Sunday Sermon: Our Daily Bread (Matthew 6:11-15)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. Matthew chapter six, beginning in verse nine, our

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Lord Christ said to us, pray then like this, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

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For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

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Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So as we come to finish our study of the

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Lord's Prayer today, we're going to be looking at the second three petitions. But before we do that, let's do a quick review of the first three petitions that we considered last week.

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So the preface to the Lord's Prayer that we've already prayed and we've already talked about this morning is that introduction, our

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Father who art in heaven. That's the way the prayer begins. That's who it is that we are addressing.

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Now here's a question that I didn't ask of you last week. If you watch the video version of this sermon,

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I mentioned it in the video, but I didn't say it when I preached this sermon to the congregation.

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But have you ever thought or stopped to ask yourself, who is it exactly that we're supposed to address when we pray?

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When you start your prayers, how do you begin? Do you say, dear God? It's a perfectly acceptable way to begin a prayer or dear

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Lord. Both of those ways we see in the Psalms, praying unto

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God or praying unto our Lord. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. Can you pray to Jesus, dear

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Jesus? We see the disciples do that a few times in Acts. In Acts chapter one, they pray to Christ that Jesus would reveal to them who the apostle was supposed to be to replace

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Judas. Then later on in Acts, you see Stephen pray unto

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Christ before he is martyred in Acts chapter seven. And as we considered last week, the very last prayer that we have in the

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Bible is to Jesus. Revelation 22, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Now here's another question.

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Can you pray to the Holy Spirit? You certainly can. He is, after all, a person in the

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Trinity. He is God. But you might be interested to notice that nowhere in the

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Scripture do we have any examples of anyone praying to the Holy Spirit. So while you certainly could pray to the

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Holy Spirit, we don't have any examples set before us in Scripture of anybody doing such a thing.

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Whenever we pray, we pray in the Spirit of God, but we don't have examples of praying to the

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Spirit of God. I think for us as Christians, it serves us best to pray most often in the way that Jesus taught us to pray, and that is to say, our

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Father in heaven, to pray to our Father above. That doesn't mean you have to exclusively pray that way, but I think that is what is best serving to us as Christians is to pray to our

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Father in heaven. After all, we've been adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ, our

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Savior, that we may call upon Him as Father. And we considered last week just how unique that address really is, that there was no one in Scripture prior to Jesus instructing us to pray this way who called

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God a Father. And so we know Him as our loving Father in heaven, the first person of the

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Trinity, to whom even our Lord Christ submitted in His will.

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And so we must also submit ourselves to the will of the Father. Jesus always prayed to the

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Father. Every time we see Jesus pray in the New Testament, in the four Gospels, He prays to His Father in heaven.

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And so following the example of our Lord Christ in how to pray, so we should also pray the same way.

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Matthew 18, verse 3 says, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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And so when we come to our Father, we become as His children. We say to Him, just like a child cannot do anything without their parents, so I can do nothing without you.

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And even when we come to our Lord in prayer, we must be as children. So that's the greeting to the

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Lord's prayer. That's how it begins, our Father in heaven. We also considered that very first word, our, realizing that as Jesus is teaching us to pray,

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He's teaching us corporate prayer. You can certainly make this an individual prayer, but it's being given as a corporate prayer, being prayed by the people of God, our

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Father in heaven. The first petition, then after we have our introduction, is,

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Hallowed be thy name. And we considered from the Baptist Catechism exactly what we're being taught here.

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We pray that God would enable us and others to glorify

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Him in all that whereby He makes Himself known, and that He would dispose all things to His own glory.

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That's what we're taught in the first petition of the Lord's prayer. The second petition is this, Thy kingdom come.

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And the Catechism tells us, we pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed, and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it, and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.

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That's what our Lord Christ is teaching us when He tells us to pray, Thy kingdom come.

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The third petition, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray that God by His grace would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to His will in all things as the angels do in heaven.

