Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
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Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
Pray Like This
26.1.2025 | Alex Huggett on the Lord's Prayer
Part of a series on Local Houses of Prayer
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www.bentleybaptist.org
Well, it's a similar struggle knowing how to bless someone that a lot of Christians struggle with prayer. How do I pray? What do I pray about? What do I come before God with, beyond the obvious urgent prayer request? Well, jesus has an answer for that. Can we throw that Lord's Prayer up on the projector? That's what we're looking at today is the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1:We often recite the Lord's prayer at communion, and one of the earliest documents outside of the New Testament, called the Didache and it may be as old as parts of the New Testament instructs Christians to pray the Lord's prayer three times a day. But the Lord's Prayer is not only meant to be recited as it's presented in the Bible. It's actually a structure for prayer that we put flesh on, if you like, and although we're focusing on blessing in this series, and although we're focusing on blessing in this series, we don't have to choose between praying for people and blessing them. We do both. We pray for our communities and we bless them in Jesus' name. Having a bit of trouble, okay? Well, I'll be giving the lines of the Lord's Prayer. I'm sure most of you are familiar with it as we go through.
Speaker 1:And Jesus begins the Lord's Prayer with a platform for approaching God. In prayer, he begins with you know it, our Father, our Father. What it reminds us is that prayer is relational. In prayer, we come to a gracious Father who loves to bless. When we bless, we bless in the name of the Father, who wants to bring healing and wholeness to our world and friends. The deeper our intimacy with the Father, the more effective and the easier, I would say, will be our prayer and our blessing people. But as we come into a very messy and, frankly, increasingly scary world full of sin and disappointment, it's both important and comforting to remember that our Father is in heaven, and this means that he's transcended. He's above and over every circumstance, he's sovereign over all the earth, and although we don't understand why he allows everything to happen as it does, we know that he holds us securely and that one day he will set all things right. And so we don't just come to a loving father, we come to a powerful and transcendent God. As we look to God in heaven, whose name is hallowed, the next line, we can only be drawn into worship. Hallowed be your name, our Father in heaven. Hallowed be your name.
Speaker 1:Now, what does hallow mean? It's an old word that simply means to make something holy. To pray for God's name to be hallowed is really to long for his reputation to be established in the world and perhaps more significantly, for his reputation to be established in my life. Because when you go in Jesus' name, you go as his representative. When people see you, they see God. Now, I don't mean that you're divine. I mean that when an ambassador goes from one country to another, they represent that country. What that ambassador says and the way they act reflects on that country and affects their reputation Pretty heavy, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Fortunately, god gives us his Holy Spirit to help us with that. But as Christians, we carry God's name and so we can hallow his name or we can profane it in the way we speak and act. And so to pray for God's name to be hallowed is a prayer that I will live and speak in a way that honours his name and that his name will be honoured in the world and that his name will be honored in the world. So it's about aligning our lives with God's values and priorities. Think about this If we don't have a heart for the things on God's heart, how can we possibly expect him to hear our prayers? We can be very me-centred in our prayer life, and God does care, but ultimately it's about him, it's about his glory, and so we need to be aligning ourselves with him, and it's actually when we do that we find a lot of our prayers answered, just by the fact that we're getting our lives straight with him. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I'm going with the thys.
Speaker 1:It slips off the tongue easily, doesn't it? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So here's another reason we need to look up. We start by looking up to God, who is in heaven, because Jesus calls us to call heaven down to earth in prayer, and so we need to look up to see what it is we're calling down. God's kingdom come, god's will be done on earth as in heaven.
Speaker 1:You know so many people, I know I often say this. They want the kingdom without the king. They want heaven on earth, but using worldly rather than heavenly means. Now, jesus does call us to work for the kingdom to come, but it's God's kingdom. In fact, jesus often called it and particularly Matthew talks about it this way as the kingdom of heaven. Heaven is our model. We want the transcendent, what is high and lofty to come near to us. That's a big prayer, and when that's our focus for God's kingdom to be manifested in this world and his will to be done in this world, then we're inviting the Spirit of God directly into earthly places.
Speaker 1:When we do that, we become a part of the great reversal of the fall that happened at the beginning of Genesis in the Garden of Eden. In Eden, the image is of heaven and earth meeting. Eden is a kind of cosmic temple and after Adam and Eve sinned, heaven leaves. There's a separation between us and God. Heaven leaves or humanity gets kicked out of heaven. We have this tree as our logo, this sort of.
