Learning Prayer from Jesus

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Well, I’ve been known periodically to hold a training conference where I teach the same material over and over, and we usually host it at my house, in the kitchen, my older two kids and me. Y’all thought I was going to talk about some theological training, didn’t you? Part of being a parent is always teaching. I host these training seminars on how to clean a pan. Now, there’s more than one right way to clean a pan, but there are a whole lot more wrong ways to clean a pan. And I’ve taken over doing that because I get even more frustrated than my wife does about pulling pans out of the cabinet, and they are dirty. So, I’m explaining, you know, you can’t just use the brush because you’re not getting all the grime off of there. You’ve got to use the sponge. You’ve got to wipe it down. But you do need that brush. You’ve got to get around the rivets. Really, you’ve got to do all of this.

And then you run your hand over it to make sure there’s nothing stuck to it that you can feel. And how do you clean Dad’s cast iron? You don’t. That’s the right answer. You don’t. Not until you’re 25. I might trust you with it then. It’s important, not only for our health now, but for their life in the future, that they know how to do things like clean a pan. When there’s something important that needs to be done, we need to be taught. Sometimes you recognize that something is important, and there’s the potential here for failure. So, you actually say to somebody else, I want you to teach me this, or I want you to walk me through it. I learned much of what I know how to do with cars, building things, and working outside from my grandfather. And either him saying, Let me show you how to do this, or me saying, Would you show me how to do this?

Even just Thursday, I was looking at the possibility of needing to paint a vehicle, and I know nothing about painting a vehicle. I called Huey and said, Tell me about this. I need you to, I’m not, first of all, when I call, I’m not asking you to do it, so you can relax. sometimes when you get that call hey tell me about that people are wanting you to do something now I just need you to tell me what the pitfalls are here what I should do what I shouldn’t do because there’s a potential I could mess something up here teach me because it’s important we do that with God’s word we recognize the need to be taught that’s part of the reason for being here is to come and be taught I need to be taught as well that’s why I sit on sit in on Sunday school classes. That’s why I listen to preaching podcasts.

We all need to be taught, and the more important the subject is, the more important the subject is, the more important it is that we seek out that teaching. And I suspect that’s what was on the disciples’ minds when they came to Jesus and asked Him, Teach us to pray. We’ve been studying piece by piece through the book of Luke for the better part of this year, and we’re now up to chapter 11. And that’s what we’re going to look at today, the beginning of this conversation, where the disciples come to Jesus and say, Teach us to pray. Teach us to pray. So, if you haven’t already, please turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 11. And we’re going to see this conversation, the beginning part of this conversation, which we’ll follow up with, Lord willing, next week, on Jesus teaching them about prayer in response to their request.

And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, and if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 11, that’s all right. It’ll be on the screen for you where you can follow along. And before I start reading it, I will point out that you may notice based on, depending on what translation you’re looking at, the wording may be a little bit different. It may be different from what I read and what’s on the screen, especially if you come on Sunday nights. I normally make a handout that shows the comparisons of those things and shares where the Gospels line up together. I’ve prepared those for this morning since we don’t have tonight. You don’t have to be part of our Sunday night class to pick one of those up, but they are out there if you want one, and it’ll walk you through. Oh, this manuscript says this, and this one has this.

That’s why different translations say different things, so don’t just think, I forgot how to read and left out parts of what I’m looking at. Luke chapter 11, starting in verse 1, it says, It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. And you may be seated. As you read that, you may think, well, that sounds different from how I remember it. I memorized it too as a child, the Lord’s Prayer or our Father, depending on what church context you grew up in. And that comes from Matthew.

It’s already a little bit different because they were two different situations. Some variation of this model prayer was taught a couple of different times by Jesus. In the Matthew version, he is standing there as part of the Sermon on the Mount, and he’s teaching his followers about a variety of topics, about what it means to live and represent God’s kingdom, and he begins to teach them this model prayer. And it is just a model. It is not something that all our prayers have to be recitation of this. It’s a model for us. It’s an example. It’s a pattern. And Jesus gives them this pattern. What we’re looking at in Luke is a completely separate incident. Quite a bit later in Jesus’ ministry, where the disciples have actually come to him. In Matthew, when Jesus does this, he’s just teaching, and he’s setting the agenda. In Luke, in this later incident, Jesus is just sitting there praying.

