Matthew 6:5-14 – Prayer

Morning.

I hope you're well.

I am my name's Duncan.

I'm one of the leaders here at City Church.

If you don't know me, if you do know me, uh good to uh be with you.

Uh, can I encourage you as we come to the passage that's just been read, uh, that you keep it open as we walk through that?

Um, we would see and hear from God Himself uh through his word.

So can I encourage you to keep that open either on in a Bible or on an app on your phone or device?

That would be great.

But as we come, let me pray for us uh together.

Loving Father, I thank you so much.

I thank you that we, as your people, get to come before you, a holy God, our holy God.

I thank you that you invite us to approach you.

And I pray now, as we come to your word, as we consider your words, the words of your son, that we would hear what you have to say, that you would move in power and authority through the work of your spirit within us, that we might more and more desire and long to seek after you, to find ourselves going and running toward you time and time again as we delight in you.

In your name I pray.

Amen.

I want you to imagine that you are sat in your home and you hear a knock at the door.

You get up to see who it is, and suddenly, as you open the door, before you is someone that you've always admired.

Maybe it's a celebrity, a singer, an actor, actress, sports star, a writer, it could be anyone, but just someone that you've always admired, someone that you've always longed to meet.

And as they stand there, they say that they just are there because they they kind of want to just hang out with you.

They just want to spend time with you.

You will be overjoyed.

You would be like, this is great.

I've longed for this moment, this time to be able to speak and get to know this person.

I've seen them from afar, but I've never gotten to actually engage with them.

And you get to share things with them.

You you would love to just speak with them for many, many hours.

You would long to have more time with them.

Now imagine that the door goes again and you go to the door, but this time it's just a random person.

You don't know them, you've never seen them before in your life, you don't have a clue who they are.

And when you look at them, they don't really seem like much.

It's not like there's anything about them that seems like, oh, I want to be with this person, and they say they're here to hang out with you, to spend time with you.

First, obviously, you think it's weird.

Why are you here?

But as you're stood there at your door, you're you're more thinking, man, I don't really want to be here.

I don't want to speak to this randomer.

Actually, they're actually getting in the way of other things, the things that I was doing, the things that I want to do.

What is true of these two situations is that the view of the person matters.

How you view that person who is stood before you matters.

It matters how you respond, it matters how you think about it, it matters how much time you want to speak with them.

And so often when we come to prayer, we neglect to appreciate the person we come before.

We neglect to understand what we're being invited into.

We so often miss it, and for many Christians, for many churches, prayer is so often neglected.

In our texts, this is what Jesus is seeking to teach us: our posture in prayer and the way of prayer.

So let us dive in, let us consider our posture in prayer.

And he begins in opening verses to address this.

So read with me from verse 5.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray, standing on this in the synagogues and on the street corners, to be seen by others.

Truly I tell you, they have received the reward in full.

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

Then your father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the Gentiles, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

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

I know for many of us we struggle with prayer.

It can be easy as Christians to just forget the privilege of what it is to be able to approach God Himself.

It can feel more like something that we just have to tick off.

It can feel like a drag at times.

It can feel like, oh great, we're praying again.

Do we really have to?

I feel pretty tired at this point.

Do we have to pray?

So often for us, we neglect to consider the posture when we come to him.

Do you consider how you actually come before the Lord?

How you view your father as you come.

What motivates you toward praying?

Jesus here exposing two ways in the time that he was in, where people were treating prayer.

There's two distinct groups that we just read in these opening verses.

There's the hypocrite and there's the babblers, the gentiles.

The hypocrites, as Jesus states, are those who love to be seen.

That those who who are not coming to prayer with a deep longing to just be with their heavenly father, but rather a longing to be recognized, to be seen as good and holy before others.

The risk here is we read this and believe that Jesus is calling us not to pray with others.

Maybe for some of us that might be something we hope Jesus is saying.

You know what?

It would be great if he's saying, I don't have to pray with other Christians.

