The Ministry of Prayer: Learning to pray. Part 3 Luke 11:1-4
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Have you ever listened to yourself pray?
Did it ever occur to you to think through and analyze your prayers, to examine precisely what you are saying?
Do it sometime.
Listen carefully the next time you or someone else is asked to pray.
This first struck me when I was attending a Men’s bible study group for a church I attended while going to Bible college.
The former pastor of the church was there at the study and he asked the question
Why do we just pray?
Why do we us the word just in our prayers.
God if you would just do this.
God if you would just do that.
Why do we not ask God to do more than just?
Prayer almost seems pointless if God already knows.
But of course there is more to prayer than simply asking.
Prayer helps us in so many ways.
If we actually get on our knees to pray, it is a very helpful reminder that we are approaching someone who is worthy of respect and worship.
This is helpful for our sinful hearts are constantly putting self at the center,
but prayer is an act of humbly approaching the great God of the universe.
Prayer is also the means by which we have a relationship with God.
God does not simply want us to be askers, but children.
Prayer is not merely so that we can get stuff that benefits God.
God delights in us and we are to seek His face, prayer is a means of fellowship.
Prayer is something that benefits us too.
Prayer is our quality time with our father that we can build up our relationship with him.
Prayer is also the time when we quiet our hearts,
when we are honest before God, and the Holy Spirit can convict us of sin, comfort us, teach us, guide us, etc.
Prayer is not only a duty but a delight,
not only a service but a benefit and gift,
not only a responsibility but a joy and privilege.
We are commanded to pray, but this is not something that we do which we cannot enjoy and benefit from, it is something that benefits us immensely.
Which is why it is important that we learn to pray.
1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread, 4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”
Your Kingdom Come
Your Kingdom Come
After praying for God’s reputation, we then pray for his rule: “Your kingdom come” (Luke 11:2).
Jesus had been preaching about the kingdom of God since the beginning of his public ministry.
Here in the second petition he teaches his disciples to also pray for its coming.
The kingdom of God is not a nation-state,
It is not a system of government, or a geographic region on a political map.
Very simply, God’s kingdom is God’s rule.
IT is the fact that God has perfect authority over all creation,
over his enemies, over the people who honor him as their King.
This second petition is a prayer for the glory of God.
To pray for the kingdom is to pray for God’s glorious rule to bring all things under its control.
We pray this for ourselves, asking God to reign in our hearts by faith.
We ask God to help us do things his way, not our way.
We want to obey his royal commands and serve his royal will.
We also pray this outwardly though as well.
Praying the same thing for our families, asking that our homes would be outposts of the kingdom—
places where God’s divine dominion is acknowledged in our household, as Joshua said - as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.
We pray for our mutual service, and the ordinary routines of daily life.
We pray this for our churches, asking God to conform our lives and relationships to the gospel.
We pray this for our town, asking that it would become a community where strangers become neighbors because of the gospel,
A place where the poor receive protection, the weak are defended, business prospers, all of this to the glory of God.
We pray this for our nation, asking that truth and sacrifice would prevail over selfishness and greed.
We pray this for our world, asking that one day very soon Jesus would return to set everything right.
We pray not only for God’s kingdom in the future, but we pray for the increase in the impact of Christ’s finished work in this present evil age.
The kingdom of God is not only a far off idea.
The kingdom here now, but will continue to be further revealed until Christ’s return.
The kingdom is here and now, is reflected in the Greek verb tense of your kingdom come.
Come is in the aorist tense.
A word that has a completed action with ongoing results.
This is the already here, but not yet fully here tension in our world today.
This ongoing nature of God’s Kingdom coming means that we pray for souls to be saved, but also for souls to be grown.
It is also a prayer for churches to be planted and churches to be strengthened,
it includes praying for missionaries and bible translators, and all those things that lead to people being rescued from Satan's kingdom and brought into the kingdom of Christ.
This is a prayer of spiritual warfare.
There is an ongoing way in which the inaugurated kingdom is present and has an ongoing effect.
For example, a person gets born again and experiences the power of regeneration and they are brought into the kingdom of God.
They die to the power of sin, they are no longer in the kingdom of satan, they are citizens of heaven.
The power of God’s future kingdom is taking ground in our character and growing the fruits of the new age in the fruits of the Spirit.
We change from one degree of glory into another, a glory that belongs to the new creation.
These are the vertical aspects of prayer to the Lord.
Imagine a couple dancing at their wedding.
We are the bride of Christ, he has won our hearts and we are his.
And now we are invited to live by faith, with our gaze fixed on him and our every move lived in response to his loving leadership.
Just as in a dance, there are three options and two of them are bad.
We can imagine that living by faith means being uninvolved – hanging like a dead weight as he leads the dance.
That will never be a pretty sight.
Or we might assume that we must play our part and fight to express our own leadership on perhaps 50% of the steps.
