The recent events of the siege in Martin Place gripped our city.
The outpouring of shock and grief was incredible.
One thing that I noticed on the TV, the newspapers, Facebook, other media,
was the amount of times I heard people say, or the amount of times I saw written,
things like, our thoughts and our prayers are with you.
I noticed it again on Facebook in response to the South Australian bushfires just last night.
My thoughts and my prayers are with you all.
This was posted from someone who I know personally,
who's got no trust in a God or whatever, no connection with God,
actually openly declares themselves to be an atheist,
and yet writes, my thoughts and my prayers are with you all.
And I noticed it again today, this afternoon,
reading the paper about the event of that guy who punched his brother and he's in hospital,
the area police commander said that there's a whole lot of fingers crossed out there
and there's a whole lot of prayers floating out there.
When difficulty or danger threatens, the immediate response of many people is to pray.
Most humans on this planet pray at least some time in their lives,
but usually without giving much thought to what they're doing.
I wondered whether the TV presenters and even the area police commander,
a bunch of other people I've seen on Facebook,
actually were giving any thought to what they were saying when they said,
my prayers are with you.
Most who pray occasionally probably don't even consider it a difficult thing to do.
My children pray often with a real simplicity and an ease that I can't even muster.
Sometimes their prayers put chills down my spine as they use the prayer times to bicker with one another.
But on one level, prayer seems a natural thing to do and a spontaneous thing to do,
and yet for Christians, prayer is anything but the easiest thing to do.
We know we ought to pray.
We feel that prayer should be right at the heart of our relationship with God.
And yet few things are so agonizingly difficult as a consistent prayer life.
Few things make us feel less Christian as when we have gone long periods without praying.
And so we're kicking off 2015 by spending the first five weeks on the topic of prayer.
And I'll be frank with you.
I need this reminder as I begin a new year.
Sam said to me just then,
so any New Year's resolutions, Steve, that you've broken yet?
And I said, yeah.
My New Year's resolution was I want to be more prayerful.
And I haven't been prayerful in the first four days of this New Year's
because I've been writing a sermon on prayer.
The irony of that.
And so I need this as much as I'm assuming you need this.
My hope is that I will grow in prayerfulness throughout this year.
I know I need to be more deliberate in my planning to pray
and have more humility for spontaneity in my prayer.
And of course, I want us to grow as a church in our core value of devotion to prayer.
And so what I'm going to do is I'm kicking off today and I'm going to assume nothing.
That's probably the safest thing.
I'm going to assume nothing today.
I'm going to start at the very beginning.
So here it is.
Prayer is an interaction between us and God.
Now, I'm pretty sure that's not Twitter worthy.
Prayer is an interaction between us and God.
It takes place between two parties who have a relationship.
And to understand anything about prayer, we must first discover what this relationship is like
or, more importantly, what God is like.
You see, when the Buddhist spins his prayer wheel and the Hindu sits in mystic silence,
both are reflecting the nature of the God or the gods to whom they're praying to.
That is, prayer is shaped and defined by the being to whom we pray.
And so, if I decided tonight to make Sam, Saint Sam, the object of my prayers,
then who I think Sam is and what he's capable of will govern the sort of prayers that I pray to him.
I'm not going to pray for Sam to control the weather because I figured that that's kind of beyond him to be able to do that.
Prayer is shaped and defined by the being to whom we pray.
It is only possible, prayer is only possible if the God is willing to accept my prayers, first of all.
So, if Sam says, no, stuff you, I'm not going to, don't pray to me.
Then prayer breaks down at that point.
Or the God is willing to answer my prayers.
So, if Sam hasn't got the capability to answer my prayers, prayer breaks down at that point.
And without those two things, prayer is ineffective.
So, throughout the Bible, there is a real insistence that the God of the Bible is significantly different from all the idols and pagan gods of the worlds around and the nations around them.
Jeremiah 32, 17 says,
Psalm 145, verses 10 to 21, says that God's rule over all that he's made lasts forever.
That he's faithful to every single promise that he's made.
And he is loving to all that he's made.
