And please turn in your copies of God's Word to Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11, and we'll read this short section together. This really is part one of a two-part teaching of Jesus on the importance of prayer, and maybe even more than importance, but really the foundation and the motivation why we can and should and must pray to our Father. I'm beginning in verse 1. 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. 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 forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. Amen. Let's pray once again. Oh Lord, we ask that as we come to your word now that your name would be hallowed, that it would be hallowed in the preaching of your word, that it would be hallowed in our hearts as we listen well to what is preached. We ask that you would give us the strength we need even in resisting temptation through the grace of the word as it comes to us and again as we receive it and store it up in our hearts by faith. And so Lord, please do the very things that you have asked us to pray for as we ask in faith through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. Well, you've probably noticed that when you spend a lot of time with someone, you begin to recognize their patterns of behavior. And you may even begin to take on some of those habits yourself. Most couples who've been married for a very long time, it's not uncommon for them to be able to tell what one another is thinking just by perhaps the expression on their face or maybe by some other kind of body language or tone. Well, as the disciples have been spending now perhaps several years with Jesus, they've begun to pick up on one of his habits, the habit of prayer. And Luke, more than any of the other gospel writers, tends to draw attention to Jesus' regular pattern of prayer, and especially how prayer accompanies all of the key events of his life and ministry. In chapter 3, Jesus prayed at his baptism, which coincided with his receiving of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God declaring his pleasure with his son. In chapter six, when Jesus ascended the mountain to choose the 12 apostles, he prayed. In chapter nine, he prayed giving thanks as he fed the 5,000. Just prior to Jesus' confession of Jesus as the Christ, our Lord prayed. And Jesus prayed on the Mount of Transfiguration when again the Father affirmed the Son. And now here in chapter 11, we find Jesus once again praying, seeing their Lord pray and constantly communing with the Father, well, this has whet the appetites of the disciples for prayer. And so on this occasion, after Jesus finishes praying, one of his disciples comes up to him and says, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. Well, it was a common practice in that day for rabbis and teachers to provide their followers with a kind of a set form of prayer. Apparently, John had done this for his disciples. Well, now the disciples who are close to Jesus are asking him for this same thing. And so Jesus teaches them to pray using this pattern of words that has come to be called affectionately by the church as the Lord's Prayer. It's the Lord's Prayer because it's given by the Lord to his disciples. But really, it's our prayer because it's been given for us to pray. And it is not only given to shape the words of our prayers, but rather its themes are to be internalized within us so that what flows out of us is prayers of faith that are shaped by these themes that Christ has provided. Now probably if there is one area of the Christian life that we all wish we could be more faithful and more disciplined in, it's probably the area of prayer. Like the disciples, we desire prayer. want to follow Jesus' examples, his example. But like the disciples, we also struggle, don't we, with prayer. For most of us, our challenge with prayer isn't that we don't know what to say, we don't know how to pray, but rather we struggle with perhaps feeling motivated to pray. Not only that, but our sinful hearts are very good at churning up excuses not to pray. Like, I don't really feel like praying. Or I'm too busy to pray. Just don't have time for that. Or perhaps, I feel like a hypocrite when I pray because I'm a sinner after all. Or even, why pray? Why do I need to pray? Well, I know that each of these excuses crop up in my own heart and mind from time to time. And I'm sure I'm not the only one here. But how do we move from that place of prayerlessness to pray? Probably many of us have had the experience of sitting under sermons. Or we've read books that tend to verbally beat our consciences for not praying enough. And then we come away from those things, certainly with the duty of prayer impressed upon us, and we feel bad for a time. And so maybe for a day or two, or maybe a week at most, we find ourselves active in prayer. But then it tends to fade away, doesn't it? Being moved by fear and guilt to prayer is like trying to light a fire with paper and twigs. It'll burn bright for a moment, but it will very soon go out. Instead, what we need is to have our souls warmed to prayer and kept warm by the long burning logs of grace. Grace is the best motivation for the Christian. And here, Jesus sets before us a prayer that not only serves as our pattern, but does itself provide us with the underlying grace with which we can approach God in prayer. Well, the way I've chosen to preach this text is by seeing how the Lord's Prayer graciously silences all of our most common excuses for not praying. And it does so by showing us the privileges and the benefits that are ours through prayer. Well, first, one of the most common excuses we make to not pray is Well, I just don't feel like it. I don't desire prayer. And if you've ever been given a task or you've ever had to do something that you just don't have a desire for, your heart isn't in, well, it's very hard to find yourself pulling, you know, to pull yourself away from other things that are easier