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I've had the privilege of the last five weekends to teach men at Southern Seminary how to preach. And one of the things we always do when we teach men to preach is ask them at the beginning to get the congregation's attention.
After all, it's been a long week and your mind might be racing through all kinds of family issues or work issues or other issues. And then we ask the men to try to secure the interest, answering this question for the congregation.
Why should I listen? Why should I listen to what's coming from the pulpit? This morning's passage will not require me or should not require me to try to get your attention. It should not require me to say, in 1983 I became a sales rep in corporate America and they immediately sent me to IBM selling school and I think I better sell the congregation today, summarize the situation, state the idea, explain how it works, reinforce key benefits, and then close.
If I have to do that for this message, it's not worth it. Today we will learn from Matthew chapter 6 how to pray with Jesus as the teacher. Jesus, teach me to pray. Let's turn our Bibles to Matthew 6.
As a pastor the last 11 years, many people have come to me and have said, Pastor, I'd like to be able to pray better. What they mean is I'd like to have a godly prayer. I'd like to have a prayer life that would please my Lord and Savior.
I don't really know how to talk to God. Help me. So this is the passage today where Jesus Christ himself teaches his disciples back then and all those who would ever claim to be his disciples. Jesus, teach me to pray.
I don't think there could be a more important topic, could there be? When I would instruct someone about Bible study, you need to be a Berean, study in context, study authorial intent, think about history, think about grammar.
What did that person mean when he wrote it? We would say, well, that's important or else we wouldn't understand the Bible. Today as we look at this prayer from Jesus, it's almost like being Bereans when it comes to prayer, that we might study and learn so we might pray to God properly.
Did you know it matters to God how you pray? That is to say, God has given us a template, a format, a pattern so we might please him in our prayer. I find that wonderful because Jesus did come to save us from our sins, yes?
Who could ever believe a lamb would rescue men? But on his way to the cross, as he would set his face like a flint towards Jerusalem and his ultimate destiny of being the lamb who would die for our sins and then be raised from the dead three days later, he also instructed us in Christian living.
I'm so thankful for that. How do we live today in such a way that would please God, not just in Bible study, not just in evangelism, but prayer? And so we're just going to look at this prayer that you probably memorized when you were a child.
This prayer actually was the first bit of scripture I ever memorized. Before John 3 .16, I memorized the Lord's Prayer or what we will come to know as the Disciples' Prayer. Jesus teach us to pray and he actually does that very thing.
The book of Matthew has been painting this picture, it's been painting this portrait of Jesus as the King. Jesus is the long-fulfilled and long-awaited for Messiah. He is the anointed one. And as we study these passages, I frankly as a pastor, I'm going to use this word on purpose, feel good about preaching such a passage.
I think it's good as well. I do both think and feel. But my responsibility, yes, my privilege this morning is to take a portrait of Jesus. Imagine there's a painting of Jesus. And my job, as one old man would say, godly old man, is to hold the picture of Jesus in such a way that you can't see me at all.
That is to say, I don't want you to see my fingers wrapped around the side. I want to just try to hold it in such a way where when you look at this passage, you see Jesus and his instruction. And since it's Jesus preaching and it's the inspired words from Jesus, it makes it very easy to do.
I like to hide behind the Bible in other words. What could I offer you to do today? My opinions, my stock forecast, who I think is going to win between the Lakers and Celtics and other things like that, I can't offer you anything.
But I can tell you these 57 Greek words are like some kind of nuclear fission. I studied this week even, 1938 German chemist Otto Hahn hit uranium, atomic number 92 with neutrons and everything began to split and fissure.
That's what I think this passage is like. So let's go to Matthew chapter 6 verses 9 through 13. Let me read these. And today we'll look at, in general, the prayer and then the first petition. So my purpose today is to show you how great Christ is as he instructs us in this essential daily matter called prayer.
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 evil.
This is so full of information, I just can't preach one sermon on the Lord's Prayer. It's probably going to take me a half a dozen to get through it and you think, you know, let's speed it up a little bit.
Just for sake of reference, Martin Luther wrote a whole exposition on the Lord's Prayer. Thomas Watson, the great Puritan writer, wrote a whole exposition. So five or six sermons is going to be relatively quick compared to some of these men of old.
But there's so much information, there's so much good instruction here, it's like a zip drive file on the computer. It just explodes. It's a lot of information packed in and for me sometimes, as with you, familiarity breeds what?
Or it breeds some kind of, well we just know it, it's passé, it's not that big of a deal. And I know every single week I say this passage has rocked my world but it has. And I will continue to say that every single week when I approach Scripture.
It is like a treasure that we're mining things out of and I think this is so rich and good, we just need to go as slowly as possible. And I don't mean my verbal count slowly because you know you get two sermons every time you show up on Sunday morning based on my speed of speech.
One person clocked me at about 180 words a minute as I preached and I figured you'd just get two sermons morning and night jammed into one. So I think it was a compliment when someone once said, Mike when we want two sermons we come to Bethlehem Bible Church.
