Luke 11:1-4

Discussion Questions

• When you read or recite The Lord’s Prayer, is there a particular portion that usually stands out & impacts you personally?
• Do you find it easier to offer or accept forgiveness?
• What can you do this week to follow Corrie ten Boom’s admonition to make prayer less of a “spare tire” and more of your “steering wheel”?

Transcript

Good morning, everyone. We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel and we have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one and would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high and someone will be more than happy to drop one off at your row for you to be able to follow along. I want to also thank the folks that joined us last week for worship and/or various Bible studies that we happen to have online and small groups as well. We had folks join us from Windsor, Ontario, Canada; from Munich, Germany; from New Orleans, Louisiana of course; and Los Angeles, California, and hope those folks are able to join us again today. You can see from up on the screen the QR code. If you’re here in the room and you’d like to be able to access the notes and quotes in advance, you’re welcome to do that. I think they can do that online as well if I’m not mistaken. So please take advantage of that opportunity, if you would like.

We’re going to cover just four verses today in what we call Luke’s version of The Lord’s Prayer. The sermon will be called “Lord, Teach Us to Pray,” which is a direct request from the disciples. We’ll read that in just a moment. As we explore Jesus’ own teaching on prayer, it’s my hope that we’ll learn to approach God not just as a distant deity, but as a loving father who invites us into a personal relationship. Together we’ll discover how prayer shapes our heart and mind, how it aligns our will with God’s, how it redirects our affections, and even can transform our view of literally everyone and everything around us in this world, including our view of our self, which is so important, I think, in our day and time.

Like the disciples, we want to learn to pray just like Jesus taught us to. If you’ll join me in prayer for illumination as we read these four verses together: Father, as we do read and study Your Word today, help us not let these words pass quickly from our eyes as we move on to the next thing because we think we know this thing. You’ve brought us to this place and this moment and to this passage so that we would be stopped by it, quickened by the Holy Spirit, captivated by Jesus, and left standing in awe at Your kindness, Your welcome for us, to us. You’ve inspired this passage in order to teach and transform us. So, rescue and redeem us from the hubris of thinking we know what it says. Produce in us lives shaped by Your grace and inflamed by Your glory. Give us a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us, in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.

So let me read the text and then we’ll dive in with just a few comments and a couple points. Fear not, it’s only four verses and as I said last week when we had five verses, we will be able to stretch this into a good 30-minute sermon for you. It’s not a problem. This is a wonderful text here for us today. “It came about that while He was praying in a certain place, [“He” meaning Jesus] after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.’” And I wonder what we would’ve asked for: Lord, teach us to pray and get what we want. Teach us to preach. Teach us to serve. Teach us to be better at our jobs. Teach us to be better at our relationships.

There’s so many things we might ask for, and we’re indeed invited and welcomed by the Lord to bring our requests to Him. But in this particular case, the disciples have said this to Jesus after hearing Him pray. You learn a lot about somebody, don’t you, when you hear them pray. And after hearing Him pray, they said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and here’s His response. “’When you pray, say, “Father, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” And I’m going to stop there and we’re going to deal with a couple of questions that you are already asking, I’m sure. And I commend you for being active and live and asking those kinds of things, but I think at least we have to begin with asking the question: What is prayer?

Is it simply self-talk? Is it wishful thinking? Is it hoping that we’ll be able somehow or another to impress upon God our need or our wants, which is so often what I’m requesting? Or is prayer a means of developing a life-changing habit of communing with God? This week on, I think it was early Wednesday morning, I had the privilege of opening this text for our state legislature downtown, and it was just wonderful to be with them. I was honored to be asked once again to go down there and do their Bible study for them, and I printed out the Matthean version, the one that we so often repeat here in The Village Chapel, the longer version. And then we had a good chat about prayer and all that it means.

I think that’s a great question. I think we hear people in our culture in our day and time often say, “our thoughts and prayers are with you, or our thoughts and prayers go out for you or our prayers go out to you,” which I think is kind of weird. If I ask you to pray for me, please don’t send your prayers to me. I would love it if you would just storm Heaven for me and get on your knees and go before God, the Almighty God, who we read about in our Apostles Creed as we take it apart. It’s a couple of fellas that decided one day that they needed to pray. And I love this. This was sent to me a long, long time ago by David Perry, and I love the innocence of this young child here and he’s probably praying, “Lord, my dog next to me ate my homework. Please forgive him and help me as I go before my teacher this morning.” The dog on the other hand is praying for Snausages and perhaps praying in tongues as dogs often do. I’m not sure.