Speaker 1:I don't know why it took so long, but it was transformed for me last year as someone came and was talking about the tree of life. In the Garden of Eden there was a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and really that was a choice between human autonomy me working it out with my own wisdom and my own way or relying on God. Of course we chose autonomy and our own wisdom over dependence on God and his wisdom, but when we invite heaven back, we gain access to the tree of life once again In the story of the Bible. You know what that tree of life actually looks like. Looks like a cross, where Jesus died for our sins. Where Jesus died so heaven and earth can come back and meet once again in him. And so in this day and age well, every age really there's nothing new here.
Speaker 1:But political engagement and social programs are actually good. I'm not saying we shouldn't do them, but we've had centuries of both and we still have intractable social and political problems in our world. It says to me, working harder, working even smarter, isn't the answer. It's not going to get us better results. Seeing heaven on earth and history tells us, every time heaven touches earth, lives are transformed, whole societies are transformed, and then the social programs and the political programs really get revved up and make a difference.
Speaker 1:And so this is a prayer that God's kingdom come and his will be done on earth. What does that look like? Well, his kingdom come and his will be done in my family, my neighborhood, my community, my workplace. You can pray for your workplace, my school, as it is in heaven. We're wanting heaven to touch all these realms that we live in. And, of course, on this Australia Day, we have to say in our nation. So what does heaven on earth look like? Thank you for pulling that up. What does heaven on earth look like? What do we specifically pray or speak, blessing for Well Jesus in the second half of the prayer gets very practical.
Speaker 1:He says to pray give us today our daily bread. Now, of course, bread is a staple food in many cultures. In others it's rice or maize, and food security is one of the most fundamental of human needs. You know, some people spiritualize this verse to mean spiritual bread, the word of God and maybe, but I think you have to be living in a world, in a country with the luxury of having enough food to eat to take on a more spiritual meaning. We live in a society with the luxury of having enough food to eat to take on a more spiritual meaning. We live in a society of abundance. We're blessed. One of the things I thank God that I'm in Australia.
Speaker 1:I doubt a subsistence farmer and day labourer in Jesus' day took these words spiritually. I'm sure they were very practical. I've met people who have nothing, who pray this God, give us our daily bread Today. We need it. And thinking practically, do we really think the kingdom of God is a kingdom in which children, in which people go hungry, is a kingdom in which children, in which people go hungry. God cares about our practical needs and in this country, with the cost of living crisis, as in many countries, praying for daily bread and a roof over our head, it means something. It's important. So what are the practical needs of maybe yourself, but also the people around us? Those are the things we can seek God's blessing on and we can pray for, and I think in our society we can legitimately include well, food, as in Jesus said, but housing we're in a housing crisis Work, food, transport. We live in a city that's, as they say, built for cars, not for people. We can include these things in our prayers for people and bless people with these things.
Speaker 1:Then Jesus goes on and says forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We pray for people's relationships and there's an interesting interplay here. Jesus puts our vertical relationship with him. Forgive us, god, with our horizontal as we forgive others. They're tied together. You cannot live with bitterness and holding on to unforgiveness against someone else and expect to be living in open relationship with God. But Jesus begins with the vertical, with our relationship with God, which makes sense because you can have the perfect life.
Speaker 1:But if you're not right with God, it's all smoke. Without God, you may have heaven in this life, but it will be hell in the next. Conversely, life may be hell now, but if we have God even now, heaven starts to break in and in the next life. That's all we have to look forward to. That's everything to look forward to. That's everything. And so the prayer asking for forgiveness is God forgive me. It's a prayer of hope that things can be and will be right with God. Doesn't our world need hope now?
Speaker 1:But what are the debts that we owe God? Well, obviously, we owe a debt of sin, one we can never repay. Christ has repaid that sin of debt if we put our trust in him. But there's more that we owe God. What do we owe God? Well, you're here today because you believe. You perhaps owe him, or just want to give him a debt of worship. We owe him our gratitude for giving us life. We owe him or just want to give him a debt of worship? We owe him our gratitude for giving us life. We owe him our obedience. We owe him our love and our loyalty. You know.
Speaker 1:The prayer of forgiveness reminds us of our complete inability to live up to any of these. These are debts we can't repay, repay. But God is a God who is gracious and merciful towards us in our weakness and in Jesus, and when we enter into Jesus through faith, jesus has made up the fullness of all of this and we have the fullness of it all in him, and so we need forgiveness, and so does our world. And when we ask God to forgive the sins of those around us as well, then we're actually entering into a priestly role. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you remember we talked about us being priests, a kingdom of priests, and intercession is one of our priestly roles asking God have mercy on our community, have mercy on our nation.
