February 15, 2026: Prayer, a Family Affair, Pt. 2 - Matthew 6:9

Our Spring series on the Lord's Prayer is part of a multi year

project in the spring to preach through basics for the

fundamentals of the Christian faith has been done for

centuries and preparing people for baptism and for joining the

church. And the main triangle that you'd

find in many of these early documents has to do with the

Apostles Creed, the 10 commandments, and the Lord's

Prayer, all of which is coming from the Bible and training,

onboarding new Christians for their participation in the

community of faith. Ji Packer says that the the

creed is teaching us what to believe, the commandments how to

behave, and the Lord's Prayer how to commune with God.

So we're learning from the very basic outset of our life

together and Christianity, how to believe, how to behave, and

how to commune. Last week we looked very

carefully at the term Father as our Lord teaches us to pray, Our

Father who art in heaven, What does that word mean?

And we learned that within that word, there's a whole theology

of adoption embedded in that term.

Father sin makes us children of the devil, the Bible says, but

God in the gospel makes us his children through adoption.

Packer helps us here, too, with this quote.

Adoption is the highest privilege of the gospel.

The traitor is forgiven, brought in for supper, and given the

family name. To be right with God the judges

a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father

is greater. And we learned last week that

this adoption is a Trinitarian mission which makes prayer a

family affair. The only way we can address God

as Father is through the work of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,

who is the agent of our adoption.

His work is applied and empowered by means of the Holy

Spirit, who is called the Spirit of Sonship.

It is a Spirit who animates our prayers, helps us to pray and

even praise for us. Thus, prayer is a family affair

addressed to the Father in the name of the Son by the Holy

Spirit. Today I'm just looking at the

Word hour. Yeah, you heard that right.

We got a whole another sermon on just one more word, very

important word, and which makes this sermon entitled Prayer is a

Family Affair Part 2. For with that word hour we are

asked to focus on and another aspect to the familial nature of

our relationships. You see, we desperately need

family. We desperately need family.

And as we look out, you know, over the world and we see the

ongoing breakdown of the family with more and more children

growing up without stable homes. And as we look out and see a

culture of radical individualism, hyper

individualism in times of desperate and epidemic

loneliness, what are we to do? What are we to do?

Zuckerberg and Musk thinks that the companion bots will solve

our problems. I think that's too small.

What are we to do? How can we go on like this?

We desperately need a family. So as we focus on this little

word, this little pronoun, we see that it changes everything.

For we pray our Father and that little word our sets us within

the family, not only within the Trinitarian family, Father, Son

and Holy Spirit, but now we're talking about the family of the

Church. So we are recognized.

We recognize that we are not only adopted as individuals, but

because of our adoption we are now placed in a new adoptive

family, the Church, which makes again prayer a family affair.

Now we pray as brothers and sisters in Christ with this

little word our we join hands and pray as a collective of

adopted children. God is our father.

We have these brothers and sisters in Christ and many have

seen that the Bible seems to teach and other and very

important theologians have also affirmed that the church is our

mother, That we don't just have sort of a flat relationship

between between our siblings in the faith, but there is actually

authority and nurture and care and protection that we can think

of the church as our mother. John Calvin says this.

I shall start then with the Church, into whose bosom God is

pleased to gather his sons and daughters, not only that they

may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are

infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her

motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of

faith. So that for those to whom he is

Father, the Church may also be mother, following St.

Cyprian who said you cannot have God for your father unless you

have the church for your mother. And as Paul also testifies when

he teaches that we are the children of the new and heavenly

Jerusalem, see Galatians 426 where he literally says she is

our mother. So prayer is a family affair our

places us within this familial context.

I think it's a hard thing to learn and to follow.

I remember one of the most jolting aspects about being a

newlywed was to transition in my way of speaking from my and mine

to our and ours as we brought all of our money and our

vehicles into common. I had to stop saying my house to

Deidre or my car to Deidre. It is now our, not mine.

