The Lord's Prayer

If you have your bibles, open them to Matthew 6.

From the beginning of the Book of Genesis through the end of the Book of Revelation, Jesus’ primary purpose is clear: redemption. He came—fully God and fully Man—to live a perfect life and carry Man’s sin to the cross. Through His death and resurrection, He redeemed forever those who would put their faith in Him as the substitute bearer of their sin. His work alone reconciles us to God forever. This is of utmost importance, because Jesus’ death and resurrection is what gives us kingdom authority and power in our prayer lives.

One thing that comes out very clearly in the pages of Scripture is the fact that prayer can dramatically change situations, people, and sometimes even the very course of nature. It's been said, if you're swept off your feet, it's time to get on your knees. But listen, the thing that prayer changes the most is “you.” You change when you pray. 

The objective of prayer is not to change God or to get Him to do something different. The objective of prayer is to align yourself with the will and the purposes of God. But God will allow hardship and challenge and need and sometimes even tragedy. So He can reveal Himself to us. So He can put His power and glory on display. So He allows things to happen in our life. So we will turn to Him in prayer.

Why pray? Because we're weak. And maybe that's one of the reasons some of us don't pray more. We don't know that yet. We think we're so strong, we're so resourceful and that we usually regard prayer as a last resort. “Well, I've tried this. I've called all my contacts. I've pretty much done everything I can do. I guess all I can do now is pray.” When in reality, the first thing you should have done was pray and ask the Lord for His help, His direction, and even His provision.

But here's the interesting thing. When we see our own weakness, we have a greater glimpse of the strength of God. In fact, the weaker we see that we are, the greater we see that God really is. Paul put it this way. 2nd Corinthians 12:10: “I know it is for Christ good, and I'm content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  Paul was referring to the fact that he had this thorn in the flesh he asked God to remove. And the Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you. Paul said in so many words, “You know what? I'm OK with that. And I'll tell you why. Because when I'm weak, I'm strong because I see God's greatness in all of this. So if you are suffering, what should you do? You should pray.

If things are going really well, What? Again, you should pray. Because James 5:13 says, is any among you suffering? They should keep praying about it. And those that have reason to be thankful should continually sing praises to God.

The purpose of prayer is to glorify God’s name and to ask for help to accomplish His will on earth. This prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, begins with God’s interests, not ours: God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will. It teaches us to put God first, then bring our needs. We should not ask God for anything that will dishonor His name, delay His kingdom, or disturb His will on earth. Every line uses “our” and “us”, not “me” or “mine.” This reminds us that prayer connects us to the whole family of God, not just ourselves.

If we put God’s concerns first, then we can bring our own needs. God is concerned about our needs and knows them even before we mention them (6:8). If this is the case, then why pray? Because prayer is the God-appointed way to have these needs met.

Let me read James 4:1-3 NKJV

[1] Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? [2] You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. [3] You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Prayer prepares us for the proper use of the answer. If we know our need, and if we voice it to God, trusting Him for His provision, then we will make better use of the answer than if God forced it on us without our asking.

So remember, no matter what state you're in, here's what you need to do, You need to pray. The example of prayer was Jesus himself. He would often spend long nights alone with the Father in prayer. So one day his disciples came to him and said, Lord teach us to pray. We want to pray like you Jesus. We want to understand what prayer really is. And he said after this manner. Therefore, you should pray. And it gave them what we call the Lord's Prayer or Disciples Prayer

The most familiar of all the praying which is associated with the Lord's name is that which we are focusing on, and that is the prayer we call the Lord's Prayer. Now I want to say at the outset that this cannot really be the Lord's Prayer because the Lord could never pray. forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are our debtors. We call it the Lord's Prayer because it is the prayer the Lord taught His disciples. In all reality, it is our prayer, or it's the disciples prayer.

As we introduce this prayer today, and as we think about some of the things the Lord said to introduce praying to us, it would be helpful to us if we would just pause for a moment and remember how very special this prayer is in our world today.

First of all, it is the earliest recollection of most every one of us as children. Maybe you remember when teachers would stand before their class in a public school and lead the class in the Lord's Prayer. We have come a long way, haven't we? And we've been going in the wrong direction.

