Matthew 6:5-15
His words were mine, a wonderful
exchange. Loved in my sin, I suffered in
God’s rage. In his righteousness I’m justified. In Christ I live, for in my place
he died. I cling to Christ and marvel
at the cross. Jesus for savior. God is strange
from God. But by such love my life is not
my own. My praise, my all, shall be for
Christ alone. This world’s for mine, what cause
have I for dread? God’s daunting law, Christ has
heard in my stead. All blessed I stand with my sister. ♪ Where is death and life ♪ ♪ His robes for mine, God’s justice
is mine ♪ ♪ Jesus is crushed, the love of
others flees ♪ ♪ Christ’s strength on draft, on sin and pride dissolves
♪ ♪ Which is made the officiation law ♪ ♪ Chainsaws for safety ♪ ♪ Christ
brings my hope ♪ ♪ Christ brings my hope ♪ ♪ Christ brings my
hope ♪ ♪ Christ brings my hope ♪ ♪ Christ brings my hope ♪ His rose for us to see such anguish
none can know. Christ loves me not, condemned
as though his foe. He has survived the curse and
left alone. I, as though he, embrace and
welcome home. ♪ And marvel at the cross ♪ ♪ Jesus forsaken, God estranged
from God ♪ ♪ What power, such power ♪ ♪ My life is not my own ♪ ♪ My grace, my all should
know ♪ you shall be glorified. Well, good morning. It’s a blessing
to be with you all as we look at God’s Word together. I invite
you to turn in your Bibles with me to the Gospel of Matthew.
Be in Matthew chapter 6 this morning. beginning at verse 5. And in Matthew 6, we’re looking
at this account where Jesus is in the midst of his teaching
on the Sermon on the Mount. And as Jesus teaches the disciples,
he’s teaching them about the true nature of God’s kingdom,
the true nature of God’s kingdom, the true nature of God’s law
against the distortions of it, the distortions of it that were
present in the culture of Jesus’s day, and I think as we’ll see,
even are present in our own day. And in the midst of the distortions
that come up about the nature of God’s law and God’s kingdom
throughout the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus addresses different
moral issues, different ethical issues. Here in Matthew chapter
six, he talks about giving and he talks about prayer. And as
I’m with you this Sunday, and then as I’m with you again, the
first Sunday of July, we’re gonna be looking at Jesus’s teaching
on prayer and how Jesus gives us a true understanding of the
nature of prayer against the distortions that we can so often
have about it. So hear God’s word from Matthew
chapter 6. I’ll be reading verses 5 through 14. Hear God’s word. And when you pray, you must not
be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the
synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen
by others. Truly, I say to you, they have
received their reward. But when you pray, go into your
room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.
And your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you
pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they
think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not
be like them, for your father knows what you need before you
ask him. 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 For if you forgive others their trespasses your heavenly
father will also forgive you But if you do not forgive others
their trespasses Neither will your father forgive your trespasses
Let’s come to the lord and ask his help as we come to his word.
