Themes of the Bible: Prayer (Matthew 6)

 

Themes of the Bible: Prayer (Matthew 6)

A few years ago, the evening before the first day of Camp Challenge, some of the staff and I are dedicating time to praying for the camp and campers, the other staff, and each other. And as we went to finish the night and go to bed, someone, naturally has to say the last prayer. So, our friend Keith volunteered, and I said, “Okay, go for it.” And he launched into this prayer. I would say it was a solid prayer early on, but about halfway through, and some of you will know what I'm talking about, it became very apparent that Keith had lost his way. Keith didn't know how to land the prayer. The prayer was flying, but the landing gear was not coming down and he didn't know how to finish it up. And so, he concluded this prayer, by saying, “God, just, you know, God, just, God, just do what you got to do. Amen.” And that was it. Never before have I heard a human being tell God to ‘just do what you got to do.’ But anyway, maybe you can identify with this today. If you were here last week for Matthew 5, then you know that today we’re in Matthew 6, and we're going to talk about prayer and our prayer life. And so, I thought what better way to lead into it then with Keith’s camp prayer. Now, for next week, if you’re doing the homework, you need to read the Lost Things parables of Luke chapter 15. There are three lost things that Jesus teaches about in the 15th chapter of Luke, and that's what you need to read for next week.

Alright, but let's get back to Keith for a second. Chances are most anyone who has prayed publicly, I know I fall into this category, we've had that moment where we don't exactly know what we're saying, we lose our train of thought and suddenly this need to sound wise and to sound profound and to sound holy takes our attention, and all of a sudden our prayer becomes more about a speech that we're trying to impress other people with than it actually does talking to God. And depending on who it is that we're around, we may even feel the need to impress other people with our prayer so that they may recognize us. ‘That's a really holy person! Did you hear their prayer?’ This is why a lot of people avoid public prayer. They don't want to seem like that. They don't want to embarrass themselves with a less-than-stellar sounding prayer. And so, a lot of people just say, ‘Well, I'm going to steer clear of public prayer.’ It's why whenever you get together with friends, you always look down and you don't want to be the one that gets volunteered to pray. But today, I want to talk not about public prayer, but about your private prayer life.

So, have you ever felt like it's awkward to talk to someone who isn't answering back? Do you ever wonder, ‘well, what is it exactly I'm supposed to say?’ I mean, God knows everything. So, what is it that I'm really supposed to say to him? How should I say this? Do I need to be careful about the way that I worded? Do I talk like I'm talking to a friend? This is the God of the universe after all, shouldn't I be a little bit more dignified in the way that I approach him? How do I avoid the Jesus clause thing? Where God's like Santa Claus, and I'm sitting on his lap and telling him everything that I want. I know that's not supposed to be the way that I pray. But how do I avoid that? And when do I pray? Do I pray in the morning? Do I pray in the evening? Am I supposed to pray without ceasing all day long and every little thing that comes up am I supposed to say a prayer about it? How often am I supposed to pray and how much repetition is bad? The things that I need today are the same things that I needed yesterday. Does God expect new material for me? Am I supposed to be coming up with new stuff every time that I pray to him, What does a healthy prayer life even look like? And how do I know that I prayed enough to say that I have a healthy prayer life? I pray for a lot of stuff and I'm not getting it. Are we really sure that this is working? I mean, it might seem just kind of like praying into the wind. And can I overdo it? Do I ask too often? Do I pray too much?

If any of those questions have ever crossed your mind about your prayer life, would you just raise your hand right now? Any of those questions? See, everybody has wondered about these things. So often, I think that people feel like ‘well, I must not be good because I wonder about these things and I don't know really how to pray and everybody else seems to know and have the answers to all these questions.’ You should not beat yourself up, if you wonder these things. You know why? Even Jesus's disciples seem to feel the same way. The ones that are walking around with Jesus on the earth. They wondered about these things. In Luke the 11th chapter, you see that one day Jesus is praying in a certain place. When he finished one of his disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Teach me how I'm supposed to pray. Just like John taught his disciples. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to pray? How am I supposed to commune with God the way you do? And notice in Matthew, that chapter that I had you read, that Jesus starts off his lesson on prayer, by warning against two different perversions that can corrupt your prayer life. If you got your Bibles, make sure you're open to Matthew chapter 6. We're looking at this passage that is oftentimes called the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer is really in the Garden of Gethsemane, what is also known as the High Priestly Prayer. This is more of the disciple’s prayer because it's teaching them how to pray, but we won't get caught up on that. . . Look at verses 5 and 6. [Read Matthew 6:5-6].

