Overview Of The Lord’s Prayer

It's a pleasure to be here, and if you would, turn your Bibles open to the book of Matthew. We're going to be opening up this magisterial narrative, a book that focuses on Jesus as the greater and better Moses, a theme that we've been hearing a lot today, and specifically zooming into Sermon on the Mount.

So if you want to gear your minds and ready yourselves to think about the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically the Lord's Prayer this afternoon, that is what we are going to be learning about, an overview of the Lord's Prayer that's found in chapter 6, verse 5 through 15.

So I have a legacy standard Bible here with me from the influence of the Master's Seminary that I've been at. Whatever translation you have, I'm sure works, but if it's a little different, that's why.

I'll be reading verse 5 through 15. Hear the Word of the Lord. And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites. And actually, I'm just now remembering. Let's all stand for the reading of the Word, and we'll continue.

For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues, and on the street, and on the street corners, so that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room.

And when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do.

For they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 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 if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. This is the word of the Lord.

Please remain standing as we go to him in prayer. Father, you are the God of light. You bring illumination to our minds, and you have sent your word to us that we would have guidance in this life. We pray, dear Father, that you would guide us by this pattern that you've given us in your holy word of how to pray.

We pray, Lord, that Jesus would be our example in how to pray, that we'd have our eyes looking to him from the moment that the new birth comes, but we would not stay in that infant state fed upon milk, but that you would grow us in how we pray, so that we would pray with power, so that we would pray after the pattern you have instructed us with, that we might learn the glories of praying with fervency from our heart, with your sovereignty focused upon, and our complete dependence upon you prioritized.

God, we pray that you would sanctify our prayer lives. That is our prayer this afternoon. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Do you want to know how to pray with power? James 5 16 says, the prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The ESV puts it this way, that prayer has great power as it's working. Interesting story to testify to this is a Scottish preacher named Eric Alexander. Eric Alexander has since gone to sing with the Lord in glory, but that blessed ending of his life had its beginning with a prayer, and it wasn't the sinner's prayer.

It was his older brother's prayer that he heard around the dinner table. He was thinking he was sitting at another ordinary meal with his family when, as his older brother went to pray and bless the meal, he felt convicted that he did not have this communion with God within himself to pray such a prayer.

The life of his older brother, the fact that he was a true child of God, came through in how he prayed and convicted him, and so I want you to know that our prayers, whether we are young at the dinner table or old in the faith, they have power no matter what.

If you are in Christ, you have a connection with God and the Holy Spirit, that even when we're not faithful, he is faithful to continue to dwell in us and be there listening to us. So this is not a one, two, three step to how to pray with power as though your prayers now, our prayers now, don't have any power in them.

That's not the case. God works mightily through the weakest and feeblest of prayers, but he gives us guidance for how to grow, and so the Lord's pattern, the Lord's prayer, we call it, for prayer, is how we are to pursue growth in this act of prayer, and I hope that it is something that we all can identify in ourselves this afternoon as an area of weakness.

I hope all of us can say together, we need to grow in this area of prayer. We're not where we should, and we are a far cry from what Jesus Christ asks of us and requires of us and commands us to pray like, and we see that in this text whenever he begins with the imperative, pray then like this.

So I want you, as we read through this prayer, ask yourselves, is this true of how I pray? And if not, identify the weakness, strengthen it through practice and through reliance on the Holy Spirit. The outline for today, as we look at this overview of the Lord's Prayer, is first, the context.

We're going to look at what comes before the Lord's Prayer. Second, the content. We're going to look at the Lord's Prayer itself and how it's divided up, the pattern and priorities that Jesus would have us pray with, and third is the continuation in prayer.

The continuation prayer we see by Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and then our call to continue in prayer as well. So first, let's look at the context, and if we skim down to the very beginning of Matthew 6, you have your Bibles.

Matthew 6 begins with saying this, beware, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them is an abuse of religion.

