The Kingdom of God- 4

Subtitle:  Living in the Kingdom of God

Various passages.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 6, 2025.

We have talked about the means of entering the Kingdom.  We do so by putting our faith and trust in Jesus.  We trust in who he is as the Lord and Savior.  It is he who has taken our sins upon himself so that we can be free from them.  He is giving us a taste of eternal life through the Holy Spirit, and will raise us up in the Resurrection of the Righteous in order to make us a completed testimony of His eternal life.

We are citizens of this strange, spiritual kingdom, that is very much unlike any other kingdom on this earth.  Today, we will look at what it means, what it looks like, to living in this spiritual kingdom.

Let’s look at some passages.

The Holy Spirit gives us life (Romans 8:11-14)

In this chapter, Paul is describing how our spiritual life is a result of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Verse 14 lays out the reality that we can only become the sons of God through the help of the Holy Spirit.  This is part of the life giving work of God’s Spirit.

He first leads us to see who Jesus is and our need to trust in him for salvation.  When a person responds with faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit does a real work of making us spiritually alive.  Thus, the Spirit works to put the life of Christ in front of us, and He does a spiritual work of making us a new creation, born from above.

This is foundational to our new life in this new kingdom.  I can know for certain, I can have faith in the fact, that the Spirit of God is giving me life, and will continue to supply spiritual life to me.  No newborn baby brings themselves into existence.  God is the One who makes us spiritually alive.  However, in the case of spiritual birth, there is a cooperation between God and the one becoming a spiritual newborn.  Thus, by our faith in Jesus, God gives us spiritual life.  Also, by our continued faith in Jesus, the Spirit continues to lead us in this new spiritual life.  Over time, this spiritual nourishment causes us to become more and more spiritually mature.

This is what Paul is talking about in verse 12.  He uses the idea of a debt on the heels of all the life that the Spirit of God is giving us.  The Spirit has brought us to Jesus, made us spiritually alive, and continues to nourish us with spiritual life daily.  We are in debt to this great act of love. 

On the other hand, some people live as if they are in debt to their flesh.  What has the flesh ever done for us?  The flesh drew us into sin and bondage.  It makes us guilty before God and without any power to save ourselves.    A Christian knows that the gracious work of God’s Spirit is giving us life over the top of a life of the flesh that only brought death into our lives.

Now, this is not a debt in the sense that we need to pay it off in order to come into the Kingdom, etc.  Rather, Christ died for us so that we might live.  We owe him our lives, so we live life for his purposes.  The Holy Spirit supplies that spiritual nourishment for us to do this work and become more like Jesus, a maturing process.  This is a debt of love that is never intended to be “paid off.”  He first loved us.  We will never fully reciprocate that love.  Yet, He still loves us!

Paul’s point is that a Christian should no longer live in order to satisfy the lusts of their flesh.  This self-focused life is a part of our old life before Christ.  We are to put those lusts to death, and choose to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.  We are led by the Holy Spirit in putting our fleshly desires, and the deeds that flow out of them, to death and replacing them with life-giving righteousness.

If you pay attention to the argument throughout the chapter, you will see that Paul has more in mind in verse 11 than spiritual birth and spiritual maturity.  He is looking ahead to a point in the future when Jesus Christ will resurrect the righteous by that same Spirit that raised him from the dead.  Paul is reminding us that this is a real spiritual work that impacts not only how we live today, but also our eternal future.  Our Christian life on this mortal plane will some day come to an end in death.  Our bodies will be laid in the grave, but our spirits will go to be with Jesus in heaven.  There we will await the day of resurrection.  When that occurs, we will receive a glorified body that does not grow old and die.  We will be immortal as Jesus is.  This is pictured as an inheritance that has been reserved for us by God.

Think of it.  If the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, then you have nothing to worry about.  The Spirit is our source of life, even if our mortal bodies die.  We will live eternally in perfect fellowship with God.  We have fellowship now, but it is not perfect yet.  When we step into the eternal state, we will not have to take God by faith.  Instead, we will dwell with Him within His blazing glory and immediate presence.

Notice that Paul is using battle imagery here.  We do not fight against people and put human enemies to death.  Rather, we battle against our fleshly lusts, which are easily stirred up by this world and wicked spiritual forces.  Even bringing the Gospel to others can be seen as setting captives free from slavery in a wicked kingdom.

This may feel like a hopeless battle, but we are not doing this alone.  The more I learn to rely upon the Holy Spirit’s help, the better I will do at removing sin and replacing it with the righteousness of Jesus.

Our heart is like a garden.  In this mortal life, we will always have to weed out these lusts. We would like to believe that we could weed the garden of our heart so well that we never had a stray thought or desire ever again.  This is not the case.  You will not be perfect and complete like that until the resurrection.  Yet, we should take heart.  The task of putting our lusts to death becomes easier with daily focus.  Once a garden has been weeded, it requires much less energy if we check it every day.  However, if you “take a break from weeding,” or only periodically have a fit of weeding, you can expect that it will be spiritually taxing all of the time. 

Matthew 7:24-25.  At the end of the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus gave us a different image of this same thing.  Our life is pictured as the building of a house.  If we build our life by trusting in the teaching of Jesus, then our house, our life, will withstand the coming storm.  However, if we do not build our life upon the teachings of Jesus, then our house will be destroyed by the coming storm.

The storm can be applied to the difficulties of this life.  The cares and difficulties of life can test our faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus.  They come along and test just how well we have been building.  Yet, I do believe that Jesus has a different storm in mind.  He is speaking of the time of judgment after this life is done.  We will stand before God.  This is the ultimate test of whether our house will stand or not.  My house is all of the ways that I have lived and the reasons for why I have done what I have done.  Only those who have truly listened to Jesus will survive it.  Of course, none of us do it perfectly.  Jesus is not talking about a person who never made a mistake.  In fact, building can sometimes be analogous to warfare.  You wrestle with the imperfection of the building materials in order to get things in a good relationship to one another.  A perfect house that has no imperfections, subtle or otherwise, doesn’t exist.  However, many good houses do exist.  No matter how beautiful the house, if it is not built upon the foundation of the teachings of Jesus, it will not survive the Judgment.  These two images of a spiritual battle and a spiritual building are both important and simply two different ways of looking at the same thing.

A disciple of Christ is devoted to Jesus

As a disciple of Jesus, we need to stay close to the master so that we can learn from him.  A disciple is devoted to the master and his wisdom, his way of life.

A disciple will be a student of the Bible.  In 2 Timothy 3:14-17, Paul encourages Timothy in the work ahead of him.  He speaks of the “sacred writings” that Timothy had known from his youth.  In verse 16, he refers to these sacred writings as the Scriptures.  Of course, Paul is talking about the Old Testament (note: the New Testament was being written at that time).  The same is true of the New Testament, but let’s put that point aside.

