Prayer | Matthew 6:5-15

Good morning church. It is such a privilege to be able to gather with you this morning

and to worship our Lord and to be able to serve you now in the preaching of his word.

And it has been a little while since I've last been with you, so if I haven't met you

before, yes, my name is Justin. I'm from Gosnell's Baptist Church, just 10 minutes up Albany

Highway. I'm a student pastor there and also about to enter my final semester at Trinity

Theological College. And you know, us down at GBC, we're so encouraged to partner with

you guys in the gospel, even as Baptists and Presbyterians, being able to come together.

Because we know that the most important thing is the biblically faithful preaching of our

Lord Jesus Christ, who has risen from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins. And

so it is really just so exciting to think what it is that we might actually be able

to do together over the next 30 years or more, God willing. At least that's how long I plan

to be around for.

Funnily enough, at Gosnell's we've just finished a series in Matthew's gospel earlier on this

year and we're now about halfway through a series in Ephesians, which I think is kind

of the exact opposite to where you guys have been now. So that's pretty cool. And while

I didn't have the opportunity to preach on this passage at Gosnell's during our series,

yeah, it has been such a blessing to be able to prepare this for you this week. God has

been particularly kind as we too have had the flu in our household and I actually had

pharyngitis this week, which is not so good for a preacher to not be able to talk much

and to have much pain in your throat. And so the Lord really has been kind to strengthen

me and to have me here this morning, especially in Michael's absence as well, being able to

give him a break.

The Lord's Prayer, perhaps one of the most well-known passages of scripture in the Bible,

one which will be so familiar to many of us here this morning. But as with every single

part of scripture, we must come to it with unstopped ears and with opened eyes and soft

hearts, ready to hear again from God so that we might see Jesus more clearly and that we

might live for him more faithfully. So please, would you join me now in prayer as we ask

our Father to do that very thing for us this morning.

Our Father in heaven, how great and holy and majestic and wonderful you are. How precious

is the gift of salvation which you have won for us through your Son Jesus. Would you please

speak to us through the preaching of your word this morning? Would you please open our

eyes and our ears? Would you please soften our hearts so that we might know the loveliness

of our Lord Jesus and that we might love him all the more and that we might live for him

all the more faithfully. We need your Spirit to do this work amongst us, Father. So please

send him to do your work amongst us this morning, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Well just a few weeks ago, in light of one of Paul's great pastoral prayers in the book

of Ephesians, one of our pastors greatly challenged our church about the severe lack of numbers

at our quarterly corporate prayer meetings. In a church of almost 300 people, we would

have no more than 20 on any given gathering. And it's always the same people, isn't it?

It's always the same faithful few. Now there are good and legitimate reasons to not make

a prayer meeting. But there is one reason which a humble, faithful, elderly Christian

lady, which confessed this after the service, which was somewhat striking. She said, the

truth is, I just don't really know how to pray. And perhaps this statement is something

that you can relate to this morning. Maybe you have been following Jesus for a couple

of years or a couple of decades, but the task of consistent, genuine, faithful prayer seems

somewhat daunting and out of reach. Never mind praying in public, right? That might

seem impossible. But many of us, when we come to our Father in prayer, can often find it

so difficult to pull much more than a few sentences together. And so we dare not attend

a prayer meeting out of fear of not knowing how to pray. Alternatively, maybe you can

pull off a really great prayer in front of people, but a log book of your private prayer

times wouldn't have more than a few entries in it. Maybe you know how to pray. And although

you really do want to be praying more earnestly, more faithfully, more regularly, for one reason

or another that may not even be known to you, your prayer life is missing something that

will give you a deep-seated conviction that produces this healthy habit. Or maybe I'm

not describing you, but I think that if we're all truly honest with ourselves, we wish that

we could be more faithful in prayer. Prayerlessness surely is a great problem which plagues all

of the Christian church. The Sermon on the Mount comes to us from Jesus, the greater

than Moses, Son of God, who is speaking the words of God to the new people of God. And

these words are to be as defining for us as the words from Mount Sinai were for the people

of Israel. In these chapters, Jesus answers for us the question, what does it look like

to be one of God's people? And among many other things, what we have seen in our passage

this morning is that it is to be one who is in the habit of coming to the heavenly Father

in prayer. And in light of Jesus' words to us, I think that the sense of inadequacy that

comes when we are challenged to grow in our prayer life is good and right. Holiness must

mark the people of God. As Jesus just said a few verses earlier, you therefore must be

perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect. We must be a people who practice our righteousness.

