Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. For those of you who are here,
thanks for joining this session. For those listening online, as
always, thank you so much and look forward to seeing you soon.
If you couldn't be here tonight. And so we're in the middle of a
series and it's it's almost over, but we're in the middle of
a series called Abiding in Prayer with Dependence and
Anticipation. There are also some parallel
podcasts that are going on that will be popping up.
And we are going to actually record a podcast about podcasts
to help everybody know how to pod their casts or cast their
pods here very soon. So if you're lost in all that,
welcome to the 21st century. So tonight we've talked a little
bit in the past about why do we pray and what is prayer?
Tonight we're going to talk more about how should we pray?
And, and rather than go through some of the generalized
conversations that frankly we've had before and some of our
conversations about the seven essentials of discipleship,
which were important and foundational, I really wanted to
focus in on a singular passage and a singular sample prayer
that you know very well, but maybe you've never discussed it
like we might tonight. So amazingly, the Bible only
records 1 inch instance when the disciples actually asked Jesus
to pray. And it's it's found in Luke
Chapter 11, verse one. Now Jesus was praying in a
certain place and when he finished, one of his disciples
said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his
disciples. Now it's interesting because a
lot of we're going to talk about obviously what he teaches, what
Jesus teaches. It's interesting to me how we
very rarely will go back and try to figure out what John taught I
and we don't have a lot of that recorded.
Obviously we glean, we glean a lot about John from his
followers who frankly later became followers of Jesus.
But it's interesting that there's an example that they're
seeing from, from John and it doesn't say which disciple asked
this question. The some of the disciples
followed John before they follow Jesus.
So, so there might have been that connection there.
And then what followed is part of what he taught them.
So I'm going to read the Luke passage, the Lukan passage, and
then we're going to go to Matthew chapter 6.
So Matthew chapter 6, if you have a Bible is where you want
to, where you want to land. But let me read the Lucan
version of this because it's just a it's a it's a part of the
teaching. It says, and he said to them,
when you pray, say, Father hallowed be thy be your name.
It's hard to not do thy in it your Kingdom.
Come give us each day Our Daily Bread and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us
and lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, Which of
you has a friend who has a friend will go to him at
midnight and say to him, Friend, lend ME3 loaves.
For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing
to sit before him, and he will answer from within.
Do not bother me. The doors now shut, my children
are with me in bed. I I cannot get up and give you
anything. And I tell you, though he will
not get up and give him anything, because he is his
friend, yet because of his impotence he will rise and give
him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will
be given to you, seek, and you will find knock, and it will be
open to you, for everyone who asks receives, and the one who
seeks fines and to the one who knocks, it will be open.
What Father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will
instead of a fish give him a serpent?
Or if he asks for an egg, give him a scorpion?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to those who ask him? So he's taught this section on
prayer and Luke to his disciples, but there's a more
complete lesson that's recorded in Matthew chapter 6.
The context of this lesson is actually the Sermon on the
Mount. And so he he's teaching them
again and trying to re emphasize things or emphasize for the
first time. And Luke is the is the
supplement perhaps, but but Jesus is teaching in the Sermon
on the Mount about life in the Kingdom.
That's the whole point of the sermon.
What does it mean to understand the Kingdom of God?
Here's what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God.
So be this way. Don't be that way, be this way.
And he's teaching them about life.
And he addresses in this Section 3 major parts of what to the
Jewish hearer would have been a very common thing to think
about. For us, not so much, but for the
Jewish believer, these three things he talks about were a
part of their Judaism. It would be a part of their
normal practice, a part of their normal religious ritual.
And even though we relate to some of these things, he talks
about giving, he talks about prayer and he talks about
fasting, which to them had very not only symbolic but but
significant factors as part of their, their practice of
Judaism. But what Jesus is going to do is
he's not going to talk about the ritual.
He's going to talk about our motives.
He's talking about why do you do this?
What's in your heart? And so do we, do we do these
things? And in other words, do we give
for our own glory and recognition?
Do we want others to see how religious we are so that we can
receive praise? Is that why I give alms to the
poor if I'm a Jewish person? And so then he goes and moves
from that. Then then there's also, is this
why you pray? Is this how you pray?
Is this? Is this what you act like?
So he's going to give us some guidelines and principles.
And often we think of this just as a model prayer, but it's more
than that. It's actually, it's actually
guidelines. It's principles for the way we
ought to live and the way we ought to prayer because the
heart of the matter in the Kingdom is the heart of the
matter. What's in your heart?
Why are you doing what you're doing?
Why do you come to church? Why would you go to a connect
group? Why would you serve?
Why would you do these things? And so he includes how and why
in this process we should actually pray.
So this is often called what? What is this prayer often called
the Lord's Prayer. But every single commentator you
would ever read would all, probably all say it should
actually be called the disciples prayer, because that's really
who this is too. This is a, a lesson to the
disciples of how to pray. And, and next session, by the
way, and, and I hope you'll be back for this, this will be a
very, maybe even emotional session.
I'm not sure how you'll take it. But the next session, I'm going
to be discussing intimate moments of prayer by Jesus,
talking about going to the Garden of Gethsemane, talking
about going to the mountaintops, talking about John 17 and his
high priestly prayer before he's getting ready for the cross.
And so we're actually going to look at these intimate moments
of prayer by Jesus. And, and those are what I would
truly call the Lord's prayers. And so this, this is probably
more the disciples prayer, not not fight the title.
Nothing wrong with calling it that.
But in other words, that's probably who it's more directed
to. So I'm going to break this down
in pieces and I'm going to break it down in pieces out of order
because I want to group these verses in a way that we can
learn from them and I can teach from them because some of these
things go together and they're not necessarily in numerical
order in those ways. So I'm going to, I'm going to
break this down a little bit and talk through this.
