Sermon Transcript
Matthew 6:5-15. 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. 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. 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.
Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you.
I want you to remember your last crisis, a time when something in your life seemed like it was on fire and it’s all you could think about. Maybe it’s, uh, the last thing you thought about before you drifted off to sleep at night. Maybe you woke up thinking about it. Maybe you even dreamed about it. A level 5 crisis.
Uh, for some of you, you don’t need to put much effort into remembering one of those times because it might be happening in your life right now.
Here’s the question for us today: how did you pray when you were in that season? Notice I didn’t ask if you prayed. I asked how you prayed, because I know you prayed. Uh, even if you are someone who adamantly believes there is no God, if you’re at a level 5 crisis, you will need to put effort into not praying. Prayer will just come out of you if you’re in a spot like that.
Even if it isn’t verbalized, you will involuntarily think things like, help me, I’m desperate, please. Our soul will cry out whether we want it to or not. We all pray. Even if we don’t believe in prayer, we still pray. It just happens.
So today we’re going to look at how Jesus instructs us to pray. Um, if we’re going to pray anyway, at least sometimes— and all of us do at least sometimes— we may as well hear what Jesus has to say on the subject. Now, for most of us, we’ve probably heard at least part of what Jesus teaches on prayer. Jesus says, when you pray, pray, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. So you can hear how I I learned it, which version I learned.
We’ve heard this before, most of us. But before we talk about Jesus’ specific prayer model, we’re going to look at the context in which he introduces his prayer model. And specifically, let’s look at one little phrase Jesus says before he tells us how to pray, and it sets up everything else that we’re going to talk about today. It’s verse 8. It’s right before the start of the Lord’s Jesus says, your Father, your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. For some of you, that little phrase alone might take all the anxiety out of your life. Your level 5 crisis, you’re praying, you’re like, God, please. God, why? God, I’m at the end of my rope.
The rope. It’s like when you call 911, right? You’re all frantic. You’re like, I gotta explain my situation. I gotta get them to come here.
I gotta get them to do something for me, like now, not in 5 minutes, like right now. Now God knows what you need before you ask him.
Does that take the pressure off? Are you automatically more at ease if he knows what you need? Instead of coming to him all stressed and frazzled, we’re like, oh, you already know, okay. Like you call 911, right, and you’re like, I have an emergency, and they’re like, we’re already on it, we have deployed every resource that we have to come take care of you. Oh, okay, right?
You’re like, you’re immediately more calm. Like, immediately.
That’s how we would pray if we came into an understanding, if we came into prayer with an understanding that God already knows what we need. But oftentimes, let’s be honest, we don’t come to prayer with that understanding already up and running in our hearts. Instead, our prayers are often an effort to, like, get God’s attention. Maybe if we make enough noise, then he’ll listen to us. But that’s not necessary.
Jesus says, verse 7, there are no specific set of words that can gain us more of an audience with God. We don’t have to say things exactly right for God to hear us or for God to help us. God is not impressed with 5-syllable words any more than he’s impressed with one-syllable words. He’s not impressed if we pray in the King James English, like, O thee grandest of fathers, I beseech you that you might bestow on thee humble servant thou richest of blessings and grant me favor upon my adversaries.
Jesus is like, you don’t need to pray like that to be heard. Word. There are no special words. You don’t have to convince God to listen to you. He’s your Father.
He knows what you need. Dads can make sense of all kind of jibber jabber, right? Requests from kids, they don’t need to be in structured essay form with sources cited. Like, we know what they need, even if they use the wrong word, even if they’re making up some words, right? We can filter through through a lot of tears and a lot of snot and decipher what’s really going on.
It’s not hard. We can figure it out, and we’re just earthly dads. Listen, he’s your Father. He knows what you need before you ask him. That is the context in which Jesus gives us a model for prayer.
