Barry Metz 04/15/18

Practical Piety, Part 2Matthew 6:7-15

I grew up saying the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday in church. In such a setting, familiarity typically breeds...apathy (I think contempt is too strong a word here). When it was time to say the prayer I like others went on auto pilot and soared into mindlessness till it was time to land the plane and quote the doxology (for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever) which by the way is not included in the ESV translation of the Lord’s prayer but remains in the NASB and KJV versions.

Perhaps you can relate to my “let-us-mindlessly-repeat-this-again” experience with the Lord’s Prayer as a child.

Having subsequently trusted Christ as an adult, I’ve come to see that the prayer has much to offer us as believers. And more than a few times I’ve thought to myself, “Wow this is so good! I’ve got to let the Lord’s Prayer influence my prayer life. I’ve got to let the Lord’s Prayer change the way I pray. I’ve got to start praying differently.” But honestly every time I have those ideas, they hang around in my prayer life as long as the typical New Year resolutions we often make….about two or three weeks.

So as I prepared for today’s message I asked myself this question: “How do I want my praying to be different because of our study today?”

(Now you need to know that I’m assuming that when Jesus said “Pray then like this,” verse 9 of our text, he was giving us a pattern or model that we should use when we pray--we are to model our praying after the Lord’s prayer and not necessarily pray it verbatim1)

And with that idea of modeling my prayers after the Lord’s Prayer, I came up with this one liner-- Pray first for the great causes2 of God.

(Put it on the board)

And this one liner reflects what I want to change about my prayer life. You might be wondering where this comes from, how did I come up with this? We’ll talk about that as we move through the passage but for the mean time let’s try to get it into our minds.

Say it with me…. Pray first for the great causes of God.

So you’ve seen it, you’ve heard it, and you’ve verbalized it.

Say it with me again…Pray first for the great causes of God.

(Now what do I mean by the great causes of God? Fighting against abortion is a worthy cause. Stamping out pornography is a worthy cause. Raising Godly children is a worthy cause. But keeping church bells ringing isn’t a worthy cause. I read that the religious people of Switzerland are fighting to

1 Interestingly, the Didache, an early church document on practicing the Christian faith, urged saying the Lord’s prayer three times a day.2 Morris uses the phrase ‘causes of God’

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keep their church bells ringing throughout the night. Neighbors have asked to forgo the ringing of the bells during the night so that they can sleep better. But the church members have stood up for their bell ringing. And believe it or not this has become a national issue. And the issue made its way all the way to Switzerland’s highest court. The court ruled recently that the chiming can “continue because it was firmly rooted in the town’s culture.”3 Now personally I don’t think that this is a very worthy cause. It saddened me in fact that the religious people in Switzerland were fighting to keep their bells ringing. Couldn’t they stand for something more important?

Well the great causes of God according to the Lord’s prayer are the hallowing of his name, the spread of his kingdom and the doing of his will. And the Lord’s Prayer is so structured that we are to pray for those great causes of God first. That’s the point.

Martyn Lloyd Jones says this: “The important thing to grasp is this: that it matters not what our conditions and circumstances may be, it matters not what our work may be, it matters not at all what our desires may be, (in our praying) we must never start with ourselves, we must never start with our own petitions.”4

{Now of course in an emergency, like Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee it’s ok to pray, “Help, Jesus” but with our general praying his point is we should start with the causes of God first.}

One more quote from Martin Lloyd Jones:

And so this is what I’m hoping--I’m hoping that I will leave today with this one liner riveted to my soul…..Pray first for the great causes of God… so that my praying will be forever different. Enough of this New Year’s resolution stuff, don’t you think? But I also hope that you will see the importance of modeling your prayers after the Lord’s prayer.

And I’m going to use a Child Evangelism Fellowship technique to help us to try to remember this key idea… as I’m moving through the sermon and I say the words ‘word up!’ your job is to say the key idea …. Pray first for the great causes of God. Let’s practice, “Word up!” Pray first for the great causes of God. (I hope it doesn’t bother you that we use this idea with 2nd and 3rd graders?)