So here you go. Let's look at this prayer in total, in general, and then we'll dive down and look at the specific first petition. And this prayer is set up in such a way that you'll think it is concise yet comprehensive.
It is short yet it is the template really, the pattern that we should use every single time we pray from here on out the rest of our lives. Sometimes we think you know what I heard today from the pulpit isn't relevant.
It's not full of application. It is not the pastor's job to make the scriptures relevant. Scriptures are relevant. It's the pastor's privilege to show the relevancy and for us if we are to pray without ceasing, if we are to pray regularly, if we have the privilege to communion with God intimately on a regular basis, this will affect us daily, maybe even more than once a day.
I'm so thankful to the Lord that he would give us this prayer. I think of the great writer who said, praise God for all his benefits. One of the benefits is Christ Jesus himself teaching us what is undoubtedly the greatest Christian prayer ever uttered.
Let me give you four introductory comments as we look at the complete prayer itself. Comment number one, this prayer is for today. This prayer is for today. There are some, especially in my background in a hyper-dispensationalist kind of school that would say that this prayer is just for the kingdom.
Christians ought not to pray this now. They ought to pray this when we're in the millennial kingdom and then that's it. I would think that would be a faulty view. This prayer is for you today. This prayer is something that we will use as a template and a pattern today.
This prayer is for us. Comment number two, ask yourself this question. Why does Jesus teach others to pray this prayer, yet he himself does not pray it? We call it the Lord's prayer, but this is a prayer that Jesus does not utter to the Father.
You won't see it in John chapter 17, in Matthew, in Luke, any place you look, you won't see Jesus pray this prayer and you have to ask yourself the question, well, if this is the greatest prayer, this is the Christian prayer, this is the template for prayer, then why doesn't Jesus use this template and what's the answer?
The answer is he's not sinful and when he says in verse 12 to the men, here's how you pray, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. That would exclude the sinless, blameless lamb who has no blemishes, correct?
But Jesus doesn't have to ask for forgiveness. Consider number three as we look at just the overview of this prayer before we start taking some bite-sized pieces. Three, the outline and the structure of the prayer is simple and easy to understand.
Now, doesn't that make sense? If Jesus is going to give a template and a pattern for prayer, it's not going to be some convoluted, difficult, hard to navigate prayer that we could never recall on a regular basis.
Don't you think it would just be easy to remember and easy to recall and you would recollect it when you were in trouble, when you had joy, when things were wonderful, when things were...you were in trouble, it would be easy to understand.
Wouldn't you teach a child to pray like that? If a little one came to you and said, I'd like to know how to pray, well, let me get some of my Diffie-Cuse books out and we're going to use that as a template and you can understand that.
As a matter of fact, that old Latin, we're going to pull up Latin and you pray it in according to the Diffie-Cuse equations. Let's do that. No, of course not. It is very simple and easy to remember. There are two sections.
One is vertical section, petitions to God or praises to God, and the other is horizontal towards others. The first three primarily speak of God's glory. The second three speak of our good. One man said the first three are of God's concerns.
The last three are of our concerns. Six petitions total, three directed towards, if you look at verses 9 through 13, three directed towards God, your name, your kingdom, your will, your, your, your, all God-directed.
Then the next three talk about the human needs, and you'll see the operative word us there. Give us, verse 11, forgive us, verse 12, and then verse 13, do not lead us. So we have six petitions in this template prayer, in this pattern prayer.
Verse three dealing exclusively with God and then the next three regarding people, others. My last comment at the overall view of this prayer is that this prayer is simple but it's comprehensive. So much so, listen to what one man said about this prayer, just to show you how packed this is.
Our father showing the father-child relationship. Hallowed be thy name, the deity worshiper. Thy kingdom come, the sovereign subject. Thy will be done, master-servant. Give us this day our daily bread, the benefactor, beneficiary.
Forgive us our debts, the savior, sinner. Do not lead us into temptation, the guide, the pilgrim. The man goes on to say, from the perspective of the attitude and spirit of prayer, our reflects unselfishness.
Father reflects family devotion. Hallowed be thy name, reverence. Thy kingdom come, loyalty. Thy will be done, submission. Give us this day our daily bread, dependence. Forgive us our debts, penitence.
Do not lead us into temptation, humility. And the list goes on and on. It is so full. That's why we just need to say, let's take a look at the specifics of this. And for today, the first petition. We will look at the first petition today, found in verse 9.
Pray then in this way, our father who art in heaven. That's only even part of that first petition. So we'll just take a half of the first petition. Doesn't that sound like business as usual around here?
Sounds like it to me. By the way, if you haven't noticed, and if I haven't explicitly said it, because it's implied, but it hasn't been explicit enough, the way we teach from the pulpit here, the elders and other teachers, and myself included, is the way we want you to study the text for yourself.
We are trying to show you how to study as we preach and as we study and show you how to interpret, because this is a book and we should study it sequentially and in depth and to understand its meaning, yes?
