Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter six. I will read verses one through 18, but our sermon will be from verses seven through 15.

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
2 “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 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.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Matthew 6:1-18, ESV

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. This past summer, some of our relatives traveled on something of a once in a lifetime family trip to England. They had some things to do around the country, and they spent a few days in London and my brother in law packed out that time. They did all kinds of things, went to all kinds of events, visited all kinds of places. They had an amazing time together.

One of these days they visited the British Library, and while they were there, they saw incredible artifacts. They saw one of the original Gutenberg Bibles. They also saw the handwritten manuscripts from many of the Beatles songs. So a big range of things that are kept at the British Library there.

There's one whole room, though, that was devoted to the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta, which is something like the Royal Charter, the Constitution of England. It was signed by King John of England on June 15th, in the year 1215. And this was a royal charter that guaranteed that the king was in agreement that the king would not hold himself above the law. It guaranteed liberty, the rights to people, and particularly the king would not be able to violate those rights as though he were above the law. This was just out on display for anyone to see, including my eight year old nephew.

Now, as a typical eight year old boy, he'd seen a lot of the things he'd been in a lot of the museums. This was more history old stuff. So he greeted the exhibit a little, shall we say, enthusiastically, a little bumping up against it, that sort of thing. You know, nothing that would be beyond an eight year old boy. Then a guard came in the room and asked them, Hey, we had an alarm triggered on the Magna Carta display. Have you seen anything? Do you know what was happening?

Now, I'm told this is classic British indirect understatement. They're saying, what on earth are you doing to the Magna Carta display? But my brother-in-law and sister-in-law had no idea what had happening. They were reading the other inscriptions and things and they said, oh, we don't know, no one's been in here, no bandits or anything like that. So the guard thanked them and left. Well, my eight year old nephew was still there and he was still studying that exhibit to the point that guards came in were a little more direct get away from the display they had to tell him.

Now, it's interesting, my nephew was, I guess, messing around, too physically bumping this precious artifact to display. You have to imagine, I mean, think about it, this is a precious, priceless artifact and it's just on display. They let children come into this room, American children come into this room and look upon this thing. It's an incredible kind of a thing to think that this would happen even close enough to bump into the case.

Well, Jesus is teaching us here today about a different kind of royal interaction, not the signed treaty or contract or charter of a king who died 800 years ago. But the privilege of approaching the king of kings in his throne room in the highest heavens. Now, lest we think that Jesus would tell us that the king says children are off limits. If you want to come, you better get your act together and act like an adult in a place like this, show some respect. Jesus, in fact, says that if you want to come, you've got to come like children. Like children praying to your Father in heaven.

Our big idea today is this that we pray to Almighty God as children speaking with our father..

Now, as we study the Lord's Prayer today, we'll look at this in three parts. Prayer is paradoxical. A paradox is something that seems intention or contradictory, but it really isn't. Number two, prayer is pious. Pious and piety is something of a word that we don't like all that often. It sounds hoity toity and high up there, but piety refers to our spirituality, our holiness, and it's really important. Then third, that prayer is personal.

1. Prayer is Paradoxical
2. Prayer is Pious
3. Prayer is Personal

Now, two reminders. Again, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, we are looking at verses seven through 15 and we read the whole context because this takes place within a teaching where Jesus was offering on the piety of the people. He says, your piety cannot be hypocritical where you're just doing it to be seen by others, for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven. He talked about this, about giving to the needy. Don't do that publicly to be seen by others. When you pray, don't do that publicly just to be seen by others. And when you fast don't show off that you're fasting by your suffering. Do that in secret so your father who sees in secret, will reward you.

Each of those three sections Jesus is making the same argument, but applying it to different aspects of the piety of the people. But sandwiched within there, when Jesus talked about that second issue of prayer, he sort of goes off on something of a holy tangent. He goes off on a little bit of a rabbit trail, a tremendous rabbit trail, where he teaches us how we ought to pray. It's not just that we should refrain from publicly praying in a hypocritical way so that we are seen by others. He actually teaches us the way and the manner in which we should pray. So we're just looking at verses 7-15 in the midst of that wider context.

