You may be seated. Our sermon title this morning is
How Kingdom people Pray and a Saint of old called Teresa of
Avila. She wrote this.
She said prayers, nothing else then an intimate sharing between
friends. It means taking time frequently
to be with Him who we know loves us.
Is prayer optional, as in, does it matter?
How often should we pray? If it does matter, or what
should our prayers consist of? How long should they be?
These and many other questions that people wonder about could
be asked. But even though these questions
may be real on the matter of prayer, they're not the heart of
the matter. In short, prayer is connecting
with God by being with God, talking and listening to God and
listening from Him. It happens in the context of
relationship. Prayer is a very key and
important part of the Christian's life.
Without prayer, we cannot connect with God.
Prayer has been studied, written about, taught about, preached
on, and it'll continue. True prayer and relationship
cannot be separated in relationships, in good
friendships. That's the place where people
let down the guard, the fears melt, the walls disappear,
respect goes up, trust deepens, commitment and surrender invade
the whole atmosphere. I read something this last week
about friendships that caught my eye and I copied it and I want
to share that here this morning before we dig into the passage
itself, that we want to speak on Matthew chapter 6, verse one and
on written by a man. This article is written by a man
named Frederick Beechner many years ago, and just let me share
this here. He said friends are people you
make part of your life just because you feel like it.
There are lots of other ways people get to be part of each
other's lives, like being related to each other, living
near each other, sharing some special passion or interest with
each other, and so on. But though all of that may be
involved in a friendship, those things are secondary to the
friendship if it's a real friendship, he says.
Basically, your friends, meaning true friends, are not your
friends for any particular reason.
They're your friends, not because of the job you do, the
family you have, the way you vote, the major achievements and
blunders of your life, your religious convictions or lack of
them. Those things are real, but
they're all somehow set off to one side when the two of you get
together. If you're old friends, you know
all these things about each other, and a lot more besides.
But those things are beside the point even if you talk about
them. Those things, they're beside the
point in a friendship, humanly speaking, when stripped of its
bare essentials. You are the point, and your
friend is the point. The usual distinctions of older,
younger, richer, poorer, smarter, Dumber, male, female
even cease to matter. You meet with a clean slate
every time on equal terms and anything may come of it or
nothing may come of it. Doesn't matter.
Only the meeting matters. I'm a very blessed man to be
able to every, not every, but most Friday mornings at 6:00 AM
to meet with my sons, three of our sons at Tim horton's.
We don't come with an agenda. The meeting is the point to just
shoot the breeze, just talk, just be there.
That's the point and that aligns with this.
Bickner then quotes the verse out of Exodus 33 verse 11 where
it says so the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man
speaks to his friend. The words of the Bible.
Let's let this sit. Let this sit for a second.
There was a lot of prayer going on for Moses towards God.
He was listening a lot, but it was the relationship that
mattered. The book and and Bickner goes
on. He says in Isaiah 41 verse 8, it
says this, but you Israel are my servant Jacob, whom I have
chosen, the descendants of Abraham.
My friend Beacon writes, he said this is a staggering thought.
He continues the love of God, the mercy of God, the judgement
of God. He says you take your shoes off
your feet and you stand as you stand before this as a before a
mountain or the edge of the sea, but says, but then the
friendship of God, it's he said it's not something God does.
It's something Abraham and God or Moses and God do together.
And you may disagree with this, but let me just read this and
you can argue with me later on. He says not even God can be a
friend all by himself. Apparently in other words, to be
a friend, you need someone to be a friend too.
Abraham spending time with God, they simply being together,
being themselves. He asked the question, Is it a
privilege only for patriarchs? Not as far as Jesus concerned,
at least, he continues. You're my friends, Jesus says,
if you do what I command. The command, of course, is to
love one another, as he puts it, to be his friends.
That is to say, we have to be each other's friends,
conceivably even lay down our lives for each other.
It's a high price to pay, he says, and Jesus does not pretend
otherwise. I want to just let that sit for
a second and think about this, to be in friendship and
relationship with Jesus. And that happens in the context
of prayer. There's nothing on this earth
that's higher than that, deeper than that, more powerful than
that. There's no acting, no pretense
involved. And when talking about prayer,
it's important that we also know it takes many different forms.
