In this sermon Tim continues our series on What Jesus Taught by looking at the Lord’s Prayer and how we rediscover its power in our lives by incorporating it into our daily prayer and worship!
Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday April 3rd, 2021.
05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast
- 05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series
- 29/01/23 – The Glory of Christ – Greg Beech
- 22/01/23 – Luke 15:1-8 God's Heart for the Lost – by Lani Daniel
- 15/01/23 – 1 John 4:11 Friendship In Church by Tim Giovanelli
- 08/01/23 – Philipians 3:17-4:4 Stand Firm in 2023 – by Peter Brooks
SERMON NOTES:
Ok, well we have come in our series on what did Jesus Teach? Mainly in the Sermon on the Mount, to the Lord’s prayer.
- It comes in this section on hidden righteousness… on generosity, on prayer and on fasting.
- Where Jesus says “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.”
- He warns us not to be like the religious hypocrits, who practice their spiritual disciplines publicly, to gain people’s approval.
- Jesus says, they will receive no reward from their heavenly Father because they have received their reward in the adultion from other.
- So as we said last week, we are to hide what we are tempted to show…
So Jesus says, Matthew 6:9-13
9 This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Amen.
I wonder if you ever find yourself singing a song on the radio, something familiar, where the words are second nature, but you don’t really mean it…
- Or your at a party and as a bloke you start belting out… “It’s raining men…” or “girls just wanna have fun…”
- I got in trouble once for posting a video of me dancing to “It’s your birthday, it’s your birthday…” by 50 cent…
- Apparently it has some questionable lyrics… which I was totally unaware of… having not been big into the East Coast rap scene of the early 2000’s
- All I knew was the bit “it’s your birthday… it’s your birthday.” Haha…
- But what ends up happening, is familiarity means we don’t really consider what it is we are singing… we just like the tune…
Well I wonder if we have done the same with the Lord’s prayer?
- What should be something that is the anthem for the revolutionary coming of the Kingdom of Heaven
- Has been overly familiarized into meaninglessness…
- At my High School we had a weekly chapel where we said the Lord’s prayer…
- I can assure you, no one was praying it… or meaning it, or considering what it was Jesus was asking us to pray…
- It was like we were singing “girls just wanna have fun…” at my all boys high school…
- This prayer with explosive petitions… had become dull and boring and routine…
So I’d love us today to reconsider the vitality and audacity of the Lord’s prayer that Jesus taught us to pray…
- And to get back in the habit of praying it through regularly…
- And in the process become co-conspirators in the coming Kingdom of heaven!
- Jesus is teaching his disciples… this is the anthem of the revolution. Keep this simple prayer at the heart of your faith…
- And participate in the heavening of earth.
- Are you with me?
So with the reminder from last week, that Jesus isn’t interested in public displays of prayer, done for the approval of others…
- BTW, Here’s the great line…
- Matthew 6:5 And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.
- And Matthew 6:7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
- Instead says Jesus, in your private space, and with simple but profound words…
- This then is how you should pray…
So firstly, the structure and content of the prayer
So Jesus teaches us to pray “Our Father in heaven.”
- This is the God that Jesus knows and trusts.
- He is the God who is close at hand and involved in the lives of his children.
- The Apostle John who came to know God as Father through the time he spent with Jesus would say this;
- 1 John 3:1 “behold how great the love the Father has for us, that we should be called the children of God.”
Paul, who met Jesus on the road to Damascus, experienced the love of God and would write in Romans 14:15-16;
- “the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
- Right? This is who we are praying to… due to God’s love, due to our adoption as the children of God.
- If this is not the case, praying is a futile activity…
- But if true, it is the most important work we will do with our lives…
Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God, the son of Mary
- Fully human, human God…
- Fully human: knows all about life on this broken planet…
- So he knows what it means to pray, he know what it means to need God…
- In his humanity he needs this prayer.