In fact, if you, if you were to look at Matthew 6 and beginning
in verse 5, it says and when you pray, then if you go to verse 6,
but when you pray verse 7 and when you pray verse 9, pray then
like this. So, so there's an assumption
here. Now remember He's speaking
primarily even in the Sermon on the Mount, He's speaking in this
part primarily to his disciples and they were Jewish in their
background. So Jesus is assuming prayer
would be a fairly normal part of their life.
So in other words, he's not making the argument so much here
that you need to pray. That's not the context here.
The context here is you don't pray at all and you need to pray
now he the context here is you may not pray the right way.
You need to pray with the right motive, but there's an
assumption of when you pray, not if you pray here.
All right, so let's go into this.
We're going to go verse by verse and I again, again, I'm going to
group these and put them a little out of order.
I hope that confuses you greatly and you don't have any idea what
I'm trying to do. If if that's the case, then it's
been a fitting day because from the beginning of the day till
now, it would all that would all be in order and make sense with
the rest of my day. I think.
So that would be great. And I I'll just pretend like I'm
Amazon AI and lead you here or who knows where.
Nowhere, frankly, nowhere. All right, verse 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.
So part of what Jesus obviously is trying to get across is
don't. Don't pretend like you're
something you're not in prayer. I mean, it's absurd to do that.
It's absurd because God already knows, God already knows who you
are. And so when you act like you're
something else or you're using language you don't normally use,
or you're trying to sound pious or you're trying to get
attention, he knows that you're false spirituality doesn't
impress him at all. I feel like I've been
encountering some false spirituality with some people
here here lately. And it's, it's interesting to me
because it doesn't impress me much either.
And so these prayers don't make it to him.
If you talk about a prayer not getting past the ceiling, here's
a prayer that's not going to get past the ceiling, it's not going
to reach him because he knows he knows better.
This isn't who you are. This isn't, you know, and your
motive for praying is something else.
All this is going to produce is these are the praise or the
condemnation of man because that's what they're trying to
get in the 1st place. This is a show, this is an act,
this is her performance. So you've got sincerity versus
the show here. And so one of the questions is,
is do you pray differently in public than you do in private?
And why you know? And so these hypocrites
obviously are, are seeking the attention of of man, right?
Go to verse 7. And 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.
Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you
need before you ask him. So senseless repetition, these
incantations almost do not equal biblical prayer or power.
And you got to remember that in this context, when he talks
about these Gentiles, most of these Gentiles would have come
out of a Pagan background and part of their Pagan ritual, part
of their Pagan worship, part of their prayers in the Pagan life
would be basically casting spells, reciting incantations,
chanting things over and over again in gibberish or silly
language. It it's a form of magic to where
they're trying to manipulate the forces.
If I say it enough, I'll get what I want.
So don't pray like a Pagan. Don't, don't, don't speak
nonsense or don't just utter gibberish over and over and over
again. God's not impressed, nor can he
be manipulated by silly repetition.
So our hypocrisy, our desire for for praise for man and or just
our senseless repetition reminds us our Jesus reminds US neither
one of those is the way we ought to pray.
Doctor Chuck Quarles, a good friend who actually recorded a
podcast with us not long ago, expert in Bible translation, he
wrote, he wrote this about this passage.
He says although Jesus was devoted to prayer, his prayers
were not memorized recitations given at the whim of the clock.
His prayers were intensely personal, often spontaneous and
an expression of his deep communion with his father.
And we're going to hit that a little bit more in a moment.
So God already knows, but He still wants us to come to Him
sincerely. Even though He knows what's in
our heart, even though He knows what we want, He still wants us
to come to Him. Never forget that prayer is as
much for us or more for us than it is for Him.
He wants us to come. He wants us dependent.
He wants us believing, but He's also listening.
Isaiah 6524, this great verse. If you don't know this verse, it
says before they call, I will answer while they are yet
speaking, I will hear so. So the words that we're uttering
are not as important as what's in our heart and our intention,
our motivation for praying in the 1st place, our desperation,
our sincerity, our urgency for what we're praying for.
Well, look at verse 6. We're not even do the prayer
yet, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door.
And by the way, the room or prayer closet idea would mean an
inner Chamber of some kind. Go into your room and shut the
door and pray to your Father who's in secret and your Father
who sees in secret will reward you.
So this is obviously not a condemnation of public prayer
because there are many passages in the Bible that talk about
public pray, praying together and praying out loud.
You go to the you start talking about the early church and how
they did that together. But that's not the condemnation.
The condemnation is of a public show seeking that human, seeking
the approval of that human audience.
So what are you trying to do? It's better to find that private
place where there's no need for a show and where you seek the
approval not of that human audience, but of that heavenly
1. And, and and that's true of a
lot more than just prayer, but this context is about prayer.
And there was a time that you would well know in our culture
and our history that coming to church was like that, that
people, people went to church to be seen in the community.
They were, if you didn't go to church and you were a
businessman, or if you didn't go to church and you were a leading
lady of the community, or if you didn't go to church and you were
a politician, then you would be looked down upon.
And so the church was as much as social experience or even a
political experience as it was a spiritual one.
There was a time that you may or may not know that that, you
know, we used to have Pew boxes. You can still find churches that
have Pew boxes. Some of the oldest churches in
America, New England, etcetera, still have Pew boxes.
The Chapel that Southern Seminary has Pew boxes.
And families would actually rent the Pew boxes, pay for them, and
it was their responsibility to make sure their Pew box was full
every week. And so they would pay people to
be Pew box fillers. And so Dwight L Moody, one of
the greatest evangelist of human history, his first job in the
church was a Pew box filler for a wealthy family so that it
looked like somebody was in the Pew box every week.
