The Program of Prayer
Notes
Transcript
The Program of Prayer
Text: Matthew 6:5–15 (KJV 1900)
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
9 After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
* By way of introduction this morning, let’s catch up to where we are in the study of the Lord’s Prayer.
* We have already seen, that the key to unlock the meaning of the Lord ’s Prayer is in verse 5 of our text:
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:
* I want to remind you that The Lord’s prayer, is a continuation of the Sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5.
* Remember that the main, or over reaching theme, of the entire Sermon on the Mount, or what we call the Beatitudes, is to show that the religion that the scribes and the Pharisees were teaching the people was entirely inadequate.
* Matthew 5:20 is the key to the entire Sermon on the Mount, which includes our text this morning in chapter 6, The Lord’s Prayer.
Matthew 5:20 (KJV 1900)
20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
* Now I want remind you that the praying of the scribes and the Pharisees did not meet God’s standards, because of a very specific and simple reason-
* The scribes and Pharisees had the attitude that prayer was for them! Their praying was all wrong!
* We have been taught that prayer is for us to get God’s attention, in order to get God to do things for us- and that is entirely backwards to what God intended praying to be!
* Again here we see that the primary purpose for praying, is not for us to tell God things he doesn’t know- the purpose for prayer is not change God’s mind into helping us with our agenda-
* but the purpose for prayer is for changing our minds to line up with the Father’s will, and to teach us to hallow the Father’s name, and to teach us to further the Father’s kingdom causes!
* This is exactly why Jesus said “Seek you first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you!
* We saw a couple of weeks ago, that Jesus doesn't teach us a specific time, a specific place, a specific posture is any better than another when it comes to praying, but that everything Jesus taught in the Lord’s prayer had to do with the attitudes of our heart about God.
* As with anything else in the Christians life, true prayer focuses on God’s will, and not our will.
* In verse 10 Jesus also said:
“Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven…
* The kind of praying that pleases God will focus on God’s kingdom, and not our kingdom that we have created for our own selves, on this earth.
* Prayer is vital to the Christian life; There are two great pillars that hold up and support the Christian as he lives the Christian life.
* The most important of these great pillars is The Word of God. The Bible compares the Word of God to life giving water, which is essential to live.
* The second great pillar that holds up and supports the Christian is prayer- and like water, breathing air is essential to life.
* Prayer is to the Christian’s life, what breathing is to the human body.
* Prayer It is the drawing in, or “breathing” of the presence of God that gives us life and sustenance.
* The Word of God is where we go to strengthen our faith and fortify our minds against the kingdom of this world, and prayer is what gives our hearts humility, and strengthens and heals our damaged emotions and feelings.
* These two great pillars of the Faith hold us up and strengthen us- The reading of the Word of God and praying.
* As we walk and live as pilgrims in the Devils kingdom of this world, we are opposed by the worlds system, and get beat up. As a result we suffer from damaged feelings and emotions of the heart.
* When we pray, God heals and sooths our injured souls on the inside.
* Even though prayer is most essential to the Christian life, the apostle Paul says that we don’t know how to pray like we should.
* Just as the new born baby does not know how to breathe when he leaves the safety of his mother’s womb, when we get saved, we have to learn how to pray.
* When the new born baby enters the world, he does not know how to access the air that he so desperately needs. He must be made by the doctor to cry, forcing him to breathe.
* When we are newly born into the Kingdom of God, we desperately need life giving sustenance from God, but we don’t know how to access it.
* May times, our loving Father will cause us to cry in life… in order that we might learn how to access what we need from heaven.
* When we suffer as a Christian, we cry out to God in our pain and thus open our lungs to receive the life-giving blessings from heaven.
* - and yet in Romans 8 the apostle Paul tells us that we don’t right way know how to pray as we should.
* Here in our text, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is helping to learn to pray- to make us understand how to pray, in order that we might receive from God.
* We've been seeing that this particular prayer that the Lord gives, is not a prayer to be recited only, although that would certainly be alright, it's not a prayer to be a part of a ritual or a routine or a liturgy,
but The Lord’s Prayer is a skeleton for which all prayers are to find their form.
* Again, using the illustration of a new born baby, we need to learn how to pray, and Jesus teaches us how to pray in our text this morning, the Lord’s Prayer.
* A new born knows nothing of the community spirit. A baby knows nothing about letting someone else have their choice, a baby screams and is unable to deal with something like a mother coming in and saying, you know I'm really going to get to that I, I think by about 9:15 but in the meantime I've got a few things to do,
*- oh no! A baby understands one thing and that's me, me, me, I want, I want!
* This is how the baby Christian prays!
*- and when children get a little older, past the stage of even being in the crib, then the baby goes through the stage of “that's mine you can't have it” Kind of selfishness.
* That is the way our fleshly minds are bent, and we grow up to continue in the same kind of thinking!
* Through things like advertising, and through the various things in our society, children grow up with the world’s selfish mindset.