The second reminder, and I'm not sure I've given it here during a sermon, but I've talked about it a lot in the Westminster Standard Sunday school class that I teach. That one of the best parts of our doctrinal standards in the Westminster confession and catechisms comes at the end of both the larger and the shorter catechism series. If you've never read the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechism Exposition of the Lord's Prayer, it is well worth doing. I'd say take part of the Lord's day to day and read through it. Because what the Westminster larger and shorter catechism does is to bring in the rest of what the Bible teaches us about prayer and about these various heads of prayer that we have in the Lord's Prayer to fill out our understanding of the fullness of what Jesus here is just giving us a short summary of.

So we're going to look and try to do a little bit of the unpacking. But I would also encourage you those I'm going to quote one of the catechism questions. If you have a sermon worksheet or the sermon notes, though, I've included the catechism questions, the Shorter Catechism questions and the worksheet and then in the sermon notes, I have both that are printed there in full.

Prayer is Paradoxical

So let's dive into this that our first point, that prayer is paradoxical. Again, there's something in tension that Jesus is teaching us here that we need to think about and verses seven through nine-b. So let's look at this in verse seven, "Jesus says, 'and when you pray.'" So now he's no longer talking just about the problem of hypocritically praying in public. But when you do pray, Jesus says, "Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words."

Now we understand this mode of thinking. If prayer is a bringing of our request to God with words, that it makes sense that if you add more words and that maybe your prayers will be more effective. So people were often doing this. They were offering lots of words that they repeated over and over to try to just shout out as many words as possible to try to get the attention of God. When I was in high school, there was a debate, a form of debate that was called policy debate. I don't know if they still do it or not, but where people would speed read through their case. I mean, this was you couldn't hardly understand it. You just would read through it as fast as you could and try to pile up the arguments. Because if the other team didn't respond point by point, you could say, well, they dropped that point. They didn't respond to that point. They conceded that point. And you could pounce on that as a way of making your case. They didn't answer it. That's a point that stands for me in the making of my case. People treat prayer like this sometimes they just rush through their prayers, just throwing up all kinds of words to God, speed, reading through our prayers in the hopes that by just shouting out a bunch of words, some of that spaghetti is going to stick to the ceiling of heaven. Something is going to stick there.

This is the way that Pagans thought. If they just repeated words over and over, they could maybe get their attention of their god. One of the great illustrations of this is from 1 Kings 18, where there's this great showdown on Mt. Carmel between Elijah and the pagan gods of Baal. They're both praying for one thing, that their God, Yahweh in Elijah's in Elijah's case, or Baal in the case of the priests of Baal, that these gods would send down fire onto their sacrifice to prove that they are the stronger god.

Well, the priests of Baal started the march around the altar, and they're cutting themselves with blood because they think this is going to catch the attention of Baal and do this for hours, "Hear us of Baal". At some point, Elijah starts to mock them, in 1 Kings 18:27, he says, "Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he's musing or he's relieving himself, or he's on a journey or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened." Now, this is mockery, but he was really capturing what the pagans thought about their god. Maybe he is in the bathroom. Maybe he is asleep and we've got to get his attention.

I don't know if you've ever had that awkward moment where you've rang the doorbell on someone's house and you stand there and no one responds, maybe you can see their car in the driveway and you wonder I wonder if the doorbell is working. So then you have to say, okay, what's the appropriate amount of time that I need to wait before I can ring again? And maybe that's going to have my ear up against the door trying not to be creepy or arrested, but I'm going to listen to see if there actually is a doorbell. Then if they still don't come, you have to say, okay, what's the appropriate amount of time or should I just bail on this where I can then knock and hopefully, I'm going to get someone's attention? That's how pagans approached prayer. How am I going to get attention?