Because if your Pew box was empty, that looked bad.
You know, you didn't have to be there, but your Pew box had to
be full. So I'm thinking about renting
seats. But you are doing so well in
stewardship right now. No joke.
Thank you. I'm going to talk about it again
Sunday that I've decided not to implement that strategy yet.
So let's get into the prayer itself.
Verse 9. So don't pray like this, don't
pray like that. Don't pray like that, but pray
then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed
be your name. Now there's an implied you here,
though it wouldn't appear in the original language.
The way Greek works is it'll often give what we would call an
imperative or a command verb. And you don't actually have to
have the pronoun there because the way that verb is actually
written, the way it's actually spelled implies the you.
So you pray this way, you do this and and it's very much
there here. This is something we must do.
You pray this way. And so this was him talking at
least to his disciples, if not the crowd.
So, so we begin, if you think about this, we begin our prayer.
If we're going to pray the the model prayer, if we're going to
pray the disciples prayer, we're very aware of the fact that
we're starting not seeking our own attention.
This isn't about manipulation. This isn't about me at all.
This is this is me acknowledging
to whom I'm speaking. And in the original language,
this is ABBA. This is ABBA, father.
The word for father is ABBA or ABBA if you listen to the group.
But ABBA and and and notice it's our ABBA.
Don't miss the plural. You need to understand there are
no singular pronouns in this entire prayer.
They're all plural. So this is how we're supposed to
pray. This is part of a larger family
idea. We're in this together.
We share a bond with God. We share an opportunity with God
in prayer. So we're supposed to be in this
together. This is our loving daddy, which
is what that intimate term, ABBA can mean, but it's also a legal
term that often doesn't get discussed.
People like to talk about the daddy part and it's true that
intimate family relationship with your daddy when your daddy
is a good daddy, but it's also an official legal term.
This is also the kind of language that would be used on a
will or for inheritance. So there's a family connection
here. In other words.
In other words, we're, we were, we're part of the official,
we're designated as an official family member.
And he's and, and it's his family now that's pretty
special, especially for these Jewish hearers who would not
have thought of Yahweh that way in the same way.
And so we're part of a, a larger family.
So this is both intimate, but it's also formally relational
because this is also the sovereign Lord of the universe.
That's who you're talking to. And, and, and we, we can never
underestimate the the privilege of speaking to him or who he is.
He is hallowed. He is holy and that word means
to sanctify. It means to make holy.
He's something different. He's set apart, He's unique.
He's not like us. So we're talking to someone not
like us. And sometimes I get a little
worried. Sometimes contemporary music
does this. Sometimes contemporary preachers
do this to where we're we're, we're so much into the ABBA
part. He's just like our buddy.
God's like our buddy. He's like my best friend and I
and I and I, I don't want to dismiss that relationship.
I, I want you to love him and I want you to feel comfortable
with God and I want you to consider him your friend.
But at the same time, this is the Lord of the universe and we
need to always recognize that. I don't deserve to have this
relationship to you. I don't deserve to be a part of
the family. I don't deserve to be able to
talk to you. I just certainly don't deserve
you to listen. Who am I to talk to you?
And in fact, I like the the Christian Standard Version
Bible, the CSB, which is extremely literal.
It says this, Our Father in heaven, your name be honoured as
holy. So we begin by letting God know
how much we value him. Just how much do you value God?
As John Piper writes, you're the supreme and absolute treasure in
all the universe and over all the universe.
So we need to tell him how much we Revere him, how much we
admire him, how much we treasure him, how high we hold him in
esteem. We, we, we can't do this
flippantly. This isn't just about my list of
things I want. I wish we could get that across.
Prayer is indeed an act of worship.
It's an act of recognition, it's an act of submission.
It's an act of dependency. And so in the beginning of this
prayer, it's going to be all about him, not about us, which
is the in opposition to the hypocritical conversation that
he was having before or the Gentile one.
This is not, this is not about the show of the, the, the
religiously pious person in his dress standing on the corner so
that everybody can be so impressed with him.
This is not about the magician who's trying to manipulate the
forces by giving the right incantation.
It's not about us, but it will be about us in a minute.
And that's called grace. Verse 10.
Then your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is
in heaven. This, this just naturally flows
from the last verse. If we, if I'm going to
acknowledge who you are, then I'm also going to acknowledge
what you want and what you're about.
And so there's a healthy balance here between the eternal and the
earthly. I want God's rule.
I want God's reign in my life and I want it right now.
I want his will to control me. I want his will to control,
frankly, this planet. I want, I want his will to
control everything. I want his Kingdom to spread
around the world. With the Gospel.
I also look forward. There's an eschatological idea
here too, to where I look forward to the time at the end
of time, when there is no more time, when that part of the
creation is gone. Because that's all time is.
It's just part of the creation. And when time ends, when he's
honored by those from every tribe, tongue and nation, and
every knee bows and every tongue confesses who he is, I look
forward to that too. But I want now notice whose
Kingdom this is. Whose Kingdom is it?
It's his Kingdom, not my Kingdom, not my will.
I'm not praying that my will be done.
Careful. Because sometimes in prayer,
that's what we're trying to. We're trying to will God into
agreeing with us and to granting us what we will to be done.
Be careful. I want His will to be done now.
If what I want matches with His word, like we've talked in
previous sessions, and his and his word and his will are always
going to match, then I then I then I'm within the framework of
of Orthodoxy. Fine to pray that way.
