A Framework for Prayer

Jesus shows us how to pray by giving us a framework for prayer.

[00:00:01] Well, in our next two passages on our journey through the book of Luke, Jesus is going to teach us about prayer, and I want to begin those two sermons with a confession right up front. I often struggle with what I’ll call prayer neglect. I don’t know if it’s just the way I think, or if it’s a lack of personal discipline on my part, but I often find myself struggling to pray or even remembering to pray. It’s an area of my own Christian walk where I need to grow, and I’m sharing this with you even as one of your pastors, because I think it’s important to be honest with ourselves and with our church about where we need to grow. I think that’s an important part of growing in Christ. Last week we talked about sitting at the feet of Jesus regularly to listen to God’s Word and to cultivate our relationship with the Lord. Now we’re talking about cultivating a prayer life, and it doesn’t do us any good to say that we’re doing just fine in these areas if we’re not doing just fine. If we want a deeper, more fruitful relationship with the Lord, we need to be honest with where we are right now. And I’ll tell you how I battle prayer neglect. Okay, this is my strategy for battling it. I use my church family around me and I use God’s Word.

[00:01:25] I put myself in places where the church is praying so that I can pray along with them. And then when I read God’s Word, which is a discipline that is not difficult for me, I pray in response to it. My hope over these next two passages in Luke is not simply to learn how to pray, but to encourage all of us to pray more. Today, Jesus is going to teach us how to pray using what has become the most famous prayer ever recorded. We even have a name for it. We call it the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a prayer that that has been recited by the church for 2000 years. We recite it as part of worship here at Calvary on occasion. A lot of us can recite it from memory because we’ve heard it so many times. Although there is that little bit there in the middle, that’s a bit of a choose your own adventure. We’ve all experienced that. Are we going with debts, sins, or are we taking the long route through trespasses and those who have trespassed against us? Have you ever been in a mixed crowd where all three options are said aloud at the same time? Ooh, that is a train wreck, isn’t it? Those poor trespass people are still talking while the sin and debt people just stand there waiting like, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. There’s a reason that this prayer has endured for so many years.

[00:02:56] It’s a meaningful part of Christian worship because it’s how Jesus taught to pray. When asked, how do we pray? He said, pray like this. And while there’s nothing wrong with praying Jesus exact words, what’s even more important is to recognize that Jesus is doing more than giving us specific words. Jesus shows us how to pray by giving us a framework for prayer. What I mean is Jesus prayer shifts focus throughout. There are changes in categories that that instruct us to speak to the Lord in different ways. If you’ve ever used a prayer framework or a pattern before, you know how helpful this can be. The most popular one that I know they use the acronym ACTS. So ACTS stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. I encourage you to remember that one because I find it to be very helpful. Frameworks that we create come from the way Jesus teaches us to pray, and I find that it helps me not to fall into a rut where all of my prayers just turn into asking God for things that I want or need. Now we should do that. We should talk to God about the things that we need. That’s the S, that’s supplication in the ACTS acronym. But prayer is not just a tool to ask God for things, okay? Prayer is worship. Prayer is communion with the living God.

[00:04:29] It’s spending time with our father who loves us, who cares for us. If you have your Bible, you can open up to Luke chapter 11. We’re going to look at just four verses today, Luke 11:1-4. I’m going to read the passage, and then I’m going to give you a little bit of information about it, how we find it here in the book of Luke. And then we’re going to work through each category of Prayer. Let me read the passage for you. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. Now, if you’re like me, you’re thinking, so where’s the rest of it? Where is the rest? Seriously, I am certain there is more to this prayer. What did Jesus do with the rest of his prayer? I mean, right from the start. It’s missing an our, right? Our father. That’s the only part that everybody has memorized for sure, right? We know that’s supposed to be there. What is going on here? Well, what’s going on here is that the Lord’s Prayer is recorded in two Gospels.

