Tonight's Weeknight Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6

How to Pray (Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, Part 3)

[Online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, continues to be posted on YouTube during the coronavirus epidemic. Here's this week's midweek Lenten focus on the basics of Christian faith.]

Matthew 6:9-15

One phrase is likely to bring silence to even to the most verbal group of Christians. It’s this: “Who would like to offer a prayer?”

This is understandable in a way. In the New Testament, Paul says, “We do not know what we ought to pray for…” (Romans 8:26) And Luke says that Jesus’ apostles, the ones He chose to send into the world with His message of new and everlasting life with God for all who repent and believe in Him, felt incompetent in prayer. That’s why they ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (Luke 6:1)

Jesus gives them (and us) what we call the Lord’s Prayer, which is the subject of the third part of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, our topic for today.

But before digging into the Lord’s Prayer, it’s good, as Luther does in The Large Catechism, to consider why we should pray at all. Luther says that there are two reasons. 

The first is that God commands that we pray. That command inheres in the Second Commandment, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Why would God tell us not to use His name vainly, that is, uselessly, purposelessly, or selfishly--or as Luther puts it, “superstitiously, or to curse, swear, lie, or deceive,” if He didn’t intend for us to use His name, to “call upon Him in every time of need, and [to] worship Him with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving”?

The second reason we pray is because God makes promises to those who do. The apostle Peter, quoting the Old Testament, told the Jerusalem crowd on the first Pentecost after the risen Jesus’ ascension to heaven, “...everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…” (Acts 2:21) And Jesus, God Himself, tells us, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

So, God commands that we pray and gives promises to those who do pray. 

That’s why we pray. But how should we pray? 

Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer as both a good and useful prayer and as a model for our praying. To those who say that reciting this prayer is “vain repetition,” I would point out that Jesus Himself says of this prayer: “This, then, is how you should pray…”

The Lord’s Prayer is composed of: 

• an introduction, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…,” 
• seven petitions, and 
• a conclusion, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” 

The conclusion, though not taught by Jesus, is a doxology, that is, a word of glory, that comes from King David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:10-11. (You can look it up.)

The significance of the introduction, “Our Father, Who art in heaven,” is this: By teaching us to pray to God as “our Father,” Jesus is sharing all the benefits and privileges of being God’s Son with those who believe in Him. All who believe in Jesus are “co-heirs with Christ” of His victory over sin and death. 

By telling us to call God “our Father,” God, Luther says, “encourages us to believe that He is truly our Father, and that we are truly His children, so that we may boldly and confidently pray to Him, just as beloved children speak to their dear Father.”

The first three petitions of the prayer--”Hallowed be Thy name,” “Thy kingdom come,” “Thy will be done”--are all things, as Luther explains it, that will happen even without our prayer. But we pray that His name will be hallowed by us; that His kingdom will come to us; and that His will is done in our lives. 

In these petitions, we refuse to stand in judgment over or pretend to be superior to the rest of the world. We own that we are in as much daily need of God, His will, and His kingdom, brought by the crucified and risen Jesus, as anyone else!

In the fourth petition--"Give us this day our daily bread”--we acknowledge, as Luther says, that “God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer.” But we pray in this petition to remind ourselves that everything we need for life--our daily bread--comes from God and to receive it “with thanksgiving.” 

Luther’s insistence that God gives us everything we need to live from day to day, is a good reminder in this time when people are (of all things) hoarding toilet paper, that we don’t have a supply problem in our world; God supplies all. We have a share problem. May God teach us to share!

In the fifth petition--”And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have sinned against us,” we seek God’s forgiveness for our sin and recognize that we cannot be forgiven by God if we are unwilling to forgive those who have hurt...or who we think have hurt...us. Luther says, “We know that we have not earned, nor do we deserve” the forgiveness for which we pray. But, he goes on to say, we ask for it because of the grace that God extends to those who trust in Jesus. At the same time, in this petition, we “heartily forgive, and gladly do good to those who sin against us.” And for us to do that, we really need God’s grace.

In the sixth petition, we ask to be protected from the temptation to sin that comes from “the devil, the world, and our sinful nature,” that we won’t be led “into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.” 

I find I need to pray this petition the most just after I’ve received God’s forgiveness, right after God covers me with His righteousness, as I repent in Jesus' name. 

