If you'd like to turn to me in the scriptures to Matthew's Gospel, we shall read from the sixth chapter. Matthew's Gospel, chapter six, beginning at verse five. 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. 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. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. After this manner, therefore, pray ye. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy 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. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father also forgive you. Amen. So for the next few weeks, I aim to focus on the matter of Jesus and prayer. And so the first of these is entitled Jesus's model of prayer for maybe obvious reasons. Each of these messages has something to say about what Jesus thought of prayer and it's clear it's clear that he thought a great deal of it. Today then, as you can see, we'll consider this section which is referred to as the Lord's Prayer. Now it's not so much my attention to analyze each word within this prayer, but rather to take more of an overview and therefore consider the structure a little more than the details. I noticed that the early church document, the Didache, we find a nearly identical prayer and that tells us that this was adopted by the early church pretty much word for word. My proposal this evening is to present this to you as a kind of model, a framework rather than something that was meant for the present day Christian to merely recite word for word from memory. Although it's not a bad thing to do it. And overall I want to show hopefully that The existence of this, that he gave the disciples, just once again shows what a high view Jesus Christ had of prayer. And that obviously is an encouragement to us. Well, the prayer itself is Jewish in tone, if I can say that. It's not something that Jews would be turned off by. It is, however, distinguished from typical Jewish prayers in two ways. It is quite simple and it is very brief. And as an experiment, I read this. I read this and you can read it in English or if you're inclined to, you can read it in Greek. And it still comes in at just under one minute. One minute. This sort of model prayer. Why so brief? Well, Jesus had been already trying to maybe shock the disciples because what they were accustomed to was something very different. And so we find some quite shocking statements Jesus made. And the most notable one perhaps is he advised people, look, if you think you're going to be stealing continually, you best take a hatchet and lay your hand on the table and whack the thing off and throw it in the bin. And of course he wasn't expecting anyone to do this for real, but it got the message across. Now I'm not saying that here there was something here with this prayer it was exactly the same it was the same kind of thing but in a way it it was a shock because no doubt the disciples would have been accustomed to these long jewish prayers And there's no real time to go into this tonight, but you have this paradox whereby people like to hear long prayers if it's all about God. They want prayers saturated with scripture. It blesses us. And on the other hand, there's a great temptation within that practice to show off. You see how easily you go from honoring God in a prayer to showing off in a prayer. It's very easy and you won't even notice you are doing it. So, by advising the disciples to consider the usefulness of short prayers, he does them and us a service. And if nothing else, He sounds a warning to us about that very temptation. Jesus himself would go on to pray longer prayers than this, much longer. But we need to be cautious, even us friends, we need to be cautious. We notice that Luke also has a version of this prayer. It was a different occasion. And it's almost exactly the same. The disciples there said, Lord, can you teach us to pray like John taught his disciples to pray? And so Jesus gives them something very similar to what we have here. And it is a John the Baptist type of prayer. Now, this evening, you'll see why I say that. because there are elements missing from this model, crucial elements. Yet, in this time here, in the scriptures here, we're in a transition time. I've said this before, when Jesus came, that was part of a transition. This was the coming of the kingdom of God in all its power. It was out with the old and in with the new. And so as a transition type of prayer, it saved its purpose. but we'll see that that prayer itself can be improved and it was meant to be improved on and we'll see why. I would only add that this prayer was never obviously in that form prayed by Jesus himself. Jesus would never pray, forgive us for our sins, for example. so he was giving this to the disciples to pray which is why some have said it should perhaps be called the disciples prayer rather than the lord's prayer but still Not all prayers are to be like this. As I've said, Jesus himself prayed completely different prayers and there's no record of him ever praying this particular one. Although the elements within it certainly he used. Before we get into the prayer itself, I wanted to note that the world seemed to love this, the Lord's Prayer, let's say the Lord's Prayer. Now there are reasons for that, mainly because they don't have the Spirit