And it’s in that context, it’s in that kind of emotional space, oh, you know, we’re secure, Dad already knows what we need. It’s in that space Jesus says, when you pray, pray— I’ll give you 5 categories, 5 big categories— pray God, kingdom, bread, temptation, forgiveness. God, kingdom, bread, temptation, forgiveness. Bread, temptation, forgiveness. I’m sorry, those don’t rhyme or don’t spell anything, but we’ll take them one at a time.
And each one of those will relate back to he knows what you need. So first, God. The prayer begins with a focus on God. Jesus says, when you pray, pray, Our Father who art in heaven. I’m sure everyone who has ever said anything about the Lord’s Prayer notices that it starts with God.
So my, my comments here probably won’t be a whole lot of news to very many of you. But even though we know Jesus says start with God, we know that oftentimes we still start with ourselves and our problems. Oftentimes when we pray, it’s, God, I need. God, I would like. God, would you please, right, help me?
Like, we naturally start with us. Just like our kids when they get home from school, right? First thing they say, can I have a snack? Can I watch TV? They’re focused on themselves, right?
Now kids or students, this is just for free, okay? It’s not about prayer, but it will help your life. You— your parents would be blown away if you walked in the door and before you asked for a snack, snack, before you ask if you can play video games, before you ask if you can go to a friend’s house, if you walked in and said, Mom and Dad, how was your day?
Just start with that. You’ll probably knock them over if that’s the first thing you said. Your whole afternoon, I’m telling you, is going to go a whole lot better if you do that. Okay? That was just for free.
Now back to our paid content.
Here’s one secret to life: we are happier if we aren’t thinking about ourselves.
We are happier when we are not thinking about ourselves. The more that we focus outside of ourselves, the more content we will feel. There’s all kinds of research on what happens in our brains when we are thinking of others instead of thinking about us. We gain more happiness serving others, spending on others, than if we are similarly dedicated to us. One recent peer-reviewed article published March 2021 titled Happiness Comes from Trying to Make Others Feel Good— if you’re the kind of person who would want to look that kind of thing up— they found, um, summary of other studies, they found the reason we are happier if we focus on others is because by focusing on them, we establish more of a relational connection with them.
And then it’s really the relational connection that makes us feel happy. Whereas if we are only focusing on ourselves, we are by definition not building relationships with others, meaning we are then less happy, which is another plug for what we’re trying to develop around here, like our sense of community with each other. So in our prayers, relate this to prayer, if we start with God, if we start with who God is, if we focus on him first, at a minimum, then we will feel more connected with him. And that’s what we really need. We need to feel connected with him.
It’ll make all the difference, and he knows it. He knows what we need. There are additional reasons, of course, God instructs us to begin with our prayers with a focus on him. There’s a bunch of reasons, But listen, orienting our focus outside of ourselves will elevate our happiness, peace, stability in the world, even if we’re in a crisis. Because if you’re in a crisis, you instantly feel better if somebody’s holding your hand.
Lots of research on that too. Of course, like, holding somebody’s hand doesn’t solve everything, right? You still have the crisis that needs to be dealt with somehow. You still need to talk about what actually needs to be done, and we’ll get to that section of the Lord’s Prayer in a little bit. You know, give us today our daily bread.
So God knows we also need to talk about our needs. It’s not all about him. And psychologically, we need to be open and vulnerable about what our needs are. Studies also show if we only focus on others, never ourselves, we get burned out. So there’s absolutely a place to draw attention to the very real needs we have, but ourselves and our needs must be addressed in their proper place, which is not the primary position.
If our needs are primary, we get looped into this kind of narcissistic inward spiral and it leads to depression. So we start with God.
Second, kingdom We align with God’s will. We align with God’s will. Jesus says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, we say, God, I want what you want no matter what. I want what you want.
Many times when Christians think about God’s coming kingdom or God’s will being done on earth, we just fast forward to the end of time, and we think about when God’s going to restore everything that has been broken. He’s going to set all the wrongs right. Everyone will live in harmony. Like, that’s God’s kingdom. And certainly that day will be great.
