We are made in God’s image. This is a staggering truth. The more you think about that and let that change the way you think about yourself and others as you look at others, listen to others, and speak to others, you will be drawn to worshiping God and loving others. To be in God’s image means we’re relational on a personal level the way animals can’t be. We can relate to God in words, emotions, physical actions, and connect with him in ways we cannot connect with animals or the rest of the non-human creation. This relationship includes listening to God and talking to God. As God speaks to us this morning, he’s telling us how to go deeper in enjoying our talking to him. Prayer is a tremendous gift. The fact that our relationship to God is not one-way communication is tremendous.
Many humans pray. It isn’t just followers of Jesus the Messiah who pray. Jesus commands us how not to pray in vv.5-8. We talked about it last week and we review it now before we hear and heed the rest of what Jesus teaches us on prayer.
· He’s not giving us a mantra, but a model to pray “like.”
· We address God as Father as believers saved by his grace and adopted into his family through Jesus Christ.
· We start with God and his glory and global purposes so we see ourselves more accurately.
· We pray for God’s name to be honored as holy.
· We ask our Father that his kingdom would come, that Jesus would come back now and consummate the kingdom. We also ask that in the meantime we’d faithfully seek his kingdom and spread the gospel calling people into that kingdom.
· We ask the Father that his will would be done and obeyed in our lives and world the way it is obeyed in heaven.
· We talked about these three prayer priorities last week.
#4 – Ask our Father to provide our needs (v. 11)
This fourth priority is usually the first and most dominant priority in our prayer lives and in our sharing of prayer requests for others. We’ve tried to teach others to pray prayers of praise or confession without requests for other things as a discipline not because it’s wrong, but because we’re spring-loaded to pray for our needs, our temporal and physical needs first, foremost, and sometimes exclusively.
The first 3 requests are prayer requests so we’re not against requests. It’s a matter of valuing God and our needs the way God values God and our needs. We need to see the proper relationship between these things and pray accordingly.
We ask God to provide our needs because he is the one who actually provides our needs. He does it so often and so consistently that we neither ask him to provide nor do we thank him with gratitude since we’ve come to assume our needs will be taken care of.
The truth is that God provides our needs and food. Paul, in Acts 14.17, makes it clear that everyone who eats does so because God has provided whether they know and trust in Jesus Christ or not:
CSB Acts 14:17 although He did not leave Himself without a witness, since He did good: giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and satisfying your hearts with food and happiness."
For Christians it is crystal clear that all our needs are provided by our Father:
CSB Psalm 34:10 Young lions lack food and go hungry, but those who seek the LORD will not lack any good thing.
CSB Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
CSB Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
And this is important because we want to glorify God the Father. We exist to stir up and spread a passion for the glory of Jesus Christ together. And that’s why this prayer priority has to be expressed in our prayers. Peter reminds us that this is a distinctive way to glorify God:
CSB 1 Peter 4:11 If anyone speaks, his speech should be like the oracles of God; if anyone serves, his service should be from the strength God provides, so that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To Him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.
The fact that God provides so frequently and consistently in our lives should be cause for brokenness and gratitude, not indifference and arrogant expectation. If God wanted to, he could cut off the water supply to our city (which is one of the reported crises for our city in the near future). He can cause an immediate famine and hunger in our city with a big earthquake. And because he hasn’t, we should thank him and continue to ask for provisions. This genuine asking helps us to be thankful when it comes. When we don’t pray like this we don’t acknowledge his constant and consistent provision. Let us not be like the Israelites in the desert, which we are all prone to be like, in complaining at the provision of the Lord and taking his provisions for granted thus giving him no explicit credit and belittling his glory.
This prayer is necessary in our American culture of abundance and entitlement. It breaks our self-reliance, arrogant expectations, and God-belittling consumption of what he regularly supplies.
#5 Ask the Father to forgive our sins (v. 12)
We confess our sins to God and ask him for forgiveness because all of our sins, even the ones against others, are always against him. So we need forgiveness from him. Now this prayer is in the plural showing that confession to God can be in the company of other disciples of Jesus Christ. In fact, God commands us in James 5.16 to confess our sins to one another in the context of praying in the church with the elders during sickness.
We call God Father precisely because we have been forgiven, justified, and adopted as his sons and daughters. We ask forgiveness with confidence not because he’s a softy or a pushover who minimizes sin, but because he sent his Son to die for us and in Christ we have already been made his children so we know he will forgive us. This forgiveness spoken of here is relational forgiveness as opposed to legal or judicial forgiveness. So if I sin against my brother there will be tension, separation, and brokenness in our relationship that needs healing, removal, restoration, and forgiveness. But we’ll still be brothers in this state of need. We won’t be close and our ability to enjoy each other in our relationship will be hindered until restoration has happened. So it is with God the Father.
