discussion of prayer, and we've got partway through the model prayer, so we're going to pick up where we left off and then move on into some other passages. I had an outline I didn't bring anymore this morning, I'll have them next week. It kind of lays out where we're going to go with this and the different passages, so you can kind of read ahead. Last week we started with the model prayer, and the model prayer in some circles, particularly Catholic circles, may become something that is recited just in and of itself. Certainly that wasn't Christ's intention when he gave us the model prayer, that these are certain words that we continually repeat. if we're repeating them without having considered and delved into the depths of what they point us towards, we ultimately miss the point. And so vain repetition is cautioned against, is something that is to be avoided in prayer. As we talked about last week, the direction and the depth that we started looking at the words in the model of prayer are certainly where more of the substance is and where we as believers should find ourselves. As we go through the model of prayer, it is and becomes a structured way to go into prayer, into the thought life of prayer. I think that the very core issue in prayer is a condition of heart. As we go into prayer, and as we go into this model prayer, it highlights the condition of our heart. As we go in and we are before God, and as we consider Him in His rightful place, the first three petitions that are commonly broken into, there are six petitions within that prayer, the first three petitions, have to deal with God and His rightful place as Father, as Sovereign, as King of Heaven, as His will is enacted upon this earth, those considerations are primary in prayer. As we go into this study, we'll be back at that point several times, is the rightful place of God in prayer. Calvin likens the model prayer with the structure of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are broken into tablets. The first tablet of the law has to do with God and our relationship to God and His rightful place as God. And then the second tablet of the law has to do with our relationship with man and our call to live at peace among the brethren. Well, likewise, in the model prayer, we have that same sort of dichotomy, that same sort of division. The first three petitions have to do with God, and the rightful place of God, and our thoughts and mind being conformed to that reality. This is who we approach, and we approach a God that is Father. And then the second set of petitions, the last three, deal with those things that are common demand. The meaning of daily needs and of forgiveness and our relationship with others and forgiveness and all that. So let's find ourselves in Matthew 6 and let's read that passage and then we'll pick up where we left off last week. We'll begin in verse 5 of chapter 6. Matthew 6 verse 5. It says, And when you pray, you are not to be as hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way, Our Father, who 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 also forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen. The model prayer needs to be something that we find ourselves driving in to the midst of it. Again, the main repetition, the whole idea that somehow it's a magical formula of prayer needs to be set aside, because this isn't a magical formula. If we come to the Father in this way, then we're going to be heard. If we don't, then we won't. What's being prescribed here is not a set of words that we can use and magically enter the realm of heaven, but are a set of words that direct us to understand our relationship to the Father. In fact, we can't avoid, with that designation of Father, this intimate relationship which must precede all prayer. And that is one where we have union with Christ. Our union with Christ is how we are related to God in Him being our Father. It is by His Spirit that we are born into this realm and into this context of favor with God. It's not that any can approach God as Father, for if they don't know the spiritual birth, then they can't properly address Him as Father. They can come to Him as Creator God, or Sovereign, but it's the relationship with Father that is unique to those that are believers. It's in faith that we come to God. And it's outside of faith that our prayers are unheard and unanswered. If we do not believe in whom we approach, are we expecting that he will then respond favorably to us? So faith is very much a part of this whole relationship. I'm going to use some quotes out of Calvin's commentaries. I mentioned last week that these are available if you're interested in digging into his commentaries on prayer. He's got them in his works. They're available free at a website called www.ccel.org. Christian Classic Ethereal Library is what that stands for. I'll use some of Calvin's quotes, he really nails it in order in a lot of cases. Let me read a quote here that helps us get started in this. Let us therefore know that we shall be in a state of mind for praying in a right manner if we not only are earnest about ourselves and our own advantage, but assign the first place to the glory of God. For it would be altogether preposterous to mind only what belongs to ourselves and disregard the kingdom of God, which is of far greater importance." He says this in reference to the