Lawson Road CoC Teaching
Peter Horne: Lord, Teach Us To Pray
at home. I hope you're enjoying air conditioning there. If you have a prayer card that you have written out, we can collect those at this time and just hold them up. If you're just now thinking of something, don't worry, we'll pick them up again later on. The more warning we have, the elders have to look over your prayer cards, the more likely they're going to read it accurately. It's just the way it is. Also, if you need a communion cup, now's a good time to pick one of those up either out the doors are over here. I just want to let you know that we are working on a new updated website for the church. One of the good things about that is that it's easier to update. Because of that, we have opportunities for other people to be involved in this ministry. If you feel comfortable working with computers and would love to get your assistance with keeping the website current, that's always the hardest part. We can get it up and going at the start, but then three months down the road, we want to still have relevant information on it. We need some assistance there and if you're comfortable doing that, I'd be more than happy to show you what's involved. Another thing I just want to let you know is a walk for water you may have heard is coming up. I know it's said several times. Not everybody will be able to walk and we understand that. It looks as though I'm actually adding myself to that list. I've been having some hip pain that's been stopping me from sleeping and I don't need to aggravate it in that way. I appreciate your prayers and hopefully between now and then we'll get that rectified, but if not, you can help me pass out water bottles or encourage those people that are walking, stand on the side of the road and say good job, good job, and they'll feel much better and walk faster because of that. And the other thing is that even if you're not walking, you can still sign up. Even if I don't walk, I will still accept donations. And so the point of the exercise is to raise money so that we can bless a village with a community, with a whale and with clean water. So whether you're walking or not, sign up and once you've signed up, go and pest of yourself to your friends and to your family and let them know that the church is walking and you're accepting donations. And if you've signed up the easiest way for often to get donations, if somebody doesn't just hand you a check or some cash on the spot, is to send them the link where they can use their credit card or debit card to donate online and that's very easy to do. You just get your particular link in an email and send it to them and that works. So yeah, we hope to have everybody involved and if you have an excuse, tell it to Larry and he'll confirm whether or not it's valid. So there's a very, very small number of valid excuses. There we go. So we are beginning a new sermon series today and it's a short one. It's only going to be the next three weeks and it's about prayer and the title, "Their Lord Teach us to Pray is Taken from the Reading this Morning in Luke chapter 11." And so this is our schedule over the next three weeks. We're looking at the prayer of Jesus today or the teaching of Jesus about prayer. Next week we'll look at the prayer of Hezekiah, going back to the Old Testament and then the prayer of Paul in Ephesians chapter 2. So if you like to prepare ahead, you can do that but that's where we'll be going over the next few weeks. And the reason we're doing this is that on July 14, we are having a day of prayer. We have in the past had a prayer service usually on the first, sometimes the second Sunday of the year in January. And everybody, at least the feedback that the elders and I get is, "That was great. Can we do it again sometime?" We're like, "Yeah, next year. Come back. Stick around." But we've decided that we would like to try and do one in July. So it's sort of like Christmas in July, only prayer in July. And so we'll have a prayer service that is at worship that morning. But what we're going to do after that is I'll have a sign-up sheet down in the foyer and it'll be there next week. And that is, we'd like to get everybody to volunteer for like a 15-hour, 15-minute time slot to pray. And so from midday until six o'clock at night, so six hours of prayer. And there's no real significance to six hours, but that seemed like a good amount of time. So six hours of prayer. So that means 24 people could do it, right? And if we happen to have two people in one of those time slots, that's okay. But hopefully we can fill all those time slots. And we'll prepare a prayer guide to go with that because I know for some of us, 15 minutes of just sitting there doing nothing but praying can be intimidating because we do encourage you to set that time aside, not mow the yard and pray at the same time. God will hear you if you're mowing the yard. Don't get me wrong. But for this exercise, we'd encourage you to set that time aside. And so it's not just a prayer service, but a day of prayer. And