Last week, we began studying Matthew Chapter 6, the second chapter in the Sermon on the Mount and we started by reading the first 18 verses.
And if you remember what we said last week, whenever we do something, whether it is giving to the needy, praying or fasting, we need to make sure that we are doing those things out of the right heart.
And last week we talked about not giving to the needy in order to make people think better of us.
And we are not to pray so that people put their attention on us.
And finally, when we fast, that is when we give up food our other things for a time in order that we come closer in our fellowship with God, we fast in a way that is not seen by others. We don’t wail and moan about how hungry we are, or do things so that other people around us applaud us for our holiness.
No, we do these things for the glory and to the honor of God. Otherwise, we are hypocrites. If we are acting the religious part so that people praise us, we are only going to get the applause of men, and not of God.
Now, like I said we are going to camp out in this neighborhood of Scripture for a few weeks in order to dig up as much treasure as we can from God’s word.
Tonight, we are going to really zero in on prayer.
First, let’s review Matthew 6:5-15
5 "And when (not if) you pray, 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. 6 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.
Now, we talked about that section pretty extensively last week, let’s move to verse 7.
7 (again) And when (not if) you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 "This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.'
14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
This is the word of God.
Now last week we dug into the warning against being like the hypocrites. In that, Jesus was saying to the Jewish people in the crowd, these religious leaders you have, the scribes and the Pharisees, they put on a good show. But as they pretend to focus their words on God above, their hearts are focused on the watching eyes of the crowds.
Jesus says, you hear their words. But God is hearing the heart and the two aren’t adding up. So don’t be like them.
And again, He taught the same principle about how the hypocrites fasted and the way they gave to the needy. So last week we focused on – “Don’t do it like that. Pray. But, don’t pray to be seen as righteous by other men and women.”
But then, he breaks from the pattern and warns against another mistake. He says, don’t pray like the pagans (also translated as the Gentiles).
7 And when (not if) you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
In the New King James, don’t keep on babbling is translated as “do not use vain (meaningless) repetitions”. In the English Standard Version it is “do not heap up empty phrases”.
You see this kind of prayer in 1 Kings 18, where Elijah was one of the only prophets of God in the entire nation of Israel. And He was set against 450 “prophets” of Baal.
And they had a showdown on a mountain to see who’s God was better.
So they each took a bull and an altar and whosever God sent fire down to burn the sacrifice was the true God.
So the Baal priests put on this long show and over and over they prayed their prayers that Baal would start this fire and he never showed.
So they prayed longer still and kept saying these things and still nothing happened. And we’re talking about hours and hours of this.
Then, showing off a bit, Elijah sacrificed his bull, had the animal and the altar doused with water, (not a good idea when you want to start a fire). Then, he made a very short, and focused prayer to the true God, our God, and boom! God sent the fire down and His glory was revealed.
So the babbling of the Baal priests was useless. Again, it was vain (meaningless) repetitions.
The fact is, Jesus is saying here and we see in the Old Testament, that we can say what ever we want to whoever we want as many times as we want, but if it is not the prayer to God, for the God’s will to be done and for His glory, then that prayer is a waste of our breath.
So, don’t be like them.
Now, before we move on. Repetition is not the problem. It is the meaningless or empty prayers that we see at the core of the problem here.
Jesus Himself repeated His prayers. In Matthew 26, as He prays before He is betrayed, Jesus knows that He is about to take the wrath of God for the sins of the world, yours and mine. And over and over He says, if there is any other way, take this cup from me, if there is any other way, let’s go that route. And then He adds, but not my will but yours be done.
So, if you have a concern our a fear or a need, take it to God the Father and take it more than once, over and over if need be. But always include the humility and deference to God, who sees everything, beyond the scope of our understanding.
We may be praying for something that seems completely within His will. There may not be anything out of bounds about our prayer. But, if it doesn’t conform to His overall plan, we have to accept that He knows better than us.
As the cliché goes, God will answer every prayer with a yes, a no, or a wait and see.
And sometimes that’s going to hurt. Sometimes you may pray that someone you love might be brought out of their struggles. And that may come from a pure heart that only wants the best for them.
But, God may know that that person may need to be allowed to self-destruct in a way that brings them to the point of total surrender to their old way of doing things.
And, there’s no guarantee that God will ever reveal all of the information to us.
What He does is guarantee to bring all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. And, that’s where we are to find our hope — In the promise of God.
Let’s move on: Matthew 6:9
9 "This, then, is how you should pray:
Jesus doesn’t just say, don’t do this and don’t do that. He guides us. He gives us a template.
