So let us then turn in God's Word to Matthew chapter 6, reading the Lord's Prayer. We'll start reading before our text, I hear there. We'll start at verse 9 and read through 15. So let us hear together the Word of Almighty God as Jesus teaches us to pray. In this manner, therefore, 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 this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. For if you forgive men, their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, their trespasses, neither will your father forgive you your trespasses. Thus far, the reading of God's word, may he ask, add his blessing to our consideration of it this morning. Brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ, as we continue looking at prayer, prayer is the lifeline of a Christian. We need prayer. Jesus needed to pray, he tells us, and we need to be in prayer, God says, continually. It's like breathing. It is part of what we are. And prayer is confession. Not just when we say, Lord, forgive me for this sin or that sin, but prayer across the board is confession that we are unable. God is able. We are insufficient. God is sufficient. As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, it is the chief part of the thankfulness which God requires of us. Prayer is not a messenger service to God telling God what He doesn't know. It is necessary for us as Christians because we need to say, I know where this comes from. We so easily as human beings think we're why we have this and why we have that. Too easily we become like the rich man who says, My strength and my ability has provided all this. Take your ease. Prayer says the exact opposite. And notice what we say. Give us this day our daily bread. Prayer is not saying God supply for me whatever I need for the next 30 years. Prayer is a daily demonstration of our reliance on God's daily gracious care. God daily provides the ability to eat and to drink. God daily provides His grace as we sin against Him. And God, moment by moment, daily, provides delivery from temptation and from evil. Last week we looked at how it would be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So often when we look at those, we think, well, those are kind of ethereal, those are out there. We need those things just as much as we look this morning at things which are certainly more of our felt needs. Food. Gotta have it. And yet, salvation and God's kingdom come. God's will in us and everyone is just as important as that. Forgiveness, delivery from evil and from its effects. We see these as our felt needs. But Jesus, in a few words, reminds us of the wonderfulness of God's delivery, that He delivers us from all of our needs. He provides for all that we need, and we need far more than we easily think. And so our Savior teaches us, His people, the manner in which we should pray. And we're looking at verses 11 through 15. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation, For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Give us this day our daily bread. That first word ought to strike us. Give. We do not deserve even our daily bread. Jesus said, that we as servants, when we have done all that our Master requires of us, we are to say we are unprofitable servants. We have done what it is our duty to do. We have not added to God. God, in His graciousness, provides for us daily bread. One of my professors in seminary liked to talk about a sermon that he wrote. How do we pray, give us this day our daily bread, when we have full insurance coverage? Do we trust the insurance or do we trust God? As my dad used to like to say, when you have one gallon of milk and I have 15 gallons of milk, but mine are all sour, grace is you give me a drink of milk. When God does not provide that we can eat of our daily bread and think of how often that happens. When we have illnesses or those sorts of things, we can have all the stuff in front of us that we possibly could. We cannot eat that. God is the one who provides. And we are so tenuous in having these things. Jesus says a little bit later in this chapter, verse 34, Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things sufficient, for the day is its own trouble. God is the one who provides for us. Yes, we save. Yes, we're not called to be foolish with the things God provides for us. But in the end, God is the one who provides, not we ourselves, not our abilities and our intelligence. And God says, give us this day our daily bread. We depend on the God whom we have offended in our sins for the bare necessities of life. Never forget how tenuous our grasp on existence is. When I come before God having just sinned, God hears, not because I'm worthy. but because Christ is worthy. God is that gracious so that we who fail and fall far short hears the prayers of His people. And He provides for all of the necessities, for body and soul. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 4.7, for who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as though you had not received it? All that we have is a gift, is a trust from God. We are called to use it to His glory. And he continues then, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Interestingly enough, as I looked at dividing the Lord's Prayer, and I didn't love that, but time somewhat is of the essence, I didn't think, but all of the weirdness that goes on in our culture nowadays gets stuck on this end of the prayer. We have many people say, forgive us our sins or forgive us trespasses. Why do we say debt and debtors? It certainly doesn't mean monetary issues here. But the word there in Greek is debt. So we say debt. Why? Because we owe God a perfect life. And so when we pray it, yes, we owe perfectly everything that God requires of us. And so we call upon God to forgive us our debts, our debt of sin. In so many other ways, our debt by which we owe God perfection, we are called to look to God for those things again because we don't deserve them. Certainly, yes, we can say sins, we can say trespasses, but we tend to be a church, and I think rightly so, that seeks to be as close to the original of what God teaches as we possibly can. And we're called as well, then, to forgive our debtors. And Jesus' only comment, having taught the Lord's Prayer, is what we read in verses 14 and 15. That if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses. And this is a theme. Jesus, talking in Matthew 18 about church discipline, also speaks to us about the fact that if we do not forgive, then God will not forgive us. God teaches there in Matthew 18 that the sins which others commit against us are not worthy to be even on the balance sheet in comparison to our sins against Almighty God. And Jesus says here very clearly, if we do not forgive, then we are not forgiven. In Matthew 18, Peter asks, verses 21 and 22, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times, which the number seven is the number of completion in the Hebrew world. And Jesus says to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Don't count. Don't even think about it. James, the apostle writes, James 2.13, for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. And we live in a culture, and as we look at our culture, it's full of people who can't forgive because they don't know what it means to be forgiven. And we as Christians need to be the ones ready to be forgiven. Well, that means I'm going to get taken advantage of. God takes care of us. God cares for us. If we are being obedient to God, we don't need to fear, even if it does mean we lose something. Forgiveness, by the way, always means we lose something. We lose the right to hold this over people's head. We lose the right in so many ways. We've been talking about this as we had, and it's not been terribly recently, but the Sunday school class on the whole idea of forgiveness. that we lose when we forgive God lost. He lost his son. Crucified his son. And yet he did that for the glory that would follow. For our salvation. And then Jesus teaches us very quickly. But so importantly. In verse 13, there's so much here. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Now, I think this is a far too often forgotten request because we think we're okay. I can handle temptation. What does Jesus say? You're strong. Fight it. Flee. He doesn't say, Hey, stand your ground. is flee temptation. We are not strong enough of ourselves. Our best answer is to flee, to get out of there. In fact, often to prepare beforehand for places where we know we will be tempted. And what is the first thing we ought to be doing? Praying. Deliver me from temptation. If we know how weak we truly are, We will especially love this request. When we think we're strong, we are weak. We need to rely on the upholding of God. And that's part of the underlying understanding of what we see here. That if God does not uphold us, we will fall. Not then that we blame God, but we need to Realize God needs to uphold us and we rely on Him. 2 Peter 2 verse 9, Then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment. God knows how to do that. God knows how to deliver us from temptations. And then another fun one. Deliver us from, as our translation here says, the evil one, which means the devil. Now, our tradition, the old King James, which if you compare the old King James and the new King James on things, usually the old King James is more accurate translation, says deliver us from evil. And that is, in my opinion, as well as the opinion of good scholars, the preferred translation. Deliver us from evil. Now we can get into all the technical details of that, I don't want to. Now the meaning might be virtually synonymous, but quite honestly I want to be delivered from more than just the devil. The Heidelberg Catechism rightly says that it is not just the devil that tempts us, the devil, the world in our own flesh, assail us without ceasing. The phrase here is parallel to what we just talked about temptation. And the apostle James again, James four, verse seven says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. But guess what? I've still got the world around me. I've still got my own flesh and I don't need the devil to tempt me. I am easily the source of my own temptations and so also the world. Long before we ever get to the temptations of the devil. And we need God to deliver us from more than just the temptations of the devil. We need God's grace. to deliver us from all evil. Jesus, in His high priestly prayer in John 17, verse 15, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from evil. We seek delivery from the effects of evil in