Speaker 1:In fact, the Bible makes it clear that not only are our hearts stained by sin, but so is the land we walk on, and so this intercession isn't only for hearts, but for creation. Romans says that creation longs for the children of God. So this intercession isn't only for hearts, but for creation. Romans says that creation longs for the children of God to be revealed. So let's plead for the people and the world around us that they may be forgiven and reconciled to God. But it's not just peace with God that we need, it's also peace with one another and in fact Jesus indicates, as I said, that receiving forgiveness from God is dependent on our forgiving others, whether it's the family mired in conflict or domestic abuse, or the domestic husband, usually a partner with a conflicted heart, warring neighbours or warring nations. All need peace and the path to peace begins with forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to reconciliation. Reconciliation leads to peace. Peace leads to restoration of relationships. I guess that's what reconciliation is. Anyway, it's all intertwined there.
Speaker 1:You know one of the things I bless the community I've got this little sort of enclave in Ellenbrook, where I live, that's sort of cut off by a major arterial road on one side well, two and a road and bushland on the other and then a railway line. So we sort of feel like our own little space and there's all these new houses popping up there. It's a complete mess because it's a building site. But one of the things I go around and I'm blessing my neighborhood and I bless it and I pray for good relationships between the neighbors. It's this beautiful big park that sort of sits in the middle of all these high-density townhouses that have been built around it and it's really picturesque. I don't know what it's like to live in them because they're pretty small, but it's a picturesque place and I pray that that park will be filled with people playing and talking and community gathering together.
Speaker 1:God bless my community with good relationships, with good neighbourly relationships. Bless the homes with peace, bless the marriages in the homes and so on. And what is the kingdom of God if not restored relationships between God and people and people and people. So pray for heaven to invade people's hearts and relationships and invoke that blessing of peace On your street. You can just walk up and down it and around the neighbourhood, blessing it in Jesus' name with peace. And finally, jesus says to pray do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. This reminds us that we're in a spiritual battle.
Speaker 1:Real spiritual powers of evil are arrayed against us Now. God is king of the universe but he kind of made humanity as prime ministers at creation. It says to have dominion over the earth, to rule over it. But when we fell we kind of handed those keys over to Satan. And you know what? We keep doing it every time we say no to God. What does evil look like? Well, sometimes it looks like something human or political. It can be people acting up, it can be politics acting up, it can be structures that we just can't break out of, and it is expressed through relational, political or social oppression and turmoil. So very often it looks and it is structural and human and political. But standing behind that and manipulating things behind the scenes are real spiritual forces of evil. Satan or the devil and his demons are real and they're out to destroy God's good creation, both humans and the physical world that God has made for us to live in.
Speaker 1:Friends, there is a spiritual battle going on in your street. There is a spiritual battle over our city, over our nation, between the nations of our world. There's even a spiritual battle going on for our environment and, whether human, spiritual or both, we need someone stronger than this world to rescue us and keep us safe and praise God. There is victory in Jesus. When you pray for God's kingdom to come, when you invoke a blessing on your street or in your workplace, you're actually part of pushing back the darkness. When we ask God to deliver us from evil, we're inviting him into our world to take back dominion, not just in theory, like you know, like we have a king over Australia, he's pretty impotent. He's just a figurehead. When we're asking God to resist evil, to not lead us into evil but to deliver us from evil, we're inviting him in to take charge, to actively and manifestly move in his power, drive back evil and establish righteousness.
Speaker 1:So pray to God to deliver your family, your neighbours, your street, your workplace. Does your workplace have bad relations, perhaps a manager who's not really getting it or workmates who gossip? Ask God to drive back the evil in that place, to bless them with. Don't just pray that God will smite them. Don't pray that. Pray that God will bless them with what it is that's needed for good, healthy relationships and wisdom in management all that sort of stuff. It's called coming in the opposite spirit. It's why Jesus said bless that sort of stuff. It's called coming in the opposite spirit. It's why Jesus said bless those who curse you. Pray for your community, pray for our nation, that God will deliver us from evil and may his kingdom come.
Speaker 1:I was going to wrap this up with a video, but we're having trouble and it's probably in the wrong place. We can't get that video, but we're having trouble and it's probably in the wrong place. We can't get that video, can we? So why don't we pray that prayer together? To wrap this up, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Amen. Thank you, team.