I have to think of her in reference to everything.

And if you're living in a culture of radical individualism

where we can kind of think of our faith as just between me and

God, it can be very, very hard to think of our faith in

reference to the community of faith.

Indeed, it can be tempting to have a very negative attitude

toward the church with her scandals and heresies and

problems. But the fact is, if we have

Jesus eyes towards this lady, we must admit she is a grand lady,

a great queen, purchased at enormous cost in redemption.

He gave his own life for her. So I am passionate about having

the privilege of kindling in US. Yes, a heart and a love for our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but also a passionate love for

His bride, the Church, our mother.

And it's my privilege to bring some of that for you to this

morning as we as we look at these texts together and

consider our relationships together in the local church as

being stronger than biological connections because of the great

work of our Lord. Now our text this morning is

technically Matthew 69 and only one word within that text, which

is our. I think you can hold that in

your minds well enough that I would actually like you to turn

your Bibles to the book of Ephesians because I'm going to

show, hopefully, how embedded in that word hour is this theology

of family, mostly leaning on some sections of Ephesians,

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 4.

If you don't have your Bible, that's OK, you can listen.

Or if you want to dig out one of the Bibles underneath your

chair, you can do that too, no problem.

Our first point this morning is that this adoption, this

adoption in the gospel means that we receive a new family.

Adoption means not only new parents, but a new family.

Last week we looked carefully and I'm going to read again this

theology of adoption out of Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

If you're with me and you would like to read it with me, I'm

beginning in verse 3. Ephesians one beginning in verse

3, look at all the familial terms, the terms of adoption,

the Trinitarian aspect of this passage.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has

blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the

heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the

foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless

before him in love. He he predestined us for

adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according

to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace

with which he has blessed us in the beloved Paul will expand

this household of faith idea in chapter 2.

So if you can flip over to chapter 2 beginning in verse 17.

That's why you heard read this morning Ephesians 2 beginning

verse 17. I'm reading through verse 22 and

he that is Jesus came and preached peace to you who are

far off, and peace to those who are near.

For through Him we have access in one spirit to the Father.

Again, notice how Trinitarian this is verse 19.

So then you y'all are no longer strangers and aliens, but you

are fellow citizens with the Saints and members of the

household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and

prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the

cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together

grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place

for God by the Spirit. Wow, wow.

This is how God talks about us, about his adoptive family, about

the church. And we see that we are brought

into a family and now we have siblings and adoptive parents

and we're adoptive children, and we have aunties and uncles and

nieces and nephews with bonds of kinship that are even, as I

said, greater than our biological kinship bonds.

Paul in First Timothy says this again, talking about the church.

In church, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as

you would a father. Younger men as brothers, older

women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity.

Do we feel this? Do we sense this?

Do we understand this? Adoption means we're part of a

brand new family. And with this, next, the

extension of this, a new family means that we have privileges

and responsibilities. We have privileges and

responsibilities on the privileges side.

We have belonging and care on the on the obligation sides.

We have all kinds of duties that Paul will mention in Holy

Scripture, the way that we take care of one another.

And it's interesting, in our modern moment, we really want

the belonging part, but we're not that interested in the

obligations part, are we? We want to be friends with

benefits, but don't tie me down, man, Don't tie me down.

But the thing that's interesting, and if you think

about it logically, you can't have belonging without the

obligations. For it is the ethic of the

duties and the obligations that forms the belonging, the care,

the hospitality, the welcome. You can't have one without the

other. And in as much as we try, we

will be famished and dysfunctional.

New family means belonging, but with obligations.

And in here we can consider then now Chapter 4.

And Paul and his letters often will do this.

He'll theologize on the front end, and then he'll say

therefore and give you the ethic, here's the story that

you're supposed to live in and through and out of, and now

here's how you're going to do that.