Ok, I want you to imagine for a second that I only talk to Christiana, my wife, when you all were around. I only put on this show like we are close, and I praise her, and I say nice things about her, and talk to her when all of you are around. I praise her so that you all think that I'm this great husband, because I'm always saying nice things to and about my wife in public. Right? But then at home, I treat her like she doesn't even exist. She comes to the doorway, says something to me, and I don't even look up. Maybe I mumble something, but I don't talk to her. And we sleep maybe in separate rooms. I never have any kind of conversation or contact with her. Is there anybody that would say I'm being a good husband? I don't believe so. Would she even believe that I really loved her? Yeah, I do those things in public, but she doesn't see any of that in private at all. If I really did love her, wouldn't I want to cultivate and grow that relationship in private also? Okay, and so what is Jesus doing here? He's teaching us the same thing about our relationship with God. It is wonderful if you're proclaiming to other people how great he is, and you're singing those words, ‘how great is our God,’ but is he really going to believe that if you have no effort whatsoever to cultivate and grow that relationship in private? Or is it going to be much more of a show to impress other people? Jesus is warning about that.

And then, look at verses 7 and 8. [Read Matthew 6:7-8]. So, the second thing that he's warning about here, what we learned over and over as we've gone through these Old Testament accounts, that God cars about the heart far more than outward displays of piety. Remember what Amos said, that horrific passage where God is speaking through the prophet Amos in chapter 5 and he says, verses 21 & 23, “I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.” And why is this? Because they're not real. Nothing has changed here. They're all outward displays, when God cares about the heart. And he's shown that over and over. Look at Jesus's teaching in last week’s passage from Matthew 5 where he talks about murder. ‘Of course, I don't want you to go out and murder someone physically.’ But what he is teaching is that the anger in your heart, God cares about what is going on in your heart and now he's teaching the same thing about prayer. It's not about the many words. It's not about the things that you say outwardly, what is happening in your heart. Work to avoid these mindlessly repeated and recited prayers. That's not a prayer life. By the way, any guesses as to what the most mindlessly repeated and recited prayer that exists in Christianity? Its right here, the Lord's Prayer. That's the one that's the most mindlessly recited in repeated prayer. That is not what we should pray. That's not what Jesus is teaching.

Look at what he says in verse 9, “this is how you should pray.” Jesus is teaching us how to pray not what to pray. It’s a template or model to follow. That's what he's saying in this passage, just so we're clear. If you have the Lord's Prayer memorized and you say it, it's not bad to say it. That's not what I'm stressing. We memorize Scripture, we recite scripture. It's good to do those things. And what you're doing is you're reciting and saying and maybe drilling into your mind, the model of how you're supposed to pray. What I'm getting at is that this is not a substitute for your prayer life. When you go to bed at night and you recite the Lord's Prayer, that isn't a prayer life because it's a mindlessly recited repeated prayer. That's not what we're being told to do here. What you see is Jesus giving us a skeleton. He's giving us a framework of what a healthy prayer life will really be, but then we need to make it our own. People are going to have different things that they're praising God for, and you will glorify God for different reasons than I will, and my petitions that I'm asking are going to be dramatically different than yours. That's why a set recited prayer doesn't work for all of us. Jesus gives us the framework and we fill it in and furnish it with the various things that we are experiencing and that we know that God wants to hear from us.

Ok, let’s begin. Verse 9, “Our Father who is in heaven.” The first thing I want you to notice is the presumption that is in those words, its calling the author of all things, the God of the universe and calling him Father. 1 John 3:10 tells us that you can segregate all of humanity into two groups, children of God, and children of the devil. That's it. We're not all sons and daughters of God. Only those that have been adopted into the family of God can call God ‘Father.’ And so, what are we acknowledging when we say this? This is what Ephesians 1 tells us, “he predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself.” When we proclaim and start our prayers the same way ‘father’ or ‘Father God,’ we are implicitly acknowledging the work of Jesus on the cross, because that is the only way that I could ever refer to God as my father. Only in Christ can I presume to be His child, and our prayers that address God as Father as Jesus instructed, acknowledge that reality.

And then there's this line. Our father who's in heaven, ‘hallowed be your name.’ What does that word ‘hallowed’ mean? It means that He is holy. This is really important because this is teaching us that you don't start off your prayers by making a bunch of requests. How many times have we said that over the course of these last several weeks, that our life is not about us. Our life exists to glorify the Father and that's exactly what Jesus is teaching us in our prayer life as well. Our prayers should be acknowledging that this life is not about me. It is about Him. We are praying here that God's name will be revered and honored and made holy in our lives, and that when people see us, they will come to honor God even more.

And then there's this next portion, ‘your kingdom come.’ I’ve struggled with exactly what that’s supposed to mean. Am I asking God to bring his kingdom down and just smash all earthly kingdoms? What you see when you study this text is a very personal element to this. What is the source of all of our physical and emotional and cultural problems? You can go back into the Old Testament in these accounts, and what we see time and again is when we serve other things, when we substitute other things in the place of God, that leads to all of these problems. And so, what we're doing in our prayer is making a stated desire to kill our prideful approach. ‘I don't want this life to be about my kingdom and my desires, your kingdom come into my life. How many of us are asking that the Holy Spirit correct our desires? So you no longer want the bad things, but that you want what God wants for you. Are you asking him to do that? That should be part of a healthy prayer life, asking the Holy Spirit that dwells in you to correct my desires.

