The Model Prayer

Introduction

About my family because I’ve been told to keep it short. And I don’t mind doing that. I can I can certainly keep it short. But I do want to just briefly tell you that on the part of my family and myself, we’re all very happy to be here. I do have three children, and my oldest is eight, his name is Ty. My middle child is age six, his name is Stone. And then our youngest is age two, and she is June Elise. And then my wife’s name is Holly. And so we’re all we’re all thrilled to be here with you today. Well, as you know from the reading, or as you might could guess, the lesson is going to be on prayer this morning, and specifically on the model prayer from Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 9.

Pray then in this way, Jesus says, Our Father who is in heaven. Hallowed be your name.

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 do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And then the addition, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

I don’t like to call it the Lord’s Prayer, as it is typically called in the denominations.

By the Lord, of course, to become a mindless repetition to just be repeated by memory as part of a liturgy of a church or as almost like a good luck charm before a basketball game that the team prays together and maybe we’ll win because we prayed the Lord’s prayer. No, that’s certainly not what the Lord intended from this, but we don’t need to come away from this simply with what not to do. Well, we know that we’re not supposed to use it that way. And so let’s just dismiss it. Well, no. We need to come away with it with what to do. What do we do with this beautiful teaching on prayer that Jesus provided? And what we do is we learn to pray like Jesus prayed.

Jesus was teaching here the essence of personal prayer to God. How to pray like he did. The model prayer is not so much a command as it is an invitation. It is an invitation to share in the prayer life of Jesus Himself. Jesus is inviting his followers, you and me, to share the intimacy of his own life from the Father. And he shortens this in a very concise form. And basically, I think these are categories that he is giving us. And each category, which Jesus gave with wide-ranging shorthand expressions, can be greatly expanded upon. And it becomes then a very practical tool to have in your mind and in your memory the model prayer, so that you can then put it into action and expand on the categories.

In Luke 11, that’s the only other place where the model prayer is recorded. It’s a little shorter version of it. In verse 1, it tells us that Jesus was playing it, praying, not playing. Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he was finished, you have to keep in mind the disciples were always observing this. Jesus going off. Jesus going off for great amounts of time, going to the mountain, going somewhere alone, going when they couldn’t find him, leaving early in the morning. And where is Jesus? And we go find him. Oh, he’s praying. So he was being observed. And when he finished praying there in Luke 11, verse 1, one disciple came up to him and said, Lord, teach us to pray. As John also taught his disciples.

Teach us to pray. And so then Jesus gives them the model prayer. A 30-second prayer. You say, Well, what’s the point? Teach us to pray like you. Okay, here’s a 30-second prayer. The point was, this is the essence of what I do in prayer, if you want to learn to pray like me. When you think about the fact that Jesus could pray all night long. He could pray for hours at a time. How was he so devoted in prayer? How could he do that? He prayed about such things as hallowed be thy name. And give us each day our daily bread. And lead us not into temptation. Those are the kinds of things he prayed about. So we need to use this model prayer to pray, to learn to pray, like Jesus did.

1. Prelude: Our Father Who Is in Heaven

So we’re going to go through and just break down the categories briefly in this short lesson. First, the prelude. Now, I just say prelude because these words all start with a P, okay? So I would have said like greeting or address, but that’s what it is. So, our Father who is in heaven. This is a reverent and a humble address to God who is our Father, who dwells in an infinitely higher and celestial plane, heaven itself. We must always, brethren, be cognizant of the fact that when we approach God in prayer, we are approaching heaven. We’re approaching heaven itself. I have always imagined it this way when I pray. I have a picture in my mind. And as I close my eyes to pray, since I was a child, a teenager anyway, I have pictured a throne room.

And it’s dark except for there’s light where the throne is.

And I see me kneeling down, actually falling down prostrate, and there’s nobody else in the room. There’s God on his throne, there’s me prostrate, and there’s light shining directly upon me. When we think of prayer, we need to realize that we are drawing near to God’s throne in heaven. And brethren, we should tremble at this. It is a very sobering thought, and what a privilege. Our Father who is in heaven. Father indicates an intimate relationship, obviously. A father-son or father-daughter relationship with all the blessings that that entails. We are not originally his children, but we become his children through being born into his kingdom and in his family.