Or maybe you've had that time where you're trying to resolve something on a phone with customer service of some company. You have to dial one and then you have to dial six, and then you have to dial four, and then you have to reach the company directory and then hopefully you just keep getting zero to get an operator, hopefully a human. You're hoping to get to someone, but they can't help you. So they transfer you and they transfer you. You don't have to file your forms in triplicate to get God's attention, Jesus says. Because you don't pray to a distant, busy, preoccupied deity who needs bathroom breaks and nap times. Jesus says, do not be like them, verse eight, "For your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

Now understand, Jesus is not condemning long, lengthy prayers. He Himself in Luke 6:12, we're told that he prayed all night one night. He's not even condemning all repetitive prayer. We read in Matthew 26:44, that in The Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said the same words three times, "Father, let this cup pass from me if there is any way, but not my will, but yours be done. Jesus prayed that three times, but the point is that Jesus didn't robotically repeat the same words again and again and again.

He was talking to his father, that would be a conversation. Do you think about a child praying with that child's father. That child may make the same request, may make the same request time after time after time, but not robotically, as though by saying the right set of incantations in the right frequency of times, that suddenly that will unlock the power of their father. That's not the way it works. You can think of a child praying the same thing in the same conversation or coming back to their father again. Please, Father. Jesus says, we can pray like that, but don't pretend like you have to wave to get God's attention in prayer. You were praying to your Father who is in heaven.

Jesus then teaches us to pray, he says in verse nine, "Pray then like this", and in the first part of verse nine, the preface, the beginning of the Lord's Prayer, what's called the preface to the Lord's Prayer. He teaches us to address God by saying "Our Father in Heaven." Now, here's where that paradox, is our father in heaven. If we think about what Jesus is teaching us to pray here, these are two things that are very contradictory, at least seemingly so. They are in tension with one another.

When we pray our father, Jesus is teaching us to pray with all of the confidence of children. My children do not care in the least what I am busy with when they have a need. They barge directly into my presence to tell me their needs. Doesn't matter if I'm sleeping. Even this morning, it's one of them. One of my children, I love you, Caleb, every night he comes into my room to tell me, to wake me up, to get my attention, to tell me what he needs. It was a foot cramp this morning. We worked out the foot cramp and sent him back to bed. Children don't care. They come into the presence of their father and Jesus says, pray like that. You are praying as children to your father. Come right into his presence.

Then Jesus says, this is our father who is in heaven. This is not just your dad. He is in heaven. He is transcended. He transcends above us. He is higher than us. Separated from us wholly. In fact, what the Bible says is that He is holy, holy, holy, unimaginably, indescribably, holy, so far distant from us, that there would be no way for us to climb up to him unless he came down and offered himself to us. Our Father in heaven.

Psalm 115:3 says, "Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases." Jesus is saying, hold both of these in tension. True prayer to true spirituality. True piety is a communion with our Father, who is exalted in the highest heavens. When we pray, we must pray with both sides.

Now, how do we hold those two items in tension? Jesus is going to teach us how to pray from both sides of this. In each of the petitions, in the in the first three petitions and in the second three petitions, he's going to split the prayer in half and he's going to show us, starting with how we approach God in true piety and true holiness, true reverence, true or true fear of the Lord. He's going to start there, that prayer is pious. Prayer has to do with our piety. This is the second point where we look at the first three petitions that are meant to orient our hearts correctly to the utter holiness of God.

Prayer is Pious

So in that first petition after the preface, Our Father in Heaven, we come to the first petition, "Hallowed be your name." Now, hallowed isn't a word that we use a lot. It simply means to make something holy, to cause something to be holy. Now we don't cause God's name to be holy. God's name is holy, whatever we do with it. What we are praying to God is that He would sanctify, that's another word that even we don't use that one very often, we are asking that God would sanctify his own name, to set apart his own name, to glorify his own name is holy.

Now again, we talk about this a lot. When we talk about God's name, we are not simply talking about what we call God. We are talking about everything that touches upon God. Not only his name, but his character. We are talking about his reputation, his fame, his glory, his word, his works, his worship. Everything pertaining to God, we are asking for God to sanctify and set apart and to glorify. We are asking God to change our hearts. That as we start to pray, we're asking God to shift the direction, the orientation of our hearts to see him as he is. As the unimaginably holy, holy, holy God, hallowed be your name.