we'll remind you of that as we get closer. And that is the day after the walk for water. So if some of you need to sit quietly, we would encourage you to do that. We're facilitating that. You know, just sit and be quiet after that exercise. All right. So we are in Luke chapter 11 today as we pick up the teaching of Jesus regarding prayer. One of the things that's interesting as we read through the Gospels is how often how rarely the disciples come to Jesus and say, hey, we've got a question just out of the blue. As a minister, it's one of the things that happens to me a lot. I'll just be saying hello to somebody. Next thing I know, I've got a question for you. What's this text mean? What do you think about? And most of them I just say, I don't know. But people feel like because of my role as a minister that I'm a good person to ask questions. Now I would think that Jesus in his role as Messiah would also be a good person to ask questions. But we just don't get a whole lot of the 12 coming to Jesus and asking questions at least that it's recorded. A lot of times Jesus just, you know, they're walking around and they'll say, hey, tell me about that man who sent it. You know, it's sort of like something happens and prompts it. But they're not sort of going down all the hot topics of the day. The Pharisees on the other hand, as they try to trip Jesus up, they tend to ask him questions, right? Trying to confuse him. But in this instance, the disciples come to Jesus. We're beginning in chapter 11 and verse 1 of Luke chapter 11. One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples. I don't know, be interesting, know what John taught his disciples, wouldn't it? Where's it different from what Jesus taught? How different? But apparently that you get the feeling that John and his disciples, they had certain teens or rituals or standards, expectations. And so there were times set aside for prayer as they, you know, wasn't just John by himself preaching to and baptizing, you know, to the public. He had disciples, people who followed him that he would invest in. And as part of that was teaching them prayers, communal, communal prayers. And so Jesus replies and he says, when you pray, say, what's the interesting thing about this is that in Luke, we have a shorter version of what we traditionally call the Lord's prayer, usually when we talk about the Lord's prayer. We're talking about the prayer in Matthew. Just as Luke has a sermon on the plane that is shorter than Matthew's sermon on the mount, so his Lord's prayer is also shorter than Matthew's. And we do run into some issues here because I know that if we have the King James version or New King James version has a longer than the NIV version. And I won't get into all the reasons for that except to say that when the NIV and other translations in the 1900s started, we're able to go back to older manuscripts. They discovered older Greek manuscripts closer to Jesus, closer to the times it was written. And they found that generally those older manuscripts, Luke was shorter than Matthew. So what they think happened is that over time people tried to harmonize the scribes, the copying people, tried to harmonize the two. And they're like, why are there two different Lord's prayers? That doesn't seem right. Luke clearly made some mistakes here or left something out or maybe the previous copier missed something. And so I'll just put that back in. So by going back to the older manuscripts we get what is more original. So that's why it seems shorter and maybe a little abrupt if we're accustomed to the longer one. The other thing that's interesting about this prayer is that when they say teach us to pray, Jesus doesn't say, well, let me put it this way. One of the ways that when I've heard churches teach people to pray, anybody know the acronym acts? Okay. The A is for adoration. The C is for confession. The T is for thanksgiving. And the S is for requests. Okay, supplications, but nobody says supplications. And so that is how we would teach someone to pray. Here's the things you should include. Here's the things to think about. But what Jesus does is he actually says, here's some words you can use. Okay, here's a prayer. Let me give you an example of a prayer. And so it seems that this wasn't to be the only thing that people prayed. It certainly seems that Jesus is telling the disciples, telling the apostles that these are good words to use when you pray. I know that in my upbringing, it wasn't sort of the thing to do to recite the Lord's prayer because it was generally regarded, we would call it vain repetition. I don't know if anyone else sort of was exposed to that teaching. But it was really common in Jewish culture to have written prayers. Just as we have written songs that we sing over and over again, not worried about vain repetition, they would also have written prayers that at appropriate times they would pray. And so Jesus seems to be offering his disciples a prayer that they can use as a foundation, as a template for their prayers. Okay? And so