Praying In Secret

Apr 19, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Well, I'm blessed to have a good father. Anytime I've ever needed anything, my dad has been there. For as long as I can remember, he's he's just someone who's who's been there for me in times of need. I realize not everybody has that same experience. And so I don't take it for granted. I'm blessed. Especially as I get older, I've noticed that there are things that I turn to my dad for even now that are just helpful. Through that kind of formative years, especially, there were things I needed, but even today I need things. So maybe to take it back a little bit, when I first was learning to drive, I remember that I had this little stick and I didn't know how to drive it. And so my dad taught me. And I remember that first day learning, he took me out onto Bay Road in Saginaw. Yep. So I'm there, there's traffic. My car stalls in the middle of Bay Road. Cars begin to honk at me. I'm beginning to freak out, right? The stress and the pressure. My dad is calm, he's cool. He says, Don't worry about it. Just pop into neutral, right? Push down the clutch, start the car, make sure you're in gear, and slowly start to let off the clutch and go. And so I started to do that. And even though you know there was the pressure of the moment, before you knew it, I figured it out. That's the place to learn, right? And then I was off driving on my own. Uh, I remember when it came to the time where I had to kind of get to the point where I was tying a tie myself, and I said, Hey dad, I need help. How do you tie a tie?

unknown 2:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

This is like nowadays you got YouTube and Google who does all this stuff for you. But back then I asked my dad and he's like, Well, what do you want? Do you want a full Windsor, half Windsor? Like he was giving me more details than I needed, but I was like, I don't know, just help me tie a tie. So he taught me how to tie a tie. Even this last summer, I called up my dad because I needed something. So I was checking out my grass. My grass was not looking so great. Right. I had just mowed the lawn. I noticed some areas were kind of pushed down, and some like, that must be my blades. So I'm like, Dad, what do you think? Should I buy new blades? Should I take it in to get sharpened? He comes, he checks them out, checks out my mower. He's like, No, you got to get it sharpened, but you shouldn't take it in. I'm like, oh, what do I do? He's like, you should sharpen it. Like, I don't know how to sharpen lawnmower blades. And he's like, Well, I can show you, you know. So he's like, I got a jig. I didn't know there was a jig that you could use. And he brings it to my house. He gave me the jig. He said, Here it is, he set it up for me, showed me how to sharpen my lawnmower blades, and wouldn't you know it? Now I know how to sharpen lawnmower blades. I was in my 40s, and my dad is still teaching me all these things about life. I'm blessed. I have a father who's blessed, blessed me in uh innumerable ways. He's helped me in so many different ways. Now I approach my dad with stuff like that. Why? Well, because I have a good relationship with him. I I trust him. I know he's for me. I know he loves me. I know he wants to help me with things. There's no hesitation for me to reach out to my dad and to ask for things or or or approach him about things like that because he's my dad. Now I share that with you because this morning I want to ask a question. You may not have a father who you have that same relationship with. But scripture tells us that we have a father in heaven. Scripture is very clear that the God in heaven, if you belong to Christ, he is your father. That we have a father in heaven. So the question I want to ask is how do we interact with him? How do we approach our father in heaven? That's something that we should probably consider. We should probably think about. In fact, we should probably ask ourselves some questions about that. And thankfully, it's also the reason why I think Jesus gives us quite a bit of instruction about the way that we approach our Father. So this morning, if you want to explore the way that we approach our Father in heaven, if you want to see specifically what Jesus has to say about the topic of prayer, then go ahead and open your Bibles with me. We are in the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter six is where we're at this morning. Feel free to open your Bibles. Matthew chapter six. If you're a guest with us, you're newer here to the church, we open our Bible every Sunday. So if you brought your Bible, great. If you didn't, we got you covered. There's a Bible in front of you. You're welcome to use that. If you don't own a Bible, that's your Bible today. And if you're looking for the Gospel of Matthew, it is in the New Testament. So three-quarters of the way into your Bible, you'll get to the book of Matthew. So Malachi is the end of the Old Testament. Matthew, if you hit Mark, go back. Matthew 6 is where we're at. And uh again, glad you're here today. As you're turning there, I'm Joe. I'm the lead pastor here, thankful that you're here. We're continuing a series that we began last week, and we call this series Secret Service. And this is a teaching series that comes from the Sermon on the Mount, which is Jesus' most famous message he ever taught. And he he, in that sermon, where he talks about various things, in this section, he delves into the importance