The Lords Prayer in Todays World.

Good morning. You guys sound like our church. I'm glad to be with you all here this morning and to see what God has for us.

But when we have a service, it takes engagement on all of our parts. Sometimes I see, sometimes I do this, I come to church and I'm passive.

I'm just kind of there to chill. I've had a rough week, I've had an exhausted week and I don't really engage. And so this morning, I want to be engaged and I want you all to be engaged as well.

I have a reading at the end of this that I'm going to try to plug in here at the end. So we'll kind of get to that at the end. I have, first of all, I want to just say thank you for, you guys have some amazing cooks here.

I was on a diet until I came here and it went out the window, it's gone. And then the second observation I have is the brother that had the devotional, what was your name?

Timothy. You know, God put a wife in my life because I'm not a dresser. She dresses me. So I don't know where that puts you, but anyway, we'll leave that where it's at.

I have some sons that are dressers too. They know how to dress. I just, I love it when my daughters and my wife just lays out everything for me. She just, you know, she's got everything figured out.

And a lot of memories coming back here and being with John and Ellie and their family. The boys, I was, Anthony, how old were you when you guys left?

You were probably what? Fifteen. Fifteen, yeah. Yeah. You were fifteen and Michael, you would have been like six. And yeah.

And your sister, how old would you have been? Yeah. Eleven. Yeah. I mean like, and these guys are just all grown up. And kind of a reflection on how old I am.

But we had a lot of good times there with John, Sunday nights getting together. And we loved the Lord and we loved to barbecue. And that was two kind of work.

Open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter six. I've got a short lesson here out of Matthew chapter six that I stumbled across in my studies here a couple years ago.

And it was life changing and transformative for me. We're going to look at the Lord's Prayer this morning. Now, how many of you are familiar with the Lord's Prayer? Yeah.

Yeah. How many of you can say the Lord's Prayer with your eyes closed and pretty? We all know the Lord's Prayer, right?

Let's stand and let's just say it. Let's just repeat it. Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. All right. Thank you. You may be seated. I've heard this prayer many times. I've read the prayer, quoted the prayer.

And it's a prayer that you know so well that I've discovered I don't know it. I know so much. I've heard it so many times. It's just like, ah, and I'm done.

Okay. Matthew chapter 6. This prayer, I'm going to give a little bit of history here. The Jewish people believed that when you prayed, you prayed with passion and intention.

Passion is with enthusiasm. Intention is, gets you done. Gets you through the process. I have a little story to tell you. About three years ago, I had this dream of doing a bike ride.

I like to ride bike occasionally, and I wanted to ride from, Brendan, what was the name of that town that we started at?

Close to that fort. What's that? In the Dover area. And we have, we have a lot of canals going from Lake Erie down to the Ohio River.

And that's the way commerce was traveled back in the day. And so, they've turned some of these canals. They've put, because of the grade, they've made trails. And so, my daughter and I took off one June morning.

And there was a lot of passion. We started riding. We had, we had, I had put these saddle bags on my bike. And I had made this thing all up. And the sun was shining.

And we rode about five miles. And we stopped for a nice, hearty breakfast. And we got back on the trail. And we just started riding.

And the day was beautiful. And we'll pick this story up. But this is kind of how it was. We were just riding along, having a great time, my daughter and I. And I couldn't get my boys to go with.

My boys don't ride bikes. I actually paid my daughter's trip to go with me, to try to get someone to go. And Geraldine, she's kind of a tomboy. So, she was, we were having a really nice time.

It was a beautiful day. Kind of like last evening was. The sun was shining. We're just going to stop that story. And then we'll come back to that. Now, coming back to Matthew chapter 6.

It says here that there's something really fascinating about Jesus. Is when he taught the people, he often used things that they were comfortable with already.

So, the disciples come to Jesus and they said, Master, teach us to pray. Just show us how to pray. Now, Jesus was a rabbi. And a rabbi had followers.

And the followers that Jesus chose were not the guys that a normal rabbi would choose. A normal rabbi would choose someone that was connected.

