Oct. 9, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 13 Pastor Josh Sheldon

The Lord’s Prayer as the Model for Christian Prayer

Well, we continue going through the Sermon on the Mount for the afternoon portion of our service. We begin now the Lord's Prayer, found in Matthew chapter six and verses nine through 13. And this morning, we will cover only a few words of it, the very first words of it.

But even so, I would like to prepare us for it by beginning with the Lord's teaching on prayer as an overall topic. Back at verse five, where Jesus first introduces prayer. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty praises as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for the many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then like this. Our Father 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 lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.

The Lord’s Prayer as a Disciple’s Prayer

So here we have a prayer that is not meant for show. A prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ himself gives us after giving us the warnings of prayer and how not to pray and what secret prayer is about and all these instructions, he then gives us what is sometimes called the Lord's Prayer, other times the Model Prayer.

I like better the Disciple's Prayer since it's given by the Lord to us, his disciples, this way we should pray. Here's a prayer for us that is full of meaning and devoid of any empty phrases. Every word here carries with it a sense of our humble adoration of God and our utter dependence upon him.

In this prayer, self-reliance is repudiated and full reliance upon God is affirmed. In this prayer, God has confessed as our Father itself a statement of faith. And in it, we see God's name representing his person, representing his works, held up as a glorious name, holy, a mighty name, a hallowed name.

And such a God as this, in scripture it says, his very name is holy. He is a God whose kingdom reflects his person. And so we desire for his kingdom to come, for it, his kingdom, to have full sway over all the earth, for this terrestrial ball to have the same pure worship as does the heavenly sphere where his throne resides.

This Model Prayer with its plea against temptation is our supplication that we be made fit for the kingdom of God, that we represent our Lord, our Savior well. It is this God to whom we flee for our daily bread.

And any time it is there on our tables, we acknowledge that it is from God's hand. Every good and perfect gift, spiritually and otherwise, is from the hand of God, our Father. To him we flee also for our spiritual sustenance.

In him there is forgiveness, and only by his grace can we find the wherewithal to importantly forgive others. And if we don't pray against our tendency to fall into sin, we will lead ourselves over and over into temptations too strong for our weak wills to resist.

And so we pray that God will not lead us there, but will deliver us from our follies, that we will cease returning to sin the way a dog does to its vomit. It's called the Lord's Prayer. I like the Disciples Prayer better because it's for us.

It's given to us directly by Jesus. It is a model that satisfies all that Jesus had said just above about right and wrong ways to pray. Pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

And we will not get far even in that sentence this morning, much less through the whole prayer. I do intend as much as we can to take our time and go through this and digest it bite by bite. Because it's not just words that we're saying.

If it were just words, then would we not be having vain repetitions which Jesus had just warned us not to do? No, they're not just words. These are statements given to us by Jesus Christ. The way we address God, the way we see our own dependency upon him, the way we see our weakness before him.

God the Father and the Meaning of Sonship

Let us look this morning or this afternoon, excuse me, at God as Father, our Father. First two words here. A father is one who passes his nature to his children. By birth, our children, our physical children I mean.

They reflect our nature physically. They share our genetics. They have our DNA. They are uniquely our children. And in this sense, we are uniquely their father. No one else can be my son's father but me in this sense.

God is the father of all mankind. Every human, every creature really, but I speak of mankind. He's the father of all mankind by virtue of what? By virtue of creation. By virtue of having made man in his own image.

Now we don't have God's DNA. He has none. God is spirit. But his image has been passed on to every human being. There are those who actually consider it blasphemous to call God father if the one addressing him as such is not a believer.

Charles Spurgeon is in fact one of these. I was told of a pastor in the history of this church who taught in the strongest terms that children must not, absent a credible profession of faith, be allowed to even say the words our father.

Now it's true that father here in this prayer is laden with meaning that is more than just mere physical fatherhood. That's obvious. Jesus is addressing his disciples and the need for new birth and faith in his redemptive work is really not far off from being taught in Jesus' chronology here.

