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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
MATTHEW 6:9a
(Reading: Matthew 6:25-34; 6:9-13)
When You Pray You Say
Boys and girls…
You will soon have, or you have just had, school holidays.
Then perhaps you’re going away for a while.
Or was it last holidays you went away?
Now, thinking about going on holiday - usually you go there in a car, don’t you?
Maybe some of you are going in a plane this time, but you don’t do that every year do you?
Mostly you go in the car.
Mum and Dad pack the boot of the car, you get some games in the back seat ready, perhaps you’ve got your favourite soft toy with you, the car gets checked up - water, oil, battery, tyre pressure - and off you go!
Now, as you were there, in the back seat, Dad driving you along, which thoughts were in your mind?
Maybe you were looking forward to where you were going, imagining what things you could play with there.
You know a bit because either you’ve been there before or your friends have told you all about it.
Did you ever think, though, about whether you were actually going to get there?
Have you wondered, “Is my Dad going to be able to drive us there?”
No - never?
You didn’t have to?
You know that your Dad can do it - he’s big, he’s strong, and he’s done so much.
And there’s Mum there to push him - I mean, help him along a bit!
Congregation, it’s no wonder that in the model for prayer Jesus taught us there are the opening words, “Our Father…”
That’s what he is - isn’t he?
The One whom we trust - the One we absolutely know will keep us going on his way.
A story from the old Roman Empire pictures this.
There was a Roman Emperor enjoying a triumph.
And part of this triumph was the privilege of marching his troops through the streets of Rome, with all his captured trophies and his prisoners following behind.
There that Emperor came, at the head of his mighty army.
The streets are lined with cheering people.
Tall legionaries have to be there to keep them in place, there are so many.
At one point on the triumphal march, there was a little platform where the Empress and her family were sitting to watch the Emperor go by with all the pride of his victory.
On the platform with his mother, there was the Emperor’s youngest son, a little boy.
As the Emperor came close, the little boy jumped off the platform, burrowed through the crowd, tried to dodge between the legs of a legionary, and so run out onto the road to meet his Dad.
But quickly that soldier stopped him.
Picking him up in his arms, he said, “You can’t do that, boy.
“Do you know who’s in the chariot?
“That’s the Emperor.
“You can’t run out to his chariot.”
The boy laughed down.
“He may be your Emperor,” he said, “but he’s my father.”
You know - that’s exactly the way we feel toward God.
The same Great One who has all the might and the majesty, is “Our Father.”
It’s the most complete and utter contrast to the other religions of the time of Jesus.
They had so many gods who were always fighting among themselves.
Those gods were being busy simply for themselves.
Those gods had no time to help out mere men.
And on the rare occasion when they did they got cut down by the other gods.
What a difference when Jesus speaks of a heavenly “Father!”
The relationship Jesus had with the Heavenly Father, in prayer, is the same as we have.
God isn’t at a distance, in the words of one song, he is the God right in here, the God who does care.
Indeed, the original Greek begins the Lord’s Prayer with “Father.”
Congregation, later doesn’t the apostle Paul cry out the same with “Abba!”, which exactly means “Father!”
And not just once in his letter but twice he expresses this most intimate closeness with the Lord.
As one of those verses Galatians 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
Can you see, we are his children.
And children are those who have that child-like response to the Heavenly Father.
There is that instinctive trust.
We don’t have a choice, and we don’t want it!
Knowing we are his we keep looking to his way.
Jesus is right, “This is how you should pray.”
If we can’t there’s nothing which matters anyway!
It’s because we’ve been saved from that utter nothingness that we know we have to talk to him this way.
The early church used to pray the Lord’s Prayer with these words of introduction, “Grant that we may dare to call you Father, and to say, “Our Father”.”
They knew the paradox - the seeming contradiction - that fellowship with God in his prayer means sorrow for our sin, and yet joy in forgiveness and grace.
Prayer is a real struggle, but the struggle isn’t to persuade God.
It’s the struggle, dear believer, of being subdued by God, coming out of the dark and secret places in which we having been hiding the truth about ourselves, and laying the whole of our lives before him.
Then God isn’t our good mate, as though we can speak to him on equal terms - he is the Father in Heaven.
This is no easy-going, comfortable religion.
God is no soppy, over-indulgent, parent, who tolerantly shuts his eyes to all sins and faults and mistakes.
He we call “Father” is the ultimate One, the One we come before we reverence and adoration, and awe and wonder.
It’s as clear a difference as comparing the place he comes from, and the place we can’t get away from down here.
Nor is God “my” God either.
Prayer, though it should be done privately and personally too, following those earlier words of Jesus in Matthew 6, also means that recognising the fatherhood of God joins us as part of the brotherhood of believers.
You won’t find the words, I, me, my and mine in the Lord’s Prayer, precisely because in Jesus we say we, us, and ours.
Recognising that we’re not alone vertically as we begin our prayer also means knowing that we’re not alone horizontally either.
To know God and to make him known doesn’t belong to one person – it’s part of being in a whole family!