And the disciples see this, and they say, Lord, teach us to pray. And so, Jesus gives them a variation on this model prayer. Now, even though the lines are a little bit different from what it says in Matthew, and it’s not a contradiction. Again, it’s two different events. If you tell a story, and then I ask you the next day to repeat the story, some of the details are going to be different; you’re going to include some details the second time that you didn’t include the first time, and vice versa, but the gist of the story is going to be the same. That’s what’s going on here. Jesus gives them this prayer in response to them, because even though he’s taught on prayer, and they’ve seen him model prayer for them, sometimes we just need a reminder. Do you usually only have to be told things one time? I know I usually have to be told more than once.

I know growing up, our parents said, How many times should I have to tell you? Just once. But we get old and our memories fail us. And as a matter of fact, we had a situation yesterday where Charla said, Did you tell one of the kids they could do such and such? And I said, I don’t remember even discussing that. Like an hour before, apparently, I had. I have no recollection of this conversation, but we have cameras in our house. Apparently, I can remember the combination to my locker from high school. But I can’t remember a conversation an hour ago. I’m afraid I might need to see a doctor about that. But we have to be reminded. Very rarely did Jesus tell his followers something once, and they went, Ah, we got it. To the point that Jesus would also say, yeah, you got it. No, they had to be told multiple times. And so even though he’s taught on prayer, they still need that refresher course.

And so, they come to him and say, Would you teach us how to pray? Because they’re watching him do it. Lord, teach us how to pray. And he goes through this model prayer. And he goes on, starting in verse 5, to teach more on prayer after this model. Like I said, we’ll get into that hopefully next week. But I want us just to focus in on this model prayer this morning and some things that we can learn from it in order to help our prayer life. And a strong prayer life, a faithful prayer life, is so vitally important in the life of a believer. I heard one evangelist say that prayer was not the preparation for his work. Prayer was the work. That he was out trying to win thousands of people to Christ. And you’d think, oh, you pray in preparation for going and doing that. No, the real work is you being there on your knees before God, praying, and then you walk out and just see what God does.

And for each of us, that’s true. Whatever God has called you as his child, as a believer in him through Jesus Christ, whatever he’s called you to do, our prayer is not preparation for that. Our prayer is the actual work and then standing back to see what God does through us. We cannot have a healthy walk with him without prayer. We cannot represent him well without prayer. Prayer is, I am scared to death, I will tell you. I’m scared to death to preach this message because prayer is so vitally important to our Christian life that the last two times I have preached a series of messages on prayer, my entire life has fallen apart because Satan doesn’t like it. And so, I’m scared to death to be talking to you about prayer today, but I know God is bigger than Satan. What did we learn from VeggieTales? God is bigger than the boogeyman. So, I’m going to trust God and I’m going to pray about it.

But we need to learn some things that we can apply to our prayer life in order to be as strong in our walk with the Lord as we ought to be. The first thing that we see in this passage is that the first thing that’s important here about prayer is that prayer helps us to become more like Jesus. The goal of our Christian life is to be more like Jesus. I don’t care how many people you have influenced. I don’t care what you’ve done and what you’ve built. If you’re not becoming like Jesus, you’re not doing the Christian life right. That is His goal for us. That is what He has destined us to. Romans 8 says, whom He did foreknow, He did also predestine to be conformed to the image of His Son. His plan for us is to be more like Jesus, and that’s what the Holy Spirit is doing in us. And part of being like Jesus is going to the Father in prayer.

These people who are asking Jesus, Would you teach us to pray? They’re the ones that are following Him around. He is their rabbi, and they are patterning their lives after Him. They’re trying to learn from Him, trying to serve Him, learning at His feet, as we talked about last week with Mary, and prayer had to be a central part of that, because they see Him in the midst of this work, verse 1 tells us He’s just there praying. He’s not putting on a show. He’s not putting on a prayer lecture at this point. We’re not having a big conference on prayer. He’s just there praying. He’s just there spending time with the Father, conversing with the Father, and they see this. They see Him in a certain place, and they recognize that if they’re going to follow him, that’s something they’ve got to do as well. You and I cannot be like Jesus if we refuse to do what he did.

Let me say that again, because when I realized that, that kind of hit me hard. We cannot be like Jesus if we refuse to do what he did. Now, to the extent that we’re able, we have a different nature from Jesus. He’s God in human flesh. We can’t walk on water unless He enables it and He tells us to, and then don’t take your eyes off of Him. We can’t die on the cross for anybody’s sins. I can’t pay the penalty for anybody’s sins. But to the extent that we are actually capable of doing it, we cannot be like Jesus if we refuse to do what He did. And one of those things was prayer. Prayer was one of the most common themes of His life. As a matter of fact, it was a regular occurrence. It was a daily occurrence, but especially as he was about to take another big step, there would be prolonged periods of prayer that the disciples would find Jesus in.