Well, then Jesus teaches us in the second petition to carry on with this train of thought that prayer is about our piety. Prayer is pious. That prayer is about God's kingdom. Your kingdom come. Thy kingdom come. It's a reminder that we are not only praying to our Father, but we are also praying to the Almighty King of kings.

Now, when I pray the Lord's Prayer, this is the line that catches me. I'll be honest, there are times when I just rip into the Lord's Prayer and I'm just going along and I'm not thinking. But this is the part that always catches me and I often start over. I repent for not hallowing God's name in the way that I'm praying, but it's when I pray that God's kingdom would come, that I'm reminded of what I am there to do. Because often I come with a laundry list. God, here are the things that are important to be done today for the building of my kingdom. Here they are. I trust that you're powerful enough to do them. Thank you. We'll have another meeting about this tomorrow, where I will inform you of the new set of needs for building my kingdom.

But I come to pray as an unworthy servant. Thy kingdom come. Your kingdom, not my kingdom, your kingdom come, which reorients me, I'm a humble servant. I am a humble servant in the presence of the king. But as you think about what the Bible teaches us about the Kingdom of God, and this is where our catechisms are so helpful to bring in the full teaching of the Bible on what the Kingdom is.

We have to also understand that though I am an unworthy servant serving the King of kings, that kingdom is not something that harms me. That kingdom is for my benefit and my good. This is the catechism question I want to read to you because it's so good. Westminster Shorter Catechism number 102, "In the second petition, which is, Thy kingdom come,” we pray, that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened."

I want that. That's better than whatever anthill kingdom I had defined and decided that I wanted for myself. I want God's kingdom. The second petition reorients to that.

The third petition then extends the second petition. It teaches us what God's kingdom is like. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. This is how God's kingdom come when His will is done on Earth, just as thoroughly as it is done among the angels in heaven. Now, when we talk about the will of God, it's important to understand that theologians looking at all the Scriptures teach, talk about two aspects of God's will. God has one unified will, but he has two aspects of this will.

One is what we would call the decretal will or the will that pertains to the decrees of God, the eternal decrees of God. We read in the Bible that God decreed things in eternity past, before the foundations of the world were laid. Before the first brick was laid at the beginning of creation, God had already decreed everything that would come to pass. That decree will be done. That will will absolutely be done. No matter what we say or what we think. God's plans will come to fulfillment.

There's another aspect of God's will that is God's revealed will. What God tells us that He wants about how we should live. God's revealed will includes His law, and there is still much rebellion in this world, even in our own hearts, in this world against God's law, at least for now. To pray that God's kingdom would come, that His will would be done, is to pray that God would make in my heart and in your heart perfect faith, perfect trust, perfect obedience. We won't reach that perfection on this side of glory, but we are praying that the kingdom of glory may be hastened. That when that day comes, we will serve God as fully and freely as the angels do now in Heaven. We'll do it in a renewed heavens and a renewed earth.

Now these first three petitions are getting at our piety, our reverence, our holiness, the fear of the Lord by which we should approach God in prayer. But this idea of reverence is so hard for Americans to understand just constitutionally. We just don't get this idea of reverence and the distinction of persons and holding someone above us, particularly because the United States was founded on democratic ideals. We are a republic, a democratic republic. The idea that all men are created equal. So it's very hard for us to think about anyone or anything being above us in any sense. We got rid of classifications of nobility and of royalty above the common class of people.

It's interesting, some of the ceremonies and things that were kept. This summer, one of the things I did was to read a biography on George Washington. And it was interesting, the balance that George Washington, our founding father, was always trying to strike between trying to get rid of the idea that the officers, the legislators or the president even would be higher than the common people. They would be by the people, of the people, for the people, as Abraham Lincoln would later say. Yet he still tried to strike this balance, and he was always thinking about how to set precedents that would set the precedent for future presidents.

So one of the interesting ways he did this was in the State of the Union addresses. Now, the Constitution doesn't require a big, elaborate speech like we see. But, George, you have to just put it in writing, he could just mail this to the Congress. But George Washington started this practice of giving the State of the Union speeches in person.

