Sermon Transcript
All right, go ahead and turn your Bibles over to Matthew 6.
We had a sweet taste from the book of Romans last week. We are back in Matthew now. I want to start by praying and then we’ll rise and stand.
Father, I come to You in the name of Jesus. Will You please captivate our minds and bring us to Your throne? Escape us, Lord, from the world. For the next few minutes, I pray that our minds would be catapulted to see things that we cannot see on our own strength with our feeble minds. And I ask right now that You help me and help everyone here to think rightly from the perspective that we should be thinking. That all of us play a pivotal role in the second coming of Christ. That every single person here is here as a vapor, and yet at the same time we are called to exalt You as mere vapors. And I ask that right now You would help us to see our own lives, these next few minutes, as preparation for what we shall be doing in eternity. I need You to take our minds off of our bills, off of our shopping trips, off of our vacations, off of our health problems, off of everything in this world, so that we can have our hearts and our minds recalibrated. And I ask that right now You would help me to focus, to take a back seat, and as John the Baptist said, “I must decrease so that He can increase.” I ask that right now You would claim this service as Your own, take hold of my heart, my tongue, and my mind, and use it. Lord, use me to make much of Yourself and magnify Yourself before Your people. Please, and I pray that the love of God would be exuded in today’s service. That we would feel, taste, and see Your nearness and the love that You have for us. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
Okay, so last week we had the wonderful opportunity of a baptism. And we had this sweet break in the book of Romans. Today, we’re returning to the book of Matthew, and that is because we are in a series right now called, Who is Jesus and What Does He Want? The reason we’re in this series to begin with is because we want to make disciples of all nations because Christ has commanded us to. And the key part of that is Jesus says in Matthew 28 that we must teach them to obey everything Christ has commanded us.
So today, we are in the next stage in the Sermon on the Mount, and that is in Matthew 6, and we are going to examine the Lord’s Prayer, or the “Our Father,” or as I would like us all to adopt, the “Model Prayer.” So rise and stand with me.
Beginning in verse 9 through 15:
Therefore you should pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Now, as I was reading that, some of you, as I was going through it, you might have realized, wait, why didn’t I hear “yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever”? Did I get that right? My King James people? Oh, “Your kingdom, power, and glory forever. Amen.” We’re going to get to that next week. That’s the latter half of the model prayer, or the Lord’s Prayer, today. We’re going to begin in the first part.
You see, the Lord’s Prayer is made up of six petitions, six asks. And the first three are the ones we’re going to examine.
Main Point: We must orient our minds to the Father’s heavenly throne and pray for His earthly exaltation.
Now, I want to remind you guys how we got to this point. We got to this point because the last sermon we had on the Lord’s commands was on prayer. He reminded us of two groups of people that we must not be like. And the first group are the hypocrites, the Jewish hypocrites who love to stand on the corners and they would pray. It says in Matthew 6:5, “They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly, I tell you, they have their reward.” We learned last week that they were a group of people who did not like to pray unless people were watching them and applauding them. So you’ve got the Jewish hypocrites.
Does that mean the Gentiles are scot-free, or are they equally guilty? The truth is, they’re equally guilty because the Gentiles, Jesus says, that we must not be like, are those who like to babble on in very long prayers, uttering a bunch of nonsense, going on and on and on and on and on and on, thinking that they somehow can earn God’s ear through lengthy prayers. Jesus says, “Don’t be like either one of them.” And that’s what leads us to our sermon today.
Jesus says that we must be like this prayer. This is how we should pray. We are called, Church, to use the Lord’s Prayer as a model, not a mindless ritual. We are called to use the Lord’s Prayer as a model, not a mindless ritual or recital.
You see, Jesus says, “Pray like this.” He does not say, “Pray this.” Do you hear the difference? He’s telling you, you do not mindlessly recite the Lord’s Prayer. He says, “You pray like this.” It is a model.
When I was growing up as a Catholic, we referred to the Lord’s Prayer as the “Our Father.” And my understanding of this prayer was that the words themselves had the power. Now, it is Scripture, and therefore it does have an utterance of power in it. But it was not in the same way that I would mindlessly recite it so quickly. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. And it was almost like, let me see how fast I can say this. And then we were all trying to outdo one another in catechism. And then when it was time to confess your sins, you go into the confessional. You tell the priest, “Oh, Father, I’m sorry, I hit my sister again this week.” And then the priest says, “Well, now you’ve got to say three Our Fathers.” And so it was, in the Catholic Church, we would call that penitence. And the goal was, you would say the Our Father, you know, as a way of expressing your penitence and your sorrow for the sin that you confessed over. Although, as a kid, I felt like I was saying the Our Father as a punishment, right? “Oh, you hit your sister? Here’s ten Our Fathers.”
