Learning to Pray the Lord's Prayer: Matthew 6:5-15

This morning we are continuing our summer series, four weeks on growing in grace, and we're going to look at the topic of prayer this morning from Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 through 15.

Matthew 6:5–15

Hear the word of God this morning as we read from Matthew's gospel.

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 phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their 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 your trespasses.

This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, perfect word that He gives us.

Let's pray for the Spirit's enabling.

Father, thank you for this word, the prayer that your son taught your people to pray.

But only the Spirit can enable us to pray and to believe and to live out this prayer.

So, Spirit of God, please fall freshly upon each of us now.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So, the first week in this sermon series, How Do You Grow in Grace, we looked at the foundation, which is God's Word.

No Christian grows in the Christian life without being in, being fed by the Word of God.

Last week, Pastor Josh preached on the spiritual discipline of meditation.

We said, noted that meditation is not simply reading the scriptures, nor is it prayer.

It's pulling both together in a sense.

As we read the Word of God, we begin to pray to ruminate in this truth that we're looking at until it sinks deeper and deeper into our being, to our mind, our hearts.

Just a little bit of review from last week because I was really edified myself by much of what Josh had to say.

It's not an emptying of the mind.

Most people today think of meditation in that way.

You empty your mind.

As a matter of fact, I had some great conversations with people after the service last week about that very point.

No, this is filling your mind with the Word of God.

Very different connotation, understanding than what many people today understand about meditation.

Filling your mind with the Word of God and the Spirit taking those truths and just settling them into our hearts so that we begin to understand and believe and act accordingly.

Meditation is an art, as Pastor Josh said.

Oftentimes I think when we read the Bible, we're getting spiritual indigestion more than spiritual digestion.

Right?

You can just kind of consume lots of information and just, I think he says it's like raw vegetables that don't really get digested.

Meditation is digesting the truth so that it actually has now, it leads into spiritual transformation, as we said at the beginning of the service.

So we're going to come back to meditation, not in this current sermon series, but the next summer series coming.

We're going to be meditating on the Psalms.

But today we turn to the discipline of prayer, the means of grace, which prayer is, because neither can any of us grow in our Christian faith without a growing understanding of prayer.

What does Jesus have to teach us about this?

Jesus expects his followers to pray.

And when you pray, he's assuming that you pray.

But now he wants to teach us how to pray.

The title of this sermon is Learning How to Pray the Lord's Prayer.

There's many people all over the world, and maybe you.

You grew up reciting the Lord's Prayer.

You could recite the Lord's Prayer now, but that's not what this sermon's about.

This sermon is about learning how to actually pray this prayer in a new and growing way of our understanding.

There's a couple do-nots that Jesus gives us right at the top.

Don't pray in order to be seen or heard.

Don't put your confidence in the number of words you pray, the quantity of words.

And he kind of dives in.

Well, okay, well, how do we pray then?

And that's the first point of the outline.

Secondly, where do we pray?

And thirdly, what do we pray?

How do we pray?

And let me summarize what he's saying.

Prayer is rooted in a relationship, not rituals.

Not rituals.

Rituals can be helpful in teaching us the Christian disciplines, but it's never about the ritual.

Prayer is rooted in a relationship.

What do we mean by that?

Well, not like the hypocrites, he says.

That word in the original means to put on a mask.

To try to pretend that you're somebody that you're not.

Jesus says, don't pray like that.

When you pray, don't put on a mask and portray yourself as someone different than who you really are.

Don't get caught up in a certain way to pray, to impress others.

Some of us struggle with that.

We're very self-conscious when we pray because we're more aware of the people in the room than the God to whom we pray.

Jesus says, don't pray like that.

And if that's if you struggle with that, ask God to free you from that.

We're just talking to God.

We're not concerned about how we appear.

That's a prayer that many Christians need to pray.

What's the basis of any confidence that we would have that God hears us when we pray?

It's not how many words we say.

It's not the empty phrases he says.

The philosopher Seneca, his advice was fatigue the gods.

Thanks.

I don't think so.

Wear them out.

