Teach Us To Pray
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
If Pew Research is to be believed, then the state of prayer among Christians is in pretty tough shape. I know some of us like statistics and some of us hate them. The hate usually comes from manipulating of data. For instance, in this study of over 25,000 Christians, there isn’t much that defines what a Christian is. So, it might be difficult to discern exactly how bad or good the prayer lives are of those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God who took on flesh, lived a sinless life, died in place of sinners, and rose from the dead so that those who believe in him would be made right with God and then ascended into heaven. But I do know just from anecdotal evidence as I’ve talked with many people I would consider for Christians and even pastors at times, prayer is always number one in our list of things we know we don’t do well or do enough of.
If Pew is right, only 15% of Millennials pray daily, 33% of Gen Xers pray daily, 30% of Boomers do, and of the Silent Generation (65+), only 22% pray on a daily basis.
There are scores of Prayer Apps that are seeking to help people pray more and pray “better.” There are books out there and a number of techniques like ACTS or PRAYER, etc. And this isn’t a new problem. Back in the fourth century, the prayer rope—the predecessor to what we call the rosary—was developed to help people pray more often and focused prayers.
Prayer is something we all struggle with. But we’re in good company. The disciples seemed to struggle with it too. As one author pointed out, out of all the things that the disciples saw Jesus do and heard Jesus say, the only thing they asked specifically for him to teach them was how to pray.
Last week we saw the need to have intimacy with Jesus and we saw how Mary would sit at the feet of Jesus. When I gave my tips on how to develop intimacy, they were generally geared around the Word. So, as we learn to pray, along with the disciples, I want us to notice the flip side of that coin: prayer. Perhaps you’ve had a friendship that was pretty one-sided. They did all the talking and you did all the listening (or maybe the opposite). True intimacy comes from talking and listening. Last week, we dealt more with the listening aspect, and now we need to deal with the talking aspect. And I want us to notice six components our prayers should mention. The first component is made up of who it is we address. The second deals with what we are acknowledge. The third component is focused on alignment. The fourth deals with our appeal. The fifth component seeks absolution. And the last component has to do with appetite.
Address
Acknowledge
Alignment
Appeal
Absolution
Appetite
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.”
And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
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.”
Address
Address
As we get into the components of the Lord’s Prayer, you have probably noticed that Luke’s version of the prayer is substantially shorter than Matthew’s. That’s okay. Matthew was a Jew writing to a mainly Jewish audience and so there are what we call Hebraisms within the prayer. Those are Jewish ways of saying things. I’ve mentioned parallelisms at times—a Hebraism in which would repeat what was just said in a different way. There are various kinds of parallelisms. In Matthew’s version of the prayer, we see what we’d call synthetic parallelism and antithetic parallelism. Luke leaves these out in his version. But the whole of the prayer is the same.
And what we see is that God is addressed in both as Father. And I understand that the sins of our earthly fathers can cause us to have a skewed idea of what it means for God to be Father. But here’s the thing; we need to look more at what the Bible says it means for God to be Father and less at what our experience says.
When we address God as Father, we are addressing One who loves us sacrificially, and has adopted us into his family in that love. And he is also one who loves us enough to discipline us when we won’t discipline ourselves. When we address God as Father, we are addressing One who knows us and calls us by name. He is the One who understands our situations and circumstances. He is the One who provides for us and cares for us. He is the Father who welcomes us back if we stray. He is the Father who works in us and through us.
Have you ever thought about what all is implied when we address God as Father. There were so many other ways that Jesus could have told us to address God, but he chose Father for a reason. The way He was predominately addressed in the Old Testament was by his covenantal name, that is substituted by LORD. But he was given many other names that stemmed from that name or just by the name God. Yahweh (Jehovah) Jireh (The LORD provides), Yahweh Elyon (The LORD Almighty), Yahweh Machsi (The LORD our refuge), El Shaddai (God Almighty), El Gibbor (The Strong/Warrior God), El Roi (The God who sees).
And all of them would be true. But he chose Father. As Father, God encompasses all those other attributes.
Acknowledge
Acknowledge
The first component of this prayer addresses God as Father. The second acknowledges God’s aim, his purpose, his goal: to make for himself a name. When we say the words, “Hallowed be your name,” we are saying, “Let/Make your name to be revered.” When we pray those words, we are acknowledging that God and we are on the same page. We are not utilizing our prayer for personal gain. We are calling on God in prayer to hear our prayer and do what it is that he must do to bring about a reverence to his name. To do what it takes to make people see that his name is holy.