and more convenient to do that thing that you don't really desire. Well, if that's the case with us, if our hearts are cold to prayer, how can they be warmed? Well, as we consider the many prayers of the saints throughout the Bible. One thing that we immediately notice is how all of those prayers are grounded in the truth of who God is and in what he has done for his people. This is the heavy, slow-burning log that not only gives light but also gives long-lasting warmth and warms the faith of the believer and builds in him or her that desire and that hunger for communion with God. For example, in his letter to the Philippians, right after the greeting, Paul launches into a prayer that's built upon the foundation of their mutual partnership in the gospel, and in the promise that God will bring to completion the good work which he started in them. In Ephesians chapter one, Paul's prayer is motivated by God's sovereign grace in election, the election of dead sinners, calling them to himself from death to life. Prayer must always begin with the praise of God for who he is and for what he has done for his people, which is the very thing that our Lord teaches us. Jesus says, when you pray, say, Father, or as Matthew's version says, Our Father. Just to note that Luke's version of the prayer is slightly shorter and there are some slight differences between Matthew's version and Luke's version, but as you'll see, all of the themes are identical. It's all the same. Jesus teaches there in Matthew and here in Luke that we can address God as Father. I know if you've been a Christian for any length of time, you have addressed God as Father. And you've heard many others many times address God as Father. But what's important is that even as we regularly pray in this way, as we should, that this title of Father never becomes old hat to us. We're familiar with it, we use it all the time, but it never becomes too familiar in that sense. For who are we to call God Father? In the Old Testament, certainly God revealed himself as a father to Israel. Deuteronomy 32.6, is not the Lord your father who created you and made you and established you? Isaiah 63.16, you, O Lord, are our father, our redeemer from of old is your name. So the identification of God as the father of his people is not absent from the Old Testament. And yet, you don't really find many prayers that are addressed to God this way, addressing him as father. This is a newness that Jesus, the son of God, brings to his new covenant people. In just the last chapter, we got to listen to one of Jesus' prayers, didn't we, as he prayed to the Father, using that title of Father five times in his prayer. And his prayer was what? Well, it was focused on his joy, that he had been given the mission of revealing the Father to his own people. How fitting then that the one who reveals the Father now teaches us to pray, saying, Father, The only way we come to the Father is through the Son, God in the flesh, mediating for us. What right do we have to call God Father? Well, by nature, we have no right, none at all. No reason to call God Father. Remember who we were. We were not God's children. We were, as Paul says, children of wrath, sons of disobedience. But by God's electing love and grace, he took those who were his enemies, and he adopted us, and he made us his children into his family. The Apostle John writes that when we believe in Jesus Christ, God gives us the right to be called children of God. God, you see, is not the father of all. He is the creator of all, but he is the father of those who are adopted into his family. And therefore, the word father is a gospel term. It's something that reminds us of God's love for us as our heavenly father, the one who has redeemed us by the sending of his son into the world, the one who gives us the Holy Spirit so that we are united to Christ by faith. And this really is foundational. As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it in question and answer 120, why did Christ command us to call God our father? answer, to awaken in us a childlike reverence and trust that through Christ, God has become our father, and that just as our parents do not refuse us the things of this life, even less will God our father refuse to give us what we ask in faith. So when we pray, we have the great privilege of addressing God as our father, who like a loving father has brought us near to himself. And yet, his nearness to us has not diminished his own glory and separation, if you will, and holiness and majesty. Bringing us near, he doesn't lower the bar of his own holiness. No, rather, through bringing us near, he further glorifies himself. We see that in the next petition, as Jesus teaches us to pray, hallowed be your name. In scripture, the name of God is more than just his title, just something that he's called. No, his name is who he is, and who he is is his name. And thus, for God's name to be hallowed is for God himself to be hallowed. This is a prayer that God's name would be revered and honored and glorified and praised, certainly by all creation, but especially by his saints, those who are baptized with the triune name. As our Lord teaches us to pray, he's very deliberate, isn't he, in his ordering of our petitions. Prayer should not begin with the list of things that I want God to do for me. You know, it's so easy to go to God that way in prayer, where we come to him with our laundry list or our grocery list of all the things we want done, he needs to do when we want him to do them. You know, we approach God as if he were a genie or a gopher or a vending machine or something like that, where we have demands and it's his job to grant those demands. But God is none of those things. God isn't karma. God isn't a force of energy or a force of nature or some power that we tap into in order to make the world work the way we want it to work. That's how the occult works. That's how magic works. I change things in the divine