What is prayer? A friend of mine some time ago emailed me a note that described this little story, this little scenario that happened in a restaurant. I wanted to read this for you too. This fellow is reciting how he took his kid to a restaurant, six-year-old son, and asked if he would say grace over the meal there in the restaurant. “We bowed our heads, and he said aloud, [this little boy did] ‘God is good, God is great. Thank you for the food and I would even thank you more if mom gets us ice cream for dessert, and liberty and justice for all. Amen.’” I love that about the kid, right? Along with the smattering of laughter from a few other tables nearby, they heard one older woman at the next table smugly remark this. “That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why, I never!” And upon hearing this, the young boy burst into tears and asked his dad, “Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?”

As his father held him, he assured him that he had done a terrific job. God was certainly not mad at him and there was an elderly gentleman who approached the table where they were sitting and he winked at this man’s son and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.” And the little boy said, “Really?” Like that. And the older man said, “Cross my heart.” And then with a theatrical whisper he added indicating to the woman whose remark had been so ill-timed and so poorly stated, he said, “Too bad, she never asked God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.” So naturally, the father bought ice cream for his son at the end of the meal, and the son stared at his ice cream for a moment and then did something his father would remember for the rest of his life. He picked up his sundae and without a word, walked over and placed it in front of the woman and with a big smile, he said to her. “Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes and my soul is good already.” So, I thought that was good.

It’s a little good and a little bad there, right? Yeah, but you go, “Okay, that’s… Something’s sinking in” and all that sort of thing. Back to our text here in this prayer here, and what does it do? How does it help us understand what prayer is? And I know, as I said, I know you probably have a couple of questions because we recite this version here from Matthew 6 all the time, and so at least one question is, does Matthew somehow or another contradict Luke? Because Luke has a different kind of version. Matter of fact, there’s two versions of Luke 11:1-4, and I’ll talk about that in a second. But I’ll give you maybe four side roads real quick before we get into the meat of this whole thing. Is Matthew and Luke some proof that Jesus contradicts Himself, the Bible contradicts itself? Of course not. I’m sorry, but I think that’s just plain silly. You think that Jesus, the Son of God, only spoke about prayer once? That’d be my first response because prayer is our lifeline to God. It’s only one of the central ways by which we commune with God. And so, if Matthew and Luke are simply recording two different teachings of Jesus on prayer, I think that would easily explain the difference in the two.

But what about the fact that for some of us here in the room, for some of the folks at home, Luke chapter 11:1-4 actually read differently. You may have a King James or a New King James, or you may have an ESV/CSB. I teach out of the NASB, but I happen to have an old one. It’s a 1976 edition, and so it may read a little bit differently to you, but there are some differences indeed in some of our English translations and how do we explain that? Well, at least one of the ways I think we could explain it is through the Greek manuscript traditions and the translation philosophies. The longer versions of Luke 11:1-4, which you find in the King James Version and in the New King James Version are based upon the Byzantine manuscript tradition. There are about 5,000 fragments or copies that fall into this category, and they date from between the 9th and 15th century.

And so, 5,000 is a lot of ancient manuscripts or fragments to draw upon and from which we get a lot of our New Testament. However, the shorter versions, which is the one that I read here this morning because I read from the New American Standard, and you might have an ESV, which is probably also the shorter version or the NIV, which is also the shorter version as well. CSB as well. They’re based… They’re more word-for-word translations or transliterations, somebody might say. They’re based upon the Alexandrian manuscript tradition and there are only 40 to 50 copies in existence of that. And somebody might say, “Well, why in the world would you go with the 40 or 50 when the others there’s 5,000 copies of the Byzantine manuscript copies?” Well, it’s because of the dating. The Alexandrian manuscript copies that we have actually go all the way back to the 2nd through 4th centuries so they’re older, closer to the time of the apostles and to the original writing by quite a significant amount of time.

