Matthew 6:10-15, December 8, 2024

The Privilege of Prayer and the Call to Pray for Others

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.

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. Let us never forget the miracle that it is that we can come to you in prayer, 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, 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.

Lord, strengthen them in their lives and in their duties. Those you've put in power politically at every level, from our local level all the way up to the 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.

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. 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.

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. We know that starts with us.

We know that starts with our prayer and with our time and your word and our relationship to you, 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.

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. All right, so speaking of prayer, let's get back into the Lord's Prayer, the second half here.

Prayer as a Privilege, a Responsibility, and a Model

Now, some of you know that I teach a theology class to high school students at a small hybrid model school in Charlottesville. And by God's providence, the topic that we came to in our textbook for the classes last week was the topic of prayer.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

And one of the students said, yeah, that's pretty much what my prayers look like. Just all me asking for stuff. 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.

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 Lord's Prayer. So I was able to offer just a little bit about that and explain to them how the Lord's Prayer gives us a model of praying and a model of praying in a way that honors God.

So let's take just a brief moment to review where we've been before we get into the second half of the 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.

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. 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 Heavenly Father. We see this in Scripture as well. We have to understand. After speaking about the wonder and the majesty of God in Psalm 8, the psalmist writes this in verse four.

What is man that you remember and the son of man that you care for him? Again, reflect on the fact that this is God and that He knows you. He knows everybody, but He knows you specifically and He hears your prayers.

That's amazing. And remember also on that same note that when you pray, you're coming before the God of the universe. You're coming before the God that created you, the God that created everything that's around you.

And understand that I guess technically He owes you nothing and you owe Him everything. 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.

"'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. 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.

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. 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.

God desires our prayers. Scripture is full of verses about praying. 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, in case you haven't memorized it yet, pray without ceasing. There you go, and I heard some people saying it. That's excellent work.

But there's many others too, 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. Because remember, there's nothing in Scripture that's there accidentally.

There's nothing in Scripture that's there randomly. Every single bit of it is there. Every word is there intentionally, and every word is inspired. 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.

This is for us as well. It demonstrates that we value our relationship with God. 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, and it demonstrates our belief that every good thing comes from Him.

We'll talk about some of this a little bit later. Prayer allows us to participate in things of eternal significance. When we're discussing with God the things that are gonna happen in the world. But most of all, and most importantly, our prayer brings glory to God.

So prayer's a gift, prayer is a privilege. Prayer's a responsibility. Because our main goal in all that we do should be to bring glory to God. We wanna make sure that prayer is done the right way. We wanna make sure that we're approaching prayer, that we're approaching God the right way.

And there is a wrong way, including the story that I mentioned earlier.

With the students.

If it's just you coming and asking for the stuff you want, that's not the best approach, not a good approach. James 3 tells us that. And if you read James 3, which I'm not gonna do right this second, 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. Now we also need to pray with humility. But if we're starting in the right place with an understanding of who 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 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. Because if we did that, we'd wind up like that Pharisee in Luke chapter 18, verses 10 through 14.

Again, that's another parable that I've talked about many, many times. Thank you, God, that I'm not like these other people. And then go on to talk about all the holy things that he's done. 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. 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.

And we can use the elements that Jesus has given us in the Lord's prayer or the disciples' prayer. 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. The invocation gives us a chance to pause. It gives us a chance to remind ourselves who 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.

We pray for the perfected world that comes along with his eternal kingdom, and we pray that his kingdom comes. And we pray that his will would be done on earth as we await that eternal kingdom, and we wait the perfection that comes with the eternal kingdom.

But in doing this, in practicing this format of an invocation and these three petitions, we're reminded of something else important. We're reminded of our priority in prayer. And we're reminded that our priority in prayer is God's glory, and that means when we prioritize those first three petitions, we're focusing all on things about God.

We're reminded that the things of God, that God's glory always comes before our request. God's glory, our request, and our desire for God's glory comes before our needs, and it comes before our desires.

But if we just left things right there, it would seem as though we were never allowed to pray for what we wanted, right? And that's not the case. And as usual, we turn to Scripture for evidence of this.

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. 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, we are allowed to pray for the things that we need.

John 9, 31, we know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does his will, he listens to him. And 1 Peter 3, 12, which is quoting Psalm 34, verses 15 and 16, for the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and his ears attend to their prayer.

One last verse, 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. 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.

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. 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?

Now, of course, we have Scripture. That's our number one and easiest way to know. But thankfully, specifically, we also have Jesus helping us out. This is exactly what Jesus covers in the second half of the 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. So starting in verse nine, our Lord says, pray then in this way, our Father who is 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 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. 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.

We notice something specific. We notice the shift from the second person to the first person. 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.

We're not only praying for ourselves, we're praying for all of our fellow believers. It doesn't say my daily bread. So we have 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.

We could walk into the kitchen or wherever and get something without having to wait for it. For most of us, that area is not empty. So it might be difficult to identify within a literal sense when we talk about daily bread, but even this literal daily bread would be something that those Christians listening to this prayer, the disciples, the people around him would have understood in a much more real manner.

And it's something that our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and other parts of the world understand a lot more as well. 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.

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 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 the daily bread in terms of our necessities. 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.

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.

And that's more than just food for a lot of us. And the prayer reminds us that the 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.

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. Just this phrase, give us this day our daily bread, helps us focus on our needs.

It helps us focus on our dependency on God. It helps us focus on the source of that provision, which of course is God. It helps us focus on who receives that provision. 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. So the first one is give. And when we come to the Father, and we start out here, give. 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. 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.

Because remember, it's a pattern. It's not a word-for-word specific thing. So we're acknowledging our need for this. 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, God's the provider of it. Because if he wasn't, why would we be directing that prayer to him? 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 Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. One of the most dangerous attitudes for a 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.

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.

We say, I did that. Or, did you see what I did? Or whatever it is. So that's when things are good. 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, God, why is this happening?

So we have to be careful how we attribute things, and to whom we attribute things. 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 God with the humility that we talked about just a minute ago.

And Psalm 37 11 says, but the lowly will inherit the land. 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?

The Beatitudes, thank you very much. The Beatitudes. Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth. 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 God that provides it.

John MacArthur says this, every physical thing that we have comes from God's provision through the earth. It is therefore the sin of indifference and ingratitude not to daily recognize the gifts in thankful prayer.

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 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. If we think back to last week, I told you that only believers can pray the Lord's Prayer in faith. Only believers can pray the Lord's Prayer and expect that there will be an answer.

And when we pray the word us, the community of Christians, the community of believers, that's just reinforcing that concept. Now obviously, through the blessing of common grace, even the unbeliever can benefit from what God provides.

Even people that aren't Christians benefit from the provision of God. 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.

Only they can pray our Father in faith. If we look at 2 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.

You will be enriched in everything for all generosity, which through us is bringing about thanksgiving to God. That's 2 Corinthians 9, 10 through 11. But to take this one step further, 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 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.

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, obviously we're kinda shortening this up. And Peter said a few verses later, behold, we have left all that is our own and followed you.

So again, when we're talking about us, we're talking about believers and we're talking about God's provision, 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.

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. 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.

He provides it through our job, through the work that we do at our job, through the salary we get paid at our job. 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. But this prayer reminds us of this. This prayer reminds us that everything that we have comes from God. 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 Lord.

Never forget that. Even when our own actions are involved, it's still part of God's sovereign plan. 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.

And that's what he gives to his children. So that's the word us. Now, finally, we come to the word daily, which is a reminder of a couple of things. The first is that it's a reminder that we're not to seek provision from the Lord beyond our needs.

We're not to seek a stockpile. If we think back to the Israelites in the wilderness, 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 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. That was an object lesson in this sort of daily bread concept.

So we're not necessarily to pray for excess. We're not to pray for an abundance. And the reason for this is because a lot of us, we have an abundance, our faith in God and his provision starts to dwindle.

It starts to shrink, it starts to go away. So we start to think that we don't actually need 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 God for provision.

Now, that's not to say that we should be irresponsible, but understand that it's 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.

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. Now, let's move on to verse 12. Verse 12 says, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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. 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. 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. But like I said, we're gonna look at verse 14 and 15.

So that concept is really driven home there. 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. Forgive us our debts. Now, a lot of people ask questions like, but I thought that we were already forgiven our sins when 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? Why do we need to keep asking to be forgiven of sins that were forgiven when Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, and on the third day rose from the dead?

Well, this idea, and I think I've said this before, but this is known as antinomianism, which means that, I know, it's a big seminary word, antinomianism, which what it means is it's the idea that because of grace, we can now live however we want to.

We've been forgiven, so we can do whatever, because any act that we perform now is covered by the grace of God. And that is a heresy. Because what this ignores is the fact that we're not perfected at our conversion.

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. So the idea that we are perfect before the coming of God's eternal kingdom is just an unbiblical idea.

So therefore, we continue to need God's forgiveness daily. Because we sin daily, we need forgiveness daily. And that means, of course, that debts here is referring to sins. If your Bible says trespasses, it's still referring to sins.

Now, the best picture of this, or the best explanation of this comes in the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. 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.

So if you wanna turn to John 13, we're gonna start reading, John chapter 13, we're gonna start reading in verse six and read to verse 10. So John 13, starting in verse six. So he came to Simon Peter. He said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet?

Jesus answered and said to him, what I am doing you do not realize now, but you will understand afterwards. Peter said to him, you will never wash my feet ever. Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me.

Simon Peter said to him, 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. 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. So now we're getting a little metaphorical. But we can consider the justification of Jesus, Jesus' death on the cross to be a full cleansing.

That's what he's talking about. 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.

It's inevitable. Whether it's intentional or even unintentional, we continue to sin. Again, we're part of the world. The world is in the possession of Satan at this point,.

The world.

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. 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 God. And we have to approach him understanding that. We have to approach him recognizing our daily need for forgiveness.

Now we move on to verse 13. And this verse actually gets back to the idea that we talked about just a moment ago. Let's look at verse 13. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

It reminds us that we remain in the world. And as such, as we remain in the world, we're frequently exposed to temptation. We're frequently exposed to and offered opportunities to sin. Now, we probably all have our own ideas of this in our head.

But I think one of the best examples of this comes from the book Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. And if this is something that you've never read before, you probably should. There's versions that are in modern English that are much easier to read.

But this story, what it is, is it's an allegory of the Christian's life from salvation, the process of sanctification, and the journey to heaven. 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.

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. 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.

So they placed a fair in a town. Now, the town is called Vanity, so now we have Vanity Fair, right? Why Vanity? Well, there's a couple of verses we could look at. Ecclesiastes 1 .2, Vanity of Vanity, says the preacher.

Vanity of Vanity, all is vanity. In Psalm 39 .5, Behold, you have made my days as a hand breath, and my lifetime is nothing before you. 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?

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.

Moreover, at this fair can always be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind. Also to be seen at no charge are thefts, murders, adulteries, and false witnesses who cause death with their lives.

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.

And the devil put that there, and all these people have stopped at it and are no longer traveling the path. 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.

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.