of God and therefore they cannot pray to God from the heart in the way that you and I think is quite natural. And so they can read one or they can recite one from memory like the Lord's Prayer that they learned at school. And you know it's memorized, why? Because they chant it. The Lord's Prayer is chanted. And so we get things like, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, Forever and ever, amen. So you see what happens is it's being jointed up into these little nice chunks, whereas instead, it should be read as, you know, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. It's the same sentence. And then it should finish, you know, For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen. And so because the world is not even thinking of the words, they pray it in that sort of staggered way. But more importantly than the way they say it, there's something more crucial here. What's missing from this prayer is I. You'll notice throughout this prayer it says, us. Forgive us, lead us, and so on. It's about us. This was an example of a communal prayer. It was to encourage the disciples to pray with other believers. And that being the case, you can see why. for someone who's not attached to a congregation who sits at home but tells you that they are a christian for them to sit there is rather bizarre when they they pray lord um forgive us our trespassers well who's the us there is no us if they are not attached to a congregation of the lord's people which is another reason why these lone wolf Christians are not walking right with God. So, it's an encouragement for people to belong to a congregation. That's really the point. We're going to jump into this prayer now itself and look at a few elements in it. Elements which are They should, but don't have to, they should be a part of each of our prayers. There are exceptions and God will listen to us however we pray. But let's see what Jesus wants to teach about how to approach God in prayer. It starts with an address. Our father. It starts with an address. We say who we are speaking to. So that's the first thing. I like to write letters. Yes, I'm into computers. I'm a tech geek and all that, but I still like getting out the fountain pen and writing letters and putting them in an envelope. And they have to have an address on, of course. I mean, without an address, where would they go? They need to be addressed properly. And this is not exactly the same. God knows that we are talking to him. But still, however you think of it, it's acknowledging that God was speaking to you. If nothing else, it's just an act of politeness towards God that you would afford anyone. We approach him and we acknowledge that we are talking to him, our father. And he is the best person to go to. He is the only person to go to. Who else do we have? Where else would we go? But we have a Father in heaven. I thought it was worth just mentioning in passing that Jesus told the disciples to address the Father. A small point maybe, but Jesus didn't say, I want you to pray. dear Jesus in heaven or dear Holy Spirit. So make of that what you will, but he encourages the father to be addressed. When we say our father, it's about closeness. It should foster feelings within us of nearness to God. Father, there's an intimacy there at the outset of the prayer. And then immediately, immediately it says, our Father in heaven. And it jolts us back into realizing that yes, He's our heavenly Father. He loves us, He has this intense love and He's close, but He is also, the God of heaven. And so we consider his majesty and his power as well. So friends, we have this balance in our attitude to God when we approach him. You don't have one way about the other. If you have only reverence, then you may as well be Jewish. If you come with an attitude of only love, then you fail to acknowledge who God is. And so we find that balance. And if you find it, then you are approaching God in the way Jesus wanted you to. The next element I picked out is praise, of course. Our Father, which art in heaven. We're still with God, note. We're still on the subject of God. We're not talking about ourselves yet. It's still about God. Hallowed be thy name. Hallowed be thy name. Let thy name be hallowed. Let thy name be sanctified. Let thy name be held as holy. It's not just God's name, is it? We mean, that it should be held in this high honor. It is, in fact, it's recognizing God properly as holy in all his being. And so it's meant for us to have this attitude of real reverence It's everything God stands for, everything that he is and everything that he does. May your name, may your reputation, may everything about you be held as hallowed. Why does he deserve praise? I don't have to convince you that God is worthy of praise, but we might say that he created the cosmos out of nothing for a start, is that enough? He made this world in a special way, as far as I can make out, a completely unique way in this universe. He created the flora and the fauna and then he created man, the pinnacle of his creation, man, made in his very own image. And in his purposes down the ages, He has shown himself to be a just God and a merciful God. And for us here today, we are ones who've been the objects of God's merciful actions. We are held up in the courts