of the way in which we are motivated to practice our righteousness, to live out our faith, to engage in spiritual activities. Jesus actually highlights three specific spiritual activities. These are just examples. He talks about giving, he talks about prayer, and he talks about fasting in this section. Last week we looked at giving. Today we're talking about prayer. Next week we're going to talk about fasting. But before we jump into the message today, I want to just kind of remind you about a little bit of the context that we have here in our passage. So we talked about this last week, but what Jesus is doing here is specifically in verse one of chapter six, he's giving us a principle. And this is a principle that he's going to apply to all three of these things. As we saw last week, giving, then prayer, then fasting. And so here's the principle in verse one. Let me revisit this again. He says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people, and this is key here, in order to be seen by them. For then you'll have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. This is the principle that Jesus wants to highlight, and he's going to apply to prayer today. And Jesus gives this principle here in verse one, because the truth is we all have a sin nature. We all have this propensity in us to try to make much of ourselves, to glorify self. And there are times where when that desire grows, according to Jesus, it can even hijack the way that we live out our faith. So instead of engaging in spiritual activities for the glory of God as an act of worship, sometimes we try to do things to be noticed, to be seen, so that way people look at us and go, man, look how spiritual that guy is. So that way we can receive glory for ourselves. And Jesus warns us about this. That's not the right approach, right? What Jesus is saying here is our motivations matter. If I had to kind of give a synopsis of what this whole section is about, that would be it. That the motivation behind what we do, it matters according to Jesus. There are all sorts of spiritual activities that are great. You can do all sorts of good things, but if you don't have the right motivations, well, then there's a problem. And so Jesus is talking about that. And so we're looking at the topic of prayer today. He's going to apply this principle in verse one to our section on prayer, but he's going to do more than that. If you notice, just kind of looking over your chapter here in your Bible, he's going to spend more time talking about prayer than any of the other practices. He's going to give more real estate to prayer than anything else. And so essentially what Jesus is doing, I believe, in our text, is he's applying the principle. We're going to see that, beginning in verse five. But then after that, moving on into verse seven, he's going to say, you know, while I'm on the topic of prayer, let me say some other things about prayer as well. So we're going to get even some bonus material from Jesus on what prayer is all about. So that's what we're going to see today. Now that we have context, you guys ready to jump in? Let's dive right into scripture. All right. So the first thing I want to unpack for you, number one, is this the purpose of prayer. The purpose of prayer. So notice how our passage begins. I want to look at the very beginning of verse 5. He says, and when you pray. Now let's stop here. We did the same thing last week. If you remember, if you were here in verse 2, we we read those first four words and we paused. Notice how Jesus isn't saying, and if you pray. In the original language, this is abundantly clear. Jesus is saying, when? It's an expectation, an assumption that if you are a follower of Christ, you are a person who prays. It's expected. Now, if you grew up in church, you might be more familiar with prayer. Maybe you grew up and your parents prayed and you prayed at church, and so you you know a lot about prayer. But there may be some of you who, this whole idea of prayer is new to you. That's all right. We're glad you're here. If I can, regardless of whether you know a lot about prayer or know very little, can I just take a moment to very simply explain what prayer is? At a very basic level, prayer is an activity where we communicate to God. Now, I want us to think about this for a moment, and I want to unpack for you why this is significant. In Scripture, we read about who God is, and we we learn that God, first of all, is transcendent. Now, that's a big fancy word that just means he is far above over his creation. We have a very big God who's over everything he's created, but he's not only transcendent. The Bible says he's also imminent. That just means that he's involved in his creation. He's at work and involved within his creation. So he's far above it, but he's also involved in it. Scripture also tells us that God is a person, he is a being, and he's a communicative being, meaning God communicates. According to the book of Hebrews. In the past, God spoke at various times and in various ways to Israel's fathers by means of the prophets. But the author of Hebrews goes on to say in that chapter, but in these last days, today, God has spoken definitively, one time and one way, to us through Christ. The point here is this: we have God's revelation, God has spoken. Jesus is the final word. Jesus is the final word, and scripture is the breathed out record that reveals and proclaims that final word. So can I suggest something to you this morning? If