Matthew 6:10-15, December 8, 2024

Mount Zion Community Church iconMount Zion Community Church

0 views

0 comments

00:21
God, thank you for hearing our prayers. Thank you for being a father that we can come to, a father that we can bring everything that we have and lay it at your feet to know that you hear us, but not only that, to know that you love us.
00:35
And even though you created us, you're far above us, that you still care what's going on in our lives and you still condescend to provide the things that we need on a daily basis.
00:47
Let us never forget the miracle that it is that we can come to you in prayer,
00:52
God. And we continue to pray for those who are far away. We know that you've orchestrated everything in society, that you're sovereign over all that we do.
01:02
So we pray for those people that you have put in power. We pray for the people in the military. We pray for our first responders, all those who have the difficult jobs to do that involve suffering, that involve sacrifice for the rest of us.
01:16
Lord, strengthen them in their lives and their duties. Those you've put in power politically at every level, from our local level all the way up to the
01:26
President of the United States, Lord, help them remember who you are so that they can understand what it is that they need to do.
01:34
That rulers are not a terror to good behavior, but to evil. So allow them to do exactly as you've appointed them to do.
01:42
God, but most of all, we pray that your word and the gospel would go forth to all corners of the world, every part of our little area here, but also to the entire world so that everyone would know who you are.
01:56
Everyone would come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and the gospel that he shared. God, it's our prayer to see your word have a revival in our country and in our world.
02:09
We know that starts with us. We know that starts with our prayer, with our time and your word and our relationship to you,
02:15
God. So we humbly and undeservingly ask you to send your Holy Spirit to change our hearts, to warm the cold hearts, to soften the hardened hearts and to love you.
02:28
We thank you for all these things, Lord. Again, we thank you that we can gather and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.
02:35
Amen. All right. So speaking of prayer, let's get back into the
02:42
Lord's prayer. The second half here. Now, some of you know that I teach a theology class to high school students at a small hybrid model school in Charlottesville.
02:54
And by God's providence, the topic that we came to in our textbook for the classes last week was the topic of prayer.
03:01
So that was nice. It lined up exactly with what I was doing here. So that helped with my preparation, helped with my preparation for class especially.
03:09
But it's just great that it lined up with the things that we've been talking about for the past couple of Sundays. And while we might think that a discussion with high school students would go a lot different than what we would expect if we had a discussion about prayer here, there are some striking similarities in this area.
03:30
Now, probably the biggest difference is that some of the students, they just don't hesitate to say whatever happens to be on their mind.
03:38
The filter hasn't quite developed in the same way. Now, I know that all of your filter hadn't developed either, but for the high school students, that's certainly the case.
03:47
And at one point, we were talking about prayer. And we talk a lot about how it's a privilege and what it is that we are able to come before God.
03:57
But I was talking about how it's okay to pray for things for yourself so long as that's not the only thing that you ever do.
04:04
And one of the students said, yeah, that's pretty much what my prayers look like, just all me asking for stuff.
04:12
Now, she didn't say it pridefully or anything like that. And I like to think there was at least a little bit of recognition as we had reached that point that something about that needed to change.
04:23
But thankfully there, that gave me a wide open door to go into the Lord's Prayer. I mean, we've been reading all about the
04:30
Lord's Prayer. So I was able to offer just a little bit about that and explain to them how the
04:36
Lord's Prayer gives us a model of praying and a model of praying in a way that honors
04:41
God. So let's take just a brief moment to review where we've been before we get into the second half of the
04:48
Lord's Prayer. And I wanna start with this. I believe that I've said this for the last two weeks, but I wanna make sure that we all understand and that you hear it at least one more time.
04:58
You'll hear it more than once this morning, but one more time right now. And that is, we need to keep in mind that where prayer is concerned, that it's a privilege.
05:07
It's a gift and a privilege that we have to come before God in prayer. And recognizing and internalizing the fact that this is a gift is gonna be the first step in our properly approaching our
05:19
Heavenly Father. We see this in Scripture as well.
05:25
We have to understand. After speaking about the wonder and the majesty of God in Psalm 8, the psalmist writes this in verse four.
05:34
What is man that you remember and the son of man that you care for him? Again, reflect on the fact that this is
05:42
God and that he knows you. He knows everybody, but he knows you specifically and he hears your prayers.
05:49
That's amazing. And remember also on that same note that when you pray, you're coming before the
05:58
God of the universe. You're coming before the God that created you, the God that created everything that's around you.
06:05
And understand that I guess technically he owes you nothing and you owe him everything.