of heaven as examples and trophies, every one of us, of God's grace. Does God not deserve to be praised? Of course he does. We move on in the prayer to mention of the kingdom. Thy kingdom come. It's still about God. We're still not asking for things for ourselves. It's still about him. And what it's about is asking for the kingdom to come. I'd encourage you to think about that picture and ask yourself if that features in your own prayers and the prayers of the brethren. I don't get that impression. Because of people's views on things like end times, the prayers are, let's just escape this place quick. And so that mentality means that instead of saying, thy kingdom come, it's take us, take us up and incinerate the place. That's different. Friends, that's almost opposite to what Jesus encouraged us to pray. Not take us away, but bring it down. Bring heaven down to us. Bring all the influences of heaven to this earth. And how that's accomplished is through God's saving souls and their witness and their influence and their light shining in this world is effectively the kingdom of God come to this world. And in proportion to the activity of God in saving souls and the activity of his people in sharing their faith, so it is that the kingdom has come and heaven is on earth. And yes, friends, there will have to be an end time cleansing of this whole world of ours to turn it into a place suitable for God and his saints forever. But right now, in time, we are encouraged to pray, God, bring your kingdom down, let its influence be seen in my life and in this whole world. That's what it means about the kingdom coming. The gospel is the announcement, really, that God's rule has begun in Christ, and we participate in it. and we are to further his kingdom so that it might be experienced in all its fullness. In the prayer we move on to bread. Now at last we come unto ourselves. It's time now to ask for something for ourselves, for our personal needs. What's gone before is God first. And yes, our prayers should always be like that, but God first. Address him, praise him. Talk about his influence in this world. And now bread. What's bread? At its most fundamental, bread is a foodstuff. Then we note its use as a symbol of food in the scriptures and thereby drink and I think fairly by extension we can talk about the basics. food and drink, clothing, shelter, the fundamental needs of the human. And so we are asking for those things that we need. It's not unspiritual to ask for material things because this is how God made us. God could have made us without any requirement for food and drink and clothes. He didn't. He made us like this and in this way. He ensures that we lean on him every day of our lives for those things we need to keep us alive. We lean on him and we should acknowledge him in all these things. We know too that it says give us today our daily bread, give us this day, give us day by day, And I've heard discussions about this word, it's apparently a difficult word to know how to translate, this today or this day. But based on the principle I've seen elsewhere in scripture, I think this is quite correct, that it means to convey to us that we're to ask for material things on a daily basis, like the manna. So I think that's the most appropriate way to understand this. It's to give us day by day, each day, our daily bread. And so we don't say, Lord, I'm going to pray for our needs for the next couple of weeks. That will save me having to pray to you every single day. I can just do the one prayer now and cover the next couple of weeks. Well, of course, Jesus will have none of that. He will have you lean on him hard every day. and quite rightly because we are inclined to walk away from God and be independent of Him. I would only add to that that some might challenge me and say that it means more than this, it means more than material needs, and I won't argue, I don't know, but you do know that bread is used as a metaphor in the scriptures for the Word of God. And Jesus himself calls himself the bread of heaven, the bread which came down from heaven to give life to men. And so I don't think it would be unreasonable for us to think about bread in that sense as we pray this sort of thing. The next part of that structure is forgiveness. In verse 12, Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Why doesn't it say trespassers? Forgive us our trespassers. It's interesting. Maybe it's a mistake. It's the same word, isn't it? Forgive us our trespassers as we forgive those who trespass against us is just out the book of common prayer. It's not wrong. It's just, I think that the people who put together the Book of Common Prayer thought, well, hang on, in this day and age, maybe debts might give the wrong impression, so let's go with trespassers. In fact, the word trespassers is used further down anyway in verse 15. So it's fair to use either of those words. But forgiveness. Why do we need forgiveness? Well, we've been saved by God, and he's revealed to us that he hates sin, and he's told us not to do it. And if I interviewed anyone here tonight, you would say that you don't want to sin. And yet, somehow, we still manage to sin each day. And so we got every reason not to sin, we tell people we hate doing it, and then we go out the next day