you want to hear God's voice today, here's my suggestion. Read your Bible. We have a God who's spoken. We have a God who speaks. You can hear, you can actually hear his voice today. When you open up scripture, all scripture is God breathed. We can hear his voice today. God communicates to us through his word. What a blessing. How often do we take that for granted? God has spoken. We can hear his voice today. He communicates through his word to us, and we communicate to God through prayer. So when we lift our voices to God, our God, who is imminently involved in his creation, he actually hears us. Think about the miracle that is. That we have a God who created us. We're so tiny. You know, God is so big, we're so tiny. We're made from the dust, right? We're little dirtballs creatures. And yet when we open our voices and we we turn our gaze toward the Lord and we begin to speak to him, he hears us. That's incredible. Can I highlight something that's even more incredible about that today? Uh in the old covenant, and this is some God people, God's people have always been able to talk to him. God's created prayer as a means of communication with him. But in the old covenant, things were a little bit different, right? Access to God was more limited. What I mean by that is this you didn't just approach God however you wanted and whenever you wanted. No, there were boundaries in the old covenant, there were structures, there were mediators. So for example, Israel had a priesthood. The priest was someone who acted as a mediator between God and man. And so the priest would offer intercession on behalf of people, and so you would have a priest who would do certain things. He's kind of the middleman between you and God. And the priest then would also take sacrifices and they would go to the temple, and they and they also would at times go in the inner parts of the temple into an area where they would have an encounter with God where normal people couldn't go. This is all part of the old covenant. But now, under the new covenant, through what Jesus has done, it's totally different. Through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, Christ has not only made a way of salvation for us, he not only atones for our sin, he not only forgives us of our sin, but Christ offers us a new life in Christ. And more than that, he makes a way for us to draw near to God. How cool is that! If you placed your faith in Jesus today, if you're a believer, and by that I mean you're trusting in who Jesus is and what he's done, that he died for you, that he was buried, that he actually rose from the dead. If by grace you have been saved through faith, you now have a priestly status. We are a royal priesthood. Scripture tells us that. This means we don't need to keep our distance from God any longer. We can draw near. The veil of separation has been torn. We have full access to God. More than that, we have Jesus who has ascended into the throne room of heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the Father where he serves continually as our great high priest. He always lives to make intercession for us. And so when we pray, Scripture tells us in the book of Hebrews that we can come boldly to the throne of grace. We can approach God in prayer confidently because we have a great high priest who is there. And God not only hears our prayer, but also responds to our prayer. We can find help and mercy, grace in our times of need. We can turn to the Lord, He hears and He responds to us. That's crazy, isn't it? What a miracle. You and I can communicate to God and we can pray and God responds. That's powerful. So at its most basic level, prayer is when we communicate to God. When we get to communicate to our Creator and our Redeemer, and it's miraculous. So now that we've seen the purpose, okay, prayers are our means of communicating to God. Now let's dive into the text and let's see what Jesus has to say about it. So the second thing Jesus is gonna show us are the pitfalls of prayer. Now there are more, I'm sure, to this, but he's only gonna hit two of them today. The pitfalls of prayer. So as I said before, uh, you can do good things and you can do it with the wrong motivations and in the wrong way. And Jesus is gonna tell us some things to avoid when we pray. And so he's gonna address uh the beginning. The first thing he's gonna do is talk about the principle in verse one and apply it. So notice what he says in verse five. And when you pray, he says, You must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, and this is key here, that they may be seen by others. That's the principle we talked about. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. Notice how Jesus is applying this principle here to prayer. He begins by talking again about these hypocrites. We talked about the hypocrites last week. This is a word that's derived from a group of people in ancient Greece who were involved in theater, who wore masks, and they would put those masks on to play different characters, and they would play multiple characters in a play. And so the idea here is it's inauthentic, right? People who look one way outwardly, but inwardly there's someone different. That's a hypocrite. And there are these people in the first century who Jesus is talking about, these hypocrites who were trying to look really spiritual on the outside. And so they were praying in the synagogues and in the street corners. Now, I want to pause for a second because there's nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, praying in the synagogue was common, right? That was a normal practice. Praying even in the street was normal. Here's why. Faithful Jews in the first century, they would often stop to pray at various times throughout their day. They would pray at sunrise, they would pray at 9 a.m., they would pray at noon, and they would pray at 3 p.m. That coincided with the temple sacrifices, then they would pray at sunset. And so if you're going about your day, you might notice what time it is, and you might stop and you might pray. That was a very normal thing. Nothing wrong with that. The challenge here is these people are doing that, but why are they doing it? They're doing it that they may be seen by others. That's the point. Jesus warned us about this in verse one. In fact, this is something that they love. They love to stand in front of people and begin these eloquent prayers, and they love to hear people whisper, oh, look how spiritual they're. Oh man, I can't believe. Look at his theology, look at the way he's such a righteous person. They loved that attention on themselves. Their motivation was about drawing attention to self, receiving praise. As a kid, my parents used to pray at the dinner table when we would have dinner. And we would pray, right? I would fold my hands and I would pray. And sometimes instead of focusing on the prayer, I would do this thing where I would open my eyes and I'd begin to peek. And I'd be peeking because I was intentionally trying to see whether or not my brother was actually praying or whether he was trying to sneak food, right? And if he was trying to sneak food, then I would have a chance to tell on him, right? So that's what I try to do. Anybody else do that? Just me? Okay. All right. One of us. Great. Thanks. All right. Feels awesome. Okay. But I would do that and I wouldn't be focusing on the actual prayer, I'd be focusing on what was going on around me. This is kind of what the hypocrites are doing. I imagine that they're praying, right? And they look so so eloquent and so spiritual, but they have one eye kind of peeking open to see all the people who are watching them as they pray. They're feeding off of this attention of the people who want to give them praise. Now, what's interesting here is it's totally misguided. And if you think about it, God's not even in the equation for that prayer, is he? These people are praying publicly, but they don't really ultimately care whether or not God hears their voice. They really mostly care about whether other people hear their voice. That's what they care about. It's about all the people around them, not the God that they're supposed to be speaking to. And Jesus says if your motivation in prayer is to look really good in front of people and really spiritual in front of people, if that's your goal, well, congratulations because you'll accomplish that goal and your prayer won't amount to anything more. This is the warning. And so, in light of that, he has a better approach. He says, This 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. And notice here how Jesus is advocating for us to practice our righteousness once again in secret. This is secret service. Jesus says, the way we live out our faith in ways that please God, it's oftentimes doing things quietly when nobody else is watching. Now, let me remind you, I talked about this last week. This command here in no way is prohibiting the place of public prayer. It's not nullifying that at all. Remember, Jesus is somebody who He Himself prayed publicly. So these instructions aren't about the location of our prayer, it's about the motivation of our prayer. When we pray, we pray to God and for God, not to bring glory to ourselves. It's an opportunity to connect to the Father who is infinitely glorious. And when we pray with the right motivations, Jesus says, God hears us when nobody else is around, the God who is unseen, who is everywhere, he hears us. God hears our prayer, he's delighted. Our father is delighted when we come to talk to him. He enjoys the conversation. He wants us to come to him. And when we approach him with the right motivations, Jesus says, our Father who sees us in secret will reward us. So don't pray to be seen. That's a pitfall. That's a pitfall. But notice, as I mentioned, after Jesus applies the principle in verse one, he's kind of like, well, we're talking about prayer, so can I just share some other things about prayer? And he kind of sidesteps and he begins to share other things. And the next thing he's going to talk about is another pitfall. So you have the hypocrites, right, which probably are the religious leaders in Judaism and their misguided approach. And then now you have another group of people and their misguided approach. Notice what he says in verse 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. Now, here, Jesus is talking about Gentiles, just a heads up: a Gentile is a non-Jewish person. Within this context, these would be the pagan nations around Israel. Now, in the ancient world, there was a host of different pagan gods that were worshipped. These Gentile nations would worship various gods, and for the most part, these pagan deities were detached, they were unpredictable, they were easily angered, they were prone to anger, they were powerful, but not so much personal. That largely characterizes the pagan deities of the ancient world. And so, in order to try to get the attention of one of the gods, pagan