The Lord's Prayer was known by almost every child, regardless of what their religious background might have been, for it was a part of our heritage. Often in weddings, the Lord's Prayer is either recited or it is sung. Very seldom do you officiate at a funeral or at a graveside service without the Lord's Prayer being a part of what happens there. I know some families that recited at meal time and others that say it before they go to bed at night.

Just 66 words in the King James version of this prayer, but ohh, how powerful and how wonderful these words have been.

We can pray a lot of prayers, and it is a good thing to be reminded that the disciples did not say., “Lord teach us a prayer.” They said. “Lord teach us to pray.” And the prayer is not something that we're just to say as they wrote prayer, but we'll get into that in a moment. But it is a pattern for praying and it is a wonderful outline for praying, and it has been given a great place in the history of the church.

Many of you understand that there's somewhat of a struggle with prayer for a lot of people. If I could be theological for a moment, there are two camps that have to do with the sovereignty of God. And let me try to explain this so that it's not complicated, because if it's complicated, I won't understand it. There are a group of people who followed in the train of John Calvin, and they're called Calvinists. Have you ever heard that word? Calvinists are really strong on the sovereignty of God. God is in charge. And then there's another group called the Armenians. Have you heard of those folks? Their followers of a man by the name of Arminius and they're very much into the free will of man. So you have the Calvinists and you have the Armenians. Well, the Calvinists believe that everything's up to God and nothing's up to man. Sometimes the Armenians believe that everything's up to man and hardly anything's up to God.

I read a story during this study that illustrates how some of these questions sometimes can even frustrate mature Christians. George Whitfield was a Calvinistic evangelist, John Wesley was an Armenian evangelist. And believe it or not, one time they were preaching together in a campaign. Rooming together in the same rooming house each night, actually staying in the same room. George Whitfield, the Calvinist and John Wesley the Armenian. After they had been preaching in this community for some time, they went back to their boarding house one night exhausted and we're preparing for bed and they were going to pray. Whitfield, the Calvinist prayed like this. Lord, we thank Thee for all those with whom we spoke today. And we rejoice that their lives and destinies are entirely in Thy hands. Honor our efforts according to your will. Amen. And he rose from his knees and got into bed. John Wesley, who had hardly gotten past the invocation in his prayer, looked up from the side of the bed and said, Mr. Redfield, is this where your Calvinism leads you? Then he put his head down and went on praying, and Whitfield stayed in bed and went to sleep. About two hours later Whitfield woke up and sure enough, there was Wesley still on his knees beside the bed. So Whitfield got up and went around the bed to where Whistley was kneeling, and when he got there he found out that John Wesley was asleep. And he shook him by the shoulder, and he said, Mr. Wesley, is this where your Armenianism leads you?

Somewhere between Calvinism and Armenianism is the real truth. And you know, there is no place in all of the Bible that puts that together better than the Lord's Prayer. For the Lord's Prayer is Thine is the glory, Thine is the power, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done. And in the middle is give us Our Daily Bread, forgive us our trespasses.

There isn't any conflict in the will of God. When we get to heaven someday. There's not going to be an Armenian part of heaven in a Calvinistic part of heaven, but the Lord's Prayer. Know what a balance it brings to all that we do and how we can learn not only to pray, but how we can learn about life by studying its words and following its pattern. It's found two places in the Bible, in Matthew Chapter 6 and in Luke Chapter 11, and through this series, we're studying it in the 6th chapter of the book of Matthew.

Hypocrites

Now before the Lord actually gives the prayer in the 6th chapter, he presents a couple of requirements.  And that we need to take care of these so that we understand that “the Lord said, after this manner, pray.” But then he said, “there's some things I want to tell you about prayer before you actually pray,” and the first thing he talks about is that our prayers must not be hypocritical. He actually uses the word hypocrite in the verse. Vs.5-6 “When you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets. That they may be seen by men, and I tell you they have their reward.”