Paul wants Timothy to remember that the Bible is given to us to do several things in our life.  He first points to the teaching we receive through the Bible.  The disciples of the days of Jesus were taught directly by him.  Each day, he would take time to teach them his way of living versus the way they had been living on their own.  We do not have the luxury of this same relationship.  Of course, Jesus teaches us through the Holy Spirit, but he is not physically in our lives.  Thus, the Word of God becomes even more critical for us.  The Bible is a confirmed and sure teaching from God through Jesus and his apostles.  We don’t have to guess at how to live for Jesus.  We can read it and obey.

All Christians should make sure that they are reading the Bible each day.  The Spirit of God will help it to be profitable to us spiritually.  It teaches us those things that we don’t know.  Not all of us were like Timothy, being taught the Bible by a mom when we were young.  It will take time to learn what Christ wants us to learn.  However, a little each day will slowly build up over time.  We will not just grow in what we understand, but then the Holy Spirit will teach us how to live those things out in our life.

The Bible is also profitable for reproving us.  This is the idea of convincing us, or proving something to us.  This is a natural part of all learning.  It is not enough to be able to regurgitate an answer on a paper test.  We have to be convinced of the truth, the wisdom, of Christ in order to live life as he commands.

The Bible is also good for correction.  It can correct bad ideas, poor choices, and bad habits that we have built up through the years.

Lastly, Paul mentions that it is profitable for training in righteousness.  There are two ditches that Christians can fall into in this area of righteousness.  We can make the mistake of thinking that our salvation and hope is based upon how well we live righteously.  We can focus on lists of things that we can’t do and things we can do.  The emphasis is that it is all on me.  The other mistake is the opposite.  This view basically surrenders to the point that we cannot be righteous like Jesus.  Jesus died on the cross to be my righteousness.  Therefore, I shouldn’t diminish his perfect work by trying to do righteousness myself. 

This sounds better and sees everything resting upon Jesus.  However, it misses one thing: the purpose of God.  God did not set us free from our sins so that we could just go on sinning, but now without consequences (tongue-in-cheek “Praise the Lord!).  Yes, only the righteousness of Jesus can pay the price of our sins and save us.  Yet, God saved us in order for us to be trained in the righteousness of Jesus.  Training involves a lot of messing up, but also, getting up and going back into the battle of learning.

Some people shy away from this out of a strange sense of trying not to diminish God.  They are stuck in seeing all righteousness about being saved.  However, once we have been made alive in Jesus, we can now follow the Spirit as He leads us to do the righteousness of Christ.

Why do Christians do the things they do?  If we are simply doing good things so that our Christian friends will remark how much like Jesus we are (for social image), then we are only trying to live a Christian life from the leading of our flesh.   Getting our name on a building and feeling good about ourselves around other Christians are not the “good works” for which the Holy Spirit is equipping us.  A true disciple of Christ does what they do because the Spirit of God is prompting them as they read the Word and in other ways that we will see.  They are being led by the Spirit out of love for Christ.  This is what makes their works acceptable to God.

A disciple of Christ is devoted to the teachings of Jesus and his apostles.  This is given to us in the Bible.  Thus, the Bible can be seen as our textbook, and life can be seen as our homework.  Yet, there is another area that is important for a disciple.

A disciple will be a person of prayer.  Philippians 4:6-7 points to the importance of prayer for the disciple.  Prayer is communication with God.  It may seem strange at first because God is Spirit and speaks to us in ways different than we have experienced.  In truth, we should prayerfully read the Word of God.  It is a spiritual book breathed forth by God through faithful men.  We should not think that we can understand it without God’s help.  “Lord, help me to hear what you are saying to me today.  Lead me; guide me, and help me to live for you!  Give me some homework today so that I know what I should be working on.”  This is how we should approach the Bible.

That said, a disciple of Jesus needs to set aside time to pray.  There are different kinds of prayer.  This passage really focuses on 2.  An acronym that is used for types of prayer is ACTS:  prayers of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (Petitions). 

Paul is focusing on the anxiety that believers can have in this life.  He points to our ability to request, or petition, God for the things we need, or at least, we think we need.  The believer who lays such requests before God should also do so with a heart of Thanksgiving.  Paul sees this as a great source of peace for the believer.

Requests by their very nature can easily deteriorate into whining and complaining.  We can grow angry with God when He doesn’t do exactly what we want, or even does the opposite.  This is why Thanksgiving is so important, as well as prayers of adoration and confession.  These kind of prayers keep us grounded in the truth of who we are when we approach God to ask Him for something.  In the end, we are the recipients of His great love.  Before you ask God for anything, make sure that you take time to thank Him for all that you have.  In fact, a thankful heart never treats a request as a means for God to prove His loyalty and love.  Jesus proved the heart of the Father at the cross.  Prayers of Thanksgiving ground our requests in the goodness and faithfulness of God.  Like a child, we can ask our heavenly Father.  Yet, we can also rest in the knowledge that that request will be filtered through His love and wisdom.

Intercession is prayer for someone else.  This too is the kind of prayer that helps ground requests to ourselves in something other than fleshly desires.  As we pray for others, we also see ourselves in them.  We recognize why God may say no to us at times.  He might even say yes, but not now.  Regardless, it is ours to make our request known, and then to rest in the peace that His Holy Spirit wants to give to us.  This peace will guard our hearts and minds from the thoughts and fears that we can have.  Thoughts and fears like Eve had when she listened to the serpent.  “God doesn’t really care about you.  He only wants to hold you back from something good.”  This is a lie that the serpent spun for our first parents, and he is still spinning that yarn to this day.  Have you ever believed it?

Prayer is the ground where we humble ourselves and talk with God.  No one prayer time will fix all our questions and problems.  It is a daily and lifelong communion with Him that will only be perfected as we go into eternity.  If we don’t spend time touching base with the master, then we will not become more like him.  Thus, it is not enough to read about Jesus.  We need to spend time in prayer talking with him.

A disciple will take their place in the family of God.  In Hebrew 10:24-25, the writer tells believers not to forsake the assembling together.  He even points out that some people in those days were doing exactly that.  They became believers, joined the Church for a season and then, they walked away.

This can be for various reasons.  Some people are walking away from Jesus, and so, walking away from the his Church is the natural second action.  Others convince themselves that they still believe in Jesus, but they think they don’t need other believers.  Perhaps, someone said something that hurt them.  Or, maybe, they are just reclusive.  The writer of Hebrews tells us that part of being together is to “stimulate one another to love and good deeds.”  We should be prayerfully considering how we can encourage other believers, and they should be prayerfully considering how to encourage me. 

