The Lord’s Prayer

Matthew 6:5-14

Intro

Well, good morning Mercyview and those of you visiting, my name is Corbin King and my wife
Olivia and I are partners here (which is what we call members of our church) and I also serve as
a pastoral resident. Today we are continuing our string of one-off sermons before we head into
our upcoming series to start the year, which will be our Counter-Culture series.

And with this being the start of a new year I thought it would be helpful to preach on a subject
that is often on Christians’ minds when it comes to personal goals or desires they may have for
their own discipleship or discipling others, and that would be the topic of prayer. In fact, each
year we take surveys here that help our leadership better understand how things are going or
where people are at in their discipleship journeys; and one category of questions is typically
asking what people desire to grow in or learn in the next. And last year one of the top results was
people expressing interest in better understanding what prayer is, how it works, or how to be
more consistent in praying.

Well, in being given an opportunity to preach on anything and then spending extensive time in
prayer and reflection, I found this to be the topic that the Lord gave me the conviction to pursue.
J. Gary Millar has a fantastic essay on the doctrine of prayer that you can read on the Gospel
Coalition website. In that essay, he defines prayer as “the act of asking God to do what he has
already promised to do, which is modeled throughout the Bible by the patriarchs, the psalmists,
the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles.”

To flesh that out more I’ll go ahead and share his own summary of his essay where he writes that
“We do this through the power of the Spirit as adopted children through the Messiah Jesus. We
see this kind of interaction with God evidenced throughout the Bible as his people continue to
ask him to follow through on his promises and bring about his kingdom and rule. We can be
confident that God will answer our prayer for his purposes because he has explicitly promised to
bring his purposes to pass. These include for God to glorify himself, for forgiveness, for our own
knowledge of God, for godly wisdom, for the strength to obey, and for the gospel to spread.”

I found that summary of prayer really helpful in my time of study on the topic, and when
exploring which passage of Scripture would be helpful in modeling prayer I couldn’t shake the
simple yet profound example taught by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. Which is twice recorded for
us in the Scripture, both in Matthew 6 and Luke 11.

And my hope for us this morning is to better recognize the significance of this prayer and how it
ought to be what is foundational for our prayer life and in what we believe as Christians. In fact,
I believe the Lord’s Prayer ought to be one of many tools in your tool belt that the Church has
memorized and rehearsed since the beginning. Such as the Apostle’s Creed, Catechism, and of
course Scripture itself. Some of the inspiration for this topic is to strengthen our prayer life in
20024 but in regards to your Scripture intake for the year, Crossway released multiple podcasts

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of different readers of the ESV Bible doing a few different year-long Bible reading or listening
plans and I would encourage to subscribe to one as a helpful way to get God’s Word in your
heart on your mind each day this year.

And again, to bolster your prayer life, that you would set to memorizing and using as a guide for
prayer, The Lord’s Prayer here in Matthew 6 and Luke 11; including the additional wording the
Church has rehearsed at the end of prayer where we say, “For thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory forever…” that’s all true and worth rehearsing as well.

But for this morning, I want us to break down some significant components of the Lord’s Prayer
in order to reinvigorate our need to pray and seek the Lord, and to bring to life our spiritual
imagination as we seek to better know and trust God. And so we will dive into three main ideas
from Jesus’ prayer. First, Who You Pray to Matters. Second, What You Pray for Matters. And
third, How You Pray Matters.

Point A- Who You Pray to Matters

We start with the most important element of prayer, which is who it is you pray to. John Calvin
taught that prayer is the chief exercise of faith. And since the point of prayer is to speak with
God and seek His help, His provision, and His guidance; then what you believe to be true about
God is crucial.

And this is true in general, what any of us believes to be true about God is the most important
thing about us. And so to get this wrong or to have misinformed beliefs about God will naturally
affect how you approach life and your understanding of how the world works.

And from Jesus’ model for prayer, He makes some remarks that are telling about God that
should encourage us and motivate us to pray more, not less. The biggest statement and most
mind-blowing is that we are told to call God “our” Father. And this point has been taught
wonderfully in the past by Brad and by Jim Campbell, and so I would encourage you to go back
and listen to those sermons from the series called “Prayer.”

But of note is that God is our Father. He knows us, He loves us, and He promises to care for and
provide for us, and more will be said on that in a moment. God is not just your Creator, but if
you are a Christian, you are now His child and you’ve been grafted into a personal relationship,
and restored relationship with God.

