Prayer

6.91

Introduction

This morning is the first day of our summertime schedule when we all meet together for one service, but it’s also the final day of the series that we’ve been in over the past two months titled the Greatest Invitation.  And if you’re joining us for the first time this morning, this has been a series about the greatest invitation in all of life, which is an invitation to know the living God.   And so earlier in the series we looked at some of the attributes of God, and then over the past several weeks we’ve looked some of the different ways that we relate with God.  Last week Pastor Mike taught about worship as a natural response to God’s being and the week before he taught learning to recognize some of the different ways that we can hear from God.  And today we’re going to look at one more way that we relate with God as we wrap this series by looking at prayer.  So, learning to know God through prayer is probably one of the most straightforward teachings in the Bible.  In fact, one of Jesus’s disciples asked Jesus explicitly to teach them how to pray.  And so we’re look at chapter 11 of the Gospel of Luke and dig into not only how to pray but what is the significance Jesus’s instructions. But before we get into Luke, I want to take a step back and consider this more generally for a couple of minutes, consider this activity of knowing God.  When we think about knowing God, and when we consider this phrase to know God’, right from the start we enter into this sort of abstract territory. right, to know God is a very abstract thing to consider.  We can consider how to know or ways to know God, but what does that even mean?  Where do we even start?  We tend to know things as a result of coming in contact with their concreteness.  I know what a volkswagon is because I drive one.  I know a Black Eyed Susan because I see them at my house.  I know what a cold is because I have felt it.  Even theorietcial physicists want to have some type of concrete event to help them understand the physics.  This is a photo of the Large Hadron Collider.    And though some people experience the direct manifest presence of God, generally speaking we don’t have that same type of concrete experience of God, and if we do, it’s rare and irregular.  Being a disciple of Christ doesn’t exclude experience of God, but the focus in on faith. Things of a spritual nature tend to be abstract and lack the concrete structure which allows us to really understand and wrap our minds around.  Of course, John 4:24 says, “God is spirit...” Though God can manifest in a concrete manner if He chooses, by nature is spirit, and because of this He can be abstract.  And for us, when something is abstract, it can be difficult for us to get a sense of exactly what we’re talking about.  Yet, its clear in the Bible that God desires to be known, that He has chosen to reveal Himself to us according to His own motivation.  And, it’s fair to say that the Bible is the progressive revelation of who God is culminating in the life, death, and ressurrection of Jesus.  So God wants to be known and wants us to know Him.  In fact, God’s desire to be known by us has never been the issue of life when we look at the account of redemptive history.  Before we even talk about how to know God, it’s comforting to know that He wants us to know Him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Right, so there are a lot of things being said in this verse, but one the things as we begin to move towards looking at prayer is that God is the one who has taken this initiative to be in relationship with us and to make Himself known.  When we zero in on our faith as disciples of Christ, or if you’re here because you’re curious about Christianity, when we zero in our faith it’s not about us loving Him but Him loving us.  We respond to His love, through worship, for example, but fundamentally God, who is spirit and abstractly difficult for us to make sense of and know, has made himself known to us, through becoming man in the life of Jesus.  And so as we begin to talk about prayer we always want to be looking through this lens. Alright, so I mentioned that there is an explicit account of Jesus’s teaching on prayer, one of Jesus’s teaching on prayer in Luke chapter 11.  And so we’re going read through the first part of that chapter, but before we do I want to backtrack into chapter 10 just a little bit.  