Just go appeal to your gods, whoever your gods may be.

And even if it's our God, just fatigue him until he finally cries, Uncle, and gives you what you want.

That's not how you pray.

No, what's the basis of our confidence that God hears us when we pray?

It's rooted in a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

It's not in our acts of righteousness.

Verse 6, your Father.

Verse 8, your Father.

Verse 9, our Father.

This is it.

Our prayers are heard because of Jesus.

May I say that again?

Our prayers are heard because of Jesus.

Not what I bring.

Not what I do.

I don't point to my service in the church.

And say, okay, now he's going to listen to me.

I don't point to my checkbook.

Now he's going to listen to me.

No.

Jesus is saying it's not like that at all.

Our Father hears us because Jesus did everything to bring us into the family.

And so now we can say, Father.

God is our Father.

Jesus is our mediator.

The Holy Spirit as well intercedes for us.

The our Father means that we are family and it's not a business.

You're not in a business relationship with God.

You're in his family.

I think sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, we we kind of drift into this business relationship.

What we invest determines the yield we get.

If I invest a lot of time in God's work, if I serve God, if I do all these things for God, then we can expect a certain payout, can't we?

Well, you know, now he really should answer my prayer.

It doesn't work that way.

But that doesn't mean that we don't think that way sometimes.

It doesn't mean that we don't pray that way sometimes.

No.

Jesus says, You're my brother.

You're my sister.

God is your father.

You don't have to get him, beg him to listen to you.

He loves his sons and his daughters.

You love your sons and your daughters.

You listen to them.

How much more does the perfect father listen to his children perfectly?

Your father.

So it's not about paying in, and he pays out.

Let's be very clear about this.

He's not a spiritual vending machine.

You put in, you pull what you want.

It's when we think this way that our prayer life just shrivels up.

Have you ever thought this?

Have you ever found yourself, caught yourself thinking this?

You know, your prayer life just starts to really shrivel up, and it's like, yeah, I don't know.

I just, I'm not sure, I'm not sure it's working.

Because look at what I've done.

Look how I've served him.

Look what I'm doing.

Come on, I'm trying.

I ought to get the vendor, vending machine.

You know, you kind of give up praying when you when you get tired of pulling the knob and you don't get what you want.

Jesus says, that's not how you pray.

But I say, sometimes I feel like that.

Well, he says, repent.

Repent?

That's not prayer.

No, we're not in a business relationship.

We're in the family.

And that makes all the difference.

Secondly, where to pray.

We looked at how to pray.

Where to pray, verse 6.

Go to your room.

And by the way, in the original language, this is in the singular.

Go to your room, shut the door, and pray.

Pray to your father who sees in secret.

So I have a question for you this morning.

Do you have a room?

The word that he uses in the day and time Jesus lived would likely mean a supply room.

The supply room was the only room in a poor Palestinian home that could be locked.

There were some that had bigger homes, houses, but most didn't.

In one sense, it was the least sanctified place in the house.

It was used to feed the animals, to store the feed, the tools, and the other supplies.

But most importantly, this room's door had a lock.

Now, why was that important?

Why did Jesus use this word?

What is Jesus teaching us?

One commentator says it's no longer the Holy of Holies that is the special meeting place between God and his people.

It's the room with the lock.

Let's unpack that a little bit more.

Do you have a room with a lock?

Why would you need a lock in your room, on your door, so that you're not interrupted?

So that you're not distracted.

Some of us might need to put a lock on our TV.

Turn the TV off.

Shut the computer down.

What distracts you?

What just takes your focus off of him?

We had an elder years ago in this church who experienced real revival.

He was just transformed by the gospel.

And he came to me one time and he said, Tom, I have a problem.

God is really speaking into my heart in great ways.

But I don't know how to pray.

I have to be at work.

I have to be at the Pentagon at 6 a.m.

I get home at 6 a.m.

or later.

I come home to three little kids.

My wife, she's been with the kids all day when I come home.

She wants time with me.

Tom, I don't know how to get this room with the lock.

And typically, as I typically do, I didn't give him an answer.