Of course, it is only believers who can call God father the way Jesus means here. But rather than hearing Jesus' teaching on prayer and no sooner is the second word on our lips we're trying to figure out who must not pray this way, I think our focus could just as easily be who is to pray this way.

See, disciples should pray this way. God is our father in a special way that distinguishes us from all others. There's no cause here for pride, obviously, especially when we read ahead and see our dependency on him for everything.

So this afternoon, let's just consider how God is our father. In what way is God our father? Well, first we reflect him in our works and in our nature. John chapter eight and verse 44 to 47 in sort of a negative way speaks to this where Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being like their father.

They're doing the works of their father. They are showing off his nature. If you see their works, you would know who they came from. And of course, in that case, in John 8, 44 to 47, their father is the devil because they're doing the works that he would approve.

You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desire. But just a few paragraphs before what we are in, in Matthew chapter five, Jesus said, let your light shine before others.

Speaking to us, speaking to the disciples. Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. Even before teaching us specifically how to pray.

Even before all of that, Jesus makes it clear that if God is our father, our lives will be consistent with his nature. In other words, our works, the effect of the gospel on us in every aspect of our life will show us that God is true by spiritual rebirth, is truly our father.

How is that so obvious? Because anyone who would take the time to look in the scripture and see God's nature, see the works that God does, would see that nature reflected in us and in what we do. Our father affirms that by faith, he is our father.

You know, as I was alluding to just a moment ago, it's a matter of being reborn. What Jesus teaches in John 3, verses five and six. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. You see, it's the spirit who rebirths us. And it is he, that spirit is the same spirit, the spirit of adoption by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

Here we join Jesus himself, calling God our father. Jesus, in his hour of struggle at Gethsemane, he began his prayer in Mark, chapter 14, verse 36. He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.

Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. After the cross, the resurrected Lord said, in John, chapter 20, verse 17, speaking to Mary, he said, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.

You see, to call God Father is an incredible privilege, one we no more earned than we did our natural birth. I mean, it's a privilege earned for us by another, by Jesus, it's an honor purchased for us by his shed blood, but it should strike us as an amazing showcase of God's grace.

That Jesus Christ says, my father, and how many times did he pray to my father, not just there at Gethsemane? Called God his father, said, I and the father are one. Statements like that. And now he says, my father and your father.

He is your father, not in the same way that he's Jesus' father, because Jesus has no beginning as we do. And yet, in this, our elder brother joins us to him and says, my father and your father. This should make us wonder.

The psalmist says, oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens, out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, would you have set in place? What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands, you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea.

Whatever passes along the paths of the sea, oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. And what does Jesus say? This majestic Lord, whose name goes through all the earth, this Lord who made us a little lower than the angels, who crowned us with glory and honor, who put the sheep, the oxen, the cattle, the birds, all under our dominion, this same Lord says to us that we can say to him, father, he's our father.

We know that he acts like this because he acts for his own glory. Why do we call him our father? The same reason as everything else that we can do. It's the reason God acts in all the ways that he acts, for his own glory, and the expansion of his glory being for our good.

We know that the regard he has for us is because of the regard he has for his son, whose cross purchased us, and whose atoning death suffered for our sins is what qualifies us to be his true children.

And with all this, let us remember that he does care for us. He does care for us. And Jesus is gonna make that more and more clear as we work through this Sermon on the Mount. Not like some distant father who sees his duties fulfilled when he has the checking account replenished, or the cupboards are stocked, in leading up to this prayer, Jesus reminds us that our father knows what we need before we ask.

Is that just because he's smarter than us? No, it's because he cares. He knows what we need because he has willed himself to know what he needs because he cares for those who have these needs, because he is our true father.

Jesus reminds us, ask your father. Ask your father because he knows already, but ask him anyway. Do we ask him because we're commanded to? Well, yes, we're commanded to, so we do, but the real reason is because Jesus brings us and presents to us a loving and a caring father.

Do you believe he is your father? That he knows your need before you ask him? That he will fill your need because he is a good and loving and kind and merciful and generous and open-handed father? Dr. Vaughn puts it this way, when faith says father, love says our.