Please pray with me Our Father, we do praise you this day that
you are great, that you are glorious, and that even as you are the
God of all glory, that you have stooped to reveal yourself to
us, that you have come for us to call us out of darkness into
your light. We pray that you would send your
spirit upon us, that we would see the truth of your word this
day, and that you would draw us closer to yourself. We ask
these things in Jesus’ name, amen. I want to ask you a question
as we get going this morning. Do you forget about God when
you pray? Do you forget about God when
you pray? I asked myself that question
recently when I was watching the TV show Anne of Green Gables
on Netflix recently with my wife Ashley. Some of you may remember
Anne of Green Gables. They’re the series of novels
and stories that were written by a Canadian author named Ellen
Montgomery at the beginning of the 20th century. I think there
was a TV show maybe on the Disney Channel in the 80s. And now there’s
this remake of the series that’s on Netflix. And Anne of Green
Gables follows this little red-haired orphan girl named Anne Shirley
who’s errantly placed with this kind of crusty brother and sister
farming duo called the Cuthbert family named Matthew and Marilla
Cuthbert. And the first night that Anne
is with the Cuthberts, this kind of crusty farming family, She’s
sitting there with Marilla Cuthbert, and Marilla tells Anne, well,
Anne, before you go to bed, you have to pray. And Anne, who’s
a really blunt little girl, says, well, I never pray to the orphanage. I never pray, Marilla. There’s
a little back and forth, and then Anne asks Marilla, well,
how should I pray? What should I say? And it’s interesting,
Marilla, who in the novels is kind of depicted as this sort
of stoic, generic Presbyterian. The series was set, I think,
in Prince Edward Island in Canada. Marilla tells Anne, well, Anne,
you’re old enough to pray for yourself. Just thank God for
your blessings and ask him humbly for the things you want. Well,
I’ll do my best, said Anne. and she starts to pray, gracious
heavenly father, that’s the way the ministers say it in church,
so I suppose it’s all right in private prayer, isn’t it? Anne
goes on to pray this prayer that’s kind of rambling. She thanks
God for nature and for the snow queen and she has all this poetic
kind of mumbo jumbo. But then Anne ends her prayer
by saying, please let me stay at Green Gables and please let
me be good looking when I grow up. I remain yours respectfully,
Anne Shirley. Well, Marilla Cusbert, the crusty
lady, was kind of, like most of us, probably taken aback by
the impudence, maybe, of Anne’s prayer and some of the ignorance
of it. But while we all laugh at Anne’s
prayer, it’s actually Marilla who also kind of gets the nature
of prayer wrong, and she gets it wrong in ways like you and
I often get the nature of prayer wrong. Because you notice that
the way Marilla teaches Anne about prayer is simply to kind
of view God as one who dispenses blessings. She says, well, when
you pray, Anne, you just thank God for your blessings and you
ask him for what you want. What’s missing in Marilla’s view
of prayer? What’s missing in Murilla’s view
of prayer, and what’s often missing from UNI’s view of prayer, is
actually the reality of God himself. The first and foremost reality
of prayer, of seeking God for who he is. of our prayers being
centered on the greatness and the majesty and the glory of
God. And what we’re going to see as
we look at this passage on prayer this Sunday and when I’m with
you next month is that Jesus calls you to a bigger panorama
of prayer than just viewing God as kind of a cosmic ATM who dispenses
blessings. Instead, Jesus calls you, and
he calls me, to be gripped by the centrality of God in prayer,
so that we see our very lives through the lenses of prayer.
so that as we look out into who we are and what we’re about that
we’re more and more centered on the reality and the greatness
of God. So we’re looking at this passage
this morning looking from verses 5 through verses 10 of this passage
looking at what it teaches us about what does it look like
for you and for me to be gripped by the centrality of God Well,
the first thing we see in verses 5 through the first part of verse
9 is that you must be gripped by the centrality of God in prayer
so that seeking God personally is your goal in prayer. You must
be gripped by the centrality of God in prayer so that seeking
God personally is your goal in prayer. There’s not really a
big difference, a big distance between the prayer of Anne Shirley,
the approach to prayer of Marilla, and between the prayers of the
hypocrites and the pagan Gentiles that Jesus calls out in her passage. Whether prayer is kind of the
tool for getting an attaboy from other people, which is what Jesus
confronts the hypocrites about, or whether prayer is the way
to try to manipulate God by our language, which is what Jesus
confronts the Gentiles about, or whether prayer is viewing