It's a common abuse, but it is an abuse, and that's what it should be called. It's hypocrisy at its finest. I was talking with somebody just at our luncheon out there about my background a little bit, coming from the liberal church.

Not a true church. I have preachers that were engaged in various acts of infidelity and certain perversions were praised, and oddly affixed to that, though, was the abundance of good works and the prioritization of doing good for the poor, and the pride that that church had that I grew up with and how they served.

It was like, how could you eat their soup that they're serving when they, you just know that there's such pride behind why they're serving it, and so people look at them and they might say, oh, your smile is so nice or you're very kind, and then Jesus says here, though, no, they, I can tell you truly, truly, they have their reward in full.

We do not want to be like the liberal church or the church of the latter-day saints. Hypocrites, he calls them, but I think it's also easy for us to just look at them and think they're the hypocrites and not look at ourselves, and so look at yourselves.

Are there any hypocrites here that are coming to church as an outward show of religion but not truly engaged in their heart? They don't have the communion with God they know they ought to have. That's definitely what they're giving the appearance of to others, but it's not true.

They're hypocrites. We can't see you. We might not identify you, but God does. God knows who are is, and he knows who are putting on a facade of false worship, and Jesus, especially whenever we go to the Lord in prayer, would warn us that we would not likewise be hypocrites in our prayers, but rather our hearts would be in the right place, and that we would not just be heaping up words meaning, meaninglessly, and so if you're taking notes, the context is the danger of hypocrisy seen in two ways.

We see in the context two ways that we have the danger of not praying with genuine hearts before the Lord, and that's whenever we have the tendency to come before the Lord with a haughty heart, somehow thinking ourselves good or righteous or boasting in our ability, or we have the danger of heaping words.

We must be warned of the danger of having a haughty heart when we go to pray to avoid hypocrisy, and we also must be warned of the danger of heaping up words. So I remember in this regard, he says, well, the scripture says you do not want to pray like the Gentiles.

So what does he mean by that? I was watching a documentary where, as a cultural experience, this guy was out in India, and he was looking at how the Hindus worship there, and thought that it would be a enlightening experience to join in in their false worship, and I'm watching this documentary of this heathen Gentile guy just trying to show us the beauty of the culture in India, and he brings us in, and there's this music, and they're trying to make it look all beautiful.

There's gold-plated objects everywhere, and you can probably get the idea of kind of what a shrine would look like, and there were on the ground, it was interesting, all these women bowed, chanting these prayers over and over and over again, so that the room filled with this, it was a not a beautiful sound, it was a dissonance, this chanting, this mantra over and over and over again before their various shrines and gods, thinking that if they just said these words, enough, I guess, is the hope, maybe it's like the genie in the bottle, maybe they can rub the genie the right way, they'll come out and they'll give them what they want, that's the hope, and it's always about something physical, something about this world, something about their desires or their wants, and it's interesting, Jesus in this prayer, he doesn't talk about any fleshly desires or wants that we would have, he gets right to the basics, he gets right to what we need, and so he says don't pray like them, don't pray like the pagans in the temple, pray instead with this manner about you, concise, sincere, and focusing on what matters most, and so let's look then at the content of the Lord's prayer.

In verse 9 through 13, the prayer goes, 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, amen.

The content of the Lord's prayer is fundamentally God-centric, it tells us who God is, where God is, what God is doing, and what we need from him. To break it down even simpler though, it's helpful just to understand that it's a prayer all about the sovereignty of God, and our complete dependence upon him.

The Lord's prayer is about understanding the greatness and glories of God and his redemptive purposes, and focusing our minds on that first, and then moving to what we need from him, which sounds so different, at least for me, from the majority of my prayers, which I think I often go with the impetus of what I want and desire on the forefront of my mind, and I forget to adore, and I forget to think about the kingdom coming, and God's will being done, just as on earth as it is in heaven, with my mind thinking about the heavenly realm, and no that's not where my mind's at, my mind is about how awful I feel right now, and how much I want God to help me, which is a good prayer, help me God, but it shouldn't end there, and it shouldn't start there, and Jesus says, have your mind first on heaven, where your God is, and think about him just for a second before you get to yourself.