So in order for this to mean anything, he has to first be your father and you his child.

2. Praise: Hallowed Be Your Name

But we’re talking to our father who is in heaven. And we need to make sure that we show respect. A man back home got up to lead a prayer, and there was this long pause. And I thought, the poor guy doesn’t know what to say, I guess. But then I realized what he was doing. He was cognizant of the fact that we’re approaching heaven. And so take it seriously. And then he began his prayer. So we need to remember who it is that we are talking to. There is an instant humility and reverence demanded by the genuine utterance of this rich greeting. Secondly, praise. Hallowed be your name. The word hallowed means made holy. And so to tell Lord, the Lord, hallowed be your name, is it is sanctifying the name of the Lord.

He is holy, and he should be honored and revered as such. He is of an infinitely higher quality of being. He is eternal and we are temporal. He is sinless and we are sinful. He the creator. We the created. He the Father. We the children. He the I am and we the once were. And we keep this in mind that He is sanctified. He is set apart. He is hallowed. To cry out as Moses did in Exodus 15, 11, who is like unto you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, and working wonders. The name of God, when we have uh hallowed be your name, the name of God essentially stands for God Himself. We cannot think of the name of God without thinking of His character, His essence, and His attributes.

Now, in America, we we don’t usually place a lot of meaning and importance even to a name. But in other cultures, they do sometimes. In South Africa, for example, I heard a story of a man, an American who went to Tanzania, and this American was talking with a member there of the Masai and was using his name, personal name quite frequently. And the man said, Do not throw my name about. My name is important. My name is me. My name is for my friends. Now in America, we just use a name to just make sure, you know, we’re getting on to the right child. And they know the right ones in trouble. Or something like that. Just to designate individuals, mostly. But uh, when we think of the name of God, it’s not just designating who he is, it stands for who he is.

And so we need to revere that name. And we need to hallow our God in our prayers. Do we do this? Do we praise God? Do we hallow his name? Do we really know how to do that? Does hallowing God’s name in prayer just mean that we need to uh repeat a whole lot of adjectives and tell him that he’s holy and he’s righteous and he’s pure and make sure to add the omnis. He’s omnipresent and omniscient and get all the omnis in there. I’m not saying that those are bad words, but brethren, that there comes a point where they’re just words, and we need to make a personal connection with the fact that the way to hallow God’s name is the same way that the psalmist does, is to hallow God by telling him of his mighty works.

And so we praise God. We hallow him by telling him how wonderful he is in the fact that he is the creator of all the universe. That he stretched out the heavens and measured them with a span, and he holds the waters of the earth in his hand. That he’s the one that sent the flood to destroy and purge the wickedness of the earth. That he led his children of Israel with a powerful hand out of Egyptian captivity and into a land flowing with milk and honey, and he led his children in there to defeat the wickedness and the enemies that were in the land. And how God gave to his people King David and promised to King David that your descendant will sit on the throne forever, and your kingdom will be established forever.

3. Purpose: Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

And that king is Jesus. And Jesus is king because he died for us, and he gave his life. These are the ways that we hallow God’s name in prayer. Notice also here that praise comes before petition. I think, therefore, there is an implicit lesson there that there’s a higher priority on praise than on petition in some ways. Perhaps we skip praise to go straight to what we want from God. Thirdly, purpose. Your kingdom come. God’s kingdom is the realm where he rules. Now, this topic of the kingdom can be a complicated and multifaceted topic. But I think there’s no doubt that here, this is the same kingdom that Jesus was talking about when he said the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is the Messianic kingdom which was to come, which was at hand, which the Jews had great anticipation and excitement for.

Your kingdom come. And so what it meant was to pray, not only that the kingdom be inaugurated, but that it thrive, and that his followers would become a part of that. Well, the kingdom is now here. You know, the messianic kingdom is now a reality. So I guess that means that this part of the prayer doesn’t have any application to us, right? We can just forget about this one. No, not at all. If the kingdom is now here, and if our King Jesus is on the throne, then what do we need to be praying about the kingdom? We need to pray for the welfare of the kingdom. Now you cannot think of the kingdom of God without thinking about the will of God, can you? The reign of God is his kingdom.

