Prayer 2015

The recent events of the siege in Martin Place gripped our city.

The outpouring of shock and grief was incredible.

One thing that I noticed on the TV, the newspapers, Facebook, other media,

was the amount of times I heard people say, or the amount of times I saw written,

things like, our thoughts and our prayers are with you.

I noticed it again on Facebook in response to the South Australian bushfires just last night.

My thoughts and my prayers are with you all.

This was posted from someone who I know personally,

who's got no trust in a God or whatever, no connection with God,

actually openly declares themselves to be an atheist,

and yet writes, my thoughts and my prayers are with you all.

And I noticed it again today, this afternoon,

reading the paper about the event of that guy who punched his brother and he's in hospital,

the area police commander said that there's a whole lot of fingers crossed out there

and there's a whole lot of prayers floating out there.

When difficulty or danger threatens, the immediate response of many people is to pray.

Most humans on this planet pray at least some time in their lives,

but usually without giving much thought to what they're doing.

I wondered whether the TV presenters and even the area police commander,

a bunch of other people I've seen on Facebook,

actually were giving any thought to what they were saying when they said,

my prayers are with you.

Most who pray occasionally probably don't even consider it a difficult thing to do.

My children pray often with a real simplicity and an ease that I can't even muster.

Sometimes their prayers put chills down my spine as they use the prayer times to bicker with one another.

But on one level, prayer seems a natural thing to do and a spontaneous thing to do,

and yet for Christians, prayer is anything but the easiest thing to do.

We know we ought to pray.

We feel that prayer should be right at the heart of our relationship with God.

And yet few things are so agonizingly difficult as a consistent prayer life.

Few things make us feel less Christian as when we have gone long periods without praying.

And so we're kicking off 2015 by spending the first five weeks on the topic of prayer.

And I'll be frank with you.

I need this reminder as I begin a new year.

Sam said to me just then,

so any New Year's resolutions, Steve, that you've broken yet?

And I said, yeah.

My New Year's resolution was I want to be more prayerful.

And I haven't been prayerful in the first four days of this New Year's

because I've been writing a sermon on prayer.

The irony of that.

And so I need this as much as I'm assuming you need this.

My hope is that I will grow in prayerfulness throughout this year.

I know I need to be more deliberate in my planning to pray

and have more humility for spontaneity in my prayer.

And of course, I want us to grow as a church in our core value of devotion to prayer.

And so what I'm going to do is I'm kicking off today and I'm going to assume nothing.

That's probably the safest thing.

I'm going to assume nothing today.

I'm going to start at the very beginning.

So here it is.

Prayer is an interaction between us and God.

Now, I'm pretty sure that's not Twitter worthy.

Prayer is an interaction between us and God.

It takes place between two parties who have a relationship.

And to understand anything about prayer, we must first discover what this relationship is like

or, more importantly, what God is like.

You see, when the Buddhist spins his prayer wheel and the Hindu sits in mystic silence,

both are reflecting the nature of the God or the gods to whom they're praying to.

That is, prayer is shaped and defined by the being to whom we pray.

And so, if I decided tonight to make Sam, Saint Sam, the object of my prayers,

then who I think Sam is and what he's capable of will govern the sort of prayers that I pray to him.

I'm not going to pray for Sam to control the weather because I figured that that's kind of beyond him to be able to do that.

Prayer is shaped and defined by the being to whom we pray.

It is only possible, prayer is only possible if the God is willing to accept my prayers, first of all.

So, if Sam says, no, stuff you, I'm not going to, don't pray to me.

Then prayer breaks down at that point.

Or the God is willing to answer my prayers.

So, if Sam hasn't got the capability to answer my prayers, prayer breaks down at that point.

And without those two things, prayer is ineffective.

So, throughout the Bible, there is a real insistence that the God of the Bible is significantly different from all the idols and pagan gods of the worlds around and the nations around them.

Jeremiah 32, 17 says,

Psalm 145, verses 10 to 21, says that God's rule over all that he's made lasts forever.

Psalms 145:10–21

That he's faithful to every single promise that he's made.