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Or another way that I taught this to you last week is we pray that we would realize God's will in the earth as it is perfectly realized in heaven.

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So this is the introduction and the first three petitions that we considered last week as our

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Lord Christ is teaching us how to pray. What are the elements of prayer?

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What should we consider should be part of our prayers when we pray? And that's what we have in the

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Lord's Prayer. It is a blueprint for prayer. So today as we bring to a conclusion the series that we have been doing on prayer, we look finally at the last three petitions and then the conclusion to the

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Lord's Prayer. So we're up to petition number four. Here is the fourth petition of the

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Lord's Prayer, and it's right at the beginning of verse 11. In fact, it is verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread.

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Give us this day our daily bread. What are we being taught and what are we asking for when we say, give us this day our daily bread?

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Again, from the Baptist Catechism, we pray that of God's free gift, we may receive a sufficient portion of the good things of this life and enjoy

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His blessing with them. That we would see all the things that we have been given as sufficient, meaning we need nothing more than what

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God has provided for us. I look out upon this congregation today and I see clothed people.

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Thank you for wearing clothes to church today. But as I see you sitting in your pew clothed,

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I recognize you have been blessed by God for He has provided for you clothing.

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Did you eat breakfast this morning? Did you even at least have a cup of coffee?

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God has provided for you. He has given you this day your daily bread.

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Our basics, our necessities are provided for and given to us by God.

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You have clothing. You have food. You even have shelter. You even have people that you are surrounded by.

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I don't really see anybody sitting by themselves. We are in the church together.

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We are rejoicing together. We are fellowshipping with one another. That we may be encouraged by the body of Christ and by the word of God that is proclaimed.

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So when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, I think there is most certainly a material request that's being made here.

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Give to us the things that we need in order to get through today.

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There are some that will spiritualize this verse and will say, well, we're only talking about the word of God.

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I think that's certainly true, but we're not only talking about the word of God. Daily bread. Yes, certainly the word of God is our daily bread.

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Jesus said, man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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So you can see daily bread as being a material thing that we need, but also daily bread as being those spiritual things that we need as well.

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But it is not too far from us to read this and understand it as being the material things that we need also.

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Consider these words from Proverbs chapter 30 verses 7 through 9.

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Two things I ask of you, deny them not to me before I die.

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Remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches.

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Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the

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Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my

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God. Think about what the wise man is asking for here.

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I find it interesting that the first thing that he is asking for is holiness. God give me holiness.

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Help me to live in a holy way that is pleasing and righteous to you. The second thing he asked for is, give me neither poverty nor riches.

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Feed me with the food that is needful for me. Don't give me too much. Don't make me too rich because then what will likely happen to me is that I'll rely too much on my riches and I'll think

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I don't need God for anything. This is something that Paul says to Timothy in 1

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Timothy chapter 6. He's teaching Timothy how to lead the people that he's going to pastor at the church in Ephesus.

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And one of the things that Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter 6 is, teach the rich not to rely too much on their riches.

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He doesn't say it's a sin to be rich, but those who are rich tend to fall into a snare.

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They tend to rely too much on the stuff that they have or think that I need more stuff in order to be happy.

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I need more in order to get by. They're not really sufficient with the things that have been given to them.

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They need more. I just need one more. One more and then I'll be happy. You notice that you could even look around in our society and see that the rich are never satisfied.

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They're never happy. They always need just a little bit more. So that's a warning that Paul gives to Timothy. Teach the rich not to rely on their riches.

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So the rich can fall into that snare of depending upon material things and earthly things too much.

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Jesus said, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

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But then we also have from the wise man here in Proverbs chapter 30, the prayer that I not be too poor.

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Because if I'm too poor, I might feel like I need to steal in order to survive and so profane the name of the

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Lord my God. So it's interesting that that's the two parts of this prayer.

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I pray for holiness and I pray that I would be satisfied with the things that you give me.

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Now that's far from the nature of our culture and of our society today.

