Open Topic 2023 // Prayer [Matthew 6:7-11] (Dan Pettersen)

And I also pray that you may just prepare our heart

slaughters as Dan opens the scripture and speaks to us as

well. Or that we may be prepared for

what you have to say. So we just pray these things in

Jesus name. Amen.

Awesome. We're in in our month of prayer

and it's cool that we've we've had held here talking about the

Gideons and and God's Word because.

God's word is kind of the primary way that God

communicates to us. I guess that's the primary way

he gets his, his message to us. And so I want to talk a little

bit about the flip side of that this morning because we're in

our month of prayer talking about prayer, which is our

primary way of communicating back, right.

And in any good relationship, right.

Communication needs to go both ways.

Yeah, we all know that, right? And there's a, there's a term

for that, isn't it? When they had that sort of

circular thing, kenosis, you know, it's going both ways.

And and but if you, if you think about it for a minute, if you

had a friend and your friend came to you and they said,

that's a good friend, right. And they came to you and said,

hey, listen, my lawnmower's broken down, can I borrow your

lawnmower? You know, I need, need to mow my

lawns, right. And it's a good friend.

So you'd probably go, yeah, yeah, that's that's fine, Look

after it. But yeah, that's good, right.

So because it's, it's a good friend.

Right. But what if that friend?

Just kept coming back. And they would say, hey, can you

lend me 20 bucks? Hey, can you babysit my kids

this weekend? Hey, can you, can you help me

with this? Can you do this?

Can you do that? Can you do that?

After a while, you'd start sort of thinking about what kind of

friendship is this, you know? And so a few years ago, I became

quite convicted that my prayers to God were kind of that way.

My conversation with God, all my prayers were kind of a shopping

list. Yeah.

Even felt like that, Yeah. So I I I'd be praying and

saying, OK, God, I I need you to help me deal with this person.

You know, I can I if I could get a good parking space on the way

to work this morning, you know, that would be great.

You know? And I, I I don't know how I'm

going to pay this bill. If you could provide some more

money somehow, that'd be good. And all my prayers were kind of

like this big shopping list. All right.

I became kind sort of convicted about that.

So I started studying prayer and just kind of looking a little

bit into prayer. In the Bible.

I just want to share a couple of highlights this morning.

We're going to kind of a shorter session here, but just a couple

of highlights that were really helpful to me studying this out

and hopefully will be helpful to you as well.

And so we're going to be in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Jesus is talking about prayer and we're going to pick this up

part way through, right part way through the conversation.

So Jesus is teaching about prayer.

Matthew chapter 6 and verse #7. Jesus says this.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He says. And when you pray, do not heap

up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, right?

Like like the pagans do. Don't heap up empty phrases like

the the pagans do, for they think that they will be heard

for their many words. Now you see this a lot in

religion, right? It's it's kind of everywhere,

you know, you know go and so it say a few Hail Marys, right?

Or you know the whole the mantra thing, right.

So you have this kind of phrase. And you repeat this phrase and

you if you keep repeating this phrase, then God or the gods are

kind of forced to listen because you kind of keep saying it.

Or you know, we had a friend in in Korea and she went and

visited A Buddhist fortune teller and now pay them a lot of

money. I think it's like 1200 U.S.

dollars to come up with for her a lucky name and she would

change her name to that lucky name.

And because you'd be saying it all the time and people would be

saying it all the time. You know that would you know the

the gods would listen and that would bring her good luck good

luck for her meant a lot of money right And and so you know

that was that was kind of the plan right.

But Jesus says look that that's not the way it works.

OK that that's not how it goes. The phrase there I'll just go

back empty phrases where he says you know don't keep up empty

phrases really interesting phrase.

Some versions of Bible will will translate as empty repetition.

I think you know IV translators as translates as babbling.

Right, babbling it. It's a it's a single Greek word,

but it's a compound word. This is the word beto lagayo,

beto lagayo. So it's it's a compound where

the lagayo part on the end just means to speak, to say

something. The beto part on the front

literally means to stutter or to stammer.

But it's actually grammatically it's called onomatic paya.

Remember onomatic paya? I had to think back.

I was thinking back to high school thinking, what was that

again, Right. Onomato Paya is.

A word that describes a sound. You know, we have a lot of

those, hey, like, you know, beep, buzz, ring, you know, cock

a doodle Doo. You know, we have a whole bunch

of those, right? And that's what this is.

So what Jesus is saying here, he's saying when you, when you

pray, don't don't go batta, batta, batta, batta, batta,

right. That's what he's saying.

And it's kind of like in English we say this, right?

You know, yada yada yada. Yeah.

It's a little bit different in many but you know the same kind

of ideas it sort of repeated like that in a lot of Greek

texts in in in other secular texts.

When they use this word better they'll they'll repeat it

several times like that like yada, yada, yada.