the idea of quoting it or citing it or saying it together as a group, I no longer have any reservations about doing that. These are the words that Jesus has given us. If he just wanted to teach us principles, he would have taught us principles. But instead he said these are the words. This is the prayer. So it begins like this. We can still learn principles from this prayer, right? Because it's not the only prayer, even if we are to recite it every day or recite, pray it to God every day. It still wouldn't be the only thing we pray. Okay? We're still going to pray for our health and the health of our loved ones. We're still going to pray that we'll find a job when we're looking for a job. We're still going to pray about what's going on about life. And so this is not the Be All and End All. But we begin by saying Father and we can begin all our prayers like that. Now it's not as though nobody referred to God as Father. It's not common in the Old Testament. But in between the Testaments, this had become a more common way of talking about God, that he was the Father of Israel. Okay? So it wasn't Moses or even Abraham who was the Father of Israel, but God was the Father of Israel. And so what was unusual is to make it individual and say, "Oh, yeah, God is my personal Father." And so there is still this sense of intimacy to say, "Yeah, this is our relationship." Okay? I think of maybe some old movies I've seen where, you know, people come in before the king. Yeah. And it'd be like, "Lord, High, Great, Almighty, Sovereign of the Kingdom of whatever, you know, Germany and the surrounding nations I bring before you this plea on behalf of all the people of your..." Jesus just says, "Father." Dad, even. Last week, how he used the term "Abba" at times, which is more like a dad. And so there's this intimacy as we come to God. This is the relationship. We're not making requests of God like we might make a shopping list and send it over our app to DoorDash or whoever. There's no relationship. You don't know who's going to bring your food when you send it to DoorDash. They may mess it up. But we're going to say, "Father." That's where we begin is with this relationship. I have this relationship with the creator of the universe that I am his child and that he is my father. "Helloed be your name." "Helloed" is a funny word. I sort of want to say hello to you two. But it refers to holy or magnified, lifted up, exalted, valued, sort of lots of different ideas with it. But think about this for a prayer. What is the person saying when they say, "Helloed be your name?" You see, when we pray that, what we're praying, what we're saying is that God, Father, I want everyone to recognize who you are. I want you to receive the glory that is due to you. I want your reign and your sovereignty to be appreciated and valued by everybody. I don't know about you. Even if I begin with "Helloed be your name," I don't usually mean all of those things when I say it. It's really a missionary type of prayer as we get started. But it's not just a missionary prayer because we want everybody to be rescued from eternal flames. It's a missionary prayer because we want God to be worshipped as he is worthy of. And then we come to the next line, which is in many ways a repetition, but it says, "Your kingdom come." Now, if we were to go over to the Gospel of Mark, we would see there that John the Baptist, I think it was John the Baptist that was speaking, Mark chapter 1 and verse 15, and we're told there that the kingdom of heaven has come near. When we're looking, "No, it's Jesus." "The time has come," he said, "the kingdom of God has come near." So the kingdom is here. The kingdom of God has arrived. It's come into our proximity. And yet we also recognize that it hasn't come to fulfillment. We call that the already and the not yet. It's already here, but it's not yet completely here. And so the prayer is for God's kingdom to expand. And I believe that part of this prayer then is that the eradication of evil, that evil will be eradicated. The God will reign over all. And so I wonder in our prayers, how long does it take for us to get to asking for things for ourselves? Here, the first two things that said are actually asking things for God. God here are two things that I would love to happen for your benefit. And then we get to the requests for ourselves. Give us this day a daily bread. I know it sounds like a demand, but it's a request. Give us this day, each day a daily bread. And so is this recognizing this ongoing dependence that we have upon God. And in our lives, it may not be daily bread that is our most urgent need. If you were living in rural Israel at the time, food security wasn't always guaranteed. How good of a gardener you were or how good of a fisherman you were contributed to how well you ate that year. Anybody else going hungry? And so give us each day our daily bread was a very real concern for them because so many things could go wrong whether it be crops, caterpillars, drought, floods, snow at the wrong time. And so Lord, give