Again, not pretty.
The beautiful way to engage the dance is 100% active, but 100% responsive.
We fix the gaze of our hearts on him and follow his every lead.
Fully involved, but completely responsive.
With our hearts and minds oriented towards God.
That makes for a beautiful married dance.
When we are praying for God’s kingdom to come we are engaging in that dance.
The task of the church, that you and I as believers have, is to make the invisible kingdom visible through faithful Christian living.
So we pray, Father let your kingdom come!
It is our hope, our desire, to see the kingdom fully present.
This then is a prayer for judgement, a prayer which remembers where our home lies and our final hope lies.
It is a prayer for God to judge and to put a final end to satan, sin, death, and all rebels.
Because we seek the glory of His name, because we want His name to be honored and His majesty to be seen a recognized by all, we want nothing more than that moment where every knee will bow to come as soon as possible.
This then is how Christ teaches us to pray, ‘Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come.’
He teaches us to pray this way that we might daily remember that God is God,
that His glory is our greatest priority and joy,
and that our hearts are to be so caught up with His beauty that we cry out for Him to glorified and for His kingdom to come.
I give this so much time because our hearts so easily and frequently orient on our selves.
Focus on ourselves.
And we must make the conscious effort to point them to God.
This was a wonderful reminder for me this week in preparing this sermon.
When my attitude is sour, it is most often because I am far too focused upon myself than upon the things of God and what He has for me.
The horizontal aspect of our relationships are not unimportant though ether, the second portion of this prayer focuses on just that.
3 Give us each day our daily bread, 4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”
The issue comes though in that this is where most of the time we begin praying.
For our needs.
We are to want his glory, his kingdom and will before we come to ourselves.
But that does not mean that we are not allowed to pray for ourselves.
God loves us, and Jesus teaches us that we can bring our needs and requests before God.
But as with needing to be taught to want the right things first, we are also taught the right things to want for ourselves.
What should we bring as prayer requests to God? The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to ask for provision, pardon and protection.
This covers all the basic needs that we have in body, mind and spirit.
We have prayed regarding our relationship to God now we pray regarding our relationship to the world, others, and the devil.
These three requests direct us to the struggles that we have in a fallen world
and our need for God as sin disrupts our relationship to work and providing,
our relationship to others in forgiveness
and our relationship to the spiritual war we are in as we battle temptation in all its forms.
Prayer for our daily needs.
Prayer for our daily needs.
‘Give us each day our daily bread.’
This prayer request put in our mouths by God gives us the confidence to ask for our daily needs.
Bread which was the staple diet of someone in the ancient world is a token for daily needs.
What are your daily needs?
I am not talking wants, I am talking needs.
Here Jesus is asking us to pray for our needs not for our greeds.
The human heart quickly leans towards making gods out of created gifts and replacing the Giver with His gifts.
Everyone would like to be rich, but the Bible warns against easy money.
In fact the Bible warns that those who desire to be rich fall into sin.
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
In praying this way, we are not asking for our needs, but we also have the opportunity to evaluate what are the things that are attempting to pull us away from God.
What am I tempted to pray for, and get mad at God if he does not provide it to me in my time frame or at all?
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
When we ask for our daily needs, this does not mean that we are not to plan for the future,
no the wording is meant to bring to mind other verses which teach us contentment.
This request is not denying the connection between our daily work and God providing through our work.
This means that all those prayer requests that relate to our work,
its conditions, our work colleagues, our productivity,
our prayers to honour God in the work place by our witness all fall under this request.
We need to remember every time that we pray this request that things fade, and rust, that the riches of heaven are the riches we should be working for.
This request is asking us to remember who our true provider is, and be honest about what we need and what we don’t need.
Prayer for pardon.
Prayer for pardon.
The next phrase has to do with praying for forgiveness.
Luke 11:4 (ESV)
4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
Of all the things that we are to pray for, Jesus puts forgiveness in the top things he encourages us to pray for.
It is interesting though that forgiveness is not at the top of the list.
Have you ever felt like every time you sin, you aren’t able to approach God.
Or that God disowns you every time when you do something wrong?
Perhaps even going so far as to think you have lost your salvation?
This is a faulty understanding of sin.
You should grieve and be sad over your sin yes, but not beat yourself up to try and gain forgiveness.
What we miss in thinking this way is that once God becomes our father, although he may discipline us, he will never disown us.
If we have truly trusted in Jesus as our Lord and savior, then we are sealed by the Holy Spirit.
We are in Christ.
Salvation is not something that you can lose.
This idea goes back to the parable of the sower that we saw in chapter 8.
Which soils represent a saved person?
Was a person that grew up among thorns truly saved?
We don’t know, but God does.
But we do know that salvation is an irreversible thing.
Eternal life never becomes uneternal once it is begun, and God never ceases to be my father.
I can start every prayer by addressing him as Father even though I have sinned.