* Even through the Junior High and the High School, we tell kids that they are the king of their own castle, that they are to determine their own destiny, they are the master of their own fate, they will arrange their own affairs, they are charting their own course, they are to govern their own lives, and so the whole of human society is a selfish, self-centered, worldly kingdom, that knows very little about any other pronouns than me, mine and I.
*And so when God invades a life and all of a sudden the command of the Word of God is that when you pray it isn't me, mine and I, it's Thy name be hallowed and Thy will be done, and Thy kingdom come, that goes against the grain of everything that we have been taught.
* And we have problems with that; according to Romans 8, Paul says, "We do not know how to pray as we ought."
*And our Lord here is helping to make it right so we will understand, and we've been seeing that this particular prayer that the Lord gives is not a prayer to be recited only although that would certainly be alright, it's not a prayer to be a part of a ritual or a routine or a liturgy,
*- but it is a skeleton for which all prayers are to find their form.
* In other words these phrases that make up the Lord’s Prayer, are simply brief concise statements that open up to us incredible unlimited horizons and vistas of comprehension and content in our prayers.
* We've been learning that as we've been taking these statements, one phrase at a time.
* This morning we come to the third phrase in verse 10 it's the first three words, "Thy kingdom come."
"Thy kingdom come."
* Israel prayed for the kingdom, the early church prayed for the kingdom, the disciples asked, is this the time the kingdom will come?
* The phrase "Thy kingdom come." Is an incredible statement, three simple words in English, three simple words in Greek, and yet they open up to us something so vastly beyond our understanding, that we could never conceive of all that's contained in that simple statement.
* As we approach this phrase this morning, we should like feel like a little boy with his little plastic bucket at the beach- standing before the uncharted seas, there's no way we can contain the great truth of the kingdom, and the power of prayer in our little bucket this morning.
* We could spend the rest of our lives examining all that is being said by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer!
* Someday in eternity we will understand the full measure of what is meant in Jesus words contained in the Lord’s Prayer. "
* Jesus said “thy Kingdom come.”- This exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ is what that prayer is about.
* "Thy kingdom come," is to be expressed in prayer, to the one who has a right to rule and a right to reign who is none other than the King Himself, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.
* God the Father seeks this, so when you pray this, you are praying it in accord with God's will.
* In Psalm 2 we read, "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion."
* In other words God says He is exalting His Son the King. This passage goes on to say:
"The LORD hath said unto the Son, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for thy possession."
* You see, God wants to give the kingdoms of the world to the Son. God desires to set His Son, His King on the holy hill of Zion to reign on the throne of David.
* Throughout the Old Testament there is a promise of a coming King, one who would be born upon whose shoulders would be the government, says the prophet Isaiah.
* There is coming One who will reign and rule and have sway in the earth, a Savior, a Monarch, a King, a Messiah.
* The very word Messiah means anointed one, one with the right to rule and reign in the earth.
* You see, and this is so important for you to understand, God's program centers on a person.
* It is not a plan without a person, it is not a program without a person; all of human history focuses on a person!
* A person who will come again to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords on this earth and in Heaven.
* Such was the hope of Israel; such is the hope of the church;
Such is the hope of the world!
* Jesus Christ the King is the ultimate focus and consummation of all human history!
* In the book of Daniel we see a great image smashed by a flying stone coming through the air-
* , that stone is represents Jesus- and then the stone fills the whole earth, you see, Jesus is inseparable from His Kingdom.
* Turn with me there to the Book of Daniel chapter 2 and verse 31:
Daniel 2:31–35 (KJV 1900)
31 Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 32 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
* This great image that the King Nebuchadnezzar saw represented all the nations of the world as God sees them from Heaven.
* Now look what happens to the nations of the world in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar in verse 34:
34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. 35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them:
and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
* God revealed to Daniel the Prophet that the plan of God for the ages is that a kingdom from heaven would come down and crush the nations of the earth, and replace them with an everlasting kingdom:
Daniel 7:9–14 (KJV 1900)
9 I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. 10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. 11 I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake:
I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. 12 As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.
13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
* This one who is like the “Son of Man,” was Jesus who came “with the clouds of heaven.” And to Him was given a kingdom!
* There is no plan of God apart from the person of Jesus Christ, the person is the plan.
* And to pray, "Thy kingdom come," is nothing more or less, nor could it be more or less, than Christ reign, here and now, and in your heart and mine.
* A true child of God then concerns himself not so much with his own plans, and his own desires as he does with the pre-determined program and plan of God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
* Praying right, is not letting God in on your plans, it is calling on God God to fulfill His own plans. "Thy kingdom come."
* It takes quite a transformation in the life of a believer to come to the place where instead of saying, my kingdom come he says, "Thy kingdom come."
* Oh we may say, "Thy kingdom come," in words but I wonder sometimes if our prayers aren't literally filled with our own kingdom, our own plan, our own rule, our own reign; our own causes.
* And yet all of history, from the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis, where we heard of the seed of the woman to be born to bruise the serpent's head, all of history is moving to the glorification of, of the Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
* All history is moving to the consummation or one final end, the return of Jesus Christ.