It says that he upholds those who fall.
He sustains everything that he's made.
And that he is near to everyone who calls on him.
And so, the Bible consistently asserts that God is sovereign over all of his creation.
Nothing is too hard for him.
He's also a God who cares for the intimate details of everything that he's made.
He knows every number, every hair that I've got on my head.
He knows when one falls out, which a few have been doing in recent times.
He knows everything about his creation.
He's a God of mercy and love.
He is both powerful and he is merciful.
And he is loving.
And yet, the other side of the coin is that the Bible speaks of a God who is so holy, so pure, so perfect, so powerful, that he is unapproachable.
That he is so perfect that he will not allow the imperfect to commune with him.
So, 1 Timothy says,
God, the blessed and only ruler, the king of kings, the lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.
And so, the biblical picture is that prayer, a communion with God, is an exciting possibility and an enormous privilege,
and yet, a practical impossibility at the same time.
God is the all-powerful creator and ruler of the world who delights to show kindness to those who call on him,
and yet he is blindingly holy, righteous.
His eyes are too pure to look upon evil.
And Psalm 145 says,
The God who delights to hear those who call on him will also hold all who are guilty accountable.
See, the Bible tells us right at the beginning that when people rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden,
God punished them by throwing them out of his presence.
He actually threw them out and he cut them off from access back to him.
Sinful, rebellious people cannot have access to God.
People no longer had access to God, and how then can we approach the unapproachable?
How can mortal sinners pray to a holy God and even work on the assumption that he is listening?
Well, the answer to that dilemma is what we celebrated last week or so at Christmas.
God takes the initiative to re-establish relationship with his revelable creation by coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
For thousands of years, God held back his anger against his rebel creation,
and eventually his patience ran out and he unleashed his anger,
but not upon his guilty rebels, but upon his son, who was born so that he might die.
You see, Jesus died to rescue us from the position of being cut off from access to God.
God resolved our problem so that we can have full and complete access to him again.
And anyone who trusts in Jesus has a relationship with God
and therefore has been granted free access to the almighty and true and living God.
Jesus is the one who tore down the barrier.
He's the one who moved the roadblocks away.
And so what's that got to do with prayer?
I want to say it's the very foundation of prayer.
This is the beginning of prayer.
It's got everything to do with prayer.
Prayer only takes place because of this new relationship through Jesus Christ.
This new relationship that Christians have with the Father through the saving work of the Son in the Spirit
is the beginning and end of all prayer.
You see, prayer is not some sort of an addition, a duty that we have in the Christian life.
It's not an appendix to the Christian life.
It is the heart of who we are as Christians and how we relate to a heavenly Father.
Prayer is simply our relationship with God in action.
It is why we can pray our Father who is in heaven.
And it's this issue of relationship with God that's at the heart of the context of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.
So if you grab your Bibles, open it up.
Matthew 6.
I'm going to begin in verse 1.
As Jesus launches into this chapter, he has in mind here actors and the theatre.
Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them.
If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
And he refers to a specific kind of actor in verse 2, verse 5, and verse 16.
They're the ones he calls hypocrites.
The word translated hypocrite was originally the name that was given to actors.
The scene of the first half of Matthew 6 is a theatre performance.
Jesus says that hypocrites do their acts of righteousness before men to be seen by men.
And so Jesus has specifically in mind here those who put on vulgar displays of religious piety
in order to receive the applause of people.
Have a look at verses 5 and 6.
Back when Jesus said these words in the synagogue,
it was fairly much common practice for the men to lead the times of prayer.
And this responsibility was passed around from bloke to bloke in the synagogue.
There would have been at least some temptation to pray to the audience that had gathered.
Maybe to try and outdo the last guy who prayed.
I don't know if you ever felt that temptation before.
I can say I have.
To pray in a way that people like, in a form that people like.
Maybe to sound more spiritual or theologically informed than the last person who prayed.
Maybe to pray in a way that you're giving an announcement to those who were gathered
rather than lifting your heart to God.
A hypocrite prays to the people, not to God.
How should the disciples of Jesus pray?
