is a matter of the heart. It's a matter of the fleshly
nature within a sinner. And He taught us that the fruit
of the Spirit of love and grace toward God and men is a matter
of the heart. That He's made new. And last
time we looked at our Lord's command to pray in secret. Prayer is secret. It's spiritual. Between God who
is secret, spirit, and the spirit He's made within us, which is
secret. And even when assembled with
our brethren, prayer is immediate communion. between no one else
but God and His people. Now this time, our Lord instructs
the believer to pray in simplicity. Beginning in Matthew 6 verse
7, But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen
do. Now, men who do not know God
think that prayer turns God to sinners. And so they think the more words
repeated, the more prayers spoken, the more people involved in praying
will obligate God to hear. Verse 7, he says, For they think
that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto
them. Now this is the Master speaking.
Do you believe the Lord Jesus Christ? Has He given you a heart
to walk after His commandments? He says to every believer not
to pattern your prayer after the heathen. That's to pattern it after the
traditions of men. He says don't do that. Don't
do that. Verse 8. For your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of before ye ask Him." Now this is comfort
right here. Your Father knoweth. Your Father knoweth your need. And your Father knoweth before
you ask Him. Prayer is not the child turning
the Father to us, but prayer is the Father turning His children
to Him. The more we know the Father,
the more our petitions become direct and simple with one single
desire. In the most solemn moment of
all time, when the greatest need that any man has ever had was
in view, the prayer was this, O my Father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou." And so our Lord says, after this
manner, therefore, pray ye. Now what our Lord is about to
teach us is not that these are the only words to be used when
praying. But rather, in each statement
that he makes here, he teaches us the very heart of what we
need. He teaches us to guide and to
restrain our petitions no further than the pattern that he gives
right here. Verse 9, he says, "...our Father which art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be
done in earth as it is in heaven. He begins with our Father which
art in heaven. When a vessel of God's mercy
has been regenerated, been given the spirit of adoption, the child
of God cries, Abba, Father. We acknowledge that our Father
is holy God. We acknowledge His rightful authority
and place as well as our place. He is our Father. We are His
children. He is in heaven. We are below. He is our King. We His subjects. His will is absolute. Our will
is for His will to be done. Now by acknowledging Him, by
calling upon His name, our Father, we confess that we believe Him.
We confess we believe Him when He says that we have access to
Him and His Son, that He accepts us, that we can freely approach
unto Him and we believe that He will give us what we ask. In fact, we confess by calling
Him our Father in heaven that we believe He is able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the
power that worketh in us. Now here are our petitions. Number
one, hallowed be Thy name. Hallowed be Thy name. Prayer
is a confession that the name of our God is holy. It's holy. Every aspect of the salvation
of a wretched sinner declares his name is above every other
name. By electing whom he would under
salvation in his son Christ Jesus, our Father declares that his
name is holy. He can do with his own whatsoever
he's pleased to do. By honoring His own law on behalf
of His children through His Son, He declares that His salvation
is holy. By making His Son who knew no
sin to be sin for us, making us to righteousness of God in
Him, He declares that His love and His mercy and grace and His
longsuffering His abundant goodness and truth, His reservation of
mercy for thousands, His forgiveness of iniquity and transgression
and sin is for the sole purpose of magnifying His holy name. If He saves any other way, It's another God. It's another
Jesus that folks are believing in. And they're believing in
One whose name's not holy. His good pleasure to save His
children, to regenerate them, to make them willing to keep
them by His power, by the means that wise men call foolishness,
is to stop all man's boasting, so that those who glory, glory
that His name's holy. Therefore, our desire in all
our petitions is that He do for us only that which magnifies
His holy name in our hearts and before all the world. Here's
the second thing. Thy kingdom come. First, we ask
our Father that Christ, our King Priest, come into our hearts. that our hearts be established
in Him. He's the King of the Kingdom.
Secondly, we pray that He would enter into the hearts of those
of His elect who He redeemed and purged of all their sin at
Calvary who are yet in darkness and don't know Him. And thirdly,
we earnestly and joyfully await His return. that final glorious
consummation when He shall have saved us and brought us to Himself
and we shall dwell with Him for all eternity. Here's the third
thing. Thy will be done in earth as
in heaven. Now we know that He doeth according
to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. Nobody can question Him. Nobody can stop Him. We
acknowledge when we pray to Him that we wouldn't have it any
other way. Our prayer is, Father, in glorifying Your holy name,
establishing Your kingdom, Thy will be done in earth as it is
in heaven. I think it was Matthew Poole
who said it. We could sum it up like this
way. Our prayer is, God, glorify Thy name. Glorify Thy name. Now, here's the second part. We come to our needs. And the
Lord says there are three things that we need. Three things we
need. First of all, we need daily bread. We need His daily provision.
Secondly, we need forgiveness. And thirdly, we need deliverance.
That's pretty simple, isn't it? That sums up what we need. Daily
bread. forgiveness and deliverance.