Right. Don't go better, better, better,

better, right. There's probably a lot more into

in that then we've got time to look at this morning.

But let's let's move on. Best #8 says this Do not be like

them, these these people, these Pagans who?

Who use this empty repetition for?

Your father knows what you need before you ask him.

Okay. So God knows what it is that you

need. He knows about the shopping list

before it is before you even tell it to Him, right?

God wants us to come to Him with our requests.

We'll see that in a minute. But the point is that God is

already aware of our needs and so we don't have to use any kind

of clever tricks to try and get his attention.

If I keep saying this or I keep doing this, I keep, you know,

repeating this, so then then God will have to listen, right?

Actually God already knows. So that's that's important,

right as we as we come into this.

So he starts off vest #9, he says pray then like this.

And So what Jesus does now is he lays out a template, kind of

like a boilerplate sort of template idea of to teach us how

to pray now. I don't know if you're like me,

but when I was younger, what we used to do was we used to

memorize this prayer and then we would just say it at certain

times and it kind of was empty repetition, right?

Which is exactly what he just said not to do, right.

And so that's not what we want to do with this, right?

And that was not Jesus intent. What he's kind of giving us a

kind of a framework of how prayer should go.

And like I said, what I want to do is just look at a couple of

things that he said. There's a lot in there.

So we're just going to pull out a couple of main points here.

And they don't want to kind of show you just how kind of some

ways that I tried to personally apply this and it's been really

useful to me. So it might be, you know,

hopefully will be the same for you as well.

So this is how he starts off right.

He says our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, Okay.

So Jesus is kind of balancing out a few different things here.

Right. In this phrase, there's a lot in

this, right? But he's balancing out a few

different things. He he says he, he starts off by

addressing God as Father. Right.

And this was quite new. This is not something that you

see in the Old Testament, so far as I know, right.

And this, this was a very new thing.

And and Jesus does this repeatedly.

When you see him praying, he refers to God as Father.

I can imagine when he did did this, I can just imagine the old

guys. Bristling had this right.

That's not how you, you know, that's not how you address God.

But what he's doing there is he's, he's showing the the, the

nature of the relationship, right.

We have direct access to our heavenly Father like a like a

child has relationship and connection to their father who

can have. So that's how he starts it out,

right. But then he says this hallowed

be your name. And really, really the idea here

is your very being. Is holy.

It. It's really important for us to

understand this concept of holiness because I think we we

sometimes can play this down a little bit.

The Greek word that we usually translate as as holy is the word

hagnos and and it means hagnos agios anyway.

It literally means not earthy right, not earthy, but it it

gives the idea of this is on a whole nother level, right.

It's not like ordinary stuff. It's just on a a whole

different, whole different plane.

It's about a majesty and a purity and a power that is is so

powerful that it's just on another scale, like just like

orders of magnitude different. Making sense.

Yep. And so that's what he's getting,

getting at there. Right.

So. And I I think it's kind of like

the way that I sort of imagined the sun.

Right. So.

We have the sun and and we rely on the sun for warmth and to,

you know, make things grow into into live and stuff.

But if you get too close to it, it will kill you, right.

Because that's very, very powerful, right.

And I think that's the idea of sort of holiness in the way that

ancient people kind of imagined it.

You know, God said to Moses, take your sandals off your feet.

You are on holy ground, right? You know, take this seriously,

right? There's there's there's a,

there's a power and there's a there's a majesty and there's a

purity there that is that is very, very.

Powerful, right? So we have this balance, right?

We have this God that we have a direct relationship with.

He's not a distant God. You know, there was a song in

the 90s, I think a Bette Midler song, and it was, you know, God

is watching us from a distance. It's like, no, no, no, he's not.

He's not a distant God, right? We have this, this connection

with him, but he's also a very, very powerful holy God.

He's on a whole nother level, right?

So we we don't want to take God lightly.

So that's kind of how he how he starts it off, right.

So in practice, right. What does this mean for us in

practice? Okay.

How do we, how can we put this into play?

So this is something that's been helpful to me, right.

So I kind of imagine the sky like how massive the sky is.

So maybe it's like storm clouds or whatever and I and I can kind

of see it from horizon to horizon or the stars.

And you see the Old Testament writers do this a lot, just

looking at the stars and how massive the The thing is.

And then understand that God is bigger than that because that's

his creation. He made that and Romans one

talks about, you know you got to be careful, right.

You can get hooked up in in the worship of these things, you

know that God created anyway and and and we we want to be

worshipping the creator not the creation because he has so much

bigger than his creation. And so when I imagine that if I,

I can sort of picture that in my mind and think, wow, yeah,

that's that's just huge. And God is so much more than

that. So much more powerful than that,

so much greater than that and just sort of, you know the the

the idea that he is the powerful creator of the universe who is

in control of everything, right. The holy God.