The Lord's prayer begins with God's name. First, God's name. We see in this first petition, God's name is to be hallowed. When we pray, we aren't, this is interesting, only to pray for our sanctification, or to pray for God's sanctification.

I don't know if you thought about that before, but the word hallowed means to sanctify, but of course God isn't cleansed of sin, that's not sanctification for God, that's for us, we're praying that we'd be cleansed from sin, that we'd be purified, but what is sanctification for God?

Well, the word means to be set apart. God is set apart from every finite thing that he's created. He is distinguished beyond all that we know or see as completely and altogether beautiful and splendor and infinitely so and absolutely so to a degree that we cannot imagine.

We need to remember the greatness and grandeur of our God. We need to remember the glory of our God, and in this first petition that his name would be hallowed, we actually have the first prayer that some people think is the only prayer in this Lord's prayer, that we will be praying forever in eternity.

Every other one, God's kingdom is going to come one day, you know, every other one, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us of our sins. We know that there's coming a day when we're no longer going to sin, we're no longer going to be reliant upon bread as we are now.

This prayer, many think, has the priority and is the greatest of all the prayers that follow, and so our minds ought to be on that which is greater at the forefront. Second, God's reign, God's name, and God's reign.

In the second petition, we pray thy kingdom come and thy will be done. So this is interesting because typically we're used to the axe model, and I don't know if you're familiar with the axe model of prayer, but you have adoration first, God's name, we're thinking about who he is, and then we immediately move to, well, in light of all of who God is, I'm this, I'm full of sin, and then we confess our sin.

That's not wrong. This model does not say we shouldn't pray like that or that we shouldn't pray like David prays throughout the Psalms or even how Christ goes to prayer himself in the high priestly prayer, which you'll see he doesn't follow this model exactly.

Nevertheless, the axe model isn't the Lord's model, and we should remember that, and I think there should be a priority set to how God would have us pray, and it should influence us to such a degree that it becomes a normative rule to our lives.

We look at this and we say, yeah, by and large, for the most part, my prayers kind of take this structure. I kind of hit these main points in the life of my prayer. This is what I focus on. This is what it looks like.

That's what we're after. That's what we're trying to learn from Jesus here, and so he's going to get, Jesus is going to get to confession, but it's just not yet. First, he's going to focus on the kingdom, so we've just looked at the king.

Now we're gazing upon the kingdom, the kingdom coming in number as people are saved, the kingdom expanding as its people are sanctified, and looking forward to the kingdom coming in Jesus Christ's second return, so the kingdom come, thy will be done.

Our mind should be upon God's kingdom going out as we evangelize, going up as we worship, as we're doing now on the Lord's day, being built up by the word of God, and then always with that fervent hope, that expectation never lost, and always there upon our hearts.

We want to focus on God's reign. In the last half of the Lord's Prayer, we see God's provision, pardon, and protection. So in the first half, we see God's sovereignty, but in the second half, we recognize our dependence upon God for everything physical and spiritual.

The third, fourth, and fifth petitions then are God's provision, God's pardon, and God's protection. God's provision, pardon, and protection. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we are, I think we forget this, daily dependent upon food.

Our food, really, we ought to be thinking of it like it is manna come from above, given by God that we do not deserve. That's what this is foreshadowing. This is what it's trying to make us remember, and every time we go to pray for our food, that's what we are doing.

We're reminding ourselves this is not something we earned by our hard work, maybe in a sense, but primarily and first, this is given by God. And so, yes, you worked for it through the secondary means, but God gave this to you, and you're giving him back what is rightfully his in prayer, owning, recognizing that everything that you have, the clothes that you wear, the food that you eat, it's not just food.

It's clothes. It's your house that you live in. It's the air that you breathe. It's all the necessities for life. We're reminding ourselves in prayer to thank God for them. God's pardon then comes after our recognition of his provision, and notice Jesus adds a second C to the confession.