This is no different so we switch into the ethical section

of Ephesians when we look at chapter 4 beginning in verse

one, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1 and I want you to notice

Ephesians 4:1

underline if you need to, all of the ways he's encouraging us to

obligations that give us this sense of belonging and mutual

care. I, Paul, therefore, a prisoner

for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the

calling to which you've been called.

He's going to talk about our attitudes in verse 2, in verse

2, with all humility and gentleness, with patience,

bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the

unity of the Spirit, and in of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called

to the one hope that belongs to your call. 1 Lord, 1 faith, one

baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through

all and in all. But grace was given to each one

of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, He led a host

of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

Did you notice some of the themes?

Love, unity, peace, gentleness, respect, all because of the

story of this great gospel that we have down in verse 11.

He's going to talk about more of the structures of the church.

He and He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the

shepherds and teachers to equip the Saints for the work of

ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we attain

to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

To mature manhood to the measure of the status of the fullness of

Christ. So that we may no longer be

children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by

every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and disk,

evil schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in

love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the Head

into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by

every joint with which is equipped with each part, when

each part is working properly, making the body grow so that it

builds itself up in love. Now he talks about the going

ongoing maturity that brothers and sisters in Christ help that

the authority of the officers within the church help encourage

maturity so that we grow and overtime look more and more like

Jesus. Verse 25 and following verse 25

of chapter 4. Therefore, having put it away

falsehood. Let each one of you speak the

truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on

your anger and give no opportunity opportunity to the

devil. Let the thief no longer steal,

but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands

so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as

such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it

may give grace to those who hear and do not grieve the Holy

Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of

redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and

anger and clamour and slander be put away from you, along with

all malice. Be kind to one another, tender

hearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

I don't know about y'all, but I want to live in that kind of

family. I want to live and belong to

that kind of family. He's giving you a vision of

heaven, an outpost of the Kingdom of God.

And so the church, with all of its sins and its scandals, is

still equipped by the Holy Spirit of God and the gospel of

Jesus Christ to shine brightly in this world and has done for

2000 years. We live out of the story and in

the story. And if we follow the ethic like

this, the world will see us and scratch their heads and they'll

be like, what in the world do we do?

They have. I mean, I thought chat bots were

great companion buddies, totally affirming, never tell me I do

anything wrong. But they have real

relationships. They seem to be growing and

changing in ways that are fundamentally compelling.

They have a corporate solidarity.

They look after one another. They don't leave one another

behind. It's a radical vision, a

countercultural vision, a counterintuitive vision, because

it is counterintuitive to think if I commit, oh man, they're

going to take up all my time. But God is saying, the Bible is

saying the church has taught us that if we commit and care for

one another, only then will we actuate the flourishing that is

described, the mutual care necessary to tend to one

another. We have to ask ourselves, is the

church our central institution in our lives?

We have to ask ourselves this question because it can become

so easy for the church to become 6th or 7th in our institutional

hierarchy. My true affections and loyalty

and time and money belong to fill in the blank.

This institution, that institution and the church

receives the leftovers. But what is needed is for that

to be flipped, for the church to recenter as the regal queen that

she is, with my best energy. I'm so glad that you're here.

First day of the week. This is prime time, the very

early hours. But we haven't even eaten lunch

yet. You're here giving part of your

time, an important part of your time, beginning the week off

right, showing that our affections have this institution

at the center of our lives. But besides time, we always

teach that. We also teach that our talents

and our services, our spiritual gifts, belong to the church.

So if you're asking ourselves, is the church in the center of

my institutional life, I have to ask.

We have to ask ourselves what is our ministry within her midst?

How am I serving the local church?

How am I engaging the life of the family of God?

We have to think about not only our time, but our our talents.

You guessed it, the preacher's going down a list of teas.

I hope you're following along. Time, talents, treasure.

You can determine priorities by looking through someone's bank

statements. We don't do that around here,

but we can figure out by spending patterns where our

loyalties lie, what's important to us.

These lights don't stay on automatically.

My salary isn't paid by magic. It all comes from the loyal and

generous offerings that are given to this church, committed

church people who have this place centered.

