Matthew 6:13-15

The Lord's Prayer made the headlines in 2017 when Pope Francis made a controversial decision to support the French Catholic Church's updating of the Lord's Prayer in their language. The controversy centered around one of the last lines of the prayer - "Lead us not into temptation." Many have questioned what this wording implies. Should we think from this phrase that God leads us to sin, but we should ask him not to do that?

Needless to say, the French Catholic Church thought the wording in French left the door open to misunderstanding. The French wording, translated to English, reads, "Don't subject us to temptation." The Catholic Church changed it in an attempt to clear up the wording - "Don't let us go into temptation." Pope Francis was in hot water with many in various Christian denominations because he supported the change. In defense of the update, he said in an interview, “It’s not about letting me fall into temptation. It’s I, the one who falls, not Him pushing me toward temptation, so as to then see how I fall.”[1]

As Bible-believing Christians, we do not believe the pope is a legitimate NT church office. Still, the pope in the broad religious community holds a lot of clout. What he says and believes makes waves in the news, so media outlets will take note of his thoughts on the Lord's Prayer. The controversy that arose from his defense of the French Catholic Church shows just how much people