06:13
That should also shape the way you think about your prayers. We read a couple of verses from Ecclesiastes 5 last week, but I wanna share the second half of verse two again where the writer of Ecclesiastes said, for God is in heaven and you are on earth.
06:29
Therefore, let your words be few. Now, I say all that because I want you to know that when we pray, it's not something we do lightly.
06:40
It's not something we do flippantly. We don't just toss up whatever it is that comes right off the top of our head to God and call it a prayer.
06:50
But at the same time, I also wanna make sure that you're not so worried about the perfection of your prayer that you don't pray because that would be worse.
07:01
So another concept that we have to remind ourselves once we understand who God is and what prayer is is we have to remind ourselves that God wants us to pray to him.
07:11
God desires our prayers. Scripture is full of verses about praying. First Thessalonians 5, 17, in case you haven't memorized it yet, pray without ceasing.
07:21
There you go, and I heard some people saying it. That's excellent work. But there's many others too.
07:27
And God's word, Scripture, wouldn't be just chock full of statements and reminders about praying if he didn't want us to pray.
07:35
Because remember, there's nothing in Scripture that's there accidentally. There's nothing in Scripture that's there randomly.
07:41
Every single bit of it is there. Every word is there intentionally, and every word is inspired.
07:50
And God wants us to pray for several reasons. He wants us to pray because it demonstrates our trust in him, and it helps build our trust in him.
08:00
This is for us as well. It demonstrates that we value our relationship with God.
08:06
It demonstrates that we believe he is who he says he is, that we believe that he's our father. It demonstrates our dependence on him.
08:14
And it demonstrates our belief that every good thing comes from him. We'll talk about some of this a little bit later.
08:21
Prayer allows us to participate in things of eternal significance. We're discussing with God the things that are gonna happen in the world.
08:30
But most of all, and most importantly, our prayer brings glory to God.
08:37
So prayer is a gift. Prayer is a privilege. Prayer is a responsibility. Because our main goal in all that we do should be to bring glory to God.
08:47
We wanna make sure that prayer is done the right way. We wanna make sure that we're approaching prayer, that we're approaching
08:53
God the right way. And there is a wrong way, including the story that I mentioned earlier with the students.
09:00
If it's just you come in asking for the stuff you want, that's not the best approach. Not a good approach.
09:07
James 3 tells us that. And if you read James 3, which I'm not gonna do right this second,
09:12
I'll let you do that at some point. Or James 4, 3, excuse me. That'll tell you why you feel like your prayers aren't being answered if you're praying in that way.
09:27
Now we also need to pray with humility. But if we're starting in the right place with an understanding of who
09:34
God is and what prayer is, humility should be a natural response. So we don't go to God in prayer as if it's
09:42
God's privilege to receive a prayer from us. And we don't come before God boasting about all the great things that we've done for him.
09:54
Because if we did that, we'd wind up like that Pharisee in Luke 18, verses 10 through 14.
10:02
Again, that's another parable that I've talked about many, many times. Thank you,
10:08
God, that I'm not like these other people. And then go on to talk about all the holy things that he's done.
10:16
I thought about that Pharisee this morning, that poor guy. Jesus told that parable one time and I keep going back to it, talking about it over and over.
10:26
Probably one of his tortures in hell is listening to people preach about how bad he was about praying. But no, when we come to God in prayer, we are to come in a completely different way.
10:38
And we can use the elements that Jesus has given us in the Lord's Prayer or the disciples' prayer.
10:45
And last week we looked at the first half of the prayer. We looked at the invocation and we looked at the three petitions. The three petitions that were all related to God.
10:53
The invocation gives us a chance to pause, it gives us a chance to remind ourselves who
11:01
God is, that he is God, but that he's also our Father. The petitions, again, related to God and his glory, specifically that his name would be revered or hallowed or made holy, however you wanna think about it throughout the world.
11:18
We pray for the perfected world that comes along with his eternal kingdom and we pray that his kingdom comes.
11:25
And we pray that his will would be done on earth as we await that eternal kingdom and we await the perfection that comes with the eternal kingdom.
11:37
But in doing this, in practicing this format of an invocation and these three petitions, we're reminded of something else important.
11:45
We're reminded of our priority in prayer. And we're reminded that our priority in prayer is
11:50
God's glory and that means when we prioritize those first three petitions, we're focusing all on things about God.
12:01
We're reminded that the things of God, that God's glory always comes before our request.
12:06
God's glory, our request and our desire for God's glory comes before our needs and it comes before our desires.