beginning of this prayer. and the identification of the Father as we've talked about, the relationship we have with Him as Father, being born of His Spirit. But when we come to this whole idea of the heavenly realm, and the idea that God's will be done on earth as it is already in heaven, We find ourselves at that point, and I think this is kind of where we left off last week, with this struggle of our nature typically wants to conform the world to our will. We come to the Father, we ask that the Father's will conform to ours. That's typically how we find ourselves. That's the normal, natural state of depravity. My will conforms that thing out there. I want that thing to conform to me. But when we come to the Father, and we address Him as the Sovereign over Heaven, we have this relationship turned over on its head. And we arrive, and this is where the struggle begins. Immediately in our prayer life, we struggle with It's not my will, but it's His will. We're confronted immediately with this thing that cuts against our very nature. Again, we pose the question, could those that aren't born of God actually arrive at that conclusion? They would never arrive at that conclusion. They would never pray this prayer sincerely. Because they're wanting their will done, not his will done. And we're immediately confronted with this in Jesus' moral prayer. Our relationship to the Father and our wills become very central. Because it is an act of willfulness when we sin or when we try to conform the world to us. And in this prayer we're finding ourselves in the correct relationship as we go in to petition God and to deal with the issues of life that bring us to this point of prayer. That God's will brings things into conformity to itself. And as we look out into the world and as we're dealing with the issues that confront us, we're dealing with God's will. That's the daily struggle that we each and all have. I think it was Martin Luther who said that our biggest problem in this world is God. We deal with God's will and His plan and purpose for us, and that's our biggest problem in life, is that God's will ultimately is done, but in our willingness to find peace there, is that God's will be done. We left off last week towards the tail end of that first three petitions, those petitions that deal with God. As we move into verses 11, 12, and 13, we transition into those petitions that are oriented more towards the physical life here on this earth and of our immediate condition. Calvin goes to some great length to talk about the order of the petitions, why the physical, give us this day our daily bread, why that came first. He says in his commentary, it certainly isn't because those things are more important than the things that follow, which I think is an important point to highlight. It's not that we move from the more important to the less important. That's not being conveyed in this context. But in fact, it is a physical need that as we look back in history, as we see God dealing with God's people, What were some of the primary causes for their belly aching? Especially when God brought them out of Egypt and even brought them out into the wilderness and they were out early on in their adventure out there. What was the things that they were complaining about most frequently? The things they were afraid of. And what were they afraid of? They were afraid of the people in the promised land. They were afraid when the Egyptians started chasing after them when they first left. Afraid of all kinds of stuff. They were going to die because of the poor food. You brought us out here to die? To bring us out here and starve us to death? But what did God teach the people of Israel? Do you remember those stories? With the strange stuff that arose on the leaves and on the ground and they went out to collect it? The manna. Do you remember the stipulations that were involved with that? They couldn't save it. They had to collect it today for today. If you collected it for tomorrow, what happened to it? It got rotten. And then, over the Sabbath, they could collect enough for that day and the Sabbath, because they weren't to work on the Sabbath. I don't know that these things are horribly unrelated. I think they're precisely the same condition. Them people back then that were out in the wilderness and got it, brought them out of bondage, and he brought them out and was bringing them ultimately to the Promised Land. has the same issue that we have every day. We are afraid of the things that are out there. We are fearful that God has left us. And there's something very basic about acknowledging that it's not upon our own abilities that we meet our needs, but that it ultimately is God's design to care for our needs. Go on. What are you thinking critically of these people and themselves? Well, that's the way I am too, that all the miracles he had performed, you get them out of Egypt. He didn't do anything. But yet I look at myself, when I start having problems, and sometimes we do doubt and lack of faith, if we look back on our life, we're the same as the Israelites. We see what he has done in the past and what he can't see, and it's going to be the same today. And that really is where we're driving. Because that's where we end up, isn't it? In these last three petitions. Forgive us of our sins as we forgive those that... We can't go too far down this road before we