You can’t think of that without thinking of his will. So it’s no accident that the very next part of the prayer is your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I really believe that this is a parallel thought. At its most basic level, what does your kingdom come mean? Essentially, it means your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So, how can we expand that? Let’s make this practical. Your will be done on earth. Do we really see how that’s practical for us in prayer? Well, if we want God’s will to be done on earth, then how about we start by praying for his will to be done in our lives? Or if you will, his kingdom come in our hearts and in our lives.

4. Provision: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

In our families, in this country, in other countries throughout the world, that God’s will be done. Do we not pray for those kind of things a lot? Well, sure we do. But do we realize that essentially what we’re doing is unpacking the Lord’s Prayer? Do you see how practical this is? Jesus was practical. The Bible is practical. The Lord’s prayer is practical. Number four. Provision. Give us this day our daily bread. Bread here doesn’t just mean bread and only bread. Give us our bread, but don’t give us anything else. We don’t need water. We don’t need any other food. So you can say that bread represents food. But even more than that, bread here in a broader sense represents all the provisions of this life. Do you see that?

This prayer is an expression of continual daily dependence upon God for every provision. In Europe, I’ve read that their grocery shopping is a bit different from ours. Their grocery stores are different. I don’t know if any of you have visited there and seen this to be true, but this is what I’ve read. I don’t know this from experience. That their grocery stores don’t have quite as many options and they have a lot more perishable items than what we have. And so grocery shopping there is in general more of a daily thing. And I tell you when when I go to the grocery store, load up my family, you know, I’ve got the wife, I’ve got the three kids, and we go to conquer publics. And we are examining every aisle, every single thing.

We don’t want to miss a thing. We live a little ways from public where we live and we’re loading up an entire buggy and sometimes two and sometimes stuff down the bottom because I want to have everything I need for a couple of weeks. I don’t want to have to go back. We may not relate to this quite as much as the first century saints would about give us this day our daily bread because it wasn’t something they just had stocked up like we do. All their provisions of life and so forth there was more of a daily recognition of the fact that we don’t necessarily we can’t necessarily rely on having this tomorrow we need to have that mindset brethren. We need to be we need to be like what God was trying to teach his children of Israel to be with the manna.

5. Pardon: Forgive Us Our Debts

Don’t store up any more than one day there’s I think implicit in that a dependence upon God for what God was giving them every single day. Now how can we expand this? How can we make this practical how about give us this day our daily money give us this day, our daily clothing. Give us this day our daily shelter. Give us this day our daily health. Give us this day our daily rest. You see how we can expand this. Do we rely on God enough for our provisions? Or do we trust in ourselves? Because we’re hardworking Americans. Our prayers provide the evidence of where we place our trust. Number five. Pardon. Pardon. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. This is my favorite part to get to in this prayer.

You think about it, all these other categories were things that Jesus Himself personally prayed for, but not this one. This is the one thing he did not have to pray for because he was sinless and he did not need forgiveness. Forgive us our debts.

And one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. Now that doesn’t mean ten thousand dollars. One talent was worth 20 years worth of labor. Okay? So 10,000 talents would have taken 200,000 years to earn. That’s how much he owed his king. So the king demanded that the man and his family be sold and put into prison and payment be made. So the man falls prostrate before his king, his master, and begs for mercy. I will pay you back everything. And the king does that which no king would ever do. And he actually releases the debt.

You know, brethren, we ought to do what that man did and fall down on our face, prostrate before our God, begging for mercy, because our debt is a 10,000 talent debt that we can never pay back, and we beg him for forgiveness. I don’t need to tell you how important this is. But not only should we pray and forgive us our debts, but also we need to pray as we have forgiven our debtors. This is the one part of the prayer that Jesus gives commentary on after the prayer, after he gives the model prayer. In verses 14 and 15, he says, For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions.

This is a matter of heaven and hell, brethren. It’s a matter of salvation of whether we’re willing to forgive someone who has sinned against us. And there’s a lot more detail that I could go into here that I won’t. But you understand the principle. Infinitely greater. In that same parable of Matthew 18, after that servant received forgiveness, basically, of that 10,000 talent debt, he then went on, and there was a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii. Well, a hundred denarii is a hundred days’ wages. Pretty good chunk of change. But that’s nothing compared to 200,000 years of wages that he owed his master and was forgiven of. But what did he do about this? Did he forgive? The servant fell down before him and begged for it.

