Sermon for April 3, 2022 (Lord's Prayer, part 5)

Sermon for March 27, 2022

Sermon for Sunday, March 20 -- Give us this day our daily bread

Sermon for Sunday, March 13, 2022

Sermon for Marh 6, 2022

Sermon on the Lord's Prayer, focused on Temptation (8/25/2013)

Matthew 6:9-13 (ESV) 
  9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.


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This coming week is a big week for a lot of people in this country, particularly in this section of the country.  On Thursday, college football season kicks off.  I’m sure most of the country will be tuned in to watch Presbyterian college play Wake Forest University.  Millions of people have been waiting with bated breath for this day to arrive.  Frankly, many religious leaders, myself included, are somewhat concerned with the level of passion that football invokes, especially when compared to the passion that religion invokes.  That’s another sermon for another day, but football has become a quasi-religion in this country.

Now, ask any casual fan of a football team who the starting quarterback for their favorite team is, and they’ll probably be able to tell you his name.  If you want to see how well they really know the team, though, ask them who the starting offensive linemen are.  Some die-hard fans will know, but most folks won’t be able to name the five men responsible for keeping the quarterback on his feet.  The quarterback can’t do his job well without the offensive line, but it’s not the offensive line that gets all the glory. 

Now, as hard as this may be for you to believe, I’ve never played football.  I know I may have the rugged stature of a football player, but I was always able to beat back the nagging of coaches.  That, and my high school didn’t have a football team.  And my mom told me I wasn’t allowed to play football.  And I’d be terrible at it.

But I have to imagine that some of the players on the team resent the attention the quarterback gets.  He gets a rather large share of the glory and the blame, and most of the spotlight is cast upon him, far more than the linemen get. 

Today, we’re talking about temptation.  We’re talking about the prayer Jesus teaches us for God to keep us out of temptation and to deliver us from evil.  We’re trying to determine what we can learn from this last section of the Lord’s Prayer.

But first, we need to talk about what temptation is, and I want to borrow this image from the world of football.  See, when we’re tempted, we’re always tempted to be selfish.  Nobody’s ever tempted to be too selfless.  I’ve yet to have someone walk into my office and say that they’re struggling with the urge to give too much away.  As far as I know, they don’t have a group that meets to help people who have overwhelming desires to serve too many people.  Temptation leads us in the opposite direction from selflessness—it tempts us to be selfish.

Just look at the first sin, the one committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  What did the serpent promise?  That eating the fruit of the tree would make them like God.  They wanted to be more than they were.  They wanted things that weren’t rightly theirs.  They wanted to claim for themselves rights that belonged to God.  They were tempted to be selfish. 

Fast forward to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.  What were the temptations of the devil?  They were to provide for himself, to secure himself, to gain power for himself.  The devil was trying to get Jesus to be selfish and use his powers and his privilege for his own good, rather than the good of others.  The devil was trying to focus Jesus’ vision upon himself.

Friends, the temptations you and I face are no different.  When you look at the 7 deadly sins, they’re all selfish.  Lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy and pride are all selfish sins.  They’re all sins that build up or serve the self, rather than serving another.  It’s about what I can get for me.

So when we talk about temptation, we talk about how the devil is tempting us to look inward first, at the expense or neglect of others.  The devil is trying to get us to seek our own wants and needs regardless of how it affects others.  The devil is trying to isolate us.  When we value our needs more than the needs of our relationships, our relationships struggle.  When we value our success more than the success of our companies, the companies suffer.  Whenever we focus exclusively on ourselves rather than the community, we are giving in to temptation.

I’d like to take a moment and life up two Biblical examples of individuals giving in to selfish temptation in two completely different ways. 

The first is King David.  If you’ve studied Biblical history, you may know that King David was labeled as a man after God’s own heart.  He was passionately in love with God, and his reign was supposed to point to God in all he did.

But King David gave in to temptation. 

Israel was off at war, and David had stayed home.  This was mistake #1.  Next, David goes up on the roof of his palace late in the afternoon.  Now, to us this doesn’t seem so dangerous.  But we don’t live in ancient Israel, where the only hot water heater was the giant ball of fire in the sky.  So the women would fill up their bathtubs, which were on the roof, in the morning and let the sun heat the water up all day.  Then, in the late afternoon, when the water was warm, they would go bathe.  Everyone knew this.  David knew this, too.

In other words, if you wanted to watch women bathe, the palace roof, which would have been taller than other buildings, would have been a great place to be.  If, however, you’re a married man, it’s not such a great idea, particularly if you discover that the woman you just watched bathe is married to someone else, especially when that someone else is off fighting in the war for you.  But David gave in to temptation.  However, had David never even gone up on the roof, he wouldn’t have been faced with temptation.  He wouldn’t have had to resist temptation, because he wouldn’t have been in a place to be tempted.