But I want my life to begin to look like it should look in the
new creation. I want my life now to look like
what it should look like. An eternity when things are
perfect again. So I want his victory to reign
over the flimsy kingdoms of this world and the influence of a
cursed and defeated enemy. As Tony Marita writes in a very
good commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, in the battle for the
souls of men and women, I ask you, Father, to deploy your
troops among the nations, that your will, your reign, that,
that, that bringing my will into line, that says that's what that
means. If I, if I dare pray your will
be done, that means mine can't. I can't.
We can't have both of them unless mine aligns with yours.
So you've got to change my will. You've got to help me believe.
You got to help me see what it is that you want me to see.
So my Bible study, my prayer, these different essentials of
discipleship all have to connect.
They all go together so that I can be who you want me to be.
Not it's no longer mine, it's thine, right?
So again, we're going to visit in the next session.
We're going to go to those moments, those intimate moments
in the life of Jesus Christ, especially in the gardener or
even in the in that John passage as he's heading toward that,
where he's praying for his disciples, he's praying for his
followers. And then then he's in the
garden, in the Garden of Gethsemane where he demonstrates
this very principle. Lord, if this cup can pass from
me, I pray it can. But not my will, but your will,
asking for His sovereign will and putting to get to death our
own will. It's a bold act of faith.
These are words of surrender. These are words of submission.
So hopefully prayer prepares us for His will.
Prayer is the pathway to His will.
Prayer is the a pathway to understanding the purpose of God
in my life. If you want to know what does
God want from me, you need to ask Him.
You need to ask Him. And if you don't hear right
away, ask Him again and then ask Him again and keep asking Him
because it's fascinating. You know, in Romans 12, it'll
talk about submitting our our bodies as living sacrifices.
But then later on, it'll say that for this is a spiritual
worship that we can actually know that we can actually prove
what the will of God is. God's not trying to hide his
will from you. He wants you to know his will.
He wants you to know his word. Now, there might be moments
where you can't handle everything he's got for you
right now. So he may make you wait.
We're great at waiting, aren't we very patient people.
So prayer should prepare us for his answers, his direction.
It's it's not simply the the approval that we seek of of our
own desire. So please reverse that in your
prayer life. God, this is about you.
It's all about you. But then because of who he is,
amazingly verse 11 comes along. Amazingly, verse 11 comes along.
Give us this day every single thing we ever wanted, right?
Everything that I can name and claim, give me an A storehouse
of everything I could ever want. Jesus says now here's the way to
pray. Give us this day or what now it
should it would for them and you really need to make the
connection for the disciples. This would have been a very
significant Old Testament bridge.
When did God provide them daily bread manna in the wilderness.
Don't miss that they would have got that would have been right
there with them. They would that would have been
right there. So just like manna, that's only
good for the day. It's an, it's what I need, not
what I, not what I want necessarily, but I want daily
bread. I mean, I, you know, I want
daily bread. Don't you want daily bread?
I want daily bread. I need daily bread.
I need daily provision. So, so the, the prayer actually
shifts its focus from him to us, sort of.
I mean, it's a very gracious thing.
What a gracious God. The prayer could have stopped at
verse 10. It could have stopped at verse
10 and just been about him and he's within his rights to where
all we're doing is praising him and thinking of him.
But but here we see this provision, this need and a
literal sense for for food each day.
This is a part of the lives of many people around the world
today. I've I've told this story to you
before in some form someplace. I don't know, but Teresa gave me
a little plastic chicken for my office one time and I have a
photograph on my phone right now.
I could show you to where my favorite love offering ever and
preaching in any church I've ever preached in was in a little
red mud dirt tree branch structure with a tin roof and
sun dried bricks in the refugee camps of the South Sudanese.
And at the end of the service, these people who couldn't scrape
2 pennies together to get a scent brought me a chicken, a
live chicken. That was my honorarium.
Some of you know this they, the ladies came dancing.
I, I was standing there with the, the leader who was a dear
friend of mine, Bishop demon, just a dear friend man, a
warrior. You talk about a warrior.
This guy weaves in and out of the world's largest refugee
camps on a little motorbike, starting churches, leading
people to Jesus running, running an entire denomination.
He's the president of the South Sudanese Baptist Convention.
They're sending missionaries that have been for years to some
of the hardest places of North Africa, Muslim, Muslim, Muslim,
radical Muslim, violent Muslim territory.
And we're standing there together and the women start
dancing and, and, and shouting and singing and, and they bring
us both a chicken. I've shared this with some of
you. Sorry, I, I haven't shared this
where it could be recorded. So, so, so I've got this photo
and I get this chicken tucked in my arm like a football.
Nice sermon, pastor. You know, that's, I'm in the
line there and I've shared this too.
We ate that chicken the next day for lunch and that was the
toughest chicken. I don't know what that poor
chicken been through, but I mean, it was like eating chicken
jerky. I mean, it was, I mean, I'm
telling you, you were you're over here on the side, you know,
and just kind of tear it, ripping it off of a piece there.
But I tell you, when I saw that chicken and I saw that plate, I
thought to myself, I could, I mean, I could barely eat it
because of what it meant. That was somebody's chicken that
they had donated to the somebody's tithe and offering to
the church. And for them that meant that
they didn't get to eat that chicken.
And Old Fat Boy from America got it.
So give us Our Daily Bread, our, our daily needs are part of his
willful agenda. You're going to let that
sentence rest a minute. Our daily needs are part of his
willful agenda. This is his will that we do
this. He wants us to come to him with
our, our, our real needs. And so we need to recognize that
and, and, but this is also still about him because it's a
recognition of our absolute dependency upon him to provide
the daily need. I can't do this without you,
God, If you do not provide what I need for today, I can't
survive without you, whether that's physical, emotional,
relational, psychological, If you don't provide for me today
what I need you to provide for me, I will not survive this
fallen creation. It's too hard.