So, if we think of the Acts model of confession, there's a second C here. There's confession, but he pairs it with commitment. If you read in the Acts, he says, forgive us for our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us.

In other words, God's forgiveness of us must be wedded with our forgiveness toward others. Faith is not an idle affair, but it is wedded in holy matrimony with fruit. Gospel and good works go hand in hand.

You're only saved by the former, but it comes with the latter. True faith has fruit, and the gospel, as it goes forth, will bring along with it good works. That's how it works, and Jesus doesn't want us to forget the duty alongside our dependence on his grace.

Yeah, we have God's grace for giving us, but he doesn't want us to forget we have a calling ourselves to a commitment ourselves to be following after him and forgiving others and making that the priority of how we are as Christians.

There's no one thing that anybody has said to us where we can say, there's no one thing that anybody's done to us where we can say that's too much. That's, I could never forgive that man. I could never, you don't understand what he's done.

No matter what, no matter how you've been sinned against, it's not as, it's not what Christ went through. It's not as bad as how Christ was sinned against by being nailed to the cross. Jesus went through everything for us.

He forgave us of sins, and at a great cost, and so here he reminds us of that great cost and our calling to demonstrate that great love towards others as we have been shown it so greatly by our great God.

Last, we see God's protection. God's protection. He gives us grace, but he also gives us guidance, and he ends his instruction on prayer with what I believe to be at least in part a reference directly to Satan.

In the Lord's prayer, you begin with God in his name, our Father in heaven, and then you end from looking up. If you're looking, you end your prayer looking out, very much aware of the danger that lurks with a war mindset of sin, understanding it is there, ever present, and looking to get you, and we need to pray that God would save us from temptation, that he would keep us from Satan, the evil one.

We have to remember that this life is a battle. We have fleeting thoughts that need to be slain, evil motives to be destroyed, selfish inclinations to be surrendered by the sword, and so we not only remember the Israelites in the wilderness in our prayers, but we remember the Israelites in Canaan, conquering in their charge to destroy all the high places, and we have high places in our hearts that still need to be destroyed, and we must remember that, acknowledge that, affirm it, and go to the Lord for help and strength, but never become lazy or lackluster so that our prayers lose total sight of our sin and become all about our needs and what we want.

It's about God's glory and splendor, and then we're also remembering our sin and Satan, but last, let's not leave it here. This is the imperative of Jesus Christ. Pray, then, in this way, so we have this calling, but we're not alone.

We have help. We have divine aid to pray as we are called to pray. We have divine help in Jesus. We have divine help in the Spirit. They both are continuing in prayer for us, and we have a calling ourselves, then, by their divine aid, knowing they're continuing for us to ourselves to labor on unceasingly in prayer.

First, let's just think about Jesus for a moment. Are you done praying? I want to encourage you, Jesus is not. He says he always lives to pray, and Hebrews 7 .25 is such an encouraging prayer. Therefore, he is able to also, he is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

That's what's connected to people being saved. Jesus's prayer, Jesus's ministry in heaven, he always lives for this purpose. He always lives, not just for the moment, not just for the time being. This is his heartbeat.

This is what he lives for, and it should be what we live for, too. He lives on his throne as king. We've talked this morning about how he is the great prophet, not just a prophet, the prophet, but he is also a priest, a priest who makes sacrifices, a priest who intercedes for his people.

He is on the throne, and he is also praying from the throne for us. Hallelujah. What an encouragement to know when we are struggling, there is a savior who is a true prayer warrior, if you want to use that cliche, in heaven praying for us.

I mean, he's the epitome of that name. If there's anybody, if you're going to call anybody that, that is Jesus, and it's not just him that's praying, the spirit is praying as well. Romans 8 26 says, and the same way the spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

That's infinitely greater prayer. He's praying for us in such a way that we couldn't even try to translate or put into English words what is possibly being said. He loves us so much that he was in heaven enjoying Christ's ascension and coronation, but he didn't stay.