* When Jesus taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come,” He was teaching us that our own causes are only valid in prayer, insofar as they agree
With, and are in accord and harmony with the eternal causes of God to be revealed in Christ.
* That is what Jesus meant when He said:
John 14:13–14 (KJV 1900)
13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
* When we pray, "Thy kingdom come," we are really affirming that we are relinquishing our own will, and the rule of our own life.
* We are saying to God's Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ within us, “Holy Spirit, You take control and You do what You will for Your glory.”
* Now when you do that, you bring yourself into an immediate
Confrontation with your own human nature, because your human nature screams for its own will, and its own way and its own causes.
* By using the phrase “Thy Kingdom come,” Jesus was teaching his disciples that we should be preoccupied with the things of God,
That we should be lost in His Kingdom causes!
* We are Kingdom people, and so for us to pray "Thy kingdom come," is the most basic part of our lives.
* We are to pray for God's causes.
* The whole of prayer focuses on Jesus- Jesus said in John 14:13,
"Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son."
* It's the glory of God that is the true measure of prayer.
* Jesus is teaching us here that God comes first in our prayers, He says, before you go blurting into His presence with all your petitions, stop long enough to consider His causes, His Kingdom, and affirm your yearning that He be glorified in His purposes and plan.
* In the phrase “Thy Kingdom Come,” Jesus was teaching his disciples, before asking for you own needs, take the time to let God know that your requests are only requests, insofar as they're in accord with His purpose.
* Jesus said “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," and
He will take care of adding all those other things that involve you.
* Your clothing and your housing and your food, all those things, He'll take care of if you seek His kingdom first.
* And so what does the phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” teach us about praying?
* Our attitude of prayer should be “Lord, I pray that You will do whatever advances Your kingdom, whatever brings Your rule and
Your reign.
* Why?
* Look at the second half of verse 13 in our text:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Conclusion:
* So, what do we take away from this sermon this morning?
* Praying “Thy Kingdom Come” demands an act of the will on our part.
* Jesus told the scribe one time, "You're not far from the kingdom."
*What did Jesus mean? He meant you've got the head knowledge, but you just haven't made the choice to make Jesus King of your life!
* If you want pray the way Jesus taught us to pray, your life and attitude should reflect a commitment to God’s plan for all things- the kingdom of His Son.
* We will never be effective in our praying until we make a commitment to the rule and reign of our King, Jesus in our hearts and lives.
* Are you committed to let God rule and rein over your life? Do you put the things of the Kingdom of God first in your life?
* To be a good citizen of the kingdom, you not only have to have the head knowledge that Jesus needs to rule your life, but you have to make the choice to let Him rule.
* Jesus said “No one who puts his hand to the plow, as a would
be follower, who begins to follow and then looks back is fit for My kingdom.
* In other words, you can know about the kingdom of God, and you can make some effort toward it, but until you make that final complete
Commitment to God, to allow Him to rule your life- then the rule of Christ is not established in your heart.
* There must be a commitment- have you made that commitment?
* If Jesus said "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." You should be seeking it, shouldn't you?
* If there is a kingdom, then you ought to seek it, if there is a reign and a rule of Christ you ought to run for it, you ought to seek it with all your heart.
* You know in Luke 16:16 it says, and this is a remarkable verse, "The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John;" John the Baptist, "since then,"- "The gospel of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it."
* By the phrase “Thy Kingdom come” Jesus was teaching us that we ought to pray "Thy kingdom come," in the sense that men be might be
saved, and that they might be rushing to grasp the reign of Christ in their life.
Secondly, I want you to take this thought home with you:
* We ought to value the Kingdom of God.
*In Matthew 13 Jesus says, "the kingdom is like a treasure,"
* In verse 44, then in verse 45 He says, "It's like a pearl of great price.' It is priceless, it is inestimable in its value, and we, because it is worth so much, should run to grasp it.
* But what if I’m already a faithful Christian, how does it apply to me? What can I say to the Lord?
* Jesus is teaching here in the Lord’s prayer is a daily time daily for us to affirm to God, that we bow the knee to His rule.
* I think this is what Paul meant in Romans 14:17 when he said "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink," The apostle Paul was saying that the kingdom of God is not on the outside, the kingdom of God is not external
* He was saying that "The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit."
* And so if the kingdom is to come to my life I can pray as a Christian,
Oh Lord, make me more righteous, more like Christ, oh Lord fill me more with Your blessed peace, oh Lord may I know the fullness of the joy of the Holy Spirit. And as I give myself over to the virtues that the Spirit wants to produce in my life, I am asking that the fullness of
Christ's reign be made manifest in me.
* We know that the kingdom comes upon us at the time of our conversion- We know that to inter the Kingdom we must make a commitment to the king, but know I want to remind you that the kingdom will have a consummation:
Luke 12:37–40 (KJV 1900)
37 Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. 38 And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. 39 And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. 40 Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.