So lesson #1 here is that a good way to resist temptation is to not put ourselves in places to be tempted.  The devil tends to personalize our temptation, so we’re each tempted by something different, but this is pretty clear.  If you’re tempted to gluttony, Golden Corral isn’t a good place for you to go and eat.  If you’re tempted to envy, you probably shouldn’t watch the television shows about rich and famous people.  We could go on and on, but it’s wise for us to not put ourselves in places to be tempted to act wrongly.

There’s also another form of temptation, and that’s the temptation toward inaction. 

Jesus illustrates this well in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  In it, a man is robbed and beaten and left lying on the side of the road.  Before the Samaritan shows up to help, two men, a priest and a Levite, show up, survey the scene, and pass by the beaten and hurting man without helping.  The temptation here is to value their own comfort and cleanliness over the needs of other, which might interfere with their lives.  They’re busy folks, and they give in to the temptation to believe that their needs and their business is the most important thing in the world, far more important than the needs of another, which might encroach upon their comfort.

Frankly, we don’t talk about this much, but I think it’s a big thing that the Christian church is struggling with.

We like being comfortable.  We like our routines and our habits and our communities and our friends, and we don’t value intrusion or the needs of others, particularly when these others are different than we.  So we are tempted to ignore the world outside our door and get on with our own business, hoping that someone else will take care of those needs.  We are tempted to inaction, and this, too, is wrong.

So these are two ways temptation works. 

What does it mean to pray for God not to bring us into temptation?

Again, we go back to selfishness.  If temptation always tries to make us opt for selfishness, what we need is to be reminded of the needs of others.  And this happens best in community.

I believe that our prayer for God not to bring us into temptation is a prayer for God to surround us with the type of people who will help us see temptation for what it is and give us the strength to resist it.  I believe God gives us individual strength and can help us resist, but we are always stronger together.  If you’ve ever watched the Discovery channel for more than 10 minutes, you’ve watched how lions hunt.  They try and pick off one member of the herd, because they know they can’t confront the entire herd.  It’s always fascinating to watch a predator retreat in the face of a herd determined to run him or her off.

1 Peter tells us the Devil is like a roaring lion, and in order for us to resist him best, we need strong community.  We don’t resist temptation well on our own, so we need God to work in the hearts and minds of people working together to help us move past temptation and to act rightly.  In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul tells the church in Corinth that God will not let you be tested beyond your strength.  But the ‘you’ in plural.  God intends for the strength of the entire community to help them resist temptation.  God intends for all of them to work together, to lean on one another, and in so doing we help one another stay faithful. 

When you’re facing temptation, how much stronger are you when another person can remind you of the importance of faithfulness?  If you’re tempted to do a business deal that cuts a corner or two, how much better can you resist when another can prop you up and remind you of your integrity?  If you’re tempted to have one more drink, how much stronger are you when another person can remind you of the road that it leads down?  On and on it goes—we are stronger together.

The entirety of the Lord’s Prayer is a call for community.  Our Father, Jesus prays.  Give us our daily bread.  Forgive us our sins.  Do not bring us into the time of trial.  Rescue us.  All of this is a lesson that we act together, as one body, with Christ as our head.

For together, we move forward.  Together, we are stronger, because God uses each of us to remind one another of the final truth—that God wins.  God delivers us from evil.  God saves us.  We cannot do this on our own, but God has done it for us, and when temptation tries to tear our eyes away from that truth and get us to focus on ourselves, we band together and remind one another that Jesus Christ is the victor and we will share with him in his eternal glory.  Throughout our lives, we remind each other of this eternal and important truth, and God works through us all to proclaim this message to the world—that Christ delivers us from sin into glory, from death into life, and that love is stronger than death.

Let us pray 

Sermon For 8/18/2013 On The Lord's Prayer, Part 4

Matthew 6:9-13 (ESV) 
  9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

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Does anyone remember the hope of flying cars?  I got Boys’ Life magazine as a child, and they constantly focused on flying cars to the point that it seemed to me we would all be navigating the skies by the year 2000.  We’d have flying cars and flying cities and flying-whatever-the-heck-we-wanted.

Now, in the year 2014, I’m reading about how they’re redesigning the Toyota Corolla.  Not quite as exciting as flying cars.

I have a theory about what it is that captures the imagination the way that flying cars do.  They symbolize complete independence.  When your car can fly, you don’t need to depend on or worry about anyone else.  You can just fly out of your driveway and to wherever you please.  You are as free as a bird, with no need to worry about where the road might lead.  You are free. When you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a thousand of your closest friends each and every morning, the idea of not being limited by anyone or anything is pretty tempting. 