But that is not what the Lord’s Prayer was supposed to be. You see, Jesus wants us to use the Lord’s Prayer as a model. And if we are to model the prayer He is giving us, we must understand it.
Now, if we’re being honest, if I were to ask you, have you thought through the Lord’s Prayer much, what would you say? Have you genuinely given pause and thought to ask yourself, what does it mean when we say, “Hallowed be Thy name”? And is that much of a priority for us in our lives? I would hope so because it’s the first step in this prayer.
You see, in order to understand this prayer, we must understand the what. But you see, now that we know that this is not a mindless recitation, but rather a prayer that we model, we must understand what it means. But before we can understand the what of this prayer, I want you to understand the why.
1. Why do we pray like this? (Matthew 6:9a)
Therefore, our first question is: why do we pray like this? Why did Jesus even give us this prayer? In fact, last week, Jesus says that He knows everything that we need before we pray it (Matt 6:8). So we’ve got to ask, if You know everything I need, why are we to pray at all? It’s kind of strange, right?
See, that just reveals, honestly, that we don’t understand the design of prayer. Prayer is much more than receiving what you want. But it is, in fact, the vehicle that God has designed for us to receive our blessings. God wants you to go to Him and speak to Him.
You do not have because you do not ask. (James 4:2, CSB)
The Lord has designed and built prayer to be the vehicle through which we receive His blessings. He wants you to go to Him. He wants you to talk to Him. He desires a relationship with you.
The second thing that I want you to be aware of is prayer is how God uses prayer to shape our hearts. First, prayer reminds us that we must pray according to God’s will.
This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14–15, CSB)
So God is saying, you can be confident that I hear all of your prayers, but you must understand that the confidence that we have that He hears our prayers is because we are praying according to His will. Prayer is the vehicle that God uses to shape our hearts and wrap it around His will. His mold and what He desires for our lives.
It’s kind of weird, you know, when I was trying to model for our children, what does prayer look like? And we’re having our family worship at night, and we’re sitting down, and we’re like, “You got any prayer requests?” You know, and we ask the kids, like, we’re waiting to see, like, what kind of spiritual maturity. The hope for a parent is, yeah, I want my kids to say something like, “I need God’s help to shape my heart to love Him better.” Like, that’s a sign of spiritual maturity. When your prayer requests acknowledge both you’re insufficient to do God’s will, and you need His help, and you want to desire Him more. But when they’re children, what you start to hear first is, “Yeah, can you ask Jesus if we can go to Disney World this year?”
Well, as an adult, we think if you were to pray like that, “Lord Jesus, please give me a private jet.” As that just comes out your mouth, you’re like, that’s so foolish. Why would I ask the King of kings for such a request? As Christians, we know that’s foolish. You see, just by going to the Father and transporting your mind to His throne and kneeling down before Him and praying, we immediately begin to realize the things that are most important to us. Prayer has a way of shaping our heart according to God’s will.
But not just that, prayer is how God has granted us peace.
Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7, CSB)
Peace in our hearts happens as a result of praying.
So, God has designed prayer for us to have a relationship with Him, for us to receive the blessings of God. To shape our hearts after His own will. And to give us the peace we need to live in this forsaken world. Not God-forsaken, but righteousness-forsaken. God is very much still here.
I love this quote from John Frame.
“When we ask for things, we should do so with the ultimate desire of glorifying God. If God will be glorified in giving us our request, then we thank him; if he is more glorified in denying our request, our prayer has not thereby become useless, for all prayer is a recommitment to God’s purpose, his kingdom. The Lord’s Prayer beautifully exemplifies this spirit.” (John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 340)
a) It orients our minds towards heaven’s throne and the end goal before we pray for our personal needs.
The Lord’s Prayer is designed to foster your heart after God’s own heart. It opens up by transporting us to heaven’s throne.
So the real question that we now must ask is, how does the Lord’s Model Prayer shape our hearts?
