Jesus Modeled Prayer
Matthew 6: 5 – 13.
Introduction.
Do you have a cell phone? I don’t know how we ever lived without cell
phones!
I remember when I was a kid, Batman and the
President of the United States were the only people with phones in their
cars. Now, everyone has a phone…And, we
can stay in constant communication with our friends, family and our jobs. I guess there is both good and bad about
having a cell phone.
Maybe you have the same experience with your phone
that I have…I don’t always have a good signal on my phone. This is especially true in the church
office. Sometimes my phone works just fine
in my office. But, other times I have to
stand next to the window in my office to talk on the phone. (This is interesting to me, because in 2006 I
traveled to North Africa on a mission trip.
We spent a week in a mountain village with crude bathroom facilities,
limited electricity and better cell phone reception than in downtown Lufkin!)
Isn’t it a good that we don’t have to have good cell
phone service to talk to God? In many
ways, this is the message we proclaimed at Christmas. God sent his Son, Jesus…And as the Gospel of
Matthew tells us, his name will be Immanuel—God is with us. No matter where you go or where you are, God
is accessible. God is present. And we can always talk to God through prayer.
One of the Spiritual Resolutions I mentioned last
Sunday is that we should resolve to spend more time with God. Jesus modeled this for us by waking up
earlier than his disciples and spending time alone with God in prayer. And, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught
us how we can pray as Jesus prayed…
Matthew 6: 5 – 8…"And
when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the
truth, they have received their reward in full.
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your
Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will
reward you. And when you pray, do not
keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of
their many words. Do not be like them,
for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Jesus introduced the Model Prayer by first
describing two negative examples of prayer. First, there is the hypocrite who does not
love to pray. Hypocrites love for other
people to see them praying and to hear the words of their prayers. A hypocrite is an actor who prays for show or
a person who puts on a mask to hide the wickedness on the inside. There are two ways to describe the prayers of
the hypocrites. On one hand, they are
more concerned with what other people think about them than what God thinks
about them. On the other hand, hypocrites
pray with no heart. They pray with their
bodies and their lips and even with their minds—wondering what other people
think about them. But their hearts are
far from God. Don’t pray like a
hypocrite who prays with no heart.
The second negative example Jesus gave us was the
pagan. Jesus makes no mention of whether
the pagans prayed in public or in private.
Instead, Jesus criticizes their “babbling.” Other translations call this “vain
repetitions.” The NIV chooses to
interpret this as “babbling,” because the Greek word used is probably an onomatopoetic
term imitating the sound of a language other than Greek (battalogeo). In this case,
Jesus is not discouraging repetition or even persistence in prayer. He is discouraging us from babbling on and on
and on…
The reason the pagans babbled in their prayers was
to find the right magic words acceptable to their gods. Pagan prayer was an attempt to flatter the
gods and thus to coax them to act. If
the gods did not answer prayer, it was because the pagans prayed incorrectly—either
using the wrong words or praying them in the wrong order. So, they prayed on and on and on...uttering
words that had no meaning, hoping to pray the magic words or to stumble upon
the right formula. In other words, the
pagans prayed mindless / meaningless prayers.
Hypocrites pray heartless prayers. Pagans pray mindless prayers. Jesus calls us to pray with engaged hearts
and minds. Prayer is to be a passionate
and heart-felt communication with God.
Prayer is to be thoughtful and mindful.
The Model Prayer is Jesus’ remedy to the heartless
and mindless prayers demonstrated by the hypocrites and pagans. Therefore, we should never turn Jesus’ words
into a heartless and mindless formula.
Matthew 6: 9 – 13…"This,
then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your
name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have
forgiven our debtors. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'
In introducing the Model Prayer, Jesus instructs his
disciples that this is “how” they should pray and not “what” they should
pray. This is why we refer to this
prayer as a model. It does not prescribe
the proper formula for praying. Instead,
it describes one model or example of prayer.
It is significant that the Model Prayer can be
divided into two sections. Both sections
contain three petitions (or requests) of God—a total of six petitions. The first section is all about God. The second section is about human need.
The first
petition: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”
Prayer begins in the intimacy of a child speaking
with his or her father. But this
intimate relationship with God as heavenly Father is balanced with the holiness
of God’s name. More than likely Jesus
spoke this prayer in Aramaic rather than Greek.
If this is the case, we might expect Jesus to use the Aramaic word
“Abba,” since we have examples of Jesus’ addressing God as Abba in other
places. This would be like our English
word “Daddy.” And we all know there is a
difference between a “Daddy” and a “Father.”
A father is a male parent. A
daddy is a father who is involved in the life of his children. Our relationship with God is not like a
father who sends child support payments to his children. Our relationship is like a daddy who is
involved in every aspect of our lives. He wants the very best for us and is so
involved in our lives that he blesses us with his time and good gifts.
Yet this intimacy with God as our heavenly Daddy
should be balanced with the holiness of God’s name. Name in the Bible is always a reference to a
person’s character. Person and name are
so closely related that they cannot be separated. Both God’s name and character are holy. That is to say God is separated from
everything that makes us human beings.
We are human and imperfect. God
is not human and is perfect. We are
sinners and subject to temptation. God
is sinless and cannot be tempted by evil.
