Sermon Tone Analysis

Pray

This prayer from Jesus is also called the Lord’s prayer.

Read Matthew 6:9-15

Praying as a new believer is like walking through completely uncharted territories.

What is prayer?

Who are people praying to?

Are you supposed to keep your eyes open or closed?

Why is everyone bowing their heads and folding their hands?

Prayer in its essence is quite simple: you are communicating with God.

You can also pray to Jesus and the Holy Spirit since God is a trinity being.

In this example, Jesus is talking to God the Father.

He demonstrates that even though He is a part of the Trinity, He still needs to commune with God to maintain their relationship.

Prayer is important because if we believe that our faith is a relationship with God, we must talk with God and also hear from Him.

God hears us and desires for His will to be done on earth.

As children of God, we are given tasks and responsibilities to carry out.

If we don’t converse with the One who gives us instructions, how can we be faithful and diligent believers?

So how do you begin to pray?

Simply talk to God.

The Lord’s Prayer, or really the Model Prayer, is a simple guideline for how you can pray, but there are no limits or structure in how “you should pray.”

Prayer is a special and intimate time where you get to meet the God of the universe in your specific way!

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”

Relationship

Father does not refer to sexual generation or chronological sequence, but the intimate personal relationships within a Jewish home.

It is astonishing that believers can call YHWH, “Father,” through their faith relationship with Jesus!

Hallowed

This term meant “honored,” “respected,” or “held in high esteem.”

The verb comes first in the Greek sentence for emphasis.

Hallowed has to do with something or someone being different or set apart.

We must come before God with an attitude of reverence for God’s perfection (in contrast to our imperfection), his wisdom (in contrast to our foolishness), his power (in contrast to our impotence), and his love (in contrast to our selfishness).

God’s holiness is everything that sets him apart from us and all the rest of his creation.

Addressing such a being should never be done casually or flippantly

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

Submission

The kingdom servant sees God’s kingdom as not yet completely fulfilled on earth.

This prayer is not only for the future coming of Christ (although this can be included), but it is also for the spreading of God’s kingdom around the world through his kingdom servants.

Therefore, it is a prayer that we, his servants, would be faithfully obedient and effective in living his kingdom principles in our own lives and then spreading the kingdom through our actions and words.

Focus

This request assumes that God’s will is done in heaven, but not yet on earth (in the same full way).

Sin and rebellion are absent in heaven, but hindrances are present on earth.

This is another request for the spreading of God’s kingdom rule on earth, primarily through the church as the agent of the kingdom.

Our prayers are to be continual reminders to ourselves to “get with” the kingdom program.

Sadly, too many believers live for the weekends and not for Christ’s kingdom.

“Give us this day our daily bread”

Desperation

This petition is probably best taken at face value—as a request for the food needed daily, and that it be provided when it is needed.

Most of the people in Jesus’ day lived hand-to-mouth.

This was true particularly among the lower classes to whom Jesus’ message appealed most.

Source

This request acknowledges God as the provider of every physical need, but it also reminds the petitioner to trust God to provide as the needs arise, and not necessarily in advance.

Compare this with the lesson Israel had to learn during forty years of daily manna; any excess spoiled by the second day.

They were always just one day away from starvation, and yet they ate well during all those decades.

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”

Need

The Greek word for debts in the New Testament appears only here and Romans 4:4.

It is clear that Jesus and Matthew intended the word to mean “sins” here (Luke 11:4).

The choice of this word reflects the fact that all sins place us in debt to God.

Jesus used the idea of debt to teach about sin and forgiveness

There seems to be a condition placed on this request of forgiving others.

Attitude

One does not gain forgiveness by forgiving.

But a person evidences his or her own forgiveness by forgiving others.

Since this is family forgiveness, our sense of forgiveness is denied us when we deny forgiveness to others.

As God’s children, we are commanded to be forgiving.

When we fail to forgive, we reap the consequences of spiritual and moral defeat.

Jesus expects us to replace this specific petition with more personalized requests for forgiveness for the specific sins in our own lives.

No “meaningless repetition” here.

Jesus’ intention might be better reflected if our Bibles printed his words of petition followed by a large white space, leaving room for us to “fill in the blanks” with our own personal sins.

The petitions as he has given them guide us to the important themes for prayer, but he expects us to personalize these principles in our own lives.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”

Weakness

If the preceding request for forgiveness is curative spiritual medicine, then this request is the preventative medicine.

Forgiveness is required to deal with guilt already incurred.

Deliverance from temptation and evil is required to prevent our incurring future guilt.

The kingdom servant’s petition for both forgiveness and deliverance is a prayer dealing with the power of sin (1 John 1:7–9); both look forward to the day when we will escape the presence of sin.

Trust

The kingdom servant who matures and grows in purity and obedience should rely less and less on the prayer for forgiveness and more and more on the prayer for protection.

In this life, the kingdom servant will have need for ongoing forgiveness, but the many lessons learned will help in avoiding the traps of temptation in later life.

Believers must never let down their guard.

We find many exhortations in the New Testament to stay awake and watchful

Now Pray!

Easy way to remember this pattern is Acts

Adoration

Confession

Thanksgiving

Supplication or requests

Take some time right now to pray to God.

Ask Him to teach you how to pray.

Wait upon Him and see what He says.

Trust that you are a child of God and that He does speak to you.

Start and finish each day by thanking God for specific things.

Have a list of prayer topics that you want to pray about as well.

Ask Him what He wants you to pray for as well.

Pray