Someone that was educated. And had a lot of learning. So, a young man would come to a rabbi and would say, Rabbi, I'd like to become a disciple of you.

And then he would say, hey, quote, Maybe all the verses that talk about doves in the Old Testament. Or all the verses that talk about hills or mountains. And these guys will know this stuff. And they'll rattle it off.

And if they pass the test, they're good to go. But the guys that Jesus taught were people more like you and I. They were fishermen. Maybe construction people.

They were not normally people that were used as disciples for the rabbi. So, these guys don't know how to pray. They don't know what to do. And they see the rabbi praying.

And Jews have a prayer for literally everything they do in life. Literally. They even have a prayer thanking God when they use the restroom. They do. Yes.

So, these Jewish guys, they come to the rabbi and they say, Lord, teach us how to pray. And Jesus uses a prayer that they're very familiar with.

This prayer is taken from a mirror after an old ancient Jewish prayer called the Amidah. Say that with me. Amidah. Now, I don't know that it's word for word because Jesus didn't always use word for word.

But he would take something they're comfortable with. He would put his twist to it and give it back to them. For instance, the story of the prodigal son. The story of the prodigal son is a story that was passed on for many, many generations throughout Jewish history.

But when Jesus told the story, he changed it. The change was the original setting of this story is that when the son came back after living a life of sin and went to his father, his father turned his back to him and said, You're dead to me.

That's how the story is supposed to go. Jesus took that story and he twisted it. And he put his kingdom values into it. And I believe he did the same thing in this prayer.

Let's start looking at this prayer. Matthew chapter 6 starting in verse 9. One day Jesus was praying in a certain place and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.

And this prayer, I've discovered, is a rule for all of life. Now, when we talk about this prayer, this prayer does not work unless you're born again.

If you do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ, this prayer is a meaningless bunch of gibberish. But this prayer works for a believer.

If you're born again today, this prayer really should be your heart's cry and your burden. He said, when you pray, say this, our father which art in heaven.

Now, we're going to break this prayer down. Now, that word, our father, is a powerful word because it's plural. It means God can be a father to the Jew, to the Greek, to the Gentile.

Because it says our. He doesn't say your father. He says our father. It's collective. It's plural. We acknowledge that God is a personal God.

Calling God as a father. When, that's a personal thing. When you call your dad, dad, or father, that means he's yours.

He's your dad. We use the word dad today, but this dad, father, is for everybody, not just one person. You know, from the beginning, from Genesis, God wanted to have a relationship with his people.

And God spent many, many years with the children of Israel trying to teach them how to have a relationship with them. In Genesis 3, 8 through 13, it says that God came in the cold of the day to talk to Adam.

This is a creation principle where God wants to have a relationship with his people, but sin causes separation. Jesus restores the connection back to God through the new birth.

So, it's important to acknowledge that God is the one who is Lord, and he wants to spend time with us. So, before we get out of the gate this morning, I'm going to ask you a question.

Is God your father? Is he a personal God? Do you know him? Do you have a relationship with him? Because that's how we can't even start to pray until we know Jesus Christ as our Savior.

That's when we really, we can pray the sinner's prayer, yes, but to really have a relationship with Jesus Christ, he must be our father. We must have a personal relationship with him.

Not an abstract form where there is a Sunday worship and a Monday living. But no, Jesus Christ is all part of our Sunday worship and rolls right into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

There's no change. So, God's, Jesus is teaching his disciples, says, our father, which art in heaven. And then he says this.

I missed my spot here. So, when we talk about God as our father, do we bring him into our lives in a very personal way?

I'm talking about being really practical. This is something that God's been dealing with me in my life. You know one thing that, and we don't do this near enough, in fact, it's kind of rare, but we're learning.

My wife and I are learning. Do you guys ever get into spats with your wife? Guys? Do you ever have an argument with your wife? Yeah?

Wives, do you ever just, your husband just tick you off, right? You ever have it happen? Maybe this is just an Ohio disease, but we have it in Ohio. Sometimes we get into it a little bit.

