025. Our Prayer

PP OUR PRAYER 

I’ve really come today to speak about the Lord’s Prayer. At least that’s what I always thought it was. But now that I’ve sat down to study it in preparation for this message, I’m not so sure I can call it the Lord’s Prayer after all! 

Let’s read it. Here Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray. … 

PP Matthew 6:9-13 NKJV 

v9 “Our Father in heaven, 

Hallowed be Your name. 

v10 Your kingdom come. 

Your will be done 

On earth as it is in heaven. 

v11 Give us this day our daily bread 

v12 And forgive us our debts, 

As we forgive our debtors, 

v13 And do not lead us into temptation, 

But deliver us from the evil one. 

For Yours is the kingdom and the power 

And the glory forever. Amen. 

So Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray. 

------ In my old King James Bible, it’s got ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ as a title along the top of the page. … 

PP The Lord’s Prayer 

Where did we get that name from? 

Who said it was The Lord’s Prayer? 

Did Jesus name it ‘The Lord’s Prayer’? 2 

Did His disciples name it The Lord’s Prayer? No. 

Then who did? 

Maybe the Bible translators back in 1611 

coined the title ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. 

I don’t know. 

---- In a way, this prayer is misnamed The Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer that Jesus Himself could not have prayed. 

You see, one of the major statements shown in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:112 and Luke 11:4, is this, … 

PP “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” 

Friends, Jesus Christ, Son of God, who did not sin, could never have made such a request. 

Maybe we should really re-name it. … 

PP1 (Not) 

The Lord’s Prayer (but) 

PP2 The Disciples’ Prayer 

Now if it’s the Disciples’ Prayer, could we pray it? 

Are we Disciples? Of course! So if we wanted to, we could clearly re-name it … 

PP3 OUR PRAYER 

Yes, it’s your prayer and my prayer. 

------ Now, friends, … 3 

PP If anybody could teach us how to pray, it would have been Jesus. He was a Master of Prayer. 

Sometimes He would pray all night. Sometimes He would do real battle in prayer. -- Tell me, where was it that Jesus ‘shed as it were great drops of blood’? It was not in Pilate’s Judgment Hall. It was not as He staggered under the weight of the cross as He struggled up Golgotha’s Hill. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane, under those ancient olive trees, while He prayed. ---- Paul, writing to the Hebrews, said that Jesus prayed to the Father, making His petitions ‘with strong crying and tears’. 

I’ve spent a lot of time in the Garden of Gethsemane on different occasions. I’ve even got a bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil with some olive twigs in it, taken from those ancient trees that may have witnessed Jesus praying there. ---- 

-------- Now if I had been there watching Jesus suffering as He prayed, I think I would have felt very uncertain about the future. I think I would have said, “If He’s behaving like this when all He’s doing is praying, then what is He going to do when He faces the cross? It’s too bad He can’t be like His three sleeping friends. -------They went to sleep and found peace in the midst of the storm.” But friends, when the crisis did come, Jesus went to the cross in triumph. It was his three friends who were supposed to be staying awake and praying who fell back and fell away. … 

PP So as well as Bible study, what was it that gave Jesus the strength He needed? Prayer! And it will give us strength too. 

So back to Matthew chapter 6 where Jesus is teaching His disciples (that includes us) what to say when we pray. 4 

Now if you want to learn how to fix your car, you ask the expert, the motor mechanic. If you want to learn how to paint, you go and ask a master artist. If you wanted to learn how to pray, who would you be best to ask? Jesus! The Prayer Master. So we, like His disciples, go to Him and make that request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” 

So Jesus tells us how to pray. He says in … 

PP Matthew 6:9 

“In this manner, therefore pray: Our Father...” 

That single word ‘Father’ is an amazing title. Friends, when we come to the Creator of the universe, Jesus says that we are to address Him as ‘Father’. ---- 

The philosophers and scientists ask the question, “Is the universe friendly?” We can say ‘Yes!’. When we call the great God who set the stars in place ‘Father’, we are affirming that at the heart of this universe there is not only mega power, but there is mega love. 

------ Jesus, teaching us to pray, assures us that we can come to God as a child comes to a father in the family. And if you haven’t had a good father down here, then I invite you to become acquainted with the ultimate Father. 