The enemy is too strong. I'm too weak.
I need the daily provision to make it through, and I recognize
that the only place I can get it is from the Lord who has, who is
hallowed, the God, the sovereign ABBA of the universe, who like a
good Father, doesn't want to give me a scorpion.
He doesn't want to give me a snake.
He wants to give me what I need in order to see His Kingdom
come, in order to fulfill His will, in order to understand who
He is, in order to draw closer to Him and to one another, and
to serve Him and to do what He wants me to do.
I need that. That's what I need.
I'm going to want a bunch of junk.
Let me tell you something. When we moved over here, oh,
myself, some of you men, thank you.
God bless you men for putting up with it.
I mean, first of all, we when we finally moved, it was 110° in
the shade last summer when we finally moved everything and I
had stuff in about four different places and we moved
from a house that had this third floor walk up attic and it was
stuffed to the gills. After 18 years in that house, I
found a box with my grade School Report cards in it.
And so Mr. Dumpster and and enjoy ministries benefited a lot
from the move truckload after truckload of junk and we still
have too much still too much. So there has to be this
recognition of dependency. So and and and don't and don't
believe you can avoid don't don't think you can get away
with it. You need what the bread of life.
Think about the irony of this. Here's the bread of life himself
talking about God providing the bread.
And so we have to have faith that God will provide it.
And He might put us into a difficult situation every now
and then, or we might find ourselves and put ourselves in a
difficult situation every now and then where we take our focus
off of this. And we need to enhance our
recognition of Him. Listen to Matthew 619.
He says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and
steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break
in and steal. For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body.
So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of
light. But if your eye is bad, your
whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the
darkness? No one can serve 2 masters, for
either who hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted
to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God in money. Therefore, I tell you, do not be
anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will
drink, nor about your body what you will put on.
Is not life more than food, and body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor
gather into barns. And if your heavenly Father
feeds them, are you not of more value than they?
And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour
to a span of life? And why are you anxious about
clothing? Consider the lilies of the
field. How they grow.
They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon and
all his glory was not a raid like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is
alive, and tomorrow's thrown into the oven, will He not much
more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or
what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?
For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly
Father knows that you need them all.
It's not that they don't matter, it's just He knows, and He's
going to help us. But seek first the Kingdom of
God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added
to you. Therefore do not be anxious
about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
And I say Amen to that last part often.
Well, look at verse 12. We're going to Group 3 verses
together now, and we're going to talk about a subject matter.
It's going to take a minute or two.
So I've been trying to get to this point and forgive us our
debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Now look at verse 14. For if you forgive others their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
Verse 15. But if you do not forgive others
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. So there's this daily provision
of what we need, our earthly needs, but there's also this
daily provision that we need of forgiveness.
So here's another thing we need to ask God for.
Here's something He needs to help us with.
The word dead here, you know, obviously means sin.
It's actually the only time it appears in the Bible other than
Romans 44, where it's actually talking about a wage and debt
money. So it's not a common word at
all. But our sin places us in debt.
That's the idea. And we're going to study a whole
lot more about this. I'm going to talk about this
Sunday morning. I'm going to give you an
overview of wherever we've been. I've been here a year now,
believe it or not. And so kind of what happened in
a year, what's going to happen in the next year.
I'm going to give you an overview for a few minutes at
the beginning of the sermon Sunday morning as we continue
Nehemiah. But but, but one of the things
we're going to do next after Easter's, we're hitting Romans,
as I've shared with you, and we're going to study a lot more
about this and our study of Romans.
But God justifies us. He does that to the sacrifice of
Jesus and then we're cleansed from our our past sin.
It's because the sin debt had to be paid.
And so because because of the way he pays our sin debt, we get
to be forgiven because that sin debt was insurmountable for us
to pay. We couldn't, could never pay it.
We could never get there. And, and I always want to
emphasize that I'm going to do this again Sunday in a different
way. But if you're here right now or
listening to this right now and you think, man, I'm too far, God
couldn't care about me. I'm too dirty, I'm too bad, I'm
too sinful. I'm too, you need to stop.
There's no insurmountable amount of sin that grace can't
overcome. It's amazing.
So, so just like he provides Our Daily Bread, he's also going to
help us on our on a day by day basis to be forgiven and cleanse
to wash away our sin. See, he he paid that debt and
justification and sanctification is that day-to-day experience of
well, I screwed up, I need to be forgiven again.
I messed up, I need to be forgiven again and he's going to
continue to help us to grow. And continue to wash away our
sin. So we need to be grateful for
his grace. But what Jesus also says, and he
says it in more than one place, the Bible says this in more than
one place, because you've been forgiven.
You've got to learn to forgive other people.
And this is hard. Sometimes it's hard.
It's hard to forgive. And I'm not saying forgive and
forget, by the way, don't, don't add that on there.
I didn't say that you can't forget.
Your memories are biochemically etched into your brain.
You're going to remember. We'll talk more about that in a
minute. But how can I forgive?
How can I move on in grace to where I'm not carrying the load
and I'm not trying to dump the load on somebody else in
judgement or hang on to the sin of others and at the same time
ignore my own? It's kind of like a log in your
eye and the speck in another, right?
So when you be grateful and willing to extend that grace to
others, if we refuse, then we're going to have issues.
But Thomas Watson once said, he says we're not bound to trust in
me, but we are bound to forgive them.
I've said to many, many people, even in the last two weeks,
several people that you need to learn from that.