And as we know from these verses in chapter six, the way which we give, the way which

we pray, the way which we fast is actually really, really important. So I want to help

us to see two things this morning, which I think Jesus is saying to us. Firstly, it'll

be how we should pray, and then we'll see why we should pray, the how and why of prayer.

So the how of prayer. Jesus, he's very, very practical in these verses, isn't he? He pulls

no punches as he warns against practicing our righteousness to be seen by others. And

first, Jesus, he actually tells us how we shouldn't pray. He says in verse five that

we are to not be like the hypocrites. These hypocrites, and perhaps he maybe had the Pharisees

of the day in mind, but it could have been anyone who prayed like this. They were indeed

praying to be seen by others, weren't they? I mean, why else would you love to pray standing

in the synagogues and in the street corners? There's this certain arrogance to this kind

of person, isn't there? That instead of loving to just be able to have the ear of your heavenly

Father, they instead love all the more the admiration, the status, the veneration, the

approval of those who are watching on. And these words of Jesus, they can really cut

us to the heart, can't they? In a simple verse with this simple illustration, the thoughts

and intentions of our own hearts are laid bare. When I read these words, it always makes

me think, is this why I find it easier to pray in front of people than in private? Because

it's true, I do. But Jesus says that we must not pray like these hypocrites. We must not

pray to be seen by others. And he gives us good reason for it, because hypocrites who

love to pray to be seen by others will get what they're asking for. Not what they're

asking for in their prayers, but what they're asking for in their corrupt act of prayer.

Jesus says that they have received their reward in full. If you pray to be seen by others,

then the approval that you may or may not get is as good as it gets for you. But there

is actually something far, far greater that we can hold out for if we pray in the right

way. If we pray to be seen and to be heard by our heavenly Father and nobody else, there

is a vast and rich treasure waiting for us. A treasure that cannot be compared with even

the greatest admiration and fame that this world could possibly bring. A reward that

comes not from the lips of men, but a reward which comes from the creator and sustainer

of all things. Jesus, he does not tell us exactly what this reward is, but make no mistake,

on that day that we receive it in full, will be a great day indeed. You might have heard

about the social experiments going around where parents sit their toddlers down, they

place a cookie in front of them and say, alright, if you don't eat this cookie until I come

back in a few minutes, then I'll give you two cookies. And it's really a fascinating

thing to see these kids' different reactions in this moment. And Jesus says to us, you

could be like the hypocrites and receive this reward now, but if you pray how I tell you

you should pray, there is something far, far greater to come. So instead of being like

the hypocrites who love to pray to be seen, we ought to instead make it a habit to go

to our rooms, to close the door, to love to pray where we cannot be seen. It's about as

private as it can get, doesn't it? The picture that Jesus paints for us. And this habit of

private prayer is a mark of the new people of God who practice their righteousness not

to be seen by anybody else except for their heavenly father. Did you catch that little

phrase in verse six where Jesus says that we pray to our father who is unseen? More

literally this phrase is your father who is in secret. And this clever little turn of

phrase shows us that when we pray how Jesus wants us to pray, that is when we pray in

secret, we have a far greater audience than any number or any quality of person watching

on. We have the audience of the almighty God church. Almighty God who holds all things

in his hands, who is sovereign and is powerful over all creation, who is loving and kind

and generous and strong and gentle. Almighty God whom we can come to as our heavenly father.

There's so little to be gained by loving to pray to be seen by others, friends. So, so

little in comparison to being in the presence of our Lord and King. Like any one of my children

can come to me at any time and can be heard by me. So we can come to our heavenly father.

