Matthew 6:9-10 "How to Pray, Part 1"

1:08I have been playing golf for 35 years. I played golf with the men of New Life yesterday at Big Shots. And every time I walk away amazed at how bad I am at golf, it's just really, really hard. And if you play it more often, and I play pretty often, you're not necessarily guaranteed. To get better, you just might play mediocre golf regularly. And the only way to really get better at something like golf is to get a really good coach.

1:45Somebody who can teach you and train you the fundamentals of the game so that you will actually begin making progress in it. Friends, last week we began a new series called Christian Prayer, where we are walking through the Lord's Prayer over a four-week timeframe. We are asking Jesus to teach us to pray just as his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. Now, remember, as we talked about last week, three out of four Americans say that they pray at least once a week. But prayer is like golf.

2:22Just because you do it regularly doesn't mean you know how to do it or that you are improving in your practice of it. So, if we are going to learn how to pray, if we're going to improve our prayer lives, we need a teacher, a coach, an expert in prayer. Someone, say, like God's only begotten Son. And so, in verses 5 through 8, which we covered last week, Jesus, God's only begotten Son, began to teach us how to pray by saying, This is how you are not to pray.

3:00We are not to pray in order to be seen by others. And we're not to pray heaping up empty phrases like the Gentiles, thinking that we're going to be heard because of our many words. Instead, we saw that we're supposed to embrace Christian simplicity, meaning that we pray humbly, we pray faithfully, and we pray to be rewarded by God. This morning, we are covering verses 9 and 10, where Jesus gets into the actual prayer itself, where he gives us this model for prayer. And many Christians refer to this as the Lord's Prayer. And so Jesus is going to become our instructor in how to pray.

3:43So maybe you've never really prayed before. You've never really tried to communicate with God based on his promises in Scripture, but you want to learn how. Or maybe you've been praying your entire life. Maybe you've grown up around prayer. You've heard it. You've done it yourself. But you've never really sat at the feet of Jesus and allowed him to teach you how to pray. Either way, there is no shame in admitting that we don't know how to pray, or that we need to unlearn and relearn how to pray because Jesus wants us to learn how to pray.

4:28He wants us to learn how to pray. So that we will regularly and confidently communicate with our Father in heaven. And so, friends, this morning, we will learn that Christian prayer remembers God's nature and focuses on God's priorities. Let's look at the text here in verse 9. Begin with: Christian prayer remembers God's nature. Verse 9, Jesus says, Pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. So Jesus gives us this model for all of our prayers. He says, Pray then like this, and then addresses God as our Father in heaven.

5:19Think about those words, our Father in heaven. It is really hard to communicate with somebody if you don't know who you're talking to. 30 years ago, and I know this is going to be really hard to imagine for some of you, but 30 years ago, there was a time when a phone would ring and you would not know who was calling. No, it's true. Life in the olden days was just that chaotic. A phone would ring, and it did not have a screen that displayed a name, a number. Or a picture.

6:01You would just have to pick up the receiver and say, hello? And wait for the person who called to tell you who it was. It was madness. Even if you've never had that experience before, even if you are too young to have had that particular experience, I want you to imagine the phone rings and you answer the call, but the person on the other end of the line doesn't tell you who's calling. Do you think that's going to affect your conversation with them?

6:34Absolutely. If we are going to have a meaningful conversation, if we're going to be able to talk openly and honestly, if there's going to be any hope of sharing the intimate details of our lives, we have to know who it is that we are talking to. And that's why when Jesus teaches us to pray, he teaches us to begin with our Father in heaven. So, first, we are talking to our Father in heaven. Now, that's very important because America is built on rugged individualism. The idea that we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. The myth that you can and should do it alone.

7:23But Christianity is not based on any of those ideas. Christianity is built on the idea that. Through faith, we have been born again into a spiritual family. Through faith, older believers are spiritual mothers and fathers to us. Younger people are spiritual sons and daughters. Our peers are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Friends, that's one reason that being a member of a local church is so important for our spiritual growth and health. Because when you join a local church, it's not like joining a country club or like joining Costco.

