Turn back to Matthew chapter
6. Matthew chapter 6. Title of the message, After this
manner, pray. There's no one, absolutely no one, who can teach
us to pray more than the one we pray to. The one that we pray
to. God of heaven and earth is the one giving us the instructions
here. And knowing that, we ought to
pay even more attention. We pray to Him, now He's telling
us this is how you pray to Him. This is how you pray. He gives
us here a pattern of prayer. You know, a pattern is something
you go by. When me and my two brothers added
an addition onto my house when we were living in Ashland, we
made a pattern to the rafters. And we went by that pattern and
we didn't take the pattern and use it in the process because
then we wouldn't have a pattern to go by. But we had a pattern
to go by and we made everything to that pattern. Now our Lord's
given us a pattern here, not of the exact words to say in
every prayer, but the essence of prayer is right here. And
it's amazing how short it is. Remember we just read, don't
you be like the hypocrites who like to stand in the streets
and in the corners and they pray these long prayers. And the heathens,
they use these repetitions. He says, don't do that. You don't,
because they're praying, those heathens are praying to a God
that doesn't even exist. But your heavenly father knows
what you have need of. Isn't that comforting? You now
need to live in the reality of truth. And the truth is this,
your father, Speaking here to believers. This prayer is for
believers. It's not for anybody else. It's not for anyone else.
This is for the children. This is for the children. He's
teaching his children how to pray. And he says, your Father
knows what you have need of before you even ask Him. Never think that your Heavenly
Father is ignorant as to your needs and what's going on. He
knows. And it's interesting over in
Luke chapter 11, let me read this to you because the disciples
asked this and they asked the Lord to teach them to pray. And
it's interesting. In verse 1 of Luke 11, it says,
And it came to pass that as he was praying, as the Lord Jesus
Christ was praying in a certain place, and there, just get this
in your mind, they are sitting there or wherever they are, and
he's leading in prayer. They are listening to him. They
are listening. They are listening to God Almighty, the God of heaven
and earth, the God-man, the God-man, the mediator. They are listening
to Him pray. And they knew. They knew. Like it was said, never a man
spake like this man. They knew it. Never a man prayed
like this man. He's praying. When they listened
to him, they knew he was communing with God. They knew he wasn't
standing in the street corners and the marketplace giving out
this long prayer that was meaningless, totally meaningless to these
Pharisees. He's speaking to God. He was communing with God. And
as they listened, one of his disciples said to them, Lord,
teach us to pray. Oh, listen. Prayer's not easy,
is it? I don't find prayer easy. Now,
I know there are times when it seems to flow. There are times
when we are so tried that we just cast our cares upon Him. We just fall before Him. But there are many times it's
just difficult. So he gives us here, he gives
to his children a pattern for prayer. And after this manner,
therefore pray ye. And you'll notice through this
prayer that he never mentions that we pray to any saint. He
never says pray to Mary. Never says that. Pray to Paul
now. Or pray, you know, you can bring
the greater matters to me, but the lesser matters you can call
upon one of the other saints, you know, or Mary. No, He's the
Mediator. There's only one Mediator between
God and man, between God and His people. There's only one
High Priest that we call upon, that we go through. We don't
go through or pray to any other. You can't find that in the Word
of God. You cannot find that in the Word of God. That's made
up of men. That's superstitious. That's
all it is. Just superstition is all it is.
And they play upon the ignorance of men, men and women, who are
spiritually dead and spiritually ignorant. They play upon that.
But after this manner, this pattern, here's how you pray. You'll notice
in the first three petitions in this prayer has to do with
God our Father. It doesn't have to do with us
immediately. It is a concern for our Father's glory. We are
calling on our Father. And if you'll notice this, this
jumped out to me this morning, it's our, the Lord said, our
Father. Remember He said to the disciples
one time, I go to my Father and your Father. When I read, Our Father, I automatically
want to put at the end of that, Selah. Pause and consider this. John said, Now are ye the sons
of God. You know, every once in a while,
sit down. You who believe the gospel, every
once in a while, sit down in your house by yourself and consider
this, you are a son of God, a son or daughter of God. You're His. I'm a son. You know what? I'm
looking this morning at some children who are royalty. I'm
looking at true royalty. Sons and daughters of the King,
the King of heaven. And we are the sons of God who
believe. We are His sons and daughters.
And He's our Father. God who said, Let there be light. God who created the heavens and
the earth is our Father. And I want you to notice in this
prayer how broad it is and how selfless prayer is. It's our Father. Listen to this,
I'll just point this out. It's our Father. Let me flip
over here. It's our Father. Now listen.
