The Commands of Christ-20

March 9, 2022 A Christian's Prayer

1. Imagine that your prayers, like those in the Psalms, were recorded for others to read. What would people learn about your image of God?

For instance, what is David’s image of God in Psalm 4?

Psalm 4 (NASB95) For the choir director; on stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. 2O sons of men, how long will my honor become a reproach? How long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception? Selah. 3 But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for Himself; The Lord hears when I call to Him. 4 Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. 5Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, And trust in the Lord. 6 Many are saying, “Who will show us anygood?” Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O Lord! 7 You have put gladness in my heart, More than when their grain and new wine abound. 8In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety.

David believes:

God hears (1, 3,

God is the source of our righteousness

He give relief when we face distress

God sees those in right-relationship with Him differently

God does not like sin

God is trustworthy

God’s attention (countenance) results in our good

God gives joy and gladness

God gives a peace that allows me to sleep

God presence is a place of safety

So, examine your prayer life and write down what it tells yourself and/or others about your belief in God.

Purpose: To learn how we should pray.

The fundamental difference between various kinds of prayer is the fundamentally different images of God which lie behind them.The "Lord's Prayer" was given by Jesus as a model of what genuine Christian prayer should be like. According to Matthew he gave it as a pattern to copy ("This is how you should pray"), according to Luke as an actual prayer ("When you pray, say . . ."). We are not obliged to choose, however, for we can both use the prayer as it stands and also model our own praying upon it. Either way, Jesus not only teaches us about prayer but also gives us a greater vision of the God we call "Our Father."

As we continue to think about Jesus’ commandments concerning prayer I would like us to talk about corporate prayer for a few minutes.

We read a few weeks ago:

Matthew 6:5–6 (NASB95) “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

So, Jesus commanded and modeled private prayer.

Matthew 14:23 (NASB95) After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.

He gave only a few examples of public prayer

John 11:38–43 (NASB95) So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” 41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. 42 “I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” 43When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”

But not corporate prayer, per se — prayer in the Garden? Matthew 26:36–38 (NASB95) Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. 38Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”

But the early church engaged in public, corporate prayer:

Acts 1:13–14 (NASB95) When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the sonof James. 14 These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with thewomen, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.

Acts 1:23–26 (NASB95) So they put forward two men, Joseph called Barsabbas (who was also called Justus), and Matthias. 24 And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two You have chosen 25 to occupy this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” 26 And they drew lots for them, and the lot fell to Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

Acts 2:1 (NASB95) When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

Were they praying? We have always thought so.

(Corporate or personal?) Acts 2:42 (NASB95) They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Acts 3:1 (NASB95) Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer.

Acts 4:23–24 (NASB95) When they had been released, they went to their own companionsand reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, “O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them,

Acts 4:31 (NASB95) And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and beganto speak the word of God with boldness.

Acts 12:5 (NASB95) So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. Acts 12:12 (NASB95) And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

Acts 13:1–3 (NASB95) Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

Corporate prayer:

In Acts, encouraged in other passages:

1 Corinthians 14:13–17 (NASB95) Therefore let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15 What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also. 16 Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the “Amen” at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying? 17 For you are giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified.

Cultural but not relevant to the 21st century?

[1] Sacks, Cheryl. (2007). The Prayer Saturated Church: A Comprehensive Handbook for Prayer Leaders (p. 189). NavPress.

Unless God’s people humble themselves in fervent, corporate prayer, revival just doesn’t happen! Only sustained, consistent, concerted, corporate prayer will release the reign of the Lord—His power and glory over our communities. Read what happened when a lone intercessor began a prayer meeting for businessmen in New York City.

The date was September 23, 1857. An intercessor named Jeremiah Lanphier had posted a sign on the Fulton Street Church building that read, “Prayer Meeting from 12 to 1 o’clock—Stop 5, 10, or 20 minutes, or the whole hour, as your time permits.” Jeremiah waited ten minutes, then ten more. By 12:30, no one had come. Then at 12:30, one man entered the room, then another and another until there were six men praying. Nothing extraordinary happened that hour, but the men decided to meet to pray the following week. That time, twenty men came; the next week, forty. Because of the climbing interest in prayer, Jeremiah decided they should meet for prayer daily. Within days of that decision, a financial panic hit the country. Banks began to close and people lost their jobs. Conditions were ripe for a revival. Soon, three thousand people were jamming into the Fulton building to pray. Within six months, twenty thousand pray-ers came and at least twenty other corporate meetings had begun in the city. Corporate prayer movements such as these began to spread quickly across the nation and in different parts of the world.

The years of 1858–1859 became known as the Annus Mirabulus—Year of Miracles. During this era, powerful missionary movements were birthed and great leaders such as Dwight Moody, Andrew Murray, and William Booth came to fruitfulness. When Jeremiah and his five prayer partners began their prayer vigil, they had no idea that God would bring an estimated one million persons into His kingdom.

The Fulton Street prayer meeting is just one of thousands of examples of corporate prayer that preceded a major awakening. Gregory Frizzell says, “Corporate prayer is the foundational pattern in nearly all great revivals of history. Though a variety of prayerstrategies are certainly important, none can rival the historic role of the corporate prayermeeting.” Truly God works through people who pray in one accord for the expansion of His kingdom.