I understand that in the New Testament, 275 times or more we are told directly or indirectly, that when we bow before the sovereign Majesty of the universe, the word that should come easily to our lips should be ‘Father’ ----- 

------ When we were in Belgium, we saw the world’s most amazing clock. It took 40 years and at least 1.5 million dollars to build. The clock is accurate to two fifths of a second every 300 years. That 5 

clock has 10 faces. Some of them tell the time of the day, the day of the week, the week of the month, the month of the year, and the year of the century. It’s able to accurately track the movements of the planets and the sun for 2,500 years. Would you believe that there are parts in the clock that will only move once in 2,500 years? 

But there’s something disturbing about that clock -- it’s not accurate. It loses two fifths of a second every 300 years. How do they know that? Because they have measured that clock in Belgium against God’s great clock, the universe. God’s clock is so accurate that every clock on earth, even the one in the town hall in Belgium, is measured against it. ----- 

----- The astronomers gaze in awe as the great telescopes sweep out through the galaxies. Yet … 

PP The majority of people in this country of Australia, have lost sight of God. We have forgotten to get to know Him as ‘Father’. ----- 

Jesus says, that in prayer, the name ‘Father’ should come easily to our lips.’ 

So the prayer begins in verse 9 with ‘Our Father’. Not My Father, but Our Father. I cannot honestly pray ‘our Father’ if I don’t share Him with others. If I keep God selfishly to myself by not talking to others about Him, then I cannot honestly address Him as ‘Our Father’. 

You know there’s a strange thing about this prayer. So often when we pray, we don’t seem to have too much time for God. We say “Our Father, gimme this and gimme that.” Of course we say ‘please’ sometimes. But our typical prayers are all about ‘me’ – focused on me and not on God. Listen to the prayer, … 6 

PP1 ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed (or holy) be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, …” 

And then it goes on a little bit later to say at the end of verse 13, … 

PP2 “For Yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” 

Friends, let’s not forget God in our prayers. 

Jesus is showing here, that when we talk to the Father, we need to talk to the Father about the Father. Then in this prayer example, a small amount of time is spent talking about ourselves and then it gets back to the Father again to finish off. We need to put first things first and get our priorities right. ------ 

------ Now … 

PP When we pray ‘hallowed (or holy) be Your name’, we are respecting our heavenly Father and putting Him in His rightful place. ‘Hallowed be Your name!’ We’re not trying to belittle Him down to our size. His name is to be honoured in the way we pray, and the way we live. If we put Him first, He will never be embarrassed when we call ourselves Christians. 

------ Sometimes, if we listen carefully to the way we pray, we may just find there are other people we are hallowing, or making more holy, than Him. Perhaps our prayer to God is just a means to an end and God’s name is mentioned as a formality before we talk about ourselves or our friends or family who we actually respect more than we respect God. ------ 

------ So Jesus reminds us to say as we pray, “Hallowed be Your name” ---- In my prayers and in my life I will allow God to truly be 7 

God with a capital ‘G’. I will not simply use Him as a means to meet my own selfish requests. 

Then in verse 10 Jesus instructs us to pray,… 

PP Matthew 6:10 “Your kingdom come”. 

So having spoken to the Father about Himself, we now begin to speak to Him about His programme. God’s programme, the programme of the Bible, is moving towards that great soon-coming event. “Your kingdom come”. His kingdom is soon to be re-established on this earth. It was promised in the Old Testament. It’s promised in the New Testament. It is that fabulous kingdom where Jesus will come back and rule, and rule forever. 

---- A man said to me, “Ray, there’s a lot of crime today.” So I took the opportunity to give him a little sermon on the Bible prophecies that show that crime, and earthquakes, and man’s ability to destroy the earth, and pestilences like Covid 19, and all these things that are happening so fast today, are there in the Bible to show us that any time now, God’s kingdom will be ushered in, and every knee on earth will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord. That’s where history is going --- and fast! ---- 

PP1 Have you really accepted Jesus as your friend and Saviour? Start to get acquainted with Him before it is too late. 