That’s because once God has forgiven me, I forget that it’s He Who makes me righteous; I start to think what a righteous, wonderful guy I am all by myself.  

When that happens, I don’t see the bear trap of temptation right in front of me. “...in the gospel,” Paul writes in Romans 1:17, “the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith [in Christ] from first to last…” In the sixth petition, we ask God to help us to remember that our righteousness is from Christ alone and to protect us from the delusion of our own intrinsic goodness.

In the seventh petition, Jesus teaches us to pray, “But deliver us from evil.” Luther’s full explanation is worth quoting: “We pray in this petition, as in a summary, that our heavenly Father would deliver us from every type of evil--whether it affects our bodies or souls, property or reputation--and at last, when our hour of death comes, would grant us a blessed end to our earthly lives, and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to Himself in heaven.”

I planned this series some weeks ago, long before the coronavirus upended our lives. But I can’t help but feel that God had already planned for me to talk with you about the Lord’s Prayer during this week in Lent. If you’ve never seen your need to regularly pray, including praying the Lord’s Prayer, I hope you see it today. 

The public health people say to wash our hands for twenty seconds frequently throughout our day. A friend has reminded me that twenty-seconds are about how long it takes to pray the Lord’s Prayer. So, I invite you in the days ahead to pray the Lord’s Prayer as you wash your hands. Every time you pray it with trust and honest helplessness, you will bless yourself and the world for which you pray. And you will be ready for all that may come to you, in this world or the next. Amen 

Batman, Robin, and the Lord's Prayer

I don't know the source of this, but the writer is correct, of course.

In introducing what we call the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says, "This, then, is how you should pray..." THWACK! BAM! POW!

Knowing God: More Than We Imagine

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Luke 11:1-13
I have a feeling that one reason that so many people today claim no religion is that they might like to know God, but don’t know that, through Jesus, they can know Him. 

And even we followers of Jesus, Who know Him through the Word and the Sacraments, also want to know Him better. And like lovers obsessed with their beloved, it's because we know God through Jesus that we want to know God more.

Jesus’ first followers, the disciples, seem to have felt the same way. 

That’s part of why, even though they didn’t completely understand that Jesus was God in the flesh until Jesus had died and risen again, in their hunger for God, they followed Jesus for three years. 

That’s also why it’s no surprise that when they saw Jesus praying one day, seeing the intimacy with God the Father He had, they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. 

Our gospel lesson for today, Luke 11:1-13, tells us how Jesus responded: Jesus teaches them (and us) what we call the Lord’s Prayer. 

It presents a pattern for prayer for those who want to know God deeply and personally. 

It also gives us a prayer that we can offer to God regularly when we realize that we don't know what to pray or when we pray together in worship. 

Let’s take a look at it.

“Father,” Jesus begins. Being a Christian is not about being religious. It’s about having a relationship with God. God is our Father and not an earthly father, one who, no matter how good or devoted, can let us down. God is the Father Who made us and stands ready to hear us whenever we call on Him. We begin the prayer by acknowledging that incredible fact!

The next petitions remind us that everything is out of place in the world and in our lives if God isn’t given first place. And so, Jesus teaches us to pray: “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.”

For God’s Name to be hallowed means for it to be held as unique, special, set-apart, holy. God’s Name is not a sitcom punchline or a phrase for stupid people with limited vocabularies to use in the place meaningful speech. God’s Name is a precious gift He gives that allows us to call on Him, as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, for “prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” Here, we pray that God’s Name will be revered and used properly, not just by the whole world, but by us as well.

God’s kingdom is what Jesus came to bring. He brought God’s kingdom into this dying world through His life, death, and resurrection. All who, incited by the Holy Spirit to heed the gospel message of new life through Jesus, turn from sin and believe in Jesus for forgiveness and new life with God, are part of God’s kingdom, today, at this moment. We live under the reign of God. Here, we pray that God’s kingdom will invade every human life--including our own, so that we and all who believe in Him will not perish in hell, but have life with God forever!

It isn’t until the petition in verse 3--”Give us each day our daily bread”--that Jesus gets around to teaching us to pray for ourselves. This is pretty counter-cultural! How often are we advised by pop culture or even by so-called friends to look out for ourselves instead of putting God or others ahead of ourselves? And even in this petition, we don't pray entirely for ourselves, as Jesus teaches us to pray for not me but us!