8:09When you join a church, you join a family. A family with members that you know you can count on when a relationship ends, or when you lose your job, or when you're struggling with doubts about your faith, or when, I don't know, your kid locks you out of your bedroom, which may have happened this week to one among us. Friends, we are living in one of the loneliest periods in American history. COVID accelerated these trends, but more people live alone and isolated than at any other time in our country's history.

8:55And it is taking a toll on us. And part of the The beauty of the Lord's Prayer is that Jesus teaches us to pray in a way that reminds us right off the bat that we are not alone. You are not a spiritual orphan, an only child with no one else in this world to turn to. You have brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters in the faith that you can turn to. When we pray, we are praying to our Father in heaven.

9:32Second, we are praying to our Father in heaven. Now, throughout the Old Testament, God describes Himself as a Father many times to the people of Israel. But when they prayed, ancient Jews used to most often use exalted titles like sovereign Lord or King of the universe. So we can imagine how surprised the disciples were when, as Jesus is teaching them how to pray, he teaches them to address God as our Father. Now, you might have heard before that the word here, it's a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic word Abba, could be rendered daddy.

10:22And there's some truth to that. It's probably not quite accurate because kids did call their fathers Abba. But so did adults. And adults don't call their father daddy. So maybe a better translation would be papa. Something that's warm and familiar, but not childish. Now, for some people, thinking of God as father, to say nothing of thinking of him in some kind of a relational term like papa, is very hard. Maybe you never knew your father. Maybe you and your father have a cold and distant relationship.

11:04Maybe your father was abusive. And if any of those or all of those things are true, then it's going to be very hard for you to relate to God as father, and I'm sorry for that. But this is why it's so important for us to understand what kind of father God is. And we learn exactly what kind of father God is in the scripture. God reveals himself to be a perfect provider. Unlike some earthly fathers, he gives us everything we need when we need it. Jesus even says he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. He cares for all of his creation and provides for it. God is a perfect protector. In Psalm 18:30, God reveals himself to be a shield for those who take refuge in him from the storms of the world. Life.

12:02God is a perfect. We can't. Many of us have known to call on Jesus as Savior, but we can't forget Jesus is our rabbi, our teacher. He is the one who trains us to live in this world in a way that leads to flourishing the way that God intended us to live. And God is a perfect Savior. He sent His Son, His only begotten Son, to live the life that you and I were called to live, a life of perfect obedience and submission to the Father, but we failed to do it. And so Jesus came and He lived that life of perfect obedience and submission to the Father, offered himself in our place, died, was buried, and rose again that we might be saved through faith. Friends, that is God's nature.

12:54Unlike many earthly fathers, and to one extent, like all earthly fathers, he is a perfect provider, a perfect protector, a perfect teacher, and a perfect savior. And remembering those truths and many others like them completely transforms the way that we speak to God in prayer. Third, we're talking to our Father in heaven. Now, when Jesus says, our Father in heaven, he's not really talking about where God lives. Scripture reveals God to be omnipresent. He's everywhere. That's what David says in Psalm 139. Where could I go from your spirit? God is everywhere. So when Jesus calls God our Father in heaven, he's not really talking about where God lives.

13:49He is reminding us that God is high and lifted up. He is exalted. He is unlike us in that he has power and knowledge beyond what any of us have. In fact, the scripture reveals God to be omniscient, all-knowing, omnipotent, all-powerful. Now, of course, good earthly fathers love you and want what is best for you. But earthly fathers are limited. We don't know everything, and we can't do everything that we would want to do for our children. But friends, God does. He does know everything, and he is all-powerful, so he can do anything that you need, and he knows what is best for you. Things that sometimes you would not even choose for yourself, he is going to choose for you, and he has the power to actually bring those things about. So he can do anything we ask.