[00:05:55] It’s recorded here, obviously, but it’s also recorded in a much more famous place, the sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter six. The Matthew version is the longer one that has been used in public worship far more over the last 2000 years. The most likely reason that they’re different is simply because they are two different settings where Jesus teaches the same thing, but in different words. In Matthew, Jesus is preaching a sermon. He’s before a crowd of people so we would expect that the version he would use there would be more robust, that he’d be teaching more. Here in Luke, Jesus is teaching only his closest disciples in response to a question that he’s asked, or a request that is made of him once he gets done praying. So it’s a more informal occasion. I can’t be sure that that’s the reason why we have a difference here. But I do know for sure that when you teach the same thing in different settings, with different crowds, the language will be similar, but it will not be the same. And that’s what we have here. Now, if you go to Matthew 6 later today and you decide you want to check that out and compare it with Luke 11, you’re also going to notice something else that is missing.

[00:07:18] Neither one of them has the big ending that you’ve come to expect. Matthew ends, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil or from the evil one. And Luke, as you can see here, simply ends, lead us not into temptation, and neither one of them has, for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Neither one of them has that. Have we just been adding that to scripture for 2000 years? Yes, yes we have. That is what we’ve been doing. But it’s okay. It’s okay that we do this. It’s not it’s not a problem. Very early church tradition took the Lord’s Prayer and added a doxology at the end of it, probably so to give it a big, glorious ending for public and for private use. We have an ending like that recorded very early in the first century document, the Didache, which is a sort of a manual for church worship. We have this prayer. We’re instructed to pray it three times a day in this manual, and it has a doxology ending on it. Adding an ending is not unlike what we do when we take Scripture, and we turn it into corporate worship songs. It’s sort of the same thing. If we take a Psalm and we add a chorus to it so that we can sing it as a church that chorus doesn’t become scripture, but it’s not wrong to do that. We do it all the time. Perhaps you remember the song Chris Tomlin’s Forever. Remember that song? Give thanks to the Lord our God and King. His love endures forever. Remember that song? That is Psalm 136, rewritten as a song that we can sing today. So it’s what it is taking God’s Word, creating art, and then using that art to glorify God. And as long as we’re not changing the meaning of Scripture as we do that, it’s a fine thing to do. So that’s why it seems like some pieces of Luke’s version are missing. They’re not missing. What Jesus gives us here is a short, helpful framework for prayer. Let’s look at the categories. It begins, Father, hallowed be your name. So this is the address to God the Father. One of the really amazing truths of Christianity that sets it apart from all other views of God is that through faith in Jesus Christ, we are invited to approach God personally. We are invited to be in his presence. God is not a cold and aloof spirit uninterested in our lives. He’s not a distant God who got the world started and then just stepped back to see what would happen. God is a caring, loving father who invites us to come and to be with him and to talk with him and tell him our concerns and our needs and simply enjoy being in his presence.

[0010:28] Now, this fatherly relationship is not a given. It’s not automatic that all people everywhere can approach God, stand in his presence and be received by him as a father. All over the Bible we find that God is the judge of unrighteousness. He’s the judge of it. And that to stand before the judge with your sin, if you were in his presence, with your sin on your shoulders, in your account, you would then be condemned. That’s what it would mean to be in God’s presence with your sin. Our sin prevents us from being received by a completely holy God. Holy means completely pure and free of any moral corruption. And right here in this address we are reminded of the Father’s holiness. Hallowed here is a request for God to declare his pure, righteous holiness. That’s what hallowed means. Another another way of this saying this opening line would be, father, declare how perfect and holy you are. Make the purity of your character known to everyone. So what we have here in this opening address is a seemingly impossible situation. We have a sinful person standing in the presence of God, calling him father and declaring the holy purity of God. Now how can that be? How is that possible? There’s only one way that this scenario could be true.

[00:12:11] The person praying must be made holy himself or herself. And Hebrews chapter 10:19_22 shows us how. Listen to this. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. How can an unholy person enter into God’s presence with confidence? How is that possible? Well, it’s possible through the way that was made by Jesus, by shedding his blood on our behalf. His sacrifice pays for our sins so that we are no longer carrying them ourselves. There’s no longer anything keeping us from drawing near to God with full assurance. You’ve been washed. You’ve been made clean by Jesus if you have put your trust in Jesus. His sacrifice pays for our sins. This first category of prayer is one of affection and adoration. It’s the A in the acronym ACTS. We magnify the name of of of God boldly, and we do so with love and with joy, not in fear and trembling. We don’t have to do that. This is an often neglected part of our prayer lives.