Now last week we looked at Matthew 6: 1-6 and 16-18. In those verses, Jesus talked about practicing our righteousness before men. Specifically he said that giving to the poor, fasting, and prayer to be seen

3 USA Today, “Switzerland’s church bells set off a ringing debate” Thursday, April 12,20184 Martyn Lloyd Jones, page 333

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by men was hypocritical. Why was it hypocritical? Because on the surface we’re acting concerned, we’re acting as pious as we can, but really we’re out to impress the audience around us. We’re practicing our righteousness to be seen by men. Instead, Jesus said we are to live out our lives before an audience of one, our great God.

True piety plays to an audience of one. Or as we said last week, ‘The secret of religion is secret religion.’

If you have your Bible this morning, we pick up in verse 7. Follow along with me as I read Matthew 6:7-8

7 “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. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

So in verses 7-8, Jesus encourages his disciples not to pattern their language of prayer after the prayer habits of Gentiles. The Gentiles had a tendency to resort to repetitive babble and way too many words 5 , thinking that that was the way to get a hearing with God.”6 “Surely God will hear us when we use many words,”7 they thought. But Jesus says the quantity of our prayer really doesn’t influence God.8 He’s a father and he knows what we need before we ask him. He’s a father who already knows our needs and He’s merely waiting for us to express our dependence on him.9

So in summary we’re not to pray like the hypocrites, verses 5-6, to be seen by men. And we’re not to pray like the Gentiles, verses 7-8, thinking that our many words earn us an audience with God. Instead, verse 9, we are to pray like this…and Jesus introduces what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.”

___________

I want to pull off the road here and share a new concept that I learned in my study this week and then I’ll briefly talk about five overarching ideas regarding the Lord’s Prayer.

The new concept is entitled recollection. Let me put the word up on the board.

{And this concept isn’t taught in our passage, it’s just some extra info to help us in our praying. In Louisiana you could call what I’m doing lagniappe, it’s just a bonus.}

Well Martyn Lloyd Jones says this about the concept of recollection: “The great teachers of the spiritual life throughout the centuries, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, have been agreed about this, that the first step in prayer has always been what they call ‘Recollection’.10 5 “endless verbosity”6 Chouinard7 Keener8 Martyn Lloyd-Jones9 Keener10 If you do an internet search on the concept of recollection, it’s generally called the ‘prayer of recollection’ The prayer of recollection is a prayer to separate one from their own strength and cling to the robe of God. The prayer opens one's soul and prepares one to meet God in truth and to be open to the false-self and personal Idolatry in the presence of God’s love.

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The word recollection as a word just means to remember--the action of remembering something. So the idea then is before we pray we pause in silence to remind ourselves what we’re about to do and who we are about to speak to. Lloyd Jones says it’s like putting your hand over your mouth like Job.11 You remember that Job was filled with words until God revealed himself and then Job got quiet. He put his hand over his mouth. Typically our hearts are filled with stuff and we begin speaking to God immediately. But with the idea of recollection we just stop for a moment and remind ourselves who we are about to talk to and what we are about to do.12

Our board began doing this several months back; we didn’t know what to call it at the time but we felt that it was helpful to just be quiet before the Lord and leave our busy day behind. We didn’t know it at the time but we were practicing ‘recollection’.

And now the five overarching ideas regarding the Lord’s Prayer before we jump in and look at the details.

1. Many have suggested that the prayer is misnamed. They suggest that it should be called the ‘Disciples’ prayer’ because it’s an example for the disciples to follow. And strictly speaking, it is a prayer that the sinless Christ could never pray given that it has a request for forgiveness, right?13

2. The prayer is offered not so much as a command to pray but an invitation to share in the prayer life of Jesus--to pray in a way that honors him.