And he is loving to all that he's made.

It says that he upholds those who fall.

He sustains everything that he's made.

And that he is near to everyone who calls on him.

And so, the Bible consistently asserts that God is sovereign over all of his creation.

Nothing is too hard for him.

He's also a God who cares for the intimate details of everything that he's made.

He knows every number, every hair that I've got on my head.

He knows when one falls out, which a few have been doing in recent times.

He knows everything about his creation.

He's a God of mercy and love.

He is both powerful and he is merciful.

And he is loving.

And yet, the other side of the coin is that the Bible speaks of a God who is so holy, so pure, so perfect, so powerful, that he is unapproachable.

That he is so perfect that he will not allow the imperfect to commune with him.

So, 1 Timothy says,

God, the blessed and only ruler, the king of kings, the lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.

And so, the biblical picture is that prayer, a communion with God, is an exciting possibility and an enormous privilege,

and yet, a practical impossibility at the same time.

God is the all-powerful creator and ruler of the world who delights to show kindness to those who call on him,

and yet he is blindingly holy, righteous.

His eyes are too pure to look upon evil.

And Psalm 145 says,

The God who delights to hear those who call on him will also hold all who are guilty accountable.

See, the Bible tells us right at the beginning that when people rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden,

God punished them by throwing them out of his presence.

He actually threw them out and he cut them off from access back to him.

Sinful, rebellious people cannot have access to God.

People no longer had access to God, and how then can we approach the unapproachable?

How can mortal sinners pray to a holy God and even work on the assumption that he is listening?

Well, the answer to that dilemma is what we celebrated last week or so at Christmas.

God takes the initiative to re-establish relationship with his revelable creation by coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

For thousands of years, God held back his anger against his rebel creation,

and eventually his patience ran out and he unleashed his anger,

but not upon his guilty rebels, but upon his son, who was born so that he might die.

You see, Jesus died to rescue us from the position of being cut off from access to God.

God resolved our problem so that we can have full and complete access to him again.

And anyone who trusts in Jesus has a relationship with God

and therefore has been granted free access to the almighty and true and living God.

Jesus is the one who tore down the barrier.

He's the one who moved the roadblocks away.

And so what's that got to do with prayer?

I want to say it's the very foundation of prayer.

This is the beginning of prayer.

It's got everything to do with prayer.

Prayer only takes place because of this new relationship through Jesus Christ.

This new relationship that Christians have with the Father through the saving work of the Son in the Spirit

is the beginning and end of all prayer.

You see, prayer is not some sort of an addition, a duty that we have in the Christian life.

It's not an appendix to the Christian life.

It is the heart of who we are as Christians and how we relate to a heavenly Father.

Prayer is simply our relationship with God in action.

It is why we can pray our Father who is in heaven.

And it's this issue of relationship with God that's at the heart of the context of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.

So if you grab your Bibles, open it up.

Matthew 6.

I'm going to begin in verse 1.

As Jesus launches into this chapter, he has in mind here actors and the theatre.

Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them.

If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

And he refers to a specific kind of actor in verse 2, verse 5, and verse 16.

They're the ones he calls hypocrites.

The word translated hypocrite was originally the name that was given to actors.

The scene of the first half of Matthew 6 is a theatre performance.

Jesus says that hypocrites do their acts of righteousness before men to be seen by men.

And so Jesus has specifically in mind here those who put on vulgar displays of religious piety

in order to receive the applause of people.

Have a look at verses 5 and 6.

Back when Jesus said these words in the synagogue,

it was fairly much common practice for the men to lead the times of prayer.

And this responsibility was passed around from bloke to bloke in the synagogue.

There would have been at least some temptation to pray to the audience that had gathered.

Maybe to try and outdo the last guy who prayed.

I don't know if you ever felt that temptation before.

I can say I have.

To pray in a way that people like, in a form that people like.

Maybe to sound more spiritual or theologically informed than the last person who prayed.

Maybe to pray in a way that you're giving an announcement to those who were gathered

rather than lifting your heart to God.

A hypocrite prays to the people, not to God.

How should the disciples of Jesus pray?