He mentions two things.
Verse 6, firstly.
But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen.
Now Jesus is not prohibiting public prayer here.
Because if he was, his disciples didn't get that idea.
Because as soon as they were apostles and moved off into the church in Acts,
that's exactly what they did, public prayer.
Verse 6 is simply causing us to ask questions of our motives and our hearts.
Do I pray more frequently and more fervently when alone with God than I do in public?
Is my public praying simply an overflow of my private praying?
What do I think about when praying in public?
Am I so busy scrambling to find expressions that are going to be pleasing to my fellow worshippers
that I'm not actually concentrating my attention on God or scarcely even aware of his presence,
even though he's the one to whom my prayers are nominally addressed?
Who am I praying to?
That's the issue in verse 6.
The second thing Jesus mentions about his disciples or how they should pray is in verse 7.
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans because they think they'll be hurt for their many words.
Do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
So some of the pagans in Jesus' time thought that if they named all of their gods
and addressed their petitions to each of those gods and repeated themselves a few times,
then they would have a better chance at receiving an answer to their prayer.
And Jesus says to his disciples, don't pray like that.
The prayer for the Christian should not consist of heaped up phrases, idle repetitions,
and the ridiculous assumption that the probability of the answer is in total proportion
to the number of the words used in the prayer.
Jesus wants to teach us here that praying to be a genuine act of righteousness
must be without showiness.
It must be directed to our heavenly Father and not to the people that are gathered
and devoid of the delusion that God can be pleased or manipulated by excessive words.
Do you see what Jesus does here in this section?
He connects true spirituality, true relationship with him,
and a life of prayer, a life of certain kind of prayer.
Puts them together.
Prayer is tied together with a genuine relationship with God.
Now, thankfully to help us in our prayers,
Jesus goes on to graciously give us a wonderful example
of what prayer looks like for his disciples.
It is a prayer that has relationship with God at its very centre.
It's usually referred to, traditionally referred to as the Lord's Prayer,
but as the New Testament scholar Don Carson suggests,
it is more appropriate title would be the Lord's Model Prayer,
because Jesus himself actually never prayed this prayer.
Carson says,
it is less a prayer that Jesus prayed than the prayer that he gave his disciples
as a paradigm for their own praying.
And Carson goes on to suggest,
it's also somewhat ironic that at the very place that Jesus tells us
that we are not to keep babbling on like the pagans do,
is the very place that he gives us a prayer
that has regularly been babbled in churches ever since.
Tim Keller says that the Lord's Prayer is the greatest martyr on earth.
Everyone tortures and abuses it,
so few get comfort and joy from its proper use.
It is like a mine with precious jewels and diamonds
that we can see, but that we just cannot extract.
Jesus gave this prayer to us to unlock all the riches of prayer.
It is the single richest source in the entire Bible on how to pray,
and yet it is an untapped resource,
partly because it is so familiar to us.
Martin Luther said in one of his works on prayer,
how many pray the Lord's Prayer a thousand times in the course of a year,
and yet if they were to keep on doing so for a thousand more years,
they would not have prayed or tasted it at all.
Our world is starving for spiritual experience,
and Jesus gives us the means to it in just a few words here.
It's like Jesus saying,
wouldn't you like to come face to face with the Father
and the King of the universe every day
to pour out your heart to him and have a deep sense
that he is listening to you and that he is loving you?
And that's what this prayer does for us in its proper use.
So let's take a very brief tour of the Lord's Prayer.
It consists of six petitions,
but it begins with an address.
Verse 9,
As John Calvin said,
who would break forth in such rashness
as to claim for himself
the honour of being a son of God
unless he had been adopted as children of grace
in the Lord Jesus Christ?
And so what he's saying there
is that this opening address of God as Father
in the Lord's Prayer
is not so much a call just to plunge right in
and start talking to God
as much as it is a call
to first
pause
and recollect
our situation
and realise
our standing in Christ
before we proceed
in prayer.
It's a recognition
of everything that we have
in Christ
to be able to call
the unapproachable
God of this universe
Father.