God as just the dispenser of blessings, either way, what’s
the common thread there? The common thread is a self-centered
view of prayer. The common thread is that there’s
a focus on prayer simply in what’s in it for us, in a view of prayer
as just being about ourselves. Jesus instead gives us a bigger
view of prayer. A view of prayer that says first
and foremost, prayer is about seeking the living God. Prayer
is about encountering the reality of the living God because he’s
the one that you and I need the most. Remember, I asked that
opening question, do you forget about God when you pray? And it’s interesting because
here in these first verses, Jesus kind of points out truths about
God that the hypocrites and the Gentiles, perhaps you and me,
forget about. The hypocrite’s approach to prayer
forgets that prayer is actually about seeking God, first and
foremost personally, in the secret place of our hearts and of our
lives. Jesus says in verse 6, Don’t
go out into the street corner just to be seen, but go into
your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in
secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. Hypocritical prayer, prayer that’s
just about being seen by others, forgets that actually the reality
of God is that God is everywhere, but that what God wants first
and foremost for us and what is the greatest joy for us is
not getting acclaimed from other people, because of them hearing
our words or seeing what we do. But the greatest thing, the greatest
joy, the greatest encounter you could ever have is to have an
experience of the living God by faith in secret. What about
the what about the pagans? Well, jesus says they forget
that god isn’t one who can be Manipulated that god isn’t one
who has to be cajoled by a lot of words into giving us what
we want But jesus says verse 8 do not be like them for your
father knows what you need before you ask him The pagans forgot
that God knows everything, and that God is a God who wants to
hear the prayers of his people, who wants to respond to them
in grace. But the pagans miss out on that,
and the hypocrites miss out on that, because the center of their
prayer life isn’t on God, but it’s about themselves. Jesus
says, instead, have a God-centered view of prayer. Don’t just come
to God in prayer, seeking something beside Him, but come first and
foremost in prayer, expecting that God is, and as the author
of Hebrews tells us, that God is the rewarder of those who
seek Him. I want you to consider if you’ve
forgotten about God in prayer. If maybe how you’ve forgotten
about God in prayer is kind of a slow slide into self-centeredness. A self-centeredness that leads
you to have a dull and a lifeless prayer life. Maybe in the self-centeredness
of prayer, you’ve stopped expecting to have an encounter with God.
You’ve stopped to have a sense of the greatness of God in his
glory. You’ve stopped expecting to have
a greater confidence in the gloriousness of God’s grace in Christ. Perhaps
your prayer life has just become perfunctory. Maybe your prayer
life has become just kind of like brushing your teeth at the
end of the day. It’s like, well, OK, I know I
don’t want to get cavities, so I make sure I brush my teeth
at the end of the day. But I don’t particularly drive
a lot of joy from brushing my teeth. Maybe prayer has become
like that for you. You’re like, oh, well, I know
I need to pray, so I’m going to shoot up something. But lost
is that sense of expectation of meeting with God. Lost is
that sense of God actually hearing your prayer and actually meeting
with you. Jesus says no. Go pray to the Father in secret
and expect that he will reward you. And the greatest reward
of all is God visiting you with his presence himself. So consider
your prayer life. Consider if you’ve forgotten
the greatness of God. Consider if you’ve forgotten
that the greatest thing about prayer is that the God of the
universe, through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, has said,
I want to know you. I want you to come and know me
and be changed by me as you give over your hearts to me. And as
you expect that as you give yourself to me, that I will be at work
in your life to change you and to draw you closer to myself. I want you to consider that maybe
if you have that bigger view of what prayer is about, that
actually how you view your life will change. That the more you
see prayer as an actual encounter with the living God, of placing
your heart before him, that that’s going to percolate, that’s going
to go down, trickle down into the rest of your life. And maybe
you’ll start to see everything else differently Maybe situations
that you thought were impossible that were beyond god’s ability
to work in You’ll start to see freshly Maybe you’ll start to
see areas in your heart where there’s been persistent hard-heartedness
and short-sightedness to the things of god That god starts
to break down Regardless when you focus in prayer on seeking
god for who he is first and foremost Your life will start to change.