I just said, you need to pray about this.

Ask the Spirit to show you.

He came back to me about a week later and he said, Tom, I think what the Lord is showing me is I have to get up an hour earlier every morning.

That's the only time I can put a lock on a door that nobody gets to me.

He did.

And he continued to grow in Christ.

Do you have a room?

Does it have a lock on it?

Where others can't get to you, but God can.

I think that's hard today in our very busy, frenzied lives.

I think it's hard.

I try to put a lock on my phone when I'm with God.

I'll let your call go to voicemail if I have an appointment with God.

I'll get back to you.

I need a lock.

I need a lock on my phone.

I need a lock on a door of my schedule.

Where to pray?

Jesus is not saying that this is the only prayer place.

He says you can pray anywhere, anytime, yet only those who have a room with a lock know the benefits.

If you have a room with a lock in your prayer life, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know the benefits of being uninterrupted, of just being drawn into the presence of the Lord in a different way.

One of my rooms are the sidewalks of Alexandria.

I'm one of those people that when I'm walking, if I'm just by myself and I'm walking briskly all around these neighborhoods, he gets my attention.

There's just something, my mind is clear.

For some of you, it's the sidewalks of Alexandria or Washington.

You may have it when you run.

Where to pray?

We all need a place to pray if we're going to grow in grace.

Thirdly, lastly, what to pray?

Well, that's the Lord's Prayer as we normally think of it.

That is the Lord's Prayer.

Let's unpack these six petitions.

John Calvin said that the Lord's Prayer is one of Jesus' greatest gifts to the church.

For do we often wonder what to pray about?

This prayer helps us when our ideas run out.

Although I want to put a plug in for what Josh shared last week from George Mueller's Life.

And if you didn't hear last week's sermon, let me encourage you to go back and listen to it online.

It's very foundational to the series and Growing of Grace.

George Mueller, this great man of faith, who ran these orphanages crazy, not asking for funds, depending on God every day to give them exactly what they needed.

Over 10,000 children he served in his lifetime.

Well, Mueller says in his diary that it took him about 10 years to finally figure it out that the first thing to do when he gets up in the morning is not just to spring into prayer.

Pick up the word.

Pick up the word first.

He said, I wonder how I went so long without doing this practice.

But then when I started doing this practice, it made all the difference in the richness of his prayer life.

There's just something about it when we open the word of God and the Spirit is working, that all of a sudden it comes alive to us in new ways.

God speaks to our souls by his spirit, through his word.

And all of a sudden, he gives me all kinds of things to pray about that I didn't have beforehand.

You've experienced that, right?

All of a sudden, the Spirit is working using his word.

And I commend George Mueller's practice.

It's my practice.

This prayer helps us when we run out of ideas.

There are six petitions.

If you're an analyst and you like to break things down, there's two tables of three petitions each.

The first three petitions focus on the word your, God word.

They're all about God.

The second table has three petitions with the word our, us.

Okay?

The one is vertical, the other is more horizontal.

The first table is all about the Father.

The second table is about us and our needs.

Notice that Matthew puts this prayer smack dab in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.

Some of you are familiar with the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through chapter 7.

It feels like, if you know this sermon, it feels like unreachable.

These are radically challenging truths to live by.

Why do you think Jesus put this prayer right in the middle of that sermon?

It's the powerhouse, it's the power center for us to be able to live out this sermon.

We can't live out this sermon unless we are learning how to pray in these truths.

First petition.

Hallowed be your name.

What he did is went back and did a lot of reading, and one author in particular pulled together St.

Augustine's thoughts on this prayer, Luther's thoughts on this prayer, and Calvin's thoughts on prayer.

So I had a good week of study.

Just kind of digging in these gold mines.

Hallowed be your name.

Luther said, Is his name not already holy?

Of course it is.

Yet his name is not often kept holy.

Well that's true.

That's true.

We pray that we will not dishonor his holy name.

We pray that he will empower us to become holy.

Are you praying for your personal holiness?

I wonder.

How many Christians do?

Are you praying for your own personal holiness?

We need to pray this.