This is what the Holy Spirit is leading you to do.  Thus, a person who walks away from a body of believers is refusing the leading of the Spirit.  Of course, there are some churches that you may need to flee.  They are a cult or have allowed the flesh to corrupt the leadership and activity of the church.  Regardless, we need to go somewhere.  You can say that you can’t find a place, but that is usually a cop-out.  The Holy Spirit will lead you somewhere, and that somewhere will not be a place peopled by perfect Christians who never make a mistake.

Why will you not step up and let the Lord work through those relationships to make you more like Jesus and to make them more like Jesus?  The answer is in our flesh.  The solution is in dying to the desires of our flesh and saying yes to the desires of Jesus.

The Church is like a family, a family of God.  We have to learn how to say that we are sorry.  We have to learn how to say that we forgive.  This is not easy, and we can be stubborn.  Yet, may God help us to become quicker and quicker at yielding to the teachings of Jesus.  There is life in it.

When we humble ourselves through prayer, we may with frustration say that we don’t see what God sees in those other people.  However, the Holy Spirit will remind us that we also don’t see what God saw in us.

When we give mercy to others (even undeservedly), we are actually making the case for why others should have mercy on us.  If you don’t have mercy on others, do not think that you will receive mercy from God when you stand before Him on Judgment Day.

All of this to say that a true disciple will learn to take their place in the body of Christ.  They will learn to receive and give stimulus that leads us all to love others and to do the good works that God has for us to do.

Of course, this is a hard thing to do.  It can be intimidating and uncomfortable.  We may even fear doing it.  However, this is God’s signature.  You were made to be able to do things far beyond your comfort level.  Every little boy who thinks about growing up and working 40 to 60 hours a week can balk at growing up.  Every teenage girl who thinks about giving birth to a baby and raising a child can be intimidated at the thought.  However, God made little boys and little girls to grow up into men and women.  It may be scary, but there is a greater good in it that we can’t understand until we’ve done it.

In the end, it is the same as our salvation.  A disciple who has faith in Jesus will trust that Jesus will help them to join other Christians and live for him.  Somehow and someway, we can become family by the help of God’s Holy Spirit.

These are not the only ways to show our devotion to Jesus.  However, they are very important things that we need to embrace by the Spirit’s help.  May God help us to be devoted followers of Jesus!

Kingdom of God 4 audio

The Sermon on the Mount XVII

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy IV

Matthew 7:7-12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 14, 2024.

Jesus finishes up this section by looking at our relationship with God through prayer (or lack thereof).  How can prayer become an area that is fraught with hypocrisy?  It can be so in the same way that prayer has always been a challenge to the flesh of us humans.

Are you challenged by prayer and sustaining a relationship with God through it?  Prayer is not easy on us, at least when we approach it as Jesus taught back in chapter 6.  Secret prayer is acid to our ego and our flesh.

Let’s look at our passage and get into this topic.

Hypocrisy in our prayer life (v. 7-12)

In verse seven, Jesus uses the command form of “asking, seeking and knocking” in his description of prayer.  We could say that these verbs represent different ways of describing prayer, or ways of thinking about prayer.  The command is to be doing something in the present because something else will happen in the future.  We should note that Jesus does not tell us how long that will be.  In fact, from the experience of the saints, we know that this period of time (from praying to receiving an answer to prayer) varies from an immediate answer to an answer that may be answered after our death.

Though you could infer this from verse 7, the addition of verse 8 makes clear that there is an implication of continuity in our prayers, persistence, perseverance.  Thus, we are to be asking in the present until that day in the future becomes today.  We should not confuse this with the earlier warning not to pray as if we will be heard by our many words.  That is pointing us towards simple prayers.  Whereas continuing to ask each day is not the same thing.  It is in truth continuing to have faith that God will answer.

When we feel that tendency to complain like this: “I asked God for such and such, but it didn’t happen,” we need to understand that our faith is being tested.  We need to wait upon the Lord’s answer in faith and trust, while continuing to ask. 

Now, let’s look at the same statement that is made in three different views of prayer.

The first is the idea of asking.  We come to God with a request.  Jesus essentially says for us to be asking and it will be given to you.  We may be asking for something tangible, like bread, or we may be asking for something less so, like wisdom.  Regardless Jesus emphasizes that his followers should be asking God with the expectation that they will receive from Him.

Sometimes we ask for things, but we haven’t thought through what it might look like for God to give it to us.  Wisdom is rarely given instantly as seems to be the case with Solomon (though it could be argued that it was not as immediate as people may think).  It typically comes through interactions with life and God’s help in the moment.  We then grow in wisdom as God helps us.  It doesn’t work like the futuristic movies that picture a person hooking their brain to a computer and downloading the skills to fly a military helicopter.  When we ask for wisdom, we should not expect to wake up as Solomon the next day.  However, we can be fully assured that God will help us to receive it in a multitude of many ways.

We might even ask ourselves (after asking God for something) this question.  What would be the righteous way to answer this?  What would be the good way that a loving, heavenly Father would answer this?  Asking our heaven Father for something involves maturing in our understanding of that process.  I didn’t know all of the things that my earthly parents were thinking about, but their answers and their timing helped me to grow in understanding them.  How much greater is this with God who is a perfect Father?  It is much more.

The second picture is that of seeking something from God (or even seeking deeper relationship with God).  Seeking involves not knowing where something is and trying to get to it, find it.  We may even think of prayer as seeking God’s wisdom in how we ask and how He responds.  Prayer is not about coming up to a cosmic vending machine and pushing certain buttons and putting in a certain amount of currency in order to get what you want.  In prayer, we are seeking something and our heavenly Father is just the One to help us find it in the righteous and proper way.  Thus we are commanded to be seeking and then we will find.

The third view of prayer pictures us knocking on a door.  Doors are a picture of access.  They often have locks to keep unauthorized people out.  Jesus is the door to the Father.  Thus, we pray to the Father in the name of the Son (through him).  However, there is a sense when we are asking God for something that it is much like knocking until He answers.  Am I going to get tired of knocking and walk away?  Will I be persistent, or accuse Him of being stingy?

The interesting thing is that God is pictured as a Father who is approachable and gives answer to prayer.  We see this all through the sermon on the Mount.  The essential statement underlying all of Christ’s commands is this.  “God is your heavenly Father who cares for you.  You can completely trust Him!”  In chapter 6 when he teaches us how to pray, he says to address God as a Father who is approachable and desirous to help us.  Is that how you see God?

Verse 8 quickly adds the reason why what he has said is true.  It essentially is a no-brainer statement.  However, this is what makes it so powerful.  We can grow discouraged and stop asking, seeking and knocking.  Jesus tells us that it is asking people who receive, seeking people who find, and knocking people to whom the door is opened.  It essentially undermines our tendency to quit.  Why would I quit when an essential aspect to receiving is being a asking person?  The reason is that I have lost faith in God’s care and love for me.