So look in your bulletins. The Lord’s Prayer orients our minds towards heaven’s throne and the end goal before we pray for our personal needs.
The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. “Hallowed be Thy name,” “Your kingdom come,” and “Your will be done,”—all of these are centered around God being magnified. And notice that this comes before we even start praying for our own needs, like having our sins forgiven, our daily bread, or protection from the enemy.
The first thing in our life, according to this prayer, our highest priorities ought to be that we see God glorified and magnified above our own lives being protected. Let that sink in.
When you pray, do you pray mostly about your joints, arthritis, bills, then you pray that God’s kingdom come? Or that His name be glorified in all the earth?
b) Because the Father knows that we need Him to be exalted.
The second thing I want you to notice in your bulletin, well, we were instructed to pray according to this model prayer because the Lord knows what we need. I want to remind you of that first. Look at Matthew 6:8.
Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:8, CSB)
When He starts opening this prayer for us to glorify God first, that is telling you that the Lord believes what you need most in this life is for God to be glorified. When God is glorified and magnified in your mind and in your heart, you have a great surpassing peace, joy, and happiness than if God gave you every earthly pleasure.
Therefore, we pray this model prayer because the Father knows we need Him to be exalted. We are blessed when God is exalted.
Another way of saying this is we are blessed when God is magnified. And I’m going to borrow this illustration from a fellow pastor. He says that there are two types of magnification. The first type of magnification is a microscope. Taking something that is small and making it look big. The other one is taking something that is so big you can barely see it because you’re so up close to it. And it’s so mighty and so far away that you need to magnify it via a telescope.
So two types of scopes. We are not called to be microscopes. We are called to be telescopes.
Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor’s product is far superior. There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is.
Church, we are called to be telescopes. We magnify God by helping something that appears so far and so big to the rest of humanity and helping them see God for who He truly is. That, Church, is what we are called to do in this prayer.
We now ask, how, who, and what?
2. Who are we exalting? (Matthew 6:9b) “Our Father in heaven…”
So how are we praying? He says, “Our Father.” This probably means He expects us to be praying together.
And then the next one is, who, or to the homeschool kids, whom, to whom are we praying? We are praying to the Father. Notice that He does not say, our Lord, or our God. He says that we are praying to the Father.
All things have been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal him. (Matthew 11:27, CSB)
This is an intimate relationship that we all ought to have, a relationship made possible only by Jesus. If you can call God the Father, it is only because Jesus has revealed the Father to you. But, just like Jesus calls Him the Father, so do we. We have the same intimacy and closeness with the Father that Christ, the Son of God, has. That should never be lost on us.
You see, we have lived in a broken world. We see disease, death, decay, and destruction. Our world is marred by sin, and it is a hideous place to live in currently. And Jesus has stepped in, and He has bridged the gap that sin has put between us and God. And He has bridged that gap to bring us near to Him. And we are so near to Him, and He loves us so deeply that we get the beautiful privilege of calling Him not just Lord and King and God, but Father. That’s incredible.
A creature that was supposed to be separated from God for all eternity, not only is allowed to be in His presence, but we get to call Him Father.
So far, we have understood why Jesus gave us this prayer, to whom we are praying, and how we should pray. So now we must understand what is the meaning of these first three petitions.
3. How do Jesus’ followers exalt Him? (Matthew 6:9c) “Your name be honored as holy”
We exalt the Father by our good works and by making Him known.
So the first one, “May Your name be hallowed,” or “Hallowed be Thy name,” or “May Your name be honored.” What does this mean?
To understand this, we have to understand two ideas from the Old Testament. And then we will understand what it means for Jesus. In fact, we will know, by looking at these two ideas, that what Jesus is asking us to pray for, He’s asking us to pray that Jesus’ followers would exalt or magnify the Father.
So the first idea comes from the Old Testament, and that is how God’s name was defamed. It was defamed or profaned through sin. A good example of this is in Leviticus.
“You are not to sacrifice any of your children in the fire to Molech. Do not profane the name of your God; I am the LORD. (Leviticus 18:21, CSB)
Through offering up their children as sacrifices to false gods, they profaned the Lord’s name. So by contrast, that means that we honor the Lord’s name through our good works.
The other idea comes from Ezekiel 39:7.
So I will make my holy name known among my people Israel and will no longer allow it to be profaned. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel. (Ezekiel 39:7, CSB)
Our good works and making Him known. That is the meaning of the first petition.