If you have the kind of Evelyn Woodhead speed reading course through the Bible and you said, I just read a Bible every six months, but you don't understand what you're reading, what good is that? The meaning of the scripture is the scripture.
If you have the wrong meaning, it's not the scripture. So we want to dive down and say, what does this mean? What did Jesus intend? How is it applicable? That's one of the reasons why we go slowly. Another reason is, I just can't.
If you saw what I chucked out of the sermon already, you would think that I had a sword out and with some kind of rapier just going through all my notes. There's just so much in here to talk about. Give God honor as we look at it.
But for today, the first part of the first petition, Our Father Who Art in Heaven, and the way we'll work the outline so you have some pegs to hold on to your thoughts with, let me give you nine questions to help you understand what Jesus was saying.
Nine questions, nine points, if you will, in the form of questions so that they motivate you to think. You think 400 words a minute, I preach 150 a minute, I'm going to try to get you to think about what I'm saying so you're not drifting off into getting married on Saturday or any other kind of thought like that.
Nine questions to help you better comprehend the statement, Our Father Who is in Heaven. And my purpose, as we understand it, is so that you'll do it. We're not just preaching so that we might listen and learn, but we're preaching that we might understand so that we might do.
We learn for a reason. And that learning can show itself out in obedience to the Father based on what He's done for us in response of gratitude, in response because we have the Spirit of God in us, in response because we are purchased people by Christ's death and life.
Question number one. Do you consider prayer an option? Do you think prayer is an option is my question. And let me give you kind of a sub-component to every one of these questions and I can ask it adverbially.
You should pray obediently. That's my point. Do you think prayer is an option? If you like the question format, fine. If you want just the straight up what I'm after with the Nathan Lightfinger, do you pray obediently?
I'm just going to look at the words. Look at the first word in Matthew 6 and 9. Pray. Pray. So this whole section is it's a prayer and Jesus says, I want you to pray. This is a command and this is one of those ongoing commands.
In the original language you can say pray one time. Or you can say pray like Jesus said here and it is keep praying. It is a habit of life. It's a lifestyle as the King James would say. It's a conversation.
It is a religious technical term for someone talking to a deity. This is no deity though. This is the deity. Boy, wasn't that a good scripture reading from Daniel chapter 3? This is the only God. How do you approach such a God?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And Jesus says you are to approach. You might think you would cower. You can't speak to the King. You don't have the good manners. You don't know the words. You're not sure of the approach.
What kind of prayer shall to have on? And Jesus says to these bag of ruffians as it were, at least spiritually and emotionally, these blue collar fishermen and other assorted scallywags like tax collectors, and he says I want you to pray.
You approach God. Don't hide behind some kind of fake humility. Oh, you know, I couldn't. He says I want you to pray. This prayer would include when things go well. This prayer would include when things aren't going so well.
One man said someone made this quote. Christians offer their prayers like sailors use their pumps, only when the ship leaks. So here the general idea is just ongoing prayer, praying all the time. No exceptions if you've got a high IQ.
No exception if you're a seminary student or theologically trained or have been walking with the Lord for 40 years. Jesus has disciples, and he wants those disciples to be unlike the Pharisees and the hypocrites who are unrighteous.
So he teaches this very internal righteous prayer, and he says, first of all, pray. Pray in obedience. And certainly Jesus modeled that, didn't he? He was the greatest prayer. Early in the morning when it was still dark, Mark 1 says Jesus got up, went to a solitary place, and he prayed.
If you'd like to do a study sometime, we don't have time for it today, is do a study on the prayer life of Jesus, and you will be encouraged. Jesus was a great prayer. When he was baptized, he prayed.
Before he chose the 12, he prayed. When he fed the 5 ,000, he prayed. When he asked the disciples, who do you say that I am, he prayed. He prayed on the Mount of Transfiguration. He prayed when he called people to salvation.
He prayed at Lazarus' tomb. He prayed for Peter before the denial. He prayed in Gethsemane. He prayed at the cross. He prayed after his resurrection. Jesus prayed. And here Jesus tells his disciples, pray.
Do you consider prayer an option? Number two, the second question to help us understand what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6, verse 9, is this. Do you pray the Lord's prayer in context? Adverbially, you should pray with single-mindedness.
So I guess the adverb would be single-mindedly. You say, well, where did you get this? I don't understand this. This is kind of out there. I'm just using the word then. Pray then. What do you mean then?
Pray then. In light of what Jesus has just taught, pray. In light of these hypocrites who pray to be seen, you pray to be heard. In light of these hypocrites and pagans who pray with many words because they want to think that they're great, you pray with prayer as worship in your mind.
Instead of these Pharisees and pagans who have no God as a father, you pray with God as a father. You have a father. And that was the last two weeks of our messages. So moving quickly, number three. What word do you think I'm going to go for next?
