Every faith has some form of prayer. Muslims stop whatever they’re doing five times a day to pray as you’ll hear the wailing cries of prayer callers in many Asian cities. Incas and Aztecs went so far as to sacrifice humans in order to attract their gods’ attention. And millions of people who attend AA meetings pray to a Higher Power to stop their addictions. More people this week will pray than will drive a car or go to work according to Gallup polls.
Today, we being a study on the Lord’s Prayer, called Eleven: Two – it’s taken from the Scripture address of the Lord’s Prayer in the gospel of Luke. The Lord’s Prayer is designed to change our priorities and to reverse our thinking. The words of this prayer are beautiful like a finished work of art. They are plain yet majestic. The words of the prayer has a serenity and tranquility to them that is unequaled. The prayer is short and simple so it can be quickly learned. As a matter of fact, we’ll close each worship service during this series by reciting the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew.
Anyone who is serious about Jesus will want to grow in prayer. One of the quickest ways to check the health of your spiritual life is to answer this question: How’s your prayer life? We’re devoting six weeks to the Lord’s Prayer and here’s why: 1) I want to help all of us develop a powerful prayer life by offering you a tuning fork where you’ll know when your prayers are on the right pitch. 2) And I want to encourage by showing you that God hears prayer. Think of it: what prayer can have greater power with God the Father that a prayer the comes directly from the lips of Jesus.
Let’s jump right in…
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:1-13)
Now, most of us are less familiar with Luke’s version and more familiar with the longer version of the same prayer in Matthew’s gospel:
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 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. (Matthew 6:5-13)
There are some who say that prayer is simply superstitious. It’s a way to cope with a crisis when we’re too weak to handle it or we don’t know any better. So called answers to prayer are really nothing more than self-fulfilled expectation. Or prayer is simply coincidences that we naively attribute to God. For others, prayer often comes when we find ourselves in a mess and we want God to get us out of it. Usually about the time that we’ve shared with God what we want, we’ll later remember those who are hungry and perhaps even the homeless. Jesus shows how to put these things together in the right order.
Sermon Preview
The Model Prayer
A Private Prayer Time
God is Father
And lastly, I want to close with asking with you, “Who Gets to See the President?”
1. The Model Prayer
Remember, Jesus offers us this prayer at the request of His disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1b)
Jesus was always praying. He prayed a couple of hours at least, from what we can tell, every single morning, and the disciples noticed. So they say, “What is the secret? How can we have this relationship?” Notice the words are not, “Lord, teach us how to pray,” but instead they are asking the Lord to teach us to pray. Jesus is giving us a model on what to pray. By the way, have you ever asked the Lord to teach you to pray? He’ll do that if you ask.
Jesus didn’t intend that we should repeat His words as a parrot would repeat something mindlessly: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7). Hindus say their prayers when they repeat their mantras. A mantra is either the name of a Hindu god, or some other phrase that is repeated over and over again. They are to do this until they are completely numb. Or our Catholic friends often pray by using a rosary where they repeat the same prayer over and over again. They do this so often it loses its meaning. And the one prayer they pray the most is this very prayer, the Lord’s Prayer!
1.1 The Sin of Hypocrisy
Now, be careful at this point for each of us clap our hands when Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the “Pharisee” as we think of someone who’s a religious show. Be careful that we don’t say, “Yes, I can’t believe Catholic and Hindus parrot a mantra…” Why do I say, “Be Careful?” Look again at Matthew 6:5: “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:5). But Jesus is exposing the devastating effects of the sin of pride in your personal prayer life. It’s not just them that’s capable of hypocrisy but you are capable of hypocrisy as well. Hypocrisy fuels itself at the gas station of pride and a self-inflated ego. And pride killed these men’s prayer lives. They prayed so to seen by others and not for God. Simply, the person who spends more time praying in public than in private reveals that he is less interested in God’s approval than he is other’s approval. Pride gives us the illusion that we are competent to run our own lives. And pride is a prayer-killer. The sin of pride and a self-inflated ego is so sinister it will follow us all the to the very gates of heaven and – if it were possible – into heaven itself.
Here’s a way to think about your prayer life and who is the focus of your prayers? If God answered your prayers, what does God get out of it? Is He exalted by your prayers or is He simply your genie in the bottle? If God were to answer your prayers, how would the world be different?
Pride Blinds You - Did you know that? It blinds you – you can’t immediately see it in yourself? The sin of your self-inflated ego is like a smog polluting your entire mind. What’s more, once you live in Los Angeles, you never go into the countryside, you grown used to the smog. You are blind to your pride and your hypocrisy. Here’s the real way that you can know you’re escaping your arrogance and pride—it’s when you forget yourself completely. The solution to avoiding the hypocrisy of showy religion and ineffective prayers is thinking of yourself less. Let me repeat: the essence of humility is not thinking of more of yourself or thinking of less of yourself – it’s forgetting to think of yourself. So pride is a prayer killer and pride is the gas station that fuels hypocrisy. Genuine prayer combats pride by admitting that you really do rely on God.
1.2 A Quick Overview of the Lord’s Prayer
This has been historically called the Lord’s Prayer. But it is also your model prayer. Dietrich Bonheoffer, the German pastor who was killed for his plot against Hitler, called this prayer the quintessential prayer. This prayer is a pattern for all Christian praying. You can think of the words of this prayer as flexible pattern for your prayers.