Now, if you see one today, you know, it's very interesting. The president doesn't come to the Congress as a king. He doesn't just barge in, able to just dissolve the parliament at his wish. The president comes in only at the request of the Congress. There's a separation of powers. But when he comes in, he is still announced by his titles, the president of the United States. So we recognize there's some sort of reverence for the office esteem for the office. But we also recognize that the president is not above the law, just what was established in the Magna Carta in 1215 that my nephew tried to desecrate.

All of this has to do with ideas that we've so fully internalized that it's hard for us to even think of God as above us. We want God to be our buddy. We want God to be on the same level as us. What if God were one of us? What Jesus teaches us to say is that there is absolutely no balance. We are not on his level. He is in heaven and we are on Earth. Therefore, let our words be few. When we approach him, we must approach him with reverent piety, the fear of the Lord as we commune with him.

Yet Jesus says there's a different balance. It's not the balance that God is on our level, in fact, after all. It's that God calls us to approach him as our Father. He is our Father in Heaven. That's the paradox.

Prayer is Personal

So this brings us to the third section, that prayer is personal. This is with the last set, the second section of three other petitions. So in the fourth petition, remember all of these have come after our hearts have been reoriented toward the glory of God and of His kingdom. And the fourth petition in verse 11, we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread". Now, it's not true of everyone in the world or even everyone in our country, but I'm aware that many of us have never lacked daily bread. Many of us have never missed a meal except when we chose to do so.

So sometimes as Americans who live in a nation of incredible, extraordinary affluence, especially historically speaking, we might feel somewhat disconnected from this prayer. Food has just always been there in extraordinary abundance in the grocery store, where else would it be? But this last couple of years, we've recognized perhaps some of how frail and how precarious our situation has become. We've suddenly learned there's a supply chain and that can have breakdowns which stop things from getting to the stores. We've seen wars and famines and fires and disasters that have reminded us that it just takes that much and suddenly our comfortable lives would not be so comfortable. We are always utterly dependent upon God for everything we have. For our daily bread, for every breath that we take into our lungs. Everything we are dependent upon God.

It's interesting, again, we don't have Jesus teaching us to lay out our laundry list. We're not just going to an e-commerce store online on an app or on our phones where we're selecting the things we need and putting in our credit card and hitting send and having it appear at our door the next day. When we go to God and Jesus teaching us to pray, he's more teaching us about the posture of prayer. To recognize and acknowledge before God our utter physical dependence upon Him. I need you, God. I need you or I have nothing. It's less of asking God what we want and more of coming to our Father in Heaven and asking Him to supply all of our needs.

The fifth petition is similar but of a different sphere. The fifth petition deals with our sins and, "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors". Our bodies cannot live without our daily bread, our souls cannot live without daily forgiveness. Jesus teaches us to make it a practice of praying, of asking God as a part of prayer to forgive us our sins. It's a recognition of this, every time we come to God, we have more sins. Our original corruption has popped up more than once. We have acted in ways that we should not, and we need to continue to go to God for prayer. This is a reorientation not to our physical neediness, but to our spiritual neediness. This is a declaration of what the soul means declares in Psalm 130:3, "If you Oh Lord, should, should mark our iniquities, oh, Lord, who could stand?" Forgive us our daily debts, we might say, just as we pray for our daily bread.

Now, Jesus has us acknowledged here that we should also forgive our debtors, those who sin against us. We'll return to that point in a moment because he has more to say in verses 14 through 15. But let's continue to the six petition where Jesus teaches us to pray about temptation, he says, "and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil". Now, this word for temptation is used in in the Bible, in the New Testament for all kinds of testings, trials, temptations. Sometimes, but not always, these are temptations to sin. These are the kind of temptation that tries to seduce us, to lead us into rebellion against God in some way. Now what, James 1:13 says is that God is never testing us or tempting us in that way. God is light in Him, there is no darkness at all. God is never tempting us to sin against him. God doesn't do that. God cannot do that; it would be a violation of His character. God would cease to be God if He seduced us to rebel against Him, which is impossible.