3. It’s become fashionable (and this is a new idea for me) to believe that the Lord’s Prayer is primarily focused on the end times when God’s kingdom comes in its fullness.14 But I’m convinced that “the language of the prayer lends itself to both a now and not yet perspective.”15 In other words, the kingdom has come in Christ now and wherever the king rules over his subjects the kingdom is present. But there will be a day when the kingdom will come in its fullness. And we look forward to that day when Christ will rule over all.

4. The scope of the prayer is amazing. It extends from the grand themes of God’s name, his kingdom, and his will to the everyday themes of bread, (forgiveness), and temptation.16

And finally this one feeds our ‘word up’ this morning….

11 Martyn Lloyd-Jones, page 32712 Martyn Lloyd-Jones, page 32713 Hughes makes this point14 France, page 13315 Chouinard16 Wilkins, page 274-275

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5. The prayer teaches us to prioritize God and his great causes first before we as a community pray for ourselves. The prayer reflects the idea that we are to be preoccupied with God and his priorities before we give attention to even our own needs. And again it’s this final overarching point that gives rise to our word up this morning. Word up! Pray first for the great causes of God.

_____________

With that background, let’s jump in… 9 Pray then like this: Pray along these lines…

pray in the following manner…17 It seems clear that Jesus wants this model prayer, this pattern prayer to shape the prayer life of his disciples.

“Our Father in heaven… Each of those words influences the way we are to pray. Notice the prayer assumes we are in community and we pray in community, “Our father.” Notice that the prayer assumes we’re not living isolated lives but that we’re connected with others and our destiny is the same. The words “Our father,” call us not only upward but outward to minister to our brothers and sisters.18

Secondly is the word Father. The idea of referring to God as Father was a radical idea in the time of Jesus. You and I have grown used to addressing God as Father but in Jesus’ time it was revolutionary idea.

It’s not that the writers of the Old Testament didn’t believe in the ‘fatherhood of God’; they did. In fact God is referred to as “Father” fourteen times in the Old Testament. But the term was always used with reference to the nation, not to individuals.19 In fact one student of scripture writes this, “You can search from Genesis to Malachi and you will not find one individual speaking of God as Father.”20 And in Jewish writings outside the Bible the use was extremely rare.21 “The Jews preferred exalted titles for God like ‘Sovereign Lord’ and ‘King of the Universe’ and the like.”22

Now we know that Jesus spoke Aramaic and the Aramaic word for Father was Abba. It was the word used by Jewish children for their earthly fathers. But it was also the word used by adults to address their fathers so the meaning ‘daddy’, as some suggest, goes too far.23 Perhaps

17 MacArthur18 Hughes19 Hughes20 Hugues21 Carson22 Carson23 ESV Study Bible, page 1831

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‘dearest father’ is the best we can do.24 But however we slice it, the word, the title, still ‘conveyed the authority, warmth, and intimacy of a father’s loving care.’25 It implied intimate communion. 26 And this was a revolutionary way of praying!

The impulse to call on God as ‘father’ is evidence that we’ve been born again. Listen to Romans 8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba Father! You see, the impulse to call on God as Father is evidence that we are his beloved sons.

Dr. J. I. Packer considers one’s grasp of God’s Fatherhood and one’s adoption as a son or daughter as of essential importance to spiritual life. He writes:

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.27

And if we are tempted to be too chummy with our Father, Jesus reminds us that he is ‘Our father in heaven.’ Whereas the word Father suggests that he is immanent--involved in our lives and close, the phrase ‘in heaven’ stresses his transcendence--that He is sovereign, that he reigns as king. Our father (“affectionate intimacy”) in heaven (“respectful dependence”).28

Martyn Lloyd Jones tries to bring the two ideas together:

“That is the way to pray, says Christ, take these two things together never separate these two truths. Remember that you are approaching the almighty, eternal, ever-blessed holy God. But remember also that that God, in Christ, has become your Father, who not only knows all about you because he is omniscient. He knows all about you also in the sense that a father knows all about his child. He knows what is good for the child.