Think about the first three commandments: No other gods, no graven images, and no taking his name in vain. All three of these commandments are addressed in this one component of this prayer.
Think back about why God did everything that he did in Old Testament. Let me give just a few examples: In 1 Samuel 12:22, we see that God does not forsake his people for his name’s sake. In Psalm 23:3 he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. In Psalm 25:11, For your name’s sake pardon my guilt. For my name’s sake, God says in Isaiah 48:9, I defer my anger. In Ezekiel 20:14, God says that it was for his name’s sake that it would not be profaned among the nations that he acted. But let’s look at my favorite from the New Testament.
I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.
Over and over again, we see that God does what he does for his own name’s sake—that it might be seen and acted as if holy. That it might be revered by believer and unbeliever.
So when we are praying “Hallowed be your name,” we are saying that no matter what the answer to our prayer may be, we want God’s name to be revered. Yes, no, or not now; it doesn’t matter so long as God’s name is made holy in the sight of all. That’s our goal because we acknowledge what God is about.
Alignment
Alignment
So we address God as Father, acknowledge that all he does is for his name’s sake. And now we see that the third component of our prayer comes when we align our kingdom with his kingdom. This goes beyond acknowledging that God works for his name. In this petition, we are putting his kingdom first. We are asking for the domain of darkness to lose its power and thus Satan as the prince of the power of the air to lose his power. We are asking for our little kingdoms in this world to lose their power and so remove ourselves from the throne of our lives so that he has priority. In their places, we are asking that God would manifest his kingdom.
We are looking for the shalom—the complete peace that only God’s kingdom can bring. This means then that we must align our lives, our wills, our decisions, with his kingdom. This goes back to the synthetic parallelism. Synthetic is to synthesize two sayings. Matthew’s version would say, Your kingdom come. Your will be done. As if to say, “Your Kingdom come so that or therefore your will be done.” For God’s kingdom to come is to have his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
When John the Baptist began to preach in the wilderness and when Jesus began his ministry, they both preached the same theme. “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The idea of being “at hand” means that it was present among the people. They needed to turn from their sins, turn from their way of thinking and doing, and turn it toward God’s kingdom. They needed to align their thinking with kingdom thinking. They needed to align their actions to kingdom action.
When we petition God to bring about his kingdom, we are asking God to bring in people from every tribe and tongue. We are asking for him to do a work that is bigger than us.
He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?
It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
We want the birds that look like us, but we want the ones that don’t look like us too. We don’t want just cardinals. We want blue jays and orioles. We want big ones and little ones. We don’t want a homogeneous kingdom. We want as many people as we can get! That means aligning our values, our thoughts, our words, our actions, with the kingdom. We align our willingness even to suffer for the kingdom to come.
This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—
Appeal
Appeal
After focusing on all the matters that pertain to God first, Jesus then moves on to the things that pertain to us. And I do wonder if this accurately would describe our prayers. Do we focus first on God, his holiness, and his kingdom, or do we go straight to our wants and desires?
And, on top of that, are our self-focus petitions in our prayers influenced by the God-focused-ness in our prayers? We need to understand that the last three petitions are not separated from the first three. And so what we see is that the fourth component is our appeal to God to provide what we need.
Give us each day our daily bread,
Really what this request is saying is “Give us the bread sufficient according to the day” or “Give us enough bread each day.” Sufficient or enough for what? For the work he has given us.
Remember that we read in chapter 9, Jesus had sent out the apostles and then, in chapter 10, he sent out the 72. Both times, he told them to go without food and to rely upon the kindness of strangers to feed them. By doing so, one is not having so much faith in fellow-man, as much as he is in God to provide.
This is the same idea that we see in the Exodus. God promises to provide the manna as sufficient for the day. To those who have large families, there was enough. For those with small families, there was enough. For the single person, there was enough. And then on Fridays, there was enough for the Sabbath day too.
But keep in mind that our appeal is directly linked to our alignment with the kingdom.
As we will see in a few weeks,
And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.
For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
No need to worry about having enough bread. The Father knows we need it. So we align ourselves with his kingdom—seeking it first—and he will provide.
So we make an appeal for that which we need, and allow the Father to decide what is sufficient…what is enough.
Absolution
Absolution
This takes us to our fifth component in prayer: absolution. We are in need of forgiveness. Every time we sin against God, it’s like going further and further into debt. It’s like using a credit card not realizing that one day the bill will come due.
When we are seeking forgiveness, we are realizing that we are in over our heads and that the cost of the way we are living is too high for us to pay. The price is our very lives! And so when we are asking forgiveness, we are asking the judge to erase all the debts and its consequences. In other words, we are asking our Father to expunge the record and remove the penalties that come with it.