Now, we are about to get into the Lord’s Prayer. This is a well-known passage. It is said in churches around the world, it’s printed on coffee cups and on posters with little pictures of a loaf of bread.
And, let me be the first to say, that is great. It is a valuable tool, given to us by Jesus and we should always hold it in high regard.
The one warning that I would lay out is that we can – without realizing it — begin to allow this to become so commonplace in our minds that it simply rolls off our tongue without ever penetrating our heart.
And then what we have done is we have become like the pagans that Jesus just warned us against by making this a meaningless repetitive string of words.
One quick example. Have you ever been listening to the radio and been singing along with some new song that they have been over playing and then, out of the blue, you realize what the words are that you are singing and your taken off guard by how dumb or offensive the lyrics actually are?
And you realize, I am just following along with the repetition. This song is on every other hour and it is just lodged up in my head. You are not only not feeling the words in your heart; you may not even be paying attention in your head.
Or am I the only one?
Well, this prayer can become the same thing. If you say it every Sunday, week in and week out in church and in other instances throughout the week, it can start to just be noise that you make with no heart connection at all.
Now, these words we are about to read are infinitely more profound than any pop song, but without a heart connection, our prayers can come out in a meaningless way, like babble.
9 "This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
That is, we recognize you as our Father, as our dad, the source of faithful and incomparable love. We recognize you Lord as our Father, who adopted us, chose us, reconciled us to Yourself by way of the ultimate sacrifice — by the blood of Your Son.
And, we recognize that we are praying to you Father God — In Heaven! Our eyes are fixed on you in Heaven, not on us here in this broken world. We fix our eyes and our thoughts and our hearts on the promise, the amazing promise of what is to be — even if the world seems to be falling apart around us or even if things are going so well for us right now that we may get distracted by small blessings and lose focus on the ultimate blessing to come.
(" 'Our Father in heaven,)
hallowed be your name,
Hallowed in the Greek is hagiazo . It means to be set apart as holy or pure. To be sanctified. Here we are simply agreeing with God. God is the holiest of all. God is the ultimate in purity. It is by His standard that all things are measured.
10 your kingdom come,
In one sense, this part of the prayer has been fulfilled, yet we still seek its ultimate completion. You see the Kingdom of God is already here in the lives of every believer. Everyone who has put their trust and loyalty in Christ has been given the Holy Spirit and we are now spreading the kingdom out into the world.
Jesus said the Kingdom of God begins like a mustard seed; it begins small, but eventually grows so big that the birds of the air can land on its branches.
And He taught that the Kingdom of God is like the yeast that is mixed into the dough. He says that even thought the yeast (or leaven) is tiny; it eventually works through the whole loaf.
Well, we can see this in the truth of history. The church began as a rag tag, tiny group of followers, who began to spread and grow and work their way into different areas of the known world. And with each new believer, another area could be reached with the Gospel of the Kingdom.
And it is still growing and spreading today. We are here as just one more small part of the tree growing in the world.
And, with all of that said, we still pray for and long for and wait expectantly for the final and ultimate completion of all of this. When Jesus returns in all of His Glory with the power to judge and the love to redeem. And we pray that that day would come — that His Kingdom would come — That Jesus Himself would come — in all of His glory.
We pray for His Kingdom to come because we long for that new Heaven and New Earth that He promises us. Where there is no more sadness, no more pain or sickness, where we no longer struggle with sin, when we are no longer hurt by the sins of others or the sin in our own lives. We pray passionately for His Kingdom to come!
(Your kingdom come,) your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
That is, just as God’s will is done in Heaven, apart from sin or our selfishness or the greed or malice in the hearts of men and women, just as His will is done perfectly in Heaven, we also desire that to happen here.
This is where it gets really interesting. Because Jesus is teaching us to pray that His will would be done and I don’t know about you, but I always used to think about “Oh, Lord. Change this person or that person so that he or she will start doing your will.”
And that is certainly part of it where we see a brother or sister in Christ or even a non-believer living outside of the will of God.
But this is also and more so a deeply personal request to conform us to His will. And this is necessary where we need to turn from sin, but he gets to that later in the prayer.
More so, this is a place where we say God, help me to surrender to Your will.
Because there are times when we don’t want this to happen. There are times we want God to change His will to conform to ours. Sometimes I do this when I am in outright rebellion that needs to be addressed. Sometimes it is when I am not seeing the big picture and I am not seeing all of the facets of a situation and I don’t want to accept His will if He won’t show me how it will all work out.