Put these two things together. God in his almightiness is looking at you with a holy love and knows your every need. He hears your every sigh and loves you with an everlasting love. He desires nothing so much as your blessing, your happiness, your joy, and your prosperity. Then remember this, that He ‘is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’. As your ‘Father which is in heaven’, he is much more anxious to bless you than you are to be blessed. There is also no limit to his almighty power. He can bless you with all the blessings of heaven. He has put them all in Christ and put you into Christ. So your life can be enriched with all the glory and riches of the grace of God Himself. That is the way to pray. Before you begin to make any petition, before you ask for anything, just realize that you, such as you are, are in the presence of such a Being, your Father which is in heaven, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.29

24 Hughes25 ESV Study Bible, page 183126 Keener27 Hughes, R. K. (2001). The sermon on the mount: the message of the kingdom (p. 156). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.28 Keener29 Martyn Lloyd Jones, page 331

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Well we come to the first of the three great causes of God at the end of verse 9, Hallowed be your name--the hallowing of God’s name.

To hallow means to set apart as holy.30 “To hallow God’s name means to hold it in reverence, to honor, glorify, and exalt him.”31 And since God’s name is essentially who he is, this is a prayer to God, that God might be set apart as holy and treated with the greatest of honor.32

What a prayer to pray in a bar!What a prayer to pray when you are surrounded by unbelievers at work!Oh God, may your name, may your character be set apart as holy!

Now there’s a curious thing about this prayer. Essentially we are praying that God would hallow his own name, right? Hallowed be your name! But the prayer is answered when we (or those we are praying for) hallow his name.33 Do you see that? “God, cause your name to be hallowed!” And when the prayer is answered, human beings are hallowing, setting God’s name apart as holy! “In other words, Christ’s followers are asking their heavenly Father to act in such a way that they and an increasing number of others will reverence God, glorify him, consider him holy and acknowledge him.”34

So here’s the prayer: “Lord, let it be! Cause it to be. May your name be hallowed. (May your name be set apart as holy!) This is my request, my prayer. I am urging you to do this (Lord): Cause people (the people around me) to hallow your name. Cause me to hallow your name!”35 And again God’s name is essentially--it’s who he is--it’s his character.

Cause your name to be reverenced, esteemed, admired, respected, cherished, honored, and praised. John Piper suggests that this is essentially a missionary prayer.36

You see this is one of the great causes of God… “God loves to have more and more people “hallow” his name. That’s why his Son teaches Christians to pray for it. In fact, Jesus makes it the very first and paramount prayer. Because this is the first and great passion of the Father.”37

Word up! Pray first for the great causes of God.

We come to the second of God’s great causes….

30 France, page 13431 Wilkins, page 27632 Wilkins, page 27633 Carson34 Carson35 Piper, “Solid Joys” email, 4/14/1836 Piper, “Solid Joys” email, 4/14/1837 Piper, “Solid Joys” email, 4/14/18

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Verse 10 Your kingdom come… this prayer is for God to cause his kingdom to come. This has been the hope of God’s people throughout all history.38 We aspire for the day when Christ will finally rule over everything and make everything right.

There are two time horizons that could be in view with this petition.

The phrase “Your kingdom come” could have in view a decisive time in the future when the kingdom will come once and for all--an event that will happen only once. This would be the second coming of Christ when he will return, judge the world and set up his eternal kingdom.39

And yet with our ‘already but not yet’ perspective on the kingdom, the kingdom has already come in a spiritual form. And wherever Christ rules over his people, his kingdom is present. So his kingdom is currently present in the church.

“The presence of God’s kingdom in this age refers to the reign of Christ in the hearts and lives of believers and to the reigning presence of Christ in his body, the church.”40

So when we pray, “Your kingdom come,” aren’t we praying for the spread of the gospel? Aren’t we praying that the gospel will take root deep in the hearts of those around us and those far and wide? So essentially, this petition too is a missionary prayer.