realize there's a road over here that I don't sometimes want to go down. I don't want to forgive my brother, but I certainly want God to forgive me. And those two roads are so connected that we can't go down one without the other. Again, it goes back to demonstrate that these are things that are issues of life for those that are brought to life. If you're not brought to life, the prayer that we're discovering and we're understanding and we're pulling apart really have no meaning to us. It's when we have the life of God in us that we see the connectedness of these two things, my forgiveness of my brother and my forgiveness of my sin. That I'm not pointing fingers at all those backwards Israelites. They were so short-sighted. We realize, wow, I'm just like them. If I were there, I would have done the same thing. And we're confronted with that same issue here in the model prayer. I think that's why the order is significant in the model prayer. When we come to our basic human needs, and those aren't being met, it's a very fearful thing. And where is it that we go to acknowledge who meets those needs? We ultimately find ourselves at the throne of God, in front of the sovereign of our life. As we move into the next petition, that of forgiveness, and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. The whole idea there of debting, a debt that continues. It's not a debt that ultimately we have gotten past, but it's a continual need. And again, that highlights this whole idea of faith. Yes, certainly, we have in Christ had the debt paid for. But that debt, as we are living within the reality of that having been paid for, still has its day-to-day reality. My debt is paid, it's finished, it's done. But it goes back to that whole idea of the pollution that remains. Yeah, the verdict is finished. We've been judged correct and right. but we're still polluted. There's this relationship that we still are under the depth of sin. And as we come to God in account for that sin on a daily basis, or frequently on a daily basis, we discover that there's this relationship between me and God and there's this relationship between me and man that always remains. Where I struggle to forgive my brother. It never gets easier. I still find it very difficult and hard to do that. I just did it last week, and now I've got to do it again. We find that very difficult. We also find ourselves in constant need, because the debt remains, that we still sin against God. We still sin in not giving Him his rightful place. We still sin in not being immediately upon His will, not ours. We find ourselves at every point under debt. And it's an acknowledgement that we are under that debt that's important as we go through this process of prayer. All of these things are pointing us where, ultimately? are ultimately pointing us to God, but also pointing us intimately into our heart, and the condition of our heart, and where our relationship to God is, that inmost being, the one in which we are intimately brought to life by an act of God's Spirit. These things only apply to those that are believers. It's pointless to talk about these things to those that are outside of faith. At very most, the vain repetition is all they have. They can't delve into the depths of these relationships because they don't have the life. Once the life arises, the grand ballroom of these things opens up and we see things differently. We're related to them now differently. Do not lead us into temptation. This is the third of the petitions here, dealing with this whole relationship of the trials that we're brought into. Now what we have to make clear from the very beginning, and we're going to flip over to James so that it clarifies for us, is when we're talking about the temptation or the trial, We're not dealing here with a temptation unto evil. God never offers us to evil. But He does test and try us. He does take us through situations that are purposeful in expanding us and growing us and allowing us to, by faith, react. Let's go to James chapter 1. We're going to be finding ourselves in James quite a bit. That's our study. The men's and women's Saturday studies are going to be in the book of James. This is kind of a pre-announcement, but we do have those study books available for people to purchase over at the book table. That study will start the first week of February, the first Saturday of February. So, there will be more on that this morning in the announcements. Look at James chapter 1 verse 12 and following. It says, Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. For once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. And when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among his creatures. It's interesting that James here concludes with that whole idea that God has done this work for you. He's begun this work. He's brought life to you. For us to turn around and to charge him with that God has brought this thing upon me, cuts contrary to the whole idea that God has brought us from death to life. It's that same complaint that we have with the Israelites. Did God bring us out here to starve us to death? When it was clear from the miraculous signs and the work that He had accomplished, that His intention was never to bring them out there to allow them to starve. But from the very beginning to the very end, He had at the very first moment their well-being in sight. That