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The society does not teach you to be satisfied with the things that you've been given. You just hear the ruckus that's being caused in our culture right now and it's all about how you have not gotten what you deserve.

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So you need to fight. You need to bicker and quarrel and argue until you get the things that are owed to you.

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It's almost like the way a sleazy lawyer works, where a guy might convince you, this lawyer comes to you and he says, you've been treated unfairly.

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That's right, I've been treated unfairly. You've been wronged. Yeah, you're right,

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I've been wronged. You deserve compensation. Yes, I deserve compensation.

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Well I can give you what you deserve, so all you have to do is sign here on this line and we'll work this out.

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Who comes out the winner in this deal? The lawyer always.

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The lawyer always wins. You may not ever get anything, but the lawyer's always going to get paid, right?

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And our society seems to be speaking the same way right now. You just turn on the nightly news and you hear this message.

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It might be driven by politicians, it might be driven by media, there might be influencers and movers and shakers that are behind this, but what they're saying to you is, you've been oppressed.

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You've been discriminated against. Somebody owes you something and I'm going to make sure that you get it, so all you have to do is sign here on the dotted line.

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And then they get your vote, your support, your money, they get you to echo the message that they are trying to put out into the world.

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Whatever it is, they're the ones that gain, you're not the ones who gain. So that's one way this happens.

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You also hear it from the prosperity preachers. Prosperity preachers say, see, all you have to do is this.

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You need to do this, this, and this. You need to pray prayers like this and then God is going to give to you.

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He's going to give and he's going to give and he's going to give. And then when he gives to you, you need to give to us. So if you sow a seed, if you give us this much money, then you are making a faith pledge unto

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God and then he's going to reward you by pouring all this kind of money out on you. Who wins in this deal?

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The prosperity preacher. The only person who benefits from prosperity theology is the prosperity preacher.

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That's the only person who's benefiting from that. So we need to be careful of that message. But then we also hear this message from our commercialistic, capitalistic society that says to us, you are not happy.

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You need to be as happy as these people in our commercial advertisement.

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Are you as happy as these people? No, you're not. So buy our product and then you'll be as happy as these people are.

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We've all been through this, right? You're always buying that next new thing or that great new gadget thinking that there's some sort of euphoria that comes with this.

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And there is a good feeling about buying a new thing. You almost feel like a new person. I just bought a brand new truck.

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I feel like a new man. You're not a new man. You're the same man with debt.

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That's who you are now. But this is the message that our culture pushes on us.

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You need this in order to be happy. Some in the culture even saying you need good health and you don't have good health because you're not getting free health care.

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So give me your vote and I'll give you that. Over and over and over again, we get these messages bombarded with this stuff daily, constantly of the stuff that you're not getting and you deserve.

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And so if you'll join my side, I'll make sure that you get it. But how is the

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Lord teaching us to pray? We ask him, give us this day our daily bread and we are thankful and satisfied with what he gives to us.

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Augustine, 1600 years ago, said, God could have bestowed these things on us without our prayers, but he wished that by our prayers, we should be taught from where those benefits come.

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And so we pray, give us this day our daily bread that we may be reminded the things that we are provided with come from God.

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Here's another question that goes right along with this petition in verse 11. What time of the day should we pray?

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Well, I think that should be obvious. We should pray all the time. As Paul said to the Thessalonians in 1

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Thessalonians chapter 5, pray without ceasing. And I quoted to you a few weeks back from a song from Stephen Curtis Chapman where he says, let us pray, let us pray everywhere and every way, every moment of the day, it is the right time.

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So we should always pray. Any moment of the day is a good time to pray. But I think that because of the way that the

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Lord Christ teaches us to pray here in verse 11, give us this day our daily bread, this seems to give an indication of beginning your day with prayer.

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You could certainly pray this at any time of the day, but that you start the day by asking, give us this day our daily bread.

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We should start our day appealing to the Lord and asking Him to provide for us.