If you had to say, what's pastor doing here and what's the outline point, where is he going to go? I think it would probably be pretty simple. We pray with obedience. We pray not to be seen but to be heard.
And number three, I'll ask it in question form. Do you understand that the Lord's prayer is a model prayer? Do you understand that the Lord's prayer is a pattern prayer? And verbally, you should pray submissively.
Notice the text, please. Verse nine. Pray then in this way. This is a how prayer, not a what prayer. This is how we pray, not exactly what we pray. Years ago, somebody left this church because weekly, we did not pray this prayer corporately.
It is fine to pray it corporately. It is good to pray it corporately. But Jesus' point with this prayer is not to tell us what to pray. It's to tell us how we ought to pray, in what manner. And that's exactly that word there in the original.
Pray then in this way. This is how we pray, what Jesus would say. Along these lines. Hasn't Jesus just warned us, warned the disciples, and said don't pray with meaningless what? Repetition? So then why would he just say every time to get together, you just pray this prayer over and over and over and over?
He wouldn't say that. This is a model prayer. This is a pattern prayer. Lloyd-Jones called it a skeleton prayer. As you think about prayer, this is the skeleton on which you begin to fold over the layers.
I just saw a book in Harvard Square the other day, and it was the human body. And so when you look at the front, there's a little see-through area. It's clear. And you see the entire human body without skin.
If you turn it to the very back and open it up, there's the skeleton. And then there's the arterial and venous system. And then it's the muscles. And then it's this and then it's that. And then it's the gallbladder page and all that.
And you look at it and you think, there it is. This is the skeleton. This is just that foundational page. Here's the skeleton that you hang all these petitions, personal petitions, upon. It's an outline.
And basically what we are told through this is that we need instruction. This is something that we wouldn't just figure out. We wouldn't just say, well, I've kind of got a warmth in my bosom, and I've kind of got just a feeling, and I think this is how God would like me to pray.
I think this might be best. That's what people do with unbelieving gods, don't they? I'll just kind of make it up. I think this is the best way to pray. When we have been tainted by the fall, we are corrupt, our thoughts are not God honoring all the time.
We have to force ourselves to pray. We have to force ourselves to get into the prayer closet. Jesus says, I'm not going to let you figure out how to pray. I'm going to, in love and kindness, I'm going to give you the greatest gift of salvation.
I'll give you the lesser instruction on how to pray. We need instruction on how to pray. We need to be taught. We need to go to school. This is the school. It matters to God how we pray to Him. It's not good enough to just say, well, I just need some kind of zap, and I just need to say, bada, bada, bada, bada, and I just need to do these things.
You won't find that in this model. You'll find words and clauses and statements and objects and verbs and direct objects where we approach this God who is a person. Did you notice what isn't in the text?
This is a good way to study the Bible. What isn't in the text? What's not in the text is how you stand, sit, kneel. No physical posture here. What's not in this text is, well, you need these beads. Somebody this morning gave me a prayer mat, a Jesus prayer mat.
It was some false teacher who sends little things in the mail, and I guess the fake anointing oil and the fake hand deal and the fake scarf is kind of not bringing up very much money. And so they have this prayer mat, and so it's got Jesus' supposed face on it, and it's got His eyes closed, and if you stare at it long enough, His eyes open.
And you're supposed to get down on this mat. I don't think it works unless you send a couple grand to this false teacher, heretic, lying dog, but ask me my opinion on another time. You don't need that.
You don't need to have somebody tell you these are the incantations and the magical kind of formulas to pray. Here is the simple yet complex instruction from Christ. He knows that we're but dust. He knows that we're frail.
He knows about us, and He with great eloquence teaches us the depths of prayer. Question number four. Question number four. If you were looking at my outline, what word would you look at next? Do you have joy in praying to the Father in community?
I could say it another way. Do you recognize that you should pray to the Father in community? Adverbially, you should pray corporately, and do you see the text there? Our. Jesus tells the disciples and all who would ever follow and dare name themselves disciples, Our Father.
You notice what the text is not stressing? A Father. The Father. My Father. Our Father. Here, when we come together corporately and we say, just like Pastor Dave prayed today, he said, Our Father. We are the family.
We corporately come to God together. And it's just not about our specific needs. It's the good of the church and good of others. This is pre-church here, but still the emphasis is on not isolation, not kind of single-minded, you know, Marlboro man kind of, I'm my own person, but we pray as a corporate body of redeemed sinners.
This is a family prayer. It's a household of God prayer. This is a prayer that talks about the home. We all belong to each other. We all belong to one another because we've been purchased by Christ and His great work and life.
We recognize the spiritual pedigree that we have, the spiritual privileges we have. We've been rescued by God. It's a corporate prayer, Our Father. If you're at home and you want to pray, My Heavenly Father, that's fine.
With other Christians, it's Our Father. Not because they're more than one of us, but because what that more than one of us means, we're a body, we're corporate. Question number five. Do you pray to God as a person or as a force?