We should pray for that day to come, obviously, the final fulfillment of God’s kingdom. But that’s not the only way in which we’re asking for God’s will to be done or for his kingdom to come. We’re not only trusting him for when he will set everything right in future. We’re also trusting him for what happens in our individual lives right here and now. So illness, unemployment, chronic pain, kids or grandkids who are way off track, someone at work is out to get you, spouse is difficult, wish you had a spouse— God May your will be done, and may your kingdom expand through whatever is happening in my life.
Jesus, of course, on the night he was arrested and shortly before he was crucified, Jesus prayed, Father, may this cup pass from me, but may your will be done. Jesus, facing torture, torture, facing getting nailed to a piece of wood, facing the wrath of God for the sin of the world. He says, if I can avoid this, 4 stars, that’d be great, but may your will be done. Now, as far as we know, Jesus didn’t add, uh, and your kingdom come, right? As far as we know, he just said, your will be done.
But it was his crucifixion that brought more of God’s kingdom to the earth. Of course, in some ways, God’s kingdom was already here. God had been— I mean, Jesus had been proclaiming God’s kingdom, showing how God’s kingdom overturns sin, overturns darkness, overturns sickness. But it was through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection that death begins to be reversed. It’s through his crucifixion that the curse on us for running away from God, that that is lifted.
Lifted. Darkness recedes. Dawn bursts forth. It’s God’s kingdom coming through his crucifixion. His crucifixion was necessary for the advancement of God’s kingdom.
So it shouldn’t surprise us then if God’s will in our lives might require a crucifixion of sorts from us. It might be that our trial, our pain, our difficulty is the very thing God will use, just like he used Jesus’ crucifixion. It is the very thing he will use to restore something in our world. Our tragedy might bring more light or wholeness to the world, more of God’s kingdom. There’s plenty verses, plenty, on how suffering produces perseverance or character or hope.
So the question is, do you trust him to use your difficulty, your current difficulty, do you trust him that he will use that to heal something in you or to heal something in the world? When you are going through the fire, can you say, Your will be done. Your kingdom come. Maybe you’ve never thought about it this way before, but what if you need the fire?
What if it would be somehow worse for you if you didn’t go through the fire? And He knows it because He knows what you need. Would you want the fire then? Would you say, your will be done, expand your kingdom through me? You know, we just sang in here Christ Be Magnified, and some of the lines are, if I’m in the fire, I’ll rejoice because you’re there too.
If the cross brings transformation, then I’ll be crucified with you. Listen, do you trust God enough to say, if this is what you have for me, I want it?
If this is what you have for me, I want it. If this is what you have for me, I want it. Don’t take it away.
Do you trust him to know what you need? Say, your will be done, God. If this is going to advance your kingdom in me or in the world, do it.
Next, bread. Uh, we petition for our needs. Bread. Uh, we petition for our needs. Give us today our daily bread.
Uh, this is the part where we talk about us, our needs. And it’s okay to ask for our needs to be met. In fact, we must ask on behalf of ourselves. Like we said earlier, totally ignoring ourselves is unhealthy. Sometimes, especially among Christians, we can get the idea that self-care is unspiritual.
We think if we never share a prayer request that we are somehow stronger or more holy. Like, oh, I don’t need you to pray for me. I just want to hear how I can pray for you. That doesn’t make us holier. If it makes us anything, it makes us feel superior to others, which would be sinful, right?
We must declare what we need. It’s part of proper spirituality. Admitting weakness is good for us. Like we said, Jesus in the garden asked, he says, Father, may this cup pass from me. He brings his needs before the Father, and he brings his needs before his friends, right?
He tells them, he’s like, stay awake with me, Hey guys, like, can you be there for me right now? I’m having a rough time. He says that. It’s okay. It’s good.
It’s necessary to talk about our needs. But in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus shows us the posture we should take when we talk about our needs with God. Remember, the whole prayer is couched under the heading of he knows what you need. So when you go to him and say, give me today my daily bread. It’s with the understanding he is the wise provider.