He brought them from death to life, He brought them and burst them into His kingdom. And that every thought of His is for our good. That all good things that come to us, come to us from Him. So as we go into this last petition back in Matthew 6, Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What's being asked there? What do we know about ourselves every time things get difficult? We skip down the rosy path. Right? Happy. Then we wake up and tell ourselves the truth. It's not fun. We know ourselves, and as we go into this last petition, it's really, again, a heart that's been brought to life that has come to understand what it is about. My heart is corrupt. I know the kids down the hall, they've been going through TULIP and dealing with those issues, but we don't go very far down theological road before we come back to The T of Tulip. Our total depravity. Our total depravity keeps finding its way back to us. And here we are, we're concluding in our prayers where we're at. Our hearts will go astray at every moment. And we understand that that's the case. And as God brings us into trials, those trials present to us one of two paths. And those paths for us as believers is where we find, as James points us to, the opportunity for perseverance. Opportunities for faith. Opportunities to be correctly focused. They also present to us opportunities to be non-focused or off the focus. And that's the heart's cry in this petition. Lord, lead me not into temptation because I know who I am. But we know in His leading us through that, that if our focus is to be maintained on Him, we'll be protected and preserved from that evil, from that wickedness. The thing that comes not from outside of us, but comes in from in us, as James points out. The lust that's within us, it rises up in those opportunities of trial. We want to be secure in our direction. We want to be safe. We don't want to be afraid. And so how is it that we go about that? Well sometimes we try to grab ahold and take destiny into our own hands. Because I want to avoid the fear and I want to avoid the calamity that I see. And it's our will. We want to conform this to my will. And that's our reaction. That's a normal fallen depraved reaction. One in which we really find easy to do. It's probably the very first thing we want to do. But in prayer we come to recognize that the first and the most obvious thing we want to do needs to be brought to God. So that that trial, as we deal with it and go through it, is understood in life as well. It's again a heart issue. My heart wants to take me away from God, because it's fallen to prey and rebellion. But the Spirit of God, who is in my heart, reforming it, pulls us back the other way. He will bring us to God, so that we find ourselves sacrificing our will, and grasping hold of His will. So that we understand that that trial isn't there to destroy us, but to grow us. The Israelites have a hard problem with that, as we do. At every point, those trials seem to aggravate the condition of their heart. It seems to inflame them, take their focus off on what they want. At some point, they said, well, we want what they've got. We want a king like they've got. When it wasn't God's plan at that moment to have them have a king. But he gave them their king. They had heartache upon heartache after that. For it wasn't a king upon this earth that they should have been looking forward to. But it was a king upon heaven and in the throne of heaven that they ultimately already had. We want that. I want that thing. I don't want this thing. The Israelites did that a lot, didn't they? Come into the first century. Here Christ comes. He presents himself as the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. One to usher them from this earthly kingdom into the next. They didn't want that. Because this involves stuff we don't want. like death and sacrifice and not Romans being overthrown. We don't want that. We want this thing. It's a constant struggle for us. They serve as pictures for us, as mirrors in a sense. As we look at them and we see their reactions, we can't go too far down that road to realize that's what I would do as well. That's my reaction. And it's when we find ourselves in that reaction, we come to God in prayer. Well, I was thinking, again, to me this points out the very, very importance of this daily communication with God, that daily prayer can constantly be in His presence. Then we're ready for these things when they come along. And as far as the sin goes, that we are constantly asking for forgiveness, because she might look at me and think, well she's a pretty good person, but I look at my heart every day, and my thoughts, and all these little things, and I think I'm pretty lousy. We have to have that constant searching ourselves for forgiving. But I guess, I don't know if you've ever been there, but practice in the presence of God, I guess that's what it means. Practicing the presence of God. Well, there is that constant refreshing of who we are and who God is. And in real basic terms, that's exactly what this whole model prayer does for us. If you study the Westminster Confession, the Confession is laid out very reflective of how we find ourselves being presented in Scripture. Just like the tables of the law, being confronted with the person of God, the character and nature, the attributes that we must understand to know