Matthew 6:5-14
WHEN YOU PRAY DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING?
DOES GOD ANSWER YOUR PRAYERS? WHY DO YOU FEEL THAT WAY?
WHEN YOU PRAY, DO YOU ALWAYS SENSE GOD’S PRESENCE?
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 “Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
BACKGROUND
Last week we reviewed Jesus’ teaching on giving. We noted that in that section, and this one and the next on fasting, that Jesus used Hebrew parallelism to drive home his point. Jesus does the same thing in this passage in verses 5 and 6, but we won’t repeat it here. Instead, we’re going to focus on how to pray.
First, Jesus gives us this model of prayer because God delights when we pray (Proverbs 15:8). He looks forward to us praying to him, to have a conversation with him. Have you ever thought in those terms about prayer before, that he delights when we pray? This knowledge should transform our prayers.
God wants to answer our prayers. When God’s people prayed in the Bible, God answered. In Exodus 32 God relented from destroying his people when Moses asked him. In II Chronicles 7 God says he will answer if his people repent of their sin and seek him. When we pray in faith, things change. Jesus said, “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14). Note from the scriptures that God doesn’t make deals. We simply ask and he answers.
God answers according to his will. “This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14–15).
To pray effectively we must not be hiding some secret sin. “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Psalm 66:18). Sin interrupts our relationship with God. He never looks favorably on sin, therefore we must always have a heart of repentance. This pleases God.
WHAT IS PRAYER?
Some specifics. What is prayer? The most basic definition of prayer is to say that prayer is a conversation with God. But what kind of conversation? We bring to God the things that are on our hearts. We praise him for who he is. And we seek his will for our lives. In essence, prayer is like a child’s conversation with his parent. Children seek out their parent’s presence. They ask for things from mom or dad seeking whether it is their will to give him something. They ask for help, even to have the parent do something with them. When faced with difficulty or hurt they cry out for mom or dad. This is what prayer is like.
Prayer is also a tool that God uses to bring our will in line with God’s will. Sometimes we ask God for things that may not be his will to grant. The more we pray about that the more our hearts should subtly change to realize it is something we should not need or want. Eventually it should drop from our prayers.
HAVE YOU EVER PRAYED FOR SOMETHING OR SOMEONE AND SENSED THAT GOD’S ANSWER WAS NO?
For instance, I prayed for a long time that all of my daughter’s descendants would become Christians. But the more I prayed for that the more unsettled about it I became. I began to realize that God’s answer to that prayer was no. This should not be surprising. When Abraham prayed for Ishmael to walk with God, God said to him no (Genesis 17:18-19).
Then my prayers began to transform. Instead of praying for all of my descendants to know him, I began to pray that there would never be a generation of her family that would not know the Lord. And even as I still pray for that today, I have the sense that God is answering that prayer in the affirmative. My will was being brought in line with God’s will.
Prayer transforms our thinking, feeling, and will. We do not simply pray for something and then move on. As we pray we change.
Sometimes, when I struggle with prayer, I use the Lord’s Prayer to guide my own prayers. Let me show you how.
EXAMINATION
(V.7) “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.”
Repetitious prayer was common in pagan cultures. People repeated phrases over and over thinking such practices gained the god’s attention and demonstrated greater piety by the worshiper. But Jesus denies this. God is a person. He is moved by the content of our prayer, not the form. This does not mean we should not repeat our prayers from time to time, we should. Jesus himself prayed repeating himself in the garden three times before his arrest. His repetition revealed his great stress for what he knew was coming.
Remember that prayer is a conversation, not a rote religious practice or charm, or magic. The purpose of prayer is to bring our hearts in line with God’s.
(V.9) “Our Father in heaven…”
IS IT HARD TO THINK OF GOD AS A FATHER, OR PERHAPS, A DAD?
Jesus regularly called God, Father, in reference to his divine relationship to God. But by saying “our” Father, he places the relationship we have with God as a father to his children. Notice throughout this prayer that Jesus prays in the plural, signifying that this may be a liturgical form for the church at large.
When we pray we should be mindful of God’s holiness and transcendence, but also his tenderness. He is our Father. We all know what fathers are suppose to be like. The Father in heaven is all that and more.
(V.9) “…hallowed be thy name…”
Here we see respect for God’s name and holiness. What does it mean to hallow something? Essentially, to honor and make it holy. God is separated from us in great holiness. We should regard him in that way.
So how do we pray this first verse? By praising God for his holiness, his honor. Use this as a jumping off point in your prayers.
“Father, you are great and holy. There is none that compares to you. You are perfect in all your ways. Glory and honor and praise belongs to you alone. And yet, you are a Father of love to your people…”
Notice how the statement in scripture is used as a jumping off point in our prayer.
