THE MODEL PRAYER (Part 2)

Introduction

-{Matthew 6}

-Prayer can definitely be difficult for adults, and sometimes it’s hard to teach to kids as well. Quite often we teach kids to recite prayers like the Lord’s Prayer to teach them, but sometimes they mishear things and the results are silly.

~I mentioned last week the kid who thought God’s name was Harold, because according to him the prayer went: Our Father in heaven, Harold is your name.

~Another child thought the prayer went: Our Father in heaven, how’ja know my name?

~One child was taught to recite the prayer using the King James English said: Our Father who does art in heaven…

~There was a kid who thought instead of asking for daily bread, the prayer said: Give us this day our jelly bread.

~A 6-year-old was overheard reciting the Lord's Prayer at a church service: "And forgive us our trash passes, as we forgive those who passed trash against us.

~There was one woman who said that when she was younger she thought that the last line of the prayer was “lead a snot into temptation” and she thought she was praying that her little snot of a sister would get into trouble.

-Kids might have these slips of the tongue, because honestly, they really have no idea what they are saying or what they are praying. Sometimes, even we adults say stuff, but maybe we have no idea what in the world we’re actually doing.

-Jesus’ early disciples asked Him how to pray, and Jesus gave them and leaves for us a model that will help guide us as we approach the throne of grace. We know it as the Lord’s Prayer through which the Lord taught and trained His early disciples. And now, although we don’t repeat this prayer verbatim, this prayer gives us a pattern that can guide our thoughts as we lift our prayers to God.

READ Matthew 6:9-13

Matthew 6:9–13 ESV

9 Pray then like this: “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 lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Last week I looked at the first three points of the Lord’s prayer, and you can see the sermon on YouTube or listen to it via podcast. But let me quickly summarize those three points:

1) Recognition of relationship

OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN recognizes that one needs to be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ for Him to hear and answer prayers. We are able to approach God in the intimacy of this relationship, while at the same time remembering to fear and respect God, because as much as He is Our Father, He is also the transcendent God of Heaven

2) Petition of praise

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME is a call to bring honor and glory to His name and reputation through us and through the spread of the gospel throughout the world. We desire the whole world to be directed to the praise of His greatness.

3) Surrender to sovereignty

YOUR KINGDOM COME, YOUR WILL BE DONE, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN is to pray that God’s sovereign rule and reign through Jesus Christ would come into the hearts of all people everywhere, and that through that sovereign reign people would do His will quickly and perfectly just as it is done in heaven.

-But now there are three more points to this prayer:

4) Plea for provision

-GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD—we began the first half concentrating on God and His name and His rule, and now, understanding who God is, we come to Him with our particular concerns and needs

-We approach God as limited, needy human beings who are unable to provide for themselves. We pray that God would provide for us that which we need to sustain us in this world. Jesus specifically uses the word bread because bread was the staple food in the Jewish diet of the first century, and so to pray for bread was to pray for the most basic of provisions.

~It is hard for us to fathom this because we can make a quick trip to the grocery store for anything we might need. Very rarely are any of us middle-class Americans hard up for life’s necessities. But for 1st century Jews even the basics of life were a struggle, and sometimes scarce if drought and famine hit. If that were the case, they had nowhere else to turn but God.

-We need to remember in our supposed self-sufficiency that God is the one that gave us what we have and is the source of everything that we have and need. So, for all of our needs we turn to Him and humbly ask that He would give, and God graciously and abundantly provides.

-We are reminded of this later in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says:

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9–11 ESV)

-But it is not just bread and not just the basics that we pray for, but anything that we might need in this physical world. The Reformer, Martin Luther, wrote about what “daily bread” truly entails. He said:

"What does daily bread mean? Everything that nourishes our body and meets its needs, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, yard, fields, cattle, money, possessions, a devout spouse, devout children, devout employees, devout and faithful rulers, good government, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors and other things like these."