We should also be praying that God's kingdom come in regard to the application of His Word. ‘God, bring into my life people that are teaching the word effectively. Help me surround myself with good teaching. Help me to understand your word more. Help me to care more about what you think.’ Are we are asking him to overpower us in every part of our lives and our desires? How many of us pray for this? That's what Jesus is modeling. “Your kingdom come,” and along those lines, “your will be done.”

If you submit your will to God saying, ‘Alright, I know what I want, but I want to submit my will to You. Lead me wherever You will take me, use me however you will.’ If you do that, you better know what you're asking for. Because there will be pain, and there will be struggle, and there will be suffering that comes along with following Christ. Jesus said, ‘men will hate you because of my name.’ Jesus warned us about all of those things. Remember what he told people if you want to follow me take up what? Take up your cross.

The cross meant pain, suffering, humiliation. What a great selling point. Hey, you want to follow me? Right, grab that cross because that could be your future. Remember what Job found? That he was to glorify and honor God in some horrible, horrible circumstances. But this life wasn't his own. And God was to be glorified, and he may never understand why God is allowing things to happen to him that are happening to him, but not my will, yours be done. If you're going to pray that, I would highly recommend that we also be praying that we don't become bitter, that we don't become hardened by the consequences that come from submitting to God's will. Know what you're praying for when you ask for this.

Have you noticed yet how the start of our prayer is to be all about God and not about us. Nothing in here is about us, other than asking God to come and overpower us. Doesn't that fit with everything we've learned about a Christian life, that it's not us that matters. We are vessels to bring God glory and in this kind of prayer, you are going to heal that self-centeredness that makes life about you. That's a key component of this.

Ok, verses 11, “give us this day, our daily bread.” What is Jesus reminding us here? He's reminding us that even our most basic needs are in His hand. This last year and a half we've been dealing with all of this COVID stuff. And initially, nobody really knew what it was going to do, how contagious it was, what the mortality rate would be, and we shut down the world's economy as a result of that. There was a lot of confusion, what's going to happen? But imagine for a second if COVID would have been a lot deadlier than it was. Taking nothing away from the deadliness that it was, but what if its mortality rate would have been 40%? What if you had a global pandemic the way that they used to have global pandemics? What if there was an economic depression and you couldn’t go to the store and buy food? What if there was a nuclear attack? And everything that you have built up your security, your safety your bank account means nothing. Jesus is begging us, he’s teaching us that so much of your security is a house of cards. If it is built in anything in this world, it can be shattered in a moment. Its like the house built on shifting sand. It can be shattered with one report from the doctor. Just like that. So, in this verse, Jesus is calling us to pray for our basic needs that God, who benevolently has bestowed so much upon us, would continue providing for our basic needs.

And then this line, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” If I can be honest, I've always found that to be odd wording. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It's almost like I'm telling God, “hey, you need to be as forgiving as I am.” That’s not a real good interpretation of that passage. . . But I do think that there's a lesson there. I think this is teaching us something. Jesus is teaching us that this is not just say sorry for all the things that you've done wrong. And a lot of us think that that's what we're supposed to do. We did all these things bad today, so we should say sorry for it. And certainly, if we have unrepentant sin in our life, we should repent and put it at the foot of the cross. But remember what we've said before, you're already forgiven. You're already taken care of. That's not necessarily what this teaching is all about. What Jesus is saying, is it's in God's presence that you're going to learn to truly forgive. In your prayer life, through God’s Word, in your interactions with other believers, you will recognize how much you have been forgiven and then you will forgive others in that same way. Your relationship with God is tightly linked to your relationship with other people and the way that you treat and regard other people. Jesus is saying, your relationship with man is tightly linked in your relationship with God. The degree to which God is willing to forgive you is what you should be willing to forgive in others. I'm going to tell you if you think that way, that awareness is going to change everything. Have you ever wondered how Christians are capable of forgiving people of the most atrocious heinous crimes? The world wonders, and that right there is exactly how it happens.

I don't know if you remember when the encounter between Botham Jean and Amber Geiger. Amber Geiger was a former Dallas police officer. She was off duty. She was coming home to her apartment. And the way the apartments have been built, they were kind of cookie cutter, all the apartments look the same. And her apartment was on the third floor and his was on the fourth, she approached ‘her apartment’ and notice that the door was open. She thought it was her apartment. She was on the wrong floor. It was his and she assumed that there was a break-in, so she drew her weapon. She opened the door, and he was sitting there and she claimed that she was freaked out and thought her life is in danger and she shoots him and kills him. It was a horrific crime. She loses her job. She's convicted of murder, and they're at her sentencing, the brother of Botham Jean spoke, and he shocked the world. He didn't shock Christians, but he shocked the world in what he said to his brother's murderer, Amber Geiger. It illustrates the point and if you didn't, this is what Jesus is talking about.