14:52So when we pray, we aren't wishing upon a star. We're not asking for some good luck. We are praying to an all-knowing, all-powerful God who also happens to be our Father in heaven. Friends, when you pray, do you begin by remembering God's nature? Do you begin your times in prayer focusing on who God has revealed himself to be in Scripture so that you know who you're talking to? It completely transforms the way that we communicate with him.

15:32How would you communicate with God if you knew that you could speak anytime to the King of the universe who is all-powerful and who loves you and wants the best for you as a perfect Father? Remembering and meditating on those truths completely transforms how we communicate with God and how often we communicate with God. And so I want to encourage you, as you review your prayer life this week, to consider how are you doing in remembering God's nature when you approach Him. Jesus teaches us to pray to our Father in heaven, encouraging us to go to Him regularly and confidently.

16:19Remembering God's nature also helps to make sense out of the first request here in the Lord's Prayer. If you look there again at verse 9, our Father in heaven... Hallowed be your name. Now, that word hallowed is not a word that we use in English very often. It means to sanctify, to set apart, to regard as holy. And so, this verse could be translated: let your name be kept holy. Let your name be treated with reverence.

16:55So, for a moment, picture somebody that you love and respect and admire. It might be a parent or a grandparent. It might be a coach or a teacher or a mentor, somebody that you really respect and admire. Whoever that person is, you care about how people talk about them. You care about their reputation and how they are perceived by others. And as a result, you are careful to always speak about them in respectful terms, in ways that show how highly you think of them. You realize that your own words and your actions reflect on them and their reputation to some degree. And so, you're careful about what you say and what you do.

17:45So, as those who know God as our Father in heaven, we want his name to be kept holy, to be treated with reverence. And so, we pray that that would be true. And we also realize that as God's children, our words and our actions reflect upon him, and they affect the way other people think about and talk about and live before God, just as a child's behavior and words reflect to some degree on his or her parents.

18:22So by praying, hallowed be your name, we're not just praying for those in the world who do not yet treat God's name with reverence, although we are certainly doing that. We are praying for ourselves, that God would help us to keep his name holy, that God would help us to treat his name with reverence, that our own words and actions would reflect well upon the Lord. Look what Jesus says in Matthew 5. He says, in the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

19:09So we should pray for God's name to be kept holy by others, but we should also speak and live in a way that influences others to treat God's name with that holy reverence. Christian prayer remembers God's character, that He is our Father in heaven. And because of that, that we want his name to be hallowed, to be treated with reverence and kept holy. Second, Christian prayer focuses on God's priorities. We'll see that in verse 10. Let's pick up there.

19:49Jesus prays, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, verse 10, your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In this verse, Jesus teaches us to pray for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done. In other words, to focus on God's priorities in our prayers. So the first thing he does is he teaches us to focus on God's kingdom and not on the kingdoms of this world. In order to do that, we need to define God's kingdom. What is God's kingdom? Well, in his book, What is the Gospel? Greg Gilbert notes that when we think of a kingdom, we're usually thinking of geography, of land and borders, of like the middle earth or something.

20:46But God's kingdom is different. Look what Gilbert says. He writes, biblically speaking, the kingdom of God is best understood as more a kingship than a kingdom as we Usually use that word. God's kingdom is therefore God's rule, reign, and authority. God's kingdom is his rule, reign, and authority. It's not a particular place, a land with borders. It's his rule, his reign, and his authority. Now, if you are familiar with the Gospels, you know that Jesus talks about the kingdom of God a lot. In Mark, in Luke, and John, it's always called the kingdom of God. In Matthew, written to a particularly Jewish audience, he refers to it as the kingdom of heaven, but these are the same concept, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. So I want you to look at two verses from Matthew's Gospel. Look at Matthew 4.

21:46Jesus says, From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now look at Matthew 26. This is right after Jesus pours out the wine and drinks it with his disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus says, I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. These two verses illustrate an important truth about God's kingdom. It has already come and it has not yet arrived.