And the text, if you read the text, it would be easy to maybe think that.

Look what he says.

He says, When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your father who is unseen.

Surely we should just end Monday night prayers.

We shouldn't pray in our community groups.

We shouldn't pray if we meet with another believer, another Christian in the church.

Just do it on your own.

Jesus clearly is not speaking against praying with others.

The Lord's prayer itself is plural.

Our Father.

You don't have to look far to see many examples of Jesus himself praying with others or the call to Christians to pray together.

No, Jesus is going after the motive of these hypocrites.

He's going after their hearts.

Jesus is exposing the reality of genuine faith being revealed in private devotion.

That if you truly love and know your father, you will delight in being with him without anyone else knowing, without anyone else around.

That the motive to come to him is not driven because there are others.

No, you see the posture of prayer is one in which the father is the focus, and being able to come before him in itself is enough.

You don't need anyone else.

It isn't about being recognized by others, it's about enjoying him, it is about coming before him.

So, brother, sister in Christ, do you seek your father in moments throughout your day when no one else is around and no one else will know about it?

Do you find the majority of your prayer life is when you are with other Christians?

When praying with others is your focus is not on your father, your loving father, but actually upon those around you.

Prayer is not something to be used to build yourself up in the view of those around you.

Rather, genuine prayer is to want to just bring glory and honor to God.

Genuine prayer is building up brothers and sisters in Christ, praying for their needs, praying that they would know Him.

Prayer is when you seek Him, when you bring what you're going through before Him.

Prayer is being able to be with your Father and finding that your heart is captured by Him.

The second warning here is for us not to be like the Babblers, like the Gentiles.

Verse 7: When you pray, do not keep on babbling like the Gentiles, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.

Unlike the hypocrites who desire to be seen, the Babblers focus on being heard.

These are people who consider that their words are what matter.

That if I say these words, I will be heard.

The view of God is as if He is like a supernatural vending machine.

You put in the right prayers, the right amount, and out comes what you want.

Jesus is warning us against going through the motions in our prayer life, that we approach it as if it's just something we do.

That even the Lord's prayer can be used in utterly wrong ways.

That if I say these words, I'll be okay.

If I say these words, God will do what I want.

The focus, you see, once again, is not on the Father, but it's upon self.

It is a view of prayer that is not relational, but purely mechanical.

The error we could take from this is that Jesus is giving us grounds to only pray short prayers.

Some of you, I know you're joking away, haha, not long prayers.

I get it, I'm secure in Christ.

But here for some of us, we might be like, oh, maybe Jesus is just telling us short prayers.

Now there's nothing wrong with short prayers.

There is nothing wrong.

But that once again isn't the heart of what Jesus is saying.

It isn't about long or short prayers, but it is about the realization of the focus of our prayers.

The focus is set upon the one who knows you.

The focus is the one who you come before.

He does not need your prayers, and yet he invites you to come to him in prayer.

Look at verse 8.

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

The tragedy here is when we pray in this way, we are stripping away the relationship to the Father.

That our view of prayer is transactional rather than relational.

Can you imagine as Jesus, the Son of God, declaring these words, thinking, do you really understand what I'm saying?

He he longs for us to see this, he longs for us to realize as the Son of God, the one who has lived and been in perfect relationship with the Father eternally, the one who grasps the pure joy of being able to come before the Father, the one who is eternally in his earthly life, sorry, has has constantly been withdrawing to spend time with the Father, that he would withdraw for hours just to be with his father.

Jesus is desiring us to understand what we are being invited into.

Jesus is calling out to those who belong to him, saying to you, you've been brought into the most all-inspiring, beautiful, glorious, satisfying relationship that has eternally existed.

A relationship that does not and will not fail.

And we can so often come with a posture to pray, with hearts that don't grasp the depth of what we are about to do, what we are being brought into.

We rock up as though God should just be impressed that we're there.

I'm here, isn't that great?

Don't you see?