That was the 19th century, in the age of FaceBook and virtual reality surely we don’t need in-person prayer any more?

Of what value is it?

Can’t we pray just as well at home on our own?

If the majority of the church doesn’t attend, should we stop it?

Should we cut back on church prayer times since gasoline prices have skyrocketed?

In particular, should we stop Tuesday mornings and/or Sunday nights?

How about virtual prayer meetings?

Let’s go further,

Of what value is corporate Bible study?

If the majority of the church doesn’t attend, should we stop it?

Why gather at all?

Sunday mornings?

Read Matthew 6:7-15

2. How do pagan prayers (Matthew 6:7) differ from the persistent prayers Jesus himself offered (Matthew 26:44)?

Question 2. Jesus is not condemning perseverance in prayer but rather verbosity, especially in those who speak without thinking.

3. In what ways might we be guilty of mindless, meaningless prayers today?

4. If, as Jesus says in Matthew 6:8, God already knows what we need, why should Christians pray?

Question 4. Believers do not pray to God to tell him things he doesn't know or to motivate him to keep his promises or to urge him to do what he really doesn't want to do at all. Rather, prayer is for our benefit—to exercise our faith and to cast our worries on him. As Luther put it in his commentary on this passage, "By our praying . . . we are instructing ourselves more than we are him."

5. What two natural divisions do you observe in the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13)?

Question 5. In the first part of this question you are simply looking for what verses are covered in each half of the Lord's Prayer: Matthew 6:9-10 and Matthew 6:11-13. Then, in the second part of the question, look for the main subject of each half. If the group needs help, tell them to notice that in the second half of the Lord's Prayer the possessive adjective changes from "your" to "our," as we turn from God's affairs to our own.

The well-known phrase "for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever" is not found in the earliest manuscripts.

What is the focus of each?

6. What does the phrase "Our Father in heaven" (Matthew 6:9) tell us about God?

Question 6. The words in heaven denote not the place of God's abode so much as the authority and power at his command as the creator and ruler of all things. Thus he combines fatherly love with heavenly power, and what his love directs his power is able to perform.

7. What does it mean to hallow God's name (Matthew 6:9)?

Question 7. The name of God is not a combination of the letters G, O and D. The name stands for the person who bears it, for his character and activity. So God's "name" is God himself as he is in himself and has revealed himself. His name is already holy in that it is separate from and exalted over every other name. But we pray that it may be hallowed, ("treated as holy"), because we ardently desire that due honor may be given to it, that is to him whose name it is, in our own lives, in the church and in the world.

8. God is already King. In what sense are his kingdom and perfect will still future (Matthew 6:10)?

Question 8. The kingdom of God is his royal rule. Again, as he is already holy so he is already King, reigning in absolute sovereignty over both nature and history. Yet when Jesus came he announced a new and special break-in of the kingly rule of God, with all the blessings of salvation and the demands of submission which the divine rule implies. To pray that his kingdom may "come" is to pray both that it may grow, as through the church's witness people submit to Jesus, and that soon it will be consummated when Jesus returns in glory to take his power and reign.

9. In our self-centered culture we are often preoccupied with our own little name, empire and will rather than God's. How can we combat this tendency?

Question 9. You might ask the group to think of situations in which we could demonstrate greater concern for God's name than our name, God's kingdom than our "kingdom" and God's will than our will.

10. Some early commentators allegorized the word bread (Matthew 6:11), assuming that Jesus could not be referring to something as mundane as our physical needs. Why is it perfectly appropriate to pray for actual "daily bread"?

Question 10. Early church fathers like Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine thought the reference was either to "the invisible bread of the Word of God" (Augustine) or to the Lord's Supper. Jerome, in the Vulgate, translated the Greek word for "daily" by the monstrous adjective "supersubstantial"; he also meant the Holy Communion. A more ordinary, down-to-earth interpretation seems most likely—just as the Lord daily provided manna for the Israelites in the desert (Exodus 16:4).

11. How is our heavenly Father's forgiveness related to our forgiving others (Matthew 6:12, 14-15)?

Question 11. Jesus certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. Rather he means that God forgives only the penitent and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit. 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.

12. If God cannot tempt us and trials are beneficial (James 1:2, 13), then what is the meaning of Matthew 6:13?

Question 12. It is probable that the prayer is more that we may overcome temptation, than that we may avoid it. Perhaps we could paraphrase the whole request as, "Do not allow us so to be led into temptation that overwhelms us, but rescue us from the evil one." So behind these words that Jesus gave us to pray are the implications that the devil is too strong for us, that we are too weak to stand up to him, but that our heavenly Father will deliver us if we call on him.

13. In what ways do your prayers need to more closely resemble this model prayer?

14. Take time now to pray, using the Lord's Prayer as your model.

LifeGuide Topical Bible Studies - Sermon on the Mount.

LifeGuide Topical Bible Studies - Sermon on the Mount.