And as fully God, he comes from the Father’s heart and knows the Father’s heart
- He is giving us his revelation of his Father…
- It is like he is saying “I know the Father” so pray this way… talk to him like this…
- These are the things you need…
- In this prayer he gathers up all of our concerns and lifting them to the Father…
- He shows us how to pray… and what to pray…
So there are 6 petitions… ands two halves to the prayer…
- Thr first 3 are addressing God. Hallowed be your name… your kingdom come… your will be done…
- Your, your, your…
- Then 3 petitions that concern our needs… give us our daily bread… forgive us our debts… lead us not into temptation
- Us, us, us…
I wonder if you see echoes here of one of Jesus other teachings on the greatest commandment? Matthew 22:37
- ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
- And verse 39 ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
- The first half is about loving God and the second part is about us and our relatyonships… loving others…
- So this prayer focusses on our relationship with God before shifting to focus on our needs…
And what do we need in order for the kingdom to come?
- Well we need to trust God for our daily needs, our daily bread…
- We need to keep forgiving others and being forgiven… in order that our relationship remain right.
- We need to avoid temptation and giving into the evil one.
- So we pray this… at the forefront of our thoughts and actions… we pray this prayer…
Alright, well what is the center of this prayer?
I want to suggest that it is the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven”
- “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
- On earth as it is in heaven captures the mission of Jesus.
- Is this not the very thing that Jesus has come to do? Change earth into as it is in heaven?
And imagine all of us as a church, all those around the world who follow Jesus… going about our daily activities praying this, participating in this…
- “on earth as it is in heaven.”
- In fact I think this is the center of the entire sermon on the mount!
I once heard someone say “In Jesus, God is getting the hell out of earth.”
- Would you agree? God is getting the hell out of earth? Think about it?
- Jesus mission is to bring heaven to earth and to get hell out of earth…
- When Jesus heals the sick… is this not what is happening?
- When Jesus delivers someone from evil spirits… is this not what is happening?
- When Jesus forgives someones sins… is this not what is happeneing?
- So when Jesus invites us to pray, “Father, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
- Is he not inviting us to participate in this revolution?
So when we pray this prayer and forgive our enemies… is not heaven invading earth?
- When we give care to the lonely or hurting… is not heaven invading earth?
- When we are generous and hospitable opening our homes and giving to the needy… is not heaven invading earth?
- When you choose to act ethically, when you choose to speak truth rather than lies…
- When you stop lusting, when you deal with your anger… when you don’t choose revenge… is not it happening on earth as it is in heaven?
- Are you with me?
You know, revolution is a loaded term… particularly with the last 100 years of bloody revolutions that have come and gone…
- But be under no illusions, Jesus is bringing about a massive revolution…
- A peaceful, humanity renewing, cosmic, reordering revolution.
- Remember right before he starts the sermon on the mount in chapter 4 we read…
- “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”
- He is going about declaring the radical intervention (that they thought would happen at the end of history) is underway in the middle of history…
- On earth as it is in heaven…
You know we need to be clear about what the good news about Jesus and the Kingdom of heaven is all about!
- For too many Christians this is our view of heaven and earth
- God space is heaven. Our space is earth
- Jesus comes from heaven space to our space to rescue us back to God’s space?
- Right? In this view, the goal of Christianity is to “get to heaven.”
- The problem with this view… well… is the bible…
- It’s just not what it says… it would be half truths at best…
- So the bibles view of heaven and earth is a lot different.
- Right, go to page 3… haha… go to Genesis 3… heaven and earth are overlapped. God’s space and our space is one…
- And the question Genesis poses is will humans in the garden of eden work in harmony with God or rebel against God.
- So with the fall, hell or the absence of God is what happens when heaven and earth are ripped apart…
- But God doesn’t leave our space altogether. But with the giving of free will… earth looks like hell a lot of time because we’ve abandoned God.