That doesn’t mean I think that I can definitively say you should never read the longer version. It may indeed be that we’ll all get home to Heaven one day and discover that, “Oh yeah, those Byzantine manuscript copies were right, and the Alexandrian ones were a little different,” but I love it that our English Bible translators are honest about this kind of variant. Don’t you like that? I feel like that means we’re getting the truth. Nobody’s trying to sweep this under the rug, and most of your English translations may indicate in the margins, or you can go online and you can look all of this up yourself if you would like to, but you’ll find that the oldest, even though they’re fewer in number, the oldest closer to the time of the apostles, those are from the Alexandrian tradition, Codex Sinaiticus. There’s also Papyrus 75 and Papyrus 66, sometimes known as P75, P66, and those are older, closer to the time that this would’ve been written.

So, there’s a lot of credibility there, but that doesn’t mean that I know for sure which one is the most accurate, true to what Luke may have originally written. Also, a third thing that I think is important is “deliver us from evil.” If you happen to have the longer version of Luke 11:1-4, “Deliver us from evil” is there as well, and sometimes it says, “Deliver us from the evil one.” So, in Matthew 6, is it deliver us from evil or is it deliver us from the evil one as if that’s Satan? Well, actually, that’s one of those Greek words that could actually be translated either way, and so you’ll find some English translators will take “peirasmos” and they’ll go delivers from evil in a general sort of way, or they’ll say the evil one. I, for one, appreciate, again, the forthrightness of our English Bible translators.

The last side road, before I just pick it apart a little bit further, is I want you to notice that this and the Matthean version are all stated in the plural. The Matthean version up here that we recite each and every week is the more traditional 66 words, although we’ve added and forever and ever, we’ve added that in there because we just want it to go on and on and on forever. But there are 66 words in the traditional version. The first word begins to show us that this prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, is stated in the plural. That’s such great news in a world plagued by an epidemic of loneliness, in a world where we’re more connected technologically than ever before in the history of the world. We are all connected and yet, at the same time, it’s paradoxical, but we’re all lonely in some ways as well.

And so, in the midst of this loneliness epidemic, here’s The Lord’s Prayer reminding us when we go before God, when we are in Christ as Christians, when we’re followers of Jesus, and that’s who He’s talking to here, He says, “When you pray, you pray all in the plural.” Even in the shorter version of Luke, it doesn’t say “Our Father,” but everything else, once he starts saying here in Luke, once he starts requesting petitions for the self, it’s always “us, we, our.” And so that’s really beautiful. When you become a Christian, you are no longer alone for the rest of eternity, and you may be here today feeling lonely. I just want you to know that according to the Bible and in terms of the view of Jesus, you are never alone again. Let’s make each other know that, feel that, experience that.

As I said, a couple weeks ago, anybody sitting alone to me is a three-alarm fire in this place. Let’s make sure nobody is alone the whole hour. Let’s make sure everybody recognizes that they got welcomed and they are known when they come here. So, what’s the biblical idea of prayer as we see it here in Luke? Again, it’s not self-talk, it’s not merely wishful thinking. It’s not ginning up positive vibes. That’s not what prayer means to those who would read the Bible. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do self-talk. I think good self-talk is proper. I think using my imagination to imagine good things and maybe even to spur me on toward creativity and productivity, I think that’s all really good, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. This is prayer we’re talking about, not just self-talk and not just merely ginning up some positive vibes or trying to plan ahead for the future or whatever.

In the biblical view of prayer, we don’t focus inward but rather outward and upward. Our prayer is directed and it’s not directed, as I said to people, it’s directed to the Father, and that’s why Jesus in both the Matthean and Lukan version begins with God, begins with the Father. Praying involves both talking and listening to God who is really there seeking God’s perspective, God’s wisdom, God’s will and God’s ways, His comfort, His courage, His help along the way. William Law said it this way, “Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of Him that we are capable of in this life,” and I think that’s so important. Move your prayers from merely checking a box and doing sort of “I check the box my daily devotions.” It’s a good thing to have a routine. It’s a good thing to be disciplined but lean into it more if it’s just become perfunctory. If it’s just mechanical, lean into it more. Move into communing with God, not just saying words in a repetitious kind of way. Delight in him. Enjoy him. And William Law I think is right on that.

Karl Barth, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” You think the world is disordered and somebody ought to say amen, yes, it is. How about your world, your world, your sphere? Is it disordered as well? Mine is. There’s lots of disorder in my world, and so I need, like Martin Luther says, “I have so much to do today. I have to spend three hours in prayer.” We have to have that same sort of perspective, I think, that we really need to include our communion with God as a regular part of our lives but lean into it and really mean it. Jesus and the Apostle Paul, both teach us to bring our requests before God, so that’s proper and right.