It comes in many different ways. The Bible has an awful lot to
say on it. There's not only one kind of
prayer, one type of prayer, one style of prayer.
It can take many forms and expressions.
In our passage today, we'll find Jesus gives instructions to his
audience on the subject of prayer.
Not because they're not praying. They were praying.
They were praying an awful lot. Those people were and given
instructions how not to pray as well as how to pray and the
instructions that Jesus gives. They were instructions giving to
God fearing Jews. These people were not pig and
unbelievers. These Jewish listeners, they
would have been well familiar with the subject of prayer.
Oh yeah, yeah, we do it five times a day, that kind of thing.
I don't know exactly how often Jews pray, but they do pray in
rituals. Our relationship with God does
not exist for the sake of prayer.
The praying we do is the envelope in which the
relationship is carried. The relationship is the point.
In other words, physically, people don't live so they can
breathe. They breathe so they can live.
Breathing serves the purpose of living.
Prayer serves the purpose of sustaining and nurturing a
relationship with God. Breathing is to the body what
prayer is to the soul. Prayer is the pathway, the
channel through which we connect with God.
We do not worship prayer. In prayer, we worship God.
We pray because we desire God. We pray because we want to speak
to God. We pray because we want to hear
Him, but most importantly, want to be with Him.
So how now do we pray? Or rather the text says, how
should we not pray? In order to pray right now,
let's read our text. Matthew chapter 6, five to 18.
Matthew 65 to 18. Last time we talked about
giving, doing good. Well, here goes to prayer.
And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they
love to pray, standing in the synagogues and on the corners of
the streets, that they may be seen by men.
Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.
But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you've shut
your door, pray to your Father who's in the secret place, and
your Father who sees in secret, will reward you openly.
And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen
do, for they think that they will be heard for their many
words. Therefore do not be like them,
For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask
Him in this manner. Therefore pray our Father in
heaven, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, your 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 do not lead us into
temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.
Amen. For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses.
Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites with a
sad countenance, for the disfigure their faces, that they
may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they
have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint
your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to
be fasting, but to your father who's in the secret place, And
your father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly.
So first here what we see is do not pray to get people's praise
or attention. So what I've just said by the
way of introduction to this, we, it's obvious, do not pray to be
seen, to be noticed or to be recognized.
Jesus forbids his people any kind of prayer with the mouth
when the mouth and the mind is not is not engaged when that's
separate. If we pray with her mouth, but
our hearts of energy says don't, don't.
Let's continue now with this passage.
Go back to chapter 5-6, verse 5. When you pray, you shall not be
like the hypocrites. They had prayer, a lot of it.
They love prayer. So I want to be careful what I
say here, but ask, do we love prayer?
Do we? So when prayer meetings come, do
we come or do we have prayer meetings on the side?
I'm not judging those who don't come to prayer meetings here
necessarily. Are we people of prayer?
So they had that going for them. They love to pray, but the
motives were wrong. They prayed to get human
attention and Jesus, that's not how you do it.
They wanted to be noticed, to be seen.
I come. I was born into the traditional
conservative Mennonite culture where praying in public would
never happen, at least not to my knowledge.
We never did it and so we took passages like this while we're
not supposed to pray for public attention, and if you do it in
public, then we can get proud and so we don't do it.
Were we perhaps in the same vein, just proud from the
reverse side? Good question.
Pride prevented us from doing what they did with pride.
So the Jews had their regular prayer times and specific
prayers that they would pray. I've, I've mentioned this in my
sermons here in this church before, that Satan doesn't care
on which side of the path you fall off the path to the right
or to the left, as long as you fall off.
For the Pharisees, they fell into legalism, perfectionism,
performance. They're praying lots of prayers.
It's a good thing to pray, but the reason why they were praying
was bad. I'm reminded in the book of
Amos, in the Old Testament, there were people who were
worshipping. God was not pleased with the
worship they were doing. They had prayer, they had
worship, and they had lots of it.