us each day a daily bread. This is dependence upon God. For us, it could be something different. If we're working part time, it could be, give me some work today God. I've got bills to pay. Let me put gas in my car this week. But it's this dependence that we have on God to provide our basic needs. Bread, of course, does not mean simply a loaf of bread that we use to make sandwiches. Bread is a general term there for food. So they did eat more than bread back in the day, but the bread there just means food. Forgive us our sins. We also forgive everyone who sins against us. I think we need to be careful with this, that we can sort of read it in a way that says we'll only be forgiven by God if we do a good job of forgiving other people. So that sort of gets us back to the idea of we've got to be good enough. We've got to do enough in order for God to forgive us. But what we do see is that because God has forgiven our sins, then we are prompted, we are motivated. We recognize the need for us to forgive the sins of those who hurt us. Our prayers are to be consistent with our lives because it's easy to want one thing for ourselves and another thing for the people around us. We won't do it perfectly. That's why we need to keep asking for our sins to be forgiven is because we're not going to do it perfectly. And so that's kind of built into it. But there is this connection that because God has forgiven us, we forgive others. And we apply that in other ways too, don't we? Because God has blessed us, perhaps financially, we bless others. Because God does things for us, we do things for others. Our relationship with God impacts the way we live our lives. And then the last one here is lead us not into temptation. And it's not that God ever leads us into temptation. I mean, I understand the Holy Spirit took Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, right? We think back to Job, where we had the God sort of pointed Job out to the accuser and said, "Hey, have you seen this guy?" He's like, "Well, will you let me test him?" He's like, "Yeah, go ahead." But the prayer here is not about what God does or doesn't do in relation to our temptations. It's saying God protect us from temptation, right? We ask you to forgive us because we need forgiveness. We recognize that we, to embody your character into our lives and we will forgive other people. But Lord, we also need your help. And please help us resist temptation, help us to stay away from those things that cause us to stumble. And so these are the things that we pray for in this prayer. Prayer for God and for His kingdom is the first two and then prayer for ourselves and our needs. But it's interesting how short the needs are. I think most of the prayers that show up on our church prayer list involve health. You notice something that's missing from Jesus' prayer? He wants bread and then he wants forgiveness and avoiding temptation. It's a pretty simple prayer, isn't it? The last thing I want to just point out about this particular prayer is if you look at the pronouns, give us each day our daily bread. So Jesus is praying this himself, right? He's talking. And so if he's teaching the group how to pray, it would be perfectly fine for him to say, "Give me each day my daily bread." He would say, "This is what I want you to pray when you wake up in the morning. Give me each day my daily bread. For you give me my sins as I forgive everyone around me who sins against me. And then lead me not into temptation." Yeah, that's sort of somehow maybe how I want to stop my day. But Jesus doesn't word it like that, does he? You see, he is saying this is a communal prayer. This is a group prayer. It's for who we are as followers of Jesus together. Give us all as a group. And the thing is you don't have to just do this when we're together. How are you going to pray this prayer when you're home alone? Are you still going to say give us thinking of your church family? How daily bread? Are you going to change it to give me my daily bread? You see, there's built into this this idea of community and thinking of each other even as we worship God and approach his throne. And so you think that there's some ideas for us to consider about how we pray. I find it fascinating that he prays for God to begin with. God, this is what I want for you. And then can you help me with these things or help us, help us with these things. I want to keep going through to finish off. It's sort of like a portion of scripture that is three paragraphs. I think we'll be a little quicker with the next two paragraphs. In chapter in verse five, Jesus said to them, "Suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight and say, 'Friend, send me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I've no food to offer him.' And suppose the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked. My children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need." Now, I think given the context, we all understand there's a lesson in here about prayer, right? That's what we're talking about. We're