As we see the Father, we should understand the glory and the wonder of what we are getting to do, what we are getting to experience as we come to Him.

When was the last time you were just struck by what you were able to do as you prayed?

When was the last time you approached the Father, just with the kind of giddy excitement of awe that you get to speak and come to him?

In awe of him.

Why we so often struggle to pray is our posture in how we come.

We miss the glory that we are being invited into.

That the same Lord God who spoke all into being, who sustains all, who spoke the universe into being, calls us and says, Come.

The same Lord God who performed incredible miracles throughout the Old Testament, who rescued his people time and time again, says to us, Come.

The same Lord God that when Moses in the Old Testament went to the tent of meeting to speak with him, the whole camp, the whole Israelite camp would come to the entrance of their tents and they would watch Moses walk to the tent of meeting, and they were worshiping.

They were like, He's going to speak with the Lord God, the creator God.

That's what he's getting to do.

And the same Lord God calls to us and says, Come, the same Lord God, who Isaiah in a vision saw and got a glimpse upon him.

And as he stood before him, he cried out on his knees, Woe to me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

The same Lord God says to you, Come, approach, come to me.

Do you hear?

Do you realize how much we take it for granted?

What we are being invited into, the wonder of it.

As Jesus Himself calls us to pray, he first wants us to have a right heart, to realize the focus is not on us, but upon the one we come before.

Jesus also desires to reveal the way of prayer.

So look with me at verse nine.

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.

It would be easy to hear, to make this into a mechanical prayer.

I'm guessing for many of us, we we've said the Lord's Prayer in in many different contexts, in many different places over our lives.

And there are times, I'm sure, where we've just said it.

We've not really thought about what we are saying.

It's not been a prayer that we have actually owned.

And what Jesus is doing here is giving us direction to understand the ways in which we can and should approach the Father.

There are four areas I want to highlight as we walk through the Lord's Prayer.

Pray prayers of worship, pray for his rule, pray for provision, and pray for direction.

Pray prayers of worship.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Our prayers should be worshipful.

The opening two words of this prayer should be mind-blowing.

Our Father, that we can claim God, the Creator God, to be our Father.

That we could even utter those words is astonishing.

That Jesus is inviting us to approach him in this way.

The desire to hallow his name is a prayer that we might more and more know God to be who he is, that others might know him to be who he is.

It is a prayer that we would see him more clearly, deserving honor, deserving esteem, reverence, that he will be in our lives taking the place of ultimate value and worth, that he will be our treasure, the one we love.

And as we approach our Father, we cannot but long for him to be honored and glorified.

The more we realize the beauty and glory, the more we will long for this prayer, the more we will delight in just worshiping him in prayer.

That it's not just about bringing what we need, but it's about worship.

It's about knowing the one who is truly glorious and beautiful.

The implication is clear.

Are your prayers sprinkled with worship toward your heavenly father?

Do you enjoy coming before him and just declaring his glory?

When we consider God the Father, for many of us struggle to see him in the right way.

You can look to your father as though he just puts up with you rather than delight over you.

And hear me, this is something we all struggle with so often, I think.

Is we just feel that he just looks and he just puts up with us.

All your prayers, pray, looking to your father through that sort of lens, a lens of your brokenness and your shame.

Rather than looking to him, looking to your father with the unwavering love for his son Jesus Christ.

That just as he delights in his son, so he does in you, as you place your faith in Christ Jesus.

The more we grasp the depth and the height and the breadth of his love, the more instinctively we will come and just delight in him to bring praise and glory to him, to long for that to be true of those around us.

Longing for him to be honored.

Let our prayers be filled with worship toward our loving Father.

Pray for his rule.

Verse 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done.

On earth as it is in heaven.

So often in the Christian life, it is painted as if our life is some sort of restricted life.

That we are being restricted from truly what will make us happy.

Christians can act at times as though, yeah, we have salvation, but that's really for our future.

That our lives now are more lives that are lived of don't do that, don't do this, because God says no.