This point is not a guarantee that you will get exactly what you pray for, like an order at a fast food joint.  Rather, he is pointing out the silliness of not continuing to prayer.  Only those who continue in prayer will see answers.

We should also note here that we are not talking about the general grace of God.  Everyday God gives a certain amount of grace to everyone.  We all have oxygen.  When it rains, we all receive it (in that area).  The sun shines on us all alike.  We live in a world that is fit for us to survive.  However, in prayer, we are talking about special grace that comes in the form of an answer to our requests.  God in His sovereignty has provided a certain level of care for all.  However, He leaves room for us to take the initiative in order to make requests of Him.

Perhaps you “tried” being an asking person and “felt” like it “didn’t work.”  I will come back to some of the words in that last sentence.  But, let me just say that God isn’t something that you try.

Prayer has a level of discovery to it.  We pray for things, but we also want God’s wisdom and will (remember the Lord’s prayer).  My prayer about a situation, or for a particular thing, may change over time as I wrestle with God over it in prayer.  However, even then, the same point made by Jesus applies.  Only those who keep looking will discover what God has for them to learn and receive.  Prayer takes faith, not in prayer itself (as a mechanism), but in the God to whom we pray.  He is the heavenly Father who loves us.  Think of the wonder of this.  God has carved out certain areas of His will that will not happen unless we have the gumption to ask for it, seek for it, and knock on His door for it.

It is interesting that all three of these pictures of prayer are referred to in different ways throughout the sermon on the mount.  In the area of asking, giving and receiving, Jesus has mentioned several things.

• Matthew 5:42, “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”  This is important to remember that, when you ask God for things, He has been watching your response to others who have asked you for things.
• Matthew 6:8, “Your Father knows what you have need of before you ask.”  This may cause some to question praying at all.  However, Jesus goes the opposite direction.  The fact that God knows what we need (i.e., He is intimately aware of your needs) is reason for continuing to pray, not to quit.  Thus our present praying is not informing God of the what of our request.  Rather, it is demonstrating the depth of our faith in Him and His purposes (or not).
• Matthew 6:11, “Give this day our daily bread.”  All of these together shows us that God wants us to ask Him for things, and He wants to give us things.  However, we need to ask in a right way.  How can I ask God to be a giver to me when I refuse to image His giving nature to others?

The area of seeking and finding is also mentioned.

• Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”  This actually tells us what we should be seeking from God.  You cannot separate God from His Kingdom, so it is also a seeking for nearness to God.
• Matthew 7:14, “difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”  This one is in the next section.  Still, Jesus points to two different roads we can take in life.  The things you are seeking may take you down the wrong road.  If my life is all about the things of me and this life, and not about the things of God in this life, I will have difficulty finding the way which leads to life.

The area of knocking, opening (a door), is also mentioned.

• Matthew 5:2, “Jesus opened up his mouth and taught them.”  This may seem to be a stretch, but you cannot deny that Jesus is presented in the gospels as the door, the gate, the way for us.  So, when it says that he opened up his mouth and taught them, we can see the wisdom of God the “way of the Lord” being explained to the people so that they can know how to live, i.e., what way to go.
• Matthew 6:6, here we see that there is a door to the secret place that we can go through, shut, and be alone with God in prayer.  Yes, I will ask God for things, but the biggest thing that needs to happen is for me to be changed through relationship with God in the secret place.

In all of this, we should notice that parents wrestle with the requests of their kids and use their wisdom to determine whether it should be outright given, or if it should be mitigated in some way.  A kid may want ice cream for every meal.  No good parent would give such a request.  However, they will also see the desire of their kid and once and a while treat them to some ice cream.

Our asking, seeking and knocking needs to be informed by all of the wisdom of Jesus.  Prayer is learning to align my life with the Kingdom of God (His purpose and will).

Jesus then gives two examples of giving by human fathers and compares them to God the Father (verses 8-11).  These are simple illustrations that challenge our ability to give up on God in different ways, all of which lack trust in Him.  The first is a son asking for bread.  What father would give him a stone?  This rhetorical question would be understood by all in the crowd.  None of them would do that to their son.  Similarly, in the second question, the son asks for fish.  What father would give him a serpent?  This is parallel to the first question, but also intensive.  A stone is inanimate and is only unable to help the son.  Perhaps, we could see in it a mockery.  However, a serpent has an evil connotation to it that the stone doesn’t.  Still, the obvious answer is that none of them would think to give their kid a serpent when they were asking for fish, that is, food.

Notice that Jesus has begun to bring our prayers back to the concept of a heavenly Father who cares for us better than the best of parents.  This is the same as he did back in chapter 6 and the Lord’s Prayer.  Even the best of parents are fallen beings when compared to God.  They are not perfect and don’t always respond to the needs of their children like they should.  But, God is absolute righteousness and absolute love.

Parents will rightly listen to their kids, but not give them everything they ask for.  In these cases, it has nothing to do with trying to do them harm, or being mean to them.  Parents who love their kids take in mind the desire of the child and wisely formulate the best way to answer the child.  This is where we miss it with God.  As adults, we don’t like being in the child-position with God.  We give up on our heavenly Father far to easy.

God is way better at hearing the prayers of His children and determining what we need and when we need it.  He does care for you, and He is not holding out on you.

This isn’t the only dynamic at play.  Yes, I need to learn to trust God, but there is also a spiritual enemy that seeks to tempt me away from trust in God.  If you have seen a sumo wrestling match, then you know that the goal is to resist being pushed out of the ring.  Satan knows that he will win against us if he can push us out of the ring of faith in God.  Of course, he is not literally pushing us.  In this sense, our faith can over come all of his bullying and seducing that seeks to pull us away from faith in God.

Verse 11 emphasizes that God knows much better how to give good gifts to those who ask of Him than we do as people.  I don’t ask wisely in my prayers, but God is committed to giving good gifts to me.  In fact, the Lord’s prayer teaches us how to wisely pray.

Verse 12 generally looks like Jesus is jumping to a new topic.  This is the Golden Rule.  It actually serves to remind us of a principle that he has been brushing up against all throughout the Sermon on the Mount.  Whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them.  In fact, he says that this sums up the Law and the Prophets.  This is another way of saying that this is what it is trying to teach us.  Treat people the way that you would want to be treated.

Of course, our first response is this.  “What if they don’t treat me the same way that I did them?”  That is the test of following Jesus.  Jesus is not promising that people will treat you well if you treat them well.  In fact, they may crucify you if you love them with God’s love.

