Pray Like Jesus- Practice Makes Perfect (a series on practical righteousness) #3; Build your Life #22

Intro: Life is all about learning how to do stuff. What were you born knowing how to do? Cry? Eat? Poop? Sleep?No one had to teach you how to do any of that. What about breathing?Breathing is an instinctual reflex. The body just does it because it needs oxygen.

Several years ago, I found a description of prayer that really stuck with me. Smith’s Bible Dictionary- “Prayer is the free utterance of the soul’s wants to God the Father, asking benefits in the name of our Savior, and interceding for the good of others also. Faith is quickened by prayer; and it may be said that prayer is an indication of the spiritual condition of the soul- it being to the soul what breath is to the body.” You don’t need to tell your body to breathe, & you don’t need to tell your soul to pray.

J.C. Ryle (Practical Religion)- All the children of God on earth are alike in this respect. From the moment there is any life and reality about their religion, they pray. Just as the first sign of life in an infant when born into the world, is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again, is praying.

In our text for today, Jesus will teach us how to pray. Matthew 6:9–13 recite it together (KJV)- After this manner therefore pray ye:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give us this day our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

As a Christian we don’t really need someone to tell us to pray, but we may need someone to teach us how to pray. If we don’t learn how to pray correctly, we may form selfishly motivated and meaningless prayer habits, e.g., prayer life of hypocrites is shaped by why they pray, to be seen by people, e.g., the prayer life of heathens is shaped by how many words they can use to be heard by their so-called gods. Jesus teaches us that we ought not to pray like either one of them- mindless or meaningless, but by His Model.

So, Jesus teaches us how to pray-in this manner, pray this way.

1. A Prayer for God’s GLORY, Vss. 9-10 (relational)

The Lord’s Prayer is sometimes called the Paternoster (Lat. our father). To address God as Father demonstrates a relationship, a very different way of thinking about God than the 2 previous examples- hypocrites(vs. 5) or heathens (vs. 7). God is not the universal Fatherof all people; He is the personal Father of those who believe in Jesus. John 1:12, But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name...”It is only through a personal relationship with Jesus that God becomes our Father.

Not only is God our Father (personally), but He is our HEAVENLY Father (powerful). He is transcendent, far above us, but also a Father whose presence is near to us. Stott- It is always wise, before we pray, to spend time deliberately recalling who he is. Only then shall we come to our loving Father in heaven with appropriate humility, devotion and confidence. So, God is a personal & powerful Father, & Jesus teaches us to pray 3 requests about God- YOUR Name, YOUR kingdom, YOUR Will.

1st, a prayer for His Name to be Hallowed. Hallowed- sanctify; make holy; to consecrate. Name-identifies the specific God of Israel, YHWH, the One True God, God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 8:1, O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!”

2nd, A prayer for His Kingdom to Come. Kingdom- the domain ruled by God. Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount is about the Kingdom of God coming to bear on earth through the lives of Jesus’ disciples. 1 Corinthians 15:24–25, Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to Godthe Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. 25For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The Kingdom is now as Christ reigns in heaven & in the hearts of His people, but the Kingdom is not yet in the sense that the end has not come (arrived, an event to come), e.g., Coming soon to a theater near you! We are praying for it to come!

3rd, a prayer for His Will to be done. Will- desire, purpose; sense- inclination, attitude of mind that favors one alternative over another. God’s will is done whenever we choose what He would choose if He were in our shoes. By the way, He was! Through Jesus!

For God’s will to be done, we would choose the things that Jesus would choose, when He was in our shoes!

2. A Prayer for Our GOOD, Vss. 11-13 (communal)

The second set of petitions is about US- to give us, forgive us, deliver us. It’s communal. On the basis of a personal relationship with our powerful heavenly Father, we come to Him in prayer for one another.

1st, to LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME (daily bread). Dailyis a scarce word in the NT & in ancient Greek, it is only used here & in Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. The most accurate translation may be daily, as in the following day, or the next meal. A. M. Hunter: Used in the morning, this petition would ask bread for the day just beginning. Used in the evening, it would pray for tomorrow’s bread.’ Thus we are to live a day at a time.