He mentions two things.

Verse 6, firstly.

But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen.

Now Jesus is not prohibiting public prayer here.

Because if he was, his disciples didn't get that idea.

Because as soon as they were apostles and moved off into the church in Acts,

that's exactly what they did, public prayer.

Verse 6 is simply causing us to ask questions of our motives and our hearts.

Do I pray more frequently and more fervently when alone with God than I do in public?

Is my public praying simply an overflow of my private praying?

What do I think about when praying in public?

Am I so busy scrambling to find expressions that are going to be pleasing to my fellow worshippers

that I'm not actually concentrating my attention on God or scarcely even aware of his presence,

even though he's the one to whom my prayers are nominally addressed?

Who am I praying to?

That's the issue in verse 6.

The second thing Jesus mentions about his disciples or how they should pray is in verse 7.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans because they think they'll be hurt for their many words.

Do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

So some of the pagans in Jesus' time thought that if they named all of their gods

and addressed their petitions to each of those gods and repeated themselves a few times,

then they would have a better chance at receiving an answer to their prayer.

And Jesus says to his disciples, don't pray like that.

The prayer for the Christian should not consist of heaped up phrases, idle repetitions,

and the ridiculous assumption that the probability of the answer is in total proportion

to the number of the words used in the prayer.

Jesus wants to teach us here that praying to be a genuine act of righteousness

must be without showiness.

It must be directed to our heavenly Father and not to the people that are gathered

and devoid of the delusion that God can be pleased or manipulated by excessive words.

Do you see what Jesus does here in this section?

He connects true spirituality, true relationship with him,

and a life of prayer, a life of certain kind of prayer.

Puts them together.

Prayer is tied together with a genuine relationship with God.

Now, thankfully to help us in our prayers,

Jesus goes on to graciously give us a wonderful example

of what prayer looks like for his disciples.

It is a prayer that has relationship with God at its very centre.

It's usually referred to, traditionally referred to as the Lord's Prayer,

but as the New Testament scholar Don Carson suggests,

it is more appropriate title would be the Lord's Model Prayer,

because Jesus himself actually never prayed this prayer.

Carson says,

it is less a prayer that Jesus prayed than the prayer that he gave his disciples

as a paradigm for their own praying.

And Carson goes on to suggest,

it's also somewhat ironic that at the very place that Jesus tells us

that we are not to keep babbling on like the pagans do,

is the very place that he gives us a prayer

that has regularly been babbled in churches ever since.

Tim Keller says that the Lord's Prayer is the greatest martyr on earth.

Everyone tortures and abuses it,

so few get comfort and joy from its proper use.

It is like a mine with precious jewels and diamonds

that we can see, but that we just cannot extract.

Jesus gave this prayer to us to unlock all the riches of prayer.

It is the single richest source in the entire Bible on how to pray,

and yet it is an untapped resource,

partly because it is so familiar to us.

Martin Luther said in one of his works on prayer,

how many pray the Lord's Prayer a thousand times in the course of a year,

and yet if they were to keep on doing so for a thousand more years,

they would not have prayed or tasted it at all.

Our world is starving for spiritual experience,

and Jesus gives us the means to it in just a few words here.

It's like Jesus saying,

wouldn't you like to come face to face with the Father

and the King of the universe every day

to pour out your heart to him and have a deep sense

that he is listening to you and that he is loving you?

And that's what this prayer does for us in its proper use.

So let's take a very brief tour of the Lord's Prayer.

It consists of six petitions,

but it begins with an address.

Verse 9,

As John Calvin said,

who would break forth in such rashness

as to claim for himself

the honour of being a son of God

unless he had been adopted as children of grace

in the Lord Jesus Christ?

And so what he's saying there

is that this opening address of God as Father

in the Lord's Prayer

is not so much a call just to plunge right in

and start talking to God

as much as it is a call

to first

pause

and recollect

our situation

and realise

our standing in Christ

before we proceed

in prayer.

It's a recognition

of everything that we have

in Christ

to be able to call

the unapproachable

God of this universe

Father.

