SERMON MATTHEW 6:5-15 THE LORD S PRAYER: FIFTY-SEVEN WORDS THAT CHANGE THE WORLD 1 SUNDAY, 29 MAY, 2016, 10 A.M. KEMNAY PARISH CHURCH

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1 SERMON MATTHEW 6:5-15 THE LORD S PRAYER: FIFTY-SEVEN WORDS THAT CHANGE THE WORLD 1 SUNDAY, 29 MAY, 2016, 10 A.M. KEMNAY PARISH CHURCH Let us pray: Father, we adore you. We yearn to know you, to love you, and to follow your will. As we begin our time of learning about and reflecting on the the words of the Lord s Prayer, we pray that you will help each and every one of us to to dwell in Jesus words. Lord, let let our souls be soaked in these words, so that your name will be hallowed, so that your kingdom will come, and so that your will be done on earth, as it is done in Heaven. We pray all these things in the name of Jesus, and for His glory, Amen. 1 The title of this sermon is taken from a book of the same name by Rev. Darrell Johnson of Regent College in Vancouver, B.C. I am also grateful to him for helping me think through the structure and meaning of the Lord s Prayer in new and meaningful ways.

2 When I was a student in Whitworth university in Washington State, I had the great blessing of learning from professors who cared deeply about their subjects, and also cared deeply about their students. Whitworth was and is a Christian University, and everyone who teaches there has to submit a personal statement of faith that agrees with the historic teachings of Christianity. It was a great blessing to learn and study in an environment that wasn t afraid of the hard questions, while at the same time affirming the Truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Even though many years have passed since graduation, I have kept up regular correspondence with many of my professors, especially those who taught my courses in bible and theology. Many of them were also ordained to the ministry, or had spent time teaching in church settings, and so much of their

3 advice, encouragement, and guidance was based on a realistic view of life and ministry. Throughout the years of correspondence, my mentors from Whitworth have encouraged me in many ways, but one piece of guidance has been offered time and again: memorize scripture. Time and again, the events of my life has shown me the value of this guidance. When it comes to knowing the content of our faith, nothing is more important than knowing scripture! Now, for many of us the idea of memorizing scripture might seem like a daunting task. But, I am here to say that most if not all of have already memorized one of the most important passages in the bible: The Lord s Prayer, which is going to be our preaching focus for the next few weeks. Today we are going to hear about the prayer as a whole, and over the next few

4 weeks, we are going to dive deeper into each line of the Lord s Prayer. As I just said, the Lord s Prayer (or better to known to some of us as the Our Father ) is well-known to us in this church. If we grew up coming to church, if we went to Sunday school, the Lord s Prayer was often a big part of what we were taught about our Christian faith. But, even if we didn t grow up in the church, the Lord s Prayer is known to anyone who comes to worship here in Kemnay Kirk, because we tend to recite the Lord s Prayer nearly every week! There is a good chance that the words of the Lord s Prayer are familiar to us, and as I mentioned before, it is good when the words of scripture are near to our hearts. When we take the time to recite the Lord s Prayer every week, I pray that the Spirit is speaking to us through these words of Jesus, drawing ever closer to Christ.

5 That s the hope when we pray the Lord s Prayer. If our familiarity with the Lord s Prayer draws us closer to God, then that s great! But, sometimes being familiar with something can lead us into thinking that there is nothing new to learn from that source, that we have heard it all before. If familiarity with the Lord s Prayer or with any other portion of scripture leads us into this kind of thinking, then we need to stop what we are doing, and ask God to give us new eyes, new ears, and a new heart for Scripture, right now! Because the Lord s Prayer is so very familiar to us, it is easy to gloss over when we hear it, when we read it, or even when we recite it. Because the words never change, it s easy to become very formulaic about the Lord s prayer. It s possible to say these words aloud week after week, but never really

6 consider or reflect on the deep substance of the prayer. In other words, it s always possible for set prayers like the Lord s Prayer to become nothing more than empty words. But, it doesn t have to be that way. It shouldn t be that way! The Lord s Prayer is one of the greatest gifts that Jesus ever gave to His church! In the words of Darrell Johnson (one of my wife Heather s teachers from seminary), Nowhere is the brilliance of Jesus more manifest than in the gift of the prayer he taught His disciples to pray. In the Greek language (the original language of the New Testament), Matthew s account of the Lord s Prayer which Heather read aloud for us is fifty-seven words long. We might be tempted to say that these fifty-seven words changed the world; but, it would be better to say with Darrell Johnson that these fifty-seven words of Jesus CHANGE the world, and they can also CHANGE our lives in the here and now!

7 In just fifty-seven words, Jesus has taught His church to pray in a manner that touches on every dimension of human life. According to the bible, prayer is the most important thing that we can do as people of Christian faith. I find it absolutely fascinating that in all of their interactions with Jesus, His first disciples only asked Jesus to teach them one thing, and that one thing is recorded for us in Luke 11:1: Lord, teach us to pray. According to the New Testament, Jesus taught his disciples many things, but they only asked him to teach them one thing: Lord, teach us to pray. The first disciples never asked Jesus to teach them how to lead, how to drive out demons, how to preach, how to grow the church, or how to balance the budget; they only asked Him to teach them how to pray. Why?