I think that is an utter shame when we think that way, when we view our fate like that, when we view our loving father in that way, we completely miss it.

The creator God from the beginning of creation has always been about life, has always been about human flourishing.

In Psalm 16, King David cries out and he says these words The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot, the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Do you hear these words ring out?

David, a man who's known as a man after God's own heart.

He knows God, he knows his heavenly father, and he knows that the Lord ultimately loves him.

He realizes that the Lord is for him, that the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

David doesn't look upon the rule of the Lord God in his life as restricting, but rather life-giving.

Because he knows his loving Heavenly Father.

He knows the sort of father he has.

Brother, sister, when you know how much your father loves you, you would not doubt his rule over you.

You wouldn't question whether it is for your good or not.

You would long for it, you would desire it more and more in your life.

You would long for that to be the case.

That he, the one who knit you together in your mother's womb, knows every hair upon your head.

Unless you're Ben.

He's bold, he doesn't have any hairs, but you know what I mean.

Who is the one who has always been for you, does not call you toward a life that diminishes and takes you away from what is good, but calls you to a life that is exactly what you've been created for.

To resist this is to resist experience life itself, to not want to pray this prayer is to say, I don't want to know life, what true life is.

When we pray for his kingdom to come, we pray for both his rule now, but also for his eternal kingdom, for Jesus to return, to bring his kingdom.

That we would long for his kingdom.

We should desperately long to see the day when the deadness we feel and experience is completely satisfied when Christ returns, when we are restored fully and completely.

We need to be people who cry out for the rightful, loving, just perfect rule of our Father.

In a world that so desperately needs it, there is so much brokenness around us that we should be on our knees praying for those situations that God's rule would be made known in them.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Pray for provision.

Verse 11 Give us this day our daily bread.

When I look at my life, I see the gracious hand of my father providing time and time again.

Growing up, we didn't have much, we weren't rich, yet we experience time and time again God's provision for us.

Time and time again, our father answering prayers, meeting our needs.

Whether through an envelope coming through the door with money we needed, whether it was when the microwave broke and we get a phone from the electric company saying someone's bought a microwave for us.

In my marriage, in our marriage, myself and Becky has could share situation after situation of God's kindness and how how much He has provided for us.

Time and time again, how constantly we found ourselves in situations where we didn't know what would happen.

And we prayed and he answered.

This isn't me saying that there is no pain or suffering in this life.

That's not what I am saying.

But do not believe your father will not provide.

One of the predominant lies around us in our culture, and sadly in the church, is that your life is down to you and what you do.

It's all about you making something of yourself.

It's that you earn it.

Now, in part, I'm I'm for working hard, I'm for taking responsibility, so don't hear me wrong.

We do have responsibility, we should work hard.

Yet when we pray and give thanks for food later on at lunchtime, when you give thanks for the food before you, do you truly believe it is only there because of your loving father has provided it?

Because too often I think in my own life and in others that when we see that food, we think we made it happen.

We went to the shop, we worked for the money, we got the food.

But that is rubbish.

It has been an act of the father's care toward you that you get to eat this lunchtime, that you get to enjoy that food, these clothes, the house you live in, the car you drive.

You did not earn it because even in the ability to work, consider that the circumstances of your life that has led you to this point, you did not map that out.

The opportunities that determined you got to be there.

You weren't in your mother's womb thinking, right, let me just pop down what I want, what I think my life should turn out like, what family I should be born into.

You didn't pop out and think, yes, this is the family I chose, this is the location I want to be born, these are the abilities and gifts I wanted.

No, that sounds crazy, and we all know that sounds crazy.

Your father is the one who has provided.

That every good gift comes from him.

Self-reliance is an utter delusion because the truth is we are all reliant upon our next breath.

You cannot choose or control that, you don't make that happen.

Yet we know the one who does.

That Jesus calls us to come to our Father, to praise him for his provision, to ask for his provision in all practical gifts that we receive.