this world, from our own evil, as well as the effects of the devil and of those around us. Some of us have dealt with some pretty horrendous effects of evil. Yet God can overcome those effects and even use them for our good and for His glory. God can give us grace for this life, and He promises us perfection in the new heavens and the new earth. And remember that much of the effects of evil with which we have to deal is our own. We need to be delivered from evil. We have been given hope, not in ourselves, but in the Son of God. He became flesh. He dwelt among evil. He who was perfect was subject to evil, sinful rulers, and even parents who loved Him, but were totally unable to understand the glory of what He was going to do on this earth. So much so that His mother and brothers at one point came and said, I'm back home, Jesus. They literally did. He came into this world to purchase for us eternal deliverance from evil. And we conclude this prayer with yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Again, modern translations, if you have the ESV, this isn't even in there, it's in a footnote. Now, I don't want to get deep into this, but 90% of the texts of the New Testament that we have, have this in there. The point being, and these are ancient texts, the point being, What does Jesus conclude? He goes back to the beginning, doesn't he? These are the same ideas we started out with. The kingdom and the power and the glory. Our prayer is not about us. So easily that's what we think when we start out a prayer. God, you didn't know, but I need X, Y, and Z. Our prayer is about God's kingdom. Yours is the kingdom. Go back your kingdom come about God's power. Your will be done as well. Give us this day our daily bread. Who provides those things? Certainly not us. God's glory. Just one example, the glory of our Savior by saving us. and bringing about the forgiveness of sins by delivering us from evil and so on. We as Christians are here about God's glory. We so easily are glory thieves. We conclude the prayer by reminding ourselves and Jesus reminding us that we're all about God and we are nothing without God. And we conclude the prayer with Amen. Now there's been some fun and crazy discussion about that one recently too. Because people don't know history. Amen is the transliteration of a Greek word which means truly or surely. Jesus says it regularly in his ministry. Mark records him saying very much, amen, amen, which is often translated into English by saying something like, assuredly, I say to you. But why does Jesus teach us to say amen at the end of our prayer? Because our hope is not in ourselves. We acknowledge at the very end of this prayer, truly, certainly, because our certainty is in God. Our trust is in God, the God who created the world, our Father in heaven. It is not in our ability. It is not in our deserving. We can pray this prayer. We can pray this prayer trusting that God will provide that which is perfect and right. So prayer is saying, I know where things come from. Prayer is coming before Almighty God with open hands. We need to know that while we have no claim on giving us his good gifts, God gives them to us for the sake of his son. The writer to the Hebrews says, therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised. is faithful. And certainly that speaks to worship, but it speaks to prayer too. That we can come before the throne of God. We have a high priest, as we talked about in our catechism lesson, who intercedes for us. And we can draw near with boldness through the way which he has made for us in full assurance of faith. I love that, in full assurance of faith, even failing, stuttering, sinful, yet in full assurance because it is in our strength of our faith. It is in the perfection of our Savior that we hope. And so we can approach the throne of grace in confidence, knowing with that word, Amen. that God hears our prayer, not because we're worthy, but because our Savior is worthy. Amen. Let us then bow our heads and come before the throne of our God's grace in prayer. Let us pray. Almighty, most gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the wonders of your grace. We praise you, Lord, that you hear our prayers, unworthy as we are. We pray, Lord, that we would live in thanksgiving and in service to you. We thank you, Lord, that you provide for us forgiveness, that you provide for us our daily bread. And we do pray, Lord, deliver us from temptation. For we know that we are so weak of ourselves that we cannot stand against it for a moment. And we pray, Lord, that we would be reminded always, yours is the power, the kingdom, the glory forever. And we praise you, Lord, that we can also consider, amen. That you hear our prayers, that it is true, not because we're worthy, but because Christ our Savior is worthy. And so, Lord, we do come before You to use the prayer which our Savior taught us to pray. And we pray, Lord, that our minds would always be upon the wonders of the glory which You provide for us. Not that we are worthy. but because Christ is worthy. For we pray these things as he himself did teach us to pray, saying, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, 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 forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.