I have discovered one of the best ways to fix that is to stop and pray. Bring God our father right in the middle of that thing. Or if you're having a difference about theology, just stop and pray.

All of a sudden, this thing isn't so big. All of a sudden, we realize that we have an enemy that's trying to drive a wedge into our marriage, trying to drive a wedge into our relationships.

God wants to be a personal God, something that works, something that's practical. Romans 8.15 says, The spirit you have received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again.

Rather, the spirit you have received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, Father. Going to the next phrase.

Do you know everything about God is holy? His presence is holy.

His name is holy. He is 100% holy. Everything about God is holy. It's not just a mental assent to acknowledge that God's name is holy.

We're saying, God, your holiness, you're holy, and we want that holiness to be a part of my life. Hallowed be your name. May your name be so holy in my life that people see me, and they see that I have met you, God, as a father, and they see holiness coming out of your life and my life because we've met Jesus Christ.

In the Hebrew, to acknowledge that God's name is holy is to say, I want my actions in every day to acknowledge that you are holy.

So we don't just say, hallowed, holy is your name. What we're actually saying is, God, I want your holiness. I want your reality of holiness to be in my life.

And the first way that we are made holy is when our sins are under the blood. We don't become holy by practicing good or by dressing up or by doing the right things.

We become righteous before God when our sins are under the blood. And God looks down at my life, and he says, Dwight is holy. That's kind of hard for me to acknowledge.

Or Hebrews actually infers that Dwight can be perfect in Jesus Christ. Now that's a tough thing for an Anabaptist to say. But it is true. It's not because we're perfect.

It's because we're perfect in Christ. Because he is holy. And we take on his righteousness. And then out of that power, out of that relationship with Abba, Father, we serve him because we love him.

And out of our belly flows rivers of living water. And righteousness becomes a part of our lifestyle. We want to walk holy because we have a love relationship.

And we're called to walk to a higher standard. To walk in the Spirit is not to walk. I'm sorry, I missed that. To walk in the Spirit is not to walk in the flesh.

It's so easy to do. So easy in our relationships that I rub shoulders with very closely. To allow that to happen.

Do people see holiness in me on the job? In our church community? In my relationships? Am I just as holy throughout the week as I am on Sunday?

I'm talking to myself. This hits home. When Christ came into the world, he brought holiness with him.

And we're called to bring his holiness into this world as we advance his kingdom. With our homes. In our businesses. In our relationships. Thy kingdom come.

You know, when Jesus came to earth, he taught about the kingdom of God. And what he taught was that the kingdom of God has a value system that is in direct conflict with the value system that the world has.

And so often I see we as people trying to straddle. We go over here and we stretch out and we try to hook on to the value systems of the world.

And then we reach over here and we try to hook on to the value systems of God. And it doesn't work. We don't get either one right. The value system that Jesus Christ taught is that there's another kingdom.

That kingdom has a set of values. That kingdom has a set of goals. And that kingdom has a whole set of things that as believers we walk. And we are called, when it says, thy kingdom come, we're called as a people individually.

And then secondly, corporately, to advance God's kingdom. That means that when I go to work on Monday, my job is not just a place to make money.

My job is a place where God can use me to advance his kingdom. And you can do that in your job. Mothers, when you're raising your children, you are raising not just children, but you can be raising warriors to advance God's kingdom.

You can be teaching that child about the kingdom of God and that there is a value system that we as believers adhere to. And as we walk this kingdom out, the church becomes a powerhouse.

And Jesus said, when we follow the kingdom of heaven, I am convinced that the gates of hell will not prevail against us. We become an active force in the community. We become a place where Satan is pushed back and holiness reigns.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When I pray this prayer, I'm saying, God, I want your will so bad in my life that it is going to be acted out like your will is done in heaven as a believer.

I don't do that. I confess. But that's what this prayer means. It says, God, your will in heaven is acted out by the mere thought.

And I want a relationship with you, God, so strong. I want your holiness. I want your kingdom values in my life so that I walk in your will.

And that means walking in the Spirit of God. That means allowing the Spirit of God to transform me and direct me throughout my day. And this is a process that we learn.