Sometimes he would go away to spend an extended time in prayer. And something that always strikes me when we look at passages like this is if Jesus needed to pray. what would give me the idea that I don’t we get so busy that we just think oh I don’t have time we talked about that some last week I think with the idea of slowing down following Mary’s example instead of Martha’s that if we make our time with the Lord something that oh I’ll do it when I get a chance then we’ll chase that chance all day and we’ll fill in the day with other things. Prayer has to be the priority, or it just won’t happen.

And if Jesus, who is actually the infinite eternal God of this entire universe, who created everything out of nothing by just the words of His mouth, if He’s God the Son, if He needs to spend time in prayer to have that constant connection with God the Father, in order to go and do the things that he was supposed to do. It boggles the mind that you and I think that we can go through one day of serving him and not need that same thing. If we’re going to follow his example, there needs to be that prayer. And they recognize that, and so that’s why they see him praying, and they want to do that just the same way that he does. Following his example and submitting to his authority, it says, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.

It was a pretty common thing, evidently, back in that day that, you know, each rabbi would have his followers, his students, the people who would come and follow him and want to be like him and learn from him. And it was a common occurrence that these rabbis would write their own prayers that they would use and that they would teach to their followers. It’s not a bad thing to have a written prayer. It depends on what the content of it is. And as long as you pray it with sincerity, I mean, we can even pray the Lord’s Prayer and not mean it, just go through the words. That does nothing. It’s okay to recite a prayer if you, first of all, if it’s in line with Scripture, and if you mean it sincerely. But these rabbis, they would write their prayers, they would teach them to their disciples, and their disciples would pattern their prayer life after the rabbi.

when they come to Jesus they’re saying and say teach us to pray like you do they are submitting to his authority and saying we want to be like you down to the way we pray because they figured out a long time ago that Jesus had something they didn’t have and they were willing to yield themselves to it wasn’t oh we’ve seen you pray we want to do that too so we’re going to go and figure it out on our own no we want to learn to pray exactly how you do and so when we look at Jesus as the example of how to pray, we’re submitting to His authority, praying like Jesus. Praying like Jesus is one of the ways we identify Him and acknowledge Him as our master, and then we get to His answer, and there are a couple of very important things that this pattern teaches us. Again, I mentioned at the outset of this, this is not the only thing we’re supposed to pray.

Every prayer doesn’t have to be our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It’s not wrong to pray that if you mean it. But every prayer is not limited to that. This is a pattern. This tells us some of the things that we ought to pray. This tells us some of the priorities that we ought to pray. And I love that when Jesus prays, he teaches us to start out by addressing God. It’s not a, because prayer, prayer is not just to get what we want. The ultimate goal of prayer, more than anything, is to bring our heart in line with God’s heart and bring our will in line with His. And so, we ought to approach it from a, not a standpoint of, God, I’m going to come to you with a list of things, and if you could fill that list for me, I’d sure appreciate it. I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Instead, when we pray, and it’s fine to ask God for the things that we want and need.

He already knows we might as well admit it to Him. There’s nothing wrong with asking God for things. But that’s not the ultimate goal of prayer. And if we do it right, we may come to God with that list of things that we want. But as we’re praying, or things that we need, but as we’re praying, we begin to notice a shift taking place in our hearts. that we recognize that maybe that’s not exactly what I need after all. Or maybe the thing I want is not what I need. And maybe God begins to impress on our hearts something different, and so we begin to pray a different way. Has that ever happened to anybody else in here? Constantly go to God thinking, this is what I want, this is what I need. And as I’m praying, God, would you just fix this? And what I find is sometimes he’ll fix this, but more often than not, what he does is fixes my heart about this.

Because as I begin to pray, I recognize there’s an attitude here that’s not in line with his will. And prayer is there to bring our wills into line with his. And so, our prayer begins by recognizing the greatness of God. Even if we don’t start out with something like this, oh God, you’re so great. that is the attitude that we come to the very place of prayer with. Our prayer starts with that attitude of recognizing the greatness of God. Now, you may be in a situation of just, all you have time to pray is, Lord, help me. That’s fine. You don’t have to start out with the flowery, our Father who art in heaven, please help me. He knows who you’re talking to. But it’s the attitude that we come with, this is first thing, this is first priority, recognizing the greatness of God.