Congregation, when we pray, “Our Father…” not only do we confess we are his children, we also acknowledge that we share spiritual privileges with all the people of the LORD.
Realising that doesn’t take away, it only adds more to those precious privileges we receive.
It’s just the same as when a husband and wife show the depth of their marriage by speaking as “us” and “we”.
They don’t say “him and me!”
When things really break down they shout at each other - “you!”
And how much doesn’t a relationship breaking down show that difference.
And we’ll know the difference that makes in their other relationships too.
There’s no communion without union.
What we are with God makes the difference to how we are to other people - especially believers, those Paul describes in Galatians 6:10 are being of the “household of faith.”
Let me picture this further, congregation.
For when we draw into “Our Father…”, we draw apart from this world.
Someone once said to me that as our society leaves the way of the gospel more and more, so the church should stand apart from the world more and more.
It’s true - for our prayer too.
You see, the further this world goes away from God, the more the forces of fear and insecurity and hate take over.
In our society’s despair the suicide rate in Australia is more than nine a day - and you won’t hear that proclaimed quite the way the road toll is - and that’s two-thirds the amount of that.
And how many of those road accidents aren’t actually disguised suicides as well?
Congregation, consider what’s rating high on television; consider the popular look.
It’s all so dark and thin, it’s empty - but it’s trendy!
People have got every conceivable luxury, but they don’t know how they’re going to get through tomorrow - let alone today!
And when bad things happen, it’s “one of those days”, or “the karma’s not right,” and all there is, is despair.
It’s with us too!
Don’t think we’re immune.
That would be the ultimate cop-out.
But believer please pray, “Our Father in heaven.”
Do we see that more than any earthly father, those men who can be so inadequate, even to the point of violent abuse, there is a Person who is way beyond us all.
And calling God “Our Mother in heaven” won’t help that, much as some may feel this is the way to go.
Because that is still only people’s way to go - it doesn’t bring us to the One we should know.
I mean, people don’t stop getting married because some Hollywood stars have wrecked the many marriages they have had.
But what we all need to see is the way that marriage is meant to be - and the way fatherhood is meant to be.
It’s as we learn about God’s way for love that we truly start to love, and to live in a relationship.
Whether that’s for husbands and wives, or for parents and children.
Most of all, it’s as we realise that our earthly relationships are based on heavenly ones, that the power which is beyond is already with us right now.
Who better to prove this than God’s only begotten Son, Jesus himself?
Throughout his life he took the time, especially when it seemed he really didn’t have the time, to pray.
At the point in his life when all the rulers and the authorities and the powers of this dark world, and all the spiritual forces of evil - in fact, when the very gates of hell pounded upon his body and soul in Gethsemane, as his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, because of our sin, there he is - in prayer.
In the words of Mark 14:36 he prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.
“Remove this cup from me.
“Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Friend, there is a child.
There is One who has so completely given himself over to his Father that there’s only faith.
In that man’s moment of the most utter oppression where’s he looking?
No human love can help him now.
Where are his disciples?
They’re asleep - not able to bear with him for just one hour!
They don’t even know what to say to Jesus.
Congregation, that’s the tragedy of frustration which is so often there in human love.
You might really love someone, and yet you can’t help that person to achieve something or to stop them doing something.
Our love can be so intense - and quite helpless!
Some among us know that only too well with children who have left the way of the Lord.
It’s into this scene of human inadequacy - our sinfulness - that Jesus spoke the words about our heavenly Father that we read from the end of this sixth chapter of Matthew.
For there we see the overwhelming power of God’s love.
The One who so mightily and delicately cares for all of creation is especially concerned for us - his spiritual re-creation!
The words of another apostle, John, come so strongly to the fore, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
“And that’s what we are!” (1 Jn.3:1.)
Dear friend, do you sense that?
Are you gripped by the power of the fatherly love far beyond anything we can know here below?
As you lay yourself before him in prayer, do you leave it all there?
Have you gone from that communion in prayer expecting everything you’ll ever need from his almighty power?
It’s as Jesus said once, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
“Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
“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!” (Lk.11:11f.)
Congregation - how much more won’t we receive all that we’ll ever need, and much more in the world to come, from the Greatest Giver of all?
He is the Father God who sent his one and only Son to pay the price we could never every afford.
Exactly so that now we can be in him and with him, especially in prayer.
It’s this same power William Cowper described when he wrote the words, “And Satan trembles when he sees, The weakest saint upon his knees.”
You see, then we are children travelling in the car called life, trusting implicitly in the driver who’s the Father of us all.
No drunk or dangerous driving can destroy us on this road.
We’re going to get there, because this driver has always arrived.
And he’s not stopping now!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Our Father in heaven…
You who is so far above and beyond us, and yet is with us in your dear Son, our Saviour, do so work in us by your Spirit that we cannot help but talk and walk in communion with you.
We thank you that you have planned from long before to place us right here - right now.
You even worked all things so that we would be adopted by you, we who are not the natural children, we who were not born of human decision or a husband’s will, but we who were born of you.
Please make us always pursue the sweetest communion with you.
In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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