At the same time, this word also appears in context where it's clear that we're not talking about seductions into sin. We are talking rather about tests, trials. Where God does put his people in positions, where their faith is stretched and put to the test. For God to purify our faith. For God to strengthen and confirm our faith. For God to teach us that we are weak and that we need Him. If we've seen an orientation to physical neediness and spiritual neediness, this is where God is reorienting us to our spiritual weakness. Jesus is teaching us to pray that we wouldn't even be led into these kinds of tests and trials, much less to be led into the temptation of Satan. Keep us from that oh God.

We recognize that as much as Jesus uses the same word to teach Peter, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." We shouldn't be cavalier about situations that will tempt us into sin. We should avoid those. Watch for them, pray for them not to come. But we recognize that these will come. And so we are praying also that God will deliver us from these when these issues arise. Jesus is teaching us to pray, to stay away from these, but then to pray for God's strength to deliver us when they do come into our lives.

Now you may notice that after verse 13, we don't pray the typical conclusion that we pray as a church included here, we don't find in the ESV version, at least, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." If you have a King James Version or something like that, you might have it in your text of the Bible. Why isn't it included in the New Testament? Well, there are lots of different reasons for this. I would direct you to conversations with Andrew Lightner. He can tell you this in far more detail than I can.

As you deal with the different early manuscripts that we have, there's divided evidence about whether that conclusion to the Lord's Prayer was originally included in the Lord's Prayer. For example, you have some documents like, for example, the Didache, it's an early handbook for how to how to how to run a church. It's written in the late first century or the early second century, very early on. That does have not the same version that we use, but a form of a conclusion to the Lord's Prayer. If you look at other early church fathers like Tertullian, Origin, Cyprian, the last of those dying in 258 AD, so it's really early on in the life of the church, they wrote commentaries on the Lord's Prayer and none of them dealt with the conclusion to the Lord's Prayer.

So was it in Matthew's original autographs, the original versions? Well, the evidence suggests probably not. But that doesn't mean that this isn't something that we can pray. We can pray. We should pray. Why? Because that conclusion is fully and entirely biblical. In fact, probably what happened is this is drawn, among other places, from 1 Chronicles, the Old Testament, 29:11, in the prayer of Solomon, where Solomon prayed, "Thine O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and in the Earth is yours is thine. Thine is the Kingdom of Lord, and you are exalted as head above all."

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we are not uttering a magical incantation with the right words have to be said in the right order. Jesus is teaching us to pray, and He's given us a form of prayer that we should follow. But the whole Scripture should inform the way that we pray. So it's entirely appropriate that we pray that traditional conclusion. It summarizes the prayer. It fills out the biblical witness of how we should pray. Because his is the kingdom and the glory and the majesty forever and ever, amen.

Well, and verses 14 through 15, Jesus then closes with a warning. He says, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Now, Jesus is not saying here that forgiveness is easy or completely instantaneous. Someone hurts me, I must forgive them instantly, or I'm no longer forgiving of my sins. That's not what he's saying. Sometimes it takes a while to really fully forgive someone.

Jesus is also not saying that we must perform in a certain standard in order to earn God's forgiveness by forgiving others. Jesus is not saying that at all. Everything that we have is by grace, and God recognizes our sinfulness and our neediness, otherwise we wouldn't need forgiveness at all. What Jesus is doing is issuing here a warning against those who would presume upon God's kindness and God's mercy and God's grace. Those who say certainly I want to be forgiven, but I'm not willing to extend forgiveness to those who have hurt me. If you have no intention of forgiving others, Jesus is saying you cannot expect God's forgiveness. Because if you have no intention of forgiving others, you've missed the entire point of prayer. You have not prayed to God as your father. Children learn from their fathers. Children seek to imitate their fathers. As God has forgiven you, if you have no intention of praying, you are not doing that.

And also you have not prayed to God as though He were in heaven, as though He is in heaven because He is in heaven. You have not obeyed what He has instructed you to do to forgive others as he has forgiven you. You've missed the entire purpose of prayer. And Jesus says, if that's the case, if you're trifling with this, you cannot expect to be forgiven yourself.

