So Luke chapter 11, and we are in, we're gonna read verses one to four. Luke chapter 11, verses one to four. I know I put verses two to four on the follow along sheet, but we'll go with verse one as well. And here the scripture says, now it came to pass, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And it's interesting that they saw Jesus pray and seeing Jesus pray moved them to ask Jesus to teach them to pray. And it's not a main point that I wanna make here, but I wonder if those people in your life see you pray enough, hear you pray enough to want to know more. Jesus prayed, and his prayer moved his disciples to ask this, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. So he said to them, when you pray, say, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Well, let's look to the Lord in prayer, and then we'll look at this passage together and think about how this points us to praying in Jesus' way. Lord, we thank you that you did say yes when your disciples asked you to teach them to pray. And our Savior, we would ask you to do that for us today. Teach us to pray. Lord, I pray that even as we walk away from our time together here, that our hearts would be stirred to seek you in prayer, that our minds would be clear on what kind of requests we should make priorities in our prayer. And Lord, I pray that together we would be just encouraged to do more of it. We pray this in your name, amen. So the focus of this study is praying backwards. And the idea is we pray in Jesus' name, even if we are not saying the words at the beginning of the prayer, we are having the idea of praying in Jesus' name flow through our prayers. That we don't want to be praying anything that we could not legitimately, honestly, reverently say in Jesus' name, I pray this. And there's a sense in which this, even just thinking that way, helps us to clarify our requests and our priorities in prayer. But, and so last week we looked at what it meant to pray in Jesus' name. So today we're looking at our Lord's Prayer, and our subject here is praying in Jesus' way. So last week praying in Jesus' name, now praying in Jesus' way. And the key here, the key sort of thought that dominates this is not my will, but yours. As we look at this, we're gonna see over and over again that Jesus moves us to align ourselves with his purposes, his plans, his ideas, his will. Chapel, and of course we're following along the contours of his book, he says this, Each petition of this model prayer has a different emphasis, but all teach the priorities that should dominate our thoughts when we pray in Jesus name. So what sort of requests does Jesus want us to pray? Because after all, this is Jesus teaching us how to pray. Well, first, the first request is make your name holy, which of course is what hallowed means. Hallowed. be your name, Lord, make your name holy. I think about our times of prayer, even times of prayer that we set aside in this church. I wonder how often we really are consciously thinking, Lord, we want your name to be holy. We want people to know and see your holiness. We have a tendency, I think, and it's probably all of us, we have a tendency to jump right to the list, right? Jump right into the list. And I've tried to emphasize this over and over again. It's not wrong to pray the list. Those things are right to pray for. But, Sometimes we miss some other things, repeatedly miss other things that are so important if we just go there. Jesus said, here's your first request. Pray that God would make his name holy. Now, of course, God's name is holy, right? We're not trying to pray that God will make himself into something that he isn't. The idea here is, Lord, we want people to recognize your holiness. We want people to reverence you. Here is what Chapel says, by praying, hallowed be your name, we make God's holiness our highest priority and ask him to promote his glory in, around, and through us. Lord, promote your glory in me. Make me more like Jesus. Take away the sin. Take away the wrong thinking, wrong patterns of my life. Take that away. Make me more like you. Make me more like Jesus around me. Lord, may your glory and your holiness be put on display in this area. It's what we're praying when we pray, Lord, would you save souls? Would you make our church a lighthouse in this area? That's the kind of praying that God would promote his glory around us. Then praying that God would promote his glory through us. Lord, use me. Use me to be an instrument by which the world will see your greatness, your holiness, we could spend a lot of time thinking about God's holiness. I mean, the number of times where God emphasizes His holiness, we could go to Isaiah chapter six, we could go to Revelation chapter four. And look at these passages where it's repeated by the angels in heaven. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. God's holiness, his majesty, his separateness from sin, his separateness from folly, that's God. We want the world to see that. Listen, in our lives, nothing will satisfy us more than God himself. Nothing. Nothing will satisfy us more than him. that we think other things will satisfy us. We think, if I get this, if I have this experience, if I have this thing, that's gonna satisfy us. But over and over again, those are the old broken cisterns, those are the wells without water. God alone can satisfy us, and God alone can satisfy people around us. We want people to see in Him, to see in us His glory, that He is that fountain of living waters So first of all, make your name holy. Second, we see it here, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can sort of summarize that request as Lord, do your will, your kingdom come. We made our way through Daniel and some of you might've got lost in the process. But one of the things I think that Daniel teaches us is that there is a kingdom that God is going to implement on this earth, where God will show his glory and his greatness in ruling in the midst of a world that's not yet perfect, ruling in the midst of a sinful world and bringing perfect justice, perfect politics, if you would, that no one else could. But there's the ultimate expression of this kingdom which is even beyond the millennial kingdom, which is glory. And there is that inaugurated sense in which as we come to faith in Christ, we are on the way to that kingdom. Lord, let your kingdom come. Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now we say this, We know this prayer and we know it's other incarnation in the other gospel, but I wonder how often we really just think it. Okay, Lord, this is where I am. I am late. Do your will. Lord, this is where I am. I am running short on money. Do your will. We have a tendency to, first of all, go to our will, and then hope God will sign off on it. Below every one of those kind of requests that we have, where we want God to work in our lives, under all of that should be, Lord, do your will. Work your will, work your way. We sing a hymn, don't we? Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. But that's not just about a Sunday service where we're thinking about the Bible and what we should do in our decisions in that service. It's about life. Have thine own way, Lord. And so Jesus' model for prayer places God's purposes as the highest priority of our petitions. This does not rule out our prayers for our concerns, but places them in proper order. secondary to his. Next, provide for daily bread. We probably have all heard that God will provide for our needs, not our greeds. And there's a sense here in which that's what God is saying. Give us this day our daily bread. Our daily bread is that which we need from day to day to live, to go on. Now, praying for daily bread though, ultimately is again, focusing us back on God because God knows what we really need. We say, Lord, give us this day our daily bread. It's not just saying, Lord, just give me a loaf of stale bread today. It's Lord, give us what we really need. we really need today. Once again, Chapel here says, the prayer for daily bread reorients us to God's purposes. With such prayer, we petition God to provide our greatest satisfaction through the things that He determines will most glorify Him in our lives. Thus, the prayer for daily bread is not just a request for boring whole wheat. We pray that God will provide all that is best for us, and in so doing, sustain our faith. And I love what he says at the end here. This may be whole wheat, or it may be strawberry shortcake. Because God knows what we need. And sometimes it is best for us for God to give us some of those sweet things, cake, manna. And sometimes it's best for us to have things that are not the top tier. Things that are basic. God knows what we need at each step of our journey of faith. And when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, we're praying, Lord, give us what we need today. And you know what's best. And how many times, I'm not the only one, I think. How many times have we prayed for something thinking that we needed it, that it was something that we desperately needed to have at that moment or at that time? Only to not receive it and find that God did something else with us and looking back on it, what God provided at that time was so much better than what we could have ever imagined. That is God. As we talked about last week, I'm so glad that God's power is not tethered to my knowledge. Imagine if, Lord, you need to do this for me. Going off of my wisdom, going off of my knowledge, man, that would be some huge fails. That'd be some monstrous disasters. No, give us this day our daily bread, recognizes that God knows what we need and trusts Him to provide for us what we need. The next request is forgive. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Forgive. Prayers of confession ought to be a regular part of our prayer life. We ought to recognize how we fall short and go to God seeking his forgiveness. Again, Chappell's quote here, regardless of the degree or frequency of our sin, we can ask forgiveness. In fact, by praying as Jesus taught, we acknowledge both that sin sifts into our lives and that His grace is great enough to secure our pardon. Our prayers for forgiveness not only confess the weakness in our nature, but also honor the grace in His." I love that quote. Our prayers for forgiveness not only confess the weakness in our nature, but honor the grace in His. Lord, please forgive us. And as you pray that, you're praying to a God of grace. implicitly saying, Lord, you're a gracious God, not because of my merits, but because of Christ, because of your work through Christ, the fact that he has paid that penalty for me, Lord, forgive me. We get a picture, I think, of where we really are spiritually. not by what we confess, but what we don't confess. You know what I'm saying there? If we go day after day, week after week, without ever confessing our sins and asking for God's forgiveness, that says a lot more about the condition of our heart than if we come with a great long list of petitions, Lord, forgive me, daily. May we, as the saying used to be, may we keep short accounts with God. May we be people who are constantly seeking God for forgiveness. And then keep us from temptation. I'm intentionally kind of going through this because once we've gone through the lesson, I do wanna open it up for discussion. I know that we've had some great times of discussion in the past, but keep from temptation. And here is what the scripture says. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Let me start with talking about do not lead us into temptation, and then we'll go from there. Does God tempt people to sin? No, God doesn't tempt people to sin. Remember when we studied James, some of you were here for that study. God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. God doesn't tempt people with sin. And Jesus is not here stating that God does that. Lead us not into temptation is acknowledging that God has the right to lead us where he wants to, and we're praying, Lord, keep us out of that path. In the path that you have for me, The plan that you have for me, Lord, keep me from temptation. Again, Chapel here says, lead us not into temptation is a crisp way of saying, Lord, keep us from acting in ways that would prevent us from honoring you. Keep us from being tempted by not having our needs met. Take from us preoccupation with our wants. Erase from our lives anything that would tempt us to dishonor you. When we pray for rescue from temptation, we ask God to make his will our desire to dominate our thoughts and actions with divine purpose. Therefore, the prayer for God not to lead us into temptation includes automatically our request for him to enable us to desire and do his will. Lord, Keep me in your will. Keep me on the path of obedience. This is what the prayer of Lead Us Not Into Temptation is about. We are so easily turned aside from the path of right. So easily. We have within our own hearts our flesh conspiring against us. We have around us the world and the world system that would lure us one way or another. And then we have the great adversary of our souls, the devil, who would do all that he can to get us to do what's wrong. We are very easily, in light of these great adversaries, we're very easily distracted. And this prayer is an appeal, Lord, Lord, keep me from being distracted. There's a sense in which we're praying, Lord, keep those blinders on. a horse that has the blinders to keep them from being distracted by what's going on around them, just walking straight forward. We want that. Lord, keep me doing what's right. Now the second portion of this, and by the way, the chapel is working through it with a translation that doesn't actually include this. In some translations, in some of the, well, really, except for the King James and New King James, you don't have the second part of verse, or the last part of verse four. It's missing, so if you have NIV or New American Standard or ESV, they either will not have that, or they'll have a little footnote that says that the best manuscripts don't contain this. Now, without going into a long description, I would argue the best manuscripts do contain this, And there's a precious truth here for us. But first I gotta work through one more thing, the difference between the King James and the New King James. Because in the King James, and some of you might have that with us this evening, it says, deliver us from evil. And the New King James says, deliver us from the evil one. What is the difference here and does it really matter? The difference is that When the new King James translators came to this, the Greek here actually is very specific, keep us from the evil. So there's a definite article that comes before evil. So to translate this as the King James does, deliver us from evil actually omits a word. On top of that, the word here for evil is poneros, which can be evil in general, but it also can refer to a person. It actually has a masculine ending. It doesn't have a neutral ending. The Greek words, the way that you can tell what gender they are is the ending. And so the ending in the Greek word for evil here is actually a masculine ending. And so for that reason, the new King James looked at this and said, well, it's not just deliver us from evil because the word is thee here. And is this just evil in general? Well, it can be, that is admitted by the word, but it could also be that this is a prayer for deliverance from Satan himself. Either way, The Bible speaks of God's delivering us from evil in general, and also delivering us from the evil one. I think that the New King James actually did a good job here. I think they did a very accurate job of translating this. 