I was thinking of a couple of examples within our own congregation. You probably heard that Birne and Lynella were able to give their victim impact statements at their attacker’s trial recently. And they shared the gospel so clearly, they shared their forgiveness so clearly, and their attacker was given a wonderful gift. The judge said as much. And much prayer was offered. The right prayers were offered.

But could this petition from the Lord’s Prayer have been a good petition to pray? (I’ve been test driving these petitions from the Lord’s prayer all week. Are they really central? Are they really relevant for lots of different situations? Let your kingdom come in the lives of the attacker and others in the courtroom! Let the gospel spread so that many will come under the reign of King Jesus!

I’m not trying to second guess the praying that went on at all. In fact I was asked to pray at one point and I felt inadequate. No, what I’m doing is admitting that I rarely dust off these ‘great-causes-of-God’ petitions from the Lord’s Prayer and use them in my praying. And I want that to change.

Here’s a second example. I visited Earline Watson last week. Her sweet husband Bill is on hospice. Could these ‘great causes of God’ petitions guide us in our praying in such a setting? When I arrived Tina was setting up the kitchen table to do Bible study with Earline. Tina is the

38 Wilkins, page 27639 Hughes40 ESV Study Bible, page 1832

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one who is helping Earline with Bill’s care and she has recently become a Christian. It’s just the coolest story. Through Bill’s declining health, Tina has come to know the Lord. So again I found myself asking, “Could these ‘great causes of God’ petitions guide us in our praying in such a setting?” Our Father in heaven, your kingdom come in the lives we intersect as we walk this difficult road. Our Father in heaven, be at work as the gospel spreads to many we come into contact with.

So when we pray ‘your kingdom come’ we pray for two things. First we pray for the final and ultimate establishment of God’s kingdom. We pray for the day when everything on earth will finally be under God’s reign. And second, ‘your kingdom come’ is a prayer that God’s rule will come to others through us. It’s a prayer that God would spread his saving grace in our fallen world.

Word up! Pray first for the great causes of God.

Well we come to the third great cause of God, verse 10b...your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

We all know that in heaven, God’s will is accomplished joyfully and completely. We know there is no resistance at all to what God wants to accomplish. And every heavenly being does God’s will completely. So this petition in the Lord’s Prayer is basically asking God to cause that same kind of thing to happen on earth.

Again we could imagine two time horizons. First we pray for the universal obedience that will come at the end of history. We express our longing to make it better. But secondly, we’re praying for God’s will to be done in the church today and even closer to home in our lives personally. “Your will be done (in me), on earth as it is in heaven.” We’re essentially asking God to conquer us, to make us holy, to make us like Christ. When we pray this prayer we are asking God to do whatever it takes to make his will prevail in our lives.41

This can get very personal when it comes to the rebellious areas still in our lives, those areas that need to be brought into the light and repented of. But there’s joy when we finally cry ‘uncle’ and submit every area of our life to the Savior. Never do we know greater joy, than when we do God’s will.42 Let me say that again…Never do we know greater joy, than when we do God’s will. Have you come to the place where you know that you’re doing what your Savior wills you to do?

Elisabeth Elliot once stayed in the farmhouse of a Welsh shepherd and his family high in the mountains of North Wales. She stood watching one misty summer morning as the shepherd on horseback herded the sheep with the aid of a champion Scottish collie named Mack. In her own words:

41 Hughes42 Hughes, R. K. (2001). The sermon on the mount: the message of the kingdom (p. 179). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

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Mack … was in his glory. He came of a long line of working dogs, and he had sheep in his blood. This was what he was made for; this was what he had been trained to do. It was a marvelous thing to see him circling to the right, circling to the left, barking, crouching, racing along, herding a stray sheep here, nipping at a stubborn one there, his eyes always glued to the sheep, his ears listening for the tiny metal whistle from his master that I couldn’t hear.