Do you pray to God as a person or a force? Well, we ought to pray obediently in context, not repetitiously in community, but also here, we ought to pray to God intimately, with intimacy. God is not some force.
Dear great ground of force, our spiritual mover, dear entity. I guess it's always time to step on toes if you're preaching. Dear higher power, as you know it, He's a Father. He's a person. It doesn't say, pray then in this way, Saint Christopher.
It doesn't say, pray then in this way, Saint Joseph. It certainly doesn't say, pray then in this way, Hail Mary, Holy Mother. That is not the template, and it never is the template. We ought to pray to our Father.
He's a Father. This is the one to whom we pray. Not some yin-yang force, ethereal kind of amorphous amoeba-like creature. How do you like that for just a few words just thrown out there? I tried to get a few to alliterate even too.
Our Father. It's close. It's personal. As the song says, He's the lover of our souls. He cares. He knows. He loves us. He's concerned. And when you think about what a name meant back in those days, it just wasn't some title.
The name showed what the person was on the inside and His nature and His essence and His character. He is by God a Father. And if you realize that He's a Father, not a force, then you will approach Him with personal communication, not impersonal.
You'll approach Him properly as a Father, as Daddy Father, not with some kind of trance or meditation that would be unbiblical. God is a Father and we're to pray to Him like that. Question number six.
Do you realize the privileges you have in prayer? Do you realize the privilege you have in prayer as a Christian? You must pray, in other words, thankfully. I think I can shock you with this true statement.
Did you know the early church would forbid unbelievers from saying the Lord's Prayer? They would not be allowed communion. They would not be allowed baptism. And they could not, when there was a reciting and recitation of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, they would not be able to say it in the church of the people of God.
Why? God's not their Father. They're not allowed to. That's why when we read Chrysostom's liturgy, here is his statement. I find it just very insightful to this whole idea. Grant that we may dare to call on Thee as Father and to say, Our Father.
Lord, it's just almost too unbelievable that we can say, God, our Father. And the unbelievers don't have the Father and they shall not say that. And you say, well, in Malachi, there's some talk about God as a Creator Father.
That is true. When you think about the concept of Father in the Bible, it's like a funnel. Here's the funnel. It starts off at the big end where God is the Father of all by creation and He is God by Father because He made them.
I think of Acts 17, as even some of your own poets have said, for we also are His offspring. By creation, by divine feat in creation, God is Father. The tunnel, the funnel rather, gets a little narrower when it comes to Israel.
And Israel had God as a Father because He was the sovereign one over the nation. Isaiah prayed this, for you are our Father in a national way. But specifically in what Jesus is talking about here today, is not as Creator, is not as the leader of the nation, but in a personal, saving, redeeming way, God is our Father.
And that is a privilege. You say, well, how can that be a privilege? Who's the Father of unbelievers in a spiritual sense? Jesus said to some men that almost cost Him His life there, but Jesus was not ready to die yet, you are of your Father the devil.
Unbelievers, when we even were born into the world as unbelievers, we had a spiritual father and his name was Satan. This whole idea of Harnack's universal fatherhood of God and universal sonship of humans, that is not biblical.
That is not biblical at all. To believers, Jesus grants, and freely grants, the right to become what? Children of God, even to those who believe in His name. We actually get to call God the Father, what Jesus calls Him.
Jesus calls God the Father, Father. And can you imagine, we get to talk to the Father the same way Jesus does? That's amazing. We don't have God, small g, of the world, the devil as our Father any longer, because we have been ransomed and we have been redeemed and we used to be children of wrath, and now we're children of blessing and adopted as children and sons, daughters.
I don't say it that often, but you could probably understand where I'm coming from. Sometimes I'll say to my kids, you don't know how blessed you are having a mom and dad, Mike and Kim as your parents.
I don't mean because we have a little Suzuki 50, borrowed from the Kurtz, and we're driving around and just some kind of material blessing. I don't mean that I don't sin or Kim doesn't sin. But in the providence of God placing two children, yet four children, underneath the two parents who said, we want to live for God and we want to serve God and that's going to be our overarching focus of our family.
You should be what? Thankful. You don't know how good you have it, because you don't know the rest of the world with no parents and faulty parents and everything else. Well, if that is true to any degree, let's just turn up the volume on the how much more scale.
How much more thankful should we be that we are called children of God? God used to be at war with us and now he's at peace and now he grants us childhood, the privilege of having God as father. And if God has so convinced you that you have no righteousness of your own, that your baptism or anything else is not some kind of credit to God, but God sees only credit in you because Christ covers you, that's a wonderful thing, because due to the faith in Christ Jesus at Calvary, we're granted sonship.
Question number seven. You didn't think I'd get through all nine today, did you? We are going. Question number seven to help us understand the Sermon on the Mount's prayer called the Lord's Prayer or the Disciples' Prayer.
By the way, if somebody ever says, that's the Lord's Prayer, don't quick to correct them, that's the Disciples' Prayer. The Lord's Prayer is really John 17. I mean, it's just so often we call this the Lord's Prayer.