It doesn't happen overnight. But we are called to advance God's kingdom in that His will becomes my will. The more I have a relationship with my Father, the more my will and His will become one.

And we walk it out. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You know, when Jesus came to earth, I think of that story of the woman who had a disease for many years.

And she came to Jesus. And she touched the hem of His prayer shawl. It's called a titzit. She touched it. And she touched it in faith because she knew that there was a prophecy in the Old Testament that said, When the Messiah comes, there will be healing in the corner of His prayer shawl.

The English translation means wings. But it actually means, and she touched it in faith. And what happened to the kingdom of heaven right there? It broke out.

And it brought healing. When you and I are in connection with Jesus Christ, when He is our Father, when His values become our values, we rub shoulders with someone, guess what's going to happen to the kingdom of heaven?

It's going to break out. We can't help it. It breaks out. And people will see Jesus Christ. They won't see you. They'll see Jesus Christ.

And there will be healing. There will be healing in relationships. There will be healing spiritually. God will use you to bring redemption to people.

Not that you save them, no. But you're walking in God's kingdom. It's going to break out. It cannot be contained. All we have to do is have a connection with the Father.

And walk in His ways. And it's just going to happen. You can't stop it. It's going to change. I was the other day. I was in Alliance, Ohio at a coffee shop.

I was actually going over a material list for this project here. And I stood up. And I looked over. And there was a 16-year-old boy sitting there with his Bible open.

Reading a Bible. In downtown Alliance. Now, I don't know about you, but that's not real common in Ohio. To see a very good-looking young man reading his Bible.

So I started talking to him. And he was trying to decide. He had a question about some things. And so he stood up and we started chatting. And then he started telling me his testimony.

He said, you know, I was so depressed. And he insinuated that he was partly suicidal. And somebody invited him to a Zoom Bible study.

On Zoom. You know what happened? The kingdom of heaven broke out. He got converted. That kid was gloriously saved. You could see it in his face.

He just talked about it openly. He was not ashamed. Sitting right there. In downtown Alliance. Just reading his Bible. That's what I'm talking about.

Somebody was following the kingdom of heaven. And invited him to a Zoom Bible study. Somebody was walking this out.

And what happened? The kingdom broke out. It couldn't help it. There it was for him to receive it. Now, the prayer changes.

We had a lot of passion here. The prayer changes. Now we go to intention. Give us this day our daily bread. Going back to this bike ride I had.

You know, I discovered about six hours in on a bike ride. That bike seat felt like it was going to come out my throat. I mean, you talk about pain.

And I think I even had under my pants. I had special padding. It just didn't work. It was hot. And I went over a bridge and I blew a flat tire.

Oh, it was the second. I think it was the second day it happened. Let me tell you what. The passion was all gone. That was long gone. You know what got me through?

Intention. Intention. I had to push through. And to make matters worse, when I tried to change my tire, I realized I had the wrong pump. I had to borrow a pump from somebody.

And he was ticked at me because he was trying to make time. And I didn't care what he thought. I asked him for the pump anyway. And so he gave it to me. So it was a little stressful there.

But I learned a valuable lesson. And the valuable lesson I learned that's in this prayer is that when the passion wears off in our relationship with God, it takes intention. It takes commitment.

It says, God, I'm going to follow you anyway, even though I've had a really, really rough week. I'm going to follow you anyway, even though I feel like trash today. And I feel like everything I do, I am just a complete flop.

And I feel so weak. And I feel so unspiritual. And I feel so unholy and so unrighteous. It takes intention. Because God is our Father.

We just keep walking. Take the next step, like our brothers shared. Take that next step with God. Just keep moving forward. Because it takes passion and intention.

Give us this day our daily bread. God, we just want you to come and meet our needs. We want you to take care of our, every need that we have.

Do you ever pray about your finances? Do you ever ask God to meet your needs? God is a personal God. He wants to come and he wants to show us something as simple as even buying tires, as buying a truck or a vehicle.