It is important to note that God does not become
more or less holy as a result of our prayers.
Matthew recorded this petition as a third person passive. Since it is addressed to God in a prayer,
many New Testament scholars refer to this as a “divine passive.” A divine passive calls on God to act and to
accomplish something that is impossible for us to accomplish on our own. It could be translated “Let your name become
holy.” In other words, this is not our
telling God how holy he is. This is our
praying that the rest of the world will one day recognize the holiness of God.
The second
petition: “Your Kingdom come…”
This petition is also written in the third person
passive. This is another instance of a
“divine passive”—calling on God to do something we are incapable of doing. It could be translated “Let your Kingdom
come.” In other words, the Kingdom of God Kingdom of God Kingdom
of God Kingdom of God Kingdom of God
The third
petition: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”
For the third time, we see another “divine passive”
in Jesus’ prayer. Jesus prayed, “Let
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus teaches us through this petition that there is a place where God’s
will is always accomplished. That place
is heaven. If God’s will were always
accomplished on earth, then we would experience heaven on earth. Perhaps that is what Jesus is teaching us to
pray—Make this life “heaven on earth.”
Shift from the
Greatness of God to Human Need
While the first half of the Model Prayer is about
the greatness of God and God’s great purposes for the world, the second half
concentrates on human need. Human need
is the very foundation of prayer. Only
needy people pray. Self-sufficient
people have no reason to pray: they can take care of their own needs. However, none of us is totally
self-sufficient. We are needy, even when
we do not like to admit our needs.
The fourth
petition: “Give us today our daily bread…”
With the fourth petition, Jesus has changed his
focus from the miraculous to the mundane.
There is nothing in life more basic than bread. For modern Christians, bread is something we
can live without. If we don’t have
bread, we can just eat meat. That was
not the case in Jesus’ day. Bread was
the primary source of food for the ancient world. If there was no bread, there was no
food. Perhaps we should interpret Jesus’
prayer as a prayer for food…for our basic, daily needs.
Notice how much food Jesus prayed for. Just enough food to make it through the
day. This is not a greedy prayer. It is a needy prayer. It is a prayer of absolute dependence on God
to give us enough food to sustain life for one more day. I believe it is grounded in the Old Testament
story of the manna in the desert. God
provided manna for the Hebrew people to eat and instructed them only to gather
enough for one day. When they gathered
enough to last to the next day, the leftover manna spoiled. You and I are more accustomed to pray for
enough money to make it to the end of the month or the end of the year. Jesus demonstrates that we are to be so dependent
on God that we could not live through today without his provision.
The fifth
petition: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…”
“Debt” is one of the ways the Bible describes
sin. It is a debt we owe to God. But, it is a debt we cannot pay. The only hope we have is that God will
forgive our debts, or cancel our sins.
Again, we are needy in the presence of God. We cannot solve our own problems.
I don’t like the second half of this petition. I don’t want God to forgive me “AS I have
forgiven others.” I want God to forgive
me “BETTER than I have forgiven others.”
But, there is a connection between my forgiveness and God’s forgiveness. The person who has been forgiven knows how to
forgive. But forgiveness is a gift from
God. God gives us forgiveness for our
own sins, and God gives us a forgiving spirit.
The sixth
petition: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one…”
Where the fifth petition dealt with past sins, the
sixth petition deals with future sins.
On one hand, we need God’s forgiveness to deal with our past sins. On the other hand, we need God’s protection
to prevent sins in our future.
God does not tempt us or cause us to sin. However, there is a biblical precedent that
God does test our faith. The purpose of
temptation is to bring about a negative result—sin. The purpose of testing is to bring about a
positive result—increased faith and resistance to sin. This leads me to believe that Jesus is
teaching us to pray about our weakness.
In Psalm 26: 1 – 3 David prayed, “Vindicate me, O
LORD, for I have led a blameless life; I have trusted in the LORD without
wavering. Test me, O LORD, and try me,
examine my heart and my mind; for your love is ever before me, and I walk
continually in your truth.” But when
David saw Bathsheba, he failed miserably.
David was not strong enough to resist temptation. Jesus was strong enough to resist 40 days of
temptation from Satan in the desert. I
am not strong enough. Therefore, I must
pray for God to keep me away from all temptation.
Conclusion.
The most
common ways we speak of prayer are really not good images…
Sometimes
we use expressions like “going to God in prayer.” But, prayer is not going to God…Because God
is already here.
Sometimes
we say that we are “seeking God in prayer.”
But, God has already sought and found us. God sent his Son to seek and to save those
who are lost. Therefore, God has already
sought you and found you.
Perhaps the
best way to think of prayer is to say we are “spending time with God.”
The
Christian faith is not a religion.
Religion is a human attempt to make our lives pleasing to God. The Christian faith is not a philosophy. Philosophy is a way of thinking about the
world around us. Instead, the Christian
faith is a relationship with God. And,
just like any relationship…Our relationship grows stronger as we spend more
time with the person we love…Enjoying their presence and investing time in
communication.
The first
sign of trouble in any relationship is when people no longer communicate. If you are too busy to talk with God, what
does that say about your relationship with God?
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