The Lord’s Prayer
Patterns of Prayer • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Review the prayer series and Last week’s sermon - The Origin of Prayer
We’ve talked about the 3 prayers in Jonah:
1) The prayer of Humility (crew on the boat);
2) The prayer of confession (Jonah in the fish);
3) The prayer of repentance (Nineveh)
4) Last week: The Origin of Prayer
26 To Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.
This sets the trajectory for the purpose of prayer from that day forward, setting the stage for why mankind prayed… To ask God to fulfill His promises…
We talked about the stark contrast between when God and man walked together in the Garden, having conversation and Gen 4:26 where men began to call upon the name of the Lord…
From conversing to calling…
Now God is viewed as a distant diety who needs to be called on rather than spoken to…
This view of prayer is carried through the First Testament…
If I had time I would take a journey through more of these prayers such as the prayer of Abram who “called upon the name of the Lord” in Genesis 12:8 and 13:4 to remind God of His promises…
Or the prayer of Isaac in Gen 26:24 where God speaks to Isaac and Isaac calls on the name of the Lord to fulfill His promise which began with his father Abraham…
Or we could skip down to the longest recorded prayer in the book of Genesis made by Jacob in Genesis 32:9-12
9 Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your relatives, and I will prosper you,’
10 I am unworthy of all the lovingkindness and of all the faithfulness which You have shown to Your servant; for with my staff only I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies.
11 “Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, that he will come and attack me and the mothers with the children.
12 “For You said, ‘I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which is too great to be numbered.’ ”
Even in His distress about his own life, it is for the sake of the PROMISE! Carried down through the seed of the woman, through Abraham his grandfather, and Isaac his father and now the promise is reclaimed in him…
12 “For You said, ‘I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which is too great to be numbered.’ ”
If we were to flesh out the context of these prayers we would find that the preoccupation of the prayer is the survival of the covenant line, with the ultimate purpose of bringing forth the seed that was promised in Genesis 3…
Generation after generation, book after book throughout the entire First Testament there is a consistent call from Mankind to God Almighty to fulfill His promise to bring forth the seed…
This idea is further perpetuated throughout the prophetic books where the coming seed is revealed to be a messiah who comes to liberate His people…
What happens throughout the generations before the beginning of the New Testament is a development of this earnest prayer for God to fulfill His promises to a point where prayer becomes ceremonial for the religious leaders of the day…
Rather than believing God would break through the impossible to fulfill His promise, Israel has all but given up hope…
Because of their own disobedience, they have been exiled twice… and now the empire of Rome has occupied their land and they are under the rule of yet another world superpower…
It looks bleak and they pray that God will send the seed to liberate His people, but the liberation has changed…
When men began to call upon the name of the Lord in Genesis 4, it was for the seed of the woman to bring restoration to what they had with God before the fall…
But now, they are looking for a restoration of their nation rather than restoration for their relationship…
We are guilty of this in our own lives if we will admit it…
You can remember when God brought you out of the darkness into His glorious light…
You can remember the passion you once had…
But as you continue on in your faith journey, the needs of the moment somehow leech in on the ultimate purpose for life and you see a shift in your prayers from believing God for His purpose to asking God to help with your life…
From, “God I give all I am to you!”
Then that prayer becomes less intense and less sincere until you think back and you’ve only prayed this week while you’ve been in church, or on your way to church… Or you know I’m talking about prayer at church so you pray so when I bring it up you can say you have in fact prayed this week….
The driver for prayer moves from a focus on God’s intent to our needs…
and from our needs to a loss of drive altogether because we have given up hope on the original promise so we manipulate the promise to make it more attainable for God…
This is what Abraham did and ended up with an Ishmael…
I know God gave me a promise, but maybe He didn’t mean what He said… Maybe I can help God out by providing the means and calling it a fulfillment of the promise…
Maybe the seed wasn’t to get us back to the relationship, maybe the seed was to restore the nation…
Maybe looking back to the original promise is too much, so we look for a half way point where God can move just a bit and get there more easily…
Because we have given up hope on the real promise…
This is what Israel had done.
They had given up hope on being restored to a real relationship with God because there was 400 years of silence…
From the time of Malachi until the angel shows up to Zacharia, it was silence from heaven…
To put this in reference, The United States of America is less than 250 years old right now.
This period of silence from heaven is like us looking back to the late Mid-Evil times as the last time we heard from God.
It is no wonder they were looking for a fulfillment of promise that was more attainable.
They had lost hope and all they had left of their relationship with God was their traditions and rituals…
And this was the culture that Jesus shows up in… They were dedicated to their last thread of connection to God… tradition and religion and ritual and routine…
So Jesus disrupts their understanding of their relationship with God by giving a series of instructions before exemplifying prayer for them…
1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
3 “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
5 “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.
7 “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.
If you don’t expect God to actually answer, what good does your ritual do if no one knows about it?
Here’s what I know…
Those who need to be seen by others lack belief in the promise of reward from God…
If you need someone to know you prayed, it wasn’t for your relationship with God, it was for attention from man and Jesus says that’s all it’s good for!
1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
They have received their reward IN FULL. That’s all they get. If you’re looking for the attention of others, when you get it, that’s ALL you get.
God does not honor attention seeking religious behavior.
If you can’t do it when no one is looking, it is not a real relationship…
What kind of relationship would I have with Casia if the only time I talked to her was when someone else was around?
What if I only told her I loved her when someone else could hear me say it?