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Adrian Rogers says the following, the prayer offered to God in the morning during your quiet time is the key that unlocks the door to the rest of your day.

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Any athlete knows that it is the start that ensures a good finish.

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So may we begin our day with prayer, and I believe that the Lord is teaching us that very thing here, even in this fourth petition, give us this day our daily bread.

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What's the fifth petition of the Lord's prayer? The fifth petition is this in verse 12, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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Or the way that it reads in the English Standard Version, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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And you may also know this in, I believe it's the New International Version that reads, forgive us our transgressions as we forgive those who transgress against us.

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What are we being taught here in this fifth petition of the Lord's prayer? We pray that God, for Christ's sake, would freely pardon all our sins, which we are rather encouraged to ask because by His grace, we are enabled from the heart to forgive others.

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That's also a message that is very countercultural, is it not? Especially in an election year, society wants you to be divided from one another.

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They want that, and the enemy is influencing that message. He doesn't want you to be unified.

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He wants you to be divided. Have you ever heard the expression, divide and conquer, right?

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If we're together, we're stronger. If we're divided from one another, we're weak. And we read in Titus 3 .3

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that before we came to Christ, we were hated by others and hating one another. So, before Christ, we're divided.

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You may see some semblance of unity or some fake imitation of unity that is being displayed by the world, but it's not true unity.

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True unity comes from Christ. People who have died and gone to hell because they did not believe in the

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Lord Christ, there's not some big unified party going on in hell. In fact, there's no fellowship happening there whatsoever.

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People are eternally separated and isolated from one another in the torment that they face under the wrath of God.

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It's in heaven where we see people together and unified forever in glory, singing the praises of our

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God and King. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.

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He is the one who makes us one. The enemy wants us to be divided, wants us to be separated, wants us to cling to our biases and the things that we don't like about the person next to us.

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We constantly are separated from each other, but it's by the grace of God that we have been forgiven our sins, and with God's grace in our hearts, we have been given the grace that we may show to each other.

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This is not a gracious world, a world that does not want to forgive you of your sins. They want you to constantly be reminded of your sins.

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That's the message of the enemy as well. In fact, the name Satan comes from the Latin hasatan, and what that means is the adversary, also the accuser.

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So he is constantly accusing us of our sins, that we may be reminded of our sins, that we may think that it's all hopeless and there's nothing that I can do about my sins.

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That's the message of Satan. That's what it is that he wants to accomplish, and that's the message that he is accomplishing in this world.

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But we know that in Christ Jesus, by faith in Him, our sins are forgiven, and with the grace of God poured into our hearts, we have grace that we may show it to each other.

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And as we have been forgiven our sins, so we must also forgive.

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It's also the way of this world in that message that keeps us divided from one another, to remember your grudges, hold on to your grudges, keep those grudges with each other.

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That keeps us divided as well. But our Lord holds no grudge against us if you are forgiven by faith in Christ, and so you must hold no grudge with another.

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Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. If you have your

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Bible open to Matthew, turn over to Matthew chapter 18. We'll turn a few chapters to the right,

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Matthew chapter 18. This is the parable of the unforgiving servant.

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And you might be familiar with this parable in Matthew 18, beginning in verse 21 with Peter's question.

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Now, right before this, Jesus has given instructions to the church on how we deal with a disagreement in the body.

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If your brother has sinned against you, go to your brother and tell him his fault just between the two of you alone.

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If your brother is convicted of heart of the thing that you bring to him, and he asks forgiveness, then you've won your brother.

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And that's as far as the matter needs to be taken. It doesn't need to be taken any farther. But if he does not listen to you, you take one or two others along that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

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And if he doesn't listen to them, you tell it to the church. And if he doesn't listen even to the church, you treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

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He's not part of the body of Christ. And as we apply these instructions to church discipline, that person gets removed from the church.

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This is the instruction that Christ has just given on dealing with disagreement or sin between two people.

