SOM: Disciples Prayer

Intro

As we continue walking through the sermon on the mount. Today we dive into prayer

And I want to tell you that I am not sure if what I am about to give is a sermon or a testimony or a little bit of both.

And I want to begin right away with this part of your notes

Prayer is not a task to be done but a relationship to be cultivated

When I was a teenager and I first started following Jesus and going to church I was always a little weirded out by prayer times in church.

I was like, why do you all need 30 minutes to pray…God knows our thoughts just say what you need to say.

So because I did not have a reverent view of prayer, I saw it as a task to be done…Just pray and move on

So I developed some bad habits surrounding prayer

In my early 20’s when I was a youth pastor, my senior pastor would make prayer time the most central thing about our church service. And I know that I hit rock bottom in my prayer life when there was one day when we were praying in church and there were just a tn of prayer requests that day. and we prayed for everything…

Aunt Bertha’s hang nail…You name it we prayed for it

So I am sitting in church...

Assuming the prayer position...

and at that time I sat with all of my youth students who came to church

Well before I knew it, this youth girl who sat next to be elbowed me in the arm and I was like “hey! why did you do that?”

Well it turns out she was just trying to give me the offering plate

I had been asleep for like 15-20minutes

And you know teenagers....

“PASTOR DAVE< WERE YOU SLEEPING THROUGH PRAYER TIME”

And I obviously lied to them and said…You see I was just so deep in prayer that it must have looked like I was sleeping

They didn’t buy it...

I had been caught as a leader in the church sleeping through the prayer time...

And the reality is that when you see prayer as a task…You will always kind of sleep through it...

But if you treat prayer as cultivating your relationship with God then it will always be a high priority in your life.

What happens when you treat your other relationships as a task...

I’ve already spent my mandatory 5 minutes with you

I realized something about the way that I thought about God highly affected the way that I prayed and it turns out that I had an incorrect assumption about God

I had realized that my theology about what kind of God that God is is highly affected by Aristotle and I didn't even know it

The Un-Moved Mover

See in the world of Ancient Greek Philosophers.

God is this un moved mover

They way they viewed God is that you and I have no influence at all over what God does but God just moves and acts as he pleases

If we were to get really honest about it, probably the Greek Philosophers live in our theology too...

We believe that prayer is like a cosmic slot machine in the sky at times.

We throw a request out and who knows, maybe God will answer prayer maybe not...

But the problem with the un-moved Mover concept is that is not Biblical.

Instead the Bible paints the picture that God is the Most Moved Mover

That God hears us and responds to us.

In Exodus 32:12b-14 Moses goes and speaks to God after Israel had just made the Golden Calf..

And what you have to understand about this is that God is Mad…He is ready to wipe his people off the face of the earth

The New International Version Chapter 32

Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ ” 14 Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

So Moses asks him to relent which means to change your mind. I mean imagine the audacity of Moses right?

Hey God would you change your mind?

and then verse 14 says everything about prayer

Then the LORD relented

When I understood this…Prayer for me was changed from a TASK to a RELATIONSHIP

In fact, When Jesus talked about prayer

He has the same idea

That God moves as a result of our request

Look at this parable with me real fast

Luke 18:1–8 NIV

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

So when Jesus talks about prayer in the parables...

He talks about a widow...

And the Judge is supposed to be God and the widow is us

Because of this woman’s relentless badgering of the Judge…The Judge moves

Jesus is saying that this is what God is like...

We have to be the sort of people who are relentlessly going before God requesting God to move

Really this is also the way that Jesus defines faith too...

How willing are we to relentlessly come before God and request of him when we

1. do not see him and

2. our request isn't being met?

When Jesus asks, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on this earth...That is faith…The faith of the widow who will continue to go back to the judge…The faith To continue to go back to God.

The point is that we follow a God who wants to have relationship with us…He is not some Stoic un-moved object in the sky, He is the living God who is moved by what we pray

And all of this helps us as we get into our text on the Sermon on the Mount today...

Matthew 6:5–8 NIV

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

This is an extension of what we looked at last week but applied to prayer

Last week we talked about giving in secret, not letting your left and right hands know what you are doing.

And if you remember just to recap…What Jesus was saying was that in his Kingdom he will form us to be the sort of people where God’s goodness effortlessly flows out of who we are

Jesus wants the same with prayer...