As a pastor, I’ve been asked many times what kinds of things are proper to ask from God as we pray? In other words, is prayer about getting God to do things for us and give us things? Again, I think the Bible actually teaches we’re supposed to bring our requests before Him. So, I’m not just going to say, “No, it’s not about that.” I am going to say, “Yes, bring your request to God. Tell Him what’s on your heart. Tell Him what you would like.” Lord, I request this. Lord, I would love to see this person healed. I would love to see this result happen in this particular situation in my job or my work or my relationship with my neighbor or my family or whatever. Yes, tell Him what you would like, but remember it’s a request. C.S. Lewis makes a real big deal out of reminding us that prayer is a request, and requests may be granted, or they may be denied, or they may be simply put on hold for a bit.

William Barclay, the old Scottish preacher, said, “Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little.” That may be a fault of myself sometimes, perhaps of yourself as well. He goes on to say, “When prayer is at its highest, we wait in silence for God’s voice to speak to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and we feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.”

Is that missing in your prayer life? Slow down, linger as Barclay says. If your internal world is so fast-paced and so noisy, it may take you pausing, stopping and remaining silent before the Lord. Silence is a powerful spiritual discipline. It prepares the heart to hear from God, to silence my ambitions, to silence my anxieties because my ambitions lead me in all kinds of ways to want to direct God to finish things this way. My anxieties are really a reflection of the fact that I’m worried that God got it wrong, or He might get it wrong, and maybe I don’t really trust the sovereign king of the universe with my little life and my little things that I’m so concerned about.

I think it’s really excellent what Barclay has said there, but Buechner reminds us, “We do well not to pray The Lord’s Prayer lightly. It takes guts to pray at it all. To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.” It’s a great perspective, isn’t it? Have you thought about that? As you’re driving down the road and you just utter a whisper of a prayer or as you say a prayer, and just as you finish saying it, you think to yourself, “I might’ve gotten that one wrong.” And like J. I. Packer, and I don’t have this on the screen for you, but I love his quote on how God fixes our prayers on their way up because the Holy Spirit intercedes for us on our behalf. And so, as His child who He loves, He’s welcomed me into His presence and Jesus has taught me how to pray. He said in Matthew, it’s only 66 words and that could be all that you need to pray today or here, it’s even shorter than that. That could be all that we need to get us in the right disposition of heart and relationship with the Lord.

So here it is on the screen for you. The version that I read aloud for you. This isn’t the longer of the two versions. This is the one from the Alexandrian texts, and so the longer version that you may have in your King James, your New King James, is from again the Byzantine manuscript text tradition. So here we go. “Father, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come.” Notice how you begin with the relationship. It’s not just God Almighty, but that’s wonderful and proper, the fascinating juxtaposition that we say in the Apostles’ Creed, which we went over a couple of weeks ago, those lines. I believe in God, the Father Almighty. Father and Almighty, such different terms. One, personal, intimate, close, familial. Almighty, transcendent, unapproachable in some ways. We tremble in His presence and yet both, that’s who our God is and that’s who He’s welcomed us to call Him. In Matthew’s version, chapter 6 of Matthew, Jesus basically teaches his disciples to think of God the Father, God the Father Creator as we stressed a little bit in our profession of faith this morning. Jesus, in what we call Matthew Chapter 6, twelve times says to the disciples, you can call God “Father.” He’s your father and He loves you, and He wants to draw you close to Himself in that regard. So that’s really, really beautiful.

Several years ago, Kim and I had the opportunity to be in Paris, and went to the Basilica, Saint-Denis. I do not speak French, I’m going to butcher it, but I call it Saint-Denis. There are 41 kings buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, 41 kings. That’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s a significant cathedral just north of Paris, and it was named after this guy Denis, who in AD250 was the first Christian missionary sent from the Christian Church in Rome to the then city of Lutece, which now is called Paris. So, they put this cathedral up and when we were over in France, and even really in any country we go to in Europe, we make it a habit of going to one cathedral and one art museum each and every day, and it is just so enriching and so wonderful for us. This is my much younger self. We kneel, Kim and I both do, kneel in each of the cathedrals we visit, and we say The Lord’s Prayer. Our disorganized stumbling way to try and find our way to being in solidarity with all of the believers in church history and to say that same prayer that’s been said in that same place by so many thousands, if not millions of people, year after year after year.