But with the time we have this morning, I want to emphasize another element of who God is that
is highlighted in the Lord’s Prayer. Which is the sovereignty of God. You see, we are instructed
to pray to our Father in Heaven and we ask Him to accomplish His will. Yes, He is our Father
and we have friendship with God, but don’t let that distract you from the fact that we are to give
reverence to the Father, “Hallowing” His name.

Right? Meaning the utmost glory and awe and worship is to be attributed to God our Father.
Why? Because He is sovereign. He is the King of Heaven and Earth, who rules from His throne

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in Heaven. That’s what’s so powerful about that phrase “in heaven.” It’s what we call the
Creator-creature distinction. God is not an old man in the sky surrounded by naked harp-playing
babies with angel wings. He is Triune, He is Spirit, He is unchanging, eternal, perfect, all-
knowing, and all-powerful.

And when we talk about the sovereignty of God, what kind of rule does God have as King? What
kind of power does He have? He alone is who created the earth (Genesis 1). He alone sustains
the earth (Acts 17:8). In fact, scientists have openly taught that if even the slightest thing were
off or different with certain elements of the human body, or our atmosphere, we couldn’t live.
None of this is by random chance or sheer luck. It is our Heavenly Father who rules the weather
and climate (Job 37). He rules the nations of the earth (Psalm 47). He rules time and history
(Lamentations 3). And really what I am trying to get at is this, nothing happens without God
granting it. He is surprised by nothing.

So, when you pray, be encouraged that you do not pray to Corbin King. Believe me, you would
not want that. Vocationally, I am an operations manager; and there are many days when I
encounter throughout the day, surprises and things in our systems going wrong, things needing
fixing, or employees who get sick and are out for a week. And so, it's easy for me to get stressed
or feel overwhelmed, or to question my abilities or judgments.

And in prayer, we sometimes make the mistake of believing that we aren’t praying to the
sovereign God of the universe and instead are merely praying to a friend who is just as helpless
or unsure as we are! But God is not a mere operations manager for the world. He does not need
vacation or a lunch break or ongoing training to improve His performance. Friends, He’s got
this! He knows all things and He holds it all together and He has been constantly working out his
plans to redeem His creation and children.

And so circling back to Millar’s definition of prayer, Jesus is teaching us to ask for what God has
promised us. And part of that promise is that the Father will always answer and fulfill and
provide a “Yes and Amen!” when we ask Him to be who He is and do what He does best. When
we ask Him to keep ruling, keep reigning, keep bringing about Your kingdom here on earth,
keep accomplishing Your will to make more and more people like Your Son, Keep regenerating
and sanctifying and making holy the hearts of sinful man so that we are ruled by the law of
Christ and His blood shed for us; that the Spirit would lead us to do Your will on earth; what is
good and right and true. The very things our pastors will preach on in the coming weeks.

Sometimes what we need more than anything in our prayer life is not to be ruled by the laundry
list of needs we have or fears we have, and we will cover those momentarily and they do matter
to God. What we need more than anything is to spend time drawing near to God and finding
comfort in Who He is amidst the suffering and trials we endure. That’s what is going to help us
endure and faithfully plod forward in life.

Not making prayer a shopping cart or wish list of things we’d like our lives to be like and look
like. But instead, through prayer, we are personally discipled by God and from our time with
Him we are strengthened to face life because we face it as a people who personally know not
some guy but the sovereign God of the universe.

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Who else but Him can help us and lead us and bring about what is most important; the
forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of our bodies from the dead. That’s exactly the kind of
encouragement I saw recently on Twitter from pastor Mitch Chase. He wrote “Dear believer: it's
another day of being loved by God in the Son through the Spirit, held in life eternal, heading
toward resurrection glory, with all things working for your greatest and deepest good. You can
face today.”

Amen all day to that. If only all of social media were full of such benedictions. Yes, it is good
news that a Sovereign God can intervene and act on our prayers. But most importantly, it’s good
news because even when our lives aren’t playing out like we hoped they would, our lives are not
meaningless or an accident. Your life is God’s plan for you, and He is ultimately working for
your good even when that includes allowing us to face suffering and hardships of many kinds
throughout life. I can rest assured that He’s still got me and that He’s my greatest treasure and
joy, come hell or high water before I go to be with Him in glory.

Point B- What You Pray for Matters

We come now to our second point for this morning, which is that what you pray for matters. And
I find this part of the Lord’s prayer fascinating. It’s sometimes mistakenly taught that what Jesus
says here is exactly what you must say when you pray but this is not true. When Jesus tells the
disciples to “pray then like this,” He is suggesting to them what kind of things to bring to God.

