near to the Throne of Grace With Confidence,” Sermons from John Piper (1990–1999) (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2007).
14 E. V. Hill, A Savior Worth Having (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2002).
15 https://www.space.com/oldest-most-distant-galaxy-discovery; accessed May 18, 2021.
16 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-deep-is-the-deepest-hole-in-the-world/; accessed May 18, 2021.