Take it to prayer. Too often I don't. But that's what God wants. God wants that kind of a relationship with you and I. God wants to meet our needs.

He cares about us. He wants to see us have our needs met. He wants to see us be fulfilled in life.

God wants us to learn to be content.

To be satisfied with what he gives us. Because in a community, there are people that make more money. Some people make less. That's okay. It's fine.

Some of us have other gifts. That's okay too. What God has given us, we need to accept him and thank him for it. And ask God to meet our needs.

My father-in-law lived by this model. He was a missionary in Costa Rica for 50 years. He lived by faith a lot of times.

He was not the most... I wouldn't be comfortable with the way he handled his finances necessarily. It wasn't dishonest. He just didn't really care.

If he had a dollar, he gave it away. Fine. He shared. He got taken advantage of. But you know what? When he died, God blessed him.

He was debt-free. He had a property. And he actually had an inheritance that he passed down to his children. God met his needs. He put the kingdom of heaven first. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you.

God blessed him. Met his needs. Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not into temptation. Sorry, I got ahead of myself.

Give us this day our daily bread. Lead us not into temptation. Do you guys struggle with temptation?

I do. Yeah. Temptation is a very real thing. And in this prayer, we're actually saying, God, lead us not into temptation.

Keep me from temptation. Keep my home from temptation. Keep my mind from temptation. Keep me from sexual sin. Keep me from porn. Keep me from saying, tempted to snap at my wife.

Or tempted to snap at my husband. Keep me from temptation. And God, keep me from even the evil within me sometimes that wants to come. Keep me from that.

Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. Protect us from the evil that wants to come. In a congregation, I'll just share this.

In the years that I've been in the ministry, I have seen it a time or two where sometimes Satan will bring someone into a congregation to sow discord and to cause problems.

We had to deal with something like that. We had that this year. We had a man coming. And there was an evilness about him. The longer I got to know him.

He professed to be a Christian. But his fruits were not there. You know, we finally had to ask him to leave. I've never had to do that before. But you know, there was a peace that came over the congregation when that happened.

And I pray that doesn't ever happen here. But we are in a war, brothers and sisters. We have a church. There will be, Satan will bring people sometimes in to distract and to divide and to cause problems.

And we need to be discerning. Deliver us from evil. Keep me from being evil, Lord. Keep me from sowing discord. Keep me from doing that gossip that is so easy to do.

Corrie Ten Boom. Anybody know who she is? She was a young girl that was, during World War II, she was in a concentration camp with her sister.

And I think her sister was killed, right, Brendan? And she survived? I'm not sure. She wrote a book. It's a really good book called The Hiding Place.

If you ever want to read a good book, that's a good read. She became a Christian. And she was back in Germany. And she was talking to the people about forgiveness.

And... Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. I forgot that one. We need to talk about that one.

Anyway, back to the story. As she was there telling the story, she talked about the love of Jesus and how God's forgiveness has granted her freedom.

What Corrie didn't tell the audience at that meeting was that there was a guard during the time that she was in the concentration camp that was brutally cruel to her and her sister.

Just horrible. Just horrible. After the meeting, she was walking around visiting with people. And this man came up to her.

And this man started telling her how he found Jesus Christ. And all of a sudden, Corrie Ten recognized this guy. He was the guard that had horribly abused her and her sister.

And she froze. He came up to shake her hand. And she was like, oh my goodness. Oh my. What am I going to do? What would you do?

What would I do? That would be pretty tough. Her feelings were gone. There was no feelings of forgiveness there.

It wasn't there. So she decided to do the only thing she could do. And that was she just forced herself to shake his hand. And she said when she reached out and shook his hand, something went through her.

And she experienced forgiveness. We ask God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And what we're saying is, God, I want you to forgive my sins like I forgive these people over here.

That's pretty rough. That's pretty rough. This is probably one of the hardest things that people wrestle with. It's forgiveness.

And you know, there's not a person here that hasn't had to forgive. And there's not a person here that hasn't hurt somebody. I've discovered that. We've all hurt people.