And if our hearts aren’t already there when we come to the place of prayer, then that’s where we need to start, is reminding ourselves how great He is. And it can be something as simple As before we get into the list of what’s on my mind, what’s on my heart, Lord, I just come to you this morning recognizing how awesome you are and how much you’ve blessed me that I don’t deserve, I haven’t earned the right to come before you at all. But just out of your own goodness, you even made it possible, and you tell me to come to your throne anyway. if we start our prayers with a recognition of God’s greatness whether it’s from our lips or already there in our hearts it’s going to set the stage for everything that happens next that’s why he says father hallowed be your name the greatness of God one of the things that we see just in that phrase right there hallowed means to be treated as holy.

God, His greatness, His holiness is so incomparable that even His name is holy. Even His name is to be treated as a holy thing. That’s the heart of our prayer life. But there’s something else unusual about the way that Jesus prayed. At that time, The Jews talked to the Father. He was referred to as the Father. But Jesus addressed him as my Father, or our Father, or just Father. Jesus addressed him in personal terms. Just calling him father like this was not something they did. And it speaks to the closeness of the relationship that God has invited us into. That God is not a, even though he could be in his greatness, he could be distant, and he could be unapproachable. He is not a distant, cold, unapproachable father. He is a father who loves us. who doesn’t owe us his time and his interest, but he loves us enough that he’s chosen to give it to us.

And so, when we come to God in prayer, recognizing his greatness, we’re recognizing that he’s great not only in who he is, but he’s great in what he’s done for us. And then he says, your kingdom come. Our prayers are supposed to be kingdom focused It’s very easy for them to become me focused What I want, what I need And again, there’s nothing wrong with those things That’s part of the discussion about the daily bread that we’ll get to God wants us to come to Him for those things but our priority is seeing God’s will to be done and for his rule to be realized everywhere. God’s already the king. He’s already the ruler. He’s already the sovereign Lord of this entire universe. He can’t get any more sovereign than he already is, but we’re praying for His greatness to be recognized by everyone. We want to see that kingdom expand in the hearts of men.

And so, we recognize His greatness, and we pray for Him to be glorified. And so, everything about prayer starts from this posture of bringing our wills into line with the Father. But then we come to the second part of this where our prayer acknowledges our dependence on God. We depend on Him for our daily provision. Give us this day our daily bread. We’re dependent on Him. There’s a lot of debate about what this phrase daily bread means. When Charla and I were in Santa Fe on our anniversary trip, she said, you know, I never just get to sit and read.

so while we’re on our trip I’d love to sit in a coffee shop and read a book do my bible study for I think it’s Janie’s bible study from Tuesdays I’d love to sit there and work on that and I said that’s fine we can take an afternoon and do that so we’re sitting in a coffee shop and she looks over at me and she says now when Jesus says give us this day our daily with Irenaeus that he’s talking about our daily provision, or he’s talking about, or Cyprian said the word of God, or do you think like Augustine meant the Lord’s Supper, and I’m going, Charla, I already married you. You don’t have to, you know, you don’t have to woo me. Say more things. I just fell in love with her all over again, okay? Kind of nerd out on these things. There’s this debate. What does he mean? I will say, I don’t think he meant the Lord’s Supper, because the disciples had no idea what that was going to be yet.

But as far, oh, are we talking about the spiritual things? Are we talking about the daily things? And some people say, oh, he can’t be talking about the daily, the stuff we need, the actual bread for that day because that’s not important enough to be included in this prayer. Excuse me, he tells us to come to him for our daily bread. He uses that example for a reason. So when he says, give us this day our daily bread, people argue unnecessarily. Is it what we need spiritually or is it what we need physically? Yes. Whatever we need. I don’t see why we have to make things so complicated sometimes. Have to argue back and forth, well, is it this need or is it that need? It’s our needs. Whatever we need. If you’re trying to figure out where your next meal is going to come from, you can go to Him about that.

