Scripture: Matthew 6.5-15
7And
when you’re praying, don’t babble on and on just like the pagans, because they
think that they will be listened to because of their many words. 8So,
don’t be like them, because your Father knows what things you have need of
before you ask Him! 9So you guys, pray like this:
“Our Father
Who is in the heavens,
make Your
Name be treated special/holy,
10make
Your Kingdom come,
make Your
Will happen on earth too just like in Heaven.
11Give
us today the food we need for today!
12And
forgive us of our debts,
like we too
forgive the people in debt to us.
13And
don’t bring us into testing/temptation,
rather
rescue us from the evil one.”
14Because if you
would forgive humans their violations, Your Heavenly Father will forgive you
too. 15But if you won’t forgive humans, then Your Father won’t
forgive your violations!
The Point I’m Stressing: Jesus
teaches us that prayer is not about what other people think about our prayers,
it is about talking to God, and it is not about using the right words or the
right amount of words to get an answer, it is about talking to God like He is
our Father, since He is, and asking for stuff for God and stuff for ourselves,
but when we ask for forgiveness, we better have already forgiven people who
have wronged us, otherwise God won’t forgive us
Interpretation
1.
Structure
a.
Teaching on Prayer Part One
i.
DON'T: Pray to Impress
People, to get respect from people
ii.
DO: Pray to Talk to God, to
get what we need from Him
b.
Teaching on Prayer Part Two
i.
DON'T: Pray with lots of
empty repetition
ii.
DO: Pray prayers that are
honest and meaningful, devoid of empty repetition
iii.
Explanation of Why Verse
12b is a Part of the Model Prayer:
1.
Forgive people, or God
won’t forgive you
2.
Themes
a.
Prayer (vv.5-15, word for
prayer or praying is found in, v.5[2x], 6[2x], 7, 8[αιτεω] 9)
b.
Hypocrisy (vv.5-6)
c.
Reward (v.5 and v.6)
d.
Forgiveness (v.12 and
vv.14-15)
e.
Sovereignty of God
(vv.9-13)
f.
Needs (v.8, vv.11-13,
14-15)
g.
Comparison (v.5, v.8, v.10)
h.
The Fatherhood of God the
Father—God is our Father (vv.6[2x], 8, 9, 14, 15)
i.
Dependence on God (vv.7-15)
3.
Doctrines
a.
Absolute Sovereignty of God
b.
Forgiveness has to be given
to be gotten
c.
Prayers are about God
d.
Prayers are also about
Needs and Requestions
e.
How we pray affects whether
God will reward us/answer our prayers
f.
God is Omniscient
g.
God is Our Father
h.
Dependence on God
Applications
1.
Prayer is not completely
about us (although we are clearly involved and our lives have an impact on what
we pray for, we do pray for ourselves). It is more about God. When Jesus tells
us to pray “Make Your Name be treated as holy, make Your Kingdom come, make
Your Will happen” those are prayers that we want for God, as much as we want
for ourselves. We want God to be given honor and love and respect, we want God
to bring His Kingdom to earth, we want God’s Will to be done. But the truth is
we are also praying because God deserves those things. We pray for ourselves,
but Jesus’ model prayer starts with praying for God
2.
We should pray frequently,
“the food we need for today” probably implies that it is appropriate to depend
on God every single day for food, to ask that He feeds you is an appropriate
prayer. This may seem like a silly prayer to some or even most of you, because
God has blessed you with more or less comfortable financial situations. You’re
families have enough money and so you’ve never had to pray this, but the day
will come in all of your lives at some point when you don’t know how you’re
going to get anything to eat. more likely the financial stress won’t be as
strong on the starving front, but I think it’s pretty likely that at some point
in your life, you won’t know how you are going to pay rent, or get your car
fixed, and some of you even get a meal. I’m only 25 and God has already put me
in those kinds of situations, so to know that you can go to God for the basics
is awesome!
3.