He was sent just as Christ gave up so much to come to earth. The spirit somehow puts up with me. He puts up with you. More than that, he's, it's easy for him. I wonder, because focusing on prayer, our prayers, I say this, my prayers are so pathetic, but the spirit still dwells within me.

He chooses daily to continue to dwell within us, even while we fall so far short of his holy standard, and he groans with us because he knows the difficulty. He sympathizes with us with groanings too deep for words to express.

He enters into our sorrow when we don't even know how to sorrow properly. We don't even know what to pray, and then there he is praying always, but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't. We have a calling to.

We know the spirit prays for us. We know Jesus is praying for us, but we are called to pray, not just every once in a while or even often. 1 Thessalonians 5 17 puts it, pray without ceasing. What does this mean?

Well, I don't think we should be focusing on how we can start praying while we're asleep, eight, nine hours a day, or however long you're sleeping, or figuring out how to pray in complete sentences while actively engaged in a conversation with someone.

I don't think that's the point of praying unceasing. I think, I don't want to diminish the point either, though. I think the point is, I think it's a very high bar that is being set, and I don't think we understand just how high of a bar it really is.

I think we just sometimes think, oh, we can't pray always, so we just, I don't know, we stop thinking about it there, but there is something here for us to glean. Prayer should so consume and regulate our very existence that it defines our constant state of being.

This is the bar that is set. We must so constantly abide in Christ that prayer goes from a mere water break, think about it that way, to the very air we breathe. We shouldn't downplay this, but rather we should dive ever deeper into the depths of spirituality until we discover this treasure of sorts lying at the bottom, which is the treasure of true continual prayer, something I don't think any of us here know, something I don't think maybe the Apostle knew, maybe Apostle Paul, maybe he got it, maybe Enoch got this, what it means to always be abiding so close in the presence of Christ, that you're praying without ceasing, but that's what we're striving after, that's what we're shooting for, and so in the Lord's Prayer, we see the context, the danger of hypocrisy, we see the content, that it's God-centric, it's about God and about what we need from him before our wants, and we conclude remembering the divine aid that he gives us alongside our duty.

The Son and the Spirit are praying, and so should we, always and evermore. So, do you want to know how to pray with power? Take a look at the Lord's Precious Travel Guide up this hill of difficulty, the Lord's Prayer.

It tells us how to pray, and God promises to help us along the way. Is there anyone here that's seeking the Lord for salvation, and has been hearing me think, talk a lot about how to pray, and you just don't think you've ever really prayed to the Lord?

I tell you, it's not hard, it just requires a heart. We all have a heartbeat, you can feel it, you know it's there, and if you have a heart, then you have all that you need to be heard. God wants you to come to him with your hearts, and if you go to him with your heart, ready to learn, ready to be taught, wanting to know his will, he will answer.

He'll let you know, and he'll give you his son, an everlasting life, if you just ask for it with your heart, and then you get to enjoy the long, fun road of growing in prayer. It's a new language that he gives you whenever you're saved.

He puts you into a new family, and it's like having a new culture, you have a new language that you learn. We shouldn't, as believers, stop at prayer one, or prayer two, prayer three, we keep going, let's learn how to progress in this language of prayer, and never stop.

We'll always be weak, but that doesn't diminish our hope, and that doesn't mean we stop short. We must master this, and we have a beautiful pattern set for us in the Lord's prayer. Let us use it for our good, and for our God's glory.

Amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we pray that you would be glorified, that your name would be exalted above all, that any who are here that do not know you would pray, that they would know who God is, and that they would believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.

Would your name be heralded and hallowed? Would your kingdom come gloriously with might and splendor? And would we in this dark world depend upon you, and shine bright as lights in the darkness? God, give us everything we need for today.

Give us the grace of your forgiveness as we go out, forgiving all who sin against us, blessing our enemies, and praying for them, and protect us from evil. As we go out this week, keep us pure as we await the coming of your Lord Jesus Christ.

In his blessed name we pray. Amen.