A woman told me that after she’d shared with a friend that she and her husband were having minor disagreements on money and child-rearing, her friend said, “Better do what I did. Better get a divorce. You deserve to be happy.” “My friend,” the woman told me, “obviously had no concern about what might make God happy, or our children happy, or my husband happy, or, in the end, what might make me happy.”

Jesus doesn't teach us to defer praying for ourselves because we ourselves aren’t important. Obviously, every human being is important. That’s why Jesus Christ died and rose for every human being who has ever lived or ever will live. And that’s why He teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

But it’s only after we’ve learned to put God and His desire to reign over the whole world with His love at the top of our priorities, that we’re ready to pray this petition rightly. So, He teaches us, “Give us”--all of us, from the people in my family to the people in places like China, Syria, and Afghanistan ”our daily bread,” not the luxuries we want or to which the advertisers say we’re entitled, but the things we need.

We pray that all people will be provided with the things they need--nutritious food, clean water, medical care, basic justice. 

And this prayer is no pipe dream! God’s earth produces sufficient abundance for every inhabitant of Earth to have exactly what they need. The fact that so many go hungry or die unnecessarily is not a supply issue, it’s a share issue. 

God gives daily bread and in praying this petition, we acknowledge that every good and perfect gift comes from God and we ask that God will help us share His bounties with others. The words of the hymn, Praise and Thanksgiving, are true: “Where all obey You, no one will hunger; In Your love’s sway You nourish the land.” 

Jesus then teaches us, in verse 4, to pray that God will forgive our sins and to keep us from blocking out His forgiveness from our lives by refusing to forgive others. 

Is there someone you need to forgive this morning? Someone who has wronged you or who you think has wronged you? 

You don’t need to make a grand show of it. You don’t have to smugly tell that other person, “I forgive you.” In your heart right now, you can release others of the debt you feel that they owe to you. Just tell God, “Lord, I want to release so and so of my grudge. I want to release myself from it. In Your Name and by Your power, I forgive them.” 

You can do that every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. And you need to do so because Jesus makes it clear that until we let go of that grudge, we can’t take hold of His grace, His forgiveness and His charity toward our sins and our shortcomings.

Finally, Jesus teaches His disciples--including us--to pray that God will steer us clear of temptation and that the evil one--the devil--won’t be able to get a toehold in our lives. 

Now, Jesus knows that it may be hard for us to believe that God could care about our prayers. More than one person in the years I’ve been a pastor has told me, “I never pray. I just don’t want to bother God.” In teaching us this prayer though, Jesus is saying, “God does care about you. You will never be a bother to the One Who made you and Who went to the cross for you!"

To underscore this fact, Jesus tells a little parable about a man who has a late-night visitor at his house and has nothing to feed the visitor. Wanting to treat the visitor right, the man runs to his friend to ask for something to set before the visitor. But it’s midnight. The man lives in first-century Judea, meaning that he sleeps on the floor with his kids, and that getting up to answer the friend’s knock or to fetch the food and drink he could serve his visitor will be a hassle, maybe even waking up the little ones and the animals and depriving him of a good night’s sleep. But, Jesus says in verse 9, even if the man doesn't want to help his friend, he'll throw off his covers, walk around the kids, open the front door, and get the things his friend requests.

The careless reader will think that Jesus is here saying that God is a reluctant friend who, if you’re persistent, will answer your prayers. But God isn’t reluctant to hear or answer our prayers. Look at how Jesus closes out His words for us in Luke 11 today, verse 13, after saying that even sinful, "evil" parents will give good things to their children: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

The God we know in Jesus Christ isn’t a reluctant friend telling those who come to Him, “Go away!” He is our Father and He wants to answer when we call out to Him. That’s why Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...”

But here’s where Christian maturity and a willingness to defer to the greater wisdom and love of God comes in. 

The first two or three-hundred times I read Jesus’ words in Luke 11:13, in which He promises to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask God, I wanted to scream, “But what if I don’t want the Holy Spirit!” What if I asked for my loved one to be healed of cancer, or that my friend’s marriage would be restored, or that, as I really have prayed, the 40% of my heart damaged by a heart attack would be restored? What good is the Holy Spirit to me then? How is the Holy Spirit the answer to the cries of my heart? I’ve had thoughts like these. I still do.