I know what you mean. If I call it that, it's kind of like sometimes I'll call Easter, Easter instead of Resurrection Sunday, and people think, I got one up on the pastor. Get a life. I know it's called the Disciples' Prayer, but we have been brought up with being called the Lord's Prayer.
What I mean when I say the Lord's Prayer is how the Lord taught others to pray. How's that? There's the disclaimer. Question number seven. Have you forgotten that if God is your father, you're God's child?
This leads right into the same kind of discussion I was talking about in number six. In other words, you must pray dependently. David prayed the prayer today in the pastoral prayer. Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called children of God.
And it's the language of John, the apostle, who says, Behold, I can't get over it. This is unbelievable. I can't describe this. I can't get over it that God, who was my judge, jury, and executioner, is now my Father.
I'm his child. When you think of child in the Bible, when Jesus says, You need to come to me as a child, it doesn't mean, according to the latest Barnett statistics, if you don't get saved when you're seven years old or less, there's a 98 chance you'll never be saved.
That's not what he's talking about. What do children bring to the parents and to the home, especially little children? Do they bring safety? Do they bring protection? Do they bring income? They don't bring anything except a mark on my IRS form, number of dependents, four.
That's what they bring. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit. They don't bring medical care. They bring nothing. They're dependent. And Jesus says, As a child with full dependence comes to me, I'm fully dependent no longer on myself but upon you.
That's a good definition of a child. That's childlike faith. There's a dependency. And this prayer reeks, and it ekes out of every sentence, dependency. We are sons of God, our dearest Father. We have no trust in ourselves.
We come empty, needy, everything we need from you, physical, spiritual, emotional, no trust in self. We can't provide for anything. You have loved me and delivered yourself up for me, and I need help.
What do I have, God the Father, that I have not received? And the language here is, dearest Father. It doesn't say here in the text that Jesus prayed, Abba, Daddy, although we can learn from Romans 8 and Galatians 4 that we can come to God as Daddy, Father.
But this word has more of a context of, yes, you can call him Father, but there's a reverence. It's not drill sergeant, Sir Father. But there's a reverence flare here that the child says, You're my Father, but it's a revering Father.
Doesn't that make sense for God? Doesn't that make sense for a child who's dependent upon God the Father to say, I can call you Father, but it's out of respect and reverence? Father implies dependency.
He knows we're but dust. He knows we're children who are weak. He knows what our sins are, and yet Jesus said, Still come. We have the grace of adoption. Jesus is saying, Don't forget that. He's your Father.
Supplies all your needs. Sustains you. Gives every good and perfect gift, James chapter 1 says. Protects you. Gives you a refuge. Provides. We know that. We know that when we're in trouble, we call out for God to protect us.
It was Awana. Are the Browns here? Where's Alyssa? It's so funny. Alyssa's been coming up to me lately and kind of pushing her proper protocol in terms of how she bugs the pastor kind of thing. And I actually love it because if the kids only see me behind here, they're going to think I'm some kind of, you know, tyrant or ogre or something.
That's the guy who gets up there and yells. And so I like when the kids play around, and she was here to the Awana banquet, and she'd kind of come up and kind of grab my leg and say things. I'm going to get you and all that.
And I thought, I'm going to get you. Now, at nighttime when you're sick and you're a child, you go to the mom's side of the bed, don't you? At least most of the time that's the case. You run over to the mom and, you know, if Luke was sick and came to my side of the bed, I'd say, well, you know, what are you doing waking me up?
You know, just get over it. Count some sheep or something. But the mom, I love you, son. Hey, honey, do you think you can get up and help Luke? There's just no way that works. But when it comes to protection, you call out for someone.
And as a child needs protection, so much so when we say God is our Father, He does everything including protect. And so when I grabbed Alyssa over by my office, slung her up on my shoulder, and ran out of the front door screaming, ah, what was she doing?
She did not say, Mom. She said, Dad. I thought, oh, great. Church split with a deacon. If you want to understand the nuance of saying, God, you're my Father, it is total provision and total protection.
That's not all. If you understand God is your Father, and you're His child, it's just not provision and protection, but it is complete forgiveness and acceptance in the family. When your kid sins against you, or does something stupid or foolish, what do you do?
I am so shocked, I henceforth banish you to the island of perdition. I'm sending you to Manhattan, or some kind of island, or exile island. I don't know where I'm sending you, but you're no longer able to have my name.
Abendroff is below you. Maybe some parents do that. But when children of God, who have had Christ's blood cleanse them, to the degree that God the Father raised the son from the dead to show the efficacious nature of that cleansing, when a son or a daughter of God sins, God still loves and has always loved that sinner as much as He did in eternity past, as much as He did at Calvary, as much as He did when He saved you, and as much as He does when He sanctifies you, and as much as He will in heaven when you're there.