realm so that things in the natural realm changes. That's not how God works. And that's not how we relate to God. We don't go to Him demanding what we want to get done. No, we go to prayer communing with a person whom we reverently call Father and whose name we hallow. Let us remember this in our prayers. And as you call God Father, remember what it means for that to happen. Remember what it cost Him for you to call Him Father. The Father had to send the Son into the world as a sin-atoning sacrifice, so that you, though a rebel, a sinner, a filthy wretch, one who was at one time far off, has now been brought near, so that you can go to Him and lovingly call Him Father. When you feel your heart is cold to prayer, perhaps even cold to God, the solution is not to avoid prayer, rather it's to go to Him. and say, Father, hallowed be your name. And as you do that, this prayer that Jesus gives you will redirect the focus of your heart, that focus that is so prone to turn inwards towards self and away from God. Well, through this prayer, your faith will be redirected towards the praise of God himself, the one for whom you were created to glorify and to enjoy forever. Well, a second excuse that we often make when we neglect prayer is that we're too busy. We just don't have the time to pray. And certainly it's true, depending on your stage of life, you may have a lot going on. You may be busier than the person in the pew sitting next to you or whatever person you might want to compare yourself with. With work, with commuting back and forth, with serving in the church, with caring for children, all the laundry that has to be done in the home, making meals. If you're a college student or a school student, all of your homework and assignments and deadlines. And it can be easy to just look at all of that and say, I just don't have the time. There's not enough hours in the day. Well, in these next two petitions, Jesus shows us why prayer is a priority for the Christian. The petition that follows, hallowed be your name, is your kingdom come. Throughout his gospel, Luke has been showing us this, hasn't he? The coming of Christ's kingdom. In Luke 4, Jesus proclaimed the arrival of his kingdom as that great year of jubilee in which the Messiah had come. And he would bring with him life and health and salvation where the blind would have sight restored, the lame would walk, prisoners would be set free. And greatest of all, sins would be forgiven and peace proclaimed on God's people. And Christ is still building his kingdom today. His kingdom is already and not yet. It is here and it is still arriving. It is still expanding and advancing throughout the world. And so by praying, thy kingdom come, we're praying for Christ's ongoing work by the Spirit and through his church in saving the lost, in subduing us to himself, and in destroying the kingdom of darkness. It's easy to forget that. I think so often we fail to pray because we lack this kingdom awareness and this kingdom mindedness. Our minds have the tendency to become so this worldly focused. Not that we shouldn't be preoccupied with the news and with different factors that are happening in the world, but we can allow ourselves to treat that as more real than what's happening in the spiritual realm. And so we become so this worldly focused to the exclusion of what God is doing in the world, both seen and unseen. But here, Jesus teaches us through this prayer that we should have our desires reoriented so that they focus on the advance of his kingdom. In the ordering of the prayer then, Jesus begins with praise for God, our Father hallowed be your name, and then the petition for his kingdom. What this teaches us is that however we choose to order our days and our lives, however we choose to prioritize things, prayer should be a priority, and especially prayer for God to advance his kingdom. If we are too busy to pray for Christ's kingdom, well then the problem isn't that God hasn't given us enough hours in the day. The problem isn't that we just have too much going on. No, the problem is that we haven't made that a priority in our lives. And we need to. We need to. Because if we don't have time for this, the problem is us. And so we follow Jesus' prayer and we pray this honestly as we make praying for his kingdom a priority. Well, the other reason why our excuse for not having time to pray falls flat on its face is because time itself is a gift from God to us. And Jesus shows us that as well. After praying for God's kingdom, We then bring our petitions saying, give us each day our daily bread. With this petition, Jesus reminds us that even the most basic and essential things of human existence come from his hand. I think that because many of us are not involved in a very direct way with food production, I mean, some of us are, most of us are not, with food production and processing and preservation and those kinds of things, it's very easy for us to think that, well, God hasn't given me my daily bread, my food. I got that from Walmart or Haldi or wherever. God doesn't give me those things. Maybe we don't say that, but The very fact that we fail to pray for our daily bread would indicate that we think that, in effect. But what this prayer does is it reminds us that everything, down to the cereal that you fill your bowl with in the morning, or the glass of water that you drink with your lunch, whatever the case may be, that it's all given as a gift from God's hand. Yes, you worked hard this week for your weekly wage. You earned, perhaps to some extent, your place in your workplace. You worked hard to get that promotion so you could have the resources to provide X, Y, and Z. And yet, who gave the rain to the farmer? Who kept the livestock from disease and illness? Who holds the universe in his hands? Yes, you may have worked hard, Who gave you that job? Who kept you from perhaps an illness that might keep you from working? All that we have is from his hand, and we contribute nothing to him. Paul, before the Areopagus in Acts 17 says this. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind. life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God. Beloved, how for a moment could we even think that we don't have time to pray to God and commune with Him, since every moment and every breath that we take has been given to us as a gift from His hand. As Paul even says, time is in His hands. Time that's allotted is from Him. You know, sometimes our hearts sinfully lead us to think that we need to preserve our own kingdoms and we selfishly desire to make sure that his kingdom doesn't encroach too much on our time. We'll give him so much, but we want to maintain the boundaries of our own little personal kingdom and especially our time in a very time-conscious world. But here, we're reminded that the prayer of faith is one that reorients life around the prayer for his kingdom, and it's one that recognizes that all that we have is from his hand. He is worthy of our time, even our time taken to pray. Now I think sometimes we can feel a little bit overwhelmed by the call to pray. Perhaps some people are especially evangelistic in their efforts of calling people to pray, and you hear stories of perhaps Puritans or whomever who get up at 4 a.m. and pray for 10 hours or something like that. And when we hear that, well, that's the kind of prayer we're called to, well, it's no wonder why we say, perhaps, I don't have time for that. God hasn't given us 10 hours in a day to pray. That's reality. In the evangelical and charismatic tradition that I was raised in, the kinds of prayer that you were called to was these kind of hours and hours of prayer. And that's what it was to be pious. And if you didn't pray that long, well, you may as well not pray at all, was the attitude. But the reality is that prayer doesn't have to be long in that sense. How long does it take to pray the Lord's Prayer? A couple of seconds. And when you take all of those categories and you fill them out, okay, I'm praying, thy kingdom come, I'm praying for the local church, what God is doing here, I'm praying for missionaries, sister churches, and when you fill all those categories out, prayer takes minutes. The point isn't how long you can last on your knees before they buckle, rather the call to prayer is, a call to a continual life of prayer, where we're continuing to go before the Father in prayer, where yes, we're carving out times for prayer in our lives, but then even in the moment where something happens unforeseen, or a moment of joy where we want to give grace to the Lord, where prayer is a response to all that is happening in life. And so rather than worrying that Have I prayed long enough? Is God pleased with my prayer? Instead, we should simply be called to faithfulness and consistency and regularly going before the Father. Well, as you think of your average week, where does prayer fit in? Where does corporate prayer fit in? Where does private prayer fit in? Where do those moments of unplanned prayer fit in? So pray, beloved, dependent upon him, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Well, a third reason we give for not praying is that sometimes, well, we feel like hypocrites. You know, maybe that week, or that day or that hour, you haven't hallowed God's name with your life, the way you've conducted yourself before him and before others. Maybe you've sinned in a kind of a way that leaves you feeling sort of empty and icky. And maybe you have this genuine feeling that now I can't go to God in prayer. Maybe before I could have motivated myself to pray, but now certainly after sinning I can't go to him. I'm a sinner, he's holy. If I pray now I would just be a hypocrite. Well in this next section, Jesus, next petition, Jesus teaches us that we not only approach God as his children, we also approach him as sinners. The Lord's prayer, as one person has said, is a sinner's prayer. When we come to God, he expects this side of the fall and pre-glory that we have sinned and that we need to ask for forgiveness and mercy, that we need the cleansing and assurance that comes through the confession of our sins. You know, at times, perhaps we feel like, well, I must have, I have to have a very good week before I come to God, or a very good day, or a very good last hour. But here, we're reminded that we go to God even when we do sin. Jesus teaches us in this prayer, in this petition, what the Apostle John says in his letter. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is how we must come before the Father, not confident in our own weaks or despairing of our own weaks, certainly repentant and penitent of those things, but not confident in our own righteousness. Instead, we must come as sinners in need of mercy and grace. And this is something we need to acknowledge every day. Just as we ask for daily provision, so we must ask for daily pardon. And when we pray, forgive us our debts, we're asking for that cleansing and to be reminded of the promise that Christ forgives us through his blood with which we have been washed. He is the one who has provided our righteous standing before the Father. In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, question 117, when we pray, we must rest on this unshakable foundation. Even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord. That is what God promised us in his word. The Israelites had to go to temples to sacrifice animals, but Christ is our once-for-all sacrifice, and we can pray to him, confessing our sins, receiving the assurance of forgiveness. Let this be the pattern, not only of your life, but of your day-to-day existence in communion with God, post fall and as you await glory. And as we are forgiven much, we also forgive. That's the next line. Look at verse four. And forgive us our sins as for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Well, the wording here is interesting, isn't it? You know, it doesn't say