Wednesday, July 7, PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Now it came to pass, as he was praying in a certain place when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him,

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Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

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So he said to them, When you pray, say, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

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Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

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

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And he said to them, Which of you shall have a friend? And go to him at midnight, and say to him,

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Friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

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And he will answer from within, and say, Do not trouble me, for the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed.

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I cannot rise and give to you. I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him, because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will rise and give him as many as he needs.

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So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.

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Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks, finds.

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And to him who knocks, it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?

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Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?

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Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your

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Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So how did you learn how to pray?

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Did somebody teach you? Was it your parents? Maybe a

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Sunday school teacher? Maybe listening to a preacher?

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Listening to a pastor? How did you learn how to pray?

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Children very often learn how to pray by listening. Just listening to the others around them, how they pray, and then they pick up those patterns of speech.

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This is the way we pray. The disciples obviously listened to Jesus praying, and it was very rare in the

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Bible that anybody would pray silently. Very rare.

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Can you think of a time when somebody was praying silently, and it was weird?

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Yeah, Hannah. She was in the depths of grief, and she was so distraught because of the persecution of Peninnah.

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And Elkanah didn't make things better with his little, aren't I worth ten sons to you?

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She had no one to talk to, obviously, so she went to talk to the lord of the tabernacle. But she was so distraught that she was praying silently, and her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.

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Of course, these are the days of the judges, so Eli is watching, and he just figures she's drunk.

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It's like, oh, I've got another drunk woman at the tabernacle again. He's just used to it by now.

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It's like living in New York City or something. It's like, oh, yeah, here it goes again. So he confronts her on it, and she's just explaining that she's just in such distress.

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But when folks pray in the Bible, it's out loud.

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It's out loud. Sometimes you don't know how to pray. Sometimes we just don't know what to say, but we have a promise in Romans 8 that the

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Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings which are too deep to be uttered, and we can trust that the

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Lord hears us even if we don't know how to say it. But they obviously, these disciples, have been listening to Jesus pray, and they want him to teach them in a direct way, not just copying how he prays, but they want to be taught how to pray, to be instructed like John taught his disciples.

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And so he said to them, when you pray, say, or when you pray, something like this.

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Now the following, we have the model prayer here in chapter 11 of Luke. We can go back to Matthew 6, and we have the model prayer there as well.

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Slightly different, but these are the basic principles of prayer. In chapter 6 of Matthew, Jesus explicitly says that praying, you can pray wrong.

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You can pray wrong. There's wrong ways to pray. Sometimes in a sincere effort to help folks and discipleship, young Christians, baby

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Christians are told, oh, there's no wrong way to pray. Just talk to God.

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When Jesus did his, you know, Discipleship 101, here's how you pray, he said, now there are wrong ways to pray.

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He just came out and said that. What are some of the wrong ways to pray? Can we remember those?

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Vain repetitions. And there was another way. Yeah, that's right.

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Like the Pharisees did. They prayed on the street corners and used a lot of words.

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Very verbose with their vocabulary. Look how good we can pray. So Jesus says vain repetition, repetition, saying the same things over and over and over again.

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That is not how we're supposed to pray. So repeating the model prayer or the

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Lord's Prayer over and over and over again is exactly what Jesus said not to do.

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Right? It was never designed to be a part of your penance to go and say a bunch of, you know, recite the model prayer over and over and over again.

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That was precisely what he said not to do. So in what way is he saying pray like this?

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He's showing the principles of prayer. And notice to whom we're to pray.

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As well, when you pray, it's to pray our Father in heaven. You pray, we pray to God.

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And we, because of Christ, because of Christ, because of our adoption through the

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Holy Spirit, we know God as Father. For the Holy Spirit within us cries,

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Abba, Father. So we know God as Father through the adoption that we have in Christ and because of the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit. So when we pray to God and know him as his Father, this is a recognition of the triune

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God who is at work to bring us to himself through the redemption of Christ and the saving work of the

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Spirit. So our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

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Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the most important person in the act of prayer is

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God. We're addressing him in a way that is humble.

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We are recognizing his authority, his provision, his power. He's our

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Father who is in heaven. We want his name to be exalted. We want his name to be hallowed, set apart as special.

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And we want his authority. We want his authority to be established and felt and displayed.

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Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When God declares something in heaven, there's an immediate amen and the orders are executed.

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What about, so when God's word is declared in heaven, that's how it works in heaven. When God's word is declared on earth, there's a bit of signal lag, isn't there?

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It doesn't happen as fast as it does in heaven. But our prayers, we want it to be so.

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We want the word of God declared upon earth to be obeyed, to be followed through, to be rejoiced in, to be established on earth just as it is in heaven.

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That should be our prayers. We should pray for the will of God, which is not, and we're not talking about some sort of secret, mystical will of God.

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Who knows what it is? No, we know what the will of God is. He said it rather plainly, thoroughly in the

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Bible. What is the will of God? How could we sum it up? Love God supremely.

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Love others rightly. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these two hang all the law and the prophets.

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That's the will of God, isn't it? We can investigate what God desires, what his will is.

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We can discover that in the word of God. And we're praying that that would be done on earth, meaning in our lives and in the lives of all those around us throughout the earth.

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We're asking for God that that would be done. I'm stressing this because praying could become something in which we start with ourselves.

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How does Jesus want to start our prayers? Start with thinking about God. Start with considering who

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God is. His identity. Hallowed be your name. Right? We can go a lot of wrong directions in our prayer life if we start with us.