Martha & Mary

If you’re not familiar with the Bible, the story of Martha and Mary is a well known story, and it goes like this.  There are two sisters, Martha and Mary, and Martha invites Jesus, and presumably along with other disciples as well, into their house, and then Jesus begins teaching in their house.  The two sisters respond differently.  Mary sits at the Jesus’s feet and listens to his teaching, but Martha it says was distracted with much serving.  Martha becomes resentful about doing all the work, and so she approaches Jesus and essentially asks Him to correct Mary and tell her to help.   And this sets up, teaching situation for Jesus, and His response is on one hand totally different than many of us would expect, but on the other hand it gives us an window into the dynamics of how the Kingdom of God operates, which is often counter-intuitive to the extreme.  And so if we’re reading this for the first time, or listening to this story for the first time, we might identify with the plight of Martha and expect Jesus to validate her point of view and teach Mary a lesson about fairness and hard work and laziness.  But that’s not what happens at all. Instead, Jesus does the opposite.  He responds to Martha saying, “You’re worried about so many things, but only one thing is necessary.”  And then He goes on to say, “Mary has chosen the good portion.”  And after this, Luke transitions into depicting Jesus’s teaching on prayer, but we’re left to make sense of what this all about and what this has to do with prayer, if anything. On the surface of it, we can just say, ok, it’s better to listen to Jesus than it is to be caught up in doing chores.  So, if Jesus ever shows up, I know that I should stop what I’m doing, and listen to Jesus.  And if we move on from there, we know what to do, but we don’t know why.  We’re really no closer to understanding these dynamics of the Kingdom of God.  And if that’s the case then we’re left needing this instruction manual to refer to know how to live out our Christian life.  It becomes a question of what do I need to do in this situation.  So now if read this story of Martha and Mary, I know that if Jesus ever shows up in my house I should not clean but listen to him.  Right, but what do I do if I can’t get my four year old won’t brush his teeth when I tell him, what do I do?  Or, I just got a raise and I have more money now, what do I do?  Or, I’m feeling depressed or anxious, what do I need to do?   And this is essentially what the Old Testament Law is.  It’s this externalized code of rules that exists outside of ourselves and, and when we live like that, we either have to be constantly checking it, or we have to memorize it.  And then we’re stuck in this mind set of am I right or am I wrong.  Am I doing this write, or am I doing this wrong?  LIving live like that will cause anxiety and depression, in and of itself, not to mention what happens when we do something wrong, or we sin.  This way of life, living by an externalized code, was given to the Jews by God as a temporary stopgap, but it was never meant to be a permamnent way of life.   The OT prophet Jeremiah says,” I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.” In light of this, it’s fair to say that Jesus wants more than for us to have a code, He’s downloading something into our DNA. And this is what we see happening in this passage leading up to Jesus’s teaching on prayer.  Martha and Mary are taking two totally different approaches to life.  Martha is taking a works-based approach, and Mary is taking a Jesus-based approach.  And Martha is essentially asking Jesus, who is ‘in the right’ because clearly I am working hard, caring for others, and doing what I am supposed to do, hospitality was a sacred thing and probably a spiritual discipline in and of itself.  So she’s doing nothing wrong in a certain sense, except Jesus says that she is. and she is being lazy and listening to you.  And Jesus answers this presupposed question.  Mary, and every other person who exists for that matter is made right, is in the right, through her relationship with Jesus, and conversely, no one is made right or in the right by being a good person.  Martha was a good person, but she wasn’t in the right.  Mary was.  We are made right by Jesus, not by being good, or even doing the right thing.  This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And it is complete and sufficient and accomplished and requires nothing else of you.   The gospel is good news about something wonderful that has happened.  The gospel isn’t good advice about what we should do.  This is the greatest invitation. Sometimes, I think that we can get confused about our salvation because there is such a extraordinary shift that takes place in our lives, and we make a decision to follow Christ but if we’re not careful we will be deciding to leave an old life behind, a life in which we were bad or unhealthy or dysfuncaitonal, and we’re making a choice to be healthy and funcaitonal and good and somehow we see Jesus as a part of that life.  And that’s great, we all save ourselves a lot trouble an heartache by doing that.  But we also want to be very clear, that that is not what the Christian faith is about.  We don’t need to be good to get to Jesus.  The Christian faith is about accepting that we jsut need to accept that Jesus got to us.  The work has already been done on the Cross, and what’s left that still needs to be done, well we can rely on Christ for that also. “He who started this great work, will be sure to bring it to completion.”   But there’s another message in here that’s more directly tied to the activity of prayer, and it’s this:Stop what doing, and pray. So this is the story preceding Jesus’s teaching on prayer, which we’re going finally get into now.  But I hope you can see how important it is that we get clear on how to approach Jesus’s teaching on prayer or anything else for that matter.  We’re going to get this straight from Jesus, but we also have to keep in mind that, coming off of the heels of this story of Martha and Mary, which is representative of a story between Grace and Works of the Law, and so Jesus isn’t jsut giving us a how-to manual, He’s inviting us into being able to perceive some of the dynamics of hwo the Kingdom of God operates.  Right, and so we have this one grand invitation and then within that another invitation to look into knowing God.

