Dangerous Prayer
Matthew 6:7-15
“The World’s Greatest Talk” sermon series
Rev. Brian North – Westminster Presbyterian Chehalis, WA
May 23rd, 2010
I want to begin this morning with a confession. Last week I said we’re going through the whole Sermon on the Mount, not skipping anything, and looking at everything that Jesus said in this teaching of his. Well, I lied. Now, I didn’t mean to, as I made the comment off-the-cuff…but none-the-less, I lied. Because this morning, we’re skipping the first few verses of chapter 6 as we begin in verse 7, and then we’re going to skip a few verses after today’s passage. This was the plan all along, I just forgot what the plan was last Sunday. The main reason we’re skipping it is a combination of calendar issues and the fact that I preached on those verses just a year couple years ago. So if you want you can find that message here if you’re reading on-lie. (http://chehaliswpc.org/2008/04/06/the-church-is-full-of-hypocrites/).
So this morning we’re looking at Jesus’ teaching on prayer. And in this he shows us how to pray, giving us what is known as “The Lord’s Prayer” for the model. Now, Jesus himself never calls this “The Lord’s Prayer.” That’s what it has become known as over the past couple thousand years of church history, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. But, I would suggest to you that this prayer is mis-named. It should not be called the “Lord’s Prayer,” but rather, “The Disciples’ Prayer” because this is the prayer that Jesus is telling his disciples to pray. It’s not his prayer, it’s our prayer. This is the prayer of those who follow Jesus. If you want a prayer that Jesus prays, look to John 17, where he prays for the disciples, the church, and so forth. That’s what we should call the Lord’s Prayer, because it’s his prayer.
Now, I say that in jest, but only to a degree, because it’s important for us to recognize that: Jesus is giving a model of prayer here for those who follow him. You can’t pray this prayer with any sincerity or authenticity if you aren’t a follower of Jesus Christ, and you’ll see why as we go through it. You’ll also see that this is a dangerous prayer. You can’t pray this prayer casually. And yet so often we pray it without really contemplating what it is we’re praying. So this morning we are going to go through the prayer in small pieces, phrase by phrase, so we can understand what it is we’re praying, and therefore pray it more fervently, more reverently, and…a little more dangerously.
So Jesus begins by telling them that “this is how you should pray.” And then he dives into the prayer. It starts with these words, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Many people have suggested that Jesus was introducing a new way of relating to God in using this word, “Father”. That’s not true. He was, in fact, using an ancient way of relating to God that had been long-forgotten. For instance, Moses addressed God as Father in a prayer in Deuteronomy 32; Isaiah calls God “Father” several times, and Jeremiah addressed God as Father as well. So Jesus is returning to an ancient Jewish way of addressing God. And it reminds us that God is accessible. He’s our Father, and he loves his children, he wants a relationship with us, and he wants us to come to him. But he’s no ordinary father. This is our father who is in heaven. This is the Father of all fathers.
Jesus then continues the prayer with “Hallowed be thy name.” (Hallowed = Holy) Now, in Hebrew thinking, to speak of a person’s name was to speak of the person. Therefore, Jesus is teaching us that when we say, “Holy is your name,” we can’t say it without meaning that God himself is holy. This would have been familiar territory to them. But now in the 21st Century, we treat God’s name very casually and flippantly. And if we’re treating God’s name with a lack of reverence, we’re treating God with a lack of reverence. For instance, when we treat God’s name irreverently, whether it’s said out loud in an “Oh my…” kind of statement, or abbreviated in an email or text message or on Facebook when someone writes “omg,” or someone cuts us off on the road and we say the name of Jesus Christ in an irreverent way…when we do that, we’re treating the name, and therefore the very person of God irreverently. So we can’t use his name in that kind of way and still pray this prayer authentically.
Jesus continues with “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is where the prayer starts to become dangerous, if we really mean these words when we say them. This is a prayer of complete and total submission of our wills to the will of God. It’s a prayer for the reign of God to be made manifest on earth, and for His will to be made known and to be followed here on earth, which includes our individual lives, so that we would follow God’s rules for living and his leading in our lives. By the way: If you want to pray this part of the prayer with greater fervency and greater authenticity, then you should attend the Will of God class that Rev. Ralph Carr is teaching for the next few weeks.
The prayer then comes to three requests: “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Here we see a prayer for our present, our past, and our future. “Give us our daily bread” is a prayer for the present, for today. Literally translated, the prayer reads, “The bread of us, daily give to us today.” In other words, it’s a prayer for God to supply enough “bread” for today. Not tomorrow. Not next week…for today. Lord, get us through this day. You see, the temptation is to pray for more than that. We’re tempted to pray for God to provide so much that we can retire tomorrow and coast through the rest of life. But that’s not the prayer God wants us to pray.
I imagine that we’ve all prayed something along the lines of, “Lord let me win the lottery and I’ll really dedicate my life to you.” But the fact is, when we have more than we need, the tendency is to become self-reliant, rather than God-reliant. That’s what happened to the prodigal son. In Luke 15 Jesus tells a story to illustrate our need for God in our lives, and God’s love for us. It’s the story about a son who asks for his inheritance in advance…the father gives it to him…and what happens? The son’s life goes down the tubes. It’s not until he’s broke, destitute, and so hungry he’d like to eat the food he’s feeding the pigs, that he realizes his need for his Father. He had more than his daily bread, and he wandered far from God. And so it should come as no surprise that Jesus tells us here to simply pray for enough bread for today. So that’s a prayer for the present.
