The Disciple's Prayer (Part 1)

The Disciple’s Prayer Sermon Series: Marching Orders - #7 Matt 6:9-10 Nov. 3, 2019 Rev. L. Kent Blanton Review and Segue • “What’s our purpose as humans?” This is the central question in our fall sermon series, Marching Orders • Scripture reveals that our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever (Is 43:6b-7; 1 Cor 10:31) • To glorify God means to feel, think, and act in ways that reflect God’s greatness • Some of the ways that we glorify God include introducing people to Jesus (John 1:41-42a), becoming fully-devoted followers (Matt 16:24), obeying the Great Commandment (Mark 12:28-34) and obeying the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20) • One of the activities required to fulfill our marching orders is prayer. Prayer involves talking with and listening to God • Have you ever wanted to talk with God in prayer, but the words just didn’t seem to come? • Have you ever known someone who seemed to be able to talk freely to God in prayer and wished you could do that? • Have you ever wondered how to pray? • If you answered “yes” to any/all of these questions, you’re not alone. Jesus’ disciples had these same questions and desires. Passage Overview: Jesus Teaches His Disciples How to Pray (Matt 6:9-13) • What is often referred to as The Lord’s Prayer can more appropriately be called The Disciple’s Prayer • The petitions suggested here serve as a sample prayer for Jesus’ followers • This then is how you should pray (Matt 6:9a NIV) – the prayer serves as a guide or model of how Christ followers should pray • The prayer is composed of an invocation and six petitions • The prayer illustrates key components and attitudes that Jesus’ disciples should incorporate into their prayers • The first three petitions in the prayer concern God’s honor, his kingdom and his will • The last three petitions concern our needs as humans • The prayer places God’s concerns first, just as with the Ten Commandments the first table concerns the duties we owe to God and the second table, the duties we owe to our neighbours • We often begin prayer with human needs and sometimes never focus on God and his glory. • Our prayers are often focused on ourselves. This is not the way Jesus taught us to pray. The Invocation (Matt 6:9b) • Our Father in heaven (6:9b) • The first word in the prayer is “our” and “our” is used throughout the prayer • This indicates that prayer is to be done in community • Our praying should reflect the corporate unity, desires, and needs of the entire church • It’s not wrong to pray privately. Jesus encouraged private prayer (Matt 6:6). • But The Disciple’s Prayer teaches us that for all who have placed their faith and trust in his Son, Jesus, God is our Father • The second word in The Disciple’s Prayer is Father. • To call God “Father” suggests his immediate presence and care for the members of his family • God is not a distant god. He is not a god who needs to be appeased. He is as accessible as the most loving human parent • In the OT, the word father appears in reference to God only fourteen times and never once does any individual Israelite address God directly as “my Father.” It would have been considered much too intimate, even blasphemous. • The Jews of Jesus’ day used terms like “The Most High” or “Lord” instead of saying God’s name. Jesus overturned all this. He always referred to God as his Father (cf. Matt 7:21; 8:21; 10:32-33; 11:27; 12:50; 15:13; 18:10, 19, 35; 19:29; 20:23; 25:35; 26:29, 39, 42, 53). Jesus authorizes and invites his followers to do likewise. • Jesus’ teaching was revolutionary. It involved a totally new understanding of the nature of God. • Jesus went even further than calling God, Father. He used the Aramaic word, Abba (the equivalent of our English word “daddy”) to address God in his prayers (Matt 11:25; 26:39, 42; Mark 14:36; Luke 23:34’ John 11:41; 12:27; 17:10, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25). Paul tells us that we too, can call God, Abba (“daddy”) (Rom 8:15). • But Jesus also reminded us that God is not like us. God is different than we are. God is not bound to this earth. He is not a creature. He is in heaven. He is the creator. • With the phrase, in heaven (6:9b), Jesus balances Gods accessibility and the intimacy he affords us with his sovereignty, majesty, transcendence, and infinite greatness. • Jesus reminds us through this phrase that we are never to come to God casually or flippantly • Some see God as distant, uncaring, and uninvolved. They’ve never experienced the intimacy with God that Jesus reveals as possible in the word “Father.” • Others think casually of God as their co-pilot, their buddy, or as “the old man upstairs” who winks at or glosses over sin • Both pictures of God are grossly inaccurate. Do you find yourself in one of these two extremes? Practice Prayer #1: Invocation Write a prayer that . . . • Thanks God that he is your Father (Daddy) and/or • Asks him to show you that he is a good Father and/or • Asks him to reveal his fatherly love for you and/or • Says sorry for thinking of and treating him casually First Petition: Hallowed be your name (Matt 6:9c) • “Let your name be made holy” • This is a prayer that God will bring us and all people to a proper attitude toward him. It expresses an aspiration that God who is holy will be seen to be holy and treated throughout his creation as holy. • To hallow God’s name means to hold it in reverence – hence to hold him in reverence, to honor, glorify, and exalt him. • For us, our name is just a personal designation. But