But besides these time and talents and treasure, one more

tea for you this morning. Our thoughts and cares in a

given week is the church centered?

Do its concerns become part of our prayer life?

Our previous ministry resident before Hudson came along, we had

Everett Pollard. Some of you know him, love him.

Great man Everett went through Taylor as a student committed to

UCC. He also worked at Lyft.

And one day, sadly, the greeter at Lyft, this older woman named

Gene Bowen, she got sick, declined, and she died.

And Everett shared with me, he said, Dan, I knew that my

relationship with UCC changed when in my thoughts and

concerns, the things that I think about during my weekly

life began to be interrupted by the thoughts and concerns of

UCC. And it happened with Jean.

I had to come out for her funeral.

I couldn't miss it. So there's this centering that

goes on even in our thoughts and concerns, and this brings us

very closely to what prayer is and what it means for it is in

our prayer life for their our thoughts and our concerns come

pouring out to God. If a new family means belonging

and and obligations. The Bible teaches us, I don't

have time to show you, but the Bible teaches us that we are to

pray for one another as a group. And so we have two things that

are going on in a biblical theology of prayer.

One is our individual prayers, our private prayers, but also

our corporate prayers as a church family, private prayers,

individuals, corporate prayer as a church family.

Our Lord is the model for this, and John Calvin again helps us

with such keen insight when he's thinking about the relationship

between individual prayer and corporate prayer.

Calvin, our Lord himself also, therefore, with good reason,

when he determined to devote himself more intensely to

prayers, habitually withdrew to a quiet spot far away from the

tumult of men. But in the meantime he did not

abstain from praying even in the midst of a crowd, if the

occasion so presented, so presented itself.

And so we should lift up clean hands in all places where there

is need. Finally, and he's going to get

very pastoral and very incisive here finally, we must consider

that whoever refused to pray in the holy assembly of the godly

praying Church knows not what it is to pray individually.

Again, he who neglects to play, to pray alone and in private,

however often he goes to church, they're in church only makes

windy prayers. For he defers more to the

opinion of men than to the secret judgement of God.

What does all that mean? He Calvin is teaching that in

the life of our Lord there's an example of private prayer and

corporate prayer in public. We too follow that same example.

We have private prayer and we have corporate prayer that is in

public. But Calvin's going a step

further pastorally by saying if you don't pray in private, then

you're no good praying in public.

You're just doing it to achieve the praise of men.

But On the contrary wise, if you're not praying in public or

engaging in the corporate prayers, you're no good on your

knees at home. They're somehow mutually

inclusive and informing one another and one without the

other is like a bicycle that only has one wheel but ain't

going to work. Both of these come together when

we consider now the Lord's Prayer.

Because we pray our Father who art in heaven, we're allowed to

pray it in secret. But even when we prayed in

secret, we were praying it in the context of a family

relationship. This is radical to me.

For in my life when I pray the Lord's Prayer, until fairly

recently, I was only thinking about my needs and the needs of

my immediate family. So when we get to the petition,

for example, give us this day Our Daily Bread.

Guess what Dan Blosser's thinking about on his knees and

private prayer? Our groceries.

Yep, our home budget for the Blosser house, car payment

mortgage. You know, Lord, please provide

for us. But what our Lord is teaching

when he says our Father is not for me to not only include the

needs of my immediate family, but the needs of this family.

So now when I pray Our Father, I'm also praying again back to

the example petition for Our Daily Bread that this church

will have what it needs. Lord provide for our church.

When I'm praying the petition for forgiveness in my individual

self, I'm thinking about, OK, I need to forgive as I'm forgiven.

But now when I pray Our Father and think about it as a member

of UCC, when you think about how UCC, its relationships, all with

these brothers and sisters, we need forgiveness, don't we?

May my church experience your forgiveness, not only with you,

our Father, but with one another.