We all long for independence.  Since we’ve been little children, we’ve had it drilled into our heads that we should all dream of being our own master, of mastering our own fate and being lords of our own domains.  As Americans, we celebrate independence and teach and preach it whenever we get the chance.  We threw off the shackles of the British, and now we each are free to do and be what we please.

If we’re truly free, we’re not indebted to anyone, right?  If we owe a debt to anyone, they are a master over us.  They can control us.  I owe over $100,000 to Suntrust Bank, and if I shrug off this obligation, they will kick me out of my house.  Now, they don’t ask too much of me, only that I send them a rather sizable check every month, but I am a debtor to them.  I am not completely free to do whatever I want.

Jesus, here in this petition, is reminding us of another debt, one far greater than any financial obligation you or I could rack up in our lives.  Currently, the most expensive home for sale in Chattanooga is a nice little 7 bedroom number on Missionary Ridge that lists for just under $3 million.  You could buy that, never pay a dime on your mortgage, and your debt would scarcely register compared to the debt to which Jesus is referring.

We have offended God.  We have sinned against God, which is the greatest offense we could ever commit in our lives.  To the one who created us in his image, we have turned our backs.  To the one who promises to be as a bride to us, we have cheated.  To the one who pledges to love us eternally, we have spurned.  Since the fall of humanity in the garden of Eden, each and every human heart has, in some way, turned from the worship of God and chosen to worship false images, false gods, false idols.  We have pursued our own independence at the neglect of God and others, and we have strayed from the narrow pathway that leads to life everlasting.  In our sin, we have racked up a debt to God.

Now, the debt of sin is not as easily paid as other debts.  If I make enough mortgage payments over the next few decades, I’ll repay my debt to Suntrust.  There is no possible way I will ever make enough payments to God to make up for the debt I have accumulated by my sin.  It is simply impossible.

Fortunately, we worship a God of grace who, in Jesus Christ, has forgiven our sins.  Colossians 2:13 tells us that we were dead in our sins but were made alive in Christ Jesus, who forgives us our sins and cancels the debt that stood against us.  In Christ, God has canceled our debt to him, making it possible for us to have life with him.  What we could not pay, Jesus paid for us.  He who had no sin became sin so that we might have life.  It’s a free gift.

So why, you might ask, does Jesus teach us to pray for forgiveness?  If we have been forgiven for sins, why bother asking for it?  We’re not in the habit of continuing to ask for things we’ve already received.

In this petition, Jesus is reminding us that we are not our own lords and masters.  We do not exist to serve ourselves.  We have not been created so that we might make much of ourselves.  In this prayer, we acknowledge that we need forgiveness, that we depend on God, that we are not our own master.  We remember our sinfulness, lest we begin to believe that we are better than we are. 

But in remembering our sinfulness, we also remember God’s grace.  In praying for forgiveness, we remember that God has forgiven our sins.  We remember the grace of God that has made it possible for us to be redeemed from the hand of sin and death, and we can rejoice that our sin does not condemn us to an eternity far from God.

So Jesus teaches us to be reminded that we are not independent, but we are rather recipients of a great gift, and that God is a great and gracious God.

Then he continues, and we begin to wonder about God’s generosity.

Forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors, we are told to pray.

And we wonder about that little ‘as’. 

I once heard someone call it the most dangerous preposition in the Bible.

If we’re honest, we’ve all stared at that little word and wondered how big of a difference it makes.  If we’re honest, we can confess that we’ve wondered if God will only forgive us to the extent that we forgive others.  We’ve wondered if we’re doomed to an eternity with only a fraction of the grace God has poured out.

In short, I’d like to offer this rejoinder to all those questions:  No.

By no, I mean we don’t control God.  Jesus isn’t telling us that forgiveness is offered by God to the same extent that we offer it to others.  God doesn’t take our limitations as a basis for his actions.  When Jesus was on the cross and he looked upon his Roman executioners, he didn’t cry out, Father, forgive them to the extent they figure out what all this means and offer some grace later on to those that might owe them something.  No, he cried out, so that all could hear, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.  When Jesus ascended the cross, he didn’t do so to bleed a little, offering a pint of blood, because that’s all our forgiveness was worth.  No, he died on the cross, offering himself as the sacrifice to pay for all of our sins, past, present and future.  We cannot control God, and let us be grateful for that, for God is always more gracious and loving than we can imagine.

So what does this little word ‘as’ mean?  What does it mean to pray for forgiveness as we forgive others?