8 Perhaps it was because everything that Jesus did, all of his healing, all of his preaching, and all of his teaching was built on the foundation of His relationship with His Father, and that relationship was based on prayer. Throughout His ministry, Jesus showed His disciples the importance of prayer in His own life. On more than one occasion, Jesus rose early and slipped away to pray (Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16). Jesus knew the power of what was written in the book of Psalms: I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words (Psalm 119:147). Lord, teach us to pray. When they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, His disciples were not asking Him for some sort of new, short-cut path to spiritual growth. Instead, when they asked, Lord, teach us to pray, I think the disciples were saying to Jesus, Lord, we want to know the Father like you do;

9 we want to be in relationship in the Father like you are in relationship with the Father. In response to this request, Jesus taught His disciples the Lord s Prayer, fifty-seven words that change the world. The Lord s Prayer is one of the greatest gifts that Jesus has ever given to His church, and I would like to share three reasons why I believe this to be so: 1. The Lord s Prayer frees us from a fundamental anxiety: are we praying in a manner that pleases God? I know of many Christians at different parts of their spiritual journeys who all share this fundamental anxiety about prayer. Because they feel this way about prayer, because they are afraid of praying in the wrong way, because they don t know what they should pray, many Christians never fully embrace prayer as the

10 foundation of our relationship with God. The Lord s prayer is meant to free us from any anxieties we have about prayer. Look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:9 This, then, is how you should pray. There it is, right there in the text: clear guidance! This, then, is how you should pray. We should not gloss over the words of scripture, especially when they offer us crystal-clear guidance on how to live the Christian life! When Jesus said, This, then, is how you should pray, we should not take Him to mean that the only way to please God is to pray these exact words in this exact order. Rather, what follows after This, then, is how you should pray is a model of prayer that we can follow in our own lives. Again from Darrell Johnson: It is as though Jesus is saying in the Lord s Prayer, Here then is the kind of praying that pleases my Father; this is the kind of praying the Father loves to hear and loves to

11 answer. So, the first reason why the Lord s Prayer is such a great gift is because it can free us from any anxiety we might feel about prayer. 2. The Lord s Prayer is a gift because it reveals the heart of the Living God. In other words, the Lord s Prayer tells us about what is important to God! The heart of the Living God cares about the hallowing (or holiness) of His name; the heart of the Living God cares about the coming of His Kingdom, which is breaking into our world, even now; the heart of the Living God cares about the completion of His will on earth, just as it is already completed in Heaven! The Lord s Prayer tells us when it comes to the created order, when it comes to our world, when it comes to our lives, God is not disinterested, and God is not neutral. No, God is passionate is about the holiness of His name,

12 about the coming of His Kingdom, and about the completion of His will in Heaven and upon the earth! But it doesn t stop there. The Lord s prayer also tells us that the heart of the Living God desires to meet the needs of our daily existence (our daily bread); the heart of the Living God desires to see us freed from the shackles of sin, which means that we must offer the same forgiveness to others; the heart of the Living God desires to have us stay on the path of life, protected from the vicious attacks of Satan. The Lord s Prayer reveals that the heart of the Living God is concerned with God s glory (His holiness, His Kingdom, His will), and with our growth as His children (our daily bread, our reconciliation to God and neighbor, and our protection from evil). The Lord s Prayer tells us that all of these things are in the heart of the Living God.

13 3. The Lord s Prayer is a gift because it allows us to partner with God in His work. One of my favorite statements about prayer comes from the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, who wrote, To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world. This third point about the Lord s Prayer flows from the first two points. Because the Lord s Prayer removes our anxiety about prayer and because the Lord s Prayer shows us the very heart of the Living God, the Lord s Prayer then invites each of us to participate through the Spirit in God s ongoing work of reconciling the world to Himself in Jesus Christ. Through the kind of prayer shown to us in the Lord s Prayer, each and every believer is set free from fear; each and every believer is drawn up into the very Life of God; and, each and every believer is given what is needed to actively participate in the ongoing redemption of the world.

14 The Lord s Prayer is not mere poetry. There is real transformative, invitational power in the words of Jesus Christ. The Lord s Prayer can and should be the great rallying cry of the Church. The Lord s Prayer is our divine manifesto. The Lord s Prayer tells us what we are supposed to be about as people of Christian faith. We have only scratched the surface today. The Lord s Prayer is deep, deep enough for a lifetime. As we slow down and go through this prayer over the next few weeks, my hope is that each of us would hear God speaking anew through these very familiar words. As we dive into these fifty-seven words that CHANGE the world, may God use this time to teach us more about prayer, more about Jesus, and more about who God is calling each of us to be. Amen.

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