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And so, then Peter asked this question in verse 21. Peter came up and said to him,

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Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

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As many as seven times? And Jesus said to him,

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I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. Does that mean we keep track, make sure we got 77 logged in our forgiveness journal?

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Well, I've forgiven this person 77 times, so he's met his quota. No more. That's it.

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We're done. Actually, Jesus is telling us that we not keep track and consider the parable that he gives after that, beginning in verse 23.

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He says, therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

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When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10 ,000 talents.

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Now, that's a complicated currency for us to wrap our minds around today, so let me just tell you basically what

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Jesus said to his disciples. He looks at his disciples and he says, this guy owed his master $100 ,000 ,000.

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It would be like if I had just said that to you. His disciples would have heard this and they would have looked at each other and they would have gone, 10 ,000 talents?

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10 ,000? What in the world did he do to rack up a debt of 10 ,000 talents?

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That's how they would have responded to that. So it's not a form of currency that we use, but it was a massive amount of debt.

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They would have heard this and they would have understood there's no way for this servant to pay back that debt.

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It's impossible. It's impossible to pay back 10 ,000 talents. In verse 25, since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had and payment to be made.

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He is to be sold and he still has to pay it back. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me.

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I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, verse 27, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

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The response from the master was not, well, okay, I'll be patient with you.

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I'll give you a little more time because that's what the servant was asking for. He didn't just say,

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I'm going to give you more time. He said, don't worry about it. That's it. Debt canceled.

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You owe me nothing. Now likewise, the disciples hearing that, they would have gone, what?

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He owed a hundred million dollars and the guy just forgave, like, you don't owe it to me. Wow. That would have blown their minds to hear that as well.

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I'm going to consider the rest of this parable, but before we do, let's understand the message that's being communicated to us as this relates to how we forgive others.

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Are there people who have wronged you? Oh, I'm sure there are. There are people who have wronged me too.

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In fact, if that bad Gabe part of me were to come out and I were to sit down with my pen and paper,

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I could write down all the people's names and all the horrible things they've did to me and all of this stuff that they owe me because of the bad things that they did.

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Never even said they're sorry. I can write that list down and I'm not going to be a better person because of it.

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No matter what shows up on that list, it doesn't even remotely compare to what

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I've done against God. It's not even close.

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You couldn't even hold the two lists next to one another. They would be incomparable.

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I have sinned against God to a much greater magnitude than anybody has ever done to me.

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And yet, by faith in Jesus Christ, that debt's canceled.

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The sin is forgiven. As Paul talks about this in Colossians chapter 1, he took the record of debt and all of its legal demands and nailed it to the cross.

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Tetelestiai was the statement in Greek. It is finished.

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Where have we heard that said? By our Lord Christ who died on the cross for our sins.

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By faith in Christ, my sin debt is paid. It is canceled.

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It is no more. It is taken and thrown as far as the east is from the west, according to Psalm 103, and God remembers my sins no more.

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And so if God has forgiven me with such a great measure of grace as this, how much more should it be upon me to forgive me of the people who have done wrongs to me that are so much smaller than the wrongs that I have committed against God?

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Amen? So that's how we should understand this in the parable of the unforgiving servant.

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But we're not done with the parable yet because, again, the name of the parable is the parable of the unforgiving servant, not the unforgiving master.

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The master was forgiving. How did the servant respond though his master had shown him so much grace?

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Look at verse 28. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.

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So that's like, this guy owed his master a hundred million dollars.

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The master forgave it. But this servant had another fellow servant who owed him a hundred bucks.

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Way smaller debt than a hundred million dollars. And how did he respond to this other servant?

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He seized him and he began to choke him and he said, pay what you owe me.

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So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him and said, have patience with me and I will pay you.

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Is this not the same thing the servant had just said to his master earlier? But he refused and he went and he put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

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How do you do that? I'm locked in shackles. I'm in prison. How in the world can I pay you back your debt?

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But that's what this wicked servant did to his fellow servant. Verse 31, when his fellow servants had seen what had taken place, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their master what had happened.