The Lord’s Prayer   

So, I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t grow up going to church.  I received Christ when I was 29 years old and really had no christian instruction up to that point.  I remember going to church on Christmas Eve often, not as much on Easter and then on some random occasions.  There was a period of time when I was in elementary school that I attended Sunday School for one or two years.  There was a little girl my age who lived down the street, Renee Krystofiak, and she told me one day that she went to Sunday School at the church that was a little ways past her house.  I didn’t want to be left out, so I went to my mom and asked her since Renee was going to church if I could.  So I went to Stanton Reformed Church Sunday School. I wish that I had this great story about how my amazing Sunday School teacher changed the course of my spiritual life, but I don’t.  I have one memory from Sunday School.  We were in the downstairs classroom, and I was in class having this epic runny nose snot thing going on.  I’m not going to go into detail in this setting other than to say that …  Anyway, there was so much snot, I was overwhelmed and suffering.  And this is what I remember, is that my teacher realized my plight, and gave me a tissue out of her bag.  I was so grateful to that teacher.  That’s what I remember. Nonetheless, somehow I memorized this prayer which is commonly known as the Lord’s Prayer.  And it was the King James version. “ Our father, who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our trespassers, Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.  I don’t know how, if I learned it at Sunday School, or if my mom taught me, but that was one of two prayers that I learned.  The other was God is good, God is great, Thank you for our food, amen. This is a prayer that can get etched into our consciousness even though we don’t know how it happens.  And it’s also a prayer that can get in there without us really pausing to consider its signifcance.  Nonetheless, when Jesus was asked by one of his diciples how to pray, this is what he came with. So let’s take a look at this prayer. 11 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.” No before we get into the prayer a couple thingsAs I mentioned, there is a different version of this prayer in Matthew, which is in the sermon on the mount, which is at the beginning of his ministry.  That there are subtle differences isn’t really a significant issue because its assumed that Jesus taught this prayer on many occasions, and so there were probably occasional variations to how he taught at different times.  Nonetheless, the subtle variations don’t fundamentally change the prayer at all.  In fact, this prayer actually has its roots prior to the life of Jesus, though The second thing I want to mention is that we notice that this prayer does not use any singular pronouns, meaning that this prayer is meant to be prayed with others.  So as Jesus responds to the disciple asking him for this teaching, Jesus responds presupposing that they’re going to be doing this together, with one another.  Remember, being a disciple of Jesus is a team sport, and as we read Scripture, we’ll never get away from that because its all over the place.  There’s another teaching Jesus gives that does have a more individual tone to it, so following Jesus is not exclusively coorporate, but it is a part of it.  I want to encourage you to pray this prayer with your family.  Small group plug

one address, two affirmations, three requests 

Our FatherA statement of the possible intimacy that can be had between a human being and God.  This was unusual, at least, to consider God in such a way in the 2nd Temple Judaesm, but not individualsanctity, holiness, of God14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.But we must be careful that we do not misunderstand the biblical understanding of God’s transcendence. God’s transcendence is not to be viewed in either deistic or “wholly other” terms as has been common in some contemporary thought. For as the “covenant” Lord, Scripture clearly stresses that God is also immanent, that is, involved and present in His world (Ps. 139:1–10; Acts 17:28; Eph. 4:6). Your Kingdom Comerecognition of the coming rule of Godalign our will with God’s willBreadChristians live in a state of continual dependence on God.ForgivenessTemptationGive us spiritual direction ‘… and forgive us our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. To begin with, this is not talking about financial debts.  This is talking about forgiving one another as God has forgiven us.  One thing that happens when we spend time reading the Bible is we come to realize that Jesus sets the bar really really high. Let’s think about this in the context of the story of Martha and Mary.  Martha approached Jesus with bitterness and indignation in her heart towards Mary, who she saw as the lazy slacker sitting around listening to Jesus and freeloading while she’s slaving away.  Martha approached Jesus because she was being wronged by her sister Mary.  She had taken offense. So now, when we look back at the story of Martha and Mary through the context of this snippet of scripture, we see an added dimension.  Not only does Jesus reorient Martha’s spiritual compass so that she can undertsand where righteousness comes from, but he instructs her to forgive her sister.  Whether, or not, Martha was actually in the right, she believed she was, and Jesus is saying that you are to forgive her, which is to say, do not hold that offense against her in your heart.  Relate with her as if she had not wronged you. Now, to clarify, Jesus is not saying, present yourself to your sister to be wronged.  Or, when we think of the Christian ethical teaching of turn the other cheek, that doesn’t mean to go and seek out being wronged, or to be a doormat.  No just the opposite, don’t throw your your pearls to swine to be trampelled on.  This is a condition of the heart.  Jesus is instructing us not to hold bitterness or resentment towards those who have wronged us. 

Persevere

persistence and boldnessthere was a premium placed on proper hospitalitydon’t have resources to be hospitable

Conclusion - “You who are evil.”

So, we’ve gone through this teaching on prayer, and everything is great, at least for me, accept for one thing.  How many of you, when we’re reading through this scripture get caught up on this little phrase right here, where Jesus says, “you who are evil.”  Right, so Jesus is talking to His disciples, so obviously he’s referring to them.  Up to this point, everything is so positive and uplifting, and if it wasn’t for little phrase, we could all get out of here feeling good. So, we can have an intellectual reaction to this - why does He call His disciples evil.  But we can also have an emotional reaction to this and actually feel hurt.   we might read this, and maybe you are someone who struggles with self-esteem, and this hurts your feelings, in a very real way.  And this type of verse actually gets in the way of being able to make sense of the Bible, or give yourself over to Christ totally, or to read Scripture… and it leaves us confused.   And so we’ve made three four paragraphs in the Bible, and we’re right back to where we started with the story of Martha and Mary.  And we say, wait a second, I thought Jesus loved me, I thought God loved me.  Right, John 3:16 says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes would not perish but have eternal life.  But here, Jesus, who is God, the second of the Trinity, is calling me evil.  So, does He love me, or not. 14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.