The day in which Jesus spoke these words, the Jewish Pharisees especially were committed to praying on the set hours of the clock.  Matthew 23:28 says, “Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”  It's not always true that what you see on the outside represents the reality of the person. Jesus wants us to know that it is not that we pray publicly that He cares about. Don't do this as the hypocrites do.  For hypocritical praying focuses not only on position, but hypocritical praying focuses on recognition instead of reward. You cannot impress God!

Folks, no man can at one and the same time be trying to impress men and be able to impress God. You can't do that and so Jesus warns us at the outset the prayer, the Lord's Prayer is not necessarily something we should fancy doing in public for attention. The Bible says that we are not to pray in that way.

But then the Lord adds another warning to us. He says don't pray like the “hypocrites do” and notice that the word hypocrite is in verse 5, but in verse 7 he said don't pray like the heathen do. Don't pray like the hypocrites and don't pray like the heathen. Well, that prompts another question. Do the heathen pray? Ohh yes they do. And Jesus describes one of the characteristics of heathen. It is vain repetition. It is coming to God as if we have to repeat over and over again the same kinds of words, almost like a spiritual Hindu song, for God to hear us. And it is possible for even evangelicals, maybe graduates of Christian colleges and Christian high schools, it is possible to fall into the vein of heathen praying.

Now in many churches, they have what they call a prayer book. And I am by no means saying anything against prayer books. Some of the greatest things you'll find are in some of the old, old prayer books that have come to us out of the history of the church. But a prayer book has a prewritten prayer. And if you get a good prayer book, you can get a prayer for anything your heart desires, any kind of occasion. Any kind of moment you will ever experience. So you just look in the index and find the prayer you want and open it up. And then you pray this prayer out loud. Now if the prayer represents the genuineness of your heart, then God will hear it and it will be acceptable to him. What He wants is a relationship with his people so that we come to him as we would come to a friend and we converse with him and it's meaningful in relationship.

Our prayer must not be heathen. Did you know that in Tibet there are over 1,000,000 who write their prayers down on paper and they use prayer machines and they put their little prayer requests in these prayer machines and they're like wheels and they turn around like sorta maybe like the Wheel of Fortune, they believe that every time the wheel passes in front of heaven that the prayers offered. So as many times as they can pass that wheel in front of heaven, that's another prayer and that's a vain repetition. That's the kind of thing we get into sometimes if we're not careful and Jesus warns against that.

One man has written that “one sentence burdened with a hearts desire is dearer to God than an hours rehearsing of words and phrases with no longing behind them.”

God wants our hearts and so these warnings are given by our Lord at the start of our prayer.

Now the interesting thing as you come to this prayer and we just want to kind of wet our appetites for it. As you come to this prayer, you begin to realize and dive into its meaning and you discover some great theology. I want you to look down at the prayer and notice the emphasis upon God in the first 3 petitions. Thy Kingdom, Thy name, Thy will. And then notice the second part of the prayer. And its emphasis upon the poverty of man. And I'm going to change the way the words are just so you can get the point. I want you to watch carefully in your Bibles and notice “us” give us daily bread. “us” forgive us, “us” lead us not into temptation, “us” deliver us from evil. In the first part of the prayer, it's thy thy thy. In the second part of the prayer, it's us us us. God has all the glory and all the power and all the majesty, and you and I have all the needs and all the wants and all the poverty. Isn't it great to come to a prayer where you can just say God I'm empty but ohh God, you're so full and you are my source and you're the one to whom I come. You are my father.

So here in this prayer is everything that we need to do when we pray. The Lord's Prayer is a model prayer.

1.  The prayer starts with praise. And the Bible tells us that we're to enter into the presence of God with praise and Thanksgiving. It says hallowed be thy name (depending on your translation). Basically, that means we come to God and the first thing we do is we honor him and we worship him and we praise him. How many of you know how easy it is to rush into the presence of God? And you got your grocery list and you're halfway down the list and all of a sudden you realize you haven't even said a good thing about God from the start of your prayer. I find that tendency because what motivates us, what drives us? The things we feel in our hearts, the needs. And God wants us to come first of all and open the prayer gate with worship and praise.

But I found that when I praise Him first. If you come to God with your long grocery list of needs and most of us have one, and you first do not see him high and lifted up in all of his greatness and power, you won't have the confidence in your prayer, which is what you should have. Make God big in your prayer before you do anything else.