This command from Christ does not have an escape clause.  There is no mechanism for letting us quit doing them good because they haven’t reciprocated good to us.  We are simply to live our life only doing to others what we would want them to do to us. 

When we approach this as a law, we are looking for  the loopholes.  However, when we see Christ on the cross, we realize that this is all about imaging God, not getting what we want.  In my flesh, I feel that I have been nice enough, but what if God did that to us?

This brings us to ask the question.  What does this have to do with prayer?  The Golden Rule reminds us that prayer in the secret place with God is intimately connected to our life with others in the public place.  A relationship with God cannot be divorced from our relationship with others because God loves them too.  We see this throughout the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:23-24 pictures a person offering a gift to God at the altar and then remembering that their brother has been offended by them.  He tells us to leave our gift at the altar, go make amends with our brother, and then come back and offer our gift to God. 

Matthew 5:44 tells us to pray for those who are spitefully using us, as well as learning to love our enemies.

Also, Matthew 6:14-15 we are reminded that God’s response to us takes into account our responses to others in the area of forgiveness.

How does this relate to hypocrisy?  The faith component in prayer tries and tests us.  Will I stay in relationship with God when things take longer, or don’t happen as I wanted them?  Will I blame God and walk away?  We too easily give up on God and lose faith in the difficult things of life.  When that happens, some will remain in the church and play the part of a Christian, but in their heart they no longer pray, nor believe that God is their loving, heavenly Father.  This is the very definition of a hypocrite.  In fact, the more responsibility you have in the church, the more vulnerable you are to hypocrisy because you may feel that you have too much to lose.  The religious leaders of the days of Jesus had become hypocrites, but held on to their positions of power.

Others may be disillusioned with God and “deconstruct their faith.”  They may walk away and join another religion or become an atheist.  At least they aren’t a hypocrite, right?  Maybe not.  Think about what is going on in their heart.  “I tried it, but it doesn’t work!  I don’t believe in God!”  Yet, this person is insisting that they did everything right and it was God who didn’t do the righteous thing.  They are accusing God of something that is not true and clinging to the fiction of their own righteousness.  You “tried” praying to God?  What did that look like?  And, “it didn’t work?”  What were you expecting it to do?  What do you exactly mean by “work?”  This argument that I was righteous and God failed doesn’t hold water.  This is the hypocrisy of accusation against God.

In the end, prayer is not about getting everything that I want.  Don’t go through the Bible looking for the Scriptures that promise you will get everything you pray for, nor looking for the Scriptures that show you will not get everything you pray for.  Pray is not a mechanism for getting things, though you will get things through it.  Prayer is a relationship of faith that enables us to become everything that we need to become by God’s help and grace.

Let’s not be a hypocrite, but instead, let’s turn back to God in prayer.  Let’s start believing in God and not giving up on Him because He hasn’t given up on us!

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy IV audio

The Sermon on the Mount XII

Subtitle:  Correcting the Righteousness of the Hypocrites III

Matthew 6:11-15.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 25, 2024.

We are picking up in the middle of the Lord’s prayer.  This is the center point of the Sermon on the Mount, and it is also a central issue, that of prayer.

Jesus is speaking to the way of righteousness in the area of prayer.  There was a lot of praying that happened in first century Israel, but not many righteous prayers.  Righteous prayer is not about quantity, but instead, it is about quality.  Thus, Jesus has pointed out that our desire for others to think well and highly of us can lead us off the righteous path in this area.

The first half of the prayer is praying for God’s purposes, i.e., His Name, His Kingdom and His will.  Of course, there is no question that these things are done in heaven.  The prayer is for these things to also be done on the earth.  Let your purposes be done on earth as they are done in heaven!

The emphasis here can be boiled down to praying in a way that demonstrates that we love God first.  We can also notice that the second half of the prayer focuses on our love for our brother or neighbor.  We not only should pray for God’s purposes because we love Him, but even when we ask for things from Him, there should be an aspect of love for others wrapped up in it- more on that later.

Let’s look at our passage.

The model prayer: prayer in relation to love for others (v. 11-13)

If a person didn’t get the imagery through the use of the term “kingdom” throughout this sermon, you should catch it here in this first request.  Jesus is in the wilderness preaching to the people, and he teaches them to ask God for their daily bread.  This would have stirred up the imagery of Israel in the wilderness receiving the supernatural manna each day.  It the recognition that we are dependent upon God for our daily bread.

We should not be too quick to jump over the natural aspect of this.  Just as Israel would have literally died in the wilderness, if God had not fed them, so we are mortal and in need of physical food.  Bread is often called a staple of life.  A staple food was the predominant food in any group’s diet.  We are spoiled today, but throughout most of history, regions had particular food that was the main source of their diet.  If it was destroyed, or ruined, then their lives were in jeopardy.  Thus, bread took on the metaphorical connotation of life itself.  No bread…no life.   Humans must eat, that is how God has designed us.  We don’t have to eat all of the time.  We don’t have to eat fancy stuff, but we do need to eat periodically.

This biological reality of life is recognized in this prayer.  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  However, God always uses natural, or material, things to teach us spiritual realities.  This is why Jesus taught using parables regarding the everyday life experience of first century Judeans.

Moses told Israel in Deuteronomy 8:3 that God had allowed them first to know hunger, and then to know His gracious supply of food in order to learn a spiritual lesson.  Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Thus, the literal bread that we ask of God connotes our need of spiritual bread.

In John 6:341 and following, Jesus said that “the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  He then said, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never hunger.”  That is an amazing statement.  It is the same statement that he gives to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:14.  “[W]hoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.”  Jesus is the spiritual water and bread that we need in this spiritual wilderness.  In Jesus, God supplies spiritual food to sustain your daily walk of faith with God.  Prayer is an important part of that.

We should also notice that the prayer is couched in us language.  Yes,  you need bread, natural and spiritual.  However, you are not alone and should pray as a part of a community.  This is easiest to see in a parent approaching God.  Of course, you pray for your daily bread, but I have kids who need to eat too.  A parent approaches God in prayer for the sake of the family, not just as an individual.  Yet, this dynamic needs to scope out to our extended family, our town, our county, our State, our Republic (or nation as the case may be), even to the whole of humanity.  I may pray alone in the secret place, but I am not to separate myself from others as I ask God for help.  Lord, help me so that I may be part of your help to others.

In fact, let us recognize that some people have plenty of food and money, but they still commit suicide because they have no hope or faith in the future.  This is a spiritual need that no food and money can supply, only Jesus.

I get it that people look at our world today (particularly in our cities), and they lack faith or hope.  Yet, Jesus lived in such a devastated time, and he said, “the fields are white unto harvest.”  He could do that because he spent time with the Father in prayer.  He had spiritual reserves that we are often ignorant of.  Even in the United States of America, we need a miracle of God to supply our daily spiritual bread, so that we might continue in faith, rather than fainting in death.