By the way, I trust the Lord is pleased with what we did this
morning. I trust now if everybody's doing
it for the right reason, I can't judge that the Lord knows.
But let me read Amos chapter 5, verse 21 and 24.
And this is tough. Amos 521 says I hate, I despise
your feast days. I do not savor your sacred
assemblies. Though you offer me burnt
offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept
them, nor will I regard your fat and peace offerings.
Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear
the melody of your string instruments.
Ouch. For God to look at a worship
service of His people and say that, that's heavy.
That says a lot about what he was thinking of their worship
service. They were not in relationship
with God. They had their programs, no
doubt well done professionally, maybe.
God, I hate it. I'm just, I despise it.
I despise your feast. Stacy says it's entirely
possible to have a large gathering, a large crowd,
professional, everything, and not have any connection with God
at all. God just says stop, stop, stop.
Get it away from me. I don't want it.
I'm not I can't, I can't stand it.
He doesn't like it. He's he's turned off.
But then he says something else. But let justice run down like
water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Let your worship of me consist of in living righteous holy
lives, like being the salt of Jesus.
Matthew 5 being the light in the community.
Make a change, make a difference.
Well, Jesus continues on verse 6 is but when you pray go into
your room when you shut your door, pray to your father's in
the secret place and your father sees in the secret will reward
you openly. Jesus was not pleased with the
style of praying the Pharisees were doing, but he does not
leave his audience blank and how to do it.
He gives his audience direction how to pray properly.
He just go into your room by yourself.
You and your father. Notice this word, Father.
I underline it in my Bible. There's numerous times he
doesn't say go on to you and pray to your God.
He doesn't say that when you pray, go on to you and pray to
your father, not to your God. It's your father.
There's a relationship there. He frames everything in this
relationship. Pray to your God in secret.
Pray to your no, he's pray to your father who's in secret.
It's, it's, it's a relationship not meant to be displayed and
paraded for show. Does this now mean that all
praying should be done as one-on-one with our Father
alone? No, that's not what Jesus is
saying. He himself prayed in public
numerous times. We have stories in Old Testament
when people prayed corporately, King David, Solomon, Moses, they
prayed publicly. There's a great need for
corporate prayer. And I will say this, as
churches, we don't do it enough. We should do more.
The new book, the New Testament, the book of Acts chapter 4 was
23 and 31 to 31, that whole story where the apostles were
arrested and charged with preaching in this man's name.
You told you to stop. You don't stop.
They beat them and then they let them go.
And what do they do? They go and have a church
gathering and they prayed, they worshipped and the earthquake
and all that stuff. Acts chapter 12 is another
story. Peter's been arrested, James
been killed, Peter's arrested, thrown in jail.
And Angel comes in the night and hits Peter on the side and says
get up, put your clothes on. And then they walks him out of
prison in the middle of the night sometime, don't know what
hour it was, but Peter finds out, oh, I'm not dreaming.
I'm actually free out of prison. And he goes to the House of Mary
and they're all together praying.
Not one-on-one and all each and one closet.
They're all together praying. There's many stories of people
praying together, Paul and Silas.
They pray publicly saying praises and worship public in
the prison Philippi and it was pretty loud, pretty noisy
because the prisoners heard them singing and it was they were
they were singing and and all of a sudden, the night God sends an
earthquake shakes the foundation chains fall off prison doors
swing open. The jailer wants to kill
himself. Paul yells, don't, don't.
We're all here. And result is the prisoner.
I mean the jailer, he's the real prisoner.
He gets saved and his household gets baptized and God is
worshipped. Praying in groups in public is
not what Jesus is condemning or against.
No, it's good. It's fine, it's good, but the
point of this is, is the relationship happening?
Is the connection with God happening?
That's the question. Then he says in verse 7, don't
use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think
they'll be heard of their many words, and there's plenty of
evidence of that too. Repetition, flowery language
doesn't impress God. I'm not saying we shouldn't use
good words, but you see, the deepest, most sincere prayers
are often the quietest, sometimes with the fewest words.