That day Mack assisted his master who had arranged to dip his struggling sheep. Mack was magnificent. As the sheep would attempt to escape the tub, he would snarl and snap at their faces to force them back in. Mack’s every move in the pen or out in the pasture was perfect. He seemed as good as the shepherd himself. Amazed, Elliot asked the shepherd’s wife if the sheep had any idea what was happening. “Not a clue!” was the answer. “And how about Mack?” The answer was unforgettable: “The dog doesn’t understand the pattern—only obedience.” Elisabeth Elliot reflected:

I saw two creatures who were in the fullest sense “in their glory.” A man who had given his life to sheep, who loved them and loved his dog. And a dog whose trust in that man was absolute, whose obedience was instant and unconditional, and whose very meat and drink was to do the will of his master. “I delight to do thy will,” (we could have imagined Mack barking), “Yea, thy law is within my heart.”43

Never do we know greater joy than when we do God’s will. Have you come to the place in your life where you know the joy of doing God’s will?

Well that’s the last of the three great causes of God. Word up! Pray first for the great causes of God.

The Lord’s prayer turns in verse 11 to the disciple’s needs.

11  Give us this day our daily bread,

It’s pretty clear that the topic of this petition is larger than bread; Jesus has in mind a disciple’s material needs.44 Martin Luther, the great reformer said as much, “Everything necessary for the preservation of this life is bread, including food, a healthy body, good weather, house, home, (family), good government, and peace.”45

The meaning of daily is somewhat uncertain46. It seems to be an adjective meaning “of the day that is coming.” So if we ask for our food for the day that is coming, we mean today’s food; if we ask at night, we mean tomorrow’s.47

43 Hughes, R. K. (2001). The sermon on the mount: the message of the kingdom (pp. 178–179). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.44 France, page 13545 Martin Luther as quoted by Stott as quoted by MacArthur46 epioussios occurs here and Luke 11:3, the parallel and nowhere else except perhaps in a fragment of an Egyptian account book. Carson says, “It is found with one hundred percent certainty only in this prayer; but most likely it appears also in one of the papyri which breaks off halfway through the word.”47 Carson

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Daily bread calls to mind Israel’s daily reliance on manna in the wilderness doesn’t it? “In the same way that manna was only given one day at a time, disciples are to rely on daily provisions for life from God, helping them to develop a continuing, conscious dependence on him.”48

It’s beautiful to know that God puts himself on the hook for our daily material needs. “Pray to me for them” he says. And it’s amazing that he does! Later in the Sermon on the Mount, he will challenge his listeners to not be anxious about their lives, what they will eat or what they will drink.49 And here in what we call the Lord’s Prayer, he challenges them to bring their daily needs to him.

Lloyd-Jones writes: “Is this not one of the most wonderful things in the whole of scripture, that the God who is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the God who is forming his eternal kingdom, and who will usher it in at the end, the God to whom the nations are but as the small dust of the balance--that such a God should be prepared to consider your little needs and mine even down to the minutest details of daily bread!”50

So we need daily bread. But verse 12 says we need daily forgiveness too.

12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Verse 12 tells us that our sins create a ‘debt’ to God that we cannot possibly repay.51 And we need to seek forgiveness from God daily. But we also need to forgive those who sin against us daily. Verse 12 also sets up a relationship between our forgiving others and our being forgiven by God. We need to be forgiving people if we hope for God’s forgiveness.

Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 18 that teaches us how forgiveness is supposed to work. And the parable sheds light on our verse 12. In Matthew 18 Peter asked Jesus, “How often must I forgive my brother? Seven times?” (Peter thought he was being generous right?). Jesus replied, “No, seventy times seven times.”

And this diagram represents the flow of forgiveness as described from that particular parable in Matt. 18.

48 Wilkins, page 27849 Matthew 6:2550 Martyn Lloyd Jones, page 34451 Wilkins, page 279

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The slide communicates that God has forgiven us an incredible amount (see the size of the vertical arrow pointing down) and we are to readily forgive others when they sin against us. It’s all about our attitude; we need to be generous forgivers because God has been generous with us. But the parable also teaches that there is no forgiveness for the one who does not forgive others. What are we to do with that?