and sin. And it's as if we are sin junkies. We cannot seem to shift this. However, I would be very surprised if there was no evidence in your life of victory over sin. If you sin just as much as you would have if you hadn't been saved, then there must be a massive question mark over your profession. Now, I'm not proud, but I openly admit to sinning each day. And yet I can also tell you that by God's grace, I have found victory over certain sin. And now I'm not immune from those sins for the rest of my life, like some vaccination. I have to take heed if I think I'm strong in a particular area. I have to take heed in case I fall. And so we thank God for every victory over sin, but we don't get arrogant about it. We lean on Him continuously. Part of this sentence to do with forgiveness in this prayer is, as we forgive our debtors, as we forgive those who sin against us, so there's a correspondence between our forgiving attitude and the forgiveness we receive. Now in saying that, that creates sort of theological problems that I have no desire to go into, by which I mean Someone will start asking these illogical questions such as, well, that means that if we start being unforgiving, then God will unsave us. You know, stupid questions like this come up. All I would say is this. God knows that his blood-bought children who have the spirit will have forgiveness in their heart for other people. And on that basis, being his children, he gladly forgives them. Now, you and I know very well that Christians, I don't mean other Christians, I mean ourselves, we each have little particular areas in life where we find it difficult to forgive some more than others. But the point is, how should we view that? Should we think that because of our, when we fall in that way, that God will deprive us of a certain amount of forgiveness? That's not meant to be understood like that. What it means is, God is telling us that if we find forgiving others difficult, and we hold on to bitterness and hatred for certain people, no matter how bad they are, you, professing Christian, you need to really examine yourself. Because you are acting like an unbeliever. And at that point, you have no right to consider yourself a believer. If you don't have a forgiving attitude to others, then you are in peril. Humanly speaking, you are in peril. It may be that it's an indication that your profession is fraudulent. That's just the way it is. This issue is so important, it's all over the scriptures. Instead, what happens is this. Our forgiving attitude rises up to God when it's displayed, and it rises up like a sweet-smelling fragrance to God, and he loves it. And if you like, in response, he responds then by pouring out forgiveness into our hearts. And so we feel, we understand, we experience the Lord's forgiveness. Just a couple more, brethren. We're gonna look at holiness next. Holiness, because I'll find it in a minute. Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not into temptation, but rather deliver us from evil. So what is this? Deliver us from evil. Well, it's clear God does not always deliver us from evil. He delivered his own son to an evil end for his purposes. And friends, he will deliver us into evil circumstances for our good, our ultimate good. And God, for example, will chasten us by sending some evil into our lives. And by evil, I mean Illness, disease, disability, family, trouble within the family, within the marriage with children, trouble like that. It could be accidents, it could be persecution. God will ensure that throughout our lives, we have been presented with many, many cases of tribulation. But nevertheless, Jesus says, It's still a good prayer. Lord, save us, Lord, deliver us. Jesus himself, Jesus himself at one point on this earth said, Lord, if it's possible, can you rescue me from this horrific end in sight? And then that sort of will of the Christ then became aligned with the Father in saying, nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. Jesus trembled. Inwardly, there was something within Jesus that wanted to, that was just scared and just this feeling of absolute horror. what he was about to face. But still, it was all to the end that God would deliver him and he raised him from the grave and he took him back to his right hand side of power in heaven. And so, We pray it nevertheless. We pray, Lord, don't lead us into temptation. We pray, too, that you will just deliver us out of evil circumstances. But we have the same attitude as Christ, which is nevertheless, nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. We should be praying to God to help us not to sin in the first place. That would be good, just not to sin at all. I thought I would address the question that will be in some people's minds. Why would we pray for God not to lead us into temptation if he's a God who doesn't tempt his children anyway? Well, that's another big question that we won't be going into too much tonight. But if you'll allow me just to say something very brief. The Lord doesn't tempt us in that. He doesn't whisper into my ear, Paul, I think you should go and sin. Look at that over there. Do this. Don't you want this? The Lord doesn't tempt me to sin. But the Lord does. If you believe in his providence, if you believe in his sovereignty, the