Praise Him first and then after praise comes priorities. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What in the world would happen in your life if God's will was done on earth as it is in heaven? How is God's will done in heaven? Absolutely, perfectly, completely.

2.  And so it's a good thing, secondly, to just bring your life before him and say, Lord, here's my priorities and I've told you what my priorities are. I go over these over and over again.

I'm first of all a person before God and have a relationship with him. Then I'm a husband with my wife and I have a relationship with her. And then I'm a parent for my children and I have a relationship with them.  I’m a deacon and I direct our senior adult ministry and I have a relationship with you. The church is #4. We need to be #4 because my relationship is first with God, then with wife, then with my children, and then to the work.  Now what would happen in your life if every day you came to God and you said thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven in my relationship with you? And my relationship with wife and my relationship with my children and in my leadership and relationship in this church. Pray through your priorities.

3.  First of all, there's praise and then there's priorities, and then there's provision. How many of you have any needs? Give us this day Our Daily Bread. And some of you are thinking. There's two kinds of bread, Larry. Which kind are we talking about here? Both kinds. Whatever kind you need for this is a symbol of God's desire to meet our needs, His providing for us.

4.  Start with praise and then you work through your priorities and then you bring your needs. Notice you don't bring your needs until you focused on your priorities. And you focused on who God is, and then you talk about provision. And then when you get done with your provision, then you talk about personal relationships. And I want you to notice this. This is about forgiveness. But as we're going to see, this is the only part of the prayer that is repeated for emphasis later. Forgive us our trespasses. As we forgive those who trespass against us. And when you get to the end of the prayer, it says if you don't do that, your Father in heaven won't forgive you either. I mean, it's an awesome thought that here in this prayer is the key to our relationships with each other as we pray through the prayer, as we follow this outline, we're praising God, we're sorting out our priorities, we're asking God for the provision that we need, the things we need in our life, and then we're talking about relationships. Lord, is there somebody in my life that I haven't forgiven? Because you said you want to forgive me in the same manner in which I forgive others, and so you deal with the relationship. Isn't life full of relationship challenges, friendships and sometimes family relationships and working relationships? (Humor) How many of you know that you could pray about relationships every day? And it would be helpful to you. Amen. It's right here in the outline.

5.  Now let's remember, you praise God, you deal with your priorities. You ask God for what you need, You talk about your personal relationships, and then you ask God for protection. Lord, lead me not into temptation. But deliver me from evil. Lord, protect me today. Do you know being a Christian today, it's like walking through a minefield every day. You know, you don't know what you're going to step on and if it's going to blow up in your face. You just need to ask God to help you not to walk in the path where evil is and you ask for his protection.

6.  And then it all ends where it began. Back in the throne room again for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. The glory and the praise of God are the bookends of this prayer. And if you start with praise and you end with praise in between, everything you need you can bring to God following the outline of the Lord's prayer. Someone might say today, “I'm sure glad you got around to my prayer because this is something I'm “really into” the “Lord's Prayer.”  I've been saying the Lord's Prayer for as long as I can remember, and I'm glad we’re studying this. It's about time.

My prayer, the Lord's Prayer.  Is it really?

7.  Allow me to share these thoughts with you. And you do your own grading. You take the test, you keep your own score. Here it is.

a.  Can I say Our? - if my religion has no room for others in their need.

b. Can I say Father - if I do not demonstrate this relationship every day I live?

c.  Can I say who art in heaven - if all my interests and pursuits are on earth?

d. Can I say hallowed be thy name - if I, who am called by His name, am not holy?

e.  Can I say thy Kingdom come - if I am unwilling to give up my own sovereignty and accept the righteous reign of God?

f. Can I say thy will be done - if all I care about is my own will and I'm resentful of having it pushed on me in my life?

g. Can I say on earth as it is in heaven, - unless I am truly ready to give myself to serve Him on earth?

h.  Can I say, give us this day Our Daily Bread  - without expending honest effort for it or by ignoring the genuine needs of my fellow man?