Learn from it, follow those lessons appropriately, and then
you've got to eventually be able to move forward away from it
because often times when you won't forgive somebody else,
you're not punishing them as much as you're punishing
yourself. You're carrying a backpack full
of rocks and it's and it's preventing you from
understanding the will of God and being a part of the Kingdom
the way you want you to. It doesn't mean that you justify
what happened. It doesn't mean that you think
what they did was right. You're, you're not admitting
that what you're doing is, is you're recognizing that I
deserve to go to hell too. By the way, this is the first
time I've said this out loud. Even the pastors don't know
this. After Easter, we're going to
take a little break from the seven essentials and I'm going
to do a series after Easter on Wednesday nights.
First of all, right after Easter, I'm going to share my
full board testimony, but then we're also going to share in our
midweek, I'm going to do a series called Heaven, Hell and
the Hereafter, because I felt that I need to talk about
Heaven, Hell, what happens the minute we die?
What, what heaven's like, what Hell's like, Who's going to be
there, who's not? We're going to talk a little bit
about spiritual warfare, etcetera.
So that'll be a good study. I'm going to I'm going to draw
you a picture of exactly what heaven looked.
Now I'm not going to here's God, but but remember the context of
this passage. You got to remember that.
Don't ever lose context. Remember our study on a on
engaging the word. We don't gain forgiveness by
forgiving. That's not what these verses are
saying. So so in other words, I'm not
gaining forgiveness by forgiving somebody else.
That would be a work, but but I'm evidencing, I'm testifying,
I'm proving the fact that I have been forgiving, forgiven by
forgiving somebody else. And if I don't do that, if I
hang on to it, it's a problem because Jesus is actually
teaching his disciples who are all in the same family with our
ABBA father. And many would believe that what
we're really talking about here is, is a believer talking to a
believer. Even so, will we forgive one
another as disciples so we might serve well together?
Because if we don't, we're going to eventually face defeat again.
That doesn't that doesn't mean I trust you.
That doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to be best
friends. That doesn't necessarily mean
that that everything that you've ever done is justifiable.
No, Listen, gang. And I was sharing this story
with somebody within the last week or so.
I got to be careful because I, I remember one time when I was a
pastor that we had a, we had Coast Guard families in our
church and they would go out on deployment and often their
spouses were left at home. And there was a young 2021 year
old wife and they had a little house out in the country in the
middle of nowhere. And I get a phone call one night
and somebody had broken in and at weapon pointed had raped her
and stolen things. I was one of the first people
there. Her husband was still out on a
boat and 1st responders were there.
And, and I remember meeting with him later when the husband
obviously came back and working through what do I, what do I do
with this in my life? I mean, those weren't the words.
It was obviously much more emotional and painful than those
words. But what do I do with this?
How do I ever, how do I ever move on from this?
And you can't just compartmentalize it and pretend
like it didn't happen. That's, that's not what you have
to do. You got to work through, you got
to work through a process. You got to work through a cycle.
It's like a grief cycle at death, but at the same time to
get to a place of grace. Not that you're going to forget
ever. Not that you're ever going to
justify ever. Not that you're going to ever
like what happened or that person.
But can I find freedom and grace?
Because if I hang on to everything that's ever happened
to me, and if you hear everything that's ever happened
to me, you'll wonder why I'm still here if you hear my
testimony. But if I hang on to every single
thing that everybody's ever done to me that's mean or wrong, I'm
not going to survive. I've got to let loose of that
bag of rocks. But especially if it's within
the family. Listen to Warren Weirsby, he
writes. If the members of the family are
not getting along with one another, how can they claim to
have a right relationship with the Father?
Will we forgive one another as disciples?
Will we do that? The fellowship I have with my
fellow disciples, it's going to affect my fellowship with God.
So Ephesians 4, Paul writes it similar verse.
He says be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one
another as God in Christ forgave you.
It's that same balanced equation, isn't it?
You, you, you love somebody, you forgive somebody because Christ
has loved you and forgiven you. That's the only strength you
have to do it. And remember that verse is
written to the church. So one another would have been
the church in that context. So extend grace because it has
been extended to you. So this is that's a curative
medicine. That's the idea there.
That's to actually help you heal.
That's to help you cure. It's not so much about relieving
the burden on that other person. It's to relieve the burden on
you. This is what you need to heal.
This is what you need. But you also can't have that
kind of relationship with the other believers.
You can't have that relationship and be able to love one another
and love God and serve him and do the will of God.
But then interesting enough, there's still verse 13.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
So if one of them is curative medicine, this is preventative
medicine. So we pray about dealing with
past guilt, and now we pray about dealing with future guilt,
'cause I want to be forgiven for everything I want.
I want to be able to be so like Jesus that even if nails are
driven into my wrist, I can say, Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do. Now, I'm not saying I'm that.
I'm not saying I'm there and there's a lot of pain.
But I said to somebody yesterday, and I've probably
said this before too, I say a lot of things over and over
again, sometimes because they're important, sometimes because I
don't remember. I've wasted a lot of pain in my
life. Don't waste pain.
Learn from it, grow from it, be stronger because of it because
I've wasted a lot of pain in my life.
And so here we see that we're dealing with not only the past,
but the future. And don't misunderstand this.
We're not we're not. This verse is not just saying
somehow that God's going to tempt us.
That's not the idea here at all. God does not tempt us.
Read James one sometime It the Bible is very clear God's not
going to tempt you. That's not the prayer.
That's not the way the original wording would have made it made
it work. This is a cry for guidance.
This is a cry for protection. See, please do not lead us into
situations where Satan will have an opportunity to tempt.
Please protect us. Guide us through the minefield
of this thing called life because it's dangerous out
there. And He's very alive and active.
He's been working. First Corinthians 10/13 says no
temptation is overtaking you. That is not common to man.
God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your
ability. But with the temptation, He will
also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure
it. But that verse is conditional.