What Jesus is doing is linking our relationship with God to the relationships we have with those around us.  Jesus is teaching us that our relationships with our fellow humans should be shaped and defined by our relationship with God.  Jesus is telling us that a religious life is not just the intimate connection you have with God—it bleeds over, explodes out of us and affects every single part of our lives.  We who have graciously received unbounded and unlimited grace and love from God should be so transformed by the experience that we are then willing to seek to duplicate this love of God as we interact with those around us.  If we understand what it means to be forgiven, we cannot help but want to offer this to others, to give grace and love and pray that it transforms lives.  In doing so, we point others to God. 

It’s easy for us to get caught up in our individual relationship with God, and we start to believe that is all that matters.  What Jesus is teaching us is that we can’t get too comfortable in that.  We have to let Christ transform all of life, so that we’re not just worried about worshiping rightly, but also about acting properly.  Jesus tells a parable about this later in the Gospel, portraying a servant who owes 15 years worth of wages to his master.  The servant is forgiven freely, and while he is so grateful, he is unable to see how this should affect the rest of his life, so that when he meets a fellow servant who owes him a fraction of what he has been forgiven, he has the man thrown in prison when he is unable to pay.  Rather than extend grace, he uses his newfound freedom to imprison others.  The gift has failed to transform his heart.  He doesn’t understand the gift.

 And so we must see that how we treat others is a consequence, not a condition, of how we have been treated by God.  If our faith is truly shaping us, if it has truly transformed us, our interactions will be shaped by grace and forgiveness.  To forgive is to be selfless, to give up the right to something that is owed to us.  To forgive is giving up the right to selfishness, to make much of ourselves.  To forgive means we are giving up something that belongs to us.

When we do this, we imitate Christ, who gave up everything he deserved and lavished it upon us.  The honor and glory he rightly deserved is poured upon us, and the indignation and scorn we deserved was poured out upon him.  Our gratitude for this selfless act should shape our hearts and minds, that we go forth as a forgiven and grateful people, not looking to make much of ourselves, not set on independence for us, but rather looking to make much of God and of his eternal love, and may we do so as we forgive and love those around us.

Let us pray

Sermon for 8/11/2013 on the Lord's Prayer, part 3

Matthew 6:9-13  (CEV)
9 You should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, help us to honor your name. 10 Come and set up your kingdom, so that everyone on earth will obey you, as you are obeyed in heaven. 11 Give us our food for today. 12 Forgive us for doing wrong, as we forgive others. 13 Keep us from being tempted and protect us from evil

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In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a pretty boring guy. How boring, you ask? I eat oatmeal for breakfast. Every morning for the past five years, I have fixed a giant bowl of oatmeal. I mix different things in it, but it’s a pretty boring way to start the day.

How many of you are breakfast eaters?

So what types of things do you eat for breakfast?

Just as important—why do you eat breakfast?

As for those of you who don’t eat breakfast, why don’t you eat breakfast?

Now, the big reason I eat breakfast every morning is because I’m hungry. If I don’t eat breakfast first thing in the morning, I’ll be roving around eating just about anything in an hour because I need to eat. My stomach is empty first thing in the morning and it’s crying out for food. Some people just aren’t hungry in the morning.

Others don’t realize that they’re hungry.

I get Caleb up first thing in the morning, and I’ve discovered that I have to take him and set him in his high chair, or else he’ll run around and play for an hour. When I put him in the high chair, he’ll eat because it’s his habit, but otherwise, he just doesn’t realize that he’s hungry, and he’ll fill his time doing things other than eating. Sometimes, he’s content to leave the house without eating. I try to avoid telling the day care worker that he hasn’t eaten anything, because I really don’t want to know what Caleb is like when he realizes that he hasn’t eaten in twelve hours and is pretty darn hungry. I’ve tried to convince him that he is hungry, but the day you figure out how to reason with a two year old, you let me know how to do so.

So how does this fit into a conversation about asking God for our daily bread?

Simple—food doesn’t do us much good if we’re not hungry, or if we don’t realize that we’re hungry. If I take Rachel out to dinner at a fancy restaurant and she tells me, as we’re sitting down, that she’s not hungry, there isn’t a whole lot of point in our being out to dinner. I can’t imagine that it’s much fun to sit and watch me eat.

So when we talk about God giving us our daily bread, the first thing we need to do is recognize our overwhelming sense of hunger. We need what God gives us. Every single part of our being needs to cling to God. The primary sin of the Pharisees, in my opinion, is the sin of pride—they had so carefully honed their religious practices that they had excluded God from it. They thought that their practices would get them into God’s good graces. Jesus comes to tell us how badly we need a Savior. He wants to tell us, to show us, that we are a sinful people that need a Savior, and that the only thing that can fill that need is God.