[00:13:55] I know it is for me. It probably is for you. For most it is. I’m not saying that we should begin with adoration and exaltation every time we pray, but there probably should be more of that than there is. And here I find it helpful to pray adoration when I’m reading scripture. When you’re reading Scripture and you come across those passages that talk about the glory of God and His majesty, it’s a good time to stop and magnify the glory of God right there and then. Let’s look at the at the next line. Your kingdom come. Your kingdom come. This is about longing and about hope. This is focusing us as we look to God in adoration, now we’re focused on the future. It’s putting our eyes out in front of us. One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis comes from Mere Christianity, where he wrote, if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most logical explanation is that I was made for another world. And that really resonates with me. That’s why those of us who follow Jesus and long for his return would pray, God, let your kingdom come. Your kingdom come. See, the Bible tells us this wonderful creation that God has made has been broken in every way by sin. Its beautiful original design has been marred by sin in every aspect.

[00:15:30] We can still see the design, we can still see it, we even can long for it. But sin breaks everything. Sin rots everything. That’s why marriage is awesome until it isn’t. That’s why careers are fulfilling. Oh, I love my career. Until you feel tired and it feels like you’re Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill, never making any progress. The internet is somehow an indispensable tool and a den of depravity, both at the same time. Sports are fun until they become an idol and gambling ruins everything. Food is delicious until the high blood pressure comes and the heart disease sets in. Everything. Everything you look at, everything you can think of, has been marred in some way from the good design that God had for it. And so we get tired of this world. You get tired of it. Everyone’s searching. Everyone’s searching for meaning and fulfillment and purpose among the ruins. But the Bible gives us a vision and a hope of God’s restored kingdom that comes through Jesus Christ, who is the King. It’s a world made right. Sin and death in his kingdom are no more. The effects of sin are gone, and those of us who enter into this kingdom through faith in Jesus, we begin the restoration process. We’re like seagulls that have been pulled out of the oil spill and God is washing us.

[00:17:04] He’s cleaning us off. He’s removing the sin from our lives. Little by little, he’s making us new. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says, God is using this broken world to prepare us for an eternal weight of glory that is without comparison, beyond all comparison, he says. But right now, we’re travelers. We’re travelers through this world. We haven’t arrived where we’re going yet. And so part of our prayer is calling out to the Lord to fulfill, to bring to culmination his full restoration plan. For this world to come to an end and for his full kingdom to begin. But the Kingdom of God is breaking into this world right now, through those who love Jesus, who serve the Lord now. So it’s here, but it’s not yet. It’s come, but it is coming. And that’s why Jesus said, the kingdom of God is near. He says it’s at hand. It started in part among God’s people in Christ, but it’s not yet fully realized, which is why we live with the values of the kingdom of God now. And you see this in the last three requests of the prayer. The first two, the adoration of God and the focus on the kingdom coming. That’s upward in future. But now Jesus teaches us to pray about what we do now in the meantime. And he says, pray like this. Give us each day our daily bread.

[00:18:35] I believe this is a reference to the days when Israel was wandering in the wilderness, and they relied on the Lord to supply fresh manna for them every single day. See, they couldn’t build up storehouses and then eat from the stockpile that they had gathered for themselves. Every day they had to get up and they had to gather what the Lord would provide for them on that day. And in the wilderness, where there were no other options, that meant complete trust, total and complete trust. There would be no other food. There is no plan B if the manna didn’t show up. To pray to the Lord, give us each day our daily bread is an affirmation of full trust in the Lord. What you’re saying when you pray this is Lord, I know full well that absolutely everything I need for every day that I am in this broken world will come from your gracious hand, and I am not worried at all about the future. You thought you could pray it until I put it like that, didn’t you? I know I did too. Just about bread. If this line is just about bread, then we don’t need to pray it. We all got bread. Probably got a couple different kinds of bread at home. Everybody’s got enough food here. There are places in the world where this prayer would mean physical bread.