Give us this day, forgive us. It's not just all about me, is
it? If prayer is all about me, I've got a problem. It's our
Father, it's give us, it's forgive us, it's lead us. It's a prayer
not only for me, it's a prayer for the whole family of God. Pray for others. Our prayers
are to be broad, not so narrow. And now, let's back to this.
Our Father. This links us to the Lord Jesus
Christ. This links us to Him. He's our
brother. He's saying here, when He's saying
here, our Father, He is identifying Himself as our brother. He is our elder brother. He's
the elder brother. You know what? In the Old Testament,
what happened with the elder brother? Everything went to Him.
He was the spiritual leader of the house. Is not the Lord Jesus
Christ our elder brother, the leader of the house? Is He not
the captain of our salvation? Is He not the heir of all things,
and you and I are joint heirs with Him? We are joint heirs. Whatever is His is yours. Joint heirs. Our Father which
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. You see,
God being our Father, deserves our respect. You know what the
first commandment was with promise? You know what it was? Honor your
mother and your father. Your father and your mother.
Honor your father and your mother. That was the first commandment given
with a promise. And he said, live long on the
earth. Now, if we are to give such honor
and respect to our Father, our earthly Father and Mother, if
we are to give them such respect, how much more does our Heavenly
Father deserve? You know, I don't use my earthly
Father. I don't speak of them in a disrespectful
manner. I don't use their name in a disrespectful
way. How much more my Heavenly Father?
How much more Him? He deserved the respect as our
Father. We recognize Him also as our
Father to be above all fathers. You know, we all have earthly
fathers here. We have earthly fathers and mothers. We do, but
God our Father is above all of them. We don't hold anyone above Him. In any way, shape, or form. And
we recognize His position above all, and it's this. He's in heaven. Our Father, which is in heaven,
that identifies His position. He sits on the throne. Our Father
sits on the throne. And we recognize His power and
authority by saying, Our Father, which art in heaven. That shows
His power and authority over all. Over all. None equal to
Him. Hallowed be Thy name. Holy. Sanctified. That's what it means.
Sanctified. Holy. Our Father's name is to
be kept holy in our hearts and in our speech. You know, there's a lot of names
you can use if you're just going to talk about If you're just
going to talk in generalities or whatever, there's a lot of
names to use besides His name. His name. His name is holy, sanctified. It's to be set apart in our hearts
as holy. We speak reverently of Him, and
we speak reverently to Him. Our Father's name is to be kept
holy. We never use His name in vain. And when it says, Hallowed be
Thy name, that concerns all His attributes, that concerns all
that He is. There's none like Him. None like
Him. And we pray, Hallowed be Thy
name, and we pray this, Thy kingdom come. We pray this, this, Lord, thy
kingdom come in my heart. Set up the kingdom of grace in
my heart. You know, he said the kingdom
of God comes without observation. It's a spiritual kingdom. Set
thy kingdom of grace up in my heart. I pray that first, that
God's kingdom be set up in my heart. The kingdom of grace,
kingdom of light, kingdom of righteousness. Let it dwell in
me first. Let it dwell in me, in us. Let
it dwell in us. But we also, listen, we are also
more interested in God's kingdom, our Father's kingdom being established
right now than the kingdom of men. I know we get concerned about
the kingdom of men. We get concerned what's going
on out there. We get concerned with the economy.
And it's mostly because of our pocketbook. We're more concerned
with the economy. Really and truly, it comes down
to our pocketbook. But the kingdom that we desire,
that God's children desire to see set up is God's kingdom. Wouldn't it be something, wouldn't
it be something if you turned on the news and they spoke of
God, of Christ, I mean in the sense of the Bible. Wouldn't
it be something if you turn on the television and channel after
channel it was speaking of the glory, the true glory of Jesus
Christ. Wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't
it be something to turn on the television and see Israel over
there worshiping the Lord, the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ,
the one they rejected. Wouldn't that be something? Thy
kingdom come. Thy kingdom come. That's what
we want. It's the kingdom of righteousness and love and peace
and joy and light. And you'd see all the fighting
stop. And all this hatred of one another, you'd see it stop.
if God's kingdom is established. When you see the kingdom of men
being established, you see hatred, fighting, you see all the evil
there is in the human heart. And we say, thy kingdom come,
thy will be done. There is nobody on this earth
that wants God's will to be done except God's children. Man does
not want God's will to be done. He wants his will to be done.