“Forgive us our debts” is a prayer for the past. It’s a prayer for the sins we’ve committed. As probably many of you know, not everyone uses the words “debts” and “debtors” here. As Ralph said at a Memorial service not that long ago, “Some Christians are concerned about sins…some are concerned about trespasses…we Presbyterians are concerned about debts and debtors.” The Greek word here (opheilema). Is a different word than is usually used for “sins” (hamartia). And the word means, “debts” and “debtors.” So now you can go tell all your Christian friends who pray it differently that they’re wrong and you’re right. Just be sure to do it with some decent Christian humility.
Ok…so the point, however, is that: This is a prayer for God to forgive us what we owe him, because what we owe him is more than we can pay. It’s a debt beyond measure because we have sinned and can’t make ourselves holy as he is holy. If we’re really going to follow his will as we prayed for earlier in the prayer, we need his forgiveness in our lives. So this is a prayer of forgiveness for our past. If we try to turn it into a prayer for the present or the future, and pray, “God today I’m going to use your name in unholy ways several times, and I’m going to continue to hold that grudge against my spouse and I’m going to continue to cheat on my schoolwork and even though it’s clear you’re calling me to this aspect of ministry and you could use me in powerful ways there, I’m not going to follow your will because I don’t want to, so I’d like to ask for your forgiveness for these things in advance”…that just isn’t a true prayer of forgiveness. There’s no intention of true repentance there. It’s abusing God’s grace.
Now, the real danger in this part of the prayer is the part where we ask for God’s forgiveness “as we forgive our debtors.” And in the last couple verses of this morning’s text (14-15), Jesus adds a footnote to accentuate this particular point, where he says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses [this is a different Greek word than “debts”], your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Yikes! If there ever was a statement in the Bible that ought to drive us to the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, this is it! The only way God can forgive me of my sins the way the Bible tells me he does is if his mercy is in fact greater than mine toward others, because if he literally forgives me as I forgive others, I’m a goner. But that’s what Jesus teaches us to pray. So if we pray the Lord’s prayer authentically, it leads us to the one who teaches it to us, because only by his grace, mercy and forgiveness can we even come close to experiencing what we’re praying for. So that’s a prayer for the past.
Next is a prayer for the future: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It’s a prayer that God would not test us, but rather deliver us from evil. Most commentators agree that a better translation for “temptation” is “test”. God does test us, to see if we’re really faithful, or if we’re just playing a game. When we take a test, like in school, the person giving the test wants us to pass it. That’s what God does to us. Temptation isn’t that way. When the evil one tempts us, he wants us to fail. God never wants us to fail, and God won’t lead us into sin. He will test us, he will lead us up to temptation, but not into it. So when we pray this prayer, and we use this word, “temptation” we ought to think of it more in terms of God’s testing. It’s a plea for God to take it easy on us, and then also a plea to keep us from evil. Literally, it reads “evil one.” It’s a prayer for our future protection.
Now, probably most of us here are familiar with an additional line in the prayer, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.” English Bibles vary as to whether or not they include that line in the text. The NRSV, which is in our pews, includes it in a footnote. The reason for the variances is that the majority of ancient manuscripts, and the oldest of ancient manuscripts, do not have those words…and while “majority rule” and “oldest” are certainly not the only guidelines in Biblical translation, and not necessarily the most important guidelines, either, they are the main reason leaving out this phrase wins the day in some English Bibles. The thinking, then, is that these words were inserted later, to give the prayer a more polished, finished feel.
But there is good reason to believe Jesus did in fact include this as part of the prayer. For one, it does end rather abruptly with out them, and you’d think Jesus would wrap it up a little more neatly. Secondly, these closing words bring the prayer to a full circle, because it opened with praying about God’s holiness and his kingdom, and this kind of parallelism is very Jewish, so it makes sense that Jesus would have done this. Take, for example, Psalm 103. It opens with:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul… (Psalm 103:1-2).
And then 18 verses later the Psalm ends with:
Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his bidding,
obedient to his spoken word.
Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
his ministers that do his will.
Bless the Lord, all his works,
in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul (Psalm 103:20-22).
So the Psalm, which is a prayer, comes full circle. Just as with the Psalm, there’s symmetry in the prayer with the closing lines about God’s kingdom and glory and power, and it reinforces what began the prayer: that God alone is holy and worthy of our worship. So for Jesus to end the prayer in this way makes sense, and I believe he probably did in fact say it this way. And in fact, there’s a document that from the late first century and early second century that tells of the early church practices, and it includes this line in the Lord’s Prayer. So from very early on, this was included as part of the prayer in the life of the church.
So, what does this mean for us and what do we do with this prayer that Jesus gives us? It means that if we’re disciples of his, we pray it! This is how he tells us to pray. It rightly asserts God’s holiness and his place over all creation, it call us to submit our wills to his, it prays for his Kingdom to reign and be made real in our world, it covers our basic needs for today, our spiritual needs for forgiveness, it prays for our protection and God’s leading in our lives…It’s a complete prayer in just the span of a few sentences.
And when we pray it with all of our hearts, and really mean the words that we say, it is, as I said, a dangerous prayer, because it’s a prayer that leads us to Jesus Christ and away from ourselves. You can’t pray this prayer honestly without knowing Jesus, and yet it also leads us to Him. It’s a prayer that invites us to let go of ourselves and depend solely on God in all facets of life. And that is dangerous because scary. But it’s what God calls us to, and it’s the only way to live life rightly and fully. So if you’re ready to live fully and abundantly and more devoted to God, whether you’re just hearing about Jesus for the first time or whether you’ve known him for many years…and if you want to know the living God of the universe more deeply…if you’re ready to commit yourself to following Jesus and trusting in him for forgiveness more completely, he invites you and me to join together in this prayer. Let’s Pray:
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 forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the glory and the power forever. Amen.