When we pray, “Hallowed be Thy name,” or “May Your name be made holy,” we are praying that the Lord would give us the ability and the determination to glorify Him through our good works. And that is how Jesus has opened up the Sermon on the Mount.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16, CSB)
When we pray, “Hallowed be Thy name,” we are going to the Father, and we’re saying, “Father, I want to make You look good before the nations, but I cannot stop sinning. I have thoughts in me that prevent me from doing the good works I need to do. I need Your help.” We recognize that glorifying God is a part of our purpose, but we’re asking Him for help because we cannot do it on our own.
But also we are praying that through our good works, other people might know who the Father is. And just like Jesus led us to the Father, we are leading others. That is the whole point that Jesus has established the Church. We exist to make God known throughout the nations.
Our hearts should be just like Christ’s. We want people in Wake Forest to proclaim that Jesus is Lord. That is why we pray this model prayer.
Hallowed be Thy name: Give us strength to make You known and to proclaim the gospel with boldness and conviction and courage. Hallowed be Thy name: May people realize that You are King because of my life. Hallowed be Thy name: May my marriage be strong so that others would see how I love my wife and know that this is how Christ loves the Church. Hallowed be Thy name: May they see the generosity of this Church and realize that this is the overflow of Christ’s love for us. Hallowed be Thy name: Give us strength to exalt You. Hallowed be Thy name.
4. How does humanity exalt Him? (Matthew 6:10a) “Your kingdom come”
By submitting to His kingship.
But now we must ask, what does He mean by Thy kingdom come? How does humanity exalt the Lord? That’s what this second petition is getting at.
You see, when we say, “Thy kingdom come,” we are now transitioning from asking God for help to exalt Him to now we’re praying for how we exalt Him.
This petition is a prayer that humanity would submit to the Lord’s sovereign reign. And we are submitting to the Lord’s sovereign reign in one of three ways.
That we, as the current disciples, would continue to submit to the will of Jesus and make disciples who exalt Him.
The second way is that we would ask God for help to make more disciples because, by people falling to their knees and proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, they are admitting themselves to be citizens of a greater kingdom. We cannot be obsessed with current politics and be praying “Thy kingdom come” because by doing that, we are placing ourselves squarely in the heels of the King’s mission, the King’s mission that supersedes any national identity that we might have as Americans.
And then the third way that we are shaping ourselves to God’s agenda as the kingdom rule is, we are asking Him to consummate the second coming of Christ.
So in your bulletin, I want you to write, how do we, or the blank here is by submitting to His kingship. That is what it means when we pray, may Your kingdom come.
We are asking Jesus to break into our world His kingdom, which means the citizenship of His kingdom is spreading to every nation.
You cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer without thinking of the Great Commission. Because my whole purpose of getting up in the morning and raising my kids to love Jesus more deeply, or loving my wife the way Christ loves the Church, or coming to the office and pounding away at Scripture to understand it, to craft sermons for God’s people, or Wednesday night studies, all of it is because I want to see the kingdom of Christ to spread, and to spread far beyond this generation, to spread far beyond Wake County.
My ministry here and your existence, all of it is purposed to spread the kingdom of God. And that is why we pray, “Let Your kingdom come.”
We are recognizing that we cannot spread God’s kingdom through our own strength. We need the help of God.
5. How does He exalt Himself? (Matthew 6:10b) “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”
And then we get to this beautiful part, the last petition in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer. We ask, how does He exalt Himself? He exalts Himself by consummating the messianic kingdom through His predetermined plans, which constitute a world of righteousness. This is the kingdom that will be established by Jesus’ second coming. Jesus is our Messiah. And when you have a Messiah that’s ruling the kingdom, you call that a messianic kingdom.
So in this prayer, let “Thy will be done,” we are praying that Jesus would reign here on earth as King, and He is bringing all the promises of the Old Testament to completion. He is bringing all the promises of the book of Revelation to completion. He is consummating His kingdom.
Let Thy will be done. So Your will be done refers to God’s predetermined plan.
I have a whole bag of kudos to the person who can tell me where else do we read in the New Testament Your will be done. Yes. When Jesus is on His knees and He is sweating blood and He is weeping at the thought of drinking the wrath of God and all of that fury that we deserve, He is saying, let this cup of wrath pass from Me if it is all possible, but yet not My will be done, Your will be done.