12:15
But if we just left things right there, it would seem as though we were never allowed to pray for what we wanted, right?
12:22
And that's not the case. And as usual, we turn to scripture for evidence of this.
12:30
So 1 John 5, 14 through 15 says this. And this is the confidence which we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
12:41
And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from him.
12:49
We are allowed to pray for the things that we need. John 9, 31.
12:55
We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is God -fearing and does his will, he listens to him.
13:03
And 1 Peter 3, 12, which is quoting Psalm 34, verses 15 and 16. For the eyes of the
13:10
Lord are toward the righteous and his ears attend to their prayer. One last verse,
13:15
Hebrews 4, 16. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need.
13:27
So we could go on and on and on and on and on, but the point is that God wants us to pray for him because God cares about our needs.
13:35
God cares about the things that we truly need. He cares about the people that are in Christ when those petitions are brought to him according to his will.
13:47
And that leads us to the question of how can we know if we are praying for something that is according to God's will?
13:53
Now, of course, we have Scripture. That's our number one and easiest way to know. But thankfully, specifically, we also have
14:02
Jesus helping us out. This is exactly what Jesus covers in the second half of the
14:07
Lord's Prayer. So once again, let's read the whole prayer in its entirety, and then we'll look at verses 11 through 15.
14:15
So starting in verse nine, our Lord says, Pray then in this way, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.
14:23
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.
14:34
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
14:43
Now, we're also gonna look at verses 14 and 15, but we'll stop there for just a moment. Now, immediately in verse 11, give us this day our daily bread.
14:53
We notice something specific. We notice the shift from the second person to the first person.
15:01
We begin with a request for our daily bread. And because we see that this is a request for our daily bread, we know that this is also a communal prayer.
15:10
We're not only praying for ourselves, we're praying for all of our fellow believers. It doesn't say my daily bread.
15:17
So we've shifted to something else. And another thing that is immediately striking to many of us, when we say give us this day our daily bread, this idea can seem like a little bit of a kind of a superfluous request to a lot of us because most of us have food in our house.
15:37
We could walk into the kitchen or wherever and get something without having to wait for it.
15:43
For most of us, that area is not empty. So it might be difficult to identify with in a literal sense when we talk about daily bread, but even this, literal daily bread, would be something that those
15:58
Christians listening to this prayer, the disciples, the people around him would have understood in a much more real manner.
16:05
And it's something that our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in other parts of the world understand a lot more as well.
16:12
People that are truly hurting for food or truly hurting for water. So this idea of praying for our daily bread, again, in a literal sense of the food that we eat each day, again, might be strange to some of us, but we have to understand that that's not the case for everybody.
16:31
So this is full of meaning in a lot of different ways for a lot of different people. But even this phrase, our daily bread, there's been a lot of discussion, a lot of translation and interpretation about it about what daily bread means, particularly in a
16:50
Jewish context. But despite all the academic parsing of the language, I think the best way for us to think about this is to think of daily bread in terms of our necessities.
17:02
So Martin Luther said it this way. He said daily bread is everything necessary for the preservation of this life, including food, a healthy body, good weather, house, home, wife, children, good government, and peace.
17:17
Now, maybe some of us feel God hasn't seen fit to give us all of those things, depending on which one of them you're looking at, but we look at our daily bread as the things that we need to live our life.
17:29
And that's more than just food for a lot of us. And the prayer reminds us that the
17:36
God that created us will supply us with the things that we need. Of course, for a lot of us, that requires differentiating between a need and a want.
17:48
We're not always good at that. And it also reorients our thinking in a few ways when we take a closer look at some of these words here.
18:01
Just this phrase, give us this day our daily bread, helps us focus on our needs.
18:08
It helps us focus on our dependency on God. It helps us focus on the source of that provision, which of course is
18:15
God. It helps us focus on who receives that provision.
18:21
And even the individual words tell us a lot of stuff. So we're gonna look at three words just on an individual basis here.
18:31
So the first one is give. And when we come to the Father, and we start out here, give.
18:39
Now that word in itself indicates that it's a supplication. It indicates that it's a request. And simply by making that request, we're acknowledging several things, or at least a couple of things.
18:51
We're acknowledging both our need for whatever it is that we're asking for, whatever daily bread is representing in the form of this prayer.
18:58
Because remember, it's a pattern. It's not a word -for -word specific thing. So we're acknowledging our need for this.
19:05
And then on the other hand, we're also acknowledging that God is the source of this thing. Whatever it is that we're asking for, God is the source.