Application

Well to apply all of this. How then should we pray? In this text, what we see is that prayer is a paradox of two things that are both true. That we pray as unworthy servants, number one of Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Then number two that we pray, and the deepest sense of intimacy and the familiarity to our Father as his beloved children. Then we need to sit in this paradox. We need to not just say these things and move on, but we need to think about how these truths genuinely seem contradictory. It seems like either we are slaves or we are sons. Either we are debtors or we are free. We cannot be both. And yet Jesus teaches us to pray from both perspectives. How then do we reconcile these things?

Well, as we've been looking at the Sermon on the Mount, the place we've continued to return to is that Jesus is constantly teaching the pure, unvarnished truth, while yet veiling his own role in all of this. Jesus is a prophet and is declaring what is true about God and God's law and the Gospel, but He consistently hides his own role in all of these things. We're left scratching our heads, how can this be? The answer is that these truths are once again reconciled for us in the person of Jesus himself. He is Almighty God, who became mediator between God and men. Now we know that he ever lives to pray for us, to intercede for us. He is the beloved son, the only begotten son of the Father. Who came into this world to become our brother. So that by brothering up to us, he might make his Father our Father. We relate to God as our Father, not first, because of a direct pipeline we have to the Father in heaven, but because Jesus has become our brother so that we pray in His name to our Father, our shared Father in heaven.

He is also the high priest and the sinless sacrifice who gave of his own life so that our debts could be forgiven. So that we begin to cleanse our hearts, to forgive those who have trespassed against us. Jesus Christ, he's the secret. He's the secret of our prayer, our piety, our spirituality. This is why we cannot pray in any other name that in Jesus Christ, because there is no other name given among heaven by which we must be saved.

If you've trusted in Jesus this morning, I want to take this text of the Lord's Prayer that we prayed even again this morning and ask you to just revel in this paradox, to just relish this paradox for a little while. You have access to the throne room of the King of Kings in the highest heaven, and you can come boldly because you are a dear, beloved child of the King. Where others are cast out, where others are refused entrance, you are brought in because Jesus died for you. You can come without fear because you have been washed and purified and made righteous by the blood of Jesus.

What indescribable privileges we have. What a staggering opportunity we have. But do we take hold of this? Do we take advantage of what we have in prayer? I can go two ways with this. I could put some guilt and shame on you. Think about everything Jesus has done for you, why can't you just pray more? But that's not what Jesus is saying here. He's not heaping more law; he is giving you gospel. The very first words of this prayer, "our Father" reflected, a fundamental change has happened in your identity, in your nature. That you have been counted, adopted, regenerated, to give a new birth as children of God Almighty so that you are the beloved children of the King. Pray then. Relish this. Turn your hearts back to the Lord in prayer.

If you don't yet know Jesus. If you don't yet know Jesus or if you are clinging to bitterness, I will not forgive. Then understand the words of Jesus, these are not my opinions or thoughts, this is what Jesus says. You don't have this access to the King of Kings. In fact, his kingdom is still a threat. But you don't have this access yet. You have no right to approach God as your father, yet you have no basis on which to think that your sins are indeed forgiven yet.

Because what Jesus declares, what we read in the Gospel of John is that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God loved you so much that He sent his only son, Jesus, into this world to be the mediator between God and men. To be crucified for our sins, to be buried, and on the third day, to rise again for our justification. Jesus has since ascended into heaven where he ever lives to make intercession for us. He is reigning at his father's right hand until the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. These promises that we can be forgiven, that we can be washed and sanctified in Jesus Christ, these promises are for all who believed. The promise is for our children after us. The promises for any who are far off.

If you've wandered in from who knows where this morning, the Bible says these promises are for any who are far off whom the Lord our God calls to himself. Will then you come to the Father through Jesus, His son? Will you repent from your sins and trust in Jesus as your righteousness? Will you pray right now? Right now. To repent from your sins and trust in Jesus for your salvation. To pray, our Father, who art in heaven. And to ask for all that he lays out and teaches us to pray.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we lift all of these things up in prayer to you, knowing that we have no hope. Knowing that we have no claim except what you, by your grace, have extended to us through your son Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. So, Father, though, we've already prayed this morning and we don't often pray at this morning to reinforce these truths, we now pray together as our savior taught us. "Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."