“5 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. 6 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. 7 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.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, 10 Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”
Imagine that you have a combine which can harvest thirty rows of corn at a time. Let’s give it a six-hundred-bushel grain tank. Let’s say it is rated at 543 horse power. It can be a John Deere if you want. It can be a Case if you want. It can be any color you choose
Imagine that you own this combine but all you ever do is study its specs. The harvest is upon us and you haven’t been in the fields because you’ve been examining your 250-gallon fuel tank. The days are getting shorter; your corn and beans are still standing and rather than hitting it, you are delighting in your rotor length and diameter. Other farmers are already spreading manure and you are still sitting at the kitchen table giggling about your unloading rate. Fantastic specs are great, but they must be put into action.
Jesus has taught us this prayer. We’ve spent sixteen weeks studying the specifics of this prayer. Sometimes I’ve been lost in the specs and failed to put it into action. Maybe you have too.
Combines are built to harvest. Prayers are to be prayed. That is the claim of this sermon: prayers are to be prayed.
We will see this in two points. First: the manner of prayer. Second: the content of prayer. We will see the manner of prayer, how to pray, in verses 5-9. We study the content of prayer, what to pray, in verses 9-13.
First: the manner of prayer. Jesus has been teaching you how to pray. “Lord, teach us to pray,” asked the disciples. Jesus does. He tells us to pray sincerely, expectantly, obediently, and as you are.
First: pray sincerely. Jesus warned you about insincere prayers in verse 5, “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.”
These hypocrites only prayed because they wanted other people to think they were the sort of people who prayed. They prayed so that others would think well of them.
You like it when people think well of you. I like it when people think well of me. We like this esteem so much that we are tempted to feign respect for God Almighty to get it. Think of it this way: imagine that you have a high school daughter. A boy has been coming around quite a bit. He is nauseatingly respectful towards you. You know his reputation at school. It isn’t admirable, and it is well deserved. You know he is feigning respect for you so your daughter will think well of him. You will be tempted to treat God the way that boy is treating you. You will be tempted to feign respect for God in prayer so that others will think well of you. If you wouldn’t be tempted this way, Jesus wouldn’t have warned you against it.
How do you know if you are praying to God or praying for others to see? Look at verse 6, “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.”
If you pray sincerely, you pray to God and if you pray to God, you then aren’t concerned with any other audience.
You have plenty of opportunities to pray to God with sincerity. You have 168 hours in the week. I imagine that if we had the time and vulnerability to open up about our prayers, we would know the sincerity in this room. We would hear about troubled marriages. We would hear about surprising joys. We would hear about fears for the future. We would hear thanksgivings. We would hear weariness. We would hear profound sadness. We would hear God-glorifying goals.
Maybe you would be unwilling to share your prayers not because they are too personal but because they don’t exist. Maybe you can’t remember the last time you prayed without it being expected of you. Jesus’ words to you are the same, “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.” If you don’t know what to pray, start with this prayer we’ve been studying for sixteen weeks. The Father would love to hear you if you pray sincerely. First, pray sincerely.
Second, pray expectantly. This manner of prayer comes from verses 7-8, “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.”
The pagans thought they needed to manipulate their gods into generosity. Is that the manner of your prayers? Are you trying to wrestle concessions from God in prayer?
Pray expectantly. Expect that your Father in heaven cares. The pagans kept praying in hopes of bending the god’s ear just like the prophets of Baal kept crying out to him on Mount Carmel in hopes of getting fire from heaven. You don’t need to pray that way. Jesus tells you to pray expectantly because, “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
The Father is more interested in your prayers than you are. That’s not to deny your interest. If you are praying sincerely, you are certainly very interested. But even if you are pouring out your heart with tears of joy or sorrow, the Father is still more engaged in this conversation than you. You can’t be more into prayer than God is. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way, “it is even more sure that God listens to my prayer than that I really desire what I pray for.”
The hardest part about praying expectantly is continuing to pray expectantly. Some of you have been praying the same God-glorifying request for years. It is hard to make the same request over and over again with expectation.
