Prayer
Notes
Transcript
Scripture Reading
Scripture Reading
5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 “Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life.
Martin Luther declared, “I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours in prayer daily. He held it as a spiritual axiom that “He that has prayed well has studied well.” John Wesley says, “God does nothing but in answer to prayer,” and backed up his conviction by devoting two hours daily to that sacred exercise.
To pray is to change. Prayer is the the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of god the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ. This is the hallmark of sanctification!!
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). To ask “rightly” involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills.
1. Prayer connects us directly with the Father. (vs. 5-8)
5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
"In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." (Mark 1:35)
v5-8. Prayer. Jesus makes the same four points as noted above. The focus of his criticism is again on hypocrisy - where the outward act of piety does not represent the true state of the inward self. Jesus is not arguing for a particular stance in prayer, nor a particular place. He simply exposes our corrupt motivations by identifying the tendency to pray more in public than in private. As for repetitious prayer, although Jesus uses the word "pagans", his focus is still on Israel. Such prayer is pagan-like, because pagan religion rests on incantation and repetition. Repetition is unnecessary for "as a father knows the needs of his family, yet teaches them to ask in confidence and trust, so does God treat his children", Hill. Of course, Jesus is not denouncing long prayers, or repetition as such, rather length or repetition as a divine arm-bending exercise.
v35. Early in the morning Jesus heads off to a solitary place for prayer. This may be his practice, or Mark may be illustrating how the press of the crowds, due to his popularity, is already forcing Jesus to adjust his personal behavior.
2. Prayer gives us a vision for our lives in Christ. (vs. 9-13)
9 “Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." (Proverbs 29:18)
What is our vision of prayer?
True prayer begins by listening to God. When we are praying for others we must be listening to what says to us in the process. This is why it is important for us to sit and rest in God before we begin to pray. Otherwise, it can become vain repetition.
We must hear, know, and obey the will of God before we pray it into the lives of others. We must listen for guidance from God on how to pray. We start by praying for small things and gain successes in prayer which in turn build up our faith.
Sometimes we are afraid that we don’t have enough faith to pray for a child or a marriage. Our fears should be put to rest, for the Bible says that great miracles are possible through faith the size of a mustard seed. Usually, the courage actually to go and pray for a person is a sign of sufficient faith. Frequently our lack is not faith but compassion. It seems that genuine compassion between the pray-er and the pray-ee often makes the difference. When we pray for someone are we seeing in our mind’s eye this person’s face. Or if we do not know that person, are we imagining that person in front of us. We cannot have answered prayers unless we have compassion for those for whom we are praying. This was a feature in every healing in the New Testament. If we have God-given compassion and concern for others, our faith will grow and strengthen as we pray.
The Lord’s Prayer, found in 6:9–13, may be the best known and most prayed of all the prayers in the Bible. Many scholars believe a shorter form, found in Luke 11:3–4, is more likely to have been the prayer Jesus taught His disciples. This is possible but not certain. The use of the plurals our, us, and we make it clear that the prayer in Matthew is intended for use in public. The first three petitions deal with relationship with God. The next four petitions deal with life and relationships on earth.
Addressing God as Father (Matt. 6:9) reflects Jesus’ intimate relationship with God. The fact that He instructs His followers to address God this same way means that a similar relationship with God is possible for us. It also points to an understanding of the Church as the family of God. The first petition calls for the holiness of God’s name. Ezekiel 36:16–32 demonstrates what is at stake in the sanctity of God’s name. Israel had profaned God’s name through their sins. God pledged to sanctify His name by restoring Israel. Their return from captivity and the purification of their hearts would bring honor to God’s name. To pray that God’s name be hallowed or sanctified is to pray that God’s people will bring honor to His name by living holy lives.
The second petition prays God’s kingdom come (Matt. 6:10). Because the Kingdom was another name for the messianic age, a petition like this was common in Jesus’ time. The evidence the Kingdom had come would be the complete obedience of God’s people. This can be seen in the third petition that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Since God’s will is done completely and perfectly in heaven, this petition calls for total obedience on earth. The second and third petitions interpret each other.
The fourth petition asks God for the basic material needs of life. Bread (6:11) was the normal and often only form of sustenance for the poor. It was the main course for the two meals eaten each day by Jews. The meaning of the word translated daily is uncertain. It may mean necessary for survival, for the current day, or for the next day. The prayer asks for this bread today, which suggests that one must trust God day by day for the necessities of life. Jesus’ inclusion of this petition shows that His followers should bring their material needs to God in prayer.
Jews often described the commandments as obligations owed to God. This led them to speak of sins as debts (6:12) accruing by failure to meet their obligations to God. The Greek word forgive literally means to let go of or release. Forgiveness is letting go of obligations owed in a relationship. The condition for receiving forgiveness from God is granting forgiveness to our debtors: those who have sinned against us. Verses 14–15 amplify this point and make it clear that forgiveness from God will be forfeited if we refuse to forgive those who have offended us. This theme will be developed at greater length in 18:21–35.
Jewish prayers often asked God for deliverance from the power of sin, guilt, and temptation. The temptation mentioned in verse 13 could be any testing of a disciple’s faith by enticement or disobedience. Falling into temptation would bring disrepute to God’s name and be contrary to the first petition of the prayer. Some debate whether the prayer asks for deliverance from the evil one or from evil. The difference is not important since enticement to evil comes from the evil one, and the resulting disobedience has no place in a disciple’s life.
3. Prayer unleashes the power of forgiveness. (vs. 14-15)
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
"Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." (Colossians 3:13)
v13. Mutual tolerance and forgiveness are also essential qualities in the life of the Christian community. In the same way that God in Christ has forgiven us, so we should strive to forgive one another.
Standing behind the supplication for forgiveness is the centuries-old conviction that the God of Israel is a forgiving God (Exod. 34:7), a conviction that found eloquent expression in the synagogue liturgy of Jesus’ day.
7 keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation.”
When the author of Psalm 103 counted up the blessings for which his soul should bless God, forgiveness of iniquity was placed first on the list. Psalm 130:4 observes that God’s readiness to forgive is cause for awe. Despite this celebration of God’s forgiving nature, however, both the Hebrew Scriptures and later Jewish tradition were fully aware that divine forgiveness is not automatic. God is not indulgently tolerant of moral failure, as when a doting grandfather smiles at the childish pranks of beloved grandchildren. Moreover, forgiveness is not unconditional; it assumes repentance on the part of the recipient. There is no point in a man begging for divine forgiveness for having beaten his daughter in a drunken rage if he has no intention of dealing with his drinking problem. Behind actual forgiveness, however, lies readiness to forgive, an attitude that is constant in God but inconstant in us. Our determination not to forgive another is a form of impenitence that blocks the flow of divine forgiveness. The Lord’s Prayer and the attached commentary (vv. 14–15) do not suggest that God’s pardon is doled out in proportion to the number of times we have forgiven; it is, rather, that we must genuinely repent our hardness of heart before expecting to receive God’s mercy (see Eccles. 8:1–6 and Matt. 18:21–35).
21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