Prayer is just simply the air that we breathe…Jesus wants us to cultivate a sort of life with him where prayer is our normal language, we pray without ever thinking about it

So here

Jesus moves prayer from a public Spectacle to a private relationship

So then Jesus tells his disciples how to pray...

And absolutely everyone has heard this prayer

so as a pastor, I don’t want to preach it as much as I want to again give you a testimony of how this prayer has affected me

Matthew 6:9 NIV

“This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,

There is an absolute travesty in all of our Bibles...

That is this…In English, the word “Heaven”

Now this first part says, our father in Heaven....

To a 21st century person this communicates distance. ‘

This communicates that God is far off, it gives him a Location…it gives God a space that we couldn't possibly inhabit.

Now if you were to translate this from Greek Straight to English it would Say

Father of us, the one in the Heavens

Do you see the subtle difference…

There is a singular heaven and a plural heavens…You would think oh no big deal…

This is really small and it might look even petty to you that I am pointing it out, But in my mind, one of the single greatest Bible editing flops of all time is making this word heavens singular to heaven….

Now here is why: to 21st century Americans heaven is some physical location way out there, beyond our reach

But to the first century Jews the word “heavens” meant something very different…There were three levels:

The first heaven is here on earth in the realm of where people are at..

The other Heavens are the air and the sky

The next is the universe…

So when the Bible says the Kingdom of the heavens it is all of that space that is around us...

It is not far off

Jesus is communicating that his Farther is close to humanity

The first century people understood “heavens” as even the air that is around your head…

Jesus saying, “in the heavens” meant that God is always near you.

This is why I always say that God is closer than the air that you breathe

This phrase…Our father in the heavens means that when you pray, Jesus will come up to you…

Let me say that again When you pray, Jesus will come up to you….

Prayer is relational. It is not a task to do , its not a public spectacle

It is part of having a relationship with the living God

And God is never more near to you than when you pray.

I hope that radically changes the way you pray…

When you pray you are in the presence of God and he is listening to you!

Prayer brings us into the reality of the kingdom

When you pray, You enter into God’s space…when you enter into God’s space, Jesus will come up to you…

The word Jesus uses here for father is Abba..Which is an intimate expression for father…it is really Daddy….the way a child addresses their parents…

So first when we pray, we pray to our father in the heavens: The one who is closer than the air you breathe…the one that when you call on him, he’s right there…the space surrounding your head!

Then Jesus teaches us to say:

hallowed be your name,

It is a way of saying, let your name be treasured or respected in a unique way. Really it is the second commandment….You shall not take the lord name in vain…

When Emma was a little girl…Desiree and I Would be talking and I would say some truly dumb joke and desiree would kind of do one of those long sigh’s and then say...”David...Come on....” like that was so dumb I am not going to respond

And Emma would come to my defense because she treasured her Daddy and she said, “Don’t talk to my daddy that way!”

She treasured her father’s name...

And this is what Jesus is saying. We must learn to respect and treasure the name of the father.

Then Jesus teaches in verse 10

Matthew 6:10 NIV

your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

When we pray your kingdom come: What are we requesting of God?

When we pray “your kingdom come” what we are saying is that we desire God’s rule and reign, his governance to come into existence not just in our lives but all over the whole planet.

God your kingdom come in this church, in my school district, at my city counsel, at the capital building in congress

God your kingdom come at my office.

What we are requesting is that the way that God organizes life would become reality everywhere

We are praying that God’s life would become a reality in us as well

So in our relationship we say

Your will be done

Praying, “your will be done” is a way of denying yourself

When we say, your will be done we are intrinsically admitting that our own desires are flawed and that we need God’s will in our lives

Last week I talked about our “wanter’s” being broken. Praying, Your will be done is like saying God help me to want what you want.

And then he says, on Earth as it is in the heaven(s)

Remember that word heaven is plural

If you trace the word for heaven through the New Testament one of the thing you will see is actually not a ton of talk about our disembodied beings floating up to the sky

But what you will see in the very last pages of the Bible is the fullness of the heavens invading the earth.

So Jesus teaches us to pray for this great invasion day...

When the fullness of God’s dwelling place overtakes or engulfs the earth...