people in the ancient world would often go to great lengths. Do all sorts of things. So, for example, they would babble a bunch of empty phrases to try to get the attention of the gods. There's a great example of this. It's one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament. You might know about it. It comes from 1 Kings 18. This is the showdown that takes place on Mount Carmel. So here's how the story goes: there's a prophet named Elijah. He's a prophet of the Lord. And there are 450 prophets who worship a Canaanite god, Baal. They're the prophets of Baal. And basically, this showdown is between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal and between Elijah's God and Baal, the Canaanite God. And so the way the showdown kind of works is Elijah says, here's the scenario. And then what I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to ask you, prophets of Baal, to pray. And as you pray, I want you to ask for your God to rain down fire from heaven and ignite the altar. Okay, so go ahead, guys. So they begin to pray. These prophets of Baal, they're hopping around, they're praying, right? It says that they're kind of beginning to dance around. The text actually says they limp around. They're crying out over and over and over again for hours. They're crying out to their God. They even begin to cut themselves. Because as they cut themselves and begin to bleed out, they're hoping that that will draw the attention of their God Baal, that he'll hear and he'll respond. But the text tells us that there's no voice, there's no sound, and nobody answered. Total crickets. So Elijah says, All right, guys, my turn. He says, All right, let's get some jugs of water in here. He begins to dump jugs of water on the altar. Like it's getting totally saturated. The text even says the water begins to pool up around the altar, and so the wood begins to float. It is totally saturated. And Elijah he lifts up his eyes to the Lord and he begins to pray to the God of Israel. He says, Lord, rain down fire, and all of a sudden, fire comes down from heaven and it totally consumes the altar. And Elijah is victorious. And immediately after this, what we see in the text is Elijah he slaughters the 450 prophets of Baal right there on Mount Carmel. It's a wonderful story for your little kids at bedtime. I highly encourage it. Great passage. The point here is this. You don't got to do cartwheels for God to notice you or know what's going on. No, what does Jesus say? In response to this, he says this in verse 8 Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. We have a God who sees us. We have a God who knows about our situation. Right here, right now. Whatever you're facing, God knows. He knows your situation. Before you even ask him, he knows and he cares. This is what Jesus is telling us. And why? Well, because he's our Father. He's our heavenly Father. Jesus wants to show us this. Again, we don't need to interpret these verses woodenly. Jesus in this moment is not addressing the problem with long prayers. You want to know why I know that? If you read Luke chapter 6, verse 12, it says that Jesus prays all night long. If you read the book of 1 Thessalonians, when Paul talks to the church in Thessalonica, he says, this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. So this is God's will for the church, that you pray without ceasing. So the prohibition here is not against long prayers. There are times where you may have longer prayers because you have many things to communicate before the Lord. He's not warning us about a problem with long prayers. What he's saying is you don't have to convince God. He knows, he sees, he cares. You don't have to try to get his attention. Our father's attentive to our needs. He's aware of the situation. Why? He's a good father. That's why. Now, I have some quite a bit to go in the message, and so it pains me I can't spend more time here, but I would be remiss to not mention at least something about this. So if you're looking at this text right here, he says, Your father knows what you need before you ask him. If you were to think about that and meditate on that for a while, you might draw a conclusion. And here may be the conclusion. Well, if God knows what I need before I ask him, why am I asking him? Right? If he already knows the situation, what's the point of prayer? I guess this must mean we don't need to pray, because God already knows the situation, right? He knows he cares. We don't need to pray. Let me warn you. The sovereignty of God never inhibits our responsibility. What I mean by that is this we're gonna affirm what the Bible says is true. God is sovereign. We are also responsible. Both of these need to be affirmed. There's an element to this that's mysterious, but we need to affirm both. Sometimes we get caught into the trap and in many areas of doctrine, where we affirm one thing highly and we diminish something else that the Bible says is true. And this would be an example. We we don't want to say, well, God is so sovereign and he knows the situation, then we don't need to pray. No. We are commanded to pray. And the truth is, when we pray, prayer is powerful. It is effective. Things happen when we pray. This is why in the Epistle of James, he gives us clear instructions. He says the fervent, effective prayer of a righteous person avails much, it accomplishes much, it's powerful. When we pray, God hears and he often responds in powerful ways. At the same time, that prayer and