God will not love you more in heaven because God has loved you perfectly and completely, and as much as He loves His son Christ Jesus, because you're in Christ Jesus. And when you sin against a father like that, that sin's already been paid for, and you are not banished.
This was shocking to me this week when I thought about this. One man called it something, and I'll change the words just a hair. This is the gospel in prayer. This is the gospel in prayer when you think about God the Father and we're the son, and you think about who we are in Christ.
This is the gospel in prayer. It is provision. It is protection. It is complete assurance of salvation, sonship. It's not going to disown us or disavow us. Well, last question. No, last question. Question number eight.
Two to go. I think we can do it. Question number eight. Do you remember that you must pray reverently? Do you remember, do you need to be reminded that God isn't just a close, eminent God, but He's also a transcendent God?
And where do I get that from the text? Our Father who what? Is in heaven. This is not buddy God. This is not pal-o-mine God. This is not someone when you think of Father and the first thing that comes racing into your mind is some sinful, selfish, crime-spree Father that you may have had.
This is to correct all that. People say, you know what, I've had such a bad Father I can't conceive of God as Father. I could probably never understand what you've been through, but I can tell you this is the solution to your problem at least intellectually to start.
This is a different kind of Father. This is not an earthly Father, a carnal Father, a temporal Father. This is a Father who is high, holy, exalted, over all, unspotted, the perfect Father. This is the Father that Jesus calls, that Paul called rather, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He's our Father, He's close, but He's in heaven, He's transcendent. And now question number nine. The ninth question to help us understand what Jesus was saying in this prayer, especially the first part of the first petition.
Do you rejoice that you have access to the Father solely based on the work of Christ? Do you rejoice that you have access to the Father solely based on the work of Christ? I can say it adverbially. Do you pray confidently?
Now this text does not tell us explicitly what I'm going to tell you now, but it is implicit. We only have one way to the Father, by salvation and by intercession and sanctification, and that is through the Son.
When Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to me but through the Father, no one comes to the Father but through me, He meant it for lots of different reasons. Jesus Christ is the way we have access to the Father.
Ephesians 2, verse 18 says, for through Him we have access in one spirit to the Father. How could we have access? Now think about this for a second. Hold on with me. I know it's the end, but this is important.
How do you have access to a God who is a consuming fire? Hebrews 12, our God is a what? Consuming fire. Consuming fire. How do we have access to a God when we are unworthy to approach that God based on our own merits and our own selves?
How can we approach a God who since the fall of Adam and Eve there's been a no access, no trespassing sign posted as it were to the world when it comes to God's holiness? Locked out. Adam and Eve driven from the garden, Cain driven from the side of Eden.
We need access. Will God accept us? How can we have an introduction? 1 Peter 3, verse 18 says, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that we may be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
In order that He might bring us to God. And not just with salvation, but when salvation comes, all the intimacy and closeness comes as well. How do we have access to a God? How do we have entree? How can the boat approach the harbor?
That's the word for access in Romans chapter 5. Romans 5 says, Through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. I'm going to give you just a little quick overview.
And you're going to say, where does this come from? Some of you have heard this years ago. But I'm going to do a quick study for you on the word thrown. The word thrown. Why might a thrown be important?
Well, let me just give you a little study for thrown and then I'll close up. Thrones were located in a throne room. How many people have ever been overseas, especially Europe? There's all kinds of throne rooms.
Some have seen them. I got to stand in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin just a few short months ago. And there are some of the tiles of King Nebuchadnezzar's throne room. There. Lions on them. And throne rooms were usually smaller so all the attention was directed to the king that would sit on the throne.
1 Kings 7, 7 it says, and he made a hall of the throne where he was to judge. The hall of judgment. And it was paneled with cedar from floor to floor. What you do is you have a throne room, a judgment hall, where everything's narrow so wherever you look around you're going to have all your attention go to the one who's sitting on the throne where the king would govern.
Proverbs 20 talks about this king, the king who sits on the throne of justice disperses all evil with his eyes. So the throne is sitting in a throne room. Well, what about the throne in particular? Well, it would be some kind of chair and it would be a royal chair.
1 Kings talks about one of these chairs and how it was up, elevated, so you would look up to this judger. 1 Kings 10, 18, moreover the king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with refined gold.
There were six steps to the throne and round top to the throne at its rear and arms on each side of the seat. Two lions standing between the arms. 1 Kings 10, 20 says, and twelve lions were standing there on the six steps of the one side and on the other.
Nothing like it was made for any other kingdom. Whether it was Egypt, Syria, Palestine, there was all kinds of kings. All kinds of thrones with lions and gold, but there was nothing quite like that. By the way, why would they put a lion by the throne?
Either a real one or a statue. What would the lion signify? Proverbs 19, 12, the king's wrath is like the roaring of a lion. The wrath of a judgment. Here's this narrow building with an elevated throne and that's where you're going to get judgment.
Can you imagine getting a summons before them back in those days before the ACLU or J-Secular or anybody else? I don't care what your political preferences are. Getting a summons to appear before the king.