Prayer is not for
impressing people, it’s for talking with God, now you may be thinking that you
don’t have a problem with wanting to use prayer to impress people, but maybe we
do and we don’t know it. So let me ask a question, do you mind praying in
public? When we ask for a volunteer to pray, do you always hope that no one
will call on you? Let’s say you answered yes, why? Is it because you’re scared
of speaking in public? In our case, that is probably not the main issue,
because we are smaller group and we know each other well, and all of you have
spoken to all of us at some point. But let me ask the question a different way,
do you think that the main reason why you don’t want to pray for the group is
that you are concerned what people with think of your prayer? What you may not
realize is that is the same understanding ofprayer that the hypocrites have,
just manifested different. See, the hypocrites are just confident in their
ability to make their prayers sound good, whereas you may not be. But both
understand prayer as something that should impress people, the problem is when
we make our prayers more about what other people will think about us and our
prayers, than about talking with God and asking Him for what we need. Our
prayers don’t need to impress anyone, they just need to bless everyone. Jesus
is not talking about praying in public as an evil thing, Jesus’ problem is with
the motivation for the way they pray
4.
We should talk to God like
He is our Father, because He is. And He is the Best Father. You may or may not
have a father who is easy to talk to or who is good at making you feel loved
and valued, but God is a really GOOD Father, He is the easiest to talk to, and
He always makes us feel loved and valued. Yes, He is still an authority figure,
but not an abusive one, not a harsh one, not a cruel one, and not even a
selfish one, this means that the easier person to talk to is God and we don’t
have to hold back or worry about whether He will be insulted by what we say,
because He knows everything including the motives of our heart and the exact
meaning in our words
5.
Don’t think you have to
pray long prayers to get answers from God, you don’t. people who don’t really
trust God think that is how it works. they think “if I just pray really well,
or ask a billion times, God will answer my prayer.” Don’t think there are a
special sequence of words or phrase or way of talking to God that will make Him
answer—churchy words don’t mean God will answer your prayers. That’s not how
prayer works.
6.
Be selfish in your prayers,
ask for what you need God to give you and trust in Him to give it. You don’t
have to try and make your prayer sound like it is some grand thing that is so
awesome that God has to answer it, because that assumes you have to impress God
to get answers from God, but you don’t. You can tell God why answering your
prayer would bless people, and sometimes that is a good way to pray. But really
how complicated do you need to make a prayer for food or gas money? Do you need
to pray, “God, please give me some food, because food will give me strength to
tell people about Jesus, and then people will trust in Jesus, and then our
family will get bigger?” when really all you’re really thinking is, Man, God,
I’m hungry. Can I have some food?” It’s not wrong to want basic things for
grand reasons, and to pray for big picture reasons, those are good things to do
sometimes, but you don’t always have to pray like that. Sometimes a “I need
money to go on this retreat” is enough. God isn’t stupid you don’t have to
spell it all out for Him. It’s not like He going to be like “why do you want to
eat food?” He knows you’re hungry.
7.
Forgive people, everyone,
whether they deserve it or not, because God won’t forgive you, if you won’t
forgive others. Maybe you’re thinking, “why do I have to forgive them, they
don’t deserve it!” That’s a good question, let’s ask it again, “Why should God
forgive us when we don’t deserve it?” Getting forgiveness from God requires
that we have some relationship with God, and when we forgive others we show
that we have that relationship, because forgiven people forgive people, and our
relationship with God is very much tied to our being forgiven by God. We show
that we probably are not forgiven if we won’t forgive. Jesus is blunt here, if
we won’t forgive people, as individuals and as a group, God won’t forgive us!
So, uh, let’s forgive people.
8.
We pray together, which
also implies in public, that is why it says “Our Father” and “give us our daily
food” and “forgive our debts” and “we’ve forgiven our debtors” and “don’t lead
us into testing” and “rescue us,”
Illustrations/Explanations
1.
God is not like a candy
machine where the candy doesn’t come out if you don’t stick in enough quarters,
so that we need to put in a lot of quarters to make sure we get what we want from
God
No comments:
Post a Comment