The second request asks for forgiveness for our sins, or debts.  In Luke 11, Jesus shares this prayer and asks, “forgive us our sins,” instead of “debts.”  There really is no difference.  The concept of debts had connotations of sin.  When someone sins against you, it is pictured as a debt that needs to be paid off through repentance and making it right.  We are asking God to forgive our sins.

However, it is connected to our forgiveness of others sins, or debts to us.  The preposition “as” is not giving a timing element.  It is not asking God to forgive us at the same time of our forgiving of others.  Rather, the word “as” is establishing a fact that should motivate God to forgive us, “as in fact, we forgive our debtors.  In Luke 11, it says, “for [because] we also are forgiving everyone who is indebted to us.”

In our private prayers, there is a strange sense in which others are always there, at least in principle.  This is my relationship with God, but I cannot relate with God without recognizing that He loves others.  If I ignore that, then it affects my relationship with Him.  This contingency recognizes that if I want God to forgive me, then I need to be forgiving of others.  Our relationships with one another affect our relationship with God, as far as it depends upon you.

This does beg the other side of the equation, i.e., when I have sinned against others.  We can demand that others forgive us, even pointing to the Bible, but that is between them and God.  It is your job to be truly repentant when you have sinned against others.  The rest is between them and God.  A truly repentant heart doesn’t require others to act perfectly.  Duh, we are admitting that we have done wrong and want others to have mercy on us.  None of this (repenting or giving forgiveness) will ever be done perfectly, without error.  Can you forgive someone for not perfectly forgiving you for your imperfection (sin)?  Of course, we can, but the truth is that too often we do not desire it.

This should remind us of Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”

The third request is generally translated as being about temptation, but the word is bigger than that, and it should be seen as properly a time of testing.  “Lead us not into testing..”  We should again imagine Israel in the wilderness.  The wilderness is not in and of itself temptation, but you had better believe that temptation is a component of what goes on in the wilderness.

God took Israel through the wilderness for several reasons.  They weren’t ready to fight all the Egyptian armies they would continue to run into along the coastal plain.  Also, they needed some time alone with God in order to get to know Him better.  This allowed a covenant to be made with God at Sinai.  Lastly, the wilderness would test their metal.  The wilderness is tough on the flesh.  There isn’t much provision in the wilderness for our flesh.  We do become tempted by the devil and the world around us, but we are just as much tempted by what our flesh likes and doesn’t like.

God often leads us into wilderness times of testing. However, we should not think that God is doing that in order to tempt us.  God leads you there because it will make you stronger spiritually, if you trust Him.  You see, when ore is tested, it is what it is.  You crush it and heat it up.  A certain amount of metal comes out of the ore and an assayer can determine how rich the ore is.  However, people are not inanimate objects.  Even as we are being melted down (thief on the cross), we can choose to put our faith in God.  In that moment, something valuable springs into existence that wasn’t there earlier.  The mercy and grace of God is with us in the time of testing.  We can choose, have faith, humble ourselves, and ask for help.  And, guess what!  There He is to help us in time of need.

There are some subtleties happening in the verbs of this section.  It can be explained easiest by translating the words this way, “Don’t just lead us into testing, but deliver us from evil.”  The point is really the heart of God anyways.  God deliver me from the evil (bad things) that I will run into in the time of testing, and there are a plethora of these.

By the way, some translations will say “evil one.”  It is true that we need deliverance from the devil and the lying demonic spirits that work for him.  However, the Greek here is simply an adjective that is being used substantively (like a noun).  The context is supposed to supply whether it is an evil man, woman, thing, or one.  In this case, there is some ambiguity, and I believe that is one purpose.  The bad things that can destroy us in the time of testing are the devil, his demons, worldly friends and societies, even my own stinking thinking.  We need delivered from any bad thing that would tempt us away from trusting God.

Are we not in a time of testing right now, as a republic and as individuals?  Yes, we are.  We do not have to be afraid of the wilderness.  If God delivers us from the evil, then only the good will remain.  The wilderness was good for Joshua and Caleb.  Do you know why they could defeat giants?  It wasn’t because they had honed the art of slaying giants while in the wilderness.  It was because they had learned that God could be trusted with even their very life.  They had learned to trust God.  Caleb was not the original trash talker trying to manipulate people into fighting giants, and scare giants with his crazy talk.  Rather, he knew that his God was greater than those giants who made him look like a grasshopper.

Be careful of thinking the lesson of this time is that Joshua and Caleb were better than the others.  No.  Joshua and Caleb were the same as all those others.  However, they trusted God over the top of the fears of their flesh.  We can all fail in time of testing, but the good news is that we can all succeed in the time of testing by trusting God with our life.

There is a question about how the prayer ends.  The second part of verse 13 is not in the earliest manuscripts.  It does show up in a 2^nd century writing called the Didache (Greek for “Teaching”).  This was a discipleship manual for early Christians and dates back to at least A.D. 130.  However, it is in a shortened form (I believe it only mentions the power and glory, leaving out the kingdom).

Regardless of whether it was original or not, it is a very biblical thing to pray, and we find it in 1 Chronicles 29:10-11.  David has been calling Israel to join him in bringing forth donations for the Temple that was to be built.  His prayer uses the same themes that are found in this closing and even matches much of the whole prayer, e.g., using the phrase “our Father.”

David was recognizing that they were all donating stuff that they had.  Yet, at the same time, all of this stuff had come from God.  We must never forget that everything we receive from God in this life (including our body and breath) is His.  The Church has often made this mistake through history.  God would give them power over natural kingdoms, but we forget it is still His.  Yes, we are His representatives on the earth, but it is always still His.  We are only stewards of His stuff.  We will one day stand before Him and give account for what we did with His stuff.  This is what is meant in Romans 11:36.  “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be glory forever. Amen.”  It all comes from Him, even through Him to us.  However, all we do with it is to be to Him, i.e., for His glory.  He is the source, the channel and the goal of it all.  When we forget that, we make it about ourselves and fall into the trap of the devil.

Let’s look at the last verses of this section on prayer.

An added explanation on prayer (v. 14, 15)

There is not much interpretation needed here.  Jesus is not teaching that we don’t need his death on the cross, that we can save ourselves by simply forgiving others.  Rather, he is showing us his heart (the Father’s heart).  This is who he is.  He loves the brother that you have trouble loving.  If you truly have faith in him, and love him, then you will trust his way, his path, of forgiveness.  This is in the category of things that are easier said than done.  It becomes a litmus test of our faith and love for Jesus.