But here’s the thing: The Holy Spirit is exactly Who we need when we face things like crosses, and griefs, and relational discord, and war. 

He's also Who we need when we are successful, happy, and comfortable because it's in circumstances like these that we are most at risk of forgetting God or deluding ourselves that all of our blessings come from us and our goodness, power, or talent.

The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, the One Who gives us the strength and courage we need to face the pains that come to us in this imperfect and fallen world. 

The Holy Spirit is the Truth-Teller Who will tell us the truth about Jesus, about ourselves, about our need for the forgiveness and new life Jesus died and rose brings to those who believe in Him, about how deeply and eternally we are loved by the God Who makes us, redeems us, and, in Jesus Christ, calls us to Himself.

The Holy Spirit is the very life of God. 

He’s the One Who gives us faith in the face of the darkness of this world and the One Who will raise us up to come face to face with Jesus after we’ve drawn our last breaths on this earth. 

Every time you pray, ask, seek, and knock at the Father’s door, He will send the Holy Spirit to you. You will know God. 

You will know God is with you. 

You will know that God is for you. 

And you will be filled with the life of God that nothing and nobody can ever take from you.

We come to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, asking for the things we think we need or think we want and He gives us more than we could ever ask for or conceive of needing.

He gives us Himself.

People want to know God. 

Christians who know God through the Word and the Sacraments want to know Him more deeply. 

Pray in Jesus’ Name and you will know Him as surely as you know your parents, your children, your spouses, or your friends. Even more surely and well.

As we pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, we know that no matter what happens in this world, we have the Holy Spirit, Who will give us the very life of God and stand with us from here to kingdom come. Amen!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
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The hardest prayer...and why I pray it

I've said it before, the hardest prayer we're commanded by Jesus to offer up to God our Father is, "Your will be done."

I've been a Christian now for nearly four decades and that prayer never gets easier for me.

But when I think of what Christ did for me on the cross and from the tomb made empty by God's love, how can I pray for anything but that God's will be done?

The apostle Paul writes in Romans 8:18: "I consider that the our present sufferings [even, presumably, our self-inflicted sufferings, those that result from our own selfishness] are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed" [when Christ returns and the dead who in this life trusted in Christ will rise to live with Him for eternity]."

When my eye remains on the resurrection prize and when my heart is filled with sufficient gratitude for Christ's death and resurrection for me, I can pray that prayer, trusting that God is bent on making all things right. Even when I prefer that my will be done.

Teach Us to Pray, Part 3

[This was shared last evening with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, during midweek Lenten worship.]

Isaiah 25:6-8
Psalm 37:4
Matthew 7:7-8
Ecclesiastes 3:11

"Give us this day our daily bread..."

In his book, The Journey of Desire, author John Eldredge addresses the ambivalence Christians feel about what we want, the things we desire. Because the ninth and tenth commandments tell us not to covet our neighbors’ property, spouses, servants, or possessions, some Christians seem to have the mistaken notion that it’s always wrong to want anything. But, Eldredge reminds us that desire isn’t bad in itself. To have desires is part of what it means to be human.

And we have enormous desires. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has...set eternity in the human heart…” In other words, we were made by God for wanting a lot more than stuff. Though we may try to fill our lives with the stuff of this world, the fact is that you and I have a craving for what only eternity with God can give to us.

So, what does all of this have to do with the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Martin Luther is right, I think, to say that, “daily bread includes everything needed for this life…” Luther included things like food, healthy family relationships, work, and so on.

But I also think that if these daily blessings are all God had in mind for us, Jesus would not have been born, wouldn’t have died for us, wouldn't have risen from the dead. Truth be told, we need more, much more, than all these things.

If the earlier petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are to be believed, God believes that we need these blessings now. We need God’s kingdom to come to us now, today. We need God’s will to be done in our lives as it is in heaven, now, today.

He also believes that we should, through the ministry of the Church, have a taste of the rich futures belonging to all who trust in Christ. God thinks that you and I need eternity! In Isaiah 25:6-8, God paints His promises for the eternal future of those who follow Him: He will feed us with the best meats and the finest of aged wines and death will be swallowed up forever and God will dry all our tears!