CSB Psalm 32:1 Davidic. A Maskil. How happy is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! 2 How happy is the man the LORD does not charge with sin, and in whose spirit is no deceit! 3 When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night Your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer's heat. Selah 5 Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and You took away the guilt of my sin.
CSB 1 John 1:8 If we say, "We have no sin," we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say, "We have not sinned," we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
2:1 My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father-- Jesus Christ the righteous One. 2 He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.
Here is the heart of the gospel. Matthew tells us: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins” (1.21). Jesus saves his people from their sins by dying on the cross, bearing and absorbing God’s wrath and judgment that we deserve for our sins, so that if you repent and believe in Jesus Christ’s death for you, you can know that he bore God’s wrath for you too as one of his people. If you have never turned from your sin and trusted Jesus the Messiah to save you, then do it now. God will save you from your sins and give you eternal life that you get to enjoy and live now if you would repent from sin and embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior, Lord, and Treasure.
This forgiveness God gives us in our day-to-day relationship and communion with him is necessarily connected with our forgiving others who sin against us (vv. 12, 14-15). This is what Paul was getting at in Ephesians 4.32:
CSB Ephesians 4:32 And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.
CSB Matthew 18:32 "Then, after he had summoned him, his master said to him, 'You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' 34 And his master got angry and handed him over to the jailers until he could pay everything that was owed. 35 So My heavenly Father will also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart."
If you can’t forgive it is because the pain it takes to forgive chokes out the gospel grace meant to free you to enjoy God more than enjoying the ease of bitterness (cf. Matt 13.21).
#6 Ask the Father to deliver us from temptation and the evil one (v. 13)
The natural outflow of a truly repentant and confessing heart is a desire for deliverance from temptation to sin and the temptations that come from the evil one. Ask God to deliver you. There are other things we can and must do to fight sin and resist the devil, but prayer should be a regular weapon for you in the fight against sin, temptation, and Satan.
In fighting the temptation to sin you can fill your mind with truth and say it out loud like Jesus did in the wilderness (Matt. 4). You must: “Flee from youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Tim 2.22, CSB). So flee sin and pursue holiness with other CrossViewers. That’s our mission, right? We exist to stir up and spread a passion for the glory of Christ together. So we flee sin and pursue righteousness together.
But the point here is that fighting sin includes praying in this way: “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Jesus said, “Stay awake and pray, so that you won't enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt 26.41).
Why do we need to be delivered from Satan, the evil one? He led us and we followed him before we were saved (Eph 2.2). He strategizes to defeat us with his tactics/schemes/tricks (Eph 6.11). He seeks to devour you (1 Pet 5.8). And he seeks to deceive you through false teachers, Satan himself disguising himself very convincingly as an angel of light (2 Cor 11.13-15).
Jesus defeated Satan in the wilderness, in his praying, and at the cross and resurrection. So we have hope that we will be delivered from Satan ultimately because Jesus prays for us (Heb 7.25) as he did for Peter (Luke 22.32-34). So we can take comfort that God is in us through the gospel work of Jesus Christ and that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4.4). So we pray confidently because God loves to hear and answer prayers as he steps in over and over to deliver us from the destructive schemes of the evil one who tries to choke out our faith in Jesus Christ to join him in everlasting destruction and punishment.
Conclusion
So ask our Father to:
1. Let his name be honored in our lives, homes, city, and world.
2. Let his kingdom come as Jesus returns and as we spread the gospel
3. Let his will be done here on earth
4. Provide our daily needs that he has so consistently
5. Forgive us our sins
6. Remove us from temptation and deliver us from Satan
These should be our prayer priorities. Jesus tells us to ask and that our Father is good, gracious, and excited to answer our specific prayers! Listen to Jesus again when he said:
ESV Matthew 7:7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Think six months from now, September 7, 2010. Think of our church praying with these priorities and requests every day together and individually. Imagine what our LA neighborhood might look like with God answering these prayers, opening doors, and us finding what we need for the honor of his name on our mission. How would our church bless each other? How would we bless the neighborhood? Who would hear the gospel? Who will get saved? What sins will we be putting to death? How much will our love for God and each other increase?
God loves to answer our prayers for his glory and our good, so let’s pray, and pray like Jesus taught us.
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