Now spend some time thinking about that until you get it

clear in your head. Now that that lot of days, that

might be a one line prayer. You can just say that that's

fine. I can I can do that this

morning, right. We're just spending.

And worship, you know, praising God, looking at, you know in

song and and and and thinking about Jesus and what he did and

and and all of that. And I can, I can just say that

right now. But some days, depending on what

you're going through, this can be tough.

But if you read Habakkuk one, you know or even in Psalm 73

that we just just read right where they're looking around and

going, God, you know, Habaku's going, God, where are you?

Where are you? What's going on here?

Right. So it's really, really important

to try and get in that mode and and stay there until you get it.

Yeah, Yep. So that's kind of the, the first

bit of it. Then he goes to the next bit,

which is this verse #10. Your Kingdom comes, your will be

done on earth as it is in heaven.

OK, so in the Gospels, Jesus talks a lot about the Kingdom of

God, sometimes Jewish people even now a lot.

And and traditionally don't say the name of God out loud to try

and you know, as a sort of a way of trying to be respectful, God

never actually. Says to do that, but you know

that it's. I mean it comes from a good,

good place. They they would just want to be

respectful. So they don't say that loud.

So Matthew's Gospel, he's writing to the primarily a

Jewish audience and so he says Kingdom of heaven because the

Kingdom of heaven. So you see this Kingdom of

heaven, Kingdom of God thing in the Gospels, Jesus will often

say things like you know people say, you know look after #1 but

in God's Kingdom, right in God's economy, in God's way of doing

things. That's not how it works.

Whoever wants them to be a leader needs to be a servant,

right? And he would say these things a

lot, he'd say. And the Kingdom of God is like

this, right? The Kingdom of heaven is like

this. And he would kind of explain how

things are supposed to work the way that God wants them to work.

So what we're praying for is that we would do things the way

that God wants them done. Yeah.

Really interesting in in Ezekiel.

You know the. Israel, they're they're facing

this kind of imminent invasion from their enemies.

And so there's this kind of question of God, where are you,

You know, what's what's going on here?

And and Ezekiel is addressing that.

A lot of God is addressing that through Ezekiel.

And one at one point God says look at, you know, it's almost,

if you imagine a city and the city has a big defensive wall

around it and the defensive wall has, you know, has a breach in

it. Someone's someone's punched

through the punched a hole in the wall.

And God says, I look for somebody to stand in the gap,

and I couldn't find anyone. And So what he's saying is,

look, it's not my will that it goes down this way, but you guys

have choices to make. I've let you make choices.

And these are the choices that you've been making.

And this is how it's playing out in the New Testament.

It says God's not willing that any should perish, but it all

should come to the knowledge of God.

Right. That's as well.

It's not. It's not God's not willing that

anyone should perish, right. But we have options here, right?

We we have choices. God has in his sovereignty has,

has given us, you know, the ability to make these choices.

And so we need to be praying for God's will to be done right.

And it's easy to kind of point the finger at everybody else,

you know. Well, these people are just not

doing what you, you know, but us.

We need to be praying personally, right?

That we would do what God wants done.

Right. And the ultimate example of this

is Jesus in in Garden of Gethsemane.

Right. And he praised this father, if

you're willing, right, he's about to face crucifixion and

all the torture and all the pain that goes with that.

And and not only that you know there's more than that as well.

You know being turned on by his friends and and and and more and

more but but this is his prayer, right?

Father, if you're willing remove this cup from me, right.

In other words, if, if, if this is what you if it's what you

want, can can I not go through this?

Right. If there's another way to do

this can we can I not have to face this nevertheless not my

will but yours be done That's that's that's what he's kind of

getting at here right that we would we would pray like this

that we would go okay God, your will be done on on earth as it

is in heaven. Okay in practice.

What does that look like? For me it looks like this.

It's it's it's saying this, you'll deal before my deal,

you'll deal before my deal, whatever that might include.

Again, some days this will be a quick one line prayer.

Some days this will be really, really tough depending on what

it is you're facing, what it is you're going through.

You know, if you're facing an illness or the death of a loved

one or or you know something that you know it's going to be

tough, you're going to go through.

It's really it's really tough to pray this.

I always, you know, I'm kind of a standard that Jesus, you know,

was able to pray that prayer looking at what he was, what he

was about to face, you know. So again try and sit here until

you get this. But practical reality here is

you may not get there in one session.

It may take a long time. You may need to keep coming back

to this. But your deal before my deal,

whatever that might include, and then we'll.

We'll finish with this one this morning.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread.

This is kind of where the shopping list comes in.

Yeah we've just written verse #8 that God already knows what it

is we need. He already knows.

So if he already knows, then what's the point of asking him

And and I think it's because if we've been through this process.