And just as readily, even far more so, will he give us his ear. So we don't pray like

the hypocrites. Instead we make our practice, our regular habit to pray in secret to our

heavenly father who is also in secret. That we might be seen by him and receive our great

reward from him. Now Jesus, he also tells us how to pray by telling us not to pray like

the pagans do. We see this in verses 7 and 8 and I wonder if maybe Jesus is stopping

us from over correcting here. So we know that we pray to be heard by God and not by others,

right? We aren't to be like the hypocrites. But now what if we were to start instead running

off and praying like irrational people to somehow get the attention of our God. Now

the warning comes to us in verse 7 where it says, and when you pray, do not keep on babbling

like pagans for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do we

need to pray on and on and ramble on with the great many words to be heard by God? Jesus

clearly says no. Another helpful translation of this word babbling is to heap up empty

phrases. This apparently is what the pagans would be known for as they prayed to their

gods. They didn't seem to have much confidence that they would be heard in the simplicity

of their words. So they felt they needed to babble on to heap up these empty phrases so

that they could be heard by their gods and their gods would be persuaded to meet their

needs. But not so for us church. Jesus says that we are not to pray like this. We are

instead to be clear and coherent and simple and dare I even say it, we can pray short

prayers. Why? Because our Father already knows what we need. He already knows what we need.

An emphasis on that word need. When we come to our Father in prayer with our needs, we

can do so in confidence knowing that he hears us for we are his children and knowing that

he is not unaware of the need that we are bringing to him. If he sees what is in secret

then he sees everything and he is well aware of any need or any situation that we can bring

before him. And so we can come to him in simplicity and coherence even in brevity because our

God sees and he knows and more than that he cares. He cares so deeply for you friend and

so you can come to him with what you need. Now you may not always get the answer that

you are looking for but remember that you do always get an answer from God. Sometimes

it is yes, sometimes it is no but in my experience and I imagine many of us here this morning

so much of the time the answer is wait. God often answers our prayers by saying to us

wait and the really hard thing about this is so often it feels like he isn't responding

to us. Wait so often feels like silence and silence feels like God doesn't know and he

doesn't care. But let me encourage us church that wait means so much more than that. Nearly

12 years ago my wife's sister Zoe she passed away at the age of 22 with cystic fibrosis.

It's a truly awful disease where your lungs basically suffocate themselves as they produce

this thick sticky mucus from the inside of themselves and over the course of Zoe's life

I would have imagined that thousands of people would have prayed for her to be healed. And

in the days leading up to her death hundreds of them would have been praying for her healing

too and that her days with us would be extended. But when she wasn't it left many of us wondering

why God hadn't answered our prayers. But one of Zoe's closest friends he said something

to me which I will never forget. He said God did answer our prayers but just not in the

way that we expected him to. Don't you think Zoe is healed and whole in his presence right

now? No amount of babbling or heaping up of empty phrases would have given Zoe another

second of life. Even prayers with the purest of intentions and desires for good things

might not be what God considers best in his infinite wisdom. He might not deem it to be

what we actually need. And so we can take confidence that he hears us and that he already

knows what we need and that must shape the way that we pray. So Jesus he has told us

how not to pray, that we shouldn't pray like the hypocrites and like the pagans. But now

as we come to verse 9 he tells us how we should pray. Let me read it again for us. Our Father

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

heaven. Give us today 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 the evil one. Now we could

spend a sermon on its own unpacking this prayer but let me take us through it just briefly.

Obviously I think we would do well to note that Jesus does not say that this is what

we should pray but rather this is how we should pray. Meaning we do not only say these exact

words every time that we pray. Maybe sometimes we do say these exact words and that's been

a very helpful thing for many Christians throughout church history. But it is not a prayer just

to churn out to tick a box. Rather Jesus I think intended this to be something that we

can model our prayers off. For when we see these individual petitions we too can follow

them and we can tailor the specifics of our situation and our needs to this model. It's

so practical and hugely helpful from Jesus if you're feeling like you don't know how

to pray. This is so helpful for us. Another interesting note is that Jesus teaches us

to pray to our Father in heaven. This is something Eric picked up on earlier. After telling us

to pray in our rooms with the doors closed Jesus is now teaching us how to pray corporately.