And we see that is exactly what happens when we put our whole faith and trust in Jesus.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Those are my favorite verses in the Bible! But I also love Jesus’s words on the cross. “It is finished.” Tetelestai—a financial term meaning “paid in full.”
But notice what Jesus said about our absolution. How is that we can ask for absolution without being a hypocrite? Only one way. We absolve those indebted to us.
It is not that God’s forgiveness is based on our forgiveness, but that our plea for forgiveness is based on our active forgiveness toward others. God’s forgiveness is given by grace alone. However, it is certainly hypocritical to ask for forgiveness when we are refusing to forgive others.
As we all know, none of us can go an entire day without someway rebelling or transgressing God’s law and that every offense is an eternal one. Whereas, such and such a person may have sinned against us only once, perhaps twice, maybe as many as seventy-seven times, but rarely is that offence daily; nor can it be eternal as we are finite beings.
That isn’t to say that the offenses and indebtedness aren’t real. They certainly are. But when we have experienced such grace that brings absolution for us, ought it not also then extend toward others from us? If our focus in the kingdom of God coming, then we must know that God’s kingdom comes to us by way of forgiven sin, and as subjects of the King, we too then spread it by example of our forgiving others.
Appetite
Appetite
So we’ve seen that we are to address God as Father, acknowledge that he works for the sake of his name, align all of who we are with his kingdom, make our appeal for our needs based on what he deems enough, and plead for our absolution with a clean conscience knowing we have absolved those who were indebted to us by their sins. But finally, we see a component of prayer that has to do with our appetites.
There are certain foods that I am drawn to pretty much anytime. Homemade ice cream is typically one of those. Almost always would be Doritos. Steak is another. Then there are things that I might be drawn to on occasion. I have to be in the mood for it. Chocolate pie for instance. But there are things I will never be drawn to. Anything with pineapple. If you were to put anything “Hawaiian” in front of me (except the rolls), I probably am not going to be tempted to eat it, because we all know that “Hawaiian” just means something with pineapple.
You’ve got your foods. And it’s one thing when it’s just a desire for food. It’s something else when it’s a temptation toward sin—the desires of the flesh, desire of the eyes, and pride of life. And so our prayer needs to have a component about combatting sin. When we pray “Lead us not into temptation,” we are not asking God not to lead us into something, but rather not to let us succumb to the temptation before us. Hence Matthew, puts in the antithetic parallel here: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
We tend to think of “Lead us not into temptation” as a way of saying, “Don’t let us be tempted,” or “Don’t lead us toward temptation,” when it is more a positive way of saying something negative, “Don’t lead me into the midst of the temptation that is already right in front of me, but instead, lead me away from it. Take me to the way of escape that you have provided.”
If we are seeking God’s kingdom, then we certainly need to follow our King as he leads us to escape the grip of our enemies.
Conclusion
Conclusion
It’s no wonder that John Piper says that prayer is not an intercom for personal comforts but a war-time walkie talkie. Every component of prayer is built around the expansion of our Father’s kingdom! Which means that we are in a spiritual battle and that prayer is our communication with God.
If Pew Research is right about the average Christian’s prayer-life, perhaps it isn’t so much about our struggles with prayer. What if our lack of prayer isn’t the problem? What if it is only a symptom of the problem? What if a mind not fully committed to prayer is a sign of a heart not fully committed to the kingdom?
Maybe this past week, you’ve committed to sitting at Jesus’s feet and hearing from him, but you still are struggling with prayer. What if for the next week, as you sit as his feet, talk with him about his kingdom that was instituted when he came and will be consummated when he comes again. Ask him to give you a heart for his kingdom and then a heart toward prayer as well.
Take time to go through these components and expand on them. Call on God as Father and dwell on what that means biblically over and against experientially with our earthly fathers. Those prayers you’re seeking to have answered, can you see a way that God’s name would be hallowed/revered by them or through them? Can you pray for God’s kingdom to take precedent over your own? Can you trust God to give what you need when you need it? Are you giving up bitterness and offering absolution when you pray for yourself? And are you truly looking for a way out of sin and temptation, willing to follow the Father through the tiniest hatch of escape?
Prayer is difficult. If it wasn’t, the disciples would have not needed to ask how it’s done. They had the greatest pray-er of all time. But what they saw, they couldn’t simply imitate. They needed to be taught; they needed to learn. Don’t get discouraged by your prayer life. As counter-intuitive as it may sound…pray about it.