This is important.

Society is busy trying to distract us and convince us that we can fill our needs with just about any old thing, and they have plenty of things to sell us that will do the trick. This is the equivalent of you, as a child, with a carton of ice cream in one hand, a spoon the other, ten minutes before dinner. Know what happens if you eat the ice cream?

You’ll spoil your dinner!

Mom told us this a thousand times, and we never believed her. We always figured there was room for both, but we never got the chance to put the theory to the test. If we did, we discovered that mom was right. You can’t have both. You can’t fill up on sweets and still have room for the nutritious stuff.

Jesus tells us this when he tells us that we can’t serve two masters. But how we try. We try and have both. We fill our minds and our thoughts with all sorts of things. We fill our days with thoughts of the royal baby, with the pursuit of money and power, with sports and with news. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but when they become the primary things that we take in, they prevent us from feasting on God’s Word. They prevent us from eating the daily bread God is trying to give us.

So what is our daily bread?

I’ll define it this way—it’s our life-giving relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It’s recognizes that everything good in life—our very life itself—is a free gift from him, made possible by his love, and completely dependent upon his free will. It’s rooting ourselves in him, identifying ourselves as his children, and letting his wisdom guide us in everything we do.

That is our daily bread.

That’s a lot, and I believe it’s a lifetime’s worth of figuring it out. Nobody wakes up one day and gets this all figured out before lunch, never to sin again. We all have good days and bad days, but the important question is how well we are growing. Is your faith growing? Where are you now compared to five years ago? Ten years ago? Are you moving forward, progressing in your love of Christ and your faithfulness toward him? Are you feasting on the bread he’s trying to feed you with?

Now, I believe the primary way God feeds us is through his Word. He gives us Scripture for many reasons, two of which are to reveal himself to us and to teach us how to live. Scripture tells us who we are, and it tells us how we are to be. It tells us that we fall short, and it tells us that we need a Savior. It’s Scripture that reveals to us our dependence on our daily bread.

So when is the best time to feast upon this daily bread? I believe that it’s important to eat all day, every day, but we need to start first thing in the morning. When the Israelites were given manna from heaven in Exodus 16, we’re told that when the sun appeared and day grew hot, the manna disappeared. In other words, if the Israelites didn’t get out and gather the manna first thing in the morning, they missed their chance.

I believe the same is true for us. I’m not going to say that if you don’t study Scripture for half an hour in the morning you’ve missed your chance for faithful living that day, but I will say that not being fed by God’s Word in the morning makes it more difficult to orient yourself to live faithfully that day.

Think of it as a roadmap—when is it best to first look at a map? At the beginning, middle, or end of a trip?

If you think of each day as something to navigate, don’t you think it’d be wise to peek at the map first thing in the morning, to make sure you’re starting out correctly?

Now, for some of you, that’s going to be more challenging than others. Teachers, I know mornings are particularly rough for you, seeing as how you have to be in school so early in the morning. I’m not saying you need to wake up an hour earlier to study the Bible. I think it’s important to set aside anywhere from 10-60 minutes in a day to read Scripture, but that’s not always going to happen in the morning. So find a way to work Scripture into your morning. An easy way? Memorize a Psalm and recite it in the shower. Tape a favorite Scripture verse to your mirror in the bathroom. Read the Bible during breakfast. Say a prayer when you get into the car. Listen to an audio Bible in the car.

I could go on, but you get the point. God wants to feed you daily. Jesus Christ is the bread of life, and he knows that the world offers an infinite number of substitutes, but only he can truly meet our needs.

But we need to be hungry, and we need to recognize our hunger. Only then can we be wise enough to stop and eat. Only then can we truly begin to give thanks for the nourishment we find in God.

Let us pray  

Sermon for 8/4/13 on the Lord's Prayer, part II

Matthew 6:9-13 (CEV)

  9 You should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, help us to honor your name. 10 Come and set up your kingdom, so that everyone on earth will obey you, as you are obeyed in heaven. 11 Give us our food for today. 12 Forgive us for doing wrong, as we forgive others. 13 Keep us from being tempted and protect us from evil.

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My parents were divorced not long after Rachel & I got married. It had been a long time coming—I remember telling close friends in high school that I expected my parents to get a divorce at some point. It wasn’t a terrible relationship hovering on the brink of disaster—my parents were great parents, and they had a good relationship, they just grew apart over the years. They were different people with very different interests, and by the time I was in my early twenties it was pretty evident as to where things were going. So it was no surprise to me when they decided to get a divorce.