But there’s a problem. The condition of sin distorts our desires.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to eat food, for example, until sin turns hunger into gluttony.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the sexual intimacy that God engineered into our beings, unless we seek it outside the bounds of marriage between one man and one woman.

There’s nothing wrong with desiring to better ourselves unless the desire becomes covetousness or a drive to look down our noses on other people.

The human problem, from God’s perspective, isn’t that we want things. Many of the things we desire are good things, things created and given by God. But sin happens when we desire or take good things at the wrong times, in the wrong ways, for the wrong reasons. Food, sex, and success, along with orderly communities, good governments, and positive reputations are all legitimate things for us want, to ask God to grant to us...in the times He ordains, for the reasons He ordains.

This is important for us to remember when we pray because some people refuse to acknowledge their desires to God. A person once revealed to a group of us that she never asked God for anything. “I don’t feel that I can do that,” she told us. “God has already given me so much. I just don't want to bother him for more.” Thankfulness is a virtue, of course. But that individual underestimated God’s love for her.

When Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer as a model for our prayer lives, He didn’t mean for us to eliminate asking Him for the things we desire. He teaches us, in fact, to pray for them.

But He also put this petition--”Give us this day our daily bread”--in a larger context. Often, our praying is sporadic, episodic. We pray when we’re desperate for the needs we see in our own lives or in the lives of others we know and care about and then more or less shut down the prayer hotline. We risk turning God into a cosmic ATM.

In the Lord’s Prayer though, Jesus shows us that God wants to have an ongoing, eternal relationship with us. He teaches us to pray, Our Father, not Dear Sir. In intimate relationships, you don’t feel restrained in asking for things. Everything is on the table. So, Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop asking God for things. In fact, in Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus tells us: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The way I see it, Jesus doesn’t want us to reduce what we ask for, but to ask for everything with trusting hearts. He wants us to come to God with the same confidence that a child who is loved has when she comes to her mother or father, but also with the same submission, the same surrender. A trusting child will feel free to ask a loving parent for anything, but will, at least on reflection, also want to submit to her parent’s judgment, love, and will, when the answers are no, wait, or maybe.

In the context of a relationship with the Father we know through Jesus Christ, God’s and our perspectives begin to meld. We begin to see things as God sees things. We start wanting what God wants. We desire what God desires. Our laundry lists continue; but as we continue in a relationship with God, that relationship changes our lists.

When I was a young Christian, I struggled with the meaning of a verse in the Psalms. It’s Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I knew that my desires were infinite and not always pure. Did that mean that God would give me anything I wanted, even things that may seem good on the surface, but in the end would lead to my own undoing or to my separation from God?

Then I took a closer look at the verse. God will give us the desires of our hearts when we take delight in Him, when nothing and nobody is more important to us than God Himself…when our relationship with God is central to our lives. That’s why three petitions--“hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”--come before “Give us this day our daily bread.”

The more intimate we allow our relationship with our Father to become, the more similar God’s desires and our desires will become. And the more we realize that in telling us to pray for our daily bread, Jesus isn’t commanding that we ask for or to expect less. He’s commanding us to ask for every good and perfect blessing God has in mind for us every single day we live. Amen

Teach Us to Pray, Part 2

[This is the second part of a midweek Lenten series happening at Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio. It was presented this evening.]

"Thy kingdom come,
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven..."

Matthew 26:36-46
Matthew 26:29
Luke 10:9

To focus our thoughts on the second and third petitions of the Lord’s Prayer—“Thy kingdom come, [and] Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—two quotes from Jesus found in the Gospels.

First, Luke 10:9, where Jesus says, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

And second, Matthew 26:29, where, during the Last Supper, Jesus tells the disciples, “I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

These two statements from Jesus underscore the strange paradox in the New Testament’s discussion of “the kingdom of God.”

A paradox, you know, is a situation that seems to be made up of two contradictory conditions.

In the case of Jesus’ words about the kingdom of God—throughout the Gospels—the paradox is that God’s kingdom is already here, but it has not yet come.

Colossians 1:13-14, for example celebrates the fact that for believers in Christ, God “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The kingdom is an accomplished reality.

Yet, we await the final consummation of that kingdom with the risen Jesus’ return to the earth at the end of this old creation’s history.

The kingdom of God already is, but is not yet.