And regardless of the fact that there were corrupt governments, regardless of the fact that there were wartimes much greater than anything we’ve ever known. Regardless of the fact that their world might’ve been way more chaotic and frustrating than the slice of history we live in, we still wanted to find ourselves in solidarity with the church of Jesus over space-time history for the last couple thousand years. It is so important to us. We also dropped into this one. As most of you will know, that is Notre Dame. If Saint-Denis had one tower when Lutece became Paris and when they decided to build Notre Dame, they said, “We need two towers” and they’re in the Christian tradition is one church trying to say, “No, we got the taller steeple than you.” And so, the steeple wars go on and on and the tower wars as well. This is before the fire that you all are aware of that’s happened in our lifetime. And back then, this is probably 15… is this like 15, 18, maybe 18 years ago. Here’s a picture of the fact that you were on our hearts, and we took you with us and I had my Village Chapel hat, the vent. That was the hat back then and I wore that right there outside of Notre Dame. Wanted you to know we were thinking about you.

Since it’s not about you though, let’s go back to The Lord’s Prayer. It’s not about me either. All right. Father reminds us of who God is, but you know what else it does? It reminds us of who we are. If God’s your father, what does it make you? It makes you His children. You are His son or His daughter. Do you understand what that means? Now, some of you think of the father image for you may not be so good. Mine died when I was one. I’ve never known or been conscious of what therapists might call abandonment issues, but I might have those. I might have feelings that I don’t even know about that are a part of the fact that I grew up without my father. So that’s quite possible. But no matter what your experience may have been or is with your earthly father, Jesus wants you to know that your Heavenly Father is everything your earthly father should have been, could have been perhaps leaning and depending on God and the grace of God to be able to do that. But your Heavenly Father is the father you’ve always wanted. He’s the one that knows you fully and loves you completely.

And according to its founder, the Christian faith reminds you and instructs you and me to think of ourselves as having God as our father. Has that sunk into you? You’ve heard it a million times, but has it sunk into your heart and your mind like it could and perhaps maybe like it needs to again? If Jesus says that those who are His disciples should address God as father, then He is saying something about us as well. J. I. Packer believed this as well and so it’s very succinct that he put it this way: “What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.” That is from one of my very favorite theologians of the last century. So, I would say with these four verses, let me just leave you with these three or four points here. When you pray, begin with God. This is a great thing. This is a wonderful thing for us to do. Whether you’re talking about the Matthew version right here, look upon this right here.

You can see that the first third of it is not about me. It’s not about you, it’s about God: “Hallowed be Thy name… who art in heaven… Thy will be done… Thy kingdom come.” All that, that’s about God. And that’s about what is in your heart and in my heart, in your mind, and in my mind, resetting who we think God is and who we are praying to. So, it’s really important. And then somewhere along the way, about just after a third of the Matthean version, we get to our needs, to our wants, and they’re very simply stated in really beautiful ways here, as well as in the Lucan version, that bit about daily bread. So important for us, isn’t it? And then that closing section up there goes back to God and God’s glory. It’s like a little prayer sandwich, isn’t it? And you’re just in the middle there. The top piece of bread is all about God and His greatness, His wonderfulness recognizing His rightful rule in your life and in mine, wanting His will to come on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Well, I’m on Earth. That means I want His will to come in my life. And I want His name to be hallowed in my life as well, so important. Jesus says a truly effective prayer life begins with God, and I think He’s right there as well. Francis Schaeffer, some of you are familiar with him, he says, “Thus, from the biblical viewpoint, when I pray, God does hear, and He can act into the cause and effect the universe and answer to my prayer. However, God is not a machine. I must not see him as a vending machine into which I put a quarter and get out a candy bar in a purely mechanical fashion. He is personal, and thus in answering prayer He operates on the basis of what He knows is the best and wisest answer to that prayer, not just in a mechanical reflex.” Just like a good earthly father or mother would do for their child. You have their highest good in mind. You have their safety in mind, you have their maturing and growing in mind, and you want all of that to happen.