in antiquity, a person’s name was much more important. A name represented one’s person, character, and authority. • The name and quality associated with the name went together. Jesus’ name is an example. The name, Jesus, means saviour. Matt 1:21 tells us that God’s Son was named Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. The name and the activity associated with that name went together. • God’s name stands for God himself. Hence, to treat God’s name as holy is to honor him as he is revealed in Scripture. It is to hold him in the highest reverence and exalt him above all others. • There are many names for God revealed to us in Scripture, including: • Elohim (God) (Gen 1:1) • El Shaddai (Lord God Almighty) (Gen 17:1) • El Elyon (The Most High God) (Gen 14:18) • Adonai (Lord, Master) (Gen 15:2) • I Am Who I Am (The Self-Existent One) (Ex 3:14) • Yahweh (Lord, Jehovah) (Gen 2:4) • Jehovah Nizzi (The Lord My Banner) (Ex 17:15) • Jehovah-Raah (The Lord My Shepherd) (Ps 23:1) • Jehovah Rapha (The Lord That Heals) (Ex 15:26) • Jehovah Shammah (The Lord Is Present) (Ezk 48:35) • Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness) (Jer 23:6) • Jehovah M'kaddesh (The Lord Who Sanctifies You) (Ex 31:13) • El Olam (The Everlasting God) (Gen 21:33) • Qanna (Jealous) (Ex 20:5) • Jehovah Jireh (The Lord Will Provide) (Gen 22:14) • Jehovah Shalom (The Lord Is Peace) (Judg 6:24) • Jehovah Sabaoth (The Lord of Hosts) (1 Sam 1:3) • What aspect of God’s person, character, and authority is the Holy Spirit calling you to honor, to treat as holy? Practice Prayer #2: Honoring God’s Name Heavenly Father, I choose to honor you. You alone are God. I worship you and exalt you and your Son, Jesus, above everything else in my life and in this world. I choose to honor you as (insert name of God) ____________________. I invite you to show yourself as (insert name of God) ____________________ in my life. Let your name be honored in me and in all your children at Hawkwood Baptist Church. Second/Third Petitions - Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10) • This petition expresses the hope of God’s people throughout all of history: that God’s kingdom will come. • Israel was waiting for the Messiah and expected him to establish a kingdom that ruled the world. Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of heaven at his first coming. • God’s Messiah is here and at work, bringing the sovereign and saving rule of God. When he comes, again, his rule will be consummated and every creature in heaven and earth will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. • As we pray ‘Your kingdom come” we align ourselves with God’s plan and purposes. We embrace Jesus’ own practice of prayer, join his kingdom movement, and seek God’s power in furthering the kingdom’s ultimate fulfillment. • Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven expresses the desire that the acknowledgment of God’s reign and the accomplishment of his purposes take place in this world even as they already do in God’s throne room. • Whenever and wherever the kingdom of heaven exerts its presence, God’s will is experienced. • In heaven, God’s will is perfectly done now, for there is nothing there to hinder it. This petition looks for a similar state of affairs here on earth. It asks that earth will experience that same perfect rule of God. • Jesus was preoccupied with doing God’s will. His own utmost act of obedience in his earthly ministry was to submit to the will of his Father. He said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work (John 4:34). • Jesus was still submitting to the Father’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:39, 42) as he prepared to go to the cross • With the inauguration of the kingdom, those who carry out the Father’s will become Jesus’ disciples (12:50). We display the reality of the kingdom of heaven as we remain faithful to that will for our lives (Cf. 5:13-16). • The complete experience of God’s will on earth will occur only when his kingdom comes to earth in its final form, causing an overthrow of all evil rule (Rev. 20:1-10) and completing the regeneration of this earth (cf. Rom 8:18-25). But Jesus’ disciples, you and me, are the present living testimony to the world that God’s will, his rule and reign, can be experienced today. • This petition involves more than passive acquiescence. It calls for our active identification with the working out of the divine purpose. If we pray your will be done, we must choose to live in submission to God’s will. • When we pray your kingdom come, your will be done, we are asking that we might live in growing obedience to God’s declared desires as they are found in Scripture, and that the day may quickly come when sin will be judged and the whole universe becomes to God’s will, even as believers choose to be subject now (Rom 12:2). This should be our earnest desire, and we should always be careful to examine the attitudes of our hearts and our day-by-day actions in accordance with it. Practice Prayer #3: Praying for God’s Kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth Pray . . . • By name for an unbeliever to discover & receive Jesus as Saviour & Lord • That we, God’s people, at HBC, would forsake sinful attitudes and actions • That we, God’s people at HBC, would become fully-devoted followers of Jesus • That we, God’s people at HBC, would grow in passion to introduce people to Jesus • That we, God people at HBC, would live out the Great Commandment & the Great Commission Next Week . . . The Disciple’s Prayer (Part 2)