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Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant,

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I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

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And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

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And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he could pay all his debt.

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Can he do that? No, he can't do it from jail, nor can he even meet the massive amount of money that he owed to his master.

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And here's how, here's the chilling verse that concludes this parable.

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Verse 35, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

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See this isn't about money. It's not about the amount that somebody owes you or talking about somebody paying you back to an equal measure of the wrong that they have committed you.

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Jesus in answering Peter's question is saying you don't keep track. God has forgiven you, he's not keeping track of your debts because they've been paid by the precious blood of Christ.

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And so if this is the forgiveness that you have from God, so you must from your heart forgive another.

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You can't walk around with your grudges. In fact, keeping a grudge really doesn't help anyone at all.

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You've probably heard it said about a grudge, you're not hurting anyone but yourself. I don't really think that's true.

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I think that you are hurting others when you hold a grudge. You're hurting the person that you're holding the grudge against. You're hurting people around you because now you're just a miserable person to be around and you're also hurting yourself.

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No one benefits from you holding a grudge. It's some of us love our anger.

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We love our anger. It's like a tic -tac we can have under our tongue and we can suck on it every once in a while.

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I love the flavor that it releases, but no one benefits from these grudges.

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We certainly do not. Not in the present and most especially not in the picture of eternity.

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Jesus taught us to pray, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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Forgive us and may we be able to forgive. This is, again, this is a lesson that Jesus is teaching us in the

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Lord's Prayer. Consider the verses that come at the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, verses 14 and 15 of Matthew chapter 6.

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For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you.

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But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

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This is a very important thing for us to remember. That if the grace of God is upon our hearts, we must show grace to one another.

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And if we don't, if we are not forgiving, then neither will God forgive us because we demonstrate that in our hearts we don't have the forgiveness of Christ.

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If we're not forgiving others, we haven't been forgiven. This is an outpouring of the love of God that has been poured into our hearts in Christ Jesus.

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How important is it to our prayers that we ask

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God forgiveness for our sins? And even as Jesus is teaching us to pray this, we also ask

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God for the ability to forgive another. I'm not going to say that forgiving those who have wronged you is an easy thing to do.

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You've probably got wrongs that have been done to you that's far worse than anything I've been through in my life.

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And yet, if you walk around as that bitter person, it affects your life in the present and it will affect your life for eternity.

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We need to know the grace of God that has been given to us, that has forgiven us of our sins.

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And may we also turn and extend that same grace to others and forgive others their sins.

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This is the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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The sixth petition and the final petition to the Lord's Prayer is in verse 13.

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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And this is more accurately translated, deliver us from the evil one.

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So that's why we've prayed it that way. That's why I teach my children to pray it that way. It was

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Dr. R .C. Sproul that had said this is a more accurate translation of what is being said here because we're asking to be delivered not simply from the evil in this world but the schemes of the one who is perpetrating that evil in this world, who is making sure that evil is continuing in this world, and that is

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Satan himself. So we are asking not to be led into temptation, into those very ways within our own flesh that might come from within and desire things that are contrary to the goodness of God, but deliver us from the evil one who is acting both in this world and within our members to rebel.

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May we not be led into temptation, but deliver us from evil. According to the

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Baptist Catechism we're being taught here, we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when we are tempted.

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Keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when we are tempted to sin.

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You might have remembered the story from last year where the Pope had wanted to change this portion of the

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Lord's Prayer. So the Pope had decided that it wasn't going to be, lead us not into temptation anymore, but deliver us from evil, but instead what he wanted to change it to was what the

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Catholic Catechism taught about what's being said in this prayer. Rather than what the prayer actually says, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

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Deliver us from the evil one. This is the sixth petition of the

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Lord's Prayer. So we have one last portion to look at and that's the conclusion to the

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Lord's Prayer. But before doing that, let's quickly review once again these six petitions.