If if you read that verse all by itself and think that that's all
there is, then you'll never sin. This is conditional upon your
obedience. This is conditional upon your
faithfulness to do what God wants you to do and to listen to
Him and to seek Him. God help me to avoid and
whenever necessary, even to escape.
And so as we mature, maybe we will hopefully need to pray less
and less for forgiveness. But you might not like this or
even understand it. Likely have to pray more and
more for protection. Because as you mature as a
believer, you become a bigger target.
As you mature as a Christian, you become someone that Satan's
going to actually work. Why would Satan work if you're
doing everything Satan wants you to do in the 1st place?
You know what, you're easy. You didn't have to spend much
time on you. Dead churches don't rouse him up
much, but but maturity, Christian maturity, spiritual
maturity, that's a target. I, I, I've had friend after
friend after friend after friend and ministry and academics and
whatever who have had moral failures and fallen.
And I've talked to many of them. They were friends and I've
talked to them and they've confided in me.
In fact, some of for some of them, I was the first one they
called. And it's amazing how consistent
the story becomes. I never planned on this to
happen. I didn't look for this to
happen. I never wanted this to happen.
But then they'll say things like, but I forgot.
I forgot who I really was. I forgot who he really was.
And then the other thing they'll say is I began to believe what
people said to me about myself, that I was above it.
Some of these were celebrity types.
That I was bigger and better than all this, that I
transcended the need for obedience, that I could
basically do whatever I wanted to do and get away with it.
And for some of them, they did it for years, double lives, all
kinds of stuff. So we must constantly be on
guard. Matthew 2641 says watch and pray
that you may not enter into temptation.
The Spirit indeed is willing, but flesh is weak.
We we're fallen and we live in a fallen world still.
And because of that, we're still in the presence of sin.
We're surrounded by the power of sin.
Now, if we've been saved, if you're trusted in Jesus Christ
as your Lord and Savior, you're saved from the penalty of sin,
but you're still in the presence of it.
One day we'll be saved from the presence of it.
We won't, it won't be around anymore.
We'll be in a place of perfection.
Right now we're seeking the Holy Spirit and sanctification and
discipleship to help us fight the power of it, that we don't
fall prey to the temptation and we don't fall prey to how Satan
works. So before we go, I wanted to
share for a few moments some of you or somebody asked Teresa
this. I don't know if anybody asked me
this or not, but said, how do we pray?
And so this is both confession and testimony, because this may
disappoint some of you, probably disappoints Teresa, frankly, but
but we don't have that massively organized prayer time together
like everybody probably thinks I should.
To be honest with you, we've never really operated that way.
And there's some reasons for that.
So let me share what we actually do.
We pray. We, we pray, I promise.
But we're, we've been on such different schedules.
In fact, you, you all need to understand something.
One of the greatest adjustments of me becoming the pastor of
Inglewood Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, NC, United States
of America, is that I am now in Rocky Mount, NC, United States
of America all the time. In these last few years, I was
gone every month overseas. Now, I didn't do that when the
kids were at home. And so we're we've been together
now more this last year then we have probably been together in
at least at least 15 years. At least 15 years.
Yeah. She's, yeah, she's, she's OK
with it. So there's been a massive
adjustment in our personal lives, to be honest with you.
So anyway, the other thing though, that we're still on
different schedules. I get up about an hour and a
half earlier than any of you probably.
I get up pretty early and I do that on purpose.
I told Mark Farrell the other day he was up at 4 something and
I said, well, call me, I'm up. And so I'm up early.
And I like that because I have a place where I sit and I, I study
the Bible right now. I'm, I just finished second
Timothy, I'm in Titus and I'm in numbers.
And this is a personal journaling.
This is my personal Bible study that I share with the staff
sometimes, but it's just what I do.
And I'm, I pray there in that seat.
Then I go exercise. This is almost every single day,
not every day, but almost probably five days a week at
least, if not 6. I have a little home set up and
I go exercise. I need to do that for my own
health, my strength at my age as well as my diabetes.
And so I'm in there exercising and I prayer aside.
OK, so I'm praying when I'm exercising.
Now Teresa's not in there. And so I, and then we have
posted prayer lists in our house.
So there are certain things where you think we should sit
down together, hold hands to look at each other across the
table with wide eyes and pray together over things.
We're praying over those things. We just have them in lists.
And so we have, there's a list back in our bedroom area and
there's a list in my exercise room.
And so every single day I'm praying for my family and
praying for the, you know, there's set things on these
lists. I also have the prayer request
from Wednesday nights that I'm praying for throughout the week.
And so does Teresa. So I'm up early, I'm normally
done with my quiet time. And so our interaction is a
little different, much of our interaction.
And I'm not saying don't, I'm not saying don't sit down
together and have this incredible organized, regularly
scheduled prayer time together. And some of you do that.
That's fantastic. That's wonderful.
It's a testimony. Great.
Keep doing it. I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to
repent and get to there. Maybe we do a lot of spontaneous
praying, praying. So we get text messages, we get
phone calls, we get emails. Somebody's in the hospital,
somebody like, like, I don't know if you know, you all know
Ernestine's in the hospital. A lot of you know Ernestine.
So when we hear that, we, we, we, we're, let's pray for
Ernestine or let's pray for this or let's pray for it.
So we just stop right then because if I'm going to sit
there and say to somebody, I'm praying for you, we're going to,
I usually just stop and pray for him right then.
So we do a lot of spontaneous praying as well.
We pray some before bed. So, you know, we do pray
together. We obviously are praying before
meals and we're not just asking the Lord to bless the food.
They're more extended than that. And at times we have also used
devotional books for couples, even if we're in separate
places. So sometimes I used to do this
at my son's too. I would have a copy of the book
and they would have a copy of the book.