(V.10) “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
WHAT DOES GOD’S KINGDOM ON EARTH LOOK LIKE TO YOU?
This is the objective of the Christian life, to bring God’s kingdom. What is God’s kingdom? It is a group of people who have surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ who seek to live and act as God instructs them through Christ. When we say we want his kingdom to come, we are saying that we want others to know God as we have come to know him; that Jesus may rule and reign over all the earth.
When we say “your will be done” we are saying we want his will for the earth and our lives. “On earth as it is in heaven” is the scope of what we are praying for.
Use this phrase from Jesus to guide your prayer.
“Lord, I want your kingdom to be established with everyone around me. Please help me live for you above all things and desire your will above my own. Help me to obey you that others will see, in a practical way, your kingdom in me.”
(V.11) “Give us this day our daily bread…”
This prayer is for our needs, not our greeds. God wants us to bring to him our most basic needs. How often do we forget or ignore this? Most of us have this need covered, don’t we? We think we don’t need to pray for this because we already have it. But this should be a launching point to other needs also.
“Lord, you have graciously provided for me my food, a place to live, and clothes on my back. You have not forgotten my needs in any way. So, Lord, please use me to provide for the needs of others. Please provide for them through me, even if it’s in a small way.”
(V.12) “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
“Debts” in this passage refers to sin. This is a good word for Jesus to choose when talking about our sin, because, we owe to God a debt for our sin. And it is a debt that we can never repay. But thankfully, Jesus has paid our debt for us by his shed blood and death on the cross for our sin.
Many people get hung up on this part of the passage. Because he says to forgive as we have forgiven our debtors. But we don’t always forgive those who sin against us do we? Sometimes we hold it against them, even as a secret in our hearts. Here’s a way to continue our prayer using this verse.
“Lord, you have forgiven all of my sin because of your sacrifice on the cross for me. Thank you that you don’t hold my sin against me. Please help me to freely forgive others as you have forgiven me.”
It is at this point that someone may come into your mind that you need to forgive or perhaps ask forgiveness from. If so, attend to it with God right away.
If we want to experience the fullness of God‘s love and joy and forgiveness then we also need to forgive others, no matter what they have done to us.
(V.13) “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
HOW ARE TEMPTATIONS AND TRIALS DIFFERENT?
First, we should recognize that scripture says God does not tempt anyone (James 1:13). God is not in the process of tempting people to commit sin so that he can punish them. However, he does sometimes lead us into positions where temptation may occur, he does this to test us, to prove our love for him. As one example, Jesus was led in the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1). Jesus prayed for Peter not to fall into sin (Luke 22:31-32). And Peter was led to a period of temptation where he denied the Lord. Jesus did not tempt him, but he was tested because Jesus then said to Peter “when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” He was tested by God but not tempted by him.
Peter was delivered from evil because he turned back. Jesus was delivered from evil because even though he was murdered, he rose again from the dead never to die again. So too, we may experience great stress, strain, and temptation. But we can come through it.
So how do we pray this?
“Lord, I don’t want to sin against you. But I know that trials and temptations will come my way. Please strengthen me so that I will come through them without sin. But Lord, if I fail and sin, please forgive and restore me. Let not evil win the day.”
If a particular temptation or test comes to mind, then pray about that, thanking God for his provision to endure it.
(Vs.14-15) “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
This is where some believers become confused. When we read this passage, it sounds like God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others. We look upon this passage, as if it is a work that we have to do to earn salvation. But that is not what Jesus is saying. He is simply referring to the experience of forgiveness that we have with God. If we hold secret sin in our hearts, we have unforgiveness in our hearts, then we cannot have the full experience of enjoying God‘s forgiveness. That only comes when we freely forgive others.
INTERPRETATION
What is Jesus’ big idea for this passage? Pray honestly. Pray humbly. Pray according to God’s will. All of these things that Jesus is instructing us to pray are his will for our lives. So, pray honestly. Would you lie to God? Pray humbly. Would you blame God? And pray according to his will. Would you be selfish with God?
Remember that prayer is a conversation with God. Think about how you talk to your friends. Would you lie, speak arrogantly, or selfishly with your friends? Sometimes our talks with God can border on these things. So, resolve to talk rightly with your Heavenly Father.
APPLICATION
If you need more help in knowing what to pray for, then make it a habit to pray through scripture. Choose a passage and use that as a guide to help you know how to pray.
And keep in mind one more thing.
The Lord’s Prayer is more than just something we pray. The Lord’s Prayer is also something we can do.
- We hallow his name by praising him and helping others to know him.
- We bring his kingdom through evangelism and discipleship.
- We live to do his will on the earth.
- We provide for our needs and our families when we work hard to do that.
- We forgive others and resist temptation.
Everything in the Lord’s Prayer is answered when we seek to perform the very things that we pray for from the Lord.