The beauty of our Father's kindness towards us, that he delights to provide for his children, that you would know that all the good things you have been given practically are good gifts from him.

In the next chapter, Jesus says, if you then who are evil, sinful, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

When I look at Ezra, my son, I love to give him good things, things that he will enjoy, things that will be for his good.

When I feed him and he gets really excited about the food before him, myself and Becky love that.

And as you can tell, he loves it because he's fat.

But becoming a father has helped me see and and a greater appreciation for the love of our Heavenly Father.

Because his love for me and for his children does not compare for my love for Ezra, and I would die for my son.

But when we look, we see a father who loves to answer the prayers of need from his children.

Not as children who just want to use him, but children who love him and delight in him, who come running and saying, Oh Lord, loving Father, help us.

We need you to answer, we need you to move and work and provide.

As we do not just shape our lives without our relationship in Him.

But His provision does not just stop in these practical ways, He has met our greatest need.

Look at verse 12 forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Consider Jesus saying these words, because he knows the road that he is on, he knows what he is headed towards.

He knows that the forgiveness he is speaking of here is going to be fully paid by him, that he will settle the debts, our sin, our brokenness.

That this is an incredible invitation that we would know and experience the freedom from our sin, that we would experience our guilt and our shame being dealt with, that this is what the Father wants for us.

The belief that God the Father is unloving is such a lie.

When Adam and Eve, the first people he created, chose to reject him, chose to reject his loving rule, chose to reject him as their creator, they knew the consequences, they were not unaware, he told them, they knew it meant death, and yet they thought they knew better than God, better than their father.

Consider that.

When you think of God the Father as unfair, unloving, mean, harsh, God rightly at that point, in that moment, could have been like, That's it, I am done with humanity.

He would have been right, just and good and loving to do that.

The rejection of him as the one that they were created for and by.

Yet God is gracious.

God is not like you and me.

Instead, his plan was a plan of redemption to save people for himself, to bring them to him, to show forgiveness to those who are unforgivable.

And that is astonishing.

You can earn the forgiveness from the Father you so desperately need.

None is good enough.

All have rejected him, all deserve judgment.

And the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus Christ stands in our place.

Whether this is the first time or the millionth time you've heard that, we cannot lose the awe of that.

That Jesus would pay our debt in full, the debt of those who did not love him or want him, but rejected him and hated him.

Every single Christian stands upon Christ's finished work.

Where would we be without him?

How could we ever think we deserved his death for us?

How could we ever think we deserved his life for us?

The one who knew no sin, the one who sustains all life, the eternal one, made it possible so that we might be forgiven, to be brought back to the one we've been created for, God Himself, our Father, that we might know and enjoy Him.

When we consider the forgiveness we have received, that is transforming.

And Jesus, as he concludes the prayer, wants us to really realize that those who are forgiven forgive.

Look at verse 14.

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.

How can we approach the Father longing, longing for Him and His forgiveness toward us while we seek to hold on to bitterness toward others, hate towards others?

How can we be people who think it's okay not to forgive when we have been forgiven so much?

This is not Jesus stating that salvation is earned by what we do, but rather salvation shapes who you are.

That if you are a forgiven child of God, you will be someone who forgives.

This is so challenging, and I know it, I feel it, my own self, I get it.

I can suck at forgiving.

I really am ban at it at times.

I can be someone who just holds on to my anger and resentment.

I can justify why I rightly should feel these things and not let it go.

I believe that they deserve to feel what they've done to me.

There are times often when when I hold on to it, and in my mind, I know that there's gonna come a point when I need to forgive them.

I know it.

And yet I'm just like, no, a little bit longer.

I'm not ready.

How evil is that?

How wicked is that, as someone who has been forgiven?

What if my father treated me the same way?

What if he gazed upon my sin and saw what was seen and unseen and held it against me as I hold sin against others?

What if he treated me how I treat others?

What we are doing when we believe that is we think we're okay not to forgive.

We completely miss it.

We completely diminish Jesus' work for us.