That's what Jesus has done for us.
We should start by asking God
to implant in our hearts
a comforting trust
in his fatherly love
and our status in him.
And then comes the first petition.
Hallowed be your name.
Now the word hallowed
doesn't get much use nowadays,
but then again
neither does the notion
of hallowedness
because it means holiness.
Doesn't get much of air time
in our secular society.
But when you look at it
on its surface
it seems a little bit odd
that we should be asking God
for his name to be holy
when it already is holy.
The issue seems
to be
not that God's name
is not holy
but that our use of it
is not holy.
That seems to be
the issue here.
You see,
when we declare ourselves
to be Christian
we identify
with God's name.
As his name bearers
we represent
a good and a holy God.
And so we're praying
with this first petition
that God would keep us
from dishonouring
his name
the name by which
we are called
and that he would
empower us
to become holy ourselves.
That our lives
would display
his character
his holiness
and his goodness
to this world
that they too
might honour
his name
with their lives.
The second petition
verse 10
your kingdom come
this is a lordship petition
it is asking God
to extend
his royal power
over every part
of our lives
over our emotions
and our desires
and our thoughts
and our commitments.
We're asking God
to so fully rule
rule us
that we would want
to obey him
with all of our hearts
and our bodies
and our souls
and our minds
and to do it
with great joy
to want him
to rule over us
and to pray
your kingdom come
is also a yearning
for God's total control
his total rule
to be taken up
over all things
it is a yearning
for him to usher in
his final
eternal kingdom
a perfect future
where all peace
and justice reigns.
The third petition
is your will be done
verse 10
let me read to you
Martin Luther's
paraphrase
of this petition
your will be done
grant us grace
to bear willingly
all sorts of sickness
poverty
disgrace
suffering
and adversity
and to recognize
that in this
your divine will
is crucifying
our will.
Now that is a bold
paraphrase
that is a bold
paraphrase
but unless
we are profoundly
confident
in being able
to say
my father
in heaven
then we will
never be able
to say
your will be done
unless we are
totally confident
that he is my father
because of the work
of Christ
and everything
that I have
in being able
to approach him
then we will
never be able
to say
your will be done
in my life.
Only if we
trust God
as father
can we ask
for the grace
to bear
our troubles
with patience
and grace.
This is the only
part of the Lord's
prayer that Jesus
himself prayed
the only bit.
It was the
garden of Gethsemane
under circumstances
far more crushing
than any of us
will ever face
he submitted
to his father's
will rather
than following
his desires
and what was
the outcome?
It saved us.
Because he submitted
to the father's
will we can
call him father
just like Jesus
did and that's
why we can
trust him.
He always works
everything out
for the good
of those who
love him.
And so these
first three
petitions are
the beginning
of prayer
and did you
notice they're
all about God?
They're all
about God.
Our own needs
and issues are
not the beginning
of prayer.
We are to give
pride of place
to praising
and honouring
him to yearning
to see his
greatness and to
see it acknowledged
everywhere and to
aspire to full
love and obedience.
Adoration and
thanksgiving,
in other words
God-centredness
comes first
because it heals
our hearts
of their
self-centredness
which has a
tendency to
curve us in
on ourselves
and to shut
down our vision
of God
and distorts
our vision
of all things
so that we
wallow
in our
circumstances.
we begin
in the
Lord's
prayer
with a
vision
of the
all
sufficiency
of God.
We look
to our
needs in
prayer in
the fourth
petition,
verse 11,
give us today
our daily
bread.
1 Corinthians
4 reminds
us what do
you have that
you did not
receive and if
you did receive
it why do you
boast as though
you did not?
The Bible
teaches us
that God
is the
ultimate
source of
every good
thing,
food,
clothing,
work,
leisure,
strength,
intelligence,
friendship,
whatever you
want to name
and our
ingratitude to
him is an
affront to
him.
How do we
express our
ingratitude to
him?
By assuming
that he owes
us these
things.
And when
we work on
the assumption
that he owes
us these
things,
when these
good gifts
dry up,
our tendency
is to
complain and
grumble and
whinge.