Your view of life will start to change because you’ll see
life more and more from God’s perspective and less from the
small little boxes that we like to put things in. Jesus says
you can do this. You can do this with confidence
and hope. Because God isn’t out to bait
and switch you. God isn’t out to say, hey, yeah,
seek me. Seek me with all your heart,
with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your understanding,
and I’m gonna disappoint you. I’m not gonna visit you with
my grace. No, it’s not like that. Instead, Jesus says, your father
knows what you need before you ask him. So be gripped by the
centrality of God in a view of prayer that says, I’m going to
seek God first and foremost, that when I pray, my goal is
to reach out and grab a hold of my father in his goodness
and of his grace. Let’s leave this to our second
point that we see in verse nine as Jesus begins to teach us this
proper view of prayer and the Lord’s prayer, that you must
be gripped by the centrality of God in prayer. So you seek
God with reverent confidence. is that you seek God with reverent
confidence. The first part of this passage
reminds us of the goal of prayer, that the goal of prayer is to
know God and to seek God first and foremost. Jesus now reminds
us this is who God is. This is the greatness and the
graciousness of this God that you’re to seek. And that gives
us a motivation For why we should seek him and jesus begins this
prayer our father in heaven hallowed be your name The name the one
of the primary names jesus gives for god is this name of father
And it’s interesting because if you think about the number
of you in this room and the number of people out in our world, there
have been a range of experiences with fathers, right? Perhaps
some of you knew fathers who were distant from you. Maybe
some were abusive to you. Maybe some you never even knew. For others of you, you’re blessed
with loving fathers, with fathers who are present. But the common
thread, whatever your experience is with an earthly father, is
that they’re imperfect. There’s always some kind of flaw,
there’s always something that’s wrong. But what Jesus is inviting
you into, and calling you to call upon God as father, is not
to take the blank slate of our earthly relationships with fathers
and then project that onto God. But instead, Jesus is ultimately
inviting you to call God Father on the basis of His relationship
with His Father. That it’s actually the fatherhood
of God, the perfect fatherhood of God in His protection, in
His provision, that’s the model for earthly fathers to live up
to and to grow in. And that Jesus is saying, hey,
you can call God Father Because the father is my father of course
that was true for jesus in a unique way in his eternity As the son
who is one with the father in the life of the trinity but also
what jesus invites us into is to the very family of god that
because Uh, the father sent the son into the world that the son
willingly took on the work of redemption upon himself that
in his Humanity jesus is our older brother. Jesus is the older
brother who has gathered the family of god together And now
jesus invites you and invites me into that family relationship
To know the father to call the father Indeed our father Philip
graham ryken has a really helpful book on the lord’s prayer. I
commend you to read and in that book he Asks, how often as Christians
we can fall into the syndrome of being spiritual orphans? How
often can we fall into the syndrome of being spiritual orphans? And
he says that we fall into being spiritual orphans when we forget
that our father is perfect, generous, thoughtful, and giving. And that’s
the starting point that Jesus gives you in this prayer. The
starting point for having confidence in coming to God in prayer is
that you’re invited in to know your father as a father who is
good, as a father who cares for you, as a father who wants to
know your concerns, and who wants to provide for you, and who wants
to be at work in your life. And we see the proof of this
in what the father has done in sending the Son. As Paul writes
in Ephesians 1, in love the Father predestined us for adoption 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. It’s always been a centerpiece
of God’s plan of redemption that He would adopt a family through
the work of His Son, solely of His grace. And that should give
you confidence in having an expectation of the Father in prayer. That
if God sought you first in His grace and in His mercy, as Paul
says in Romans, how will He surely not with His Son give us all
things? You know, so much, when we think
about our lives, so much of the difference between doing something
and not doing something is rooted in our confidence. We can often
forget this as adults, because as adults, we so often just get
used to doing things, we kind of develop our skill set, and
a lot of times we just kind of operate on autopilot. But I think
we really see this a lot when we look at children. My wife
and I have a son who will be a year old in a few days, and
it’s really interesting watching as he’s developed. He’s a great
crawler. He can motor around our living
room on his own. He’s going out on all fours,