-Daily bread is what we need for a life of shalom peace on this earth. But praying for daily bread does not entail praying for outlandish things that would be used to satisfy unnecessary lusts. Or, as the cliché goes, we pray for our needs, not our greeds.

-Famous medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas points out several ways that our habits in owning things can become selfish and sinful. Author Kyle Bennett summarizes Aquinas’ points this way:

He says that we become selfish and sinful in our owning when we (1) want things beyond our state and condition of life, (2) abuse and defraud others in our acquisition of these goods, (3) are never content with what we have but must have more, (4) consume or spend too much in a day when it could last for many days, and (5) become proud in our possessions and forget that they come from God.

-And so, to offset any greed, we pray for just what we need in the here and now. It is DAILY bread. Not the bread of tomorrow or months from now. We do not want to have lack, nor do we want to overabundance because either of those situations would be detrimental to us both physically and spiritually.

~In Agur’s chapter (30) in Proverbs, he gives this prayer which we all ought to take to heart in this consideration of daily bread:

Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” (Proverbs 30:7–9 ESV)

-Don’t give me too much, and don’t give me too little…..But I know God provides for my needs. Whether we think it is big or small, seemingly important and seemingly unimportant, it all comes from God’s hand and is a point of prayer.

-We are thankful that we have a God who gives us what we need when we need it. He GIVES US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

5) Appeal for pardon

-Not only do we approach God with our physical needs, but we also approach Him with our spiritual needs. The next point that Jesus makes is FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS

-We want to have spiritual shalom peace as well as physical shalom peace, but we disrupt that peace when we sin because it affects our interaction with God.

~God is perfectly holy and just and the Bible clearly states that sin cannot abide around Him, and in His justice He has to give sin its rightful punishment.

~Yet, God is also merciful and gracious, and He offers forgiveness to those who would seek it. Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, is the basis of any and all forgiveness given by God, because at the cross of Jesus Christ the justice for sin was satisfied and the basis of mercy was established.

-And so, when you first come to faith in Jesus Christ, from a standpoint of salvation and receiving eternal life, your sins are forgiven—the word literally meaning that your sin is released from you or divorced from you or cancelled.

~However, even after you are saved, you still sin, and even though that sin won’t get you kicked out of heaven, it is detrimental to your spiritual walk because it does cause a barrier between you and God, not in a losing your salvation way, but in the fact that you are not walking in fellowship with God.

-So now, as Christians, we confess our sins and seek God’s forgiveness not in order to get into heaven, but in order to have fellowship with God and have an unhindered walk. If we are stubborn and we refuse to confess and repent and we hold onto our sin (whatever it might be), then God is going to seem very distant from us, and we will be leading a pretty miserable life.

-As Christians, then, we are confessing and repenting, not to be saved, but because we are saved and we want to walk and fellowship with God. Pastor John R. Rice I think explained it well when he wrote:

Though all my trespasses are already forgiven me (Col. 2:13) and not one of them can ever be charged against me to the condemnation of my soul, yet God is displeased when I sin and sin interferes with the communion of the child with his ‘Father which is in heaven.’ Referring to the salvation of my soul, my sins are already all forgiven. But when fresh sin comes between the happy fellowship of the Father and the child, then that sin needs to be removed, that is, forgiven, in the secondary sense….And this daily cleansing and daily restoration of intimate, sweet fellowship with the Father we cannot have unless we forgive others their sins against us!

-And that leads to a part that might seem confusing to some, because the prayer asks God to forgive our sins AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS. Some might misconstrue that to mean that our forgiveness is dependent upon our forgiving others. But notice the tense and case of the verbs—it is past tense, meaning it is assumed it is something that already happens. Lord forgive me as I already forgive others.

-So, Jesus is not saying we are forgiven because we forgive others, but we are forgiving people exactly because we have been forgiven. As Al Mohler says:

When we are forgiven we are transformed into forgiving people….One way to know we have received forgiveness is if we become forgiving people.

~You could say that being forgiving is a fruit of receiving forgiveness.