especially in his house. I'll do what I want to in my
house. That's the attitude of the world. It's my house, I'll
do what I want. Well, God's children want God's
will to be done even in their house, in their home, don't you? He wants it to be done in your
home. And we know this, we know God's will is best. We know that
his will is best. We know his providential will
is best. We know his secret will is best. That's the will that only he
knows. I'm not privy to everything about
God's will. I just couldn't understand it,
but he is. And I pray God's will be done. Listen. Someone may be sick, you know,
they may be sick. I knew someone, I knew someone
that had cancer. And I prayed that the Lord would
heal him. But also in saying, but thy will
be done, I knew that it may be best, it may be best that he
doesn't. Isn't that right? That's right,
I'm telling you, it's right. And the Lord didn't. And yet
the Lord did. He took him home. Now you tell
me, did the Lord heal him? He did. He sure did. He healed
him completely. He healed him completely. I may
be sick. I may get sick. And I pray, Lord,
heal me. But it may be better for me to
get even more sick. Now, I didn't realize that when
I was young. I did not realize that when I
was a young believer. This took me a while to learn, and it took
going through some hard things. It took going through some difficult
trials to learn that it's not always best for it to stop right
now. Would it have been best for Job
whenever the first person came and said, God's taking your children. Well,
let's stop it right now. Lord, end this trial right now.
It was best for Job to lose it all. And not only to lose it
all at that time, but even later, he lost his health. He was sitting
out by himself with a broken pottery, scratching the boils
of his skin. Now, would any of us in the beginning
have said, Job, this needs to go on? No, we wouldn't have. We'd have said, Lord, heal him.
Have mercy on him. Have mercy on him. Where's that scripture, Paul?
I showed this to Paul. It jumped out at me. It jumped out at me whenever
Paul was preaching yesterday and he's speaking of the patience
of Job. I believe that was in James, wasn't it? But it says
that the end of that was that it was the Lord's pity and to
show us of his mercifulness. If you just saw that going on
at that time, you wouldn't have thought that God was being merciful
to Job, would you? You wouldn't think that God was
being merciful to Job. You'd think he was being harsh. But he was being very pitiful.
Very pitiful. I wish I could think of that
scripture right now. But anyway, if anybody comes across it, holler
at me. If you see it, I believe it's
in James. But it's hard to preach and think at the same time. It is. You ought to try doing
it. But thy will be done. It has
to be done in every area of my life. Now we come to the part, after
speaking of God, His glory, His will, His kingdom, that is what
we're the most concerned with. We are concerned with that above
our daily bread. Right? That comes later. That
comes later. Our greatest concern is our Father's
glory and honor. And he says, give us this day,
in verse 11, this comes to the part of the prayer that concerns
us, our needs, our spiritual needs and physical needs. Give
us, and that's how broad our prayers are to be, not just me,
but us, because You have needs just like I do. And I need, and
I'm learning this, I need to feel your needs like I feel my
needs. Because that's the only real way I'll pray for you, is
when I feel. Like a guy who used to work for
me, he would say, oh, I feel you. We'd probably be talking
about, I feel you. And I knew I connected with him
when he said he felt me. But he never said he felt me,
I knew he wasn't listening to me. I wasn't getting anywhere. And so give us this day our daily
bread. This shows our dependence on
him. You know, I know we don't think about this this much because
we're so blessed. We're so abundantly blessed that
when we sit down to eat, it's like we ought to, this ought
to be our last meal. It's not like, you know, I know
we got the refrigerator full and the pantry full and the grocery
store's a mile down the road. But we should, within our hearts,
know that this meal, this meal right here, came from God. He gave it to me. I don't deserve
it. I don't deserve this meal. But our Father has given us this. It's showing our dependence on
His daily care. And what we have our Father has
given to us Now our daily bread, listen, our daily bread is whatever
I need. You know what my first need is
daily? Spiritual. That's my first daily
need. Give me the spiritual bread from
heaven. Let me feast on the spiritual bread from heaven before I take
a bite of this light bread, this biscuit or whatever bread I'm
eating. And I like bread. I do like bread. Give me a greater taste for the
bread of heaven than this earthly bread. Never let me grow tired
of the bread from heaven, but let me recognize and give me
Father, give me Father, the bread from heaven first. And then whatever
my need is, here it's called daily bread, but it may be financial,
it may be physical, whatever that need is, I look to you to
give it to me and nobody else. I look to you first. Now God's
a God of means. He'll bring somebody along or
something to supply it, but He's the first cause. He's it. And then this, give us this day
our daily bread shows faith. Doesn't it? It's an expression
of faith in God, our Father, that He will supply our needs.