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 3 is another passage that has the same sort of construction. And I think both King James and New King James I think, say the same thing. But maybe someone that has a King James can tell us. Someone read that for us, if you would. 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 3. Either one. I'm interested to see if there's a big difference. 2 Thessalonians 3, 3 from the King James. But the Lord is faithful. Who shall establish you and keep you from evil? And the new King James? The Lord is faithful who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. So again, we have that difference. But again, the same thing happens in the Greek. It's not just from evil, it's the. There's an actual the in front of it. Ha is the actual Greek word. So this is why the New King James actually translates it the evil one. Now, God in his grace is someone that delivers us from evil. But he is also the one who delivers us from the ultimate embodiment of evil, the devil. I hear that coming up soon, Rob is going to be taking on the subject of exorcisms and that sort of thing. I don't know what Rob has studied and found at this point, but Satan is a formidable adversary. He is not someone to be trifled with. We stand firm, but we stand firm in clad in the armor of the Lord, wielding his sword. We don't just go wandering up to him, poking at him to pick a fight. We're not clad in the armor of the Lord and wielding the sword of the spirit. We don't do that. We ought not. Because Satan is a very, very powerful adversary. And here, this prayer, deliver us from the evil one, is a prayer that echoes not only in this life, but in the life to come. Deliver us from the evil one and his snares and his temptations in this life, but deliver us from his clutches that would bring us to eternal death. Now, if we're saved, we're saved forever. Please don't misunderstand that. If we're saved, we're truly saved, we're saved forever. Nonetheless, even if the devil can't take your soul, he can mess you up in this life. He really can. Sometimes perhaps because we think, well, the devil can't take my soul, so I'm good, I'm okay. Greater is he that's in me than he that's in the world. Those are true things, but they should never ever be taken as excuses to treat the devil lightly or to trifle with his wickedness. The devil is a very, very wicked, very, very crafty, very, very deceitful, very, very hateful, murderous, slanderous being, who does not want good for you, no matter what he may present things as. So, deliver us from evil. Now here's where I'm going with all this. There's only one person, ultimately, that can deliver us from evil. We can't deliver ourselves from evil. We can't deliver one another from evil. We can't deliver one another from Satan. That's God that can do that. That's our savior that has that kind of power. I occasionally will get phone calls. It's happened. Some of you know about this, but there was someone that was calling fairly regularly and basically wanting me to come to her and perform a ceremony to cast devils out of her. And I had to tell this woman a number of times, listen, I don't have that power. No human has that power in themself. There's no ritual that someone can do, some step-by-step process that can accomplish that. This is something that takes God at work in you. And there were other things I told her as well, but the fact that she was sort of, okay, I want a person to come and perform a ritual that's gonna deliver, man, that could mess you up even more than where you started. Only God, only God ultimately can deliver us from evil and from the evil one. So this last request here, even this ultimately glorifies God. Because we are recognizing, God, you alone have this power. You alone have the power to deliver us from evil. You alone have the power to deliver us from the ultimate embodiment of evil, the evil one, Satan. Satan was crushed at the cross. It may not seem today like Satan has been defeated, but the blow was dealt at the cross. Because Christ has bled and died for us, the doom of Satan is sure. But like any weak and injured animal, he will flail away dangerously. And so we still must depend upon our Savior. The Prince of this world is judged. He's been judged by our Savior. Our Savior has victory over that dragon. And one day we will see the ultimate victory over that dragon that is spoken of in the book of Revelation, which is another youth topic that's coming up. But, Jesus has won. Jesus has won, Jesus will win, but let us go forward overcoming Satan, not by our own power, but by the blood of the Lamb. It is His blood, after all, that silences the accuser, the brethren. It is His blood by which that great devil is cast down. So let's pray in Jesus' way. It's good for us to remember the Lord's Prayer. It's good for us to remember what Jesus focuses our minds on in this prayer so that we would pray with heaven's priorities and pray in Jesus' way.