He knows better than us comprehensively what is ideal for our lives. He knows what you need. You have some idea, right? You have some hunches. You have some pretty strong inclinations of what you need, but he knows the specifics.
And so when we go to him, we’re asking him to, like, to precisely measure out the exact portion that is best for us. We say, don’t give me one crumb more than what would be the perfect amount for me. I don’t want to be overweight spiritually, but give me every single little morsel that is necessary. Don’t short me, God. Like, don’t hold back if I need it.
Give me today my Give us this day our daily bread. That’s how we talk about our needs. Like, I really have them. They’re real. And I’m bringing them to you, God.
And I’m asking you, God, to give me every bit of what you believe is necessary and essential for me to have. That’s bread. Next, temptation. We trust God’s way is the best way. This is a biggie, okay?
Not that they’re not all biggies, but lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. Now, whether you’re a Christian or not, you are familiar with the concept of temptation. You instinctively know what temptation is. It’s a desire that you have. It’s a real desire.
It’s really there, but you know that you should deny it. That’s temptation, right? There’s something you want. You really want it, but it would be bad for if you pursued it. We’re all familiar.
We’re on a diet, someone drops off a tray of sweets to the office.
I want it. Not gonna have it. We’re on a tight budget, we see a really cool TV on sale at Costco, right? We’re like, I want it, but I shouldn’t. That’s temptation, right?
It’s a desire that we shouldn’t pursue. We know that. Yeah, that’s all of us. Um, but here’s a question for all of us, whether you’re a Christian or not: how do you know which desires you should pursue and which ones you shouldn’t pursue?
How do you figure out which desires are good and which ones will ruin your life? How do you know? All right, we all have to answer that question because we all have baskets full of desires, don’t we? Um, like in our hearts, we want, we want to be productive. It makes us feel good to accomplish something, right?
But we also want to be lazy, right? Which— what are we supposed to do? We want to be faithful to our spouses. But also, there are some other people who are pretty cute too. It’s a real desire.
Maybe we’re attracted to various genders. Maybe we even have a desire to be a different gender. Should we pursue that or not? How do we sort that out? We want to be generous.
We want to be charitable. But we also want to be greedy. We want to have more than we currently have. They’re both up and running. They’re both powerful, right?
We have baskets full of desires. So how do we figure out which ones to pursue? We all have to answer that question, all of us. And we’ve probably lived long enough to have experienced that some desires will lead us to life and wholeness, and other desires will lead to destruction. Destruction, right?
And sometimes what we thought would lead us to life actually ended up destroying us. So we can’t really trust our instincts. So how do we know?
Jesus says, your Father knows what you need. He knows what you need. It’s not necessarily the strongest desire we should follow. It’s not necessarily what our friends are telling us that we should follow, those voices may or may not lead us astray. But it is our Father who knows what we need.
This prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, is, is an acknowledgment God defines right and wrong. God defines good from evil. He knows what is best, and we need to listen. It’s a plea, really, that we will follow his lead instead of, like, the pounding in our chest, for instance. We’re not going to follow that if it’s contrary to what he says.
He’s saying, I won’t be formed by feelings. I’ll hold fast to what is true. Lead me not into temptation, Lord. Lead me to you, away from evil. So lastly, forgiveness.
Um, forgiveness. We forgive as we are forgiven. We forgive as we are forgiven. Jesus actually mentions forgiveness twice in this passage. Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors, verse 12.
And then later he says, if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your forgive you. So first, do you know that you need forgiveness?
Do you know there’s a debt that you owe God because of what you’ve done? Do you know that?
God does. God knows you need forgiveness. Have you asked for it?
Let me tell you one way you know if you have not not asked for forgiveness. If you respond to the idea that you need forgiveness from God by thinking something like, yeah, I know I need forgiveness, that’s— but I’ve tried to make up for what I’ve done, and I really think I’m better now, so God and I are cool. If that’s how you respond to your debt before God, you have not asked for forgiveness.