You know, I don't expect, when my boys were growing up, they
didn't go to the neighbor's house and say, give me something to
eat. That would have been so embarrassing to me. As their
father, it'd be embarrassing. If they were constantly knocking
on the neighbor's door, they'd be calling my phone, saying, won't
you feed your kids? We expect our Father, and this
is an expression of faith, we express our dependence and we
expect our Father to take care of us, don't we? I do, I have
an expectation based on the Word of God that He's gonna take care
of me. And we'll see that as we get
the rest of this Sermon on the Mount. And forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. This is our spiritual needs. Sins are debts. Sins are considered debts. Debts
that we can't pay. Forgive us our debts. That doesn't
mean forgive me because I went to the bank and borrowed some
money. That means this. Forgive me for not loving my
neighbor as I should. Forgive me for not helping and
looking after my brothers and sisters as I should. Oh, no man anything but to what?
Paul says, but to love, to love one another. And every child
of God here knows that you and I fail. We come short in this
department of loving one another as we ought to love one another.
Having loved his own, as Paul said in the message, having loved
his own, he loved them to the end. He gave up everything. He became poor that we through
His poverty might be made rich. You can never, ever, ever become
poor by giving if you give in the right spirit. You can never
become poor. It's impossible. Paul said, or
the Scripture says, Give and it shall be given to you, pressed
down and running over. Well, I want to give, because
that's the way I want to be given that way. That's the wrong attitude.
You're not giving so that you say, well, the Lord said if I
give this, he'll make me rich. He'll make it press down running
over. That's the wrong attitude. The way to give is because I,
you know, if I was in that situation and he gave that to me, I would,
it would, boy, it would thrill my soul because I need it. And
when you say that you're giving to someone because that's the
way you would love for them to give to you, and when you're
in need, forgive us our debts, forgive. You know, in studying this again,
I've preached from this several times. But I could just take
one line at a time and just preach. I mean, there's so much here.
Forgive us. You know, I do pray the Lord
forgive me of my sins. But you know, I do pray that
the Lord forgive us because I know as a church we sin. I know we
do so individually and we do so as a church. I know we do. And I say forgive us our debts
But now listen, you say, boy, I can identify with that. I do
pray the Lord forgive me of my sins. But that's not all. That's not the end of it. There's
not a period here. There's not a period, there's
a comma. As we forgive our debtors. Do you want God to forgive you?
Do I want God to forgive me on the same grounds that I forgive
others? Do you? That really puts it in
perspective for me. We need daily forgiveness, and
we need to forgive daily. James said, in all things we
offend. I will offend some of you, if not all of you. If you
hang around me long enough, I'll offend you. I'll upset you. Because that's who we are by
nature. We still have that old nature with us. We still have
it. We say things we oughtn't to say. We take things wrong
that we shouldn't take wrong. You know, it's just the way we
are. And we need to forgive daily
those things and we need to be forgiven. And as we forgive others. The
better translation is this. As we have forgiven others their
debts. As we have forgiven others. That's
what it says over Luke. As we have forgiven others their
debts. In other words, don't ask for forgiveness if you're
not willing to forgive. It ain't happening. It's not
going to happen. It's like worship. Remember the
Lord said, if you come and bring your gift to the altar and you
have a problem with your brother, he said, you put the gift down,
you go and settle that problem. Be reconciled to your brother,
then come back and worship. And if you're going to ask for
forgiveness, And this is, I mean, this hits me, this hits me. If
I'm gonna ask God for forgiveness, I might oughta sit down and really
consider, have I forgiven and let go? And just let go. All offenses against me. Something to consider before
you pray, isn't it? You know, we just don't, I think prayer,
we oughta give thought to it. You ought to give thought to
it. Thought to the one we're praying to, what we're praying
about, and if what we're praying about is worthy of the name of
Jesus Christ that we're going to use. We need to give thought
to it. Here's a good rule. Here's a
good rule of thumb. The disciples said one time,
how many times should I forgive My brother, seven. It was seven
times. The Lord said, 70 times seven.
You know, if he sins against me seven times a day, shall I
forgive him seven times? And when the Lord says 70 times
seven, He's talking about a definite number for an indefinite number. But this thought came to me one
day when I was reading that. And here's a good rule of thumb.
How many times do you want God to forgive you? Every time you ask, right? Every
time you ask, that's how many times you forgive your brother.
And listen, when we're talking about forgiveness here, we're
not talking about just saying, OK, OK, I'll let it go. Just
forget about it. And you really don't forget about it. I mean,
this is a real forgiveness. This is a real forgiveness. You
let it go. And your attitude toward that brother or sister
is one of love one of reconciliation, one of peace, and that can only
happen if you really did forgive as God has forgiven us. He doesn't
remember our sins no more. That's real forgiveness. And
then there's a prayer here for this petition here also includes
this in verse 13, And lead us not into temptation. I can't
tell you how many commentaries and people I've read on this,
trying to get a hold of this. First of all, it's a prayer for
guidance. And it's stated in a negative
way to express the positive. The Scripture says that the steps
of a good man are ordered by the Lord. He watches over our
steps. There's never a time that we
are not being guided. We're under His guidance, right?