[00:20:00] I am literally trusting in God for food, but this is far more than food. This is a prayer for a full heart. Trust in the Lord for tomorrow that alleviates all worries today. This is saying to the Lord, I know I will have exactly what I need, exactly when I need it. Now here’s the thing about that. It’s not hard to look around the world and see Christians that are suffering from not having what they need. I’ve been doing some reading this week and lately about Christians who suffered under the persecution of the communist regime of the former Soviet Union, and it is appalling. It is appalling what happened. I won’t go into great detail. It’s pretty unnerving. But suffice it to say that if you were discovered to trust in Jesus at that time, or even to believe that there is a God, you didn’t even have to be a Christian. You could just be a person who believed in a deity. You would be imprisoned, brutalized, and brainwashed. Christians suffered and died of violence and malnutrition. Their bodies literally wasted away. And that’s just one example of one regime under which God’s people have suffered for thousands of years. Without a doubt, millions of people who put their faith in the Lord have not had this prayer met with the things they need to live this physical life. But if you listen to the testimonies of the survivors of these brutal conditions, they describe how they were sustained not by physical bread, but by the bread of life.

[00:21:51] They were brought through their ordeal by trust in Jesus every single day. And furthermore, they are the voices of those who didn’t make it, testifying to how the Lord brought joy in the most joyless circumstances, sustaining these martyrs all the way up to the moment they stood with Jesus in Paradise. That’s daily bread church. That’s praying for daily bread. We trust the Lord to give us exactly what we need to accomplish, exactly what he has called us to do every single day up until he calls us home. That’s daily bread. Here’s another way we live right now under the conditions of the kingdom. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. You read that correctly. Luke uses both sins and debts in his version. Matthew uses debts twice. You wonder why we switch back and forth. It’s because Luke switches back and forth in his actual prayer here. And if you’re a trespasses kind of person, well, that’s because Catholic tradition has been handed down to you in some way. It’s English speaking Roman Catholics that are the source of trespasses if you’ve ever wondered where that came from. But it’s okay because they all mean the same thing. It’s all referring to the same thing, our sin debt to God and the sin debt that others owe to us.

[00:23:20] And the prayer is simple, and it’s very clear. The Lord has graciously forgiven our sin debt in Christ. Which is why our hearts would never withhold forgiveness from people who have wronged us. See, there’s this ongoing cycle in the Christian life, in the Christian’s mind and heart, constantly turning back to God and repentance, constantly going before the Lord with our sins. Remembering Jesus gracious forgiveness to us in Christ, and then applying that to people who have hurt or wronged us. Constantly remembering what Jesus has done and giving that grace away to other people. And by doing this, when we do this as a church, we become living, breathing examples of the forgiveness that you can’t find anywhere else in this world that can only be found in Christ. Everybody’s longing for this kind of forgiveness. You can have it in Jesus. Now let’s think for a moment. Why would a Christian ask the father to forgive his sins in an ongoing way, like asking for daily bread? Why would a Christian have to pray this? You know, every couple of months I replace the filter that is in my furnace because it gets full of junk and it becomes ineffective. Does God’s forgiveness need to be refreshed because my sin wears it out? Does his forgiveness become ineffective because of all the sin that has gathered up inside of it? Is that why we are taught to pray for it again and again? You know, there’s a lot of Christians who think so.

[00:24:59] There’s a lot of people who are trusting in Jesus who read passages like this, and they get worried because they feel like, oh, maybe his forgiveness is gone. Maybe it’s worn out. Maybe I have to go back to him again to get it. There’s a lot of people struggling under bad theology just like that. The Christian’s assurance of forgiveness, church, hear me, the Christian’s assurance of forgiveness from God is not found in Re-upping it every day to make sure we have it. That’s not where the assurance comes from. And I know this is true because of the context here. This is a prayer. So let’s go back to the bread. If you fail to pray for daily bread, does that mean that God won’t come through for you? No, of course not. No. Our prayer is an expression of trust in a God who never fails. And the same is true here. We ask the Lord constantly for forgiveness, not because we don’t know if we have it, but precisely because we do. We ask God to forgive our sins for the same reason we ask our loving spouse to forgive us our sins against them.