So then Jesus switches from praying for “your” to we”

And this is a small point but I think a vital one.

The first part of this prayer is worship and praying for God’s way and not your own....

Only after that did Jesus move on to request time

How often do we pray and only do personal request time? because when we go to God with Just requests then God becomes our personal slot machine in the sky..

It is vital to spend a few minutes in prayer recognizing the bigness and greatness of God

So the first example request that Jesus gives is this

Matthew 6:11 NIV

Give us today our daily bread.

And you have to think about what does it mean to get daily bread?

And if you know the story of the Bible, then you know the story of the Israelites in the Dessert. ‘

God lead moses and the Hebrew people out of slavery into the Dessert in Sinai.

The People grumbled and complained but what did he do?

He made Mana rain down from the sky every day.

People collected all that they needed and they were fed...

The Bible talked about people who collected too much and it rotted, it wouldn't last till the next day

And there were people who collected too little and God multiplied it

But the point is that God trained his people to rely on him by giving them daily bread.

We live in a world where we no longer need to rely on God for our basic needs. We just go to the grocery store or we go drive through somewhere and sure we might pray before we eat but do we actually rely upon God any more for our basic needs?

About 200 years ago a man named George Muller had a radical transformation. By age 10 he was steeling, drinking and gambling. His life spun out of control and by his late teens his father paid for him to go to Bible school. Thinking that maybe that would help him out...

Well George had a radical transformation there and as George came to the understanding that he was loved by God he began to see the world different. There were children living on the streets and this broke George’s heart

he felt God was leading him to take care of all of these children but he didn’t know how it could happen. George prayed for God’s provision and made a decision that he would not ask for donations…If God wanted him to do this then God would pay for it...

In one Year George had 3 homes for children and was looking after 90 children

Every day George didn't know how they would all receive food and clothes but every day was a new miracle

Things like the butcher’s cart breaking down in front of one of the homes, bread showing up on the door steps

George never went into debt and cared for 10’s of thousands of kids

God provided his daily needs for years…and whenever George didn't have something that he needed he just dropped to his knees and prayed...

We live in a world of such abundance that this is just foreign to us today...

What would change if you started praying about your daily needs before you ever bought anything?

Then Jesus teaches us that after we ask for our daily needs then we move to forgiveness

Matthew 6:12 NIV

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

See in this prayer the idea is that we only go to God to seek forgiveness after we have forgiven others

See God wants us to model forgiveness in our own lives

And see if we go a little out of order here look at verse 14-15

Matthew 6:14–15 NIV

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Jesus wants to make it very clear

If we come to the father seeking forgiveness we better be ready to do that same work in our own lives

Matthew 6:13 NIV

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

What is the ultimate temptation? Go it on your own…You don’t need God

This was the temptation in the Garden of Eden…God made humans in his likeness and the serpent made Adam and eve that somehow you can become even more like God if you eat of this fruit…in other-words…God is holding out on you

So the temptation that Adam and eve fell into is that they believed God was withholding good for them so they decided to live life and define good and evil on their own terms

So when we say, lord lead me not into temptation but deliver me from the evil one...

We are saying…Lord help me pass the tests of life that I face every day

Every day you are tested with this question…are you going to define good and evil on your own terms or are you going to trust God?

Transition to end

Prayer is not a task to be done

It is not something to do to make you look more religious than you really are

It is a way that we live in relationship and in nearness with the living God.

You might say…well I am not Good at it.

Well some of the most profound prayers I have ever heard come out of the mouths of children, they have a tendency to say things the way they really are

So we have two responses today

1 is simply to pray and realize the nearness of God

And 2 is to receive communion

Communion

Communion is open to all who call on the name of Jesus for salvation

And what we are going to do is sort of pray through the Lord’s prayer and receive communion

Father in the heavens, closer than the air that we breathe

We thank you for the availability of your son and of your kingdom

We ask that you would make your way reign here on earth, just as you have it in the heavens

Lord as we take this bread we are reminded that Jesus is our daily bread.

We than you for giving your body for us on the cross

Lord Forgive our trespasses we we have forgiven others

Jesus as we take this cup today

We remember that it is your blood that was spilt for the forgiveness of sins. We thank you for giving your whole life to forgive our sins.