This wasn’t shocking, but it certainly had a profound impact on how I looked at my own marriage. From the time Rachel & I began dating, I’ve been terrified of divorce. It’s not that I wake up every morning in fear that she’s going to realize there are better options out there, but I’m probably more aware than many of how our marriage is going, of how we’re growing and how we’re doing emotionally. The seeds of my parents’ divorce were sown many years ago and watered by busy lifestyles and different interests for a long time, so I look out for those things.

One thing that’s become important to us is vacation. Vacations are times when we can unplug, unwind and check in. We go to places where there are no distractions and we can connect, to see how we’re doing, where we’re doing well and where we’re not doing so hot. It’s a great time to be together and to focus on our relationship, both things that are pretty difficult on a day-to-day basis.

We like to go to the beach, and we like to stroll along the surf. Whenever we do, we always talk about how we can take a bit of this sensation back home with us. We would love to be able to enjoy the sense of peace and calm from the beach when we’re stuck in traffic or dealing with a chaotic home. We’d love to capture or bottle the tranquility of the beach and bring that home. Every vacation is like this in a way—there’s something about it you want to bring home, to sustain you when the chaos descends, to help you de-stress in the midst of life’s busy-ness.

It’s impossible to do this fully. You can do it to a certain extent, but the chaos of life always seems two steps ahead of your ability to recapture the peace and calm of vacation.

And that, friends, is how I want you to think about this passage we’re studying today.

We have a hard time with ‘Thy will be done’. We aren’t entirely sure what God’s will is, and if it’s going to be done, why bother praying, right? What does God need from us if he’s just going to go ahead and do his will? Why not spend the time asleep on the sofa rather than praying?

I think the most helpful way to look at this passage is going to be by starting at the end. Let’s focus a bit on the ‘as it is in heaven’ part.

So what is God’s will in heaven? Well, when we spend time looking at the depictions of heaven in the Bible, they all include a few things. The first is that they’re centered around God, and out of that we have an existence of peace, joy and hope. When we speak of heaven, we speak of a place that doesn’t include death, suffering or pain. There are no tears of sorrow there, although there may be a few of laughter. Death is a place of wondrous music and transcendent peace, and we’ll want for nothing. There will be people from every tribe of every nation and every tongue represented there. All of our needs will be satisfied and we’ll live with God forever.

So that is God’s perfect will played out in heaven, a place where there is no sin and death. Sounds great, right?

Then let’s back up a bit. Now we’re praying for God’s will, which we’ve just discussed, to be done one earth, too.

What this means is that we want God’s will, that health and joy and peace and hope, to be present here on earth. God wants all people to experience the peace and health and wholeness that we’ll have in heaven. We want that for this earth.

But just like we can’t fully capture the sense of being on vacation once we come home, our life on earth cannot fully capture the reality of heaven because of the same sense of chaos. Sin and death are still present here, so we’re limited by sin’s reality here. We know that Christ has defeated sin, but the final victory will not come until the end of time, so until then we want the earth to resemble heaven as much as possible.

I’d like to say a thing or two about prayers for healing here. We often pray for healing, but we pray for God’s will to be done and recognize that not all of our prayers work fully. We wonder why it would be God’s will for people to have cancer or disease or to die before we think they should.

Let me say what I believe. Just like the chaos of our daily lives corrupts the peace and tranquility of vacation, sin and death corrupt how God’s will works in our lives here on earth. In heaven, we know there will be no cancer, no disease, no death. There will be no need for Hospice. That is God’s will for all people—that we live pain free.

And yet, here on earth there is still sin and death to be dealt with. We can’t shake them off by our own hands, and God’s appointed time to defeat them fully has not yet come. They still are at work in the world, operating under names like cancer and warfare and famine and oppression. They bring suffering and death, and they tarnish God’s will in the world. So we pray for God’s will, and yet we know that it’s not always perfectly done here on earth. We know that sin and death misdirect life away from God’s will.

Yet, there is that reminder at the end of the phrase about God’s will in heaven. Even if there is not physical healing in this life for an individual, there is still ultimate healing in God. In Christ, we defeat death, and we live in God’s will forever in heaven. We pray for God’s will to be done perfectly here, but we recognize that’s not always going to be the case. Sometimes it looks like sin wins, but Jesus reminds us in this prayer that God’s will is going to be done in heaven. Ultimately, we are healed, but that isn’t always the case on this side of heaven.

So when we pray for God’s will to be done on earth, we’re praying that people experience God’s peace and hope to the fullest extent possible.