Please have mercy, I’ll pay you back everything. And he said no, and he demanded the man to be thrown into prison until payment be made. And of course, when word came back to the king about this, that man received very great punishment. We need to beware that we don’t become that servant who was unwilling to forgive these small debts against us compared to this infinitely greater debt that we have sinned against God. Now, we realize this. And we pray for God to forgive us often. Sometimes we even pray for it at the beginning of services and at the end of services. I mean, hopefully we didn’t sin in between, but we could have. So it’s something, if we pray, that’s the one thing we make sure we don’t miss out on, is praying that God forgive us.

6. Power to Overcome Sin

But do we actually say what Jesus taught to say in the model prayer? Do you actually say that? Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. How often have you heard that? How often have you said that? It is absolutely essential to our prayer life that we say that and that we remember that. Jesus taught that it was essential. And he gave commentary on only that part of the prayer here in Matthew 6. That shows even more how important a priority we ought to put on it. Sixth and finally, power. Power to overcome sin. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Think about the wording of that for a moment. Do not lead us into temptation or lead us not into temptation.

I believe there’s more to this than praying that God would give us strength when we’re tempted. I believe that this is essentially asking God to keep us from being confronted with temptation. That’s one aspect of it. Do not lead us into temptation. Isn’t that what we ought to be doing? To pray against temptations and yet rush into occasions is to thrust your fingers into the fire and then pray that they may not be burnt. So how foolish would that be? I’m going to thrust my hand into the fire. Lead me not into temptation. Well, how about avoid the fire? Isn’t that what this prayer is about? Prevention. Prevention. Deliver us from evil. Who is it that’s going to deliver us from evil? Is it us because we’re so strong and we have so much self-control?

Well, that is certainly part of it, but this is calling on God to give us the strength to overcome sin. In 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13, no temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. Well, I made the way of escape. God made the way of escape. God delivered you, and you rely on his strength and not your own for that deliverance that’s implicit in this prayer. Do we rely on God to give us strength? Before the day even begins. This is one reason I love to pray in the mornings and not wait till night.

Praying at night is great too. But I want strength to overcome temptation before the day begins because I don’t think I’m going to experience a lot of temptation while I’m sleeping. So this is just a practical suggestion that I have for you. Now we have also the addition, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. You may notice a note next to that in your Bible, or you may notice it is in brackets because it’s not found in earlier manuscripts, which may suggest that it was added by a later hand. And so we have here these six categories that Jesus gives us. In summary Prelude, praise, purpose, provision, pardon, and power.

Conclusion

In everything with thanksgiving. So thanksgiving is not a separate category. Thanksgiving is part of everything we do in prayer. I believe that if you really think about it, you could pretty well fit anything you wanted to pray about into these categories. Do you see how exceedingly practical the model prayer is? Do you know how to pray? When you observe Jesus and His prayer life as you learn about it in Scriptures, are you sticking with the fact like the disciples were? I’ve been brought up in a religious environment, maybe my entire life. I’ve heard prayers publicly, and I know how to pray a little bit, but compared to Jesus, I don’t know how to pray at all. Do we have then the humility that that disciple had in Luke 11 and verse 1 to come before our master and to say, Lord, teach us to pray?

We’re going to now dismiss with a closing prayer, and then we will go to our classes. Would you bow with me? Our Father, you are so powerful. You’re a God who hears and a God who answers. And you’re a God who teaches.

And we exult in the hope of glory that we have in living our Christian lives and in drawing near to your throne today and even right now. We are approaching you, Father, in heaven. We prostrate our souls before you. We pray, Father, that you would teach us how to pray, like Jesus did. That we may become more thoughtful, that our prayers might not become mindless repetitions, but that they would come from a heart of faith and from a heart that has been taught your word and taught how to pray. Thank you so much, Father, for your grace and for your love towards us. Be with us through the rest of our worship and of our study today. Through your Son, we pray. Amen.