No doubt he's also teaching us how to pray privately here but whatever warnings there

were about praying to be seen by people do not undo the vital importance of us praying

together. So with that being said let us briefly unpack these six petitions in the Lord's prayer

and let us learn from Jesus himself how we must pray. First hallowed be your name. Hallowed

it can be quite an old timey word can't it? We might use the word hallowed maybe of the

MCG turf and not much else these days I think. But the word just means to sanctify or to

set apart as special or to be holy. And this petition is asking that God that he would

make his name that is his entire being who he is more holy and more special than anything

else. And of course because he already is we pray this prayer because what we need more

than anything else in our prayers is a grand and glorious vision of who our God is. As

we heap praise on our God as we seek his glory and his fame and his honour it frames anything

else that we could pray in light of who he is. And that is a good place to start. If

you're struggling to pray if you just spend the first few minutes praising God for all

his goodness and pleading with him that he would make himself more glorious to you and

to the world around you I have no doubt that it will quickly warm your heart to keep on

praying. The second petition your kingdom come and the third your will be done are very

similar to the first. While we pray that God would be known and would be more holy and

more glorious than anything else we also pray that his kingdom would come that is his rule

and his reign would be extended and established over everything else especially including

our own lives. It is his will that we are to seek to be done because he knows what's

best because his plan is perfect because his ways are good. We want things to be done on

earth as it is in heaven. In heaven right now his rule is total and complete nothing

in rebellion apart from it. But here on earth while we are waiting for his rule to be established

fully and finally we'd long and to pray for that day to come that he would continue to

extend his rule and reign in the hearts and lives of his people and within his church

and within this world. Now these first three petitions they are entirely God centered aren't

they? They make God the most important reality and anything else that we could possibly pray

for ought to only be in light of seeking God's glory his rule and his will. These petitions

they surely ought to rightly order our own hearts shouldn't they? Before we bring him

our own needs, before we confess our own sins, before we ask for strength and guidance from

him. I mean can you really pray for the latest land cruiser or for a bigger house in light

of these petitions? I mean I suppose you could but I just don't see how you would even want

to. And it most certainly seems to shape the things that we are to ask for. The fourth

petition give us today our daily bread it more literally says give us today our bread

which is necessary for existence. Which is a far cry from asking for the latest land

cruiser model. But of course because this is a model of prayer not exactly what we need

to ask. We aren't just praying for the food that we need to eat for the day but we pray

for every need that we have both physical and spiritual. We pray that God would sustain

us in every way by providing what we need. Today it could be patience towards your kids

or it could be strength to keep loving that difficult family member or good sleep because

your work has been really demanding lately. Or for God to provide your financial means

so that you can pay that bill. Our needs in any given day could be endless. And Jesus

he is commanding us to bring our daily needs before our Father and ask that he would grant

them to us. The fifth petition forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.

Has some great complexity to it which I'll come back to in just a few moments. But as

we pray we must confess our sins before God. And we must also bring our grievances to him

of those who have sinned against us. Did you know that prayer it is actually one of the

most important means that you have of coming to a place where you can actually forgive

someone who has deeply hurt you. We can and we ought to come to a heavenly Father with

these burdens of hurt and we bring them to him and we ask him that he would help us to

forgive them. These are the prayers that our Father loves to answer friends. And I'll come

back to this petition again in light of verses 14 and 15. So we'll just move on to the sixth

and final petition for now and that is lead us not into temptation but deliver us from

the evil one. Now we can know that Jesus does not mean for us to pray that we would never

be tested right. In James 1 we are told to rejoice when we are tested because these trials

actually refine our faith. Trials and temptations they are God's given means of making us more

like Christ. But we can rightly understand this petition to mean that we pray that the

Lord would not allow us to fall away completely because of a particular temptation or test.

Prayer is this greatly important means of us holding fast to God in faithfulness and

also God holding onto us and never letting us fall. More and more I'm finding in my own

prayers that it includes something to this effect saying, Lord help me to love you more

and my sin less. Church if you took this prayer as a model, if you went into your room and

you closed your door and you spent just two or three minutes praying and expanding on

each one of these six petitions, I can imagine that would just be such a wonderful time of

prayer with your heavenly Father. You could know that you are praying prayers that the

Lord loves to answer. You could know that he has truly heard you not because you twisted

his arm with your many words but because you are faithful in obedience to praying as your

Lord commanded you to. You could know that your Father who is in secret has heard what

you have said in secret and that he has a far greater reward awaiting you than anyone

else could ever give. This is how our Lord taught us to pray. Practical, simple but profoundly

deep and brilliant. And then comes these curly couple of verses at the end. Verses 14 and

15. Jesus says, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father

will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive

your sins. Jesus, what happened to justification by faith alone? What about if you believe

in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord you will be saved?