forgive us because we forgive others or if we forgive others. It isn't setting up a kind of a quid pro quo where we'll do our parts and then God will do his part. Rather, the wording assumes that because we are a forgiven people, that thus we are also a forgiving people. Humility, grace, and forgiveness must mark out those who are the people of God. And so then, let us be quick both to confess our own sins to others, especially to God, and let us be quick to forgive others, even as we have been forgiven so much. Well, fourthly and finally, another common reason we fail to pray is because we fail to realize how much we need prayer. At times, we can have this mistaken notion, can't we, that we don't need to pray, or maybe we've had a good week and we look back and we think, well, actually, I didn't even pray that much and I had a great week, so do I really need to pray? In the final petition, Jesus teaches us that not only are we dependent on God for our physical needs, like our daily bread, but we're also dependent upon him for all and any spiritual strengths. In the final petition, Jesus teaches us to pray and lead us not into temptation. And by this, Jesus is calling us to seek God's help in resisting the temptation of the devil. The Greek word here for temptation, depending on the context, sometimes means more like testing, and then other times is more like temptation. So sometimes it's actually a word that's applied to God in the sense of testing, and other times it's applied to Satan in terms of temptation. In the sense of testing, it's the way God tests us. In other words, in a way of attempting to learn the true nature or character of something through a trial or test. When it's applied to Satan, it's an attempt to make someone do something wrong, a temptation or an enticement. The church father, Tertullian, explains the petition this way. God tests our faith to prove our faith. Satan tests our faith to seek to weaken it. You might think of Abraham and his faith being tested, or you might think of Job and his being tested. How can both Satan and God test Job's faith? Well, with God, it's testing to prove it. With Satan, it's testing to disprove, as it were, And Calvin comments on this then. We conclude from this petition that we have no strength for living a holy life except so far as we obtain it from God. Whoever implores the assistance of God to overcome temptations acknowledges that unless God deliver him, he will be constantly falling. Sometimes the reason we fall into sin, whether momentary sin or even patterns of sin, is because we have failed to pray. We have failed to ask God for the strength we need to resist the devil's temptation. As Jesus says, you have not because you ask not. But what a comfort to know that God is ready to supply us with the spiritual strength we need to resist the devil. In the face of temptation, he supplies us with a way of escape. He gives us the grace we need, which flows from the one who never sins. who never failed when tested by Satan in the wilderness, who never failed when tested by many of Satan's minions throughout his life and ministry, the one who was always obedient, always faithful. And he gives us grace, not only the grace of forgiveness, but also this grace of sanctification and perseverance in order that we might, in his strength, resist the devil. and honor him with our lives. And he gives us this as we ask for it in prayer. Well, if prayer is one of the greatest expressions of our faith, if through prayer God does all of these things, he hallows his name, he gives us our daily bread, he gives us strength to resist the devil, he reminds us of the gospel that we're forgiven of our sins, doesn't it make sense that the world of flesh and the devil would attack prayer above many other things? Oh, beloved, when those excuses or doubts about prayer come into your mind, resist the devil the way our Lord resisted the devil, by quoting back to him and to ourselves the word of our Lord. Answer these objections and these excuses with the Lord's prayer. Memorize this prayer if you haven't already. When you feel like, well, I don't know what to pray, take this prayer and fill out the petitions, and then it will become very easy to have many things to pray about. and then go to him in prayer. Though we often feel like we don't know what to pray or we don't sound eloquent enough in prayer. We falter in our prayers. We feel we perhaps don't spend enough time in prayer. Beloved, put all of those things aside. remembering that you have the Holy Spirit who enables you to cry out to him. Know that you have a mediator, the one who has given you the right to call God Father, the one who has never ceased or faltered in his prayers for you. And know that you have a father who isn't standing in heaven with a scorecard to rate how eloquent your prayers are. He isn't a father who's looking at his watch or his calendar to wonder, well, when was the last time you were here? No, he is a father. whom we approach boldly and confidently through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. Jesus has taught us to pray. Jesus has given us every reason why we must pray. So then, let us pray. our Father in heaven, we thank you for your great love for us in making us sinners and rebels into sons and daughters. Lord, you have given us in prayer not a burdensome duty, Even as Christ has called us to himself, come to me those who are weak and weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My commandments are not a burden for you. And Lord, as we look at prayer, how foolish we are to think that prayer is a burden. What a gift you have given from your hand. Lord, help us, and by your spirit, answer the sinful objections of our hearts. Make us into praying people. that you might be glorified, that your name might be hallowed, and that we might receive all of the bounty of goodness that you have for us in Christ Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen.