ESTABLISHED: Talking with God

Three weeks ago we began a series called ESTABLISHED, the aim is to rediscover the true focus of the Christian faith—to restore ourselves to God and nurture a growing relationship with Him—up to this point we have learned what it means to truly know God and to better hear His Word, in weeks to come we will rediscover what it means to serve His people, walk in His will, and share His Gospel.

Today, our third part of the series “Established” we will be exploring what the Bible tells us about “Talking with God”

So if you will please take your copy of God’s word and turn to Matthew chapter 6.

It is by no accident that we started the series off the way have.

Before we can truly talk with God we need to know Him personally first. Then we must learn to listen to Him before we start just talking.

James 1:19 NKJV

19 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;

I think there is a reason God gave us two ears and one mouth. We should listen more that we speak.

However nevertheless the Lord wants us to talk with Him…the Bible calls it prayer.

There are volumes upon volumes of books about prayer raging from A.W. Tozer book called “In Everything by Prayer” which is probably a good book to read on the subject to “211 Powerful Night Prayers that will take your life to the next level”… not to sure about that one.

So where do we begin with this exhaustive topic concerning prayer - talking with God.

I think one must ask the question “How?” How do we pray? In fact that was the question the people asked Jesus during His earthly ministry. Luke 11:1

Luke 11:1 NKJV

1 Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”

The instruction Jesus gives regarding prayer comes to us both from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 and from Luke 11. Jesus prefaces His remarks on the pattern for prayer with these words:

Matthew 6:5–13 NKJV

5 “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. 7 And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 “Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. 9 In this manner, therefore, pray: 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 forgive our debtors. 13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Notice that Jesus said, “Pray then like this,” not “Pray this prayer” or “Pray these words.”

There is some question as to whether Jesus ever meant for us to repeat the prayer. I personally believe that Jesus was not so much giving us a prayer to recite but a pattern to show us the way in which to pray.

Jesus was providing us with an outline of priorities or those things that ought to be priorities in our prayer lives. Let’s look at the sections of the Lord’s Prayer one at a time.

OUR FATHER

The first two words of the prayer are radical as used in the New Testament. The word Father was not the basic form of address for God found in the old covenant community.

He was not to be addressed with any degree of intimacy. The term Father was almost never used to speak of God or to address Him in prayer in the Old Testament.

Yet Jesus brought us into an intimate relationship with the Father. Jesus gave us the privilege of calling God “Father.”

Jesus was the first on record to take prayer and make it a personal discourse with God.

Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, used the Aramaic word Abba, best translated “Dad” or “Papa.”

We can almost hear the cry of alarm from the disciples and see the looks of astonishment on their faces: “You don’t mean it, Jesus. You can’t be serious! We’re not even allowed to speak the name of God aloud. We don’t even call him Father, much less Dad!”

Ironically, today we live in a world that assumes God is the Father of everyone, that all men are brothers.

But nowhere does Scripture say that all men are our brothers. It does say, however, that all men are our neighbors.

There is a restricted sense in which God is the Father of all men as the Giver and Sustainer of life

But nothing in the Bible indicates that an individual may approach God in a familiar sense. The only exception is when that person has been adopted into God’s family, having expressed saving faith in the atonement of Christ and having submitted to His lordship. Then and only then is one afforded the privilege of calling God his Father.

To those who received Him, God “gave the right [authority, privilege] to become children of God” (John 1:12). Only then does God call men “sons.”

Romans 8:14–17 NKJV

14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

Paul teaches that it is only by the Holy Spirit that we can call God our Father.

IN HEAVEN

At the time Jesus spoke the words of the Lord’s Prayer, a debate was raging over the precise location of God’s presence. In the discussion between Jesus and the woman at the well, Jesus was quick to point out that God is spirit, and as such could not be pinpointed to one particular place (John 4). He was neither at Mount Gerizim, as she thought, nor in Jerusalem, as some of the Jews believed.

To be sure, God is omnipresent. There are no finite restrictions to His divine presence, yet Christ spoke of the Father’s being in heaven. Why? Christ was speaking about God’s transcendence.

The God whom we address is above and beyond the finite limits of the world.

“Our Father” speaks of the nearness of God, but “in heaven” points to His otherness, His being set apart. The point is this: When we pray, we must remember who we are and whom we are addressing.

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME

No matter how close God invites us to come, there is still an infinite gulf between our sinfulness and His majesty. He is the heavenly one; we are of the earth. He is perfect; we are imperfect. He is infinite; we are finite. He is holy; we are unholy. We must never forget that God is wholly

God demands to be treated as holy, for He is holy.

God’s honor must become the obsession of the Christian community today. Honor must go not to our organizations, our denominations, our individual modes of worship, or even our particular churches, but to God alone.

Ezekiel 36:22 NKJV

22 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.

What a shift. The nation chosen to have the matchless privilege of showing forth the greatness of God had chosen to profane His name publicly. God had to rebuke them for their treason. In the final analysis, our names, our organizations, and our efforts are all meaningless unless we honor God’s name.

So when talking with God always know to whom you are talking with.

YOUR KINGDOM COME

Jesus focused on the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount, the keynote address of His preaching. Because of this focus, the sermon was more than simply an ethical presentation of principles for good living. Jesus was talking about the character traits of people who live a redeemed lifestyle within the kingdom of God.

Jesus is King of the universe.

This reality, however, is not believed or acknowledged by the world. Though that kingship is an established fact, it is invisible to the world in which we live.

In heaven, there is no question about it. On the earth, there is considerable question about it. Jesus was saying that we must pray that the kingdom of God will become visible on the earth, that the invisible will be made visible.

Christians are to pray for the manifestation of the reign of Christ and the emergence of His kingdom.

If that is our prayer, it is our responsibility to show our allegiance to the King. People won’t have to guess about whom we are exalting.

YOUR WILL BE DONE

This third petition is a prayer for obedience on the part of God’s people, that those who are the people of God will obey the mandates of God.

ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

God is the Covenant Maker; we are the covenant breakers, frequently on a collision course with the will of the Father.

There is a sense in which the first three petitions are all saying the same thing.

The honoring of God’s name, the visibility of His kingdom, and the obedience to His will are virtually the same concept repeated three different ways.

They are inseparably related. God is honored by our obedience, His kingdom is made visible by our obedience, and quite obviously His will is done when we are obedient to that will. These are the priorities Jesus laid down.

We should not come rushing into God’s presence arrogantly, assaulting Him with our requests, forgetting whom we are addressing.

We are to make certain we have properly exalted the God of creation. Only after God has been rightly honored, adored, and exalted do the petitions of God’s people assume their proper place.

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

God provides for His people. It is noteworthy that the request here is for daily bread, not daily steak or daily prime rib. God provides the necessities, but not always the niceties.

One of the things that betrays our fallen condition is the concept of the self-made man, one who takes credit for the bounty of his goods and forgets the Source of all his provision. We must remember that God gives us all we have in the ultimate sense.

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS

The supreme warning from Jesus is that God will judge us according to how we have judged other people. Since man is saved by grace, what better evidence could there be of a man’s salvation than that he offers to others the grace he himself has received? If such grace is not clear in our lives, we may question the genuineness of our own alleged conversion.

Does Prayer Change Things? Forgive Us Our Debts, as We Also Have Forgiven Our Debtors

We must take God seriously on this point. In Matthew 18:23–35, Jesus tells the story of two men who owed money. One owed roughly $10 million and the other owed about $18. The debt of the one who owed the large sum was forgiven by the man to whom he owed that debt. But he, in turn, would not forgive the man who owed him the paltry sum of $18.

Interestingly enough, both men asked for the same thing—more time, not a total release from the debt. It was comical for the man with the exorbitantly large debt to ask for more time, since even by today’s wage standards the amount owed was an astronomical figure. The daily wage at that time was approximately eighteen cents. The man with the small debt could have paid his debt in three months. His request for more time was not unreasonable, but his creditor, rather than expressing the forgiveness he had received, began to harass him. The point should be clear. Our offenses to each other and the offenses people do to us are like an $18 debt, while the innumerable offenses we have committed against the Lord God are like the $10 million debt.

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL

Does Prayer Change Things? Lead Us Not into Temptation, but Deliver Us from Evil

At first glance, this section of the Lord’s Prayer seems to be two separate petitions, but that is not the case. It follows the literary form of parallelism used in the Old Testament—two different ways of saying the same thing. Jesus is not suggesting that God will tempt us to evil if we do not petition Him otherwise. James 1:13 specifically says that God tempts no one. God may test, but He never tempts to evil. A test is for growth; temptation is toward evil.

Not all temptation is from Satan, for James also says that we are tempted by our own lust. The evil inherent within the heart of man is capable of tempting man without Satan’s help.

The plea to avoid temptation and the petition for deliverance from evil are one and the same. The King James Version is not the best translation of this text, because the evil of which Jesus speaks is not evil in the general sense. In Greek, the word translated as “evil” is neuter in gender; in this section of the Lord’s Prayer, the word is masculine in gender. Jesus was saying that we should ask the Father to deliver us from the Evil One, from onslaughts Luther called the “unbridled assaults of Satan,” the enemy who would destroy the work of Christ in this world.

Jesus was telling us to ask the Father to build a hedge around us. The petition is not designed to avoid the trials of this world, but to protect us from naked exposure to the attacks of Satan. In His “High Priestly Prayer,” Jesus asked the Father not to take His disciples out of the world, but rather to “keep them from the evil one [poneros]” (John 17:15).

Does Prayer Change Things? Lead Us Not into Temptation, but Deliver Us from Evil

In this petition, we ask for God’s redemptive presence. Without that presence, we are easy prey for the enemy. Think of Peter, when he had finished rhapsodizing to Jesus about the extent of his commitment, the depth of his love and devotion, and the intensity of his loyalty. Looking at him and foretelling his denial, Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31–32). In other words, Jesus told Peter that on his own he would be putty in the hands of Satan. Were it not for the intercession of Christ on Peter’s behalf, Peter would have been lost; his faith would have failed.

Not only do we have Jesus to intercede for us to protect us from the enemy, but we ourselves are to ask God to keep us safe from the enemy’s hand.