the way that God responds never diminishes his sovereignty. God is totally sovereign. Prayer does not bend God's will to do something he doesn't want to do. Nothing happens outside of the full counsel of God's will. But what we do is we uphold both these things. And if you're like, well, that's confusing, that's fine. It's a mystery. Just hold them in tension and trust what God says and leave the mystery to him. But I honestly believe that we have to uphold both. I think prayer is a divinely ordained means to accomplish God's sovereign ends. And so we uphold those things, we trust the Lord with it, we pray, we're commanded to, but we trust God. We're responsible for the decisions we make and the things we do, but God is ultimately in control. So now that we've seen the purpose of prayer, very simply, it's the means by which God has given us that we communicate with Him. Now that we've seen some pitfalls, just a few of them, right, praying to be seen or trying to do gymnastics to get God to pay attention. These are some pitfalls. Now that we've seen these, the third section I want to draw to your attention, number three, is the pattern for prayer. The pattern for prayer. Now, again, I'll mention I don't have a ton of time left. The rest of my text is the Lord's Prayer. Like it's the Lord's Prayer, people. We could do a whole sermon series on this. It's a great passage of scripture. I don't want to shortchange you, so I'm gonna hit the highlights. I'll try to cover every part, but it's awesome. This section of scripture is amazing. Uh let's start with verse nine. Notice what Jesus says. He gives this pattern. He says, Pray then like this. Now I want to pause. In some circles, what people would suggest is that the Lord's Prayer is an exact script that we are called to recite. Many of you grew up in churches where the Lord's Prayer was, people would recite that every week. That's awesome. There's no problem with that whatsoever. I think it's great to recite the Lord's Prayer. I think you should commit it to memory. It's a wonderful thing. At the same time, I would not limit it or relegate it to simply being a script that we have to memorize perfectly and recite. I do believe that Jesus is giving us an example or a pattern. One of the reasons I say that is this is not the only reference to the Lord's Prayer in Scripture. For example, in Luke's gospel, we have the Lord's Prayer, and it's a shorter version. That would suggest to me that there were different versions of the Lord's Prayer that were circulating in the first century that they were used, and it was free to have some variants. So my point here is that I don't think it has to be a script, but it's wonderful if you memorize it. I think it's an example for us. Now, I should also probably mention this before I jump in. We know that in the first century, the Jewish community, as they would gather, they had various prayers that they prayed. One prayer in particular was the Kaddish. And this was a prayer that was very similar to the Lord's Prayer. So in this prayer, which Jesus would have known about, in this prayer, it talks about God's name being holy, right? Hallowed be God's name. That's one feature in the beginning of the prayer. It talks about the kingdom of God being established. That's another feature in this prayer. It also talks about God's will being done. So those three things were all part of a common prayer that the people would have known. And so as Jesus gives the Lord's Prayer, he takes something that the people were familiar with and he puts a new twist on it, which is something Jesus often does. Now, what's distinct about Jesus' prayer, however, from that prayer is the way that Jesus begins. He says, Pray then like this, our Father in heaven. Jesus begins by reminding his disciples that prayer is relational. When we are praying, we are praying to our Father. And as we pray to our Father, this pattern that Jesus begins to give, he begins by saying, Hey, it's important when you pray to the Father to acknowledge who the Father is and what the Father is doing. It's important to give praise to the Father that you're praying to, honor to the Father you're praying to. So notice what he says. Pray then like this Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's unpack this real quickly what Jesus is saying. He's going to highlight three things about God here: God's name, God's kingdom, God's will. I want to begin by talking about the name of God. So in the in the ancient world, a name, especially in biblical times, a name held deep meaning. In fact, a name was far more important than it is today. It was almost an extension of someone's being. So the fact that Jesus is saying, hallowed be your name, what Jesus is saying is, Father, you are holy. It's a recognition of who God is. You're holy, you're good, you're glorious, you are set apart, Lord. That's where Jesus begins. Notice how this is a very God-centered prayer. And then he goes on to say this: Your kingdom come. This is a prayer for God to establish the fullness of his rule and reign. It's a prayer with an eye toward the future, right? This is something that will happen in the age to come. God's kingdom will be fully established. But I don't think it's only about something in the future. I also think there's an element to it that's present. I believe that at the arrival of Jesus, the kingdom of God was inaugurated. It was begun. This is why when Jesus stood before his disciples, he said, The kingdom of