who true God is. Being confronted with those things then leads us to correctly understand who we are. Those that have been involved in secular academic studies, the whole first part of that is tossed out, and where do we start? We want to understand who we are. It's a fool's errand to start with trying to find out who you are, without first understanding who God is. That's why the scripture continually, in these patterned ways, tells us, understand who God is, then you'll understand who you are. Because it's impossible for us to arrive correctly at where we are and who we are apart from Him. All of reality hangs upon His character and nature. It is His attributes that frame our very reality. It's not by mistake that historically science and the explosion in the things that were discovered in science started with men who knew who God was. Knew correctly who He was. As they went out and they looked at the world that God created, they came to the table with the assumption that God designed this for us. We throw that out, and who knows what we're going to end up with. Actually, we're seeing what we're ending up with in this world. Very basic stuff. As we go into these prayers, we understand who we are in relationship to God. As we contemplate God, and I said this last week, often we get into the first three petitions and kind of get lost there. It's not a bad thing to get lost in the first three, because that ultimately is what drives the rest of it. We're going to get to the last three, the meetings of need and the forgiveness and all, but it's when we get enthralled and enwrapped up in who God is, His character and nature, how His attributes intersect with all of life. There's not an aspect of life that he does not have some fingerprint upon. He called everything to order. Family life. Church life. Work life. Relationships with kids and with one another. All of these things find themselves back at a battle of will. And it's that will that is a daily thing. That's why this whole prayer is a very daily activity. Let me include a few more quotes from Calvin and one from Calvin quotes Augustine in these various things. Here Calvin is quoting Augustine. He says, Augustine judiciously explains, the sentences ought to be resolved, this is concerning verse 13, as we're dealing with this temptation idea, that we may not be led into temptation, deliver us from evil. The meaning is this, we are conscious of our own weaknesses and desire to enjoy the protection of God, that we may remain impregnable against all the assaults of Satan. We show from the former petition that no man can be reckoned a Christian who does not acknowledge himself to be a sinner, and in the same manner we conclude from this petition that we have no strength for living a holy life except so far as we obtain it from God. Whoever implores the assistance of God to overcome temptations acknowledges that unless God deliver him, he will be constantly fallen. Augustine got into, and this was one of the very early conflicts between what was ultimately the differences between Reformed and Arminian understandings. This goes back to Augustus in a prayer that he prayed about the things that God commands of us that he also supplies us with the means to do those things. Pelagius, who was a contemporary of Augustine, found a big issue with that. He said, if God commands it, then we should already have the ability to do it. He shouldn't have to give us something else. And that laid the dichotomy between these two understandings that ultimately worked their way down through the centuries. But Augustine recognized that God could command us to do a lot of things. That he doesn't necessarily then have to supply us with the means to do. That the law is a perfect example as we find ourselves depraved and incapable of completing and fulfilling the law. We find ourselves having broken the law. The law is the man and still stands. Perfect and ultimate, unblemished righteousness is required. Pelagius would have said, well that's unfair for God to have required that of us. He knows our condition, we can't do it. And he understood, or thought he understood, that when God said, you should be able to do this, that we have the wherewithal to do it. If we're called to faith, then everybody must have the ability to have faith. And Augustine understood something very important, and it's very pivotal in this whole idea of prayer, is that what we find that God requires of us, it still is necessary for us to go petition God for. Yes, we have faith, but we must acknowledge that our faith is weak. It has to come and be bolstered and protected and maintained under God's sovereign care and decree. That I find myself never in a position where I myself can stand before God apart from Christ. That's the sentiment behind these words here. Whoever implores the assistance of God to overcome temptations, or any trial that comes to us, acknowledges that unless God delivers him, we will constantly fall. There is no trial so small that we don't need God's assistance. We typically find ourselves going to God when it gets too big for us. And we don't think in reverse that, is this thing... can I do it myself? Can I overcome this myself? And if I can, I won't bother God with it. That's the problem. is at that point we won't understand when it's too big for us. Because we always overestimate our ability. We always