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This is who I am. This is where I am. Is it wrong to say

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I am your child on earth? Look, I am your child in this particular situation.

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These are my problems. These are my circumstances. This is where I'm at. And God, you know me.

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I'm this, that, and the other. Well, Jesus doesn't say, start off saying, hey,

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I'm your child on earth and hallowed be my name. We begin with God.

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We begin with who he is, considering the power, the authority, the love, the compassion, the faithfulness of God.

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Considering his will, his authority, his power. And we're praying at the very beginning now, considering what his will is and asking that that would be done.

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Of course, we have great desires for things. I need some help.

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I need wisdom. Or I need healing. Or I need finances.

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Or I need some sort of opportunity.

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But our will, as interested as God is in what's going on in our hearts, as our creator, as our savior, as our king, and so on, is more important than what he desires.

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So we start with who he is, not who we are. Where he's at, not where we are. Start with his will, not our will. This is where the prayer starts.

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It starts with God. And Jesus says, this is how you're supposed to pray. And he says, give us day by day our daily bread.

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Now, that's pretty repetitious. Day by day our daily bread. What's that about?

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Notice the character of this request. Jesus does not say, pray in such a way that you only have to pray once.

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Right? God, please provide me with everything I'll need for the rest of my life.

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Thanks very much. I'll try to remember to write. You know? No, this is a, look at it, day by day.

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Day by day. We're praying, asking God for what is essential, what is necessary.

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And we're asking for daily bread. We're not asking, you know, day by day, we plead with God that we'll win the lottery.

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Right? No. Day by day, we're asking that God will provide what we need for that day. Just like the

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Israelites in the wilderness, the manna that they needed day by day.

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The water from the rock that went with them, who was Christ. The water that they needed day by day.

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Right? This is what we're to ask from the Lord, ask from our

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Heavenly Father. I've shared this before, but I'm trying to teach my kids, if they're hungry, don't just go, you know, climb up on the kitchen counter and scale the cupboards to the very top and get some crackers.

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But if someone's hungry, then they come to me and ask. I, you know,

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I want a snack. Who do you ask? Ask Daddy. That's right. Ask your father. I want my children, as I wish that I was, careful to always go to my

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Heavenly Father to ask for what I need, rather than just, you know, I can handle this.

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And so, first of all, there's the praise to the Father, who he is. But then there's also provision. Give us this day our daily bread, but also the provision of forgiveness.

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And forgive us our sins. We also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. So provision not only of our basic needs, but also provision of forgiveness.

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Don't we need that daily? If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and his truth is not in us.

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If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. So we've got to recognize, this is written to Christians, recognizing that, yes, we're still struggling with sin.

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If we don't confess our sins and agree with God about what our sins are, that we need forgiveness and cleansing, then we're in the darkness, and we're not fellowshipping with him because he's in the light.

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And when we do confess our sins and look to God for forgiveness, we have in Christ a propitiation for our sins through his blood.

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So we need daily bread, we need daily forgiveness. And we have to ask God for that forgiveness, don't we?

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You know, God loves us as his children, even if we've not gone to him confessing our sins and asking for forgiveness just yet.

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And he's going to be working on us, we have that promise that he'll be faithful to complete his work in our lives.

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It was brought to my attention not so long ago, that the whole idea of forgiveness is something in which somebody comes to ask you for forgiveness.

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They come to ask you for forgiveness. And just like Peter was talking to Jesus about, you know, one of my brothers sins against me, you know, seven times or whatever.

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And, you know, he's coming to me asking for forgiveness. Do I have to forgive him? Yes, Peter. Seventy times seven, right?

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Seventy -seven fold. And someone comes to ask us for forgiveness, we need to forgive them.

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We need to forgive them. What if they don't ever come ask for forgiveness? Well, you still need to love them.

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Now, can you love somebody? Can you love somebody but your relationship with them is broken because they never come to confess their sins, say what

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I did was wrong and seek forgiveness? Can you still love someone like that? Yeah, you can.

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The relationship isn't healed, it isn't whole. You can still love them, but until they confess their sins and come into the light where you are in the light, is the truth of the matter, and seek forgiveness, that relationship can't be healed or restored, you see.

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I think this is important for our culture we live in today, where people want to do whatever they want to do, however they want to do it, call it whatever they want to call it, and expect everybody to accept them as if no relationship problems ever exist.

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You can't do that. God doesn't do that. But we need daily forgiveness, and anytime we have any trouble forgiving somebody else, just remember what

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God has forgiven us. So, for praise and provision, and also for protection, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

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Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. This is recognition of our weakness, and our need for God's protection, and our need for God's power and victory in our lives.

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Not to think that we are, in and of ourselves, able to stand, but doing all that we can in the evil day to stand entails putting on the spiritual armor, but putting it on through prayer, if we recall.

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Prayer is absolutely essential to that entire metaphor. So, we'll look more at this next time as well, because Jesus goes on to talk about the manner in which we are to pray.

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But we see the very basics of prayer in this model, that prayer is meant for praise.

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We start with who God is, give him glory and honor. We move on to provision.

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We're dependent upon our Heavenly Father to give us what we need, day by day. And then also, appealing to him for protection.

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And so, that's very easy, I think, to remember when Jesus talks about how to pray.

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Alright, speaking of prayer, we need to pray, I imagine, for a great many needs in our lives.