[00:26:09] I suppose I could just sin against Rachel and presume that she forgives me. She does. She already does. She always will. But does that keep me from asking her for it? It shouldn’t. I don’t ask forgiveness from Rachel to dispense her forgiveness like a vending machine. I don’t go to her, ask for forgiveness  and I get it back from her. No, that’s not what I do it for. I do it to keep the relationship strong, knowing that her love has already overcome my sin in her heart. Spurgeon said this. He said, sinning and repenting, sinning and repenting make up a Christian’s life. And that’s true. There is a real joy in the progress we make. Okay, there’s incredible joy in that progress. By walking faithfully in the Holy Spirit and seeing our lives transformed, we see great progress. But repentance will always be part of that process until the kingdom comes. We will always go before the Lord and remember what he’s done for us.  Here’s the last line, and lead us not into temptation. This last request is asking our good Heavenly Father to usher us through this world in a way that will sustain our faithfulness to him as we head home. We’re all heading home. That’s the direction, if you’re following Jesus, you are heading home through this life, and we need God to sustain us in it.

[00:27:42] There’s a way of misreading this line that is to say that if we don’t ask God to lead us away from temptation, that he will lead us into temptation. But the Matthew parallel here helps us to understand what’s being said here. He puts but deliver us from evil. So the opposite of being led into sin is being delivered from it, meaning sustained within it, so that we can endure it. Asking the father to not lead you into temptation is affirming your trust that he can help you overcome it. We’re asking God to show us how to prevail. The Apostle Paul will later write, he echoes what Jesus is teaching here when he writes in 1 Corinthians 10:13, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that ye may be able to endure it. Church, we know the pitfalls of sin are on all sides, don’t we? You no sooner have swerved away from the gutter on one side, that you find yourself perilously close to the gutter on the other side. We’re in this world, in this difficult, sinful world are called to be blameless and innocent children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom we shine as lights in the world.

[00:29:14] That’s from Philippians 2. How can we ever navigate a path like that? How are we going to be able to find our way through like that? Well, we won’t. We won’t without God’s guidance that’s provided by the Holy Spirit and is provided in His Word and His church. We cry out to God to give us the guidance we need for our lives so that we won’t shipwreck. We would be shipwrecked without God guiding us through. Let me tell you this morning, church, if you are struggling, if you are struggling in sin, if you are tied down, it seems in your mind and heart to the poor choices you’ve made. If you’re just overwhelmed with the consequences of your own thoughtless and godless actions, may I suggest to you that you have not prayed as you should? The one true God will not protect you from all temptation for that you would have to leave the world, but he will guide you through it, and he will provide the way out of it. You can live for the glory of God in this life. You can live a life that is sanctified as you follow in the steps of the spirit. You can live a sanctified life in this life with salvation in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit who is at work in you. You can receive victory over your sins, and you can have recovery from the sins of your past.

[00:30:43] That’s why we pray this way. You know, every week I close our time in God’s Word with prayer. And I’m going to do that today. But we’re going to do that in a little bit different way today. I’m going to ask you to please stand with me. Please stand. In a moment, our worship team is going to come forward here. And they’re going to lead us in singing the Lord’s Prayer. We’re going to sing the Lord’s Prayer this morning. but before that, I want to lead us all to pray in unison the Lord’s Prayer, but not with a version that you’re used to. We’re going to pray together an English translation of the Greek Didache that I mentioned earlier in the sermon. This ancient form of worship was written by fellow travelers through this world 2000 years ago. And we’re going to go slow because the words are different than you’re used to. Would you pray along with me? Our father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. As in heaven, so also on earth. Give us today our bread. And also forgive us our debts. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the power and the glory into eternity. Amen.