But again, I return to the essay from Millar because when I first read it, it honestly challenged
me. And I believe it was my flesh that took offense at how little prayer was supposed to be about
me because that’s easily what I tend to do. But our prayer lives are not to be us facing ourselves
in the mirror, rattling off what we see in ourselves or would like to see. Instead, prayer ought to
be us looking out our windows, where your reflection still in view and you certainly still matter,
but you would also have a posture facing outward, heavenward, and also toward neighborhood.
Does that make sense?

John Calvin in his commentary on this passage mentions that this prayer in a lot of ways reflects
the Ten Commandments; which the first half is about God and rightly loving and worshipping
Him. And the latter half is about our neighbor and rightly loving and living with them. And so
here in Jesus’ model prayer, we are instructed to worship God. We are instructed to come
alongside and seek the success of God’s Kingdom expanding. We are instructed to submit to
God’s will, not only in history but personally for mankind to live and act according to God’s
design.

We are also instructed to seek our material provision from God and not from our own abilities or
others. It is God who provides us with what we need. We are instructed to seek God’s
forgiveness for our sins and are taught to forgive others. Finally, we are to seek God’s help to
avoid temptation and resist the Evil One, Satan our enemy.

In so many ways, this prayer encapsulates the Ten Commandments and the simple summary of
Christian living, which is to love God and love your neighbor. And so prayer is a supernatural

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means of being sanctified and formed into the image of Christ and abiding in Him as we sojourn
through this life; living for God and on mission.

But sometimes, prayer can feel like walking up to a blank canvas. And it’s up to you to formulate
your words and your ask in such a way that is effective. Or while praying you veer off and get
distracted or fall asleep, etc. The Lord’s prayer is a helpful guide because it reminds us of the
basics of what we need and what God is ultimately up to in the world.

Now, my hope this morning is that we do not over-correct just because it can be easy to make
prayer too much about us. But Jesus very clearly includes in his model that we do need to come
to God for what we need and for help. So hear me out, it's not a sin if you spent time today only
praying about something difficult that has been weighing heavily on your heart and mind.

And it's not sinful to even daily ask God for good things. What we need to be careful to avoid is
a pattern of only praying for what we want or think we need and then for nothing else. And to
help us understand this distinction, we need to better understand what the phrase means “give us
this day our daily bread.”

This is included because God not only cares about our spiritual condition but also for our
material and physical well-being as well. In fact that’s just it, because those things are related,
and we are just floating spirits but physical beings with very real needs, that the Lord knows we
need things like food, water, shelter, etc. to live and survive. Because in order for us to live for
Him and work for Him in this world and seek to accomplish His will, we are going to need fuel
and sustenance and protection and healing to do just that.

But therein lies the rub. Because God’s will and plan for each of us and what it looks like for
Him to provide is not going to be identical across the board. And for those of us who grew up
comfortably, it was easy to believe the lie that we should expect our lives as faithful Christians to
include material excess that actually goes beyond our simple needs for living and surviving in
this life.

But again, the Lord’s Prayer includes God’s provision amidst all these prayers about God’s
Kingdom expanding and our own pursuits of holiness. Because ultimately, that is what God is
after! He does not want us to be self-sustaining and independent because that will only feed into
the lie in the Garden in Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve did not consider it enough to know and
trust God, but they wanted to be just like God.

God’s promises to provide may disappoint us in what that could mean for you or me, but if we
remain disappointed, we are completely missing what He promises us in forgiving us of our sins,
helping us overcome temptation, and delivering us from the Evil One.

It’s why I am so thankful when we first started coming to Mercyview and I was in a GC with the
Raubachs and Murpheys; and we would break into smaller prayer groups and I would be
perplexed by my life and Richard and Gerry would simply smile and tell me, “It’s going to be all
right.” And they could say that and mean it because they have experienced decades of God’s
faithfulness in their lives. And that is what has stuck with them all these years. Not the

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disappointment of one week but a lifetime of God sanctifying them and preserving them in the
faith until they go to be with Him in glory. And Friday of this week, Sean Roberts shared
essentially the same message with me and I seriously felt so loved and cared for by God in
hearing how God has sustained and walked with Sean and Becky as they seek to live for Him.
God is good and He is so good to us and we need to keep reminding each other of that in the life
of this church, especially for those of us who are younger (and that’s most of us haha).