And so, when we go to our Heavenly Father and pray, we want to pray in the same way with the same view that we are now in Christ means God is our Father. That’s why the whole doctrine of union with Christ is so important. And just breezing through, it’s mentioned “in Christ” or “in Him” is mentioned 90 times in our New Testament. You realize that. There’s therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Oh, no condemnation. Yeah, you going to face the judgment day? Yes, you are. How will you face it in Christ or not in Christ? I choose A. I hope you will too. If anyone is in Christ, this new creation. In Him, in Christ, we have redemption. In Him we have obtained an inheritance. We also in the New Testament, hear our union “with Christ” mentioned as it said, we are with Christ. I’ve been crucified with Christ. You’ve died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. If we’ve died with Christ, we believe that we’ll also live with Him, Romans, Chapter 6, says. We also speak of union with Christ. When we say through Him or through Christ, I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. How can I do that? Well, because I’m in Him and He is in me. And we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That means Christ Jesus. Your relationship to Jesus is critical. It’s essential to your reconciliation with God. And it’s effective. Efficacious if you prefer. It is, it works. You have been reconciled with God because of the finished work of Christ on the cross in His glorious and beautiful resurrection. So being in union with Christ is so very important. Second point I want to highlight of four is: Bring your needs to God, so begin with God and then bring your needs to God. We have this “daily bread” phrase here, which I love. I want, do you, maybe you do too, I sometimes would prefer a little bit of weekly bread. I’d like to either gather up some of that daily, so I got enough of it in a little bit of a stash that I kind of have control over, maybe some monthly bread. I mean if I get some weekly, then I might think I’d like a little month or maybe some yearly bread would be really good.

And I don’t know about you, but I mean what Jesus is essentially saying is you are to live your lives on a daily basis dependent on God for the smallest of things, daily bread itself. One of the reasons why I think it’s important for us to give thanks before each meal. Is that a rule? Is that a law? Are you going to burn in hell if you don’t? No. I just think it’s good for me. It’s good for us if we’re constantly giving Him thanks and recognizing not only our dependence on Him, but His faithfulness to us. Those are really, really important things as we think about daily bread. Third, ask for forgiveness. Begin with God. Bring your needs to God and ask for forgiveness, and we say it right there, don’t we? As we pray this Lord’s Prayer all the time. Forgive us our sins, in the Lucan version right here and in Matthew’s version, as we have forgiven those who’ve sinned against us.

Trespasses, debts, sins, those always collide, don’t they when you say it out loud and you’re in a mixed group of people who were raised, some Methodists, some Baptists, some Presbyterian, and they use different words there for the great words that are used. And here, what we have for sins is the more common one, “hamartia.” And so, it is clear what Jesus wants us to do. Forgive us our sins for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And there’s always this inextricable connection that Jesus puts in the Matthew version and the Lucan version where you’re receiving God’s forgiveness for your sins is connected directly to you. Passing that along and reflecting that out to others as well. In other words, if you have an unforgiving heart towards someone else, don’t come to God and expect Him to be forgiving to you when you will not be forgiving to someone else. Think about it. Let that sink in.

In Matthew, Chapter 6, Jesus says that twice. There’s a connection between you receiving forgiveness and you being willing to offer forgiveness. He says that in the Lord’s prayer itself in Matthew 6, and then He says it just after that as well. So, confess your sin, receive God’s forgiveness, reflect His grace and mercy. Confess your sin. What does that mean? It means agree with God about your sin. In other words, don’t go to God with just the excuses. Sorry, I didn’t see that speed limit sign there. I was going 89 in a 25 and I didn’t see that. I just didn’t see. They should have made the sign … Look, I know that’s been happening since the garden – passing the buck. It’s always somebody else’s fault. And we in contemporary culture, modern culture, we’ve gotten even better. We’ve just perfected that art of passing the buck and blaming somebody else. It’s never my fault. I always can find a way to sort of get around admitting that it’s my fault.

Jesus says, confess your sins very clearly. You want to ask God for forgiveness, 1 John 1:9. If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins. So, we know what the response is when we confess our sins. He will forgive us. That’s what makes repentance for Christians, for Bible-believing Christians a joyful experience. We already know the response. We receive God’s forgiveness. If Jesus teaches us to pray this, ask for forgiveness, what Jesus is simply saying is that when you ask your Father who is in Heaven, if you ask Him for a loaf of bread, He’s not going to give you a snake. If you ask Him for forgiveness, He’s going to forgive you. You already know before you ask what His response will be.