I encourage you to get a copy of the DVD … 

PP2 ‘THE HOUR’ 

or download it from the ‘LIFE LESSONS’ page on the website. ----- 

------ Before I met Jesus, I never did like to pray that part, “Your kingdom come”, because I wasn’t ready for Him to come and I would have ‘missed the boat’. ---- 8 

------ When I was a kid, I believed in the ‘Secret Rapture’. And as a kid I used to think that one day, the good people like my mum and dad for example, might be raptured away, to heaven, and I, who wasn’t so good, would be left behind. And I would actually wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, a bit afraid, because I couldn’t hear anything. I was worried, and I would get out of bed – it was all quiet. Were Mum and dad still here? They might have been raptured away. --- I would sneak out, and look around their door, and in the dark I would look carefully, to see if mum and dad were still in bed. If I could see them, then I would feel a little bit better, and I would go back to sleep again. ---- 

----- Friends, I dare not say “Your kingdom come”, if I refuse to act like a child of His kingdom, and refuse to do all in my power to be ready myself for His coming, and to help others to get ready also. Jesus Christ must rule in my life. To be fair dinkum about His kingdom, I’ve got to be willing if necessary, to knock down my own little kingdoms that mean so much to me. What are they? Selfishness, sport, money, TV – whatever! --- Then Jesus Christ can reign in my life. Only then will I be truly at peace. ----- 

------ “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” 

PP I can’t honestly pray “Your will be done” if I am only wanting to do my will, and I am questioning, resentful of, or disobedient to His will for me. 

------ So in the Lord’s Prayer, which is our prayer, before we pray for anything else, Jesus said, talk to the Father about His programme, His will, and the coming of His kingdom. 

----- Now having spoken to the Father about the Father, Jesus then shows us we can talk to the Father about the family, that’s all of us together. He says we can now pray, as it says in verse 11, … 

PP1 Matthew 6:11 “Give us this day our daily bread.” 9 

We can ask Him for our basic needs. By the way, Jesus didn’t suggest we ask for champagne and caviar. No, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He’s talking about the basic necessities of life. …. 

PP2 GREEK - ‘daily’ = ‘enough for the day’ 

The Greek word for ‘daily’ there means, ‘enough for the day’. 

There’s no breaking the 10th commandment about covetousness if we pray this prayer to supply our basic needs. 

------ Did you notice this request is in the plural? “Give us this day our daily bread”. Our Australian culture puts huge emphasis on the individual. We are more likely to pray for ‘me, my wife, my son John, his wife, us four, no more!’ ---- We should pray, “Give us (that’s our whole community), give us this day our daily bread”. And if God gives us two loaves and our neighbour has none, then we cannot assume we have one loaf for eating and the other one for storing. If you have prayed for daily bread, and you have two and he has none, then you have one for eating and the other for sharing. 

So when you talk to the Father about the family, pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” … 

PP3 That’s physical food, that’s spiritual food, that’s mental food! --- all that we need. 

---- Now the next thing in our prayer is where Jesus says we can ask for pardon. We can ask for forgiveness for sins. … 

PP1 Matthew 6:12 “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” 

The words “our debts” here means “our sins”. We also see that Luke, in his book, is referring to exactly the same prayer. …. 

PP2 Luke 11:4 “And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” 10 

So we’re asking the Father to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. That verse is very clearly saying that I can’t expect God to forgive me if I’m going to go on deliberately harbouring a grudge against someone else. ---- 

----- When our stomach rumbles, we are so quick to pray for our daily bread, but are we as quick to forgive others? We need to ask God for help to forgive others. And when we can forgive others, then God forgives us for all the things we’ve done against Him. 

We can see how close to blasphemy it is to come to God and say, 

PP “You who are holiness, forgive my sins. But this person has offended me, and I am so holy, and I so righteous, that it is unthinkable that I should have to extend forgiveness to that person.” 

Friends, people who do that are self-righteous. You and I sometimes do that. Don’t ever expect to be truly forgiven by a self-righteous person. 