Most of Jesus’ disciples were poor and resources were scarce. This prayer reflects the real needs of day laborers- fishermen & farmers, a people who may not know when or where their next meal is coming from. It’s not a prayer for retirement bread, but for daily bread.

Daily Bread calls to mind the manna in the wilderness. When Israel complained they had no food, God sent them bread from heaven. They were to collect a set amount per person- no one had too much & no one had too little. For those who collected too much, it spoiled, and for those who collected too little, they always had enough.

Carson- The prayer is for our needs, not our greeds. It is for one day at a time (“today”)… A prayer for God to give us what we need for today.

2nd, to LET GO OF OUR DEBTS (forgive). Forgive- to leave or abandon, to stop blaming or taking an offense into account, i.e., letting it go. Debts- refer to sin debt. Luke 11:4, ...forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Sin functions like a debt- God & others.

E.g., when someone hurts us, we want them to pay; when we hurt God, someone did pay- Jesus. God let go of our sin debts toward Him through Jesus, & because He forgives us, we release what someone owes us.

It doesn’t mean that we are only forgiven if we forgive others, but that because we are forgiven, we forgive.

Ephesians 4:32, And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

3rd, to LEAD US INTO DELIVERANCE. Lead- to bring into a state, or a particular condition, in this case, the state of being tempted. Temptation- test, trial; an examination with the express purpose of producing (or proving) fault. E.g., Jesus- Matthew 4:1, Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

James 1:13, Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. God won’t tempt us, but He may lead us into the place of temptation, to be tested & tried. E.g., Job- he lost everything he had except faith in God.

Deliver- Rescue, to free from harm or evil; 1 Peter 5:8, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We don’t know that we will not be eaten up by temptation and sin, so we pray to be delivered from the evil one.

Stott- Thus the three petitions which Jesus puts upon our lips are beautifully comprehensive. They cover, in principle, all our human need—material (daily bread), spiritual (forgiveness of sins) and moral (deliverance from evil). The Lord’s Prayer is for our collective good.

3. A Prayer that is by His GRACE, Vs. 13b (liturgical)

When we read, or recite, the Lord’s Prayer, we read an English translation of a text written in Greek, that was spoken in Aramaic by Jesus. I think we sometimes forget that the man Jesus was thoroughly Jewish. He was shaped by His family & culture- He went to Temple, He went to Synagogue, He read the Torah, He prayed His prayers, etc.

His prayer has elements of the Aramaic Kaddish (holy) Prayer- ancient Jewish prayer regularly recited in synagogue worship after preaching:

Magnified and sanctified | may his great name be

in the world that he created, | as he wills,

and may his kingdom come | in your life and in your days

and in the lives of all the house of Israel, | swiftly and soon.

It sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?

The prayers of Jesus’ youth were formative for Him. As our Rabbi, our Messiah, our LORD, the prayer He gave us should be formative for us.

Sometime in the late 1st or 2nd C., a book was written called The Didache (“teaching”).The full title is The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The Didachewas a sort of church manual for primitive Christian groups. It’s kind of like a doctrinal statement and discipleship book all in one, because you can’t separate belief and practice.

Here’s the instruction on prayer: (8.2) And do not pray as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his Gospel, pray thus: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, as in Heaven so also upon earth; give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into trial, but deliver us from the Evil One, for thine is the power and the glory forever." (8.3) Pray thus three times a day.

THE LORD’S PRAYER SHOULD BE A PART OF THE LITURGY OF OUR DAILY LIVES. It was common for Jews to pray 3 times a day- morning, noon, & night(practicing Jews still do this). Early Christians followed the same pattern (Acts 3:1, the hour of prayer, the 9th hour). The Didache prescribed Christians to say the Lord’s Prayer 3 times a day. If this prayer was formative for Jesus, His disciples, and the early Christians, then why not for us too? Make the prayer a part of the liturgy of our daily lives.

This prayer is formative, & there is a form to it- pray like this. That means we can recite it as it stands, and we can use it as a prayer model.

PRAY GRACE 3 TIMES A DAY:

· God’s GLORY to spread (His Name to be Hallowed)

· His RULE to REIGN in our lives (His kingdom & will)

· ASK Him to meet our needs (bring all your requests to Him)

· CONFESS our sins to be forgiven & to forgive others.

· ESCAPE temptation & sin.

Hebrews 4:16, Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.