Brandt Jean said, “I forgive you. I love you as a person. And I know if you go to God and ask Him, He will forgive you. I don't even want you to go into jail. I want the best for you. And the best would be to give your life to Christ. I'm not going to say anything else. I think giving your life to Christ and to the best thing that Botham would have wanted. Again, I love you as a person. I don't wish anything bad on you.” And then he turns to the judge and asks for permission to get up and hug Amber Geiger. The two run into each other’s arms, everyone is crying, the reporters are stunned.  That right there is the type of forgiveness that a Christian is capable of. How does that happen? Brandt Jean embodied that.

How can I be aware of what Christ did for me and not forgive someone else of a lesser offense? With as awful as Amber Geiger’s offense was, she intentionally killed an innocent man, it is so much less than what I have done to offend my Creator. And if he can forgive me and show me grace, how can I not do the same? And you realize that in your prayer life, you remember when we read the story of the unmerciful servant. Jesus tells that story in Matthew 18:21-35, about a guy who owes a lot of money to the king. And he goes in, he's pleading with the king, ‘please give me more time to pay my debt.’ To which the king replies, ‘You know what, forget it all. I'm wiping it all clean.’  The man is ecstatic. He can't believe it. And he goes out and he runs into somebody that owes him a lot less money than he owed the king. And he says, ‘Hey, I need my money’ and the guy says, ‘you’ve got to give me more time.’ Instead of showing him grace, takes him and throws him in the debtor’s prison. We're shocked at that. Why? How can someone who has been forgiven such a great debt, not show that same forgiveness to another? Father, forgive us our debts, as we are forgiving others who are indebted to us. This kind of prayer reminds us of how much our master has forgiven us. And it's teaching us to do the same.

Ok, verse 13, “. . .do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. . .” Lead us not into temptation. Yeah, you're going to be tested. We're going to have to go through trials. And the apostle Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 3:12-13 that it's a good thing to undergo trials because in the heat of those trials, God is burning off all of your impurities, all of the wood, hay, and straw, so that gold, silver, and precious stones remain. Trials serve a good purpose. So, what does this mean? Well, to understand what Jesus means by saying, pray that God lead us not into temptation. Look at what he says in another context. He prays those same words in the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s the night he’ll be arrested, the next morning he’ll be crucified, and he goes, and he finds his disciples sleeping and says, “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). He tells them to stay awake and be on guard. This is what he says, keep watching and praying so that you do not come into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. It’s the same language that he uses in the Lord's Prayer. This temptation, it means entertaining, or considering yielding to sin. Jesus is saying, pray that God would steer you clear, so that you're not even messing with sin. Maybe there's someone at work that you're getting too close to, and it's going to endanger your relationship with your spouse. You should be praying that God will turn your heart and your mind away from that and he'll open doors to get you away from that circumstance. Maybe you know that going certain places or being around certain people is leading you down a dangerous and deadly path. I pray that you not come into temptation, that God would take action to remove that desire from you or remove that possibility from you. Pray that He would lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And here we're asking for God's protection. God's protection from the evil of the world. Yes, that includes Satan's desires. You know what he wants to do to you and you know what he wants to do to your family. You know what he wants to do to our church family. Pray for God's protection there. God's wanting you to pray for his protection, his divine protection for those things.

All right, I'm going to sum it all up here. How do we pray? Here’s the formular that Jesus gives us. In addressing the father, you're acknowledging the greatness of who He is and the relationship that you have with Him. You're asking for His Spirit to correct your desires, asking Him to move your desires in line with His desires, asking Him to teach you, submitting your will to his and submitting your feelings to his. That's the way our prayers should begin. All of it is about God. And then after that, we're petitioning for his provision, asking him to provide for us. We're praising him for the way that he forgave us. And we're asking for that same forgiving spirit, asking that he removes that desire towards sinfulness and requesting that he protect us from those things that are evil. That's a healthy prayer life, not according to me, but according to Jesus Christ. When his disciples asked Him, teach us how to pray, this is what he gave them.

The second part of a healthy prayer life is to recognize that prayer matters. Every page of Scripture, God's champions, the people that God will use, his servants. Prayer was an integral part of their lives and if it hasn't clicked for you yet, and you're still stumbling around trying to figure out how to have a prayer life. Maybe it's because you're doing it wrong. Well, Jesus has told you how to do it, right. So, trust him, because it's worth getting right.

Let’s pray to him now.