God is in your midst. Because Jesus was there, among them. The king was there. In other words, God's rule and reign was beginning to be revealed when Jesus arrived the first time, but when he comes back a second time, the fullness of God's rule and reign will be actualized on the earth. It will be completed, it will be consummated. I believe in what's called this already but not yet theology. And so there's an element to the kingdom that's already here, but there's an element that we look forward to. One day God will come, Jesus will return, and the fullness of his kingdom will be established. We should long for that day, we should pray for that day, we should look forward to that day. Amen. Connected to this, though, is also that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, again, this is very similar. We know that one day God is going to do this amazing work. At the end of your Bibles, you read the end of Revelation, it says that heaven and earth will unite as one. There will be a wedding of sorts where the place where God dwells and the place where we dwell will be joined together as one, and the dwelling place of God will be our dwelling place forever. We will be with him forever. It's an awesome reality. One day that will be fulfilled. And so we long for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's something we look forward to. But we can also today, in similar fashion, look for God's will to be done today. I want God's will to be done in my life today. I want God's will to be done in my family today. I want God's will done in this church today. I want God's will done in this my community and in this nation. These are the things that we should long for today. It's about aligning our hearts with God's purposes and God's plans. And isn't it interesting that Jesus, as he's saying these, this is actually a prayer that he's going to repeat later on. Remember the story when Jesus climbs up on the Mount of Olives and he knows he's about to die? He knows he's going to be arrested, and in that moment, right, he begins to sweat drops of blood. The pressure is incredible. In his flesh and his humanity, he knows that what he's going to face is going to be difficult. It's going to be hard. It's going to be painful. And so he wants to avoid having to go through that process. At the same time, he also knows what the Father has called for him to do. And so what does he pray? He says, Father, it's possible, let this cup pass from me. If it's possible, let this pass from me. Nevertheless, Lord, not my will be done, but what? Your will be done. And then Jesus took the cross. He submitted to the will of his Father. So here, Jesus is providing us with this pattern for prayer. We first fix our attention on God, who he is, what his purposes and plans are, his character, his nature. But then notice how Jesus doesn't stop there. Remember, we are talking to our Father, our Father who cares. And so he doesn't just focus his attention on God, then he looks practically at our own needs. And he's going to talk about three things our needs, our sins, our struggles. Let's look at verses 11 through 13 quickly. He says, Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. First of all, he begins talking about daily bread. This should remind us of the Israelites. As they traveled through the wilderness, every day God gave them manna to eat. They had daily bread. God wants to continue to give us our daily bread, and it's not just food, it's everything. God wants to meet our needs, and we should turn to our Father and pray about the things that we need. We see this later in this chapter. Jesus says, Man, you're anxious about what you're going to eat, you're anxious about what you're going to wear. Don't you know that you have a father who loves you, who cares about you? Look how he clothes the lilies of the field and feeds the birds and takes care of them, right? How much greater are you than they? If your father cares for the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, how much more does he care for you and want to meet your needs? We can turn to God when we have needs. He's our Father. Notice how he also talks about our sins. He says, Forgive us our debts. Now I want to remind you that Jesus is speaking to his disciples here. He's talking to his followers. I want to suggest to you that if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're a Christian today, you are a forgiven person. You probably should remind yourself of that. Before God, you stand forgiven. That's part of what's called your justification. The moment of belief in Christ, God takes your sin and he exchanges it for the righteousness of Christ. And in that moment, you are declared forgiven. You stand forgiven before a holy God. That is who you are, and that is good news for us. That's part of our justification. But the Bible also talks about our sanctification. That's a big fancy word that means our growing in holiness. And even though we've been declared forgiven as we navigate through life, we still have a fallen nature, and so we still do things we shouldn't. And when we do that, there are times we need to go before the Lord and confess and seek forgiveness. Not because we've lost that relationship, not because the relationship is broken. He's our Father. Right? But because of fellowship, we're encouraged to confess. This is why in 1 John he says, if you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. John is speaking to believers there. He's