In truth, none of us can forgive those who sin against us without the help of the Spirit of God, which Jesus has supplied to us.  Still, this is a challenge from our Lord to be the merciful ones of Matthew 5:7.

We see this principle throughout the teachings of Jesus, especially in Matthew 7, the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  There, he speaks about judging your brother.

No matter how much you believe on Jesus to forgive your sins, and no matter how willing He is to cover them, He will not do so if you continue to refuse to forgive others.

In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus gives us the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.  The servant owed the king 10,000 talents.  When he couldn’t pay and begged the king, the king had mercy on him and forgave the large sum of money.  The man then went out and found someone who owed him 2% of 1 talent.   Thus, if we treated the 10,000 talents as $10,000 (believe me that it was much higher than this), then he was throwing a man into debtors prison over 2 cents.  Of course, the king was incensed when he found out.

Jesus uses this story to get our attention.  Yet, in our flesh, we tend to think that God may have forgiven us 10,000 talents, but my brother’s sin against me is like 10 million talents!  The beam in our eye always measures our sin in small quantities, and the sin of others in great quantities.

Perhaps, we should look at it differently.  The story hinges on what we owe the king versus what we owe one another.  Have you ever thought that our sins against one another, that seem so huge, are a pittance compared to our sins against God.  When you sin against me, it is understandable because I am a sinful human myself.  I should be able to forgive it easily because I sin myself.  Yet, our sin against God is not understandable.  God is perfect, and has only loved us.  Our sins against Him are so great as to be impossible to quantify.  It is an eternal debt.  If I want God to forgive my eternal debt, then I would be smart to forgive people their small debts to me.  Which do you want, two cents from your brother, or a clean slate with God?

Prayer audio

Sermon on the Mount XI

Subtitle:  Correcting the Righteousness of the Hypocrites II

Matthew 6:5-9.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 18, 2024.

We continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus exposes, or corrects, the supposed righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, which he calls “hypocrites” in this section.

Last week we looked at the issue of charitable giving.  We now deal with the area of prayer.

Let’s look at our passage.

The way of Righteousness in prayer:

This section is expanded compared to the section on deeds of mercy (charitable deeds) and the coming section on fasting.  In fact, it has three sections: this first one that explains the teaching of Jesus regarding prayer (5-8), a model prayer (9-13), and then a last section that gives a further explanation (14-15). 

An explanation (v. 5-8)

This section does exactly the same thing with prayer that Jesus did with the section on charitable deeds.  It contrasts how the hypocrites pray with how Jesus wants his followers to pray.  It essentially boils down to wanting to be seen and heard by people versus wanting to be heard by God.

We should take this as a challenge to us from the master not only to pray, but to pray rightly.  Today, the Spirit of God helps us to sense that original challenge that Jesus gave to the people when he taught.  Do I pray?  And, how do I pray?

Just as the hypocrites did charitable deeds only to be seen by others, so they pray in order to be seen by others.  In fact, Jesus adds the descriptive word “love.”  They love to pray in the synagogue or on the street corner because people will see them.  They love the glory that people give to them for their apparent righteousness.  Yet, they neither love God, nor love others.  In truth, they pretty much love themselves.  They for sure do not love praying in secret.

If you are the kind of person that marvels at certain people when they pray- maybe their flowery language stirs your heart, then you should be careful.  Seek to become a praying person yourself, rather than marveling at the praying abilities of others.  In fact, when are We the People going to stop being so easily stirred up by the presentations of others, both for the good or for the bad?  We should stop being so easily amazed because we are atrocious at knowing whether the image that is presented is only skin deep, or whether it goes all the way to the bone.  When we are not in tune with the Holy Spirit through prayer, we do things like help out in stoning Stephen in Acts 7.

Jesus tells us that such praying receives the reward it wants, the glory of people.  God may be offended by such praying, but He lets them have what they want, the adoration of the people (at least as much as the people will give).

God is not offended like we are as humans.  Rather, He removes the restraints would have spared you great damage.  Humans were never designed to have the adoration of crowds, the worship of them as people do for Musicians, Actors, Athletes, etc.  If you look at the lives of people who reach the top of glamor and glory, their lives collapse under the weight of such false worship.

Of course, not everyone who prays in public is fake.  In fact, we could not even have a public worship service without praying, singing, preaching in public.  However, the point is not to put more value on such public acts than they are truly worth.  If public prayer does not have a foundation of secret prayer, then it is worthless, whether people know so, or not.

Thus, Jesus tells his followers not to love to pray like that.  Instead, we are to find a secret place to pray in.  The word for “room” in verse six is a word that was used for a storage closet.  They were typically small rooms in the middle of a structure that would not have windows.  His point is not so much the exact place, but that it is a place where no one will see you.  It could actually be translated “hidden place.” 

I know, I know.  Mom’s are saying right now that there is no such thing as a hidden place!  Of course, how much glory would you expect to receive from your child seeing you pray, or knowing that you are praying?  Jesus is not creating a law of prayer.  He is doing heart surgery here, and we should not become bogged down in snarky retorts. Jesus is pointing us to the intention of our prayer.  A person who only prays in public has a heart problem.  They are not in relationship with God, but seeking satisfaction somewhere else.

Jesus emphasizes that your (singular) Father in heaven is also in the secret, or hidden, place.  This phrase would have reminded them of the same phrase in the Old Testament, like Psalm 91.  David learned that,  even though God was in heaven, He was also in those hidden places when no one was looking.  David spent tons of time praying out in the field with the sheep.  God met him there. 

Even though God is everywhere, He recognizes that prayer done when no one is watching truly has the intention of relating with Him.  This private audience with the King of the Universe happens to also be a private audience with your heavenly Father.  Have you ever thought about the reality that our minds are the original secret place?  You can be in public, but meet with God in the secret place of your mind, and those in the place would never know.

Let me just point out that God as a Father is mentioned 17 times in the Sermon on the Mount.  One time it is “our Father” (The Lord’ Prayer, Matthew 6:9).  Also, Jesus refers to God as “My Father” one time in Matthew 7:21.  The other 15 times Jesus says that He is “your Father.”  Five of these are a singular “your/you.”  The other ten are plural.  Yes, God is individually your heavenly Father, but the emphasis is on us as a group.

Again, Jesus promises that secret prayer will have its reward in the open.  He doesn’t guarantee what that will look like.  In fact, the resurrection and being with Jesus is put forth as our ultimate reward.  We must be careful of thinking that if we pray alone enough, then God will have to give us some really cool things publicly.  Pray because you want to know God, not because you want stuff from Him.  He is your reward!