If we go through this, this idea of we get a fairly clear picture

in our heads of the power and the holiness of God and who God

is and who we are, you know, in comparison and and and we have

that that kind of reasonably straightened our head as much as

as much as we can do it. And then, if we've surrendered

to the idea of your deal before my deal, whatever that entails,

you know, all of that implies it will greatly change our

perspective. And and and on these urgent

things on their shopping list, even when they are urgent or

important, it changes the way we look at them and we we see them.

So I would encourage you to put this into practice this week if

you can as as we we finishing up our month of prayer.

So the the first one there is acknowledge and understand the

power, glory and holiness of God.

And like I say, you may be able to that may be.

An easy thing and it may not be depending on what what's going

on in your life at the time, right?

But for that one try and sit there and and stay there till

you get it. The second thing is your deal

will form my deal And all that implies that is a hard prayer to

pray and you you know and it's it is you know it's a fearful

thing to fall into the hands of a living God.

You know you you you don't really know what that's

happening you up to. So there's a huge amount of

trust, isn't there, in in handing yourself over to God.

With that prayer. Right.

But but this was the the boilerplate that Jesus laid out

for us. Yep.

Trying to get to that. And and the third one, tell him

what you need. Tell him what you need.

Yeah. Let him know.

He wants to know. He wants to hear it.

Even though he already knows. I think acknowledging that we

need him. You know there's a there's a

trust thing there as well and and it's it's it helps us.

It helps us to understand, you know, we're reliant on God.

In the young adults study, we'd be going through judges and one

of the things we we've seen was Gideon, you know he started off

really good. He would he would pray all the

time. But as as time went on, you

know, after he won that big battle, you know, we were

talking about this morning then he stopped praying.

You just see that he just starts making decisions.

Yeah, I got this. This is fine.

I got this right. And God wants us to trust him.

We we need that connection. And when he when he stopped

praying. He just kind of isolated himself

a little bit, stopped taking advice, stopped you know,

hanging out with people who would have, would have given him

good advice and things just kind of spiraled on him, right.

So tell him what you need. It is important, right?

God does want to hear it. And even the little things

sometimes I feel guilty about, you know, those those prayers

about, hey, God, I could really do with the car park right now,

right? But God wants to hear, right?

God knows what we need. But if we've if we've done the

1st 2 steps, then we get a lot more.

Focused about, yeah, I don't really need that.

You know I do. You know, you just get a lot

more focused on what it is that that you need.

So I I would really encourage you to to kind of go through

these steps today and this week coming, particularly #2 if you

get sending that number two, your deal before my deal if if

we can, if we can really be surrendered in that sense it, it

will change you, right? It will change you.

It will it'll be scary. It'll be a roller coaster.

But it'll be amazing. Yeah.

And it will change us corporately you know if if we're

all on that page. So hopefully that's helpful.

Let's let's pray now and and kind of a little bit soon to go

through those steps and just kind of corporately go to God

with this Father. We we do come very humbly before

you Lord and we we understand that you are the creator of

everything. And you know I just think of all

those things in the book of Job where you're asking Job do you

understand this do you understand how this works.

Do you understand how the you know the gravitational fields in

the play aids works. Do you understand all these

things that because you created it all and you created us and

you understand how we work and you love us because we are your

creation. Lord, it's hard for us to, you

know, our minds don't comprehend what Your Holiness is like.

Like how how big and how powerful and how you are.

But, Lord, we we just really want to concentrate on that this

morning. We want to thank you for it.

Lord, we do. We do want to be surrendered,

but we do want to be able to pray you will be done.

That's a scary thing. A little bit.

We know that you you're immutable.

So you you have our best interests at heart.

Because it's it's what's best for you is what's best for us.

But also your means of doing things, the method you do it is

also the best way of doing it. And that's really hard for us to

comprehend sometimes. And you know, sometimes life is

is really tough and sometimes, yeah, there's just these curve

balls that throw us. And but Lord, thank you for the

understanding of your, your presence.

And Lord, thank you for the example of Christ that you know,

he was able to pray this before going through what he went

through, you know, which is kind of unimaginable, unimaginable.

Even when we read that story, it's kind of hard to had to

comprehend. And he was able to pray this.

And Lord, we just want to be people that would also pray that

to you. Lord, Lord, we do have things we

need. We all as individuals have

things we need. But Lord, as a church family, we

just pray for for unity, Lord, just for a singleness of purpose

and focus, which is to to love you and to love other people and

share your love with those people because we love them.

And, you know, there are lots of practical things that we need.

But, Lord, we know that you understand that.

And we thank you that you do. And we thank you that we have

this connection to you as our Heavenly Father.

Lord, thank you for being our God.

Thank you for loving us the way you do.

And thank you for the ultimate way that you showed that when

your Son Jesus Christ went to the war for us, loved us to the

uttermost to the end. We thank you for that this

morning. Thank you in Jesus thing.

Amen.