19:11
God's the provider of it. Because if he wasn't, why would we be directing that prayer to him?
19:18
But he is. In every case, he is. James 1 .17 reminds us of this. Every good thing given, and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
19:27
Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. One of the most dangerous attitudes for a
19:37
Christian to have is that all the good things we do, or all the impressive things that we accomplish, or all the things that we acquire, were done by us.
19:48
And I think that we all do this at times. But we have this tendency. We have this tendency to congratulate ourselves when things are going well, or when we do something great, or when we get something.
20:00
We say, I did that. Or, did you see what I did? Or whatever it is. So that's when things are good.
20:06
But when things are bad, or when things go wrong, our tendency is not to say, look at what I did. Our tendency is to say,
20:13
God, why is this happening? So we have to be careful how we attribute things, and to whom we attribute things.
20:25
But the Lord's Prayer grounds us in that recognition of God's providence and provision. And that grounding in the recognition allows us to approach
20:35
God with the humility that we talked about just a minute ago. And Psalm 37, 11 says, but the lowly will inherit the land.
20:44
The lowly will inherit the land, and will delight themselves in abundant peace. Now, does that remind anybody of anything that we've talked about in the last couple of months?
20:54
The Beatitudes, thank you very much. The Beatitudes. Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth.
21:03
So, again, as we consider give, and what that means, that we're asking for something we need, and we're acknowledging that it's
21:11
God that provides it. John MacArthur says this, every physical thing that we have comes from God's provision through the earth.
21:18
It is therefore the sin of indifference and ingratitude not to daily recognize the gifts in thankful prayer.
21:26
And that's just from the word give. Now, I wanna touch on a couple of other words, before we move on from this verse, because remember, we're still in verse 11, in case
21:36
I've gone so far all over the place that you've lost track. And the next word I wanna consider is the word us.
21:44
If we think back to last week, I told you that only believers can pray the Lord's Prayer in faith.
21:50
Only believers can pray the Lord's Prayer, and expect that there will be an answer.
21:59
And when we pray the word us, the community of Christians, the community of believers, that's just reinforcing that concept.
22:08
Now, obviously, through the blessing of common grace, even the unbeliever can benefit from what
22:14
God provides. Even people that aren't Christians benefit from the provision of God.
22:22
But it's only those who believe in him that have the confidence and the guarantee that comes with that, that comes from having faith in the work of Jesus on the cross.
22:33
Only they can pray our Father in faith. If we look at 2
22:39
Corinthians 9, verses 10 and 11, Paul writes this, now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
22:54
You will be enriched in everything for all generosity, which through us is bringing about thanksgiving to God.
23:00
That's 2 Corinthians 9, 10 through 11. But to take this one step further,
23:06
I wanna look at Luke 18 again. In Luke 18, Jesus has told a couple of different parables and this section culminates in the story of the rich young ruler, which
23:21
I'm sure you're all familiar with. But what I wanna read is what comes right after that because he had just told the rich young ruler to sell everything he had, donate to the poor, so he'll have treasure in heaven and to follow him.
23:38
The rich young ruler went away sad and then Jesus told his disciples that it's hard for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven again.
23:45
Obviously, we're kind of shortening this up. And Peter said a few verses later, behold, we have left all that is our own and followed you.
23:56
So again, when we're talking about us, we're talking about believers and we're talking about God's provision,
24:01
Jesus says this to him, verse 29. Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more at this time and in the age to come eternal life.
24:22
So why am I reading that verse? Because that's telling us, that's telling us that for followers of Jesus, true followers of Jesus, God will provide the things that we need.
24:36
Now, sometimes God provides these things miraculously and sometimes he provides it in ways that are completely mundane, completely ordinary, ways that don't even look like the work of God.
24:53
He provides it through our job, through the work that we do at our job, through the salary we get paid at our job.
25:07
And we think this is all us because in the mundane, in the small, the seemingly insignificant, we don't always see the work of God, we don't always see the influence of God in those things.
25:22
But this prayer reminds us of this. This prayer reminds us that everything that we have comes from God.
25:31
Everything good and the not good that goes along with it, because that's all influenced by sin, but all of it has been given to us by the
25:40
Lord. Never forget that. Even when our own actions are involved, it's still part of God's sovereign plan.
25:50
He's given you this ability, whatever the ability was, he's given you the opportunity and he's given you everything else that goes along with it.
26:02
And that's what he gives to his children. So that's the word us.
26:08
Now finally, we come to the word daily, which is a reminder of a couple of things.
26:14
The first is that it's a reminder that we're not to seek provision from the Lord beyond our needs.
26:19
We're not to seek a stockpile. If we think back to the Israelites in the wilderness,
26:26
God sent manna from heaven, right? And they were instructed just to take what they needed for the day. And on Saturday or whatever day was the day before the
26:33
Sabbath, they were instructed to take two days. Now, some people took what they were supposed to take. Some people took more, but everybody who took more, it molded or it just went away and they couldn't eat it.
26:43
That was an object lesson in this sort of daily bread concept. So we're not necessarily to pray for excess.
26:52
We're not to pray for an abundance. And the reason for this is because a lot of us, when we have an abundance, our faith in God and his provision starts to dwindle.
27:08
It starts to shrink, it starts to go away. So we start to think that we don't actually need
27:14
God because we have a really full bank account. And I would challenge you to admit this to yourself, not out loud, please, that some of you probably trust your bank account and your retirement accounts more than you trust
27:31
God for provision. Now, that's not to say that we should be irresponsible, but understand that it's
27:41
God that provides all of it. Now, in addition to praying for what we need daily, this also reminds us to come to God daily because we need that provision each day.
27:57
So when God doesn't provide in excess or God doesn't provide lots and lots and lots, that's just an opportunity for us to come to him and ask him for that provision.
28:12
Now, let's move on to verse 12. Verse 12 says, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
28:22
Now, this verse has been misinterpreted in a few different ways. Now, first of all, we don't wanna fall into the error of assuming that God forgives us because we have forgiven people.
28:34
I know it sounds like that, but if we stop and think that it would be contradictory to the message of the gospel that God would do something along the lines of tallying up our forgivenesses to see if we are worthy of forgiveness, that's not how salvation works.
28:53
But what it really comes down to is whether we recognize the forgiveness that we've been given by God and how that causes us to relate to others.
29:04
But like I said, we're gonna look at verse 14 and 15. So that concept is really driven home there.
29:09
So I'm gonna wait just a few minutes to get into that. So let's shift to another facet of this verse that's important to understand.
29:20
Forgive us our debts. Now, a lot of people ask questions like, but I thought that we were already forgiven our sins when
29:31
Jesus died on the cross. So if that is the case, then why do we need to come to God daily to pray to be forgiven of our sins?
29:40
Why do we need to keep asking to be forgiven of sins that were forgiven when
29:45
Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, and on the third day rose from the dead? Well, this idea, and I think
29:55
I've said this before, but this is known as antinomianism, which means that, I know it's a big, big seminary word.
30:02
Antinomianism, which what it means is it's the idea that because of grace, we can now live however we want to.
30:10
We've been forgiven, so we can do whatever, because any act that we perform now is covered by the grace of God.
30:16
And that is a heresy. Because what this ignores is the fact that we're not perfected at our conversion.
30:24
When we experience salvation, we don't become perfect. We become justified in the eyes of God, but we still sin on a daily basis.
30:36
So the idea that we are perfect before the coming of God's eternal kingdom is just an unbiblical idea.
30:45
So therefore, we continue to need God's forgiveness daily. Because we sin daily, we need forgiveness daily.
30:52
And that means, of course, that death here is referring to sins. If your Bible says trespasses, it's still referring to sins.
31:00
Now, the best picture of this, or the best explanation of this comes in the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet.
31:08
So that's in John 13. So this is one of those times where I'll actually give you a chance to turn with me.
31:14
So if you wanna turn to John 13, we're gonna start reading
31:20
John chapter 13. We're gonna start reading in verse six and read to verse 10.
31:30
So John 13, starting in verse six. So he came to Simon Peter.
31:37
He said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus answered and said to him, what
31:43
I am doing you do not realize now, but you will understand afterwards. Peter said to him, you will never wash my feet, ever.
31:52
Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. Simon Peter said to him,
31:59
Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head. And Jesus said to him, he who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean.
32:10
And you are clean, but not all of you. Now that's a reference to Judas. But the key verse here is verse 10, when he says, he who is bathed needs only to wash his feet.
32:32
So now we're getting a little metaphorical. But we can consider the justification of Jesus.
32:42
Jesus' death on the cross to be a full cleansing. That's what he's talking about.
32:48
Those who have cleansed need only wash their feet. But we're still here in this world, right? And as we walk through this world, we're going to get some or a lot of that metaphorical dirt on our feet.
33:05
It's inevitable. Whether it's intentional or even unintentional, we continue to sin.
33:10
Again, we're part of the world. The world is in the possession of Satan at this point, the world.
33:19
So we can equate the foot washing part of this to that continued daily forgiveness for the dirt of the world that is clinging to our feet or to the lower parts of us as we walk through the world.
33:35
So it's appropriate for us to pray for forgiveness daily. Just because you've been forgiven, because you've been saved, doesn't mean that you haven't done something to offend
33:44
God. And we have to approach him understanding that. We have to approach him recognizing our daily need for forgiveness.
33:55
Now we move on to verse 13. And this verse actually gets back to the idea that we talked about just a moment ago.
34:04
Let's look at verse 13. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
34:15
It reminds us that we remain in the world. And as such, as we remain in the world, we're frequently exposed to temptation.
34:21
We're frequently exposed to and offered opportunities to sin. Now, we probably all have our own ideas of this in our head.
34:31
But I think one of the best examples of this comes from the book, Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.
34:38
And if this is something that you've never read before, you probably should. There's versions that are in modern
34:43
English that are much easier to read. But this story, what it is, is it's an allegory of the
34:51
Christian's life from salvation, the process of sanctification and the journey to heaven.
35:00
So an allegory means it's a story. So we're taking this process that's in the Bible and creating a story around it.
35:06
The main character is a man named Pilgrim and he's traveling to the celestial city, which is heaven. Now, this has been going on for thousands of years before Pilgrim.
35:19
And what John Bunyan says is that Beelzebub, Apollyon and Legion, who were essentially the devil and his demons, they noticed all these people walking down this road.
35:30
So they placed a fair in a town. Now, the town is called
35:36
Vanity, so now we have Vanity Fair, right? Why Vanity? Well, there's a couple of verses we could look at.
35:42
Ecclesiastes 1 -2, Vanity of Vanity, says the preacher. Vanity of Vanity, it's all is vanity.
35:48
In Psalm 39 -5, Behold, you have made my days as a hand breath and my lifetime is nothing before you.
35:55
Surely every man, even standing firm, is altogether vanity. So when we consider life and the things that we do as vanity, what kind of stuff do we find in Vanity Fair?
36:12
So I'm gonna read you what he says. This says, in Vanity Fair, the merchandise consisted of houses, lands, trades, places, honors, positions, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, such as whores, lewd entertainment, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and whatnot.
36:40
Moreover, at this fair can always be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind.
36:49
Also to be seen at no charge are thefts, murders, adulteries, and false witnesses who cause death with their lives.
36:59
So what is this? What is Vanity Fair? Vanity Fair is everything that the world has to offer. Vanity Fair is everything that the world has to offer to distract you from the things of God, everything the world has to offer that can take you away from the path of sanctification that is leading you from where you were saved to the eternal kingdom of God.
37:22
And the devil put that there, and all these people have stopped at it and are no longer traveling the path.
37:34
So this prayer reminds us that we need to pray constantly that here in the world where we are, in Vanity Fair, which is all around us everywhere all the time, we need to pray that we wouldn't be led into this temptation, or if we're led to it, or we find it, that we would handle it in the right way, that we would avoid it, that we would not partake of the things that are gonna take us away from God.
38:04
Commentator William Hendrickson says, though it is true that God himself never tempts man to sin, and we see this in scripture, of course, it is also true that there is good reason to ask him not even to permit us voluntarily to run into temptation by establishing a dangerously close alliance with the world, by becoming unequally yoked with unbelievers, or by going to the opposite extreme and withdrawing ourselves entirely from society.
38:36
So there's all kinds of ways that this can be done. If we're so scared of temptation, we can even go so far as to do what some of those ascetic monks 1 ,500 years or so ago did and just move themselves completely from society, but that doesn't help.
38:53
We can even become so involved in things that are a good cause that they prevent us from focusing on the things of God.
39:02
You can get involved in charities, you can get involved in organizations, boards, whatever, that are for good things, and they can still distract you from God.
39:13
They can take your time, they can take your effort, they can take your focus, so you have to be careful. Again, that's what this prayer is all about.
39:20
So this petition is for God to help us avoid temptation, and when we do succumb, and we all succumb to temptation, to deliver us from evil, or from the evil one.
39:32
It's the same thing. Evil is from the devil, the devil is the evil one.
39:37
Again, that's another one of those phrases that gets parsed to death, but there's really no difference.
39:45
And this is help that we all need, and again, these are the things that we should start our day praying and asking for, because if we can at least petition
39:56
God for his assistance before we come across these things, that sets our mind in the right place.
40:02
That starts our day with the right idea going forward, that sets our day with the expectation that this might happen, and if we're expecting it, it's a lot easier to resist it.
40:16
Now, one last thing about verse 13 that you might notice, where it says, for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.
40:24
That's in brackets, and the reason that's in brackets is because that phrase, this doxology, this benediction, whatever you wanna call it, isn't in the earliest manuscripts, not in the earliest, most reliable manuscripts.
40:38
So we just acknowledge that, and we look at this, though, and we see that while we can't reliably say that Jesus said this, it's still appropriate, it's still scriptural, it's still biblical to end the prayer this way, and again, we always end a prayer somehow with a doxology or a benediction.
41:02
So this one's appropriate. So again, we simply acknowledge that this may not have been a part of the words of Jesus and his original teaching, but what it does is it gives us a fitting conclusion to our prayer.
41:16
Now, moving into verses 14 and 15. I didn't read these earlier. It says, for if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly
41:24
Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
41:31
So we have this brief discussion on forgiveness that comes here after the prayer, and because it's so closely tied to, specifically, that second petition, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, we have to talk about it.
41:51
Now, this petition is best fleshed out in the parable of the unforgiving servant, if you're familiar with this one.
41:57
This one's in Matthew 18. We're gonna read this one too. Matthew 18, if you will turn in your Bibles, verse 23 to 35, and again, this one is, should also be familiar to you.
42:20
It's about forgiveness. Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me?
42:25
And I, oh, I said 23, didn't I? Let's go to that one. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.
42:35
When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him 10 ,000 talents was brought to him, but since he did not have the means to repay, his
42:42
Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he had and repayment to be made.
42:49
Therefore, the slave fell to the ground and was prostrating himself before him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you everything.
42:57
And feeling compassion, the Lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denarii, and he seized him and began to choke him saying, pay back what you owe.
43:11
So his fellow slave fell to the ground and was pleading with him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you.
43:16
But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what he was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their
43:26
Lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his Lord said to him, you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
43:34
Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on you? And his
43:40
Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.
43:46
My heavenly Father will do the same to you if each of you does not forgive your brothers from your hearts.
43:55
So again, what I said is this is not God tallying up our forgiveness to determine whether or not we will be forgiven.
44:01
This is more about the state of our heart. Like the idea here that you can think of is that we are not forgiven because we forgive others.
44:12
Because we are forgiven, we forgive others. We are not forgiven because we forgive others.
44:17
Because we are forgiven, we forgive others. Again, this is a complete issue of your heart.
44:23
Martin Lloyd Jones said it this way. If we really know Christ as our Savior, our hearts are broken and cannot be hard and we cannot refuse forgiveness.
44:35
He goes on to say this. If you are refusing forgiveness to anybody,
44:41
I suggest that you have never been forgiven. The story of the unforgiving servant, ungrateful servant, tells us that we should be so grateful for the forgiveness that we have been granted.
45:03
Forgiveness that we didn't deserve. Forgiveness that we didn't earn. That there is absolutely no way that we could hold grudges against other people.
45:16
This also takes us back to the Beatitudes. If you are living your life according to the
45:22
Beatitudes, you already are so humble that you understand that God has forgiven you more than you could ever possibly forgive somebody else for.
45:33
Your offense to God is far greater than anyone's offense to you has ever been. It doesn't matter what it is.
45:39
I don't care. Forgiveness is absolutely critical in the
45:46
Christian life. And if somebody, again, like this quote from Martin Lloyd -Jones, if somebody is unwilling to forgive another person, there is a chance that they are not truly saved because they don't understand what it is that they were given.
46:05
Now, let's move into our application, our closing. Now, one of the first things I wanna draw attention to, the first item is that God cares for all our needs.
46:16
Now, I wanna look at the order of these three petitions briefly because there's something significant there. Like we think of God just kind of sitting up in heaven on a cloud, doesn't care about anything except for spiritual things, things of Him.
46:31
But then we look at the order that these show up with or they show up in in this prayer. It doesn't start with some high -minded spiritual thing.
46:40
It starts with our physical needs. It starts with the most basic needs that we have. Martin Lloyd -Jones says we're alive and we need to be kept alive.
46:47
So that's where this prayer starts, with the daily provision that we need for our lives.
46:52
Then it moves to cleansing us of our sin. Then it moves to protecting us from further sin. So as opposed to starting high and going low, it starts at our most basic physical level and moves up from there, which
47:03
I think is really interesting. And these are the takeaways from three combined weeks of prayer.
47:10
So one, God cares for all our needs. Two, prayer is for God's glory. This is something that we saw in a big way here.
47:20
The Lord's Prayer, this pattern prayer, the template prayer that we are to follow starts with petitions to God because all of our prayer is for God's glory.
47:31
Number three, prayer reveals our dependence on God. So this prayer and every prayer helps us to recognize and acknowledge that every good thing that we have comes from God.
47:44
We don't wanna forget this. We don't wanna forget this at any point in our daily lives. All of it comes from God and we are dependent on him for it.
47:52
He can take it away at any time. Number four, God cares about and provides for our most basic needs.
48:01
This is almost just a restatement of the first one, but it means while we shouldn't spend all our time asking for stuff, while we shouldn't pray for excesses, for wealth, for riches, luxuries, it's absolutely okay to pray for the things that we need.
48:17
You can ask God for the things that you need. And we see this in the third set of petitions, one that we don't have to go into a whole lot.
48:25
Prayer is a gift and a privilege. God's given us the opportunity to talk to him. Don't take it for granted.
48:33
Number six, this goes back to what we talked about probably two weeks ago. Even in public, even what we do here, what
48:42
I do here, prayer is for God. It's not for recognition of people. Prayer is always addressed to God, even if there are other people hearing it.
48:51
So we have to make sure that we're never praying for the approval of other people or for the applause of other people as if it were some kind of performance or something along those lines, because it's not.
49:02
It's only to give glory to God. Seven, kind of a overarching theme here.
49:10
The Lord's prayer provides us a pattern. It doesn't provide us a word -for -word prayer that we are to say every day.
49:17
It provides us all the elements that are contained within a perfect prayer, a proper
49:24
God -glorifying prayer. And number eight, once again, sort of ending with the most important thing here is that you have to truly know
49:37
God as your father to be able to pray this prayer. It sounds awful to say. It sounds offensive to our ears to say that God doesn't hear the prayer of unbelievers.
49:49
God doesn't hear the requests of unbelievers unless they're according to his will. I promise you that if you are not saved, but you pray to God for salvation, he will hear that prayer.
49:59
That's a prayer that will be answered. But if you don't trust in God and you don't truly have faith in God and you pray to God for your daily bread, don't be surprised if it doesn't show up.
50:11
Make sure that you are doing whatever you can to be right with God.
50:16
Again, pray for salvation. All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
50:24
So that's number eight. You have to truly have faith and truly know God as your father. I wanna close with these words from J .C.
50:33
Ryle. He says this about the Lord's Prayer. And now, let us all examine ourselves and see whether we really desire to have the things which we are taught to ask for in the
50:44
Lord's Prayer. Thousands, it may be feared, repeat these words daily as a form, but never consider what they are saying.
50:53
They care nothing for the glory, the kingdom, or the will of God. They have no sense of dependence, sinfulness, weakness, or danger.
51:02
They have no love or charity towards their enemies, and yet they repeat the Lord's Prayer. These things ought not be so.
51:11
May we resolve that by God's help, our hearts shall go together with our lips. Happy is the one who can really call
51:18
God their father through Jesus Christ, their Savior, and can therefore say a heartfelt amen to all that the
51:25
Lord's Prayer contains. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you again for your word.
51:37
As we truly consider it, we truly consider the meaning and the deeper meaning. We learn a lot about ourselves, and primarily we learn that we don't often pray as we should.
51:50
We don't often pray in a way that glorifies you. We come to you with our needs and our wants, often in the form of requests and demands, with no consideration of whether this is according to your will, or whether this is even what is the right thing for us, but it's just what we want right now.
52:11
God, even those of us that have been saved, that know better, that know your word, still bring these offensive prayers.
52:19
Lord, so we thank you for the teaching of your Son. We thank you for what's been provided in your word to allow us to understand a lot of things, to understand who you are, to understand how it is that we should pray, but most of all, to understand that we're dependent on you.
52:37
But thankfully, you're the provider. You've said that you will give us our daily bread.
52:42
You'll forgive us our debts, God. So we ask all of these things in your name. Be with each person here this morning as we go out into our afternoon and then proceed into our work or school week.
52:55
Help us, Lord. Give us the things we need each day. Give us the ability to forgive others as we've been forgiven.
53:04
God, and help us through those difficult times. Help us through the things that we can't quite navigate, that we don't understand, and help us to live our lives and go about our day in ways that honor you.
53:17
God, and finally, help us to persist in prayer, even when it's difficult, even when it feels awkward and when it doesn't feel right.
53:25
Help us to know that you desire our prayers, that you love our prayers, and that you've given us the opportunity to come to you in prayer.