First of all, daily bread. He says, verse 11, give us this
day our daily bread. Now, the believer knows. We know
that He's graven us upon the palms of His hands and that our
walls are continually before Him. We know that, as David said
when he was older, he said, I've never seen the righteous forsaken,
never seen his seed begging bread. We know that, as Paul wrote to
the Romans, that He that delivered up His Son for us all, how shall
He not with Him freely give us all things? But our Father will
have us to ask Him. He'll have us to ask Him. Because
even in asking Him, For this day, our daily bread, we're confessing
to Him that we cannot provide for ourselves. He's the provider. We need Him to provide our daily
bread. And He doesn't say bread for
tomorrow or the next day. He says just today. I just need
you to provide for me today, Lord. Now here's the second thing
we need. We need forgiveness. Verse 12. And forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. The word here is sin. Forgive
us our sins. We know that Christ has put away
our sin by His one sacrifice. The Hebrew writer said when He
had by Himself purged our sins, past tense, He sat down at the
right hand of the majesty on high. By His own blood He entered
in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption
for us. And you know that He was manifested
to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin. But as long as
we're in this body of death, sin is mixed with everything
we do. Everything. Asking forgiveness,
we confess to our Father that we're yet sinners in ourselves. Asking forgiveness, we confess
that our sin is against God. Asking forgiveness, we confess
that only our Father can forgive us. We need forgiveness. And it says
here as we forgive, our debtors. I want to say just a word about
this, and we'll look at this more next time, but forgiving
others freely, the believers confessing, the believer confesses
that our Father has forgiven us freely by His grace. In Christ Jesus, He's forgiven
us. and that He shall forgive us.
That's what we confess is we forgive others. He's forgiven
us freely. Freely. I know we talked about
this, but back there in that verse where he said about the
publicans. He said that, be perfect as your
father is perfect. He says there in verse chapter
5. He says, verse 46, if you love them which love you, what
reward have you? Do not even the publicans the
same? And before that, he talked about how the father makes his
son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust. The same thing he said there,
we confess when we forgive our debtors. It's this. He's not
saying that his mercy is common, that his grace is common, any
more than the grace of God is common or that his His, uh, the
blood of his son is common. It's not. It's precious. It's
for a particular chosen people. What he's saying is it's free. It's free. It's not based on
anything in the recipient. And so when we forgive those
who trespass against us, we're confessing that His grace towards
us was free. It wasn't based on anything in
us. It was saving, sovereign, particular, free, unmerited grace. And we'll look more at that next
time. And then here's the third thing. John said there, if we confess
our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, here's the third thing.
We need to be delivered from evil. We need to be delivered
from evil. Verse 13, And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil. Now, the Lord's not teaching
us to pray that we'll never be tried. Trials are necessary and
good for us. They may cause us a lot of suffering,
and we never like the suffering. but they're good for us. He's
not telling us not to pray for trials, but rather ask our Father
to not allow the power of evil to overcome us, but to keep us
from the evil. We have the promise again. In
everything we're asking the Father, He's already told us it's ours.
It's ours, and we know it, but He'll be asked of it. We know
that the Scripture says, God is faithful, who will not suffer
you to be tempted, above that ye are able. But will with the
temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to
bear it. The word temptation, there's
trial. He won't give you a trial more
than you're able to bear, but with the trial, He'll give you
a way to escape it. Casting all our care on Christ.
All our care on our Father is the way. It's the way to escape,
to escape it. His grace is sufficient to enable
us to bear the trial. And so our Lord instructs us
as He did His apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane right here.
He's teaching us, watch and pray that you not be overpowered,
overcome by the evil. The spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak. So we ask Him to keep us every
moment, to deliver us, acknowledging we don't have any strength to
do it ourselves. We need Him. We need Him. Now verse 13 is
not in some of the ancient texts, but the words expressed here
strike me as what it is to pray in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ. In verse 13 it says, for thine is the kingdom and
the power and the glory forever, amen. Now we saw this in a former
lesson here, but amen is the name of Jesus Christ. That's
his name. And the kingdom is God's and
his son is our king. All power is God's, and He's
given our Lord Jesus the crown rights, who possesses all power
in heaven and earth. The glory of God is seen in the
face of Christ Jesus the Lord. His is the kingdom and the power
and the glory forever. Whose? Amen. Amen. Christ Jesus, the Son of God,
that's who. And in all the needs that we
saw here, in everything that we saw here, Christ has the preeminence. He has the preeminence. We need
the living bread daily. We need the manna from heaven
daily. We need to be found in Christ where we have complete
forgiveness by His blood. We need to be kept in Christ
Jesus, our sanctuary, where no evil can harm us. So in all,
in everything that we pray to our Heavenly Father, We pray
it knowing that these things have their fulfillment in Christ
our Lord. We come in His name and we know
because of Christ Jesus, the Son of God, our God will freely
give us what we need. He'll do that. That's when prayer
becomes simple. Simple prayer. We want our Father
to be glorified. We want His name to be holy. We want His will to be done. We want His kingdom to come.
We need daily bread, forgiveness, and deliverance, all in His name,
the name of His Son. That's what we need. Amen.