The original Greek New Testament word that we translate as kingdom is basileia. It’s a less static or stationary word than our word, kingdom. It really means reign.

You can be in the kingdom of God, under the reign of Jesus, no matter where you live. It isn't bound by borders, space, or time.

And because of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross and in the empty tomb, the kingdom of God has already come to believers.

The kingdom isn’t a physical place, then. That, you know, was, partly, the mistaken idea Jesus’ first followers had. Lots of Old Testament prophecy had said that the Messiah or Yahweh—God Himself—was coming to the earth to establish the kingdom of God.

Peter, James, John, and the rest believed that Jesus was the Messiah who would bring God's kingdom into the world and that's one of the reasons they were so devastated when Jesus was crucified. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” some of them said bleak-heartedly even after they’d heard (and disbelieved) reports of Jesus’ resurrection.

The disciples had expected Jesus to be the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans and get rid of the fake royalty, the Herod family, and establish God’s kingdom on earth. They thought that the kingdom of God was a political or economic program.

When Jesus rose from the dead, their hopes of a political rule by Jesus were revived. That’s why in Acts 1:6 ask the risen Jesus: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

It’s as though they’re telling Jesus, “Hey, that resurrection thing was a neat trick, Jesus. But when are you really going to get down to business and enact the kingdom?”

We may be inclined to laugh at the disciples and say something like the kingdom of God is spiritual, not physical. But that’s not true either.

Those who live in the kingdom of God are called—even commanded—by God to live in certain ways here and now. We’re to love God, love neighbors, seek justice, and believe in Jesus Christ.

The already/not yet kingdom of God is meant to be more than some private, ill-defined spiritual interchange that happens inside of us. It’s meant to change the ways in which you and I live each day.

If we have any doubt about this, we simply need to look at how Jesus teaches us to pray in the second and third petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus teaches us to pray that God will reign here on earth today as directly, as totally, and as completely as He reigns from His throne in heaven.

But here’s the really dangerous thing about these two petitions: We ask God our Father to reign over this clump of earth, over you and me.

We are clumps of earth, after all. The scientists say it. But the Bible said it first: Remember that when God made Adam, He did it by scooping up dirt from the ground and breathing life into him.

To say, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is to invite God, first of all, to reign over our lives. As Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, “God’s kingdom comes indeed without our praying for it, but we ask in this prayer that it may come also to us.”

On the night of His arrest, Jesus prayed that the Father would create some other way to bring His kingdom into being than for Jesus to go through the cross. But then He prayed, “…yet not I want but what you want.”

Our prayer should be the same as that of Jesus: Not my will, but Thy will be done, in this lump of clay, on this piece of earth.

It’s a fine thing for us to think of neighbors, friends, and even enemies when we pray these two petitions. We want the kingdom of God to come to all people. We want everyone to come to believe in Jesus Christ as God and Savior and so become part of God’s kingdom. We want God to reign over our church, homes, communities, schools, government leaders, and so on. We should pray that God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done among these people and institutions, all these clumps of earth.

But what Jesus, Who taught this prayer and then said this prayer Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, shows us is that we must also be willing to live this prayer. (And that's the hard part.)

God brought His kingdom into the world through a flesh and blood Savior. It’s God’s plan that His kingdom will continue to come and His will keep on being done in this world as it is in heaven through the flesh and blood lives AND prayers of Christians.

It’s interesting to remember that Jesus didn’t teach what we know as the Lord’s Prayer to the disciples on His own initiative. He didn’t wake up one day and say, “I think I’ll teach the guys how to pray.” He taught the disciples how to pray after they’d asked him to do so. They had seen the kingdom of God in Jesus and they wanted to know how the kingdom could come to them, too.

Maybe if you and I would take up these two petitions earnestly, asking God to reign over us and have His way with us right in the guts of our everyday lives, others might ask us to teach them how to pray.

May the Lord teach us how to pray these petitions and mean them. Amen

Knowing God

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, at both services this morning.]

Luke 11:1-13
Recent polling shows that a large number of Americans have no religious affiliation at all and, though the number of those identifying themselves as atheists is small, that number too is growing.

My guess is that many people come to churches hoping to know God and to learn how to speak with Him, but leave feeling confused by the standing and the sitting, the hymns they don’t understand, and the sermons which fall into a dizzying display of indecipherable religious talk.