22:27First, God's kingdom is already here. It has already come. Jesus inaugurated his kingdom with his first coming when he lived and died and rose again. And Scripture tells us that everyone who believes in Jesus, who puts their faith in him, is now a citizen of that heavenly kingdom. Look what Paul writes in Philippians 3. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Colossians chapter 1. Paul says, God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

23:18So, in one sense, God's kingdom has already been inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Everyone who trusts in him is already a citizen of God's heavenly kingdom from the moment that they believe in Christ. And friends, the way that we live our lives together, particularly in the local church, is a picture of life in God's kingdom today. How can God's rule, reign, and authority be seen on this earth? It is seen in us and among us as we collectively submit ourselves to God, the King, as we learn how to live. Live life under his rule and reign and authority, submitting to his word and his spirit. That's how it's seen now. So, in one sense, God's kingdom has already come.

24:12But on the other hand, God's kingdom has not yet arrived. Theologians will use the words inaugurated to describe what happened when Jesus came first, and they will say consummated to describe his second coming. So, the kingdom has been inaugurated, but it has not yet been consummated. And that's why Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper that He would not drink wine with them again until He drank it new with them in the Father's kingdom. Because when He returns, that is when the kingdom will be fully consummated. We are waiting for Jesus to return as He promised. And so, Jesus teaches us to pray, Your kingdom come. His kingdom will not be established in all of its fullness until He returns to defeat His enemies, make all things new, and take His seat on the throne in the new Jerusalem, in the new heavens and the new earth once and for all. His rule and reign and authority will then be established everywhere for all eternity.

25:24So, friends, Jesus teaches us to focus on God's kingdom, the kingdom that is both already and not yet. Rather than the kingdoms of this world. And in an election year, that is very important to remember. No matter who is elected this November, it will not be the end of the world and it will not be the beginning of everlasting peace and prosperity. All human government is impermanent and flawed, which is why our hope must be in Christ alone and in his coming kingdom.

26:08So many of us are American citizens who are old enough to vote, and if that's you, I want to encourage you to take time to learn about the issues at stake and learn about the candidates. I want to encourage you to go and vote according to the teaching of God's Word and your conscience. But do not be misled by cable news networks or by social media outlets that want to convince you that one candidate or another is going to bring lasting peace on earth. They will not. Only Jesus can do that, and only Jesus will do that.

26:52And so he teaches us to focus on God's kingdom and not the kingdoms of this world. Second, Jesus teaches us to focus on God's will and not the will of man. What is the will of God? Have you ever asked yourself that or have you ever been asked that by someone else? Many people think that God's will is indecipherable, that no one can ever know God's will. But if you've ever read the scriptures before, you know that's not true because God explicitly states over and over again exactly what his will is. Look at 1 Thessalonians 4.

27:35For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. Look at chapter 5. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Look at 1 Peter 2. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

28:19And from these verses, we know that God's will is for us to be completely holy, thankful, and good. And these are just a few words. Examples of God's will in Scripture, God's stated will that we should seek and pray for in our lives. But, friends, let's think about our prayer lives for a moment. If this is God's stated will that we be holy and rejoice and be thankful and do good to all people, especially those in the household of God, would we say that those are the kinds of things that dominate our prayers?

28:58Are those the kinds of things that we are most often praying for? I think if you're like most people, and if you're like me, frankly, you probably pray most often for immediate physical needs. Think about the things that dominate our prayers for ourselves and for each other. We pray often for safety and protection, especially while traveling, although traveling is safer than it's ever been in human history. We pray for health, although undoubtedly people are healthier than they've ever been. We have medical technology and drugs and practitioners that can help us to overcome or mitigate most things that we will encounter in this life from a health perspective.