It punishes some of us. It’s hard for some of us to believe that. And I invite you to believe not in the God of your own fashion, that won’t forgive you. I invite you to believe in the God of the New Testament who has promised to forgive you. You see the difference. It’s really important that we get that right in our own lives as we walk through life to receive God’s forgiveness. And then say, once you’ve received His grace and mercy and forgiveness, then you’re so much better equipped to be able to reflect that out to others as well because you know what it’s like, don’t you? And then somebody offends you or somebody says something unkind toward you or takes advantage of you in some way, and all of a sudden you find yourself needing to forgive someone else.

Can you do it? Well, you can if you’re really aware of the fact of how much has been forgiven to you. That really helps in the process, doesn’t it? Lewis, on that quote that I mentioned earlier: “What we call asking God’s forgiveness very often consists in asking God to accept our excuses… What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. As regards my own sins, it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think: as regards other men sins against me, it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think.” You see, I think he said it quite well there, that’s from The Weight of Glory. Finally, not only begin with God, bring your needs to God, ask for forgiveness from God. Fourthly, seek God’s protection. And in this Lucan version, it’s very short that we have here.

That’s the last line. “Lead us not into temptation.” It’s so important to pray that. It’s so important for us to seek God’s protection, to lead us not into temptation. Some people down through history and even in our own time, in our own city, I would even say. I’ve heard recently, have denied the reality of sin itself, which I think is just fantastically funny. I mean, we are a culture of people who have learned to deny reality right in front of us. Not only biological realities, but even human character issues and realities. It’s amazing to me that someone could think to make the claim, we don’t sin, we don’t need atonement. It’s the most provable doctrine of the Christian faith beyond all others. Why? Because you can see it in the mirror. You can see it in the relationships around you as people selfishly try to outdo one another and take advantage of one another.

And it’s so easy to see in other people, isn’t it? While we have the big board in our own eye, we should go to the mirror and look in the mirror and be honest and humble enough to see that we actually need His grace, mercy, and forgiveness and His protection as we encounter temptation. I’m convinced, like I said, that this is one of the most provable doctrines of the Christian faith. Jesus has prayed that God would not allow us to be led into temptation. We admit that we are weak in doing so. We recognize we could fall in doing so. We love God and others enough. We love ourselves properly and therefore, we’d rather not even be tempted to sin. So not only will we want to avoid the sin, but we want to avoid the temptation to sin. Twenty years ago, or 10 years ago, whenever I’ve taught on this before, I talk about the Krispy Kreme “Hot Donuts Now” sign and just driving my car around the block waiting for the light to go on when the last thing I need is another donut or a dozen or so of them. That’s like flirting with temptation.

How many of us are flirting with temptation when we know we’re coming up to that gathering, that family gathering, and at night like three days before we start imagining how we’re going to hit somebody with something? We’re going to say this, and we play out these narratives in our little imaginations. And we’re going to make sure this gets said and that gets said. Make this point and win this thing. And we’re just flirting with temptation to be angry or unkind. We’re actually enticing that to come into our heart and our mind and seeking to actually sin, and we need to be watchful. We need to be on guard about that. We have all of us who preach here at The Village Chapel quoted from Brian Hedges’ books, Watchfulness, especially, “Even here, in your repentance, you must not only turn from temptation in sin but also turn to Christ.”

That’s what repentance really is. It’s a two-fold turn. Away from sin and toward Christ. Hedges goes on to say, “He is the one who both preserves the tempted and restores the fallen. So, wherever you are, in respect to temptation and sin, seek Christ.” Amen? Yeah, that’s right. We turn to Him. I’ve come to appreciate this line that the Lord indeed would lead us not into temptation. I’ve really come to appreciate that in the last few years myself, as we have struggled with all the news, all of the despair, all the acrimony around us and all that sort of thing. Not to mention my own personal stuff that I’m wrestling with. And you may have a whole truckload of stuff yourself as well, but what we need is not to figure it out and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. What we need is to get on our knees, lift up the empty hands of faith and pray.

And if you don’t think you have the right words or if you don’t know what to say, you don’t need to say, “Ice cream’s good for the soul. Lord, hit me with some Blue Bell.” But you could use The Lord’s Prayer from Luke 11 or from Matthew 6, and it sets us on the right course in our prayers. It puts God first. It places us in a position of dependence before Him, and so we acknowledge our needs. That’s so important for us. It prays for His protection as we move forward in our lives. And I think I love this quote from Corrie ten Boom, which I really wanted to close with here because the disciples are so eager for Jesus to teach them to pray in this passage. And I want some of that. I want that to be contagious, that good infection of eagerness to pray.