Jesus gives another warning in the practice of prayer in verse 7, but this time, he looks to the religious practices of the Gentiles, instead of the hypocrites within Israel.  The word translated “vain repetition” is hard to translate without more context.  It is clear though that it has to do with praying many words.  The point has to do with lack of true heart-content.  It is more about rituals, incantations, or techniques that are supposed to help gain the attention of the “gods.”

In Gentile spirituality, the so-called gods did not care for humans, so they had to learn techniques and formulas for drawing their help.  They would even hedge their bets by worshiping many different gods.  Surely one of them would come through for them.  We should not repeat phrases like a mantra over and over.  We should not speak a certain power syllable over and over.  There really is no end to the empty techniques that false religion will conjure for its acolytes.

The One True God in heaven, your heavenly Father, is not impressed by such empty tricks.  We cannot treat God like some sort of cosmic machine that we can put in the right amount of quarters, or pull the lever just right, in order to get what we want.  Instead, we are to speak to our Father simply, and clearly.

Can you imagine speaking to your earthly dad in such ways?   He would probably call the men in white coats to come and take you away, if you did.  God wants us to approach Him as a child to a Father.  He wants to have real relationship with us as that signals.

Jesus even tells us that our heavenly Father already knows what we need before we ask.  God is omniscient.  He knows what you need way better than even you do.  He is intimately aware of your needs.  He is paying attention to your life, regardless of what it seems like to you.  You think you are cursed because of your experience of life, but Jesus tells you that you are blessed (Matthew 5:3-12).  You don’t have to employ tricks and techniques to draw His attention.  You just have to really pray to Him in the hidden place.  Don’t pray rote prayers over and over again in particular sequences while making certain signs.  This is not what Jesus wanted our prayers to become.

A Model Prayer (v. 9-10)

Let’s look at the first part of this prayer.  It starts out with the words, “In this manner, therefore, pray.”  The emphasis is that this creates a template or model that we can use in our own praying times.  Yes, we can pray it, but it is not a mantra or incantation that “always works.”  If we will pay attention to the components of this prayer, then we will be instructed in how to pray, and in what to pray about.

I will lay the prayer out to demonstrate the structure of the prayer.

“Our Father in heaven,

          Hallowed be Your name.

          Your Kingdom come.

          Your will be done.

                  On earth as it is in heaven.”

The first line is the address.  Who am I addressing when I pray?  It is interesting that Jesus has made the point that God is “your (singular) Father.”  Yet, in this model prayer, he uses the plural concept of “Our Father.”  Think of it.  You are approaching God alone in a hidden place, and yet you address Him as a part of a group. 

There is an obvious lack of the concept of “I” and “me” in this prayer. I am reminded of the prayer of the Pharisee in Luke 18:12-14.  His prayer keeps repeating “I,” and when he does mention others, it is in contempt and derision.  Yes, the tax collector also uses the first person pronoun of “me.”  However, the prayer of repentance and humility is always heard.  This is not about never using first person pronouns.  Rather, it is recognizing that Jesus is signaling something important to us by their absence.  Perhaps my prayers are far to self oriented?  Do you think?

The key is not so much never using the pronouns, “I,” “me” or “mine.”  It is about being fully aware that your heavenly Father is also your brother’s heavenly Father.  We should approach God alone, but not as ones who are alone.  Even people who are not God’s child are desired to be so by Him.  He is bringing us into a larger community, His family.  And, He wants us to care for one another, even in our secret prayers.

This address is followed by three requests that focus on God and His purpose, rather than on me and my purposes.

Israel had fourteen centuries of wavering between focus on God’s purposes and focus on their own purposes.  At some point, we must become a broken person that realizes “our purposes” generally get in the way of God’s.  Also, His purposes are more beneficial to us and others than the purposes that we come up for ourselves.

We generally even pray for God’s purposes selfishly.  You can pray for God to bring in the Kingdom, but why do you do so?  Do you want the Kingdom because then you will be bossing people around?  Are you focused more on how good your experience will be instead of the glory of God blessing all the earth?

Israel, in general, had come to a place where they couldn’t wait for God to put the Romans in their place under the boot of Israel.  Yet, Jesus showed the remnant the heart of God wanted to take the light of the Gospel to that Gentile world and invite them into the Kingdom in a good way.

Let’s look at the form of the three request first.  The form of the first one, “hallowed be Your name,” is true of them all.  The verb is first followed by the subject.  The other two would look something like this: “Come be Your Kingdom.  Done be Your will!”  These are also imperatives (commands).  However, they are in the third person singular.  This has the effect of begging the question of just who is to do these things.  Perhaps, it is both God and us.

The first request speaks of God’s name.  This is His reputation, and the way people view Him.  The prayer is that God’s name, person, and reputation be seen and treated as holy.  In fact, the most holy thing in the universe.  Holy means that something is set apart for God’s purposes.  This may seem redundant (how can God not be holy, i.e., about His own purposes).  Yet, the emphasis is on how others see Him.  God is perfect in His character and attributes.  He is not like sinful humans, nor like the sinful spiritual beings.  However, we don’t always see and treat God as such.  People have no problem slandering God, and attributing things to Him that are not true.  It is a prayer for God to be respected by all.  So, this should start with me.

The second request is that the Kingdom of heaven would be brought in, or that it would come.  This is clearly a reference to the Kingdom of Messiah.  We are praying for its full realization on earth, instead of just being in heaven.  This does involve living out the Kingdom today in our lives.  We are to be an expression now, of a coming Kingdom later when Christ returns.

Is my life an ever-clearer expression of the values of Jesus?  May God help us to give ourselves to being an expression of the coming King and His perfect Kingdom that is coming.

The third request is that God’s will would be done.  Sometimes God’s will seems to be at odds with His Kingdom.  When Jesus went to the cross, it seemed to be the opposite of bringing in the Kingdom.  Submission to God’s will as the All-Wise One is important.  We can be a person who expects God to do particular things in our life, and when He doesn’t, we can be disillusioned.  “God, you said I would be blessed, but now there is a cross in front of me!”  We don’t always understand why God does what He does.

When we pray for God’s purpose, we are praying for the greatest good to come about.  In fact, there are layers to the will of God.  God put a curse upon the earth.  Is it His will that it last forever?  No!  What I do with it is important.  Wrestling with God like Jacob did is rewarded with intimacy.  Yes, the wicked man will be judged and go to the Lake of Fire, but God wants us to resist that by telling him the Gospel, the love of God.  God wants us to plead with the man that He resist God’s will properly, that is, through repentance and seeking mercy.

All of this connects to the greatest commandment.  When you love God with all of your being, you will pray for His purposes to come first.  All of this is a desire to have the goodness of God expressed on the earth, and not just in my secret times of prayer with Him. 

For the sake of time, we will pause here and pick up on the second half of the Lord’s Prayer next week.

Correcting Righteousness II