That the eternal one would come and lower himself as a man, that he would come to allow those he created to mock him, to reject him, to beat him to a pulp, to drive nails through his hands and his feet, to hang for hours and watch his blood drip from his body, to have those he had loved just abandon him in his darkest hour, for us to turn to him and long for his forgiveness while we are holding on to bitterness towards others.

There is not anything in this world that we can go through that will compare to what our sin and rejection put Christ through.

Now I know, I know as I speak these words, for some of us, these are not small momentary things.

It's not that, oh, they left the fridge door open.

Oh, why did they do that?

I'm not forgiving them.

No, sadly for some of us, the wounds that have been caused are deep by others.

There are some things that have been unbearable for us to face.

But please hear the words of your savior.

Hear these words and know that freedom is found in forgiveness, that by the Spirit within you, by His life within you, you will be able to forgive even the most horrendous things that have been done against you.

I do not speak as someone who does not understand carrying deep hurts and wounds.

I appreciate it.

I know what it is to carry deep wounds caused by others.

I'm not comparing my experience, but brother, sister in Christ, allow the truth of the gospel to empower you to be able to forgive and know the freedom found in Christ.

On a side note, if this is you, if this is something you know as I've said these things, that that is me, I carry deep wounds.

Please would you go to a brother sister in Christ who you know, who you know will love and care for you and help you.

Because deep wounds are complex things to deal with, that they would help you on the complexities of your heart to deal with these things.

As Christians, we will both know our forgiveness and continually come to our Father when we fail, knowing that He is right and just to forgive all who come before Him.

The Christian life is a life of faith and repentance.

Finally, pray for direction, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

As Jesus concludes this prayer, he knows that whom that all who know him, all who are saved, will face temptation.

He knows that our salvation doesn't just beam us up.

This life is not free from sin and brokenness, but rather we are growing into our true selves, into our new identity rooted in Christ Jesus.

That as we do, we need God's power to work.

We need to seek our Father to help us.

We need to be children calling out to Him to direct and protect us.

Children who pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ, that our Father would direct and protect them.

When we begin to flatten creation itself to merely physical realities, we risk falling into sin.

In our lives, brothers, sister in Christ, we need to be aware that we are at war.

Ephesians 6 says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Brother, sister, the devil wants to devour you.

That is the language that the Bible uses.

That is the image we have.

That He wants to blind us to spiritual realities.

He wants to blind and numb us away from our Father, away from seeking and longing to be with him.

He wants you to just go through life focused on the momentary, to live for what is now, to experience one thing after another.

How desperately we need to be on our knees for ourselves, for one another, seeking our Father to direct and protect.

Protect us by the power of his spirit, resting in his sovereign care, knowing these are prayers he delights to answer.

He wants us to come and call to him in these ways.

The Christian life is the life of prayerful dependence upon God the Father to lead us home.

As I conclude, I just want, I long for my own life for you, to long to come toward him, to recognize the invitation we've been invited into, to want our hearts to be met by our Father, to know how important it is to come to Him.

My longing is that we might, in part, even just through this short time, begin to get a glimpse at the wonder and the awe of what he desires for us as we pray to him, as we seek him, to be able to be with our Father, to experience Him, to live lives that are in communion with the one we've been created for.

A hunger that we might want a hunger and a desire in our day, in our time, as people of the risen King, as children crying out to him to see him move and work.

I pray that as David said these words, that this would be our heart.

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

Amen.

Let me pray for us.

Loving Father, I pray, would you help each one of us to see what a joy, what a privilege, what an honor it is that we can enter in before you, that we can experience and know your beauty and your glory as you minister to us by your spirit when we come before you.

I pray that we would be challenged and moved as your people, as city church, to be a people of prayer, that we would not depend on ourselves, but we would desperately rely upon you, the giver of every good gift, the one who is directing and moving us toward yourself.

Help us, I pray.

Help us to embrace what it is to be your children.

Help us to reflect Christ more and more as we long to come before you.