And if you were a Jew or you were in the Middle Eastern in those days and you heard I had to go to the throne room, it would be only and forever one thing. Judgment. It wasn't going to be, well, maybe I'll get a crown and maybe I'll have some nice place to rule.
You're going to get judged. So much so that some kings would have knives tied under the chin of the guilty so they'd have to look the king in the eye as he received judgment. And then all of a sudden we move in this idea of thrones to a different kind of throne.
In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted. Psalm 9, Thou dost sit on the throne, God, judging righteously. Daniel 7, I kept looking until the thrones were set up and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His vesture was like white snow and the hair of his head was like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames. The throne of God. If that is not terrifying, what else would be? Turn to Hebrews chapter 4 and I'm going to tie this all together now.
The throne sat in a throne room. It was for judgment. It was for wrath of the king. Everything, if you would say, let's play word association back in those days, I say throne, you say judgment. I say throne room, you say justice.
Everything had to do with thrones and judgment. God sits on a throne. We are sinful. How do we approach this God who is on a throne? Could there be anything worse than approaching God when He's on a throne?
The worst thing is, He knows the extent of the sin who comes to the throne. Can you imagine God, when He approaches His bench as it were, knows our sins perfectly and without investigation? How do we go to God like that?
Verse 12 of Hebrews chapter 4. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul, spirit, both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Nothing escapes this. No cheating polygraph. When you stand before God's throne, He is going to judge your thoughts and intentions. He knows all about you. Everything you've done, said. How do we stand before a God like that?
Every thought lies open to the gaze of God. The God who brings to light the things hidden in darkness. We can't put masks on. We can't put disguises on. We can't hide with our neighbors. This is x-ray MRI kind of into the soul.
And it gets very explicit in verse 13. And there is no creature hidden from His sight. Everyone who will stand before God. But all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
We get the word gymnasium from open. And if you were in a gymnasium back in those days and you did gymnastic things, you did it naked. No clothes on. That's what it means. No clothes uncovered. And laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
Laid bare is where we get the word trach. You do a tracheotomy if you can't breathe. A guy in Omaha two weeks ago was suffocating. He took out a little steak knife and gave himself an own tracheotomy and lived enough to get to the hospital.
So what does that have to do with anything? Tracheotomy is the word here, neck, where it's if you take a sacrificial lamb, you want to make sure you just don't call the lamb up and just start poking away at it.
You want to kill it with the first cut. How do you kill with the first cut? You put your leg up over its head. You push back the body. Open up the neck. Open up the trache and take the knife and one slit across.
And before God, we are like that with our necks open before the judgment of God. And there'll be a reckoning. Look at the text. There'll be an account. It is time to pay up for divine layaway. Sin now, pay later.
It's time to pay. And now, here comes the word of consolation. Here comes the word that we've been wanting to not terrify us. Here comes the oil, the balm. Since then, we have a great high priest, no priest ever called that in the Old Testament, who has passed through the heavens.
Oh, that's obvious. It's our captain. It's our king. Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession. We have this great mediator. We always will have this mediator. He is now in the heavenly sanctuary for our sake, pleading on behalf of us.
He's a human priest. He's a divine priest. You say, you know what? But he doesn't know my sins. He doesn't know my struggles. Au contraire, verse 15. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
He's not too far. He's not too remote. The song says, Jesus knows all your troubles. He knows all your sins. And he's so sympathetic. Do you see the text? He's sympathetic. He's so compassionate. He'll help.
That's the idea. Therefore, verse 16, all the throne talk is coming right now. I say thrones. You say judgment. I say throne hall. You say justice. The writer of Hebrews and the listeners of Hebrews, the readers of Hebrews would all think Middle Easternly.
They would all think biblically. They would all think with judgment halls that would be a normal, everyday thing. There's only one thing that ever came out of a judgment hall, and that was death and judgment and banishment.
For the first time ever, there's a different kind of throne in the Bible based on what our Savior has accomplished. Let us, therefore, draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and may find help, find grace to help in time.
Jesus Christ has received the punishment from the judge, the just judge, and now when we come to the throne, we have grace because of God's gracious mercy through Christ Jesus. Bow with me. Our Father who is in heaven, we bless your holy name today for Christ Jesus, for his great instruction on how to pray, and for his great death, burial, and resurrection that has allowed us to pray.
Oh, that we would receive grace from you instead of what we deserve. We praise you. Father, it is my heart's desire today as a representative of these people, the dear church that you've assembled here in West Boylston, that it might be a week of exalting you through Christ Jesus.
Father, I pray that you would help us to not murmur, not complain, not be discontent, not to be materialistic, to not think about ourselves at all, to think about you and what you've done. You're great, and you now have a throne of grace.
And God, we need help. We can never obey all these things. We can never even pray like we ought to unless the Spirit of God helps us. So thank you that you're generous and liberal with all your gifts, including the Holy Spirit.
Come, Lord Jesus, to help us. Amen.