Satan puts his unforgiving self-righteous people into God’s church and for every one there is, the church will be held back to the glory of Satan. So if a person calls himself a Christian yet will not forgive, then in spite of what that person thinks they are, they may not be a Christian, but they may be a child of the devil. ----- 

----- Jesus really wanted that message about forgiving others to sink in. He felt that it was so extremely important, that immediately He finished telling us how we should pray in Matthew 6:9-13, He then said in the very next verses 14 and 15, these words … 

PP Matthew 6:14,15 

v14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses (or sins), your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 11 

v15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” 

----- We are members of the family of God. And part of being in that family, is that we are part of a forgiven family. And knowing the forgiveness of our heavenly Father, gives us the opportunity and the desire to forgive others. ------ 

----- Now back to verse 13, Jesus says that when we talk to the Father about the family, ask Him for protection. Verse 13,… 

PP1 Matthew 6:13 “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” 

PP2 If I deliberately make a choice to place myself in a position to sin, I have no right to insult God by asking Him to keep me away from that temptation and sin. 

When we ask God to lead us, and we pray, “Lead us, not into temptation”, we are saying, “Lord you have the power to take us past the traps that Satan has placed in our way. We ask you please, to do that.” 

---- The sad thing is, that we like temptation. We fantasize about it. That’s why people read certain books and watch certain movies and stuff on the net. And before they know where they are, they start to do what they’ve been thinking about. We grow like the company we keep. It’s normal that a person who plays with fire, gets burnt. 

------ The devil tempts us, as he tries to separate us from God. He tries to convince us that God is not a loving Father, but a harsh dictator. The devil encourages us to build up our little kingdom, that our names have got to be glorified, that while we are in the world, we can’t help sinning. And the devil also says, “While you’re in the world, collect up not just one loaf, but many loaves of bread ..... don’t share them, keep them for yourself.” ------ …. 12 

PP Now, when the devil tempts us, if we’re not spending good time in God’s Word and in prayer, then we will accept the devil’s tempting and maybe lose out on eternal life. 

When we pray to the Father that we will be delivered from temptation, what we’re really saying is, … 

PP 

“Lord, when I’ve got the inclination to sin, 

keep me from the opportunity: 

When I have the opportunity to sin, 

keep me from the inclination.” 

----- Remember, behind every temptation is the tempter, a grim and evil being who has one agenda, and one agenda only, to destroy us. ------ 

----- And then the prayer finishes in verse 13, … 

PP Matthew 6:13 “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.” 

----- Friends, Jesus taught us how to pray. He taught us to start our prayers by talking to the Father about the Father, about His heaven, about His holiness, about Him wanting His perfect loving will modelled in our lives to those we mix with on earth, just like it is in heaven today and always will be. 

Then Jesus said, after talking to the Father about His programme, we can talk to Him about our daily needs for food and forgiveness and protection against the evil one for ourselves and for others. 

And then Jesus said, get back to the Father to finish off by talking about Him again as we’ve just read in verse 13, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” 13 

---- Friends, I cannot say, ‘Yours is the kingdom’, if I am busy building up my little kingdoms. 

I cannot say, ‘Yours is the power’, if I am out for power myself. 

I cannot say, ‘Yours is the glory’, if I am seeking glory for myself. ----- 

------ Friends, after all that, do I have any practical advice to give you that may help you on your journey of growing closer to Jesus and our heavenly Father? Well I do! But maybe it’s too simplistic for you to even bother trying. But it has worked for me. ----- 

PP (rubber band on fingers photo) 

See this simple rubber band? Every morning when I get out of bed, I get down on my knees and pray, mostly using the pattern of the Lord’s prayer, which is our prayer, which is your prayer, and which is my prayer. And when I get to the part about wanting His will to be done in my life, I tell our Father that this rubber band represents His will. And I thank Him for giving me His will. 

PP (fingers touching rubber band on wrist) 

And as I put it on my wrist, I say, “Thank you Father for wanting me to do Your will today. And Father, please give me the strength to do Your will today, all day!” ------ 

Friends, if you would like to have one as a reminder each day to do His will, then I’ve got some brand new ones on the table at the door for you. 

PP (hand facing down with rubber band on wrist) 

Friends, it’s only a simple thing and people often see it and occasionally ask why I wear it. 

It has helped me for some years now, and I’m sure it could help you too, to walk each day, hand in hand more closely, with Jesus and our wonderful heavenly Father, every day. 14 

PP And as we get to know Him better, the word that will pass from our lips many times a day, is ‘Father’. 

PP 

Friends, if you have been blessed and challenged by this message, 

then please take time now to send it on to your friends.

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