I don’t know about you, but our preaching prep team meets on Tuesday mornings. We were all just talking about prayer is the first of the spiritual disciplines to go. As we drift back away from the Lord a little, that’s one of the first things we let go of. So, if something’s wrong in your spiritual life, if it doesn’t have vitality, if you don’t seem to have much sense of God’s presence and all that sort of thing, maybe I’m not saying I know for sure, but maybe you ought to check on how much prayer is getting done, how much you’re getting to. And I love it, at the beginning of Luke’s chapter, look at that verse 1 right there.

The disciples hear Jesus praying. And what do they say to them? “Lord, teach us to pray.” Not how to pray. Teach us to pray. And I pray that for myself. I pray that for us as well. Spinning off of this last quote, Corrie ten Boom. “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” Steering wheel is what you get into the car, and you use it whether you’re going backwards or forwards, you’re using that steering wheel. “Ooh, got to go this way.” How many of you have trouble backing up in your car as you look back in the back? Or how many have trouble parallel parking? We saw the worst parallel parker on the planet yesterday, and we’re both just sitting there. I said, “I know we’re in a hurry, but I got to watch this.” They just couldn’t get it right at all. And they disobeyed all of the rules of parallel parking, and they didn’t have that Hummer with the side wheels that go like that. They didn’t have that, but it was fun to watch, I just thought. But we need prayer to be our steering wheel. Whether we’re going backwards or forwards, we need prayer, not just our spare tire. I’m glad we have a spare tire. I’m glad that when I get in trouble, I can yell help, or when I need courage, help, when I need restoration, help, when I’m struggling with who I am or where I’m at in life, help. I’m glad I have that. I can do that. But I’m really glad, too, that it can be our steering wheel as Corrie ten Boom has said.

Let’s pray: Lord, we come in prayer and in confidence because of Jesus having taught us how to pray. We come to You. We know with The Lord’s Prayer, we’re praying aright. We’re praying as You taught us to pray. So Lord, when we have questions about that, I’m so glad for the default setting of this prayer, calling on You as my Father, seeking Your kingdom, Your will, Your name being hallowed, depending on Your provision, Lord, trusting Your kindness, your faithfulness, and resting in Your sovereignty. I need all of that. So Lord, teach us to pray one more time together. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed… 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 trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“This Is My Father’s World“ by Maltbie D. Babcock, Mary Crawford Babcock, and Franklin Lawrence Sheppard
“Grace Greater Than Our Sin“ by Julia H. Johnston
“Come Thou Fount“ by Robert Robinson
“Jesus Strong And Kind“ by Colin Buchanan, Jonny Robinson, Michael Farren, and Rich Thompson
 “Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois

All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: How Lovely Is Your Dwelling Place

Leader: How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
People: Our souls long, yes faint for the courts of the Lord; Our hearts and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Leader: Who is like you, O Lord, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
People: It is good to be near God; Make the Lord God our refuge and tell of all his works.

Leader: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, Who alone does wondrous things.
All: Blessed be his glorious name forever; May the whole earth be filled with his Glory! Amen and Amen!

Source: Excerpts from Psalm 84, 72, 73 and Ezekiel 15

Confession: “Maker of Heaven and Earth” 

Leader: Why do you call God the Father “Creator”?
People: I call God the Father “Creator” because he made all things. He creates and sustains all things through his Word, and gives life to all creatures through his Spirit.

Leader: How does recognizing God as Creator inform your understanding of his creation?
People: I acknowledge that God created for his own glory everything that exists. He created human beings, male and female, in his image and appointed us stewards of creation. God’s creation is thus a gift to enjoy as we work and care for it.

Leader: What does it mean that God created both heaven and earth?
People: It means that all things, whether visible or invisible, physical or spiritual, were brought into being out of nothing by the Word of the eternal God.

Source: ACNA, Q. 42-44

Classic Prayer: Myles Coverdale, 1488-1569

Merciful Father, we cry unto thee in all trouble and call upon thee through the crucified Jesus. Suffer us not to sink in great afflictions, give us not over unto our own strength; but the more the enemy presses upon us, be thou more our assistance: for in all anguish and trouble thou art our right helper and most faithful friend. If temptation comes upon us by thy Fatherly will, grant us grace, O Lord, patiently to bear it, and to lay the burden upon thy mercy; that in all trouble we, being else destitute of all consolation, may put our whole trust only in thee. Amen.

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