Our joy is
lost.
As our
heavenly
father we
come to
him as
his dependent
children with
our needs
in prayer
expecting a
positive response
from him.
Because he
is a good
God.
But we
do it so
changed by
our satisfaction
in him and
our trust in
him that it's
whatever his
will is that
matters.
The fifth
petition is in
verse 12,
forgive us our
debts as we
also forgiven
our debtors.
This petition
concerns our
relationships both
with God and
with others.
Martin Luther
said that this
petition is not
only a challenge
to our pride,
but a test of
true relationship
with God.
If we find
confession and
repentance
traumatic and
demeaning, he
says that means
that the heart is
not right with
God and cannot
draw confidence
from his
gospel.
people.
He says if
regular confession
doesn't produce an
increase of our
confidence in who
we are in
Christ and in
fact joy in our
life, then he
says we do not
understand that
salvation by grace
is the essence of
the Christian
faith.
God and our
relationship with
others together.
If we have not
seen our sin and
sought radical
forgiveness from
God, we will be
unable to forgive
and to seek the
good of those who
have wronged us.
And so Martin
Luther suggests
that unresolved
bitterness,
unresolved
bitterness is a
sign that we
are not right
with God.
It also means
that if we're
holding a grudge,
it would be
somewhat hypocritical
of us to seek
forgiveness from
God for our
sins as verse 14
warns us.
The sixth
petition is in
verse 13,
lead us not in
temptation but
deliver us from
the evil one.
temptation in
the sense of
being tried and
tested is not
only inevitable
but it's also
desirable in the
Bible.
The Bible talks
of suffering and
difficulty as a
furnace to which
impurities are
burnt off and we
become to a
greater sense of
God's love for us
and greater self
knowledge and
humility and faith
and love and
endurance.
However, to
enter into
temptation according
to Matthew 26
is to entertain
and consider the
prospect of
giving into
sin.
And so this
petition here is
a hefty reminder
that just as we
ought to
consciously be
dependent on
God for all of
our physical
needs, which is
why we pray,
give us today our
daily bread, so
also we should
consciously sense
our dependence upon
him for all
moral triumph and
spiritual victory.
This petition
reminds us that
we are morally
weak and any
virtues that we
possess at all
are because the
fruit of the
spirit.
It reminds us that
our hearts are so
deceptive and the
evil one is
malicious and
cunning and we
need our father's
help for any
moral triumph.
We are dependent
upon God for
all of our
physical needs
and for all
moral triumph.
And so what
Jesus does here in
these verses is
he tests the
reality of God
in our hearts.
These words
would have hit
the original
hearers like a
bomb blast and
it's what these
words are meant to
do for us as they
reach into the
depths of our
hearts.
God looks right
at the heart.
He doesn't look at
the external acts
of piety.
We can hide the
depths of our
hearts from each
other but we
cannot hide them
from God.
And Jesus tests
our hearts to
see if God
himself is in
fact our
sufficiency.
Jesus is calling
for a radical
reorientation upon
God himself in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
He is pushing us
to have a real
utterly authentic
personal relationship
with God through
Jesus.
Jesus is pushing
away from us as
a church.
This prayer is
addressed to the
church, the
disciples of Jesus.
He is encouraging
us to push us
away from a
stale repetition
of words and a
form and pushing
us away from
vain, showy,
external piety
into a relationship
with God that goes
right to the heart
and flows out
from the heart.
A relationship
that says God's
at the centre.
A relationship
that will express
itself in a
prayer life that
is modelled on a
prayer like this.
Let's pray.
Gracious Father,
we thank you for
the work that you've
done in the Lord
Jesus Christ in
calling us to know
you.
You, the
unapproachable,
perfect and holy
God, have come
to us so that we
could come to you.
We thank you for
all the privileges
of being able to
call you the great
God of this
universe, our
Father.
Thank you that you
listen to our
prayers even more
than we are willing
to say them.
We thank you that
you have control
over all that is
and we pray that
you would help us
depend upon you.
And we ask
tonight that you
would teach us to
pray.
Amen.