Matthew 6: 7-15

Theme: Prayer

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD IN THE PRAYERS OF MEN

I have been preaching for 32 years and I have been a Christian longer than that. I was taught to pray by my parents from the earliest age. I have prayed countless times in private and in public for myself and for others. And yet, I find prayer to be a mystery, something that I know about but never really a master of. I think when we speak of prayer, we should do so with a bit of shyness, for who is an expert? Prayer is something that any child can understand. Yet, it is such a mystery that we can ponder it for a lifetime and never fully understand it.

What struck me as I thought about the Model Prayer is that it is really about the sovereignty of God. God is in charge and prayer is our act of submitting to him. If you think that prayer is about manipulating God to get what you want out of life, you are mistaken. This is why so many prayers go unanswered and why God gets blamed for so much unhappiness. What Jesus teaches here is that prayer is first and foremost about God. And it is about our utter dependence on him as well as our need to be conformed to him. It is only after we have acknowledged God’s sovereignty and we have been conformed to his will does making our needs and desires known even make sense.

Prayer is our lifeline to God. It is both a privilege and a responsibility. We are to pray as members of the royal family. We are not imploring a distant deity, we have been invited to enter into a conversation with God.

Jesus gave us an example in the model of prayer. We are to pray Our Father. The language we have here is Greek, but the word that Jesus used was the Aramaic word "Abba." It was an intensely personal word. Jesus was telling his disciple that when you pray you may come before the throne as a member of the family. We have been adopted as sons and daughters; those who follow Jesus as Lord have been made sons and daughters of God. Therefore we can approach God on such an intimate basis that we can call him Father.

When we pray "Our Father," we are not alone. We address God as members of the body of Christ, as brothers and sisters in Christ. This model prayer reminds us that we are not in some individualistic relationship with God, but in a family. And every time we pray, we pray in solidarity with each other and for each other.

The first three petitions of the model prayer concern God and reveals how awesome is the privilege of prayer. The first one is Hallowed be Thy Name. This is a brief instruction, but a deeply meaningful one. To hallow something is to sanctify it, to make holy or to consider holy. We must never forget who we pray to. God is the creator. He sustains our world and he is our Redeemer and Judge. He is the Wholly Other, there is no one like him. Yet, He has called us to enter into this relationship.

Jesus said to hallow the name of God. In the Hebrew culture one's name said something about the person. On some occasions, when an important life changing event took place, they would change their name to reflect the change brought into their lives. We need to see that God's very name represents his Holiness. Yet we live in a world where people abuse the Name of God. Some use Jesus name as a statement of exclamation, "Jesus, it is cold." Is that they way to Hallow the Name of God? Sometimes we call ourselves Christians, which means Christ like ones, and then we don't live up to that title. It seems to me that the use of profanity obviously misuses God's name, but so often we do not hallow his name in other ways because we don’t live holy lives.

When we pray in this manner, our very lives become a prayer to God. And what we pray includes asking God to make us holy so that we might hallow his name in our world. But even our own holiness is not the ultimate goal, it is rather that God's name be hallowed. In our prayer life, we need to be ever mindful that God is holy. He is not the man upstairs. He is not our wish book or a jinni in a lamp or our God-in-a-box who serves us. He is the Holy God and we serve him. Therefore, Hallow his name.

Secondly, Jesus told us to pray, "Thy kingdom come." The kingdom of God is in the reign of God in our hearts. For the time being, we are the stewards of the kingdom. To pray "Thy kingdom come" is to pray a prayer of evangelism, to ask that God would spread his kingdom even more. It means we ask God to make us the bearer of Good news.

But even more that, it means to ask for the Second Advent to come. In recent years we have neglected this doctrine of the Second Coming because so many have made it an embarrassing topic. So many, in their arrogance, think they know when Jesus is going to return. So we have people who set dates and write books with bogus interpretations of the Book of Revelation. But, the dates come and go and the whole church is embarrassed because irresponsible people would not believe the whole counsel of God.

Yet we are supposed to long for the Second Advent, the Second Coming of Christ. And why would we not? In that day, we will be made whole, no more tears or suffering or sinning, but in an instant, we will be made like Jesus. We must pray continually for the Second Coming.

When we pray, "Thy Kingdom Come," we ought not to take it lightly. Throughout the centuries, tortured Christians have died with this prayer on their lips. They died doing what they could to spread the kingdom. We set in our comfortable pews and pray half heartedly, if we pray at all, "Thy kingdom Come." Come, but not before I graduate or before I get married or get my promotion or before I am successful. Our vision of God's kingdom is too small. We think these things are important. All of life's goals and achievements are just fleeting moments of joy and they bring nothing lasting to our lives. Remember, our lives are eternal. We will live with Christ forever. Pray for that which is everlasting, Pray "Thy Kingdom Come."

The third petition is, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This third petition is asking that God's kingdom will come in its fullness even now among us. We are asking that God's will be done now as profoundly and as completely as it is in heaven. This prayer is particularly for Church, for if we are God's kingdom on earth, where else on earth should God's will be done?

This is a deep and serious request, a request of transformation in our lives. When we pray "Thy will be done," we are committing ourselves to learning all we can about the will of God. We commit ourselves to studying God's word and meditating on Scripture. It also means that as we study and learn about God's will, we are committing ourselves to doing his will on earth as in heaven.

What does that mean for the church? It means that we gather with the intent of learning more about God and his purposes. We commit to practicing God's will in our Church and in our homes. When we pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we are committing ourselves to loving each other as Christ has loved us.

For most of our lives we have read and memorized and even prayed the Lord's prayer and never knew what it meant. It means a lot. It demands a lot. It is all about the sovereignty of God, it is not about us.

As you live out your day, live out this awesome privilege, pray as our Lord taught us to pray, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in Heaven." And I hope your prayer life is never the same again.