He says the hairs of your head are numbered. And lead us not into temptation
is not just saying lead us not into trials, because trials are
going to come, we know that. They're like a train. Trials
are like a train. And they've got all these boxcars.
And all these boxcars got troubles and trials in them. They're all
coming down the track. And that caboose at the end of
that train is the day you die. And it's over. We have those
brief periods in between those, you know, you see those boxcars
are hitched together. There's a little gap there. We
have a little gap between trials. Now they don't mean all trials
are humongous. We couldn't bear that. But they're trials. But this
temptation here is a temptation to sin. And I
had to look and look and look at this. Because the scripture
says that God can't be tempted with evil, neither tempted He
any man with evil or to sin. God never tempts us to sin. And I thought, here's my thought. My thought came to David. He
walks out on the balcony. He looks down and there's this
attractive woman bathing. My prayer is this, Lord, don't
let me ever get in that situation. Keep me out of those situations
that would cause me to fall, to bring reproach on your name.
Don't allow me to get into that situation because if it happens,
he has to allow me to do it. And I pray, guide me, guide me. It's an awareness of weakness.
Lead me not into temptation. Someone said this concerning
the flesh, okay? This is concerning the flesh.
I read this from a worldly man, has nothing to do with the gospel.
But he said, temptations are the things life's made of. For
the flesh, that is. But for the child of God, keep
me from them. That's what he's asking here.
Keep us from temptation. Keep us from doing anything that
would bring reproach on your name. Keep me from going to those
places or being with those people or anything that will bring reproach
on your name. Father, keep me from them. Because
I'm weak. I'm weak. And I heard one guy
say, he said, I can resist anything but temptation. Now listen. Temptation. Temptation. is not sin. It's when you give in to it that's
sin. So he's not saying here, leave
me not into sin, but leave me not into the temptation that
will cause me to fall. Don't let me put a roadblock,
hedge me about. Don't let me go into those situations
that will cause me to sin. The temptation itself is not
sin, because you and I are tempted every day. Satan tempts us. Satan
tempted our Lord. He tried Him. He tried Him. And it may be, and I think I
can say this, keep us in the right way so we need not be tried
severely in order to correct us. The sword never left David's
house. He said, God has made with me
an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, even
though it be not so with my house. His house was a mess. His children,
the one raped his sister in Absalom, tried to dethrone David, and
he was hung in a tree. David's house was a mess. Even
though God made a covenant with David, because of what David
did, He said, the sword will never leave your house. And listen,
keep us in the right way so we need not be tried severely in
order to be corrected. Don't you want that? I do. But deliver us from evil, from
the evil one, from Satan. You and I are no match for him. Just tell the devil to get out
of here. Yeah, right. Oh, deliver us from the power
of Satan, the power of darkness, and deliver me, deliver us from
the evil within. There's still a lot of there.
There's a lot there. There's a lot within. You know,
the Lord says, Satan has come and found nothing in me. Satan has come and found nothing
in me. You know why? There was nothing in the Lord,
there was no sin in the Lord for Satan to get a hold of. But
buddy, I tell you what, when he comes to me and you, there's
a whole lot to get a hold of. Deliver me from the evil one,
deliver me from the evil that's within, and deliver me from the
evil that's in this world. It lurks on every corner. That's
why we lock your doors, isn't it? This ain't heaven. That's why you lock your doors.
This is not heaven. And then last of all, we close
our prayer in acknowledgment of our Father's ownership, His
absolute sovereignty, and that all the glory belongs to Him.
You know it's only right to glorify God? It'd be wrong to glorify
one another. It'd be wrong to brag on... It'd
be wrong to worship one another because we're so sinful and we
are not God. But when you think of who God
is and all His perfections, it's only right to worship Him. It's only right. It's not an ego trip. It would
be an ego trip for me and you. But it's only right concerning
God, because such perfection deserves worship. For thine is the kingdom, the
kingdom of grace, the kingdom of glory. It's His. Enter into the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. It's His kingdom,
and He prepared it for us. And the power, the power of salvation,
the power to keep, the power to save, the power to rule this
world is His, and the glory of it. And that glory is yet to
be seen by us. We have a little small glimpse
of it. But the glory belongs to Him
forever, forever. Amen. Can we all say Amen? Men and women, say it. We all say Amen. This is the
pattern, the essence of prayer. Alright.