You might need help to continue praying expectantly. You might need to pray with a Christian brother or sister. You might want to pray with me. A Christian brother or sister can revive your expectancy.
A prayer journal might help you pray expectantly. Write down a list of what you’ve said to God. Look at it a few days later. Make a note of what God has done in response to what you’ve said.
Hearing the Spirit’s voice can revive your expectancy. Read passages like Isaiah 64 before you pray, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before You! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make Your name known to Your enemies and cause the nations to quake before You! For when You did awesome things that we did not expect, You came down, and the mountains trembled before You. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides You, who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.”
If you are going to keep praying expectantly, remember that the Father answers. James urged believers to keep praying by reminding them that God answers. “Elijah was a man like us,” said James. “He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.”
Praying with expectancy can be difficult heart-work, but the alternative is to stop praying. The one who died for you doesn’t want you to stop praying. He trained you to pray expectantly.
He also trained you to pray obediently. We see two markers of obedient prayer in this passage. The first is in verse 9. Jesus says, “This, then, is how you should pray…”
There are right and wrong ways to pray. I want to be careful here because some of us have very tender consciences and the fact that we could possibly pray wrongly terrifies us. If this is you, you need to remember Matthew 7:11, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” You need to remember Romans 8:26, “in the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” The Father isn’t going to reject your prayer on a technicality any more than you would reject your child’s humble, sensible request on a technicality. If you have a tender conscience, you need to hear that.
If, however, you take God quite lightly, then you need to hear that there are wrong ways to pray. God spoke clearly, “Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.”
If you never have any sense that you are speaking with your Creator when you pray, you take God lightly. If you never have any sense that you are speaking with your Judge when you pray, you take God lightly. If you think that God should be honored to speak with you when you pray, you take God lightly. That is not praying obediently.
The second marker of obedient prayer is found in verses 14-15, “if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
You can’t pray, “forgive us our debts,” with any obedience if you refuse to forgive those who sin against you. You can’t pray, “hallowed be Your name,” with any obedience if you are obsessed with what others are hallowing your name. You can’t pray, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” with any obedience if you are not willing to do His will. If you are going to speak with God Himself, shouldn’t you be sure to approach Him obediently? Pray obediently.
Fourth and finally, pray as you are. Who are you? You are a child of God. Jesus said, “this, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven.’”
I hope you that you have been born again of God. I hope that you have given up on your own self-improvements, have admitted your moral bankruptcy, and have acknowledge that the cross of Jesus is your only hope in life and in death.
I hope there are times at which you are amazed to be a child of God. I hope you can say the following two sentences with exclamation points the way the NIV translates them; “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
Have you been adopted into the Father’s family? We read about orphans earlier in our worship. If you are a child of God, you were adopted by God as an orphan.
This past week, my family watched the 2014 version of Annie. I appreciated many of the updates from the 1987 version, but I did miss Albert Finney as Oliver Warbucks. If you don’t know the story of Annie, there is an orphan named Annie who is waiting for her parents to come to the orphanage and take her home. She doesn’t know it, but her parents have died. There is also a billionaire named Oliver Warbucks. He has a public relations problem. People see him as cold hearted. They think he only cares about money. They might be right. To prove them wrong, Warbucks invites an orphan to stay in his mansion. That orphan is Annie.
Over the course of the movie, Warbucks realizes that he needs Annie as much as she needs him. He softens. He smiles. He sweetens. He plans to adopt her not because of his public image but because he wants to. Now Annie still thinks her parents are alive. She asks him to fine them. Warbucks starts a nationwide search for her parents. Some imposters come to claim Annie in hopes of a reward from Warbucks. Annie drives off with this couple, thinking her parents have come at last. There is a lovely shot of Finney looking off into the distance. It didn’t make it into the 2014 version. He sings, “And maybe I’ll forget, how much she meant to me, and how she was almost my baby, maybe.”
After Warbucks learns that couple was imposters, he saves Annie. He adopts her, and the last scene of the movie is a circus in his backyard that he has put together as a celebration for Annie. From now on she calls him, ‘daddy.’