What this means is that rather than this being a permission giving passage to sit back and do nothing, it actually should motivate us more than ever to get out and get to work. We’re praying for God’s will, peace and hope for all humans, to be done on earth, and Scripture is very clear that God uses ordinary people like you and I to spread his peace and hope. God’s message spreads through human speech and human action, so our prayer is one for our own lives to be busy doing God’s will, spreading peace and joy and hope and love. We have to do as much as possible to make sure this earth resembles the heaven we’re looking forward to. We have to get busy serving one another to show them God’s amazing love and help them see the invitation God has for all people to enter his will and dwell in heaven.

So the prayer for God’s will to be done is a call to action, a call to get busy participating in making earth like heaven, a call to let our lives be a glimpse into the eternal. Sin and death will be present here until Christ returns, so we won’t live perfectly, and we won’t be able to cast off the shackles completely that prevent us from making this a full reality here, but we can strive to be emissaries of hope and peace, to bring that portrait to the world, that they might share in Christ’s hope and peace.

And as we do this, God’s kingdom spreads. We’re praying for God’s kingdom to come in fullness, and we know that it has come in Jesus Christ, but it is still to come—it won’t culminate until Christ returns, but we pray for it to come within us, that we might be caught up in the vision and work of heaven, and we pray for it to come for those around us, that the Holy Spirit might use us to welcome them into God’s kingdom. In the fullness of time, sin and death and pain will be fully cast off, but until then, we pray that our lives be part of God’s spreading of hope and joy and peace and love.

So may God’s will be done in our lives. May we look forward with joy to heaven, and may our lives reflect the hope of heaven in all we do.

Let us pray

Sermon for 7/28/13 on the Lord's Prayer, part 1

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them one thing. There were many things they could have asked him to teach them, but we have record of one request: Lord, teach us to pray. I believe that this is because the disciples saw the fruits of Jesus' prayer life. I believe that they saw him spend countless hours in prayer, and they saw how his life was guided by his abiding relationship with his heavenly Father. I believe that they wanted this same intimate relationship, the same depth to their discipleship, and so they asked him to teach him to pray.

We, too, want a deep and abiding relationship with our Father in heaven. We want to be connected to God, to lean upon him and feel his strength and power in us. We want to place our complete trust in him, because we know that only in him will we find true life. We've tried everything else in the world, and we've discovered that they cannot fulfill our deepest longings. We know that only God can do this, and so we want to learn to pray like Christ prays.

In reply to the disciples' request, Jesus teaches them the Lord's prayer. He tells how to pray. As someone suggested, 'if Jesus had known a better prayer, he would have taught it to us.' So let us, too, sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from him over these next five weeks.

Matthew 6:7-13  (CEV) 

7 When you pray, don’t talk on and on as people do who don’t know God. They think God likes to hear long prayers. 8 Don’t be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask.
9 You should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, help us to honor your name. 10 Come and set up your kingdom, so that everyone on earth will obey you, as you are obeyed in heaven. 11 Give us our food for today. 12 Forgive us for doing wrong, as we forgive others. 13 Keep us from being tempted and protect us from evil.

When I was in seminary, I did a work study job in exchange for my scholarship. I worked 10 hours a week doing administrative tasks for one of the offices, and it wasn't exciting work, but it wasn't very difficult.

One day, my supervisor took me into a closet and opened up a cabinet. In it were two stacks of unwrapped paper. He told me that he wanted to know how much paper we had left. I looked at him curiously, because I knew how meticulous he was and inferred that he wanted me to count all this paper, which probably totaled several thousand sheets. This did not sound like an engaging or necessary task.

He left me to it, and after staring at this stack for a few minutes, I decided on a simpler method. I went and got a full ream of paper, knowing that it was 500 sheets, and I guesstimated based on the relative size of the unwrapped stack. I then went into my boss' office and told him about how many sheets we had.

I still have the distinct memory of the disappointment in his eyes as he looked at me. It was now very clear that he had expected me to count the individual sheets of paper. He asked me a few questions about my method, and then gave up on getting an exact number out of me.

I had fulfilled the task, I suppose. He was pretty disappointed with the effort I had put into it, and I knew that my heart wasn't in counting all that paper. I hadn't tried very hard to get an exact number, and it was a pretty big waste of everyone's time, despite the fact that the task was done.

We do this throughout our lives. We come up to a task that appears daunting, or maybe it's something in which we're just not interested. But it's something that has to get done, so we put in the time. Often it's half-hearted or distracted time that we invest, but we make sure the task gets done, even if it's not well done. We satisfy the requirement and check off the box, glad to have it done and confidant that if anyone asks, we'll be able to say we've completed it.

There's nothing wrong with this approach at times. No one gets really excited about paying bills, but it's necessary. If you've got to take the trash out, you don't need to get really excited about it first. Some things in life just need to be done.