They want to know God and that they can have a connection to God. Truth is, we all do.

Jesus’ first followers, the disciples, felt the same way. That’s why, even though they didn’t completely understand that Jesus was God in the flesh until Jesus had died and risen again, in their hunger for God, they followed Jesus for three years.

That’s also why it’s no surprise that when they saw Jesus praying one day, they asked Him to teach them how to do it. Our gospel lesson for today, Luke 11:1-13 (page 597), tells us how Jesus responded.

First of all, Jesus taught them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. It presents a great pattern for prayer for those who want to know God. Let’s take a look at it.

“Our Father,” it begins. Already, we see that being a Christian isn’t about being religious. It’s about having a relationship.

God is our father and not an earthly father who, no matter how good or devoted, can let us down. God is the Father Who made us and stands ready to hear us whenever we call on Him.

The next three petitions remind us that everything is out of place in the world and in our lives if God isn’t given first place in our world and in our lives. And so, Jesus teaches us to pray: “Hallowed be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.”

For God’s Name to be hallowed means for it to be held as unique, special, set-apart, holy. God’s Name is not a sitcom punchline or a phrase for stupid people with limited vocabularies to use instead of meaningful speech. God’s Name is a precious gift He gives that allows us to call on Him, as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, for “prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” Here, we pray that God’s Name will be revered and used properly, not just by the whole world, but by us too.

God’s kingdom is what Jesus came to bring. He brought God’s kingdom into this dying world through His life, death, and resurrection. All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus for forgiveness and new life with God are part of God’s kingdom. They live under the reign of God. Here, we pray that God’s kingdom will invade every human life--including our own, so that all who hear that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish in hell, but have life with God forever!

To pray that God’s will be done is to pray exactly what Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion. Every human impulse within Jesus wanted to live and to avoid the suffering that awaited Him on the cross. But He knew that He had come into the world to die for sinners like you and me and offer us the life that only a resurrected Savior can offer. Jesus had to go to the cross to save us from sin and death. So, He told God the Father, "Not the easy way I prefer, Lord, but the hard way that will accomplish what You want accomplished." Now, you and I aren’t God. We can’t see what lies ahead the way Jesus, both God and man, could. But our human impulses also prefer the easy way. We’d rather go on sinning. (Because, let’s be honest, we often sin because the sin is fun or it’s easier than doing the right thing.) But we pray God’s will be done because we know that God is more interested in shaping our character to be more like Him and preparing us for eternity than He is in making things easier for us. We also pray God’s will be done because it’s better to suffer for a short time here on earth than to be forever separated from God because we were too impatient or too self-centered to evade the temptation to sin.

As I’ve pointed out before, it isn’t until the petition in verse 3--”Give us this day our daily bread”--that Jesus gets around to teaching us to pray for ourselves.

This is pretty counter-cultural! How often are we advised by pop culture or even by so-called friends to look out for ourselves instead of putting God or others ahead of ourselves?

A woman told me that after she’d shared with a friend that she and her husband were having disagreements on money and child-rearing, her friend said, “Better do what I did. Better get a divorce. You deserve to be happy.” “My friend,” the woman told me, “obviously had no concern about what might make God happy, or our children happy, or my husband happy, or, in the end, what might make happy.”

Jesus doesn't teach us to defer praying for ourselves because we ourselves aren’t important. Obviously, every human being is important. That’s why Jesus Christ died and rose for every human being who has ever lived or ever will live. That’s why He teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

But it’s only after we’ve learned to put God and His desire to reign over the whole world with His love at the top of our priorities, that we’re ready to pray this petition rightly. “Give us”--all of us, from the people in my family to the people in places like China, Syria, Afghanistan, and even Michigan--”our daily bread,” not the luxuries we want or to which the advertisers say we’re entitled, but the things we need.

We pray that all people will be provided with the things they need--nutritious food, clean water, medical care, basic justice. And this prayer is no pipe dream! God’s earth produces sufficient abundance for all six-billion of the planet’s inhabitants to have exactly what they need. The fact that so many go hungry or die unnecessarily is not a supply issue, it’s a share issue. That’s why our involvement with things like Lutheran Social Services, Lutheran World Relief, the Hocking Hills Inspire Shelter, the CHAP emergency food bank, World Vision, and Compassion International are so important. God gives daily bread and in praying this petition, we acknowledge that every good and perfect gift comes from God and we ask that God will help us share His bounties with others. The words of the hymn, Praise and Thanksgiving, are true: “Where all obey You, no one will hunger; In Your love’s sway You nourish the land.”