Sin may strain the relationship, but it never breaks it.
Why do we continue to need pardon then?
Luke, Volumes 1 & 2 Three Petitions for Us
This is how we must always come to God: not confident of our own righteousness, but pleading for his mercy and grace.
The Lord’s Prayer is a sinner’s prayer, in which we acknowledge that we are unworthy sinners before a holy God.
This is something we need to acknowledge every day.
Just as we ask for daily provision, so also we need to ask for daily pardon.
The confession of sin is an ongoing part of our relationship with God. Our sins are forgiven through Christ’s death on the cross.
Now, whenever we sin, as we continue to do, we can claim God’s forgiveness in Jesus’ name.
God takes care of all sin, past future and present.
This is vitally important.
Imagine that God only took care of your past sins, he cleans us up and then says, ‘now you are on your own’.
It might sound great that your past sins have been forgiven,
but it is amazing how quickly we run up our sins account, and need our debts forgiven again.
As Martin Luther frequently and famously said, the whole Christian life is one of repentance.
This instruction to pray for pardon is directed outward as well.
While acknowledging our own sin first, it also recognizes the sins of others and the sins we commit against one another.
When people do us wrong, they put themselves in our debt.
The same is true of our own sin against God: it deserves to be punished.
We owe God the penalty for our rebellion, which is eternal death.
But God has mercy for sinners.
He is willing to cancel our debt if only we will come to him in faith and repentance.
One of the strongest proofs that we have received such forgiveness from our Father is our own commitment to forgiving others,
no matter what they have done.
It is simply a fact: the children of God forgive their debtors.
By forgiving our debtors, therefore, we show our family resemblance to our Father in heaven.
We each need a daily reminder that our forgiveness, and our forgiving others are linked.
Seeking pardon or forgiveness is woven into our prayers because other people hurting us,
on purpose or by mistake,
is as certain as our own sinning against God.
We are being trained by this request not only to keep short accounts with God but to quickly settle with others who sin against us.
Praying for protection.
Praying for protection.
The final item in our pattern of prayer is for protection.
English Standard Version Chapter 11
And lead us not into temptation.
This request is not saying that God is the one who tempts us.
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
Whenever we are tempted, it is by the allure of our own sinful desires.
James goes on in chapter 4 - what is that causes fights and quarrels among you, is it not the passions at war within your flesh?
Sometimes I think we enjoy being tempted, almost as much as we enjoy giving in in the moment.
There was an advertisement a while back that Jaguar made for one of their cars.
It lists seven deadly sins.
Lust, greed, pride, sloth, envy, wrath, and gluttony, and then goes on say “prepare to shift effortlessly from temptation to exhilaration.
Too often when it comes to temptation our answer is no, I feel powerless to resist.
Especially with sins that have become ingrained habits.
Gossip, we just have to share that news.
Lust, we must have that instant gratification.
The Bible teaches that when we are tempted, God always provides a way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13).
It also teaches that God can use the trial of our temptation for spiritual good (James 1:2–3).
The devil tempts, but God tests, the devil wants to see you sin and be judged, God wants you to learn strength and persevere and grow in character and holiness.
So although you pray that God will not lead you into temptation,
that does not mean that he will not test you with the difficulties of life,
nor lead you into situations where the only way forward is holiness and self-denial.
The Bible is full of those who have been tested by God, Job, Abraham, Paul and even Jesus.
Testing refines us.
6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Let’s say you pray for God to help you overcome a certain sin, does that mean that you can just sit back and wait for God to remove that desire?
No, God never removes the feeling of a temptation; you will like sin until the day you die, but with God’s help we can also hate it, and win victory over it.
As with all prayer there is your part.
When we pray for our daily bread, we still have to go out and work.
When we pray for forgiveness we still have to go out and not sin again,
and when we pray to overcome temptation we have to put actions into place to avoid it.
You can’t pray for God to help you overcome temptation and then go flirting with it.
He will add strength to your own efforts not do all the fighting for you.
What are the things that you are weak toward and need to avoid, commit them to God in prayer but then also do your part by avoiding them.
This, then, is the way that Jesus taught us to pray.
We begin with our Father God, asking him to enhance his reputation and extend his rule.
Then we turn to our own needs, asking God for daily provision, daily pardon, and daily protection.
When we pray this way, we are standing against the prevailing values of our fallen world.
In a culture that is increasingly secular and profane, we pray for holiness.
In a culture where people want to promote their own agendas, we pray for the kingdom of God.
In a culture that fosters its independence and lives for its luxuries, we trust God for daily bread.
In a culture that is convinced of its own righteousness, we beg forgiveness. In a culture that revels in its temptations, we ask God to lead us away.
As a closing act of solidarity amongst us, I would like for us to pray this prayer together, understanding it to be a pattern for our prayer lives going forward.
Luke 11:2–4 (ESV)
“Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread, 4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”