It is the same verbatim Greek phrase that we see here in Matthew 6. Jesus is asking you to pray over your life the exact same thing He prayed over His own. The world will hate you because of Jesus. Are you willing to bear that pain? Not everyone will like you because of Jesus. Are you willing to suffer for Him? Are you willing to say with Christ, “Not my will be done, Your will be done?”
You see, Jesus in Matthew 26:42, when He says, “Your will be done,” He is recognizing there are two types of will for God. There’s moral will and there’s predetermined plan will. So if I say God wills everyone to be righteous, that merely means God wants everyone to be righteous, but that does not mean that’s going to happen. But that’s His moral will. The other type of will that God can have is His predetermined sovereign will. God’s predetermined sovereign will is that Jesus is coming back, nobody’s going to stop Him. Right? That’s what Jesus was praying in the garden. “Yet not My will, but Your predetermined plan, may that happen.”
Guys, that’s what we’re also praying for in the Lord’s Prayer. When we say, “Your will be done,” we are asking God the Father to finally bring Jesus back and reign here on earth exactly as He is predetermined.
You see, how do we know that? We know that because it says, “On earth as it is in heaven.”
Currently, Jesus reigns in heaven. All of heaven, all the angelic powers that are there with Him in heaven, they are reigning with Christ in peace, and everyone submits to Him fully. There is no one in rebellion in heaven. Ever since Revelation 12, when the dragon is kicked out of heaven, there is no one there rebelling before God in His celestial place. That is the kind of place we want Earth to be. We want earth to be a place of righteousness, and that is exactly what it shall be when Christ returns.
Second Peter is writing to a bunch of people who are suffering persecution for being Christians. He writes:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; on that day the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, it is clear what sort of people you should be in holy conduct and godliness as you wait for the day of God and hasten its coming. Because of that day, the heavens will be dissolved with fire and the elements will melt with heat. But based on his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:10–13, CSB)
The place God is leading us to in the new heavens and the new earth, where Christ reigns here on earth — not from heaven — but Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It will be a place of righteousness where there is no longer anyone here who stops bowing the knee to Christ Jesus.
Every unbeliever, every person who does not submit to Jesus now will be expelled from the earth and suffer for eternity because when Christ returns, it will be His kingdom where His will is here exactly as it is in heaven. And all of our rebellion and our pain will be gone.
That’s why we pray, “Let Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So Church, with this, we can look to John the Revelator.
Conclusion
This is from Revelation 22.
Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” “Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. When I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had shown them to me. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you, your brothers the prophets, and those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!” Then he said to me, “Don’t seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near. (Revelation 22:6–10, CSB)
What time, Church? Jesus is coming back, and He’s coming soon.
“Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. (Revelation 22:12–14, CSB)
Where else do we see the tree of life, Church? The Garden of Eden. Who walked in the Garden of Eden, Church? God Himself.
Church, when we pray, “Jesus, come, let Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying that we have something better than the Garden of Eden, where God is in our midst.
Both the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let anyone who hears, say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17, CSB)
And the book of Revelation ends with,
He who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22:20, CSB)
Church, this is why we pray the model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. Because we are beckoning Jesus to return. And what does He say? You do not have because you do not ask.
You want the Lord to come back? You ask Him.
So let’s go to Him now.
Father in heaven, we thank You that we can be at Your will and mercy and be reminded that though we are feeble creatures and we are so easily tossed to and fro and our faith can be shaky, we can come to You in Your word and see that there are bold rocks that we can build our foundation on. You, Lord Jesus, are our Rock. And so we come to You now and we say:
Father in heaven, will You please glorify Your name on the earth? Will You please exalt Yourself by giving Your Church and Your people strength to exalt You through our good works to make disciples of all nations to have our lives become very small and minor compared to the majesty that we are proclaiming to everyone in our lives? Give us strength to do that and will You please come, Lord, and exercise Your will on earth as it is in heaven. Establish Your will here and consummate Your kingdom. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
We thank You. And I also pray that You would continue to meet all of our physical needs. And will You please forgive us in the ways that we sin against You, as we forgive those who sin against us. And we pray that You would lead us away from all the areas of temptation where the enemy is just prowling like a roaring lion. But when we do find ourselves under attack, will You please rescue us?
We love You in Jesus’ name. Amen.