Or, I simply don’t think that He knows best. This is pride and arrogance and a lack of humility that has to be smashed. And if you are in that boat, it comes out and is easy to see when we start asking God, How could you let that happen?! Or, God, Don’t you see what’s going on?! Or If you loved me (or her or him or them) you would do something.
And we start trying to give advice — or worse yet — orders to the creator of the Universe.
So in this prayer template, Jesus reminds us to remain right-sized in our relationship with god and conform ourselves to the will of God.
(And then),
11 Give us today our daily bread.
Again, this is a hard one, if you know what you are praying. It goes back to Old Testament teachings that the Jewish audience would have been familiar with. Proverbs 30:7-9 says
7 "Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
(And then, as a foundation for this part of the Lord’s Prayer):
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
So, Lord, Give us today our daily bread so that we are provided for and at the same time we don’t begin making other “extras” into our new sources of contentment or satisfaction.
(And then)
12 Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
There are a few items to look at here. First off, Debts here is talking about our sin. And I am in agreement with those who believe that this is a prayer for the ongoing grace and mercy of God in the areas where we are still being sanctified and corrected in our lives.
This isn’t the original prayer for forgiveness otherwise it would not come after a daily request. The prayer is not likely for the original act of justification. The work of Christ on the cross created a relationship, a bond between Him, and us that cannot be broken if we are truly in Christ.
But, as we’ve talked about before, the sin that we fall back into can still cloud our fellowship with God, even though our relationship will never be broken. So this prayer is that our fellowship be restored by His grace and forgiveness.
Then there’s an interesting word usage.
12 Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
This goes back again to the piece in Matthew 5:23-24, where Jesus told us not to offer a gift at the altar if we know there is anger between us and another. In a similar way, Jesus is telling us in this prayer, don’t ask for God’s forgiveness if you aren’t willing to forgive. Jumping ahead to verse 14, Jesus reinforces His point, saying 14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
With all that I just said about the unbroken bond between us and God if we are saved, let me also make clear what Scripture makes clear. If you have been justified by faith in Christ, through the Grace of God, then you are saved from God’s wrath.
But also, as Jesus, and Paul and James all make clear, if you are saved you will produce the fruit of repentance, the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of a follower of Christ.
The centerpiece of that is granting the same forgiveness to other people that you have been given from God.
So yes, we will stumble in this area like every other. But, if there is a person, or people or a group, or a company or a church or WHOEVER, that you defiantly refuse to forgive –if there is someone that you will not even consider forgiving and there is NO conviction from the Spirit of God in that area of your life. Then I would say, like Paul says in
2 Corinthians 5:20, “We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
Because, that level of unforgiveness is a pretty clear sign that you may not be in Christ yet. And if you are not in Christ, then you have not been saved and you cannot yet call on God as Father. Until you are made right by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, you are still in the path of the wave of wrath that will sweep across the earth when Christ returns. So please, with all of the love in my heart, be reconciled to God.
(And no to close out the prayer, Jesus teaches us to ask…)
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.'
Brothers and sisters, I don’t have to tell you that while we are still on this side of Heaven we are still going to deal with temptation.
Your temptation may be to get drunk or high, or to sleep around, or to think highly of yourself and end up being selfish, or self-centered, or judgmental and self-righteous.
You may be an abuser and your temptation may be to lash out at your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your children, or your parents.
You may be desperate or you may simply think people owe you something and you may be tempted to steal.
You may not be confident that God is in control and so you may be tempted to continue in your gambling or cutting corners or padding expense accounts at work.
You may not be comfortable with quiet times of reflection and meditation with God. You may have a past that is to hard to look at and you may only see a future that offers more of the same, so in order to shut that all out you turn to business at work on with other self-appointed duties that never allow you time to be quiet and still and alone with God.
The truth is there are thousands of temptations and Jesus tells us that what ever our temptations are, we are to pray that out, to give it up to God and trust in our prayer that God will deliver us from the evil one and all of the things the evil one does to try to pull us back into the slavery of sin.
And that is the Lord’s Prayer.
Remember, this is a beautiful prayer. It covers all of the bases that we should focus on as we talk with God.
And remember, it is very easy to take this and just make it into one more ritual that loses its meaning and begins to degenerate into meaningless repetition or useless babble or just another religious exercise that is devoid of relationship with the Father if we do not come to God with a longing to fellowship with Him through the prayer. So tonight, go home and read this over and allow these words to search you, allow these verses to guide you into a more intimate communion with the Lord. And remember, it is a template, if these words become so common to you that it begins to lose it’s desired impact on your spirit, then begin using it as a springboard for your prayer. And as an example that is how we will close this message tonight.
Let’s pray…