These things don't happen automatically.

Lord, would you please make me truly born like Jesus?

That's a prayer he loves to hear.

That's a prayer he loves to answer.

Luther, a prayer that God would be glorified among all the nations as you are glorified among us.

John Kelvin joins in this.

He says, as a thought that goes deep into my heart, what is more unworthy than for God's glory to be obscured partly by my ungrateful heart?

In other words, ingratitude kills the prayer life.

Do you have to confess that?

Sometimes I do.

Am I praying with a grateful heart?

Or am I focused more on what God's not giving me than what he is giving me?

To hallow God's name is not merely to live righteous lives, but to have a heart of grateful joy toward God.

And listen to this: an even more, a wondrous sense of his beauty.

Isn't that rich?

We do not revere his name unless he captivates us with wonderment for him.

We can't do that without the Holy Spirit, friends.

Holy Spirit, open my eyes that I might see wondrous things in your law.

Holy Spirit, open my eyes.

It was the prayer that we prayed two weeks ago in the congregational prayer.

That according to the riches of his glory, we may see the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of light of Christ's love.

Only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to see how deep and wide the love of Christ is for us.

The good news is he's really good at that when we ask him.

Hallowed be your name.

Second petition, your kingdom come.

Calvin, God's kingdom comes through the Holy Spirit, who corrects our desires and through his word, which shapes our hearts.

This then is a lordship petition.

It is asking God to extend his royal power over every part of our lives.

Our emotions.

Yes, our emotions, our desires, our thoughts, our commitments.

This is a bold prayer.

Your kingdom come.

Your kingdom come, Lord.

Third petition, your will be done.

Unless we are profoundly certain that God is our Father, we will never be able to say, Your will be done.

Can I repeat that?

Unless we are profoundly certain that God is our Father, we will not be able to pray.

Your will be done.

How much does that prayer occupy your prayer life and mine?

And the truth is, too often, I want my will more than his.

And you do too.

Lord, your kingdom come.

You see, we can't pray your kingdom come if we don't want his kingdom to come just yet.

Right?

If, Lord, come back, but don't come back now because I'm having too much fun or I'm, you know, whatever.

That's just, I know it's ridiculous.

But we do sometimes.

If you knew what his kingdom is going to be like when it comes, you would pray it earnestly and fervently now.

And I would too.

We just don't know.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

That's true.

Holy Spirit, would you show me what is the essence of your kingdom?

That I would pray that your kingdom would come in my life.

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

We can pray.

I can pray, and you can pray your will be done.

Because Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane prayed.

But that's not where his prayer started, is it?

His prayer started in the garden in the most intense suffering of his life.

His prayer started, Lord, please take this cup from me.

He prayed it again.

And then he knew that God was not going to answer that prayer.

What did he pray?

Not my will, but your will be done.

And because he prayed that, we're here today.

Because he prayed that we're saved by grace.

Because he prayed that God will not abandon you.

Was he abandoned when he prayed that on the cross?

At the cross, he was abandoned.

You will never be abandoned when you pray that prayer.

You will never be forsaken when you pray that prayer.

Your will be done in my life.

Oh, we can pray that prayer.

The fourth petition, give us this day our daily bread.

Lord, show me my daily needs.

Not my wants.

Do you struggle with that too?

Lord, you're going to have to sift through.

You're going to have to pull out like chaff from the wheat my wants from my needs.

Give us this day our daily bread.

He's not promising he's going to give you what you need tomorrow.

He's not promising he's going to give you what you need next month or next year.

He says, you pray and ask me to give you what you need this day.

He knows how to do that.

The same word that Jesus used was used in his time in the Greek.

That a woman would use.

They found a papyrus that was the woman's shopping list.

Take your shopping list to the Father.

Now, as we do, he'll sift through it.

You know, he might say, no, you don't need the Fruit Loops.

He'll wean you off of your poor diet, but he'll give you what you need.

He'll give you what you need.

But he says, I'm asking you, I'm commanding you to pray for it.

Are you praying daily for your needs?

Number five, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

This is a tough one, right?