I'm not saying it's never a time to break out and joyful shout
and raising hands and loud praises.
That is, that's, that's fine, that's great.
But you see, when life falls apart and everything becomes
desperate, there are times when only words, the only words you
can say, simpler. Lord help.
And that's it. That's all you need.
Let me ask ourselves, are we committed to God as our Father
or are we committed to a God of our imagination?
Are we desiring to become more like our heavenly Father or are
we simply imagining him in our own human way and trying to
connect with a self-made image of what we would like him to be?
In the Old Testament there was a lot of idol worship.
People were bowing to statues of wooden stone.
They believed in different gods for different circumstances, God
of rain and God of harvest and all those kinds of things and
carve themselves statues to represent these gods and had
these elaborate ways of communicating with them.
Jesus talks about the Pharisees, talks about the heath and he
says stay away from it. They're praying from a self
perspective. They're focusing on themselves.
It's almost like standing in front of a mirror looking at
themselves and how good they are and it's all about them.
They love to pray for the purpose of attention and
recognition. He says in verse 8.
Therefore, do not be like them, for your Father knows the things
you've need of before you ask him.
There's nothing that we can say to God He doesn't already know.
He knows what we need, just like a parent knows what the child
needs or will need, and yet the parent wants the child to
connect, say, come and talk to me.
He knows what we need. He wants to give us what's good
for us, but He wants to do it in the context of a father's child
relationship. Then he says in verse 9, and
here's where I'll go a little bit more further, he says, and
this manner, therefore pray our Father in heaven, hallowed be
your name, your Kingdom come, your 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
eat us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.
Amen. For if you, if you forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses.
So we know how not to pray. Now here we know how to pray.
Pray in a relationship of worship, trust, dependence, and
faith in God. This prayer is known as the
Lord's Prayer. It's a prayer that Jesus taught
his disciples. And it's a good prayer, and we
should pray it. And we do pray it, but it's not
the only way to pray. It's a template, a blueprint, if
you will, on what Jesus wants us to think about when we pray to
God. One commentator I read outlines
this prayer in seven points, and I want to briefly touch on each
of them. So we come to God our Father,
and the first thing we do is we Orient, we align, we calibrate
ourselves to be in line with him.
And so we say, our Father in heaven.
We're here, He's here, we're the child, He's the Father, We're
the we don't get to to dictate. We listen, we request, we don't
say my God in heaven. We could say that, but that
would have it carry a different message.
As he is in heaven, his domain is in all places, everywhere in
the world, in the universe of all times, in all places.
We give recognition. The word father is a close word
Addressing God in that way speaks again of relationship.
Our father, my father. In another passage, we read the
word ABBA. Father means daddy.
Think about that coming to God and say hey, hey, dad, I need
hey dad, thank you. Hey dad, I praise you or I
worship you. Just something kind of off with
that. Maybe because we're not, we're
not acclimatized to it, but that's what Jesus did with this.
I know for some people, the word father evokes dark memories.
They didn't have a father or the father they had was very broken
and, and an ungodly man perhaps. And so this evokes dark
memories. I would encourage, if that's you
seek help because that's not the father of the, of the, of the,
of the, of Jesus, the father of us, the Christians.
That's not the father we're talking about.
The father that Jesus talks about.
Is this loving, all-encompassing, eternal,
glorious being God, who's our Father, who wants the best for
us, who sent His Son to die for us?
The image of a father is the closest word picture that can be
given in explaining how much God as a Father loves and cares for
His people and all creation. Next to you says hallowed.
Be your name. Don't take His name lightly.
His name is holy to be respected.
When we carry His name as His follower, we carry a powerful
message. This goes back to what we talked
about earlier in our sermon series about swearing, oaths,
and so on. How do we carry His name?
How do we value His name? Are we careful that what we do
lines up with carrying His name? Do our lives carry that
reputation to hallow God's name? We say and do as He does in
keeping with the holy standards. From there, then, we Orient
ourselves in a bit different directions.
Now we turn to our needs. Your Kingdom come.
Jesus says. We want God's Kingdom to come to
us here on earth. Now, today we know it's in
heaven. It's our desire to come here.