i. Can I say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us?  - if I continue to harbor a grudge against my neighbor.

j. Can I say, lead us not into temptation -  if I deliberately choose to remain in a situation where I'm likely to be tempted?

k.  Can I say deliver us from evil  - if I'm not prepared to fight in the spiritual realm with the weapon of prayer?

l. Can I say thine is the Kingdom - if I don't give the King the disciplined obedience of a loyal subject?

m.    Can I say thine is the power - if I fear what my friends and neighbors are going to say about what I do?

n.  Can I say thine is the glory - if I'm always looking to get praise for myself?

o. Can I say forever - if all I care about is today?

p. Can I say Amen - unless I honestly say cost what it may? God, this is my prayer.

Don't own this prayer my friends, just because you memorized it.  You will see that if we get gripped by this prayer, it will do more than give us something to say when we bow our heads, but it will cause us to walk in fellowship with God.

(Emphasis)

The most complete and powerful expression of man's submission to God is the Lord's Prayer.

Folks, you can't pray the Lord's Prayer if God is not your father. And you say, well, isn't everybody in the family of God? I'm afraid not. There are two families in the world. And if a person has never been born into God's family, if they've never trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, they are not a child of God and God is not their father. So they shouldn’t pray a prayer that doesn't belong to them. This prayer is for the people who have trusted Christ and are a part of the family of God through being born again, spiritually into his family. The door is always open.  The invitation is always at hand. Jesus loves us no matter our past. God desires a personal relationship with His children.

Only if time…

One occasion, Father Manning, a Catholic priest, was called late one night and asked if he could go to the hospital. And when he inquired about it, he was told that there was someone there who was very ill. They thought he might not make it through the night, and they didn't know who to call. He wasn't a Catholic, but could he come? And Father Manning went. When he got to the hospital, he found a man. In the hospital bed and there was a chair next to the bed. As he got acquainted with this man who was so seriously ill, the man said I had to talk to someone. I had to talk to some clergyman tonight because a few months back someone told me that if I really wanted to experience genuine prayer, if I really wanted to feel like I was talking with God and I was struggling with that, maybe what I should do is just set a chair up in my room and just believe in visualizing my own mind that God was there and talked to him. And he said, you know, people have been coming through the hospital and they think I'm crazy because I've been talking to God by the hour, especially in these last days. Sometimes I talked to him for two hours. And since, I began to realize that this is a conversation. A personal thing. I've just grown so much in my love and my fellowship. Is that all right? Is that all right, Father? He said, you know what, I think God would be honored by that. Honored that you wanted a personal, intimate relationship enough to really understand that what you were doing is what you should do. That God wants you to talk with him. He cares about you. He is not some person distant from you. He's close to you and he cares and he wants your intimate personal fellowship. And they prayed together, and Father Manning left. He came back and was not surprised to learn that this man had passed on to the next life. And when he talked to the nurse, she said, you know, there was something very strange about this man in his death. Somehow before he died, he got out of bed and when we found him, his head was laying in the chair.

And I have to believe that man discovered what it was like to really communicate with God. He knows you, He loves you. He wants you to talk with him. You don't have to be some spiritual giant to do it. You don't have to take some class to do it. What you got to do is just understand. He's your Father, your Father in heaven. Open your heart to him. Tell Him what's in your heart, and He will hear you and He will answer you. And the Lord's Prayer will help us learn how to do that better.

Pray with me…

Gracious and Loving Father,

You are worthy of it all. We praise you and adore You. How thankful we are for Your goodness. For Your provisions and Your protection.  We thank You for this time together as we focus on Your Word and for the powerful truth found in the prayer Your Son Jesus taught us. You have reminded us that You are holy, that Your kingdom is coming, and that You invite us to trust You daily for all we need.

Help us to live out what we have learned—not just to say this prayer, but to pray it with our lives. Teach us to depend on You, to forgive as we have been forgiven, to walk in obedience, and to seek Your will above our own.

As we leave this place, go with us and let Your peace guard our hearts, Your Spirit guide our steps, and Your love flow through us to others.

May Your name be honored and Your will be done in us and through us.

We pray all this in the precious name of Jesus,
Amen.