Here’s my Challenge: I want you to adopt this as the framework for you regular daily praying. Notice God comes first in the prayer and then you. God comes first: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come” (Luke 11:2b). And then you’re next: “Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:3-4). Think of a dinner at nice restaurant. The waiter will offer an appetizer, perhaps a soup or salad… … then you’ll have the main course, perhaps steak… … and finally desert. Prayer works like this. Again, this prayer is a model prayer and it works like a flexible framework for our prayers. Just as you have choices when it comes to the appetizer or the main course or even the dessert, you’ll not always pray the very same prayer. But like the meal, it should always be in the same order.
So God comes first in the prayer and then you come next. Many of us flip this around and place our needs and wants first and perhaps come around to praising and thanking God. This is wrong. Remember, it’s God first and you second.
The Model Prayer
2. A Private Time of Prayer
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). Every believer is told to find a private place to pray. I want to encourage you to be consistent about the place where you’re private prayer and worship happens. I want to encourage you to be consistent about the time when you’re private prayer and worship happens. I want you to value prayer. Again, Jesus sometime spent whole nights in prayer. Sadly, some people pray only if they have extra time in their day. While others pray only when their emotions move them to pray. Praying in a time of crisis is a good start. Prayer to God is instinctual. Water exists to met our thirst and food exists to met our appetite, so prayer exists because of His power to bless us.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). When you are too tired and exhausted because of the trials that come into our lives, the Spirit prays on our behalf! I wish for someone of you that prayer was less like a raincoat where it hangs in the closet until you need it. So few of us pray when the sun is shining.
The Model Prayer
A Private Time of Prayer
3. God is Father
And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father…” (Luke 11:2a) Prayer is difficult for some people in our day. Some have exchanged prayer for a time of silence or some form of meditation. What’s the problem? You’ll be confused about prayer if you’re confused about God. Again, You’ll be confused about prayer if you’re confused about God. God exists and He is personal. God is control of everything. And He is concerned about normal, ordinary people like you and me. You must have faith in God in order to pray. Faith is the only way to see an unseen God. You must believe that God can move mountains and prayer moves God.
Let’s look again the Jesus’ prayer…
3.1 We’re Adopted
When Jesus called God “Father” it must have startled the disciples because this was something you didn’t do. Later, when Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before He is crucified, He calls God “Father” some six times (see John 17). Now Jesus was God’s Son from the beginning of eternity and when we are told we can call Him Father alongside Jesus, we need to be aware of who gets to do this. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” (John 1:12). “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son … so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). The privilege of becoming a son or daughter of God is not granted to everyone. It’s only for those who place their trust in Jesus Christ. Again, prayer to God as Father is reserved only for believers. Do you have any idea how big of a deal it is to be adopted into God’s family? Do you realized the magnitude in calling God Father? When we’re adopted into God’s family, we are loved no less than Jesus Himself.
Think with me about this question, Who Gets to See the President?” If you are the president or the king or the queen of the greatest country in the world, who gets in to see you? Only the most accomplished people. Only the most powerful people. Only the most important people. People who win the Super Bowl maybe get to see you for fifteen minutes. The greatest scientist who knows anything about global warming may get to see you. In other words, you only see the most accomplished, the most important. And then there’s your 6-year-old little girl at 2:00 a.m., without an appointment. Why? Because your relationship to your child isn’t conditioned. It doesn’t matter about their performance or their accomplishments or how many PhDs they have. It doesn’t matter at all. All of this comes when we are adopted into God’s family. And until we are adopted into God’s family, we dare not call Him Father. Again, the right to call Him Father is reserved for those who have received His Son, Jesus. Always remind yourself when you pray to come to the Lord as your Father and you’re His child. Drill this into your mind. You don’t come based on your accomplishments, you come based on a relationship.
3.2 Settle Whose Family You’re In
Jesus not only tells people to say “Father,” but if you look at every prayer in Matthew, every prayer in Mark, every prayer in Luke, every prayer in John, you’ll see him saying, “Father.” Every time He prays and whenever He prays, it is “Holy Father,” or “Abba Father,” or “I praise you, Father.” He’s always saying, “Father,” except one time. One time He cried out to God not as a child. He didn’t say, “My Father.” He didn’t say, “Holy Father.” He didn’t say, “Abba Father.” Instead, He said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) It happened only once. What was happening there? Jesus was being thrown out of the family, as it were. He was getting the thing we know deep in our hearts we deserve, which is rejection, but He was doing it for us. He got the punishment we deserved so we can get the loves us He deserved. Settle the Family Issue right now.
Prayer
Father, we ask you’d cause us to hear the call away from the busyness of our lives and the “craziness” of our lives. We are not people of one thing; we are people of many things, and maybe you’re one of the things. We want to be a person of one thing, like Mary, who sat at your Son’s feet so many years ago.
We want to have her calm. We want to have her focus. We want to have the coherence in her life that she knew, because the one overriding, supreme purpose of our lives is to sit at your feet, to be in your presence, and to hear your voice. We ask that you would help us to be like Mary. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Practical Idea on Using the Lord’s Prayer in Your Prayer Life Take the ideas of the Prayer one by one and make each idea your prayer for the day. It would go like this: On Sunday, you’d focus your prayer on “Our Father ” On Monday, you’d focus your prayer on “hallowed be your name” On Tuesday, you’d focus your prayer on “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” On Wednesday, you’d focus your prayer on “Give us this day our daily bread” On Thursday, you’d focus your prayer on “forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” On Friday, you’d focus your prayer on “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” On Saturday, you’d focus your prayer on “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever”