Well that raises a question: what kind of forgiveness are we talking about here in the Lord’s prayer? When you and I put our trust in Christ, all of our past, present and future sins are forgiven right? This is our initial experience of God’s forgiveness when we are justified by faith. Some call this forgiveness judicial forgiveness. We don’t need to pray for that kind of forgiveness every day, right? The forgiveness that we’re praying for in the Lord’s prayer is everyday fellowship forgiveness, right?

So what Jesus is talking about in verse 12 and then down in verse 14-15 is the day to day fellowship forgiveness with God that is interrupted when we sin.

And if one has not forgiven someone when he prays verse 12 forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors… then he is essentially “asking God not to restore a right relationship with him after he has sinned in just the same way as he has refused to forgive others.”52

This shouldn’t surprise us. If we are full of unforgiveness toward others, we should expect that God will distance himself from us until we forgive others.

And verses 14-15 say as much…14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So what the petition in verse 12 teaches us is that when we come to God seeking his forgiveness, we should have already forgiven those who sinned against us. It just doesn’t work to seek God’s forgiveness without being forgiving people.

52 Grudem, page 386

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Well the final petition, the 6th petition, comes in verse 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (or from the evil one).

In a general way this petition “indicates that disciples should be conscious that life is a spiritual battle.”53 The prayer is clearly a prayer for protection from sin.

Many trip over the idea that God would lead a believer into a place where they are tempted to sin. In fact James 1:13 says, Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.”

We find some clarity for this petition when we realize that the word temptation could as easily have been translated testing, Lead us not into testing…. It turns out that the Greek word can go two different directions. It can have a negative connotation “to entice to sin” (to tempt) or a positive connotation “to test in order to prove one’s character” (to test). Which did Jesus have in mind?

Since God is not one who tempts people to evil but He does test them, it seems that the disciple should pray that the inevitable testing that comes his or her way would not become an occasion for temptation.54 We know that trials are a means for our growing spiritually, morally, and emotionally. Yet we have no desire to be in a place where even the possibility of sin is increased.55 So we pray for protection from sin; we acknowledge that we are desperately dependent upon God to lead us in victory over evil.56

So why is the beloved doxology, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever not in the ESV translation? I’m not smart enough to explain that easily.

May I defer to John MacArthur whom I know that you trust:

Because they are not found in the most reliable manuscripts, it is likely that these words were not in the original text. In many modern translations they are therefore given in footnotes or, as here, placed in brackets.

Although they may not have been in the original account, the words are perfectly fitting in this passage, and express truths that are thoroughly scriptural. They form a beautiful doxology, declaring the preeminence of God as seen in the greatness of His eternal kingdom, … power, and … glory. They are an echo of 1 Chronicles 29:11 and, to the minds and hearts of Matthew’s Jewish readers, would have been a moving and appropriate climax.57

_________________

53 Wilkins, page 27954 Wilkins, page 27955 MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1985). Matthew (Vol. 1, p. 395). Chicago: Moody Press.56 Chouinard57 MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1985). Matthew (Vol. 1, p. 397). Chicago: Moody Press.

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Barry Metz 04/15/18

Well what have we said this morning? We’ve said that Jesus gave us what is known as the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern prayer, as a model prayer. He invites us to use it to fashion our own prayers.

I said at the beginning of the message that I particularly wanted to renovate my own prayer life by the observation that we should….. word up!....Pray first for the great causes of God! Maybe you’d like to do that too!

(I’d like someone under 12 to be courageous and come down here and unscramble our word up.)

Its’ our privilege to welcome Edith Williams for membership this morning. Edith would you come down here? I hope you’ll come down after the benediction to welcome her as a new member.

Would you stand for the benediction?

Jude 24-25 24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

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