I have hurt people terribly. I've also been hurt terribly. But it's so easy for me to focus on my hurts. I just take that little thing and I build me a nice little wall around it.

And I keep it. And every once in a while when I need some sympathy, I go back in there and pull some of them hurts out. And I look at them. Man, that feels so good. He was so mean to me. And I put it back. I just keep that little pet right there.

And then God looks at me and goes, and you want me to forgive you for your sins. After all, I sent my son, my only son, and died on the cross.

And you cannot forgive somebody for a comment they made. That's what this is saying. You see how ridiculous I look when I do that. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Some years ago, I was teaching a Bible class in Greece to some refugees. And I started talking about how we're to forgive our enemies.

I was going through the book of Matthew. And this young man jumped up. And he was like, they started questioning me. They said, what would you do if I killed your son?

If I shot Rodney, what would you do? They were asking me questions like that. You know, at that, I've never experienced anything like that. I've never had to deal with that.

I said, well, I'm sure I would struggle. But I would be called by God to forgive. And this young man just jumped up and came up to me. He opened up his phone. And he showed me pictures that were just horrible.

He said, this is what I've experienced. I've seen people shot. I've seen people killed. And I'm supposed to forgive these guys? It's God's word.

I don't know what to tell you. So later, he asked for a meeting. And then he came up and he pulled his shirt up and showed me where he had been shot through with scars in his stomach.

And his brothers were murdered. But you know, that man went on and he's just miserable. He's the one in bondage.

When we do not forgive, we're the ones in bondage. We're the ones held captive. Not that person. We're the ones that Satan uses to control.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We talked about temptation. The last part is, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.

However, you know, this kingdom has power. It has glory. And it can be our kingdom if God is our father.

We can walk forth as a people of power. Not wimps. Not scared. But we have Jesus Christ. We have his kingdom. He is our father.

And he is going to walk with us. And there is a confidence that we have when we can say, when we bring God right into our situation. Say, God, this is what I'm learning to do.

I go, oh my goodness. What am I going to do with this situation? And then God says, just let me take it. Just give it to me. And I go, okay, but I want it back.

And I grab it back again. And then I try to give it to him again, but then it's three in the morning. And it's so easy to pick that thing back up again. And God wants me to give it to him. When I give it to him, he takes it.

And he becomes, I find a rest. And I leave it there. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. That's my prayer for you all in your church here.

In your daily life. In your homes. That God's kingdom will come and break out in our lives. I want to try to pull up.

I paraphrase the Lord's Prayer. And I'm going to try to pull it up here. Let's see if I can get this to do it. That's pretty small.

Brendan, I might need some help. How do I full screen this? No, it doesn't work. That's pretty small.

I put it on display. That's why. You can take it out. I put it on full screen. Okay. Okay. I don't know. I need it. I don't know what you can do before now.

I have to ask. I need it. I need it. I need it.

I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. Maybe I'll just read it. That's fine. Yeah. It's too small.

So I'll probably just read it to you. So what I've done is I've taken the Lord's Prayer and I've paraphrased it. Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be your name.

In our homes and in my life, I want your name to be lifted up. I want my life to be filled with holiness. May it spread to my job, my relationships, and my church. Thy kingdom come.

Bring your kingdom down on earth. May my life be a model of your kingdom. May our values be kingdom values. May the values of the world not push in. May my life advance God's kingdom here on earth in my job, in my relationships, and in my church.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. May your will be done in my life on earth as it's done in heaven, also through my relationships and in my congregation.

Give us this day our daily bread. Physically meet our needs so that we can bless others. Lead us not into temptation. Keep my heart from unforgiveness, sexual sins, porn, sins of the heart.

For thine is the kingdom, power, and glory. May your kingdom, your power, and your glory be a part of my life. Amen. So as you go from here, next time you hear the Lord's Prayer, think about what we're saying.

That we want God as our Father to come. And we want a relationship with Him. We want His kingdom to be lived out in our lives. And to be, we want to depend on Him for our daily sustenance.

We want to live free from temptation and from unforgiveness. So that God's power and glory can come and reign in our lives.

Thank you.