Many people cannot pray this with an honest heart.
They do pray this, but in their hearts the meaning is different.
What they truly want is for their Kingdom to come.
As human beings, we're notorious for building our own little
kingdoms where we're in control and things were our way and, and
often times we work extremely hard to get established and have
a home and raise a family, have a job, run a business and save
for the future. That's all good.
Where the problem comes in is when our Father is not the
center of it, when he's marginalized and excluded and
has no room in it. If we want God's Kingdom to
come, we need to first look at Him as our Father and see what
are you doing? How can I align myself with you?
Am I aligning with you? But then the next one's a bit
more, a bit harder yet He says your will be done on earth as it
is in heaven. Really, we pray your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
That's what we pray. But in their hearts it was
translated according to the intention of it.
If we had an intention translator, imagine that.
What's he saying? He's saying this, what's he,
what's he intending? He's intending that if we had an
intention translator that don't exist, I don't think, but anyway
we would say this may my will be done in heaven as it is on
earth. That will be much more like it.
Lord, will you make sure that my plan succeed.
Can you align things to what I want will happen.
That's what we mean often times in case we doubt that.
How many times do we get into a situation, a struggle.
Whatever we come up with, ideas and plans, we organize and
desperately want God to make it work and nothing.
We shouldn't plan, but then when it doesn't, then the whole life
is shattered. Where was the anchor?
In God or in the plan? Our first priority should always
be to come before God. Allow Him to speak into our
hearts and minds, and with that move forward and follow His
leading. We need to be guided by His
principles, His Word, His Spirit, and only then.
Oh yeah, According to what I understand God to do, I think we
should do this and that's fine. Then pray, but then he goes into
the more clothes. Did Our Daily Bread give us Our
Daily Bread. Notice what he's not saying.
Give me this year my yearly provision.
He's not saying that the focus is trust him as a child.
Trust the father. A child that your five year old
don't say. Hey Daddy, do you have enough
money to feed us all next year? Children don't do that.
Hey mom, I'm hungry. Hey dad, I'm hungry.
That's it. He's not condemning having
extra. He's not condemning having a
savings account. We're told to be frugal and safe
for, to be generous to others and so on to live in the moment.
We must ask when we start our day, we must ask, ask ourselves,
what's my desire today? Is my heart's desire today to
live first and foremost in relationship with God And then
from there, everything else? Or is it first?
How am I going to make it today? How am I going to get enough
food today? And I want, we need, I want.
And then God comes in last. We will see in later verses in
this chapter, we're not to worry for the next day.
We'll get there down the road in our sermon series.
We're to be diligent in our work, but not to worry.
And then Jesus goes into where it spiritually says the whole
thing is spiritual, but where it gets, it's kind of ramping up
here and says forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
The assumption here is that as God's people, we're in the
practice of forgiving those who wronged us.
We're to forgiven, set them free.
What makes this passage so powerful is that Jesus says as
we forgive, if we want to be forgiven, we have no choice,
then we want to forgive. There are other scripture
passages where Jesus teaches us that if we don't forgive, we
will not be forgiven. If we refuse to set others free
who wronged us, we cannot count on God allowing us to go free
from having provided His commands.
Folks, we cannot manipulate this.
We may pretend to, but it's not real.
Story is told of two men in a village many years ago.
I don't even know if it's a true story, but illustrates a point.
So they were in conflict with each other, couldn't get along.
We're in fighting and just constant conflict.
One guy gets sick, ends up in the hospital, is going to die.
Well, he knows he's got some some some issues to to settle
with his neighbor and he's sorry.
He wants to ask for forgiveness, calls the neighbor over, sends a
message. Can you come over to the
hospital? I'm here, I'm dying.
He comes over and says, hey, that stuff between us, I'm
sorry. I just want to know if you can
forgive me. OK.
Yeah, I'll forgive you. That's that.
But then the man in bed who's dying, he says, but just
remember, if I get out of here, this doesn't count.
That's not real. That's not true forgiveness.