That's what Jesus has done for us.

We should start by asking God

to implant in our hearts

a comforting trust

in his fatherly love

and our status in him.

And then comes the first petition.

Hallowed be your name.

Now the word hallowed

doesn't get much use nowadays,

but then again

neither does the notion

of hallowedness

because it means holiness.

Doesn't get much of air time

in our secular society.

But when you look at it

on its surface

it seems a little bit odd

that we should be asking God

for his name to be holy

when it already is holy.

The issue seems

to be

not that God's name

is not holy

but that our use of it

is not holy.

That seems to be

the issue here.

You see,

when we declare ourselves

to be Christian

we identify

with God's name.

As his name bearers

we represent

a good and a holy God.

And so we're praying

with this first petition

that God would keep us

from dishonouring

his name

the name by which

we are called

and that he would

empower us

to become holy ourselves.

That our lives

would display

his character

his holiness

and his goodness

to this world

that they too

might honour

his name

with their lives.

The second petition

verse 10

your kingdom come

this is a lordship petition

it is asking God

to extend

his royal power

over every part

of our lives

over our emotions

and our desires

and our thoughts

and our commitments.

We're asking God

to so fully rule

rule us

that we would want

to obey him

with all of our hearts

and our bodies

and our souls

and our minds

and to do it

with great joy

to want him

to rule over us

and to pray

your kingdom come

is also a yearning

for God's total control

his total rule

to be taken up

over all things

it is a yearning

for him to usher in

his final

eternal kingdom

a perfect future

where all peace

and justice reigns.

The third petition

is your will be done

verse 10

let me read to you

Martin Luther's

paraphrase

of this petition

your will be done

grant us grace

to bear willingly

all sorts of sickness

poverty

disgrace

suffering

and adversity

and to recognize

that in this

your divine will

is crucifying

our will.

Now that is a bold

paraphrase

that is a bold

paraphrase

but unless

we are profoundly

confident

in being able

to say

my father

in heaven

then we will

never be able

to say

your will be done

unless we are

totally confident

that he is my father

because of the work

of Christ

and everything

that I have

in being able

to approach him

then we will

never be able

to say

your will be done

in my life.

Only if we

trust God

as father

can we ask

for the grace

to bear

our troubles

with patience

and grace.

This is the only

part of the Lord's

prayer that Jesus

himself prayed

the only bit.

It was the

garden of Gethsemane

under circumstances

far more crushing

than any of us

will ever face

he submitted

to his father's

will rather

than following

his desires

and what was

the outcome?

It saved us.

Because he submitted

to the father's

will we can

call him father

just like Jesus

did and that's

why we can

trust him.

He always works

everything out

for the good

of those who

love him.

And so these

first three

petitions are

the beginning

of prayer

and did you

notice they're

all about God?

They're all

about God.

Our own needs

and issues are

not the beginning

of prayer.

We are to give

pride of place

to praising

and honouring

him to yearning

to see his

greatness and to

see it acknowledged

everywhere and to

aspire to full

love and obedience.

Adoration and

thanksgiving,

in other words

God-centredness

comes first

because it heals

our hearts

of their

self-centredness

which has a

tendency to

curve us in

on ourselves

and to shut

down our vision

of God

and distorts

our vision

of all things

so that we

wallow

in our

circumstances.

we begin

in the

Lord's

prayer

with a

vision

of the

all

sufficiency

of God.

We look

to our

needs in

prayer in

the fourth

petition,

verse 11,

give us today

our daily

bread.

1 Corinthians

4 reminds

us what do

you have that

you did not

receive and if

you did receive

it why do you

boast as though

you did not?

The Bible

teaches us

that God

is the

ultimate

source of

every good

thing,

food,

clothing,

work,

leisure,

strength,

intelligence,

friendship,

whatever you

want to name

and our

ingratitude to

him is an

affront to

him.

How do we

express our

ingratitude to

him?

By assuming

that he owes

us these

things.

And when

we work on

the assumption

that he owes

us these

things,

when these

good gifts

dry up,

our tendency

is to

complain and

grumble and

whinge.