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The introduction to the Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven. The first petition, hallowed be thy name.

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The second petition, thy kingdom come. The third petition, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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The fourth petition, as our Lord Christ is teaching us to pray, give us this day our daily bread.

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The fifth petition, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And the sixth petition, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

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And finally, we come to the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

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Amen. The Baptist Catechism says, we take our encouragement in prayer from God only and in our prayers to praise

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Him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to Him. And in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say,

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Amen. That word Amen means, so be it. And as we're being taught here a prayer that is being prayed corporately, give us this day our daily bread.

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Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. So as this is being taught to us corporately, so the conclusion of the prayer,

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Amen, so be it, means to be in agreement with what has been said.

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All of us together as a body, we agree with what has been proclaimed. And so we say together,

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Amen. Now you know that I teach from the English standard version of the Bible, the

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ESV. And in Matthew 6, verse 13, you might notice in the ESV that this conclusion to the

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Lord's Prayer is not there. What happened to it? Well, there are some that want to say that the

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ESV translators are conspirators and they were removing parts of the Bible. So they took out this beautiful portion, this conclusion to this prayer so that God would not receive all the glory and power and honor,

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Amen. That's absurd. That's not what's being done here. So why is it that you have that in your

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King James Bible and in your New American Standard Bible you also have the conclusion to the

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Lord's Prayer, but it's been italicized so that you would understand that it was not in the original manuscripts?

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Why is that necessary for us to understand? And then the ESV translators come along and they remove that conclusion of the

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Lord's Prayer altogether. Where did it go? Well, the fact of the matter is that conclusion to this prayer was never there in the first place.

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Matthew did not write it. That's why it has been omitted from the

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English standard version of the Bible. It was added later. How did that happen and how do we know that?

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Well, there were some Byzantine monks in about the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries.

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And when it came to making copies of the Bible, they would literally copy the Bible by hand.

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So you would have a manuscript on one side and they're copying that manuscript by writing out another copy of this on the other side.

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Printing press didn't exist yet. This is how we came up with copies of the Bible. And so by this point, we are about 500 years removed from the very original manuscripts that had been written.

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The originals don't exist anymore. They haven't been kept. We don't have them. So the earliest manuscripts that we have would go back to the 2nd century.

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We don't have any manuscripts from the 1st century when these documents were originally written.

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When Matthew the Apostle himself had originally written the Gospel of Matthew, we don't have that anymore.

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It's old. It's deteriorated. It's disappeared. But we have enough copies of them to know exactly what it was that Matthew said, which is as close to the original as we can possibly get.

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Something with like 99 .8 % accuracy. But these Byzantine monks in about the 5th or 6th century, as they're copying the

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Bible down and they're writing it down, making other copies for other churches to be able to have copies of these documents, they would write in the center exactly what the manuscript was that they were copying.

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But then off to the side, they might make notes. Just like you might make notes in your

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Bible. But it's easier for you to distinguish between which notes are yours and which one is the actual text of Scripture, right?

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Somewhere off to the side in one of these manuscripts, one of these monks had written down 1

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Chronicles 29 verse 11, which says, Well, that sounds a lot like the conclusion of the

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Lord's Prayer, doesn't it? It comes from Scripture. It's not that somebody added to the text something that wasn't there.

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But they really liked that prayer that David prayed in 1 Chronicles 29, so they carried it over to the text in Matthew 6.

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Because these texts would be read in churches, and they would be read as liturgy, and even the congregation would recite these things as they were being read to the congregation.

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And so, since this was a prayer where we were being taught to pray, we need a conclusion here. We don't have a good conclusion.

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So let's use the conclusion that was in 1 Chronicles 29 verse 11. And somewhere in the copying of those manuscripts, some later overzealous monk took that passage from 1

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Chronicles 29 verse 11, adapted it, and stuck it at the end of the

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Lord's Prayer, and that's how we got it in Matthew 6 verse 13. But when we get to the modern day and we're able to look at a greater body of texts than Bible translators were able to look at, even when the

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King James was translated, even back in 1611, we're able to look at more manuscripts than they had access to, how are we able to do that?