That's not reconciliation. Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. Jesus says, Jesus will use my
response, how I forgive my neighbor to say that this is how
you forgive your neighbor. That's the standard you've set
for forgiveness in your life. And the final one, number seven
says, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from
the evil one. We're asking God to protect us.
We're asking God to watch over us, to guide us, lead us away
from things that would distract and lure us into sin.
If we're going to be delivered from the evil 1 and not to be
LED into temptation, then we need to intentionally stay away
from what we want Him to help us stay away from.
Reminded of a story of a young Christian dating couple.
They plan to spend some time together by themselves.
They would they pray that God would protect them.
And then they went on a stroll at night on a moonlit beach.
They're asking for trouble. We cannot expect God to step in
and stop us if we're willfully, willfully engaging in activities
that compromise our relations with God our Father, to pray for
protection and put ourselves into bad situations, tempting
situations, that's just foolish, Richard Gardner's commentary and
Matthew writes in praying the final petition, we ask God to
protect this relationship. Do not bring us into situations
that might overwhelm our faith, but rather deliver us from every
peril that awaits us. Are we doing that with our
relationship with God? Or protect me from anything that
would harm my relationship with you.
And that protection can come in very painful ways because God
will start carving out and chipping away things that
disrupt that. We do want a relationship with
God, and that relationship is dependent on our surrender and
our loyalty to Christ. And again verse 14, he says, for
if you forgive them in their trespasses, your heavenly Father
will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive them
in their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. Again, it goes to forgiveness.
I would say this gently but firmly because this is so
important. Our relationship with God is
contingent and dependent on both God and the person He's relating
to, both wanting it. If only God wants a relationship
with me, but I don't want it with him, nothing will happen
and I remain in my lost condition.
But if God wants a relationship with me, and He does and I want
it to, then the miracle of spiritual life happens.
In that context where our focus is, we'll decide how our
relationship with God will go. If we do not forgive others,
Jesus says God will not forgive us.
Now we want to be careful with this too.
This does not mean now that I have to remember every single
last bad word that somebody said to me.
I have to have forgiven for that word and for that word and for
that word. No, it's not talking about that
or I remember every single last thing I've said to somebody.
Oh, I forgot I said that. No, the repentant heart is the
question here releasing each other.
The question I must ask, am I holding another person hostage
in my heart and not setting them free?
They may have repented a long time ago.
I'm the one. I'm the one who's the prisoner.
The bottom line is for me to have a relationship with the
Father and pray to the Father, and I cannot hold people
hostage. I want to also add that
forgiving someone else does not mean we must not trust that
person. They may have heard us and
betrayed us very, very deeply. And there's a time for trust to
heal, trust to build. It's earned.
Trust is not just given freely in Matthew 6.
Here we've been learning about giving and about prayer.
Now these adds one more element to his teaching as he did and
then giving and praying. The question is not if they give
if they will pray was given the context of fasting.
He says in verse 16. Moreover, when you fast, do not
be like the hypocrites with a sad countenance, for they
disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting
assured. They say to you they have the
reward, but when but you when you fast anoint your head and
wash your face so that you do not appear to men to be fasting.
But your father was in the secret place and your father who
sees in secret will reward you openly fast for the purpose of
connecting with God. Fasting was a given in that call
from people fasted regularly. That is something I say to maybe
my own embarrassment and shame I don't do enough of.
There's something that's really fallen by the wayside with me
and I should do this at different times, but something
I'd have to grow in. And I think as a church we need
to grow in this. We find many times in the Old
Testament people fasted regularly.
The story of Esther in the Old Testament, she fasted because
there was a there's a need for people who were going to be
slaughtered. And so she went without food for
three days. The New Testament people fasted
and prayed and Jesus said the religious leaders fasted in a
way that everybody could see they were fasting.
They needed others to know, hey, we're fasting.
In the Gospel of Luke chapter 18, the story of the Pharisee
goes to the temple of pray says in verse 1818, verse 12, the
Pharisee says, I fast twice a week.
I give ties of all I possess this figured face, sad looking
face. He's fasting.
You know what, in reality, as far as Jesus was concerned, this
man was sinning twice a week because of the reason he was
fasting. He had his sinning sessions.