Our joy is

lost.

As our

heavenly

father we

come to

him as

his dependent

children with

our needs

in prayer

expecting a

positive response

from him.

Because he

is a good

God.

But we

do it so

changed by

our satisfaction

in him and

our trust in

him that it's

whatever his

will is that

matters.

The fifth

petition is in

verse 12,

forgive us our

debts as we

also forgiven

our debtors.

This petition

concerns our

relationships both

with God and

with others.

Martin Luther

said that this

petition is not

only a challenge

to our pride,

but a test of

true relationship

with God.

If we find

confession and

repentance

traumatic and

demeaning, he

says that means

that the heart is

not right with

God and cannot

draw confidence

from his

gospel.

people.

He says if

regular confession

doesn't produce an

increase of our

confidence in who

we are in

Christ and in

fact joy in our

life, then he

says we do not

understand that

salvation by grace

is the essence of

the Christian

faith.

God and our

relationship with

others together.

If we have not

seen our sin and

sought radical

forgiveness from

God, we will be

unable to forgive

and to seek the

good of those who

have wronged us.

And so Martin

Luther suggests

that unresolved

bitterness,

unresolved

bitterness is a

sign that we

are not right

with God.

It also means

that if we're

holding a grudge,

it would be

somewhat hypocritical

of us to seek

forgiveness from

God for our

sins as verse 14

warns us.

The sixth

petition is in

verse 13,

lead us not in

temptation but

deliver us from

the evil one.

temptation in

the sense of

being tried and

tested is not

only inevitable

but it's also

desirable in the

Bible.

The Bible talks

of suffering and

difficulty as a

furnace to which

impurities are

burnt off and we

become to a

greater sense of

God's love for us

and greater self

knowledge and

humility and faith

and love and

endurance.

However, to

enter into

temptation according

to Matthew 26

is to entertain

and consider the

prospect of

giving into

sin.

And so this

petition here is

a hefty reminder

that just as we

ought to

consciously be

dependent on

God for all of

our physical

needs, which is

why we pray,

give us today our

daily bread, so

also we should

consciously sense

our dependence upon

him for all

moral triumph and

spiritual victory.

This petition

reminds us that

we are morally

weak and any

virtues that we

possess at all

are because the

fruit of the

spirit.

It reminds us that

our hearts are so

deceptive and the

evil one is

malicious and

cunning and we

need our father's

help for any

moral triumph.

We are dependent

upon God for

all of our

physical needs

and for all

moral triumph.

And so what

Jesus does here in

these verses is

he tests the

reality of God

in our hearts.

These words

would have hit

the original

hearers like a

bomb blast and

it's what these

words are meant to

do for us as they

reach into the

depths of our

hearts.

God looks right

at the heart.

He doesn't look at

the external acts

of piety.

We can hide the

depths of our

hearts from each

other but we

cannot hide them

from God.

And Jesus tests

our hearts to

see if God

himself is in

fact our

sufficiency.

Jesus is calling

for a radical

reorientation upon

God himself in the

Lord Jesus Christ.

He is pushing us

to have a real

utterly authentic

personal relationship

with God through

Jesus.

Jesus is pushing

away from us as

a church.

This prayer is

addressed to the

church, the

disciples of Jesus.

He is encouraging

us to push us

away from a

stale repetition

of words and a

form and pushing

us away from

vain, showy,

external piety

into a relationship

with God that goes

right to the heart

and flows out

from the heart.

A relationship

that says God's

at the centre.

A relationship

that will express

itself in a

prayer life that

is modelled on a

prayer like this.

Let's pray.

Gracious Father,

we thank you for

the work that you've

done in the Lord

Jesus Christ in

calling us to know

you.

You, the

unapproachable,

perfect and holy

God, have come

to us so that we

could come to you.

We thank you for

all the privileges

of being able to

call you the great

God of this

universe, our

Father.

Thank you that you

listen to our

prayers even more

than we are willing

to say them.

We thank you that

you have control

over all that is

and we pray that

you would help us

depend upon you.

And we ask

tonight that you

would teach us to

pray.

Amen.