and he just looks like he can take the world when he’s crawling
on all fours. He can even cruise around our
living room table, holding himself up, and he motors around really
quickly. But when my wife and I will take him by the hand and
kind of walk with him, he’ll waddle along with us. But every
time I let go of his hand, or every time my wife lets go of
his hand, You see this look on his face where all of the confidence
is gone. You see that he doesn’t really
have confidence in his legs. He starts to wobble a little
bit, and then usually he plops down on the floor. Now, it’s
not that my son doesn’t have the strength to walk on his own. He’s really proven that. The
ability is right there. But what he lacks is the confidence
to actually stand on his own two feet and walk. And so often
what happens in your prayer life, and in my prayer life, when it
starts to fizzle out, is that instead of standing in confidence
of our Father’s power, we start to just kind of look at ourselves,
just like my little son looks at himself and thinks, oh, I
don’t think I can do this, I’m gonna fall over. Instead, in
our prayer lives, when we start to feel that wobble, when we
should look to the Father and be confident in Him, we just
let ourselves fall. But Jesus says no. There’s a
greater path that’s being offered to you in prayer, and that’s
to be confident in the Heavenly Father, to be confident in taking
your requests and in taking your needs to Him, because the promise
of His word is that He says, cast your cares upon me, because
I care for you. Don’t just wobble in your prayer
life, but walk out confidently, trusting in your Heavenly Father
that He is there for you, that He cares for you. This confidence
that Jesus calls you to isn’t complete unless it’s irreverent
confidence. And that’s what we see in this
real first petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus says, Our Father
in heaven, hallowed be your name. Now, of course, it’s always funny.
I did a Bible-stand-in-the-Lord’s-prayer with my college students, and
I asked them, okay, guys, well, what does the word Halloween
mean? And you always get kind of these weird looks on their
faces. The only time maybe they’ve heard
Halloween is kind of like Halloween. It’s not that Jesus is saying
that there’s anything spooky about prayer, but of course this
word, hallowed, is this word asking for God’s name, which
represents all that he is, all that he is in his glory, in his
grace, in his majesty, all of his works, his word, everything
about him, that he would be set apart among us. It’s not that
God has a need to be made more holy, but it’s that we have a
need to know truly the holiness of God. That we have a need to
truly have hearts that are set apart for him. So that in our
view of life, we don’t just bring God down to our level as someone
to be trifled with, but that we see that he really is the
great and the mighty and the all holy God. Really, praying
hallowed be your name is a way for us to get out of self-centered
prayer and to be reminded of our sinfulness, to be reminded
of our need to confess our sins and our need of God’s grace to
help us to have a vision for his greatness and for his glory
and for what a difference that makes for our lives and for our
worship. If you really think about it,
It’s almost kind of offensive for us to have to pray, hallowed
be your name. Because when we pray, every time you pray, hallowed
be your name, you’re recognizing that God is God and you are not. And you’re agreeing with God
that you have the need of your heart to be changed in order
for you to worship and submit to God in your life. It’s a confession
that we’ve fallen short. This whole idea of worship, of
God’s name having to be set apart, if you’re kind of a meat and
potatoes, basic common sense person, you almost see, is this
just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, this idea of worship? Isn’t worship
just this thing that religious people do together to make themselves
feel better? Isn’t it just weird that we would
think that there’s this great being outside of ourselves that
we should worship? Isn’t it just kind of all crazy?
What’s interesting, there’s this secular novelist named David
Foster Wallace. He actually ended up committing
suicide a few years ago. He wasn’t a believer in Christ.
But even as a secular person, he was haunted by the idea of
worship. The idea of worship was something
that really bothered him and really spoke to him. And he said
this. He said, in the day-to-day trenches
of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no
such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only
choice we get is what to worship. And he says an outstanding reason
for choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship
is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you
alive. Anything else you worship will
eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are
where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have
enough. Never feel you have enough. Worship
your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you’ll always
feel ugly. And when time and age start showing,
you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.