The problem comes when we approach prayer in this fashion. We do it because it's supposed to be done, and we do it only because we think we look better to God after we have prayed. We trot out familiar lines and make sure we've completed our task, but we weren't necessarily paying attention to what we've just done. Sometimes it's a distracted prayer while the television is on, or maybe while we're rushing from this to that, and we don't even pay attention to the words we're saying, but we're praying, right?

Jesus warns his listeners of this risk. He tells them that there are people who used lots of words and pray long prayers because they think this makes them look good. They think that the longer the prayer, the better it is, so they go on and on, but their heart isn't really in it. They're just putting in an appearance, putting on a show. They've got time to fill, so they fill the time, but their empty hearts are not filled.

Jesus wants us to pray with hearts on fire for God. He wants us to get caught up in the passionate embrace of God, to fall in love with God and let God's love surround and fill us. When we pray, he wants us to recognize that it's more than empty words shouted at the heavens. It's adoration toward the creator of the universe, and it's intimate conversation with the God who promises to always abide with you. He wants our hearts and our attitudes to be in the right place, that we might be mindful of what we are doing when we pray.

And so he begins his prayer with an amazingly intimate term. “Our Father,” he begins, and instantly our relationship with God is placed in a different position than any other religion on earth. God as Father is not a God who dwells in the clouds and remains removed from humanity, preferring to keep his hands clean. God as Father is a God who desperately loves his children and rushes to meet them, rushes to love them, rushes to save them. Father is the God who sees his child running into the street and runs to keep him from certain death. Father is the God who hears the cries of his children and promises to always abide, even in the valley of the shadow of death. Father is the God who promises that not a hair shall fall from your head without his knowledge.

Now, Father is also a God who is willing to discipline, but only out of love, only because he wants the best for us. Father is a God willing to punish, but only in the hopes that we might be reformed and transformed, that we might see the error of our ways and repent, turn back, turn towards him. Father is a God who knows that only he can ultimately satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts, and so when he sees us playing with fire he sternly rebukes us, knowing that it will be our destruction. He doesn't want us to dwell in senile happiness—he wants us to dwell in abundant life with him forever.

This is all amazing that God wants to do this, that God wants to be in an intimate relationship. God is so holy, so perfect, that we know that we cannot look at him, lest we perish immediately. Our God is the one who created the earth, who told the rivers where to flow and set the stars in the sky. This is the God who will always be near, who will never let you be separated from him. Our God is amazing.

Look to the next phrase--'in heaven, hallowed be your name.' Jesus is starting our prayer with intimacy, but it is immediately coupled to the holiness of God. We can never forget just how holy God is. We can't lose sight of God's perfection and that he dwells in unapproachable light. If we lose sight of this, than God loses his power and simply wants to be our friend, but is incapable of doing anything about the dangers that threaten us. But when we hold onto the holiness and power of God, we recognize that the God who wants an intimate relationship is the same God who dwells outside of time and space, the same God who creates simply by speaking, the same God who is able to vanquish sin and death and promises to return to defeat Satan with finality. This is the God we worship, the God we adore, the God who will reign forever. There is no question of his victory—it is assured, and we have no need to doubt or fear.

And so, in the beginning of our prayer, Jesus asks us to hold together the intimate love of God with his awesome power and majesty. Our minds cannot wrap themselves around such a concept, for it is too great for us. As the Psalmist says, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

So what can we do?

Here, we can only worship. We can bow before the throne of grace and marvel at the God who is all-powerful and yet deeply loving. We can be amazed at who God is and what God has done. We can simply fall before the throne and adore this God. We can be grateful for all that this God has done for us, for he didn't have to do any of it, but chose to use this power for our ultimate good.

This is how our prayers ought to begin, Jesus says. They ought to begin with adoration of God, and with a recognition of the depths of his love for us. They ought to remind us of where we stand—before the throne of grace of the all-powerful God, and they also ought to remind us of just whose we are—we belong to this God, and he proudly claims us in Christ. Nothing in the world or beyond it could stand between us, but he rushes toward us, wanting to be known intimately by us. He wants to hear our prayers, to hear our joys and concerns, to know our hearts. He doesn't want to hear half-hearted prayers tossed in his general direction so we can consider the task completed and go on with our lives. He wants our hearts to be completely oriented towards him, because he knows that such an orientation, and only such an orientation, will be completely fulfilling for us. For us to grow into the fulfillment of our potential, we have to turn to him alone, in love and worship, and Jesus begins our prayer with a simple sentence of infinite depth, one that focuses our hearts and minds upon the God who creates with a Word, upon the God who descends to earth and dies so that we might live with him, upon the God who abides with us by the power of the Holy Spirit in each and every day.

Let us pray