talking about prayer. It's a little different culture than ours, but in many ways it's the same. So somebody pulls in at midnight, unexpected, okay? And in the villages of that day, the homes tended to be one room or maybe two room homes. So for the house next door and the houses are very close together. So what happens in one house happens in all the houses, right? The village is not ten thousand people. The village is maybe a couple hundred people. So they all know each other well. So when a guest comes in from out of town to one person's house, he really comes to the village, right? Not just to that person. And so the person has no food at midnight. And so he goes and he knocks next door and he's like, "Friend, good way to begin, right? Hey, friend, can you lend me three loaves of bread?" It's not give. I mean, these three loaves are going to be consumed, but there's like the idea that at some point I'll owe you three loaves of bread. I'll give you an IOU for this. And so he's trying to make it as easy as he can. He says, "Friend." Another friend has come to my house and I have no food. And the person inside this situation is that they've turned out the lights for the night, the oil lamps have been extinguished. The door has been barred because they didn't have locks, you know, there's a big wooden beam that's gone across the door to sort of keep it closed. And everybody would have slept in the same room. So you can't really get out of bed and unlock the door, take this big piece of wood off and whatever, without waking all the children. And notice he doesn't mention his wife. But if you wake the children, right, there's going to be consequences. I think we all understand that. It goes without saying. He's like, "I don't want to help you." But the very fact that this person has knocked on the door in the middle of the night, this would be the shameless audacity. You see, he's had to make this decision. It's midnight. I can see that the lights are out next door. But will I go and knock on the door anyway? And so the very fact that he has knocked on the door at this time of night communicates that this is important, communicates that this is urgent. And so even though he's making all these protests, he recognizes the importance of it. And he'll get up and he'll dig around and he'll find those three loaves of bread that the children didn't eat that night for dinner. And he'll give them to his friend. He doesn't want to do this. He'd rather be sleeping. He's now got to settle all the children back down. They're excited about who it is that's come to visit next door. Did he bring camels or donkeys? How did he get here? Like there's all these questions, everything going on. There might be livestock that's been woken up by the fuss. And now he's got to settle everyone back down. It's not a simple thing of just giving three loaves of bread to your neighbor. And so he's going to complain and grumble. But because they're friends and neighbors and quite probably family, he will do it. So what does this tell us about prayer? It tells us that God is going to give. The very next line says, ask it will be given to you. Seek and you will find knock and the door will be opened. God is not the person there saying, oh, again, okay, you've got another late night guest. You've got to stop these parties. You've got to tell them to get here earlier. I gave you bread last week. You know, like he's not all the sorts of things a neighbor might tell a friend might say, even as they give you the bread. That's not how God does things. God, when we ask, we receive, when we seek, we find and when we knock, the door is opened for us. God doesn't tell us to go away and come back in the morning. And so I want us to think if a neighbor will help you out of a jam, how many jams can God get us out of? If a neighbor will give us a cup of sugar, who is not convenient to them, how many cups of sugar will God give us? You see, our prayers don't bother or overload him. And so this lesson here, this teaching about prayer, is come and tell God what it is that's going on in your life. We've just seen this model prayer, and it doesn't ask for very much, does it? But now we've got this prayer that's quite different from the model prayer. This prayer is saying, come and ask, let me know what you need. Doesn't matter what time of day it is, doesn't matter whether the lights are out or not. I will do everything I can to answer it, to address it, to meet that needs. Now, I know that we can completely have another sermon that I wouldn't preach today that tells us why is it that sometimes God doesn't answer our prayers. So this isn't a promise that every prayer gets answered. But it's certainly a promise that God hears every prayer, and that God is still working in our lives, even if he's not working the precise way that we see it. And I want to come down then to the next section in verse 11. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then, though you're evil, or really just saying not holy, even though you're not God, even though you have sin in your lives. If you then, being that way, being ungodly, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So again, we have this comparison. If the neighbor will reluctantly give you food, what will your father in heaven give to you? And if your earthly father knows the things that children need, and earthly fathers don't do it perfectly, but generally we're not going to give something dangerous to our children when they ask for something nutritious. And so if earthly fathers can manage to sort out the difference between good gifts and dangerous gifts, how much more will our father in heaven answer our prayers? And then specifically here give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. I think verse 13 is important to give us sort of the context of the whole, as we wrap up here, because how often have you heard the verse ask and it will be given to you seek and you'll find knock and a door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks binds and to the one who knocks, the door will be open. And those verses exist in a vacuum, and they can be used to teach that whatever it is that you want, the pony that your parents wouldn't give you as a child, now you've been baptized and you've got a backyard of your own, God will give you that pony if you just pray correctly. It says so, be persistent, keep knocking, keep asking. And so it's really easy to take that ask, seek, knock and turn it into a guarantee that we'll get whatever it is that we want. And so I really wanted to see this whole section as a unified unit. If we go back to the prayer, I think this sets the table for everything that comes later. Jesus isn't really concerned about ponies. I'm not either, but if we're talking about Ferraris or Lamborghinis, you know, I'm open to that. But Jesus says, "No, here's the things to focus on. Focus on what it is that God wants. Focus on the fundamentals, the basic needs of life, the staples, and focus on your spiritual wellbeing." Three things, what God wants, our staples, and our spiritual wellbeing. That's the prayer. And so now when we come down to the next sections, the next teachings on prayer, you know, we get to the end of it, and he says, "And if you ask, he'll give you the Holy Spirit." Does the Holy Spirit fit into this prayer? I think so. I think so, I think, you know, in terms of whether it be the hallowed be your name, whether the Spirit gives us the energy, the motivation to expand God's kingdom, to serve in his kingdom. Maybe not the daily food, but the forgiveness, the leading is not into temptation. If we listen to Holy Spirit, we have the Holy Spirit working in our lives, we become more godly people. And so God gives us what we need. And so when in the middle of this section, we have this statement that if you ask, it'll be given to you, if you seek, you find, if you knock the door, we'll be open. I think we need to be careful about how we apply that. But if we're wanting closer relationship with God, if we're wanting the Holy Spirit in our lives, if we're wanting a life that eliminates sin, if we're wanting to serve in God's kingdom, if we're wanting our basic needs to be met, if we're wanting to be a godly person, if we're wanting to live a life that's in harmony and consistent with God, yes, we can ask, we can seek, we can knock on those things that will be given to us because God has given us the Holy Spirit that leads us in those paths and that fills us with God's goodness. And so what is it that we pray for? Pray for the people that are sick. When we do a prayer guide on the 14th, it's going to have, pray for our missionaries. It's going to have, pray for our church members who are sick. Pray for those that aren't able to be here in person. Pray for those who are watching that we don't even know who they are, but we love them and God loves them. And we're so glad that they're part of us. Pray for our church leaders. Pray for your family. It'll pray for your loved ones. Pray for people you know who aren't safe, that you desperately long to give their lives to God. Pray for all of these things. But also, let's pray for God's purposes to be accomplished in the world. Let's pray for the staples of life to be provided. We're not looking for the luxuries of life, but we're looking for God to provide our daily needs because we depend upon Him and we want to be closer to Him, to eliminate sin from our lives, to build bridges with people who've hurt us, to represent God to those around us. That's part of our prayer. I suspect that too often it's a part of our prayer life that we leave now. I know when we send out the prayer list each week, it's a list of needs. I mean, there's some thanks there. It's a list of needs. But I don't think any of them have these needs. So that's up to you. Pray them not only for yourself, but pray them for your church family. I'd like us to close by reading this together. Father, hello, be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, forgive us our sins, but we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]