Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

Are there any announcements?

Agape Feast December 18- this includes communion, potluck, and a sweet time of fellowship in the Lord.

So please, bring your favorite dish.

Angel Tree Kids- please see Kathy if you are interested in buying gifts for children whom have incarcerated parents.

Baptism- if there is anyone interested in being baptized, see Pastor John.

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to FCC, where we worship God in Spirit and in Truth one verse at a time.

Winter time is pressing upon us and I am always reminded of:

Praise God that he washes us clean church and that he makes as white as snow.

White= righteousness church.

Because of what Jesus did on the Cross, he exchanged our unrighteous robe, for his robe of righteousness and now we are in right standing with God.

Because of what Jesus did on the Cross, he exchanged our unrighteous robe, for his robe of righteousness and now we are in right standing with God.

We call this the Great Exchange and we should rejoice and be glad!! Amen!

We have come as far as Matthew 6:9, so let us open our Bibles there and see what the Lord has for us today:

Read Matthew 6:9-15

Prayer

Lord Heavenly Father, we praise and adore you for who you are and because of You is why we are here today.

Not but strength, nor by power, but by your Spirit we come to hear from you.

Lord we ask you to teach us how to pray in such away that you are not our servant, but rather our Master.

We ask you to help us to grasp the high and depth of the model prayer that you laid out for those whom our yours and to simply apply it to our lives.

Fill us with and overflowing portion of your Holy Spirit and lead us into all Truth today and everyday.

We surrender this time and our lives to you!

In Jesus Name We Love You! Amen!!!

Review

In looking back we have gleaned several nuggets of truth that Jesus taught us as his disciples church:

When we give, we give in secret, not to be seen by men but to glorify the Father and to follow the commands that he has given us.

When we pray, we are to not pray like the hypocrites!

For they loved to pray to be seen by men.

In fact, they found the largest street corners with the most people and prayed.

When we pray we are not to use meaningless words, or vain repetitions, like the heathen because they believed the more words they spoke, the more likely their god would hear them and this is simply not true church.

Jesus taught us to go to our secret closet or room ( And this was a secret place in the home where the home owners kept their most prized treasures church) and pray to the Father who sees in secret.

And guess what?

HE WILL REWARD US OPENLY… WHAT A BARGIN!

Did anyone spend time this past week in that secret place?

As we look at our text for today, I am reminded of Luke 11.

Church, the disciples were witnessing something supernatural, something spectacular in the life of Jesus.

Jesus was doing miracles, signs, and wonders and they noticed that every-time Jesus raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, delivered the demoniacs, caused the lame to walk, and the deaf to hear, that Jesus prayed and they desired to be like their Lord.

And I think it is very important for us to see that the boys did not ask Jesus to teach them to do all these miracles, but rather teach them how to pray.

And that is what the Lord has for us today.

In this manner, therefore, pray!

What is this therefore, therefore?

It is here because this prayer is connected to the scriptures above regarding praying vain repetitions and meaningless words.

The Father desires that our hearts would be connected to our prayers.

That we would not just pray prayers without even thinking of what we are saying and who we are saying them to.

In this manner, simply means in this way church...

So Jesus is asking us to pray this way.

But before we dive into this prayer, I wanted to let you know that although this is called the Lord’s prayer in your Bible sub-headings, this is not correct.

Why?

Well, because Jesus was sinless and we see toward the end of this prayer that sin is mentioned.

A better name for the prayer would be, “The Disciples Prayer or the Model Prayer.”

John 17 is the Lord’s prayer...

Jesus did not give this prayer to us to be memorized and recited a given number of times.

In fact, He gave this prayer to keep us from using vain repetitions.

Jesus did not say, “Pray in these words.”

He said, “Pray in this manner”;

That is, “Use this prayer as a pattern or a template, not as a substitute.”

This prayer is to be a template of how we should pray.

This prayer is only 65 words long.

And it takes about 20 seconds to pray.

And there are 3 petitions to God +3 petitions for us.

Our Father in heaven-

This is a term of endearment, a term of intimacy, a term of relationship church.

In fact, God is only referred to as Father fourteen times in the Old Testament’s thirty-nine books, and even then rather impersonally.

In those fourteen occurrences of Father the term was always used with reference to the nation, not to individuals.

You can search from Genesis to Malachi, and you will not find one individual speaking of God as Father.

Moreover, in Jesus’ day, his contemporaries had so focused on the sovereignty and transcendence of God that they were careful never to repeat his covenant name—Yahweh.

So they invented the word Jehovah, a combination of two separate names of God.

Thus the distance from God was well guarded.

But when Jesus came on the scene, he addressed God only as Father.

He never used anything else!

All his prayers address God as Father..

No one had ever in the entire history of Israel spoken and prayed like Jesus.

No one!

So Jesus here is teaching a new concept regarding prayer to his Jewish audience.

Jesus is saying pray to your Heavenly Father...

Can you see the look on their faces now?

Jesus says for us to pray to our Father who art in heaven church.

As a child talks with his or her father with confidence and trust, so should we talk to Our Father.

Now for some of us, just saying Father is difficult, because many of us sitting here today, did not know our Father.

But God, who is rich in mercy desires to heal that father wound so that you can press into your Heavenly Father, ABBA FATHER as Paul says.

God’s name be honored and respected.

God’s kingdom be completed.

God’s will be implemented.

Let look deeper:

Father only 14x’s in whole OT.

Used 17 in this sermon.

70x’s in the gospels...

God had become personal church, In fact, God was standing in front of them on the Northside of the Sea of Galilee sharing how to pray.

Can you imagine what the disciples thought after Jesus ascended to heaven?

They were actually talking to their Father who art in heaven.

Have you ever thought that what goes up, must come down?

Jesus will one day return for his church

God is to be respected and honored when we pray:

The term fear here in Hebrew is one of reverence, awe, and respect.

Do we fear the Lord?

Do we respect Him and reverence when we pray?

Or do we go to him like our servant and just ask for things?

Hallowed-hagiastheto- to be counted holy; to be treated holy; to be counted and treated as different.

In the English this does not sound as though it is a request, but it should be translated, “Let your name be holy.”