saying, Hey, you're a Christian, you are forgiven, but if you're walking through life for fellowship, you should confess. It's the same thing that Jesus says to Peter. Remember in John 13, Jesus is washing feet. Peter says, I don't want anything to do with that. And he says, No, you have to, Peter. And then later on, Jesus goes to say, Hey, Peter, you're already clean because of the word I've spoken to you. You're already forgiven. You've been cleansed through your faith in me. However, there are times where you still got to wash your feet. And Christian, let me suggest to you, as you walk through life, if there are times where you engage in sin, there are moments where continually you should go before the Lord and say, Lord, I know that I'm your child. I know that you love me. I know that nothing can separate me from your love, but I sinned, I want to confess, and I want you to cleanse me, cleanse my feet, wash my feet so I can continue in fellowship with you. So we are encouraged to pursue forgiveness from the Lord. We're also commanded to extend forgiveness. That's part of this as well. But we're running out of time, so let's keep going. Lastly, Jesus focuses on our struggles. He says, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. You see, the things that we struggle with, we don't need to face those alone. We have a God who wants to help us from our struggles, from the things that we're tempted by. If you've got struggles and temptations in your life today, you can turn to the Lord and He gives you a way of escape. That's good news, and that's a promise we can cling to. There's always the open invitation from the Lord, and that's really what all this boils down to. If I've lost you, let me bring you back. In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn't just teaching us how to pray, He's reminding us of who we are praying to. When we pray, we are talking to the Father. Our Father. So unlike the hypocrites, we don't need to perform, our Father sees. Unlike the Gentiles, we don't need to say the right words to get God's attention because our father knows. And here, Jesus gives us this example of prayer. He gives us a model for how to approach the Father because our Father invites. He wants us to talk to him. He's our Father. He delights when we come and talk with Him. You know, I open this message by talking about my dad. My father. I can always turn to him. Because I've got a great relationship with him. He loves me. He's for me. He wants to help me with stuff. He wants me to know how to drive a car, right? That's an important part of life. He wanted to teach me how to tie a tie. He wanted to help me sharpen my lawnmower blades, even though it was last year, right? He's still trying to help me with things. My father's always there, and I can always go to him because we have a relationship. If you're trusting in Christ today, then something miraculous has happened. You who were once enemies of a holy God, you now have been brought into relationship through what Christ has done for you. You now have a relationship with God. He is your father, and you are his child. And this is why John says, See what kind of love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. We are God's children. And so, in light of that, the big idea that we see very simply this morning is this pray like you have a father. Now that might seem pretty simple. You might be like, Yeah, I know I have a father, but let me ask you a question. I say it this way because you might know that you have a father, but do you approach him as such? Do I? Maybe you have a tendency to fall into some pitfalls with prayer. Maybe your motivations are wrong, or maybe you feel like there are barriers between you and God, and so you might fall into different one of those categories. But scripture is very clear. God is our father. He sees us, he knows us, he invites us. So what are you waiting for? Go to him. Go to your father. He wants you to talk to him. Go to your father. Talk to your father in prayer. Because if if you're in Christ, you have a relationship with him. Let's pray. Our Father, we want to thank you for today. You are holy. Lord, you are exalted. You are good to us. Lord, we pray for your will to be done, not just in the age to come, but today. Through us, through the church, we pray that we would conform to your will. Lord, I pray for the various needs we may have. There are people in the room right now who have needs, significant needs. Maybe these are hurdles or obstacles that they don't know if they can get through or get past. And Lord, I pray that you would just remind them that you are a loving Father who cares for their needs. Lord, we realize we don't always get the things that we ask for, but Lord, you give us the things that we need. You know what's best. And so I pray that we would come to you for our needs. Lord, for the times that we fall short, the times that we begin to go astray, I pray that we would just come before you in confession. Cleanse us, wash our feet, Lord, we ask and pray. For the things that are snares for us, the temptations, I pray that you would help us. Lord, we we love you. We want to thank you for the opportunity that we have to come before you. You are our Father. We are your children. Thank you that we have a way to come before you, and we know that you hear. Because of what your son has done on our behalf. And so, Lord, we love you. We praise you. In the precious name of Jesus, we pray these things. Amen.