This is a tough one.

This is the only one with a further explanation at the end of the passage.

If you don't forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also, if you do forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But then those soberer words, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

Is this going against the grain of what was read earlier this morning by Phoebe?

Ephesians 2, 1 to 10.

I thought we were saved by grace through faith, not of works.

That's true.

But there must be something to it that we can't fully harmonize in our minds and our understanding.

There must be something to this that only God ultimately understands completely, where this is of vital importance, and that no one take false comfort.

I think what he's saying, what God would say to his children, may none of my children take false comfort.

And saying, oh, I'm saved by grace.

I don't need to forgive you.

You're on thin ice.

You're on thin ice.

That's not of God.

That's the flesh.

God wants you to crucify that flesh.

Is there somebody today that you need to forgive?

That you have not forgiven?

The Spirit can show you.

The Spirit can bring that person to your memory, to your name.

Forgive us our debts.

Dr.

J.I.

Packer says we must distinguish between God as judge and God as Father, between being a justified sinner and an adopted son or daughter.

The Lord's Prayer is a family prayer in which God's children address their father, yes.

Though our daily sins do not cancel our justification, they certainly do break our fellowship with our Father.

Yes, they do.

They certainly break our fellowship with our Father.

Daily we have sins to confess.

We take, Sharon and I take out the garbage every day.

I don't want to smell the garbage in the bedroom.

You don't take the garbage out every once in a while.

You don't take the garbage out once a month.

You don't take the garbage out once a week.

Do you?

Do we confess our sins daily?

Do we invite the Holy Spirit to show us our sins daily?

Take it out.

Confess.

Repent and believe that there is forgiveness and fellowship.

The Father wants you.

He wants all of us in fellowship.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

The last petition: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

The Greek word can be translated either test or temptation.

The context has to determine it.

But Jesus seems to, translators, lead us not into temptation.

John Kelvin had this to say.

When he says, pray, do not let me enter into temptation, he has lists two categories of temptations, from the right and from the left.

From the right, he says, riches and power and honors in life can be very tempting to us.

He says, from the left, poverty, disgrace, contempt from others, which tempt us to despair, afflictions in life, to lose all hope, and to become, and listen to this phrase, to become an angrily estranged from God.

I've been thinking about that this week as I've been studying.

Wow.

Have you, or are you, angrily estranged from God?

Are you disappointed with God the way he hasn't answered your prayers?

Have you just stopped praying because he doesn't answer your prayers?

Oftentimes when we do, there's anger.

We're shaking a fist at him.

Put your fist down.

Jesus died for you and me to put our fist down.

The Father's faithful.

The Father's righteous.

The Father's perfectly holy.

If you feel like the distance is growing between you and God, God isn't the one who moved.

That fellowship with God.

Come back, be as your family.

He loves his kids.

He loves his sons.

He loves his daughters.

Come back.

Invite the Spirit in.

Pick up your Bible.

Speak to him.

Yes, Calvin was right.

Both prosperity and adversity can test us and tempt us.

What would the Spirit be saying to you now this morning?

Through this sermon.

God's preached word, the illuminating work of the Spirit.

What is it that He has to say to you now this morning about your relationship with Him, about fellowship with Him, about learning how to pray the Lord's Prayer.

Maybe in a different way.

Let's ask Him.

Father, would you please show us?

Every one of us.

None of us have the perfect prayer life.

None of us ever will.

Lord, it's easy in the Christian life to fall into a lot of guilt with our prayer life.

It's easy to fall into shame with our prayer life.

That's not what you want.

Lord, you're asking us to confess what needs to be confessed and to repent of what needs to be repented of.

But you're not asking us to go out of here carrying our shame and our guilt.

You're asking us to come to you in our time of need that we might find help, even as we come to the throne of grace.

Because we have a Savior who bled for us.

We have a Savior who died for us.

We have a Savior who was raised from the dead for us, who intercedes for us.

Through Him and in Him, we're coming to you this morning, right now.

Hear us.

Answer us.

Give us what you know we need.

In Jesus' name, Amen.