-And so, Jesus warned elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount not to hold people’s sliver in their eye against them when you got a bit ol’ honking log sticking out of your own. You concern yourself with your sin, and extend the forgiveness given to you unto others.

As John Stott wrote:

Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offense against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. If, on the other hand, we have an exaggerated view of the offenses of others, it proves that we have minimized our own.

-And so we pray: AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS.

6) Pursue His protection

-Jesus closes His model prayer with LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL (or EVIL ONE per some translations).

~We need God’s protection from threats to our spiritual life. Some of the threats come outside of us, and some of the threats are inside of us.

-If you have any knowledge of the Bible, you are immediately struck with the wording asking God not to lead us into temptation, because it might sound like God would lead us to temptation. But we know that James says:

“Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” (James 1:13 ESV)

-God tests our faith, but He never lures us to do evil. So, what is happening here is a rhetorical way of asking God to protect us from those things that would lead us to sin. We understand that we have enemies that would seek to lead us into harms way, and we need God to protect us from them and ourselves. The devil will use the world to tempt our flesh to sin, and we don’t have the power within us to withstand such attacks. That’s why James continues by saying:

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:14–15 ESV)

-We live in a spiritually hostile environment that would lead us into harms way if it can—we are in a daily fight, and we just don’t have the resources in ourselves to protect ourselves.

-It’s very dangerous for us to think that we are somehow immune to temptation or we are strong enough to resist temptation or that we are too spiritually giant for it to bother us. That’s just nonsense leading to a big fall.

~When author Robert Louis Stevenson was a boy he once remarked to his mother, "Momma, you can't be good without praying." "How do you know, Robert?" she asked. "Because I've tried!" he answered.

-We can’t resist evil ourselves without prayer to God, because let’s face it, we’ve tried and we’ve failed over and over again, so we need help, and we pray to God for that help.

~Charles Spurgeon put it in perspective:

A man who carries gunpowder about with him, may well ask that he may not be led where the sparks are flying. If I have a heart like a bomb-shell, ready to explode at every moment, I may well pray God that I may be kept from the fire, lest my heart destroy me.

-Jesus said from the heart comes all manner of evil, and it is susceptible to temptation by the devil. The devil is not some sort of domesticated house cat that talks big but is harmless. The Bible warns us that the devil is a lion seeking someone to devour.

-God wants to shepherd us away from spiritual harm. If you think of the picture that the Bible gives, Christ is our good shepherd and we are the sheep. Sheep are dumb animals and have a tendency to walk into danger, and so the shepherd has to prevent them from hurting themselves or has to rescue them from the danger they put themselves in. That’s us. We need the good shepherd to keep us from the evil of the world, flesh, and the devil.

-So, we’re asking God to protect us and lead us away from the harm that we’d likely walk right into as sheep with hearts that are easily led astray. We pray LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL

Conclusion

-To help kids and adults know and remember the meaning of each part of the prayer so then they would be able to follow its example, Grace Finders ministries gave a short commentary on each section that will hopefully summarize for us where our prayers can and should head, and I have added a little bit to what they said:

Our Father in heaven,

God, through Christ you are our father, and we have intimate relationship with you. But You are in heaven, which means you are so far above us we are to fear and respect you.

hallowed be your name.

Your name is holy – it is special. Whenever we say your name and think of your character, we say it with love and respect, and we make ourselves available to be used to glorify your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done,

Whatever you want is what we want. You are the one in charge. You are King and Lord and you rule and reign.

on earth as it is in heaven.

We want to live now just like it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

Please give us whatever we really need today.

and forgive us our debts,

Please forgive us for the wrong things we’ve done- (forgive our sins),

as we also have forgiven our debtors

I forgive people for bad things they have done to me.

Lead us not into temptation

Help us get out of situations where we will find it really really hard to do the right thing.

but deliver us from evil

and save us from the works and workers of evil.

-Prayer is special and it is a privilege, and I want you equipped as much as possible to do it, because prayer is powerful.

~Maybe there is something you need to pray about, the altar is open

~But if you want to experience the power of prayer, you first need to believe in Jesus Christ…