From now on you call God, ‘daddy.’ Pray as you are – a child of God. “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven.’” “You have received the Spirit of adoption,” says Paul, “and by Him you cry, ‘daddy, Father.’”
Do you realize the Father was far more excited for your adoption to come through than Daddy Warbucks was to adopt Annie? Do you realize that He sees you as His baby, whether you are five or ninety-five? “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” If you are a child of God, please pray like it.
Do those words describe your prayers—sincerely, expectantly, obediently, and as you are? Is that the manner of your prayers?
What about the content of your prayers? That’s our final point: the content of prayer. Now we look at the Lord’s Prayer itself. This is the content. These are the petitions that have made up most of this series, but I want you to notice how this content is introduced. Look at verse 9, “This, then, is how you should pray.” Jesus didn’t say, “This, then, is what you should pray.” None of the translations give that impression.
Yet that is often how we treat the Lord’s Prayer. We treat this prayer as if these specific words are consecrated. People argue over whether this prayer uses debts or trespasses – forgive us our what? Trespasses or debts – it’s a matter of translation. Don’t hallow the content of this prayer.
There are plenty of people who will pray these words today in Christian worship services and it will be no more meaningful to God than saying, ‘blah, blah, blah, blah.’ The content of this prayer, even content given by Jesus, cannot overcome unbelief and plenty of people pray this content with no belief. That does nothing. Don’t get hung up on the exact content of this prayer as if Jesus said, “this, then, is what you should pray.”
This prayer teaches you what to want. Do you want your daily bread to come from yourself or from the Father? Do you want to be forgiven by your Father? Do you want help fleeing temptations? Do you want what the Father wants to give? This is a prayer that tells you what the Father will give to those who ask.
If you ask for what the Father wants to give, rest assured you will get it. If you ask for your daily bread sincerely, expectantly, obediently, and as you are, rest assured you will get it. If you ask for the Father’s will to be done sincerely, expectantly, obediently, and as you are, rest assured you will get it. If you ask for deliverance from temptations sincerely, expectantly, obediently, and as you are, rest assured it will happen.
It isn’t surprising that shortly after teaching this prayer, Jesus taught, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Do you pray for what the Father loves to give? You know what the Father loves to give. We’ve studied it for sixteen weeks now. We’ve spent a lot of time on the specs of this prayer so that you would know what to want. Do you want the Father to be adored? “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” Do you want the kingdom of heaven to come? “Your kingdom come.” Do you want to do God’s will? “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Do you want to be content with God’s will for your life? “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Do you want what you need for today to come from the Father? “Give us this day our daily bread.” Do you want to be content with what the Father provides for today? “Give us today our daily bread.” Do you want forgiveness? “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Do you want help forgiving those who have sinned against you? “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Do you want deliverance from your sinful flesh? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Do you want deliverance from this corrupt world? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Do you want deliverance from Satan? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Is that what you want? Is that your prayer?
If so, it is your prayer because of Jesus. I’m not talking about Jesus teaching you the content of this prayer. He certainly did that. I’m talking about your wanting what the Father offers. You want that because of Jesus. Without Jesus, you wouldn’t love the Father enough to pray, “hallowed be Your name.” Without Jesus, you wouldn’t want the Father’s will to be done. You would still want your own will to be done. Without Jesus, you could not be forgiven, and you certainly wouldn’t want to forgive any one else. Without Jesus, you wouldn’t be a child of God. Without Jesus, you wouldn’t and couldn’t pray, “our Father.”
Jesus died so that you could call God, “Father.” Jesus died so that the Father could call you His baby. Are you so confused as to think that God doesn’t want to hear from you? Are you so selfish as to take from God but never speak to Him? Are you so slow of heart? Jesus died so you could speak to his Father as your Father.
If you are that confused and slow of heart and if you are fine with that no amount of teaching on prayer will help you. God Himself could teach you about prayer, which He has, and it will do no good – which it hasn’t.
But if you want to speak with the Father, He is eager to listen. He is more eager to listen then any of us are to speak to Him and many of us are quite eager. His Son still trains disciples to pray. Are you one of his disciples? He has taught you how to pray. Amen.