- So the picture in the OT, but particularly with the coming of Jesus is heaven coming to invade earth… God is not finished with us…
- That is what Jesus is claiming he is doing. The overlap is advancing…
- The good news of the Kingdom of God arriving in his ministry.
- So Jesus goes about getting the hell out of earth through his ministry of healing and deliverance and declaring the forgiveness of sins.
- And so much, as we have been saying, of heaven invading earth is God bringing about a righteous people…
- A people committed to right relationships and this advancing kingdom…
- The final picture in the Book of Revelation is what?
- Well the bible story ends in Revelation with the great overlapping…
- Once again…
- It says God’s dwelling has come to be with man. And the picture is of the grand restoration of earth because heaven has come to fully renew all that is broken
- So that is what Jesus is praying for.
This is what Jesus teaches us to pray right now… “your kingdom come… your will be done… on earth as it is in heaven”
- So has the kingdom come?
- Yes. In Jesus and then spreading through the world… Yes!
- But every inch of this world – heavens no. Look at the world that we live in.
- Has the Kingdom come in your life – yes. When the Holy Spirit comes into your life you are adopted into the children of God and transformation begins….
- But are you fully transformed in all of your life… heavens no! Look at the state of our lives…
So how does Jesus teach us to pray?
- Jesus is saying, praying this prayer is the most effective way to join this revolution
- For heaven to invade earth. For God to get the hell out of earth.
- So what we are praying is more and more of the kingdom to come and take over this earth and my life…
- So he says pray like this every day… in every decision… in ever scenario…
- Faced with cheating on your spouse? Well that’s not how it would be in heaven…
- Faced with making an unethical decision… well that’s not how it would be in heaven…
- Faced with hoarding your money or taking on the world’s values..
- So we pray “God in my life… let your kingdom come, your will be done”
OK, final thing, how do we pray this?
Well clearly from this section in Matthew 6 it is not to be done for show or for the approval of others…
- But regularly in your life… in your private spaces and with simple words…
- This then (says Jesus) is how you should pray.
Now one final surprise for us today with this prayer… and it relates to the verbs in the prayer and the tense in which Jesus asks us to pray to our Father in heaven…
- Be hallowed, come your kingdom, be done your will.
- These are bold verbs…
- And the way the Greek sentences are structured has the verbs (the doing words) at the start of the sentence.
- It is; “Be hallowed, come your kingdom, be done your will.
- In the imperative mood of the verb. This is a command…
- Jesus encourages us to pray “Be this. Come that. Be done.”
Now in the ancient world, the imperative is never used to address a superiror. You wouldn’t go to the Roman Governor of the region and use the imperative….
- So surprise, surprise, surprise…
- We are addressing a superior… the ultimate one… our father in heaven…
- And we are told to use the imperative… not just asking, we are commanding…
- Be, come, be… do it, do it, do it…
- How does that make you feel?
- But remember who teaches us this prayer… Jesus, son of Mary, son of God… so this is ok…
- The Father wants his children to pray boldly…
- So the prayer is… Father you do it! You bring your kingdom… You make your will be done on earth.
This should be liberating…
- Yes we are to participate… yes we are to allow the prayer to shape what we believe and who we are…
- But ultimately it is God who will bring his kingdom. It is God who will bring heaven to earth.
- And so boldly we pray…
- Into the broken relationships… into the desire for war or revenge… into our daily needs for provision and forgiveness and deliverance…
- Father get the hell out of earth. And may it be done on earth as it is in heaven…
- Sound good? Are you ready to pray this way?
As I close, I want to make an invitation… Have you responded to this? You may want to do this right now.
- You are being called by Jesus into citizenship in heaven on earth… to be born again into the family of God.
- Have you responded to this calling?
- Do it right now. Sign up… join the revolution of the kingdom of heaven by asking Jesus to become a citizen of heaven?
- He has made the way possible on the cross by forgiving your sins… you can be in… but you have to respond.