Faith knows he's our father because the Holy Spirit has regenerated our soul, because Jesus Christ has become our elder brother, because we've been adopted as children, because Abraham is that father of us by the way of faith and the way he leads us into the faith of believing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Faith says father, but it's love. It's love that says our father. It's an inclusive word. Jesus is speaking here to a great multitude, crowns, or crowds, crowds is what Matthew calls him in chapter five, verse one.

If a moment before he told us about how to pray in private, here's the glue that binds us together in our corporate prayers. He is our father. We are together in this pilgrimage. We are together a body in Christ.

We are together looking out for one another, even as God looks out for us. As Paul puts it, he says, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. And then the New King James, the NET Bible ad, showing honor to one another.

Note some of the inclusive language in this prayer that Jesus gives us. He's our father, before he's spoken about that, our daily bread. Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. We forgive whom?

Our debtors. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. All these things can make just as much sense in our prayer life individually. And there's nothing wrong, I think, with standing before God and saying, give me this day my daily bread, Lord, in terms of a prayer.

But remember that the way this model prayer is put together for us, it's all plural. It's speaking to us together as a body in Christ, as a church, as a local committed fellowship, committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and by him to each other.

Our father, our bread, our debts, our debtors, us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. This is something amazing. If God is our father and we pray this prayer with the kind of faith that Jesus would have us pray this prayer with, your daily bread is then as important to me as my own.

Your debt, having been paid at the cross, is as important to me as that my debt was paid. Forgiveness must flow from us as readily as it did and does from God. My resistance to temptation is no stronger than yours, so we pray together, lead us not into temptation.

I think there's a good reason many churches would every Sunday recite this prayer together in a responsive way. They all recite it. I'm not suggesting we're going to do that, but there's a lot to be said for that because the plural nature of all the personal pronouns in here reminds us of something.

He is my God if I have faith in Jesus Christ and he is your God if you have faith in his son, but this prayer reminds us that he is our God, our God together. We come in a few moments to the Lord's table and this table is particularly set for God's children.

It's for those who use the term our father to mean that they've been reborn by the spirit of God, that they have confessed their sins. We've confessed our sins. It's for those who have fled to Jesus Christ as our only hope for forgiveness for those sins.

It is not for people who think that God is a father in a general sort of way, as though by creating all things as he did, we all became his child. No, it is fellowship with God by the shed blood of his son, Jesus, who as our elder brother went to the cross and sacrificed himself for us.

Those whose father, because of a reborn spirit, is the father of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. First Peter 1 .3 said, "'Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. "'According to his great mercy, "'he has caused us to be born again to a living hope "'through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.'".

Are you born again? The question is, are you a Christian? We will take the broken bread. This reminds us of his broken body, a body that was battered because justice demanded such a penalty. The wages of sin is death, and so the wine is his life.

His blood poured out, he said himself, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do you believe these things? Were your sins covered by his blood at the cross? This is one huge part, not the only part, but one huge part of the definition of what it means to be a Christian.

The table is set for Christians, for those who in that sense call God his father. We commemorate here the sacrifice that God our father demanded for our sins. It's a memorial to him, to Jesus, who willingly paid the price for us, and by whom we are God's children, and by whom he is our father.

We ask that before you participate in the table that you can say this, that God is my father by faith in his son. We ask that you've been baptized upon a public profession of faith in what his son has done.

We ask that you now live in the power of his spirit, growing in holiness and sanctification, evermore mortifying sin, and advancing towards that image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We come to a Trinitarian table, father, son, Holy Spirit.

We believe in three persons and one unified God, that God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit are all equally God. We spoke a bit about this this morning. Before we come to the table, I just wanted to repeat it that far, that this table is set for those whose heart is in that place.

So we come to God our father and the table that he sets for us in remembrance of his son this morning. And so for all of us for whom God is truly that father, I pray that we'll be able to partake in a way that is honoring to him and worthy of what he has done for us.

Amen.