What about whoever believes in the Son will not perish but have eternal life? Are you

now saying that we must believe in you and forgive others to be saved? As he concludes

this section on praying, Jesus seems to expand this fifth petition and forgive us our debts

as we have also forgiven our debtors. But Jesus, couldn't you have just left it at

verse 13? What is going on here? Well lest we begin to believe that a quality prayer

life is what will make us right with God, Jesus actually ups the ante here. Which is

quite typical of him in this Sermon on the Mount. And he shows that something far more

than just being good at prayer is needed to be one of God's people. Something more than

just being good at prayer. What is needed is actually a completely renewed and transformed

heart. So renewed and so transformed that we would be perfect like our Heavenly Father

is perfect. Even in the ability to forgive people of their sins. Now please don't mishear

me. I don't want to take any force away from Jesus words here. I don't want to sidestep

these verses and just make this dogleg back to justification by faith. But I really do

believe that this is what Jesus is showing us here. By using this fifth petition and

connecting these verses to prayer, Jesus is showing us that why we pray is not so that

we will achieve our salvation or merit our redemption or make us right before God. But

that it is only a heart that it has been truly renewed by the grace of God so that prayer

is an overflow. So that the forgiveness of others who sin against us is an overflow

of what God has done inside of us. And so Jesus can say, if you don't forgive others

their sins, then it is evidence that you have not experienced the grace of God in your own

life. And therefore he has not and will not forgive your sins. It's such strong words

from Jesus, isn't it? But oh how we have sinned far greater against God than what anyone else

has ever sinned against us. Without the renewing grace of God, our hearts are dead in sin.

We are haters of God and lovers of evil, rejecting the very one who has created us and sustains

us and gives us life and breath and every good thing. While God deserves all the praise

and all the glory, we rob it from him by giving it to created things. But when we've been

forgiven of that, when we have been given new hearts, ones that are filled with the

Holy Spirit, we can love God truly and we can long to live more faithfully in the ways

which he has created us for. And that means forgiving others just as we have been forgiven.

John Stott, he really helpfully puts it in this way. Once our eyes have been opened to

see the enormity of our offence against God, the injuries which others have done to us

appear by comparison extremely trifling. If on the other hand, we have an exaggerated

view of the offences of others, it proves that we have minimised our own. Therefore

may I be so bold as to put it before you that your prayers are ineffective if you are harbouring

bitterness and unforgiveness. Why? Because you have not seen your great need for forgiveness

from God. And because you are not truly practising your righteousness, which needs to be received

from Christ alone and cannot be found even in the best of giving or praying or fasting.

This is why we come to pray to our heavenly Father. Not as a way to earn our righteousness,

but to practise the righteousness which has been won for us on the cross of our Lord Jesus

Christ and has been freely given to His people who come to believe in Him. This is the great

reward from our heavenly Father, isn't it? That we would be granted life with the Son,

that we would sit with Him at His right hand and that we would be in His presence and rule

and reign with Him for all of eternity. All because of what Christ has won for us on the

cross. Full forgiveness, full pardon, full assurance that we have been made children

of God. And so we come to pray to our heavenly Father because Jesus has won full access for

us. So church, may we be a people who are humble and earnest and dependent children

of God, who are resolved on practising our righteousness, which has been freely given

to us. Coming to our heavenly Father in prayer, not to earn our righteousness, nor to receive

the praise of men, but in light of all that our Saviour has done for us. Let's come to

Him now in prayer. Gracious Father, thank you for how beautiful and how wonderful and

how glorious the things that you have done for us. Thank you that in the fullness of

your mercy and your love and your compassion for your people, you have rescued us through

the work of your Son. And thank you that He has won full access to you for us. Thank you

that we can come freely to you and that you have not only opened up that way, but here

in this passage, you've taught us so clearly how to come to you in prayer. That we can

pray things that please you Lord, that you want to hear, that you want to answer for

us. So we pray Lord, would you give us confidence to pray to you in light of all that you've

done for us? Would you help us to grasp these words, to put them into practice, to live

as people that belong to you? And as we do so Lord, would you give us joy as we have

intimacy and fellowship with you in prayer? Father, would you help us to see all that

it is that you have forgiven us? And so that Lord, we would forgive others and that that

would be a clear marker that we do belong to you. That we are your people, that you

have renewed our hearts and that you have given us full salvation. Strengthen us Lord,

to love you, to walk more faithfully in our prayer lives, for your glory Lord and for

our good. In Jesus name, Amen.