Forgiveness is canceling of a debt. The Greek is an accounting term, as many of you know. And if you’re saying, yeah, I have a debt, sure, but I’m working it off, it doesn’t sound like you’ve asked for the debt to be canceled. It sounds like you’re trying to pay the debt back yourself. Asking for forgiveness is It’s saying, I’m not going to pay back what I owe.
Hey, debt collector, I got nothing.
That’s what you’re asking for when you ask for forgiveness, which means just like any other debt, if you, the debtor, aren’t going to pay your way out, then by default, fault, the collector must absorb that cost. So when you ask for God’s forgiveness, you are, one, admitting you will not pay what you owe him.
You are admitting that. It’s humbling. And 2, you are asking for Jesus to cover it for you, to pay it for you.
That’s what he did on the cross. He paid the debt that you owe, so you are free from the burden of saying, yeah, but I’m better now. Yeah, but I’m working my way back where I’m gonna get there. Listen, it’s been paid.
If you’ve asked Jesus to pay what you owe, it’s been paid. You are free. You don’t have to work your way back. You are back.
Do you feel the freedom that he purchased for you? That’s the freedom Jesus wants us to give others who have sinned against us. Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. Now, that’s not easy. Forgiveness is difficult, right?
And forgiveness is difficult because other people, if other people have hurt us, they really owe us. Like, for serious. They racked up a debt. They owe us big. But they don’t seem very interested or able in paying us back.
So, who’s going to pay what they owe us? Jesus says, as I have forgiven you, you forgive them. He says, I know that means you will need to pay their debt in order to forgive them. It’s like, Jesus is like, I know that. That’s how— what forgiveness is.
That’s how it works. That’s what I did for you. Now that’s what I want you to do for them. That’s the instruction. But then uncomfortably, Jesus adds a warning to the instruction.
He says, if you don’t forgive, neither will I forgive you. If you don’t forgive those people who have hurt you, Jesus says, he will not forgive you. That’s uncomfortable, right?
I’m not going to sort it out for us. I’m just going to let it bother us.
Because I know many of us right now are thinking, yeah, sure, I’m supposed to forgive, but if I prayed the right prayer when I was a kid, Jesus and I are still cool. Right? I don’t really need to forgive other people, right? Or Jesus doesn’t really expect us to forgive everyone, does he? Isn’t this just like when he says, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off?
I mean, he’s not being literal here, right? I’m not going to sort it out for you.
Maybe you shouldn’t either.
Just let it bother you. It’s a real warning. He says, if you don’t forgive, I will not forgive you.
I can tell you, uh, from my experience, there is a connection between freeing people from what they owe us and feeling the freedom that God gave us when he paid our debts. If you are holding on to a grudge with someone right now, even if they really deserve it, here’s my guess, it’s my bet, I’ll put my money on the table. I bet at least to some extent, if you’re holding a grudge, that means you still believe that you in some way need to earn your way back to God.
If you’re holding a grudge, I bet you believe God is still holding a grudge holding something over your head. Maybe God makes snide comments to others about something you did long ago. You don’t really feel that you are completely clear with him, not all the way.
There’s a connection.
I’m telling you, as you work toward forgiving others, you will gain a greater and greater understanding of how completely God has cleared you from what you owe him.
May God help us and may he forgive us when we fail. Let’s pray. Father, we pray that we can forgive as we have been forgiven, Lord, and please forgive us when we do not. Help us, Lord. Enable us to clear the debts that people owe us as you have cleared the debt that we owe you.
We pray we would trust you in all things, that you know what we need. We pray that we would connect with you, that we would feel that you are holding our hand right now, Lord, in the middle of our crisis. You are there. You are holding our hand. You are with us, and may that take the sting out of whatever we’re going through, Lord.
We do pray for our daily bread. We know you know best, and we know we have needs, so we bring them to you, Lord. May you heal our broken hearts and give us the provision that is required. We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