Lord does deliberately put us into situations where we will be tempted. I think that's pretty unarguable that God does that. He puts us into those situations. Some Christians might not like that. They might say, well, being put in those situations can't be from a good God. Well, that debate is for another time. I would say this to you though friends, I'm glad, I'm glad that when I entered into temptation, that that whole scenario, that whole situation has been ordained by God. Might be unpleasant. But the fact that it's been ordained by God shows me that he's still in control of my life, every detail. And for me, that is a great comfort. It's a great comfort if I go through trying circumstances or I go through some temptation. God is there, still on his throne and doing everything for the good of his people. So be comforted, friends. Be comforted by your trials. We'll finish off with this doxology which says, Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. It says. Why that line is missing from the similar prayer in Mark's gospel, I don't know. I don't care much, to be truthful. It's there, it's to be accepted as is and it's a wonderful testimony. It's inspired and it's, this is why no doubt, this is why that's made its way into the Book of Common Prayer version of it, because it's quite wonderful. The power, the kingdom, the power and the glory. It's amazing really that we go through this Christian life and we offer up these sacrifices to God in terms of singing or praying or even listening to God's word being read or reading it for ourselves. Our ability to worship God is severely limited because of what we are. Now, God graciously allows us to speak to him and offer these praises up, but, you know, friends, we sing hymns, but manage to sing all the words in tune, but think about something on the television that all at the same time you have a remarkable ability to even in a prayer meeting to be thinking about something completely different. There we are all gathered and there's the Lord and we all stand before him and someone's praying, Lord listen to us now as we come to you and behind them is these people who are asleep or thinking about the dinner or something else. We have this amazing ability to be rubbish at praising God. What we need to remember is for all our failings at worshiping God, all our praises, all our efforts are presented to the throne of God in the name of Christ and they are accepted on that basis and they will always be accepted on that basis. And so take heart, friends, that even our meanest efforts to worship God, they are not ignored by our sovereign God. Overall, this prayer, what can we say about it? Well, it can maybe be summed up like this. It embodies God's purposes for the world and for people, all contained in that prayer. I said to you at the outset that this prayer was in some ways unsuitable for us in this kingdom age, in this gospel age, principally because There's no mention of Christ in the prayer, obviously. I mean, Jesus was giving this prayer to the disciples. Like I say, the kingdom coming and forgive us and be kind to us. They're all things that Jews could pray as well, as I said. But a Christian prayer in today's age, if you like, or since that time, a difference. Because they're full of Christ himself. This Lord's Prayer, Disciples' Prayer, there's no mention of Christ, there's no opportunity in there. If everyone followed that, we would have Christless prayers. There's no mention of the Holy Spirit. There's no acknowledgement of the work of the Holy Spirit. So you can see why I said it would be acceptable to religious people generally. But, It gives us anyway, it gives us some basic structure to our prayers. So I hope you've seen tonight that it's another example where we started with God, then we sort of started asking for ourselves. The elements in it. God's glory to start with, then daily provisions, material needs, then spiritual needs in terms of forgiveness and holiness. And then it all gets wound up with a goodbye, if you like, a parting praise to God. We don't have to finish our prayers like that. We don't have to finish our prayers with, in Jesus name, if we don't want to. but certainly it is good practice to praise him and round the prayer off in that day. So this isn't a formula, it isn't something to be repeated, but if you do, you're not doing wrong. I hope that makes sense. I'm not criticising people for praying this. If you're going through some trial, and you can't think straight, it may be that you can remember this. And so it has some value. So I hope you can see then that this is about how we order our prayers. And if you take one thing from it, friends, you will just take from it that it's all about God. It's all about God first. And then we come to remember our own petitions, prayer, Prayer takes time and energy and is sometimes the last thing a Christian wants to do. He would rather do a hundred other things. But we take encouragement from Jesus because even when he was busy, even when he faced death, he took the time to pray. He put a priority on prayer. And God willing, in the forthcoming weeks, we will look at what Jesus thought about prayer and also some examples of his own prayers that he prayed. Thank you for listening, brethren. Amen.