29:46Think about how often we pray about the trials of modern life. Most of those things are what we might call first-world problems. Now, listen, there is nothing wrong with praying for any of those. Things. King David prayed for safety a lot. King Hezekiah prayed for his health when he got sick. Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding feast just so the host would not be embarrassed. It's not wrong to pray for safety or health or the trials of life.

30:27But friends, I think if we're honest, most of us would say that God's priorities, God's will, is not what we pray about most often. It's our own will. It's our own concerns. It's our own immediate spiritual needs, or physical needs, rather, I should say. So here in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray that God's will would be done. That beginning with those who love and serve him, that we would pray most often that God's will would be obeyed here and now, like it is in heaven, and like it will be when Jesus returns. And so Christian prayer focuses, if there is a key phrase in these two short verses, I think that it's found at the end of verse 9. Look there at the end of verse 9. I think this is the centerpiece of this section and maybe of the entire prayer. Hallowed be your name.

31:31As Christians, that is what we want more than anything else in the world. When God saved us and gave us new hearts with new desires, what we began to want more than anything else in the world is that God's name would be kept holy, that it would be treated with reverence, that it would be hallowed, first in our own lives and then in the lives of everybody else that we come in contact with. I think Paul captures this well in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Take a look.

32:06He says, So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. That is exactly right. In our eating, hallowed be your name. In our drinking, hallowed be your name. In whatever it is that we do, at work, at home, in our studies, in our jobs, in our marriage, in our families, from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we go to bed at night, hallowed be your name. That is what we want.

32:49And so we pray these things that Jesus taught us to pray, that God's kingdom would come and that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven, because that is what we want to see. God's name being kept holy, being treated with reverence. And praying this prayer or one like it on a regular basis helps to ensure that God's priorities remain our own priorities as citizens of His heavenly kingdom. If you're here today and you are not sure if you are a citizen of God's heavenly kingdom, then I want to leave you with a few questions to consider: Are God's priorities my priorities?

33:40Am I looking for a heavenly kingdom or an earthly kingdom? Am I desiring God's will to be done or my will to be done? Am I living for God's glory or my own? You see, you can pray the Lord's Prayer every day of your life, even multiple times a day, and yet live for an earthly kingdom, for your will to be done, and for your own glory. But God is the king of the universe. His kingdom has come and it is yet to come. One day soon, his will will be done on earth. As it is in heaven. And that is a frightening prospect unless the king of the universe is also your heavenly father.

34:40And God can become your heavenly father today. Jesus said that's why he came. He came to seek and to save the lost. That nobody can come to the Father except through him, because he alone is fully God and fully man. He came to bridge the unbridgeable gap between you and God with his sinless life, his death, and his resurrection from the dead. And so this morning, if you think about those questions and you come to the conclusion that you are not yet a citizen of God's heavenly kingdom, then we implore you to turn in faith to Jesus Christ. Repent of your sin and receive him by faith, and you will be adopted into God's family as his son or his daughter forever. You will be made a citizen of God's heavenly kingdom. And then you can pray for his kingdom to come and his will to be done from the bottom of your heart.

35:48Let's pray. God, we are so thankful that in your perfect wisdom, in your providence, you being in control of all things, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them one thing, and that was how to pray. We benefit from that. God, I pray for every Christian here today that you would help us to unlearn all of the things that we have learned and picked up about prayer in our lives that go against the ways that Jesus teaches us to pray in the scriptures. I pray that every Christian, every son and daughter of God in this room would learn to communicate with you, their heavenly Father and our heavenly Father, regularly and confidently.

37:14God, we pray for those who have not yet come to you in faith and therefore have not communicated with you through the finished work of Jesus Christ. We pray that today would be the day that they are adopted into. Your family through faith. We pray that you would move in hearts this morning. Holy Spirit, that you would bring many in this room to repentance and faith, men, women, and children, that they could cry out to you as their Father in heaven for the first time.

37:50Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of gathering together and worshiping you as a body of Christ. So that we can sing and pray and lift up your glory, your power, your wonderful works as our Father in heaven. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.