He thought he was doing good. He says there's nothing in it,
it's dead, means nothing. Fasting is good and should be
practiced more more in our time, but it's not an outright command
as far as I can tell, in the sense that praying is a command
over and over. Fasting was I think once or
twice commanded the Old Testament if I have my
scriptures correct, but we don't find it commanded.
But it says when you do this, how you do it was assumed in
that culture. They did it a lot.
And even if it's done right, it's a healthy thing to
concentrate our minds on God. But here is what fasting is not.
You can argue with me, argue with me, and later on this,
that's fine. I don't care.
I don't believe fasting is when we deny ourselves an addiction.
And you know what? I'm going to fast from social
media for a week. That's not fasting.
Or the drunk says, you know what, I'm going to fast from
beer for a month. Giving up the bottle is not
fasting. I don't believe quitting an
addiction is fasting. Fasting do I understand, is to
deny myself the things I legitimately need for the
purpose of a higher good. When we fast, we deny ourselves
something we legitimately need in order to make room in our
life for the good we should do and want to do.
That's fasting. A person may take in less food
for a time. You have more time to pray.
That's good. Jesus teaches this is a
relationship matter between you and Heavenly Father, not
something for the community to be aware of.
All of what Jesus has been teaching this passage in the
Gospel of Matthew chapter 6, all of it is intended to Orient,
Orient people toward God. This is all inward here, but
people do it for outward show, giving you the giving money to
the poor, praying, fasting. All of us directed toward how we
relate, to, connect with our Father and our relationship with
our Father cannot be contaminated with any kind of
self focus, either by giving or by praying or by fasting.
Daniel Henderson in the book titled Transforming Prayer
writes this. He says the world is not
transformed by relevant Christians, strategic
Christians, visionary Christians, leadership savvy
Christians, wealthy Christians, attractive Christians, educated
Christians, active Christians, or articulate Christians.
He says these are all interesting qualities and might
be helpful on occasion in building and religious
organizations, selling books, and so on.
The point is, these things are not what God is after.
They can serve a good purpose. He wants the person, the heart.
He wants a relationship. I think it's this way.
God changes the world by changing people one heart at a
time. A man by the name of Reuben
Archer Tori said this. He said an utter transformation
came into his experience when he learned not only to pray and
return thanks, but to worship. Asking nothing of God, seeking,
seeking nothing from him. In other words, just when God
was at the core of everything he says, then we're satisfied, then
we're at rest, then we're at peace.
It does come back to being in relationship with Jesus as the
foundation for all our existence.
And that's nurtured, maintained through prayer.
In the end, whether we do good deeds, giving to the poor, spend
time in prayer, spend time fasting, all of it must be done
in a context of relationship. Prayer is the link, the
connecting point, the channel, the avenue, and it can come in
many different ways. You know that LEMC, we do have
prayer time between our services.
You're welcome to join. Invited to join regularly.
Sunday after service, the first service, 10/15 or so, we meet
for prayer. I know not everybody can
something to go teach under school and that's fine.
And even in our church service, sometimes I've seen an
individual here, individual there, two people here, two
people there. They pray for each other.
That's great, that's glorious, that's awesome.
Not because of its show. They don't.
They do it silently or quietly, not to show off.
Don't be afraid of public praying.
Do it for the right motive. I want to encourage us as a
church to be people of prayer, people of worship.
I want to remind us Jesus desire desires us to be in that
relationship. Let's pray Lord, when you
created Adam and Eve and place them in the garden, it was your
desire Lord to see them enjoy your creation, take care of it
and above all to do it in a father child relationship.
We know the story and didn't last.
Today the human race has lost its compass, so much chaos.
There's a deep need of meaning, of purpose and direction.
You offer that in the person of your Son Jesus Christ.
You want to connect with us, You want us to connect with you.
So we ask you, Lord, to come help us to open up to you.
We pray that we be humble people, surrendered and
committed. Lord, I pray that as we do so,
we'll experience that rich, joyful, all-encompassing
relationship. In your name we pray.
Amen.