But so many do the same thing with God. They only pray when someone else can hear them pray..
They only give when someone can notice… If we were to pass the plate more, we could probably get money that wouldn’t otherwise be given, but it is because there’s no attention on those boxes in the back…
We don’t give accolades for that which should be between you and God…
Hint, hint: I don’t even know what everyone gives. I don’t look at the giving reports… Because that’s between you and God and if you’re looking for my attention because you pray or give, you’re gonna have to keep on looking!
Do what you do because of your relationship with God, not for the accolades of man!
3 “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
5 “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.
Prayer is between you and God…
These that Jesus is teaching are used to seeing many in the other religions being loud and boisterous and using colorful poetic language and praying for hours on end on the street corners and chanting with endless repetition to appear more religious…
That’s why he says,
7 “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.
8 “So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
So Jesus completely uproots all the most common ways they have seen prayer used..
He overturns all their presuppositions about prayer…
And now they are left thinking, “WELL HOW DO I PRAY!?”
After all this time, all that we have been taught about prayer, after all the silence from heaven… We have lost what it means to call upon the name of the Lord, and now Jesus is stripping us of all we wrapped up prayer with…
God appears to be far off, out of touch, so disconnected that we have lost the focus of our prayers…
Then Jesus comes in and has the audacity to say this:
9 “Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Father? Wait a minute… This same God who we have not heard from in 400 plus years… but now He’s using this intimate language of Father??
Abba is the word used for Father here and it is a term of familiarity… Jesus intends for us to be familiar with God…
Jesus removes all the fluff, strips down all the accolades, and reveals an option that is reliant on a raw, real relationship with God as Father…
Our Father who is in heaven…
He is still there… He hasn’t disappeared. He is still there to be father and He is still on the throne…
He always has been and He always will be… The governmental powers of the day do not negate His kingship…
The world events do not encroach on His omnipotence…
He’s still God… He’s still the same God that spoke the world into existence…
Our Father who is in heaven… Hollowed be Your name…
See the connection? Jesus is returning to calling on the name.. He begins with the Name…
Let’s get back to the Name…
Let’s refocus on the Name…
That word Hallowed… It is the Greek: hagiazo
It means holy, consecrated, to make sacred, reverence
In other words… Hallowed is your name… Holy is your name… Sacred is your name… We hold reverence for your name… Let us consecrate that name again!
Hallowed be Your name…
10 ‘Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Here Jesus is returning back to the origin of prayer… He is displaying in this prayer what He prays later in the Garden…
YOUR WILL BE DONE!
God, let your purposes come about… Let your reign return to the earth… Your kingdom come! Your will be done!
Fulfill your promises God!
Do on the earth what you’ve purposed in the Spirit…
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…
THEN… Only after He has submitted to the purpose of God. After displaying His reliance on the will of God, does Jesus move to daily needs…
Jesus leads with the original purpose of prayer. He prioritizes the purpose of God.
It’s not that He negates the daily needs, but He places them AFTER the purpose of God.
The priority is the mission of God, everything else comes after…
11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
If we were to admit in the way so many of us pray that if God only provided our bread on days we prayed there would be a lot more skinny Christians…
Think about this, if you only ate as often as you prayed, what would your body look like?
If I am to be a glutton let it be a glutton for the presence of God and prayer…
Daily… Jesus intends for prayer to at least daily… He exemplified this as he often retired from everyone to pray…
Daily bread…
12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Can I ask you this question? What if you were radical enough to ask God to only forgive you like you have forgiven others?
We like to read this in KJV because it is more pallatable.. It is easier to swallow that Jesus is here asking God to forgive us our debts, AS WE HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS…
Forgive as we have forgiven…
Where would you be if God forgave you, but only as you have forgiven those who wronged you?
But here Jesus is assuming that those who have a familiar relationship with the Father in heaven will so reflect Him that they will have already forgiven those who have wronged them by the time they pray a daily prayer…
I think He knows how outrageous this sounds because after he’s done with the example prayer He follows with this,
14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
This is the intended emphasis of the Lord’s Prayer: That we pray as much as we eat, that we pray for the mission of God to be accomplished, that we pray for God to fulfill His promises, and that we live out our prayer by displaying the forgiveness God has shown to us!
This is the last pattern of prayer in this series:
Forgiveness
Forgiveness
When we pray, we must pray humbly.. We must confess to God and one another… We must repent… We must call on God to fulfill His promises… AND WE MUST FORGIVE…
Look at v. 14 again… IF you forgive others, your heavenly Father will also forgive you…
We like to push faith and talk about spiritual gifts and pray for miracles, but Jesus prioritizes forgiveness.
He goes on:
15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
It sounds like this is pretty important to Jesus… Do you realize that your forgiveness from God is connected with your forgiveness of others?
We are comfortable with scriptures that leave some mystery or that give us the idea, but it is these types of commands from God that make us uncomfortable, because there is no getting around it…
We cannot do enough theological gymnastics to avoid it…
Jesus is drawing a line in the sand for us… If you’re His you’ll forgive… If you refuse to forgive, you have disqualified yourself for that same forgiveness…
Let us not miss the richness of prayer and the presence of God because we hold a grudge in our hearts…
We have all been there… We have all experienced hurt from others… Some more than others, but the requirement is the same for all: FORGIVE
Altar Call… You may need to talk to someone.. You may need to make a phone call right now.. Laying on the altar is only as beneficial as the change that is carried from that point forward… Will you forgive?