And so we enter into this, this dynamic mutuality between the

individual and the corporate, and it should supercharge and

inform everything. I pray that this will be your

experience too, as we journey together as a family.

Some applications as I conclude, just a couple of things today.

How might we apply these things? The first thing, since we're

talking about belonging and the obligations that come with

belonging, we need to just make that an application.

All of us are on a journey of going further up and further in

with the Lord's church. What does it look like for you?

What does that look like for you?

If you're a brand new visitor, you're still trying to discern

if this is going to be a place where you come long term.

If you've been here for a while, maybe you'd like to get a

mailbox so that you can receive news from this place and give

notes to one another. How are we going to know one

another in this mass of anonymity if they're if we don't

know some names? So maybe the next step for you

is to put the directory on your device or ask for a printed copy

so that you can see people's names and begin to learn who

they are. So that when Hudson up here

prays for Connie Kramer, who just lost her sister, that you

could look that up, that you could see her face, that you

could know who she is, that you could lift her up in prayer.

And it isn't just a rando name that just went flowing by in the

middle of church Once Upon a time on a Sunday morning, but a

person with a sister who died. I don't know what the next step

is for you. Maybe you've attended here for a

long time and just keep forgetting to become a member.

Never think about it at the right time.

Or, you know, some have thought. Maybe you're a member when you

get a mailbox. It doesn't quite work that way.

There is a little small application.

Check the face statement. See if you're in alignment at

least with the important things. Commit to be a part of this

church, your service, your time, talents that you would take that

step of membership. Perhaps maybe some of you need

to just be in a group. You're like, man, a lot of time

goes by and I have never heard a prayer request.

Nobody knows what's going on in my life.

I'm totally anonymous. This is a big room.

It's a big group, lots of people.

We have to make it smaller. We do that with our home groups

and our Sunday school classes and our men's meetings and our

women's meetings, our prayer meetings so that we can be

involved in one another's lives. And especially for the care

aspect, because it won't take long before somebody that you

know is going to be going through a time of need or you

yourself are going to be going through a time of need.

And until you've been on the receiving end, when you're going

through a crisis, you're on the receiving end of the church

rallying around you, providing meals and prayer and calls and

cards. You have no idea what this

means. You just go drifting along

through life thinking the churches about sermons and songs

and totally miss this aspect over 50 times.

There's one another passages in scriptures about how we're

supposed to be caring and knowing one another, love,

praying for one another, loving one another.

I think this is an awesome place, the beautiful place that

I've experienced the care of God's people now for over 10

years. Watched it first hand and it has

been truly humbling and amazing to see.

But the question here is what is your next step to go a little

further up and a little further in body life?

And the second thing has to do with our prayers.

And I've alluded to this already, but we need to grow in

our individual prayers, but also in our corporate prayers.

And I also want to highlight seasons of prayer or times of

prayer. It's not only do we have a

weekly rhythm where we're praying together, but the church

for many centuries as even thought of seasons of prayer

according to the church calendar.

I wanted to just highlight one for you this morning because

Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent

or the Lenten season of the church calendar has been for

centuries a time for the church to spend more time praying than

usual, to think about the cost of the gospel, to spend

reflective, prayerful time preparing for Holy Week and for

Easter. I would recommend this to you.

It's a good practice. It can go bad in some ways, so

be smart. I'll have some resources down

here if you're interested in taking on a little devotional

reading during the next 40 days. You can come up and look at

those after the service if you're interested.

But we need to grow in our individual prayers and in our

corporate prayers, and we can do so especially during a prayer

season like Lent. So to conclude, friends, sin

makes us enemies. It does.

But God in the gospel adopts us into a family and make siblings

out of enemies. Prayer is a family affair.

I'll conclude by inviting you to say the Lord's Prayer with me if

you know it. If you don't, that's OK just

listen. And when we get to the part

about sins, I'm going to say trespasses because that's the

way my grandma taught me to pray it.

So there you go, Will you pray with me as we respond?

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy

Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our

trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For thine

is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.