Worship power or influence. You will feel weak and afraid,
and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear
at bay. Worship your intellect, being
seen as smart. You’ll end up feeling stupid,
a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. David Foster
Wallace got the reality that we’re all default worshipers. We all value something as being
great that we devote ourselves to, that we’re drawn to. And
the question for you to consider as you look at your prayer life,
as you look at maybe how you’ve forgotten God, is to look at
what things you’ve set up outside of God as the things that you
actually give more attention to and that you value more practically
than God himself. It might be one of those things
that Foster Wallace mentioned. It might be something of sex,
of power, of money, of influence. It might be something more mundane.
It might be your job. It might be even a good thing
like your job or your family. It might be something in the
political situation in the world. It could be anything. But do a check on yourself. As
you pray that part of the Lord’s Prayer, Father, hallowed be your
name. Ask God, God show me what things
am I setting up as idols that I’m devoting myself to more than
you. What things in my heart, in my
life need to be broken down so that I can be more devoted to
you, so that I can love you more, so that my life and how I view
it will be less about me and more about you. Because ultimately,
when you think about it, as that quote said, every other thing
outside of God that you devote yourself to will disappoint you. Everything that you devote yourself
to outside of God that gets in the way of your prayer life,
that gets in the way of your Christian life, all of those
things will let you down, will have an expiration date. But
the holiness of God has no expiration date. The graciousness of the
Father has no expiration date. Go to him, seek him, and ask
for his help to see that he would be more of the center of your
heart and that there be less of you, less of me. Well, the
logic of this part of the prayer goes into our final point this
morning, that you must be gripped by the centrality of God so that
God’s purposes that God’s purposes are owned as your purposes in
prayer. So that you own God’s purposes
as your own purposes in prayer. The next couple of petitions
here in verse 10, Jesus says, your kingdom come, your will
be done on earth as it is in heaven. Of course, we could have
a whole series of sermons just on this verse, just breaking
this down. But this part of the whole centerpiece
of the Bible, one of the greatest threads in the whole story of
the Bible, really is the story of God’s kingdom coming. I’m
going back to the Garden of Eden and the separation between the
seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, going into the
call to Abraham, the call of Israel out of Egypt, the people
being given the land, the people being given a king, the kings
falling and seeing the need for a greater king to come, seeing
the need of God to actually come as the king to bring light and
salvation to his people, Into the world all of those threads
of the bible come together when jesus comes on the scene in the
gospels For the very first thing that jesus does when he comes
to preach in the gospels is to say repent for the kingdom of
god Is at hand he’s saying that in me in my person in the work
of my people the kingdom Is here the kingdom is coming and the
kingdom will one day be made complete when jesus returns But
right now, the offer to you and to me is to enter this kingdom
by faith, to make sure that you have entered it by knowing Jesus. As Paul says in Colossians 1,
he says, God the Father has delivered us from the domain of darkness
and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is saying that
in your prayer life, if you’ve received that kingdom, if you’ve
received that by faith, God’s purposes in the world are to
become your purposes in prayer. God’s purposes of what he says,
the will of God is our sanctification of being made more like Christ,
that’s to be your purpose in prayer. Our purposes in prayer
are to be more about submitting to God’s will, both His eternal
will of everything that He’s decreed will happen, but also
His perceptive will of His commands, of saying, this is what is good,
this is what is best for us, that we’re to own those purposes
in prayer and to have less of our purposes being independent
of God. What does this look like in your
life? A couple things as we wrap up. First, to make God’s purposes
your purposes means that you prayerfully pursue what God’s
purposes are for you. That you prayerfully pursue what
God’s purposes are for you. I mentioned in the New Testament,
Paul says that the will of God is our sanctification. So often,
I see this with college students, We get tripped up in our prayer
lives because we want to find out the secret will of God. OK,
God, should I date this person? God, should I take this job?