Point C- How You Pray Matters

We come now to our final point this morning, which is that how we pray matters. I include this
not because prayer requires us to perform it in such a way that makes it work and God will
answer. No, actually, the text both here and in Luke 11 includes elements of personal ethics that
affect our prayer lives.

For example, here in Matthew 6, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for praying these loud, dramatic,
performative prayers in public that gave off the impression that they were more holy and in touch
with God. But Jesus calls them hypocrites! Because although they have a reputation for being
hyper-spiritual; the prayers themselves fail to genuinely connect with God. It a bunch of hot air!

Moreover, Jesus instructs us not to say a bunch of long-winded prayers stuffed with fluffy jargon
or flowery language; because again, it adds nothing to prayer. We’re told that God already
knows what you need before you even ask, so just ask Him! Keep it simple, straightforward, and
reverent toward Him. When my toddler needs to go to the bathroom, he says, “Daddy I need to
___”. When he is scared, he tells me, when he is hungry he tells me…A LOT. Come the Father
as your Father and speak to Him as such and the Lord will be pleased. Your prayers will be like
incense as you glorify his name through your utter reliance upon Him for all things.

Returning to the idea of hypocrisy Jesus mentioned earlier, Jesus further teaches the importance
of us forgiving others as we have been forgiven, which is part of the Lord’s prayer. And it makes
sense! Prayer is not about self-fulfillment, it is about God, it's about us becoming more like
Christ, and it is about others becoming more like Christ.

And a big part of reconciliation is forgiveness. But why should the Lord forgive us, help us, or
provide for us if we only want this special treatment for ourselves? But then we turn around and
instead of being a blessing, we curse and domineer others. That’s not the gospel and that’s not
the gospel culture we seek to cultivate.

This idea can be inferred in 1 Peter 3:7 when Peter instructs husbands to honor and love their
wives well less their prayers be hindered. Because again prayer is Christian, it is our hearts and
minds tethered to the heart of the Father through His Son by His Spirit; inviting us into the inner
life of God. There is no place for openly and actively working against God’s will and living in
unrepentant sin while also expecting a close relationship with God in prayer. Self-seeking and
self-glorifying people are counterintuitive to prayer. Because God is not seeking to help us sin
but rather overcome it.

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And finally, in regard to how we ought to pray, I want to turn our attention to the Lord’s Prayer
mentioned in Luke 11. Here there is a heavy emphasis on prayer consisting of being persistent.
To keep coming to God, day after day, moment by moment, because it is those who ask that
receive; those who seek are they that find; and those who knock are they that the door is opened
to.

Prayer is an important means for how God has chosen to accomplish His will in the world. But if
people don’t ask or seek the Lord on behalf of something or someone else, they have forfeited a
great privilege. The blessing and miracle of God acting on our prayers.

And again, His answers are not always what we want or ask for; but there are also many times
that He does heal in the hospital room, He does regenerate your dad’s heart of stone and gift him
with faith, he does bring the prodigal child home; because Saints (you and I) had been humbly
praying in our commute to work or together at GC or spontaneously in the cereal aisle at Aldi on
the phone with another believer while your children are running around.

God is absolutely sovereign and knows what we need and what will happen before we do or
before we ever ask, and yet He uses our prayers to bring about His will on earth. God’s
concealed will is not for us to ever know, the whys or what’s next; but His revealed will through
His Word has made it abundantly clear that we are to come to Him in prayer for every need.
Because prayer is worship. Because by praying we are exercising our faith in God and enjoying
our personal relationship with Him. By praying our hearts are being aligned with the heart of
God.

Conclusion

What a gift, what a privilege we have to be able to pray and pray to One who can actually do
something with our prayers. Who can actually act on them or if He chooses not to, through
prayer He comforts our hearts and ministers to us. One of my favorite things is to feel utterly
stuck, and then my situation improved and later I find out someone had been praying for me
about that situation and to think, “Wow, God used that. God was in that.”

We give reverence to the name Father but we also give reverence to the name, Immanuel, God is
with us, and on the heels of Christmas and our celebration of the incarnation where God the Son
to this very day is both God and man; and had come and lived amongst us. Guess what, He prays
for us. And the Helper, our seal of God’s promises, the Holy Spirit, He prays for us too and helps
us to pray. It's no wonder then that prayer is so powerful and effective; because even God prays!

So what will your prayer life look like in 2024? If you feel stuck, come back to the Lord’s Prayer
and let it teach you to pray again. And with that, let us now go to the Lord and pray.