think, well I can do this one on my own. I won't involve God in this. There is no temptation small enough that God should not be involved. Well, that just reminds me of growing up in a lot of our age groups in here. I mean, it's like you would get it drummed in your head that the Lord helps those who help themselves. It just seemed like you were thrown in the towel kind of early if you didn't make at least a stab at it. And it didn't work most of the time, but you didn't even realize it until I went around about it. It takes a long time before that finally, or it did for me, until I finally registered to hear that. This is what we've been talking about. You get God into the picture from the get-go and then you can get through this. But if you try to do it on your own, it just isn't going to happen. You'll have some kind of fake-looking victories in there, but the big war, the little battle, you're losing them all the time when you realize it. Yeah. That sounds like Franklin, who is sort of discarded God from the picture. So that's why. But I actually read a published Christian novel that had that in as a quote from the Bible. God help those that say that. Like you were saying, the attributes of Sodom and Gomorrah, if we just remember God's words, And children who believed in him were having problems. The story of Abraham really blows my mind. God told him to take his son Isaac up to the mountain and kill him. At the same time, sacrifice. And he already told him about all the nations of the world that were going to be coming for his feet. And Hebrews tell us that Abraham knew that God's word was true. And he did sacrifice, and he was capable to raise him up again. And these promises would come true. I think that's the thing to keep in mind. That Abraham couldn't see beyond this thing, but by faith he knew that God was true. Right, if you put it right, yeah. Often we get that point. Go ahead. Often we find ourselves in that very scenario, where the thing that is before us, we can't see beyond it, we don't know how on earth God will reconcile all this. How we're going to get past that broken relationship, or that hurt, or that whatever obstacle it is. We can't see past it. But it's not our job to see past it. That's where prayer comes in. We don't see past it. We admit we can't see past it. We come to Him and say as we go into this temptation, this trial, don't let evil find me. I know who I am. I know I want to go around and go up and over and circumvent this thing. I know I want to do that. But don't allow me to. At that point we're changing our will. We admit that I can't get around this. This situation, this circumstance, this problem is way bigger than me. It's way bigger than all of us. I'm sure the Israelites had that in mind. Here they were. Moses is making a bunch of enemies out of them. Going to the Pharaoh every few days with these plagues coming. The Egyptians aren't happy about all these things happening. And how on earth are we going to get around this thing? Here we're slaves and we're going to be even worse off. But yet what does God do? He delivers them. He delivers them ultimately through death. He delivers them through judgment. And it's under the blood that we find our preservation and our security. It's under the blood that we find our right relationship as we enter the throne room of God. It is in His righteousness that we come and make our petitions. We never stand before God ourselves. That's a great comfort for us. As we come into the throne room of God, as we enter the throne room in minutes for worship, we come invited there, clothed in a righteousness that isn't ours, but it is Christ, His Son. We're welcomed in there, being brought there, being born into there by the Spirit of God. What a rightful place for the people of God to be in the throne room of God, to pour Him admitting our inabilities in ourselves. I think we're finished for this morning. We'll pick up next week in the passage in Psalm 145 verses 10-20. Our gracious God and Father, we are thankful that you are such a capable and able God, that you allow us to come into your presence, that you even call us and invite us there, and that there we struggle. We struggle with our own nature, we struggle with our own heart, as we seek to have your will done. Lord, as you have taught us to pray and as we conclude this morning, Lord, as we go through trials and as we go through temptations, as we go through those difficult times in life, our heart's desire is that we have our eyes focused on You. No matter how small and insignificant we might think the issues are, Lord, let us find ourselves before You continually. Lord, even as we find ourselves having made a complete mess of things, Lord, let us not despair in knowing that You can get us through. You can bring us through. You can be victorious over any situation that You have put us in. Lord, we acknowledge that we have no strength to overcome our own enemies. Lord, we trust in you knowing that you overcome those great obstacles. Lord, take us now into this time of worship. Prepare our hearts and calm us and still us before you that we may enjoy your presence and we may read and hear your word spoken right into our very hearts and minds. It would change us, conform us, and make us more reflective of your glory, your majesty, and your honor. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.