Jesus then teaches us, in verse 4, to pray that God will forgive our sins and to keep us from blocking out His forgiveness from our lives by refusing to forgive others.

Is there someone you need to forgive this morning? Someone who has wronged you or who you think has wronged you? You don’t need to make a grand show of it. You don’t have to smugly tell that other person, “I forgive you.”

In your heart right now, you can release others of the debt you feel that they owe to you. Just tell God, “Lord, I want to release so and so of my grudge. I want to release myself from it. In Your Name and by Your power, I forgive them.”

You can do that every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. And you need to do so because Jesus makes it clear that until we let go of that grudge, we can’t take hold of His grace, His forgiveness and His charity toward our sins and our shortcomings.

Finally, Jesus teaches His disciples--including us--to pray that God will steer us clear of temptation and that the evil one--the devil--won’t be able to get a toehold in our lives.

Now, Jesus knows that it may be hard for us to believe that God could care about our prayers. More than one person in the years I’ve been a pastor has told me, “I never pray. I just don’t want to bother God.”

In teaching us this prayer though, Jesus is saying, “God does care about you. You will never be a bother to the One Who made you and Who went to the cross for you!"

To underscore this fact, Jesus tells a little parable about a man who has a late-night visitor at his house and has nothing to feed the visitor. (You remember from last Sunday’s lessons how important hospitality is in the eyes of God.) Wanting to treat the visitor right, the man runs to you--his friend--to ask for something to set before the visitor. But it’s midnight. You live in first-century Judea, meaning that you sleep on the floor with your kids, and that getting up to answer the man’s knock or to fetch the food and drink he could serve his visitor will be a hassle, maybe even waking up the little ones and depriving you of a good night’s sleep. But, Jesus says in verse 9, even if you don’t want to help your friend out “because of his persistence,” you’ll fling off your covers, walk around the kids, open the front door, and get the things your friend requests.

Now, the careless reader will think that Jesus is saying that God is a reluctant friend who, if you’re persistent, will answer your prayers. But God isn’t reluctant to hear or answer our prayers. Look at how Jesus closes out His words for us in Luke 11 today, verse 13, after saying that even sinful, "evil" parents will give good things to their children: “If you then, being evil [that is, being sinners], know how to give good gifts...how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

The God we know in Jesus Christ isn’t a reluctant friend telling those who come to Him, “Go away!” He is our Father and He wants to answer when we call out to Him. That’s why Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...”

But here’s where Christian maturity and a willingness to defer to the greater wisdom and love of God comes in.

The first two or three-hundred times I read Jesus’ words in Luke 11:13, in which He promises to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask God, I wanted to scream, “But what if I don’t want the Holy Spirit?” What if I asked for my loved one to be healed of cancer, or that my friend’s marriage would be restored, or that the civil war in Syria would come to an end, or that, as I really have prayed, the 40% of my heart damaged by a heart attack would be restored? I’ve had thoughts like these. I still do.

But here’s the thing: The Holy Spirit is exactly Who we need when we face things like crosses, and griefs, and relational discord, and war. He is the Comforter, the One Who gives us the strength and courage we need to face the pains that come to us in this imperfect and fallen world.

The Holy Spirit is the very life of God. He’s the One Who gives us faith in the face of the darkness of this world and the One Who will raise us up to come face to face with Jesus after we’ve drawn our last breaths on this earth.

Every time you pray, ask, seek, and knock at the Father’s door, He will send the Holy Spirit to you. You will know God. You will know God is with you. You will know that God is for you. And you will be filled with the life of God that nothing and nobody can ever take from you.

People everywhere want to know God. Pray in Jesus’ Name and you will know Him as surely as you know your parents, your children, your spouses, or your friends. In fact, you will, in the power of the Holy Spirit, know God better than you know any of these people.

As we pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, we know that no matter what happens in this world, we have the Holy Spirit, Who will stand with us from here to kingdom come. Amen!