As Jesus Prayed

Scripture: Luke 9: 29-31

Luke 11: 1-4

Sermon - As Jesus Prayed…

Good morning,

I’m glad to be here again to bring the Word of God. I hope it will be meaningful and you can take from it something that you can think about this week.

There was pilot calling to the tower…

Pilot to tower…pilot to tower…I am 300 miles from land…600 feet high and running out of fuel…please instruct…over.

Tower to pilot…tower to pilot…repeat after me…Our Father, which art in heaven…

This little joke brought to mind how our Lord, Jesus Christ made prayer a priority…a constant communication between himself and his Father. The Bible records for us several prayers of Jesus. And through these prayers, we have a glimpse of Heaven and the character of the Father. Through these prayers we can, with Christ, approach the very Throne of God. The veil is drawn back a little and we see the intimacies of the Trinity. It is a place to take off our shoes and approach with humility and eager hearts.

Even though there are many places in the New Testament that show Jesus praying, I would like to look at just one prayer today…the one that Jesus taught his Disciples. In a lot of my reading, it is called the Disciple’s Prayer. We know it as the Lord’s Prayer.

I won’t be able to say everything I want to say about this prayer in one sermon, so I’m sure I will be speaking about it in other sermons. There’s just too much to say.

To begin we must understand that this prayer was given to the Disciples upon their request. One of the Disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”. They wanted to know how to pray to God…they wanted to know how to talk with God.

You see...this was a whole new concept for the people of this time. The religious belief of the time was that common man could not talk directly to God, only the Levite Priests were allowed to come into the presence of God. If you or I were to need forgiveness of our sins, we would have to take our sacrifice, whether it be a measure of grain or an unblemished lamb, we would have to take it to the Temple for the Priest to sacrifice and the lift up our sin to God. We ourselves were not allowed to approach God.

So for Jesus to teach us how to pray directly to God was an amazing and fearful idea. You’ve got to understand that most of the Disciples were unlearned…they were fishermen, common men. They knew their place. So for them to realize that they too could approach the Throne of God and pray directly to the Father, Creator of the Universe was a very scary idea. It’s still a scary idea today, if you can really realize that fact…the fact that you are approaching your Maker and Creator when you pray.

This prayer is a prayer that only a Disciple can pray. The reason I say that is because it must be said and understood by one who realizes the commitment that must be present before the prayer is meaningful…meaningful to the one praying and then meaningful to God. Our scripture says that God sees our hearts and if our hearts aren’t Pure, then our prayers won’t be heard.

So as we approach and take a good, hard look at this prayer, let’s remember that this is not a prayer for a child, but for one who has entered into discipleship with Jesus.

William Barclay in his interpretation states:

“The Lord’s Prayer can only really be prayed when the man who prays it knows what he is saying and he cannot know that until he has entered into discipleship.”

So, now, as disciples let’s look at this amazing prayer, the first prayer ever given to man that leads us directly to God.

And Jesus said, “This then, is how you should pray.”

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

10your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

11Give us today our daily bread.

12Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

“Our Father”…the very first words of this prayer say so much. Just the first word ‘Our’ indicates our willingness to accept all of God’s creation. Its interesting to note that nowhere in the whole prayer is there ‘I’ or ‘Me’…it’s always, ‘Our’ or ‘Us’. The very first word of this prayer states an attitude of Christian unity…coming to God as a body of believers.

Then to address the Creator of the universe as ‘Father’…that’s an amazing intimacy. Jesus showed for us, in this prayer, that we have a God who is caring and loving…a God who wants to have an intimate relationship with us…as if we were His son or daughter. Jesus told us that we need to know that our God is a loving God…a God whom we can approach, if we come to Him with in undoubting faith and with a pure heart.