If you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to pay the mortgage, you can go to Him about that. The mundane things of life, the things that don’t seem mundane to us, but it’s our everyday stuff about how we’re going to get by. He cares because He cares about you. The spiritual stuff as well. The emotional stuff. The stuff we can’t get over, the stuff we can’t get past. the stuff that’s dragging us down we can go to him whatever our daily bread is whatever need you have you can go to him he told us to cast all of our cares upon him because he cares for us we depend on him for daily provision the food we eat he provided it yes you may have worked and earned the money but who gave you the legs and the hands and the back and made them work to go out and do that? And at any moment, he could say, no, that’s the last breath, but he hasn’t. And that’s his provision. We depend on him daily.

We depend on him for spiritual restoration as well. Verse 4, forgive us our sins for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. I will tell you that the Bible is too clear in too many places that our salvation is the forgiveness of our sins it is by the grace of God through faith alone not anything that we earn or deserve so he is not here when he’s talking about forgiveness of sins he’s not talking about how we somehow earn our way into heaven by being forgiving or that if we fail to forgive or fail to forgive quickly enough, didn’t realize that was going to be a tongue twister, that somehow we’re going to forfeit our salvation. But we know that even if the relationship with God does not go away, that sometimes the fellowship with God can be broken. Have you ever gotten into a fight with your spouse?

I can’t remember the last one we had before this, but we kind of got mad at each other at Bucky’s. Because I was getting overwhelmed by the amount of people, and she mistook my being overwhelmed for judging how much she was spending. We were not happy with each other by the time we got out to the truck, or whatever we drove. Were we still married? Come on, I told you there are no trick questions here. Were we still married? Okay, yes. Check my ring. Yes, we’re still married. Did we need to have a talk when we got out there and get all that sorted out? Otherwise, it’s going to be an awkward ride home. That can happen in our relationship with God. We’ve sinned, we’ve messed up, even as a child, and we need forgiveness. We’re still His child, but there’s a problem in the relationship that needs to be dealt with. That fellowship is not what it ought to be.

And so we’re talking about asking that kind of forgiveness, not that we’ve stopped being His child and need that forgiveness salvation-wise, but we need that fellowship to be restored with Him. And that fellowship with God is not going to be right Until we’re willing to extend that same kind of forgiveness to others. That’s why he says, forgive us, for we ourselves forgive those who have trespassed against us. But we depend on him for spiritual restoration. When there’s a problem in our relationship with God, when that fellowship is broken, it’s never his fault. Because he’s never the one that moved away from it.

like I used to see my grandparents sit next to each other in the seat of the truck one of those old trucks that didn’t have the individual seat what are they called bench seating and she would always sit next to him and I heard somebody tell a story one time about a couple like that that the wife said we don’t we don’t even act like we like each other we don’t even sit next to each other in the truck anymore and he said I’m not the one who moved when there’s something wrong in the relationship with God he’s the same as he’s ever been if the relationship is not what it ought to be we’re the ones who moved and we’re the ones who need the forgiveness and we rely on him for that spiritual restoration and so every day we’re coming back to him saying Lord if I’ve messed up, or sometimes we know how we’ve messed up, forgive me of this. We always want a clean slate with the Lord.

And then verse 4 says, lead us not into temptation. We depend on Him for wisdom and protection. This is not the idea that God is tempting us. But you think about it like Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. He’s leading us, and sometimes we will walk through that valley of temptation with Him. He is not the one tempting us, but He’s the one protecting us from the temptation, and we’re asking that He will help us and preserve us so that we don’t fall into the temptation when it presents itself. We depend on Him for wisdom and for protection. We depend on Him for every single thing that we need. This is what Jesus taught us in prayer. So, we never come to God in an arrogant way, saying, this is what I need done and I need you to do it.

We come to Him recognizing that He’s the one in control, that every good thing we have comes from Him, that we are utterly dependent on Him, and every good thing we have is just a gift of His grace because He’s that good and because He’s that kind. We’re recognizing who God is, and if we will pray that way, it will change. It does not always immediately change our circumstances, but it will almost always change our attitude toward our circumstances. It will humble us, and it will help us see situations for what they are, it’ll help us see God for who He is. A God who loved us enough to deal with us at all. A God who loved us enough to save us when we didn’t deserve it. A God who looked at us in our sin and our inability to change our sin, saw us, and instead of writing us off, said, I will provide the sacrifice. And Jesus Christ came and took responsibility for my sins and yours.

And He paid the penalty. He took the punishment for our sins so that we could be forgiven. And not only that, but God took His righteousness and put it on us so that when we come to Christ, the Father no longer sees sinners, but He sees us as forgiven and clean and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He didn’t owe us any of that, and we didn’t do anything to deserve any of that. It was solely because He was good and kind.

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