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Well, those libraries are kept better than they used to be, and we have all of that stuff scanned and kept in digital libraries.

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And so, even from here in the United States, we don't have to travel all the way over to Europe or somewhere where they're keeping all of these manuscripts together.

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We can look at them all in the digital copies that have been kept online. And so we can look at older manuscripts and a greater body of those manuscripts, and when we look back at the earliest manuscripts, what we see is that the earliest translations of Matthew chapter 6, the earliest copies, they're not the original autographs, but they're as early as we can get.

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They do not have, in Matthew 6 verse 13, For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,

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Amen. Which means that was added later. It wasn't in the original text.

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So for the English Standard Version translators of the Bible to be as accurate and as faithful to the original text as possible, they omitted that conclusion to the

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Lord's Prayer, since it wasn't in the original. It doesn't mean that it's wrong for us to pray that, and I think that in a good tradition of the church, it's fine that we pray the

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Lord's Prayer that way and we conclude it with that. But there's your history lesson as to why the

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English Standard Version of the Bible does not include that conclusion to the Lord's Prayer. It's not been added to Scripture.

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It's taken from Scripture, right? From 1 Chronicles 29, 11. But it wasn't what

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Matthew actually wrote down when he was penning the words that our Lord Christ taught us to say.

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Nevertheless, there is still wonderful, beautiful things that we learn from even this conclusion to the

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Lord's Prayer. Again, we take encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise

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Him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to Him, and testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard.

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In this testimony, we conclude the Lord's Prayer by saying, Amen. And all

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God's people said, Amen. Consider Romans 11, verses 33 through 36.

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Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How insearchable are

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His judgments, and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the

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Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?

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For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever.

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Amen. I hope that as we have gone through this series, and as we have considered the parts of the

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Lord's Prayer as a blueprint for prayer, that you have been encouraged in your prayer life.

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And this has helped to teach you how to pray. Consider these things and meditate on this all the more as we go from this series and continue on in what our

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Lord Christ continues to teach in the Sermon on the Mount. And we'll pick up next week.

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Let me conclude with a few quotes about prayer from some faithful teachers over the centuries.

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Corrie ten Boom, who was the Dutch theologian who helped the Jews escape the

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Nazis, she said this, Is prayer your steering wheel?

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Or is prayer your spare tire? Is prayer the thing that drives you?

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Or is prayer the thing that you rely upon when stuff goes bad? That's when you pull your prayer out.

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And you haven't even checked that spare tire in a while to see if it still has air in it.

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Until you really need it. You find out it's no good. Charles Spurgeon said this,

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True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance.

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It is far deeper than that. It is a spiritual transaction with the Creator of heaven and earth.

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Abraham Lincoln said this about prayer, I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right.

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But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the

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Lord's side. Billy Graham said that if a nation is ever going to get back on its feet, first it needs to get down on its knees.

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And we should pray that for our nation, especially in these days. Leonard Ravenhill said prayer is not an argument with God to persuade

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Him to move things our way, but an exercise by which we are enabled by His Spirit to move ourselves

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His way. Remember when we began our series in the

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Lord's Prayer, I said to you that I had made a statement online in which I said that prayer doesn't change

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God's mind. Prayer changes mine. And so we pray, as Leonard Ravenhill would even instruct us to pray here, not to persuade

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Him to move things our way, but we would be enabled by His Spirit to move ourselves

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His way. John Piper had said something about prayer once,

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I didn't write this quote down, but he said if social media, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all of these things, if this stuff is ever going to reveal anything to us in the judgment, it's going to show us just how much we had time to pray and didn't.

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May that be convicting, that we submit and commit our every way unto the

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Lord in prayer. And if there's any promise that I can give you as a pastor, it is this, the

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Lord will answer you. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ, when we understand the text.