And we might be in totally different parts of the country,
but we're reading the same thing every day and talking about it
later. So this is a new life pattern
for us. So pray for us that I'll get my
act together and that. But I, as I've mentioned to you
before, I am the praying all day long kind of guy.
So I promise you, I am talking to God.
I've been speaking to him about the demonic device called
artificial intelligence in the last several minutes.
So I'm constantly, I'm not, that's no joke.
So I'm in the office, we get stuff and and so we're, we're
constantly, I'm constantly talking to God back in my office
or in the truck. And so I really, I mean, that
really is the truth. I'm arguing with him all day
long, usually. Sometimes I'm a little like
Jacob and I lose, but and then I also prayer walk.
I pray, I prayer walk this room every week.
I pray prayer walk this room before the, the conference with
our students. I come in here all by myself,
especially during the week, and I pray sometimes over every seat
asking God to, to working live. So it's always frustrating when
nobody's in that seat or nothing happens, you know, with people.
My wife is, is a, a very sympathetic, empathetic person
as well. And so she's praying with others
all the time as well and lifting them up.
And you know, we, we pray for our families a lot.
We pray for our grandchildren, obviously a lot like many of you
grandparents do. And so, so for us, this is a,
it's a changing habit right now, I think a little bit for us and
we're going to continue to to grow in that.
And so you all can give us pointers and we would appreciate
that very much. So that's kind of what we're
doing. All right, so before we go,
here's what I want us to do. And I'm hesitant to do this
because of the translation difference.
This is going to be funny. So if you have a Bible or access
to a Bible, and we'll see how many different translations,
hopefully the word sin or debt will be the issue.
You turn to Matthew 6, and I thought we should say the Lord's
Prayer together. There's nothing wrong with
memorizing this prayer. There's nothing wrong with
praying this as long as it's not just ritualistic, as long as
it's not just something you're doing out of habit.
I, I want you to think about these words.
I want you to think about what this prayer really says.
So we're going to begin. We're not going to say pray then
like this, but we'll be in verse 9 and we'll start with our
Father. Are you ready?
Let's say it out loud together, our Father.
And how would be thy name your Kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day and forgive us
as we also, and lead us not. Yeah, some translations as you
all just read, thank you, end, end it differently and have that
that ending part while other other manuscripts did not have
it. And so it's it's interesting.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
And it certainly, certainly doesn't take away any of the
theology. It just builds it and the fact
that it is, it is his Kingdom, it is his power and it is his
glory forever. And I hope that when you see the
Lord's Prayer, whether it's in the Bible or you see it along,
you know, it might be on a sign or piece of artwork or somewhere
along the line that you won't pass by it flippantly.
You won't rush by it. Don't, don't say it as fast as
you can. Stay as slowly as you can.
Chew on it, savour it. Recognize what you're doing.
I'm recognizing who God is. I'm recognizing my need, I'm
recognizing my dependency upon Him.
I'm recognizing the kind of person that I need to become
with His help so that I can be a good citizen of His Kingdom and
then to remind myself of who all this belongs to.
So let's pray to him right now and ask Him to help us to pray
as we should. Father, I'm thankful for that
day that your Holy Spirit LED a disciple to ask a question, the
only time in the scriptures. I wonder, Father, I wonder,
Father, as they walked the road together, how many times they
actually asked it. But Father, thank you for
recording it for us here, so that we'd know, so that we would
learn, so that we could grow, so that we could be better.
Father, forgive us when we just come with a shopping list.
Father, we recognize that's not who you are.
Father, One day, one day when we see you and we're there in your
presence and we really understand who you are.
Father, I'm thankful that in that day I won't have to look
back with remorse. I won't have to look back with
guilt. I won't have to look back and
recognize what a silly, silly little man I am.
Because when we're there, we'll have a new mind and a new body,
and we'll see things in a new way.
But Father, for now, even in the fog of the fallen creation, even
in the fog of our sinful nature, Lord, help us to see behind the
veil, to recognize the incredible awesomeness, the
wondrous opportunity we have to approach you.
You are indeed holy by name and by nature.
And so, Father, I pray that as we come to you in our prayer
life, Father, we won't. We won't hesitate to ask you
because you want us to. You won't.
We won't hesitate to bring our greatest needs, our greatest
burdens, our hurts, our anxieties, even things, Father,
that might be silly to somebody else.
Father, they're not going to be silly to you.
You want us to bring you those things.
But Lord, I just pray that we'll remember to start to begin by
thanking you and acknowledging you for listening to us and for
who You are, and then, Father, to recognize that we don't need
everything. We need what we need from you.
And you know exactly what that is.
And help us. Help us, Father, to be joyful in
that. So Father, bless us.
Lord, it's a big week. Father.
We had a lot of folks here last weekend.
We got a lot of folks coming this weekend.
Then we have Easter, a lot going on.
And so, Father, I pray that you'll give us energy and
endurance. Help us, Father, to stay
focused. Lord, we have some incredible
speakers coming this weekend who are going to talk about you and
Father. They're going to share the
gospel very clearly. And Father, I believe with all
my heart, we're going to have men saved.
And so, Father, help us, Lord, to be ready.
Help us to be prepared for that. And Father, I look forward to
Sunday that the family might gather together, all of us.
We might be in our connect groups.
We might be in our family ministries.
And Father, we'll engage in worship so that we can honor you
and actually recognize who you are and say so out loud.
So Father, bless us. Thank you, Father, for this
privilege in Christ's name, Amen.
Thank you so much for listening today.
And I also hope that you'll go to
ourwebsite@englewoodbaptist.com as well as our app and find many
other resources that will bless you and your families.
Thank you once again.