And it’s not that asking for guidance from the Father is bad,
but a lot of times we get tripped up because we seek a thing or
we seek a sign instead of seeking first the kingdom of God and
His righteousness. Because often it’s once we seek
the kingdom first, once we simply follow what God has called you
to do in a particular place at a particular time, seeking to
love him more, that the doors open up, that the leading becomes
more clear, and that God does lead you to where you’re supposed
to be. So ask yourself, well, am I actually
pursuing God’s purposes for me? First of all, in your Christian
life, are you asking God to help you to be more like Jesus? Are
you asking God to give you a stronger faith in his promises, a stronger
dependence on his grace? Are you asking God to help you
to be sure to know what your spiritual gifts are and how you
can serve in the church? Are you asking God to use you
in your work or your retirement or in your raising of kids, in
your relationships, that he would use you for his kingdom purposes
with people in those places? Or are you instead setting up
your own kingdom independent of his purposes and ignoring
that in prayer? The other thing of owning God’s
purposes as your own in prayer is to pray for God’s purposes
in others, to pray for God’s purposes in others. It means
making sure you pray for the ministry of your church, that
you pray for the faithful ministry of your pastor, that you pray
for God to bring unbelievers into the church, to bring people
out of darkness and into light in this church. means that you
pray for missionaries, to pray for other churches, to pray for
campus ministries, that you would pray for the people you know
who are a part of extending God’s kingdom even beyond where you
are, but that you would pray that God’s kingdom would be extended
in the lives of other people where you are. Do you actually
pray in a way that expects God to be at work through other people? And do you pray for the gospel
to have fruit through the ministry of this church and the ministries
of other people and in other places? This means praying for
people you know who don’t know Jesus yet, for praying for God’s
kingdom to come in their lives, for them to be able to say to
God, your will be done, not mine. The final thing about refocusing
on God’s purposes in prayer and owning them as your own is that
you need to take up this part of the Lord’s Prayer when you
encounter times of difficulty. And I think when we encounter
times of difficulty are often when kind of the, and surely,
I’m just trying to get something out of God kind of prayer really
breaks down. Because it’s when things break
down, and maybe God doesn’t answer prayer the way you want him to,
that it could seem like the whole point of prayer has unraveled.
Well, if God didn’t answer it the way I want him to, what’s
the point, and is God really good? But on Jesus’ view of prayer,
We’re kind of shocked out of that. We’re moved beyond that
to instead to be able to say, well, if God’s purposes can be
my purposes in prayer, that means that I can accept that God can
have a higher purpose in my suffering than what I can see right now.
That God is still a good and gracious father and that I can
receive that in prayer even when my purpose, what I want to see
happen, isn’t necessarily being accomplished in the way that
I want it to. The good news ultimately of where
we’re going to stop at this point in the passage is that there
was one person who encountered the will of God and felt kind
of shaken by it, right? The Lord Jesus was in the garden.
The Lord Jesus was staring down, taking our sins upon himself
on the cross in the garden. And he said, Father, if this
cup will pass from me. But nevertheless, not my will,
but yours be done. It’s because the Lord Jesus said
yes to the will of the Father. Because the Lord Jesus said to
the Father, your will be done. Your will be done through me.
That you and I, even when times are difficult, even when it feels
like we’re dying on the inside, we can let go of our wills and
say to the Father, Father, not your will, not my will, but your
will be done, because you are good, you are gracious, and you
have displayed that in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Brothers
and sisters, I’d encourage you with this, to look at this prayer,
to take this prayer up, anew yourself, that you would be gripped
by the centrality of God, by the greatness of God, the greatness
of a father who even gave up his son on the cross so that
you and I would know him and would know life everlasting. Look to him this day. Please
pray with me. Our Father, we do praise you
for your word. We praise you for your greatness
and for your graciousness. We praise you, Lord Jesus, that
you said yes to the will of the Father, that you willingly took
on our sins, the sins of your people, On the cross so that
we could come and know the father and we praise you that you are
risen And that you’re present with us now by the power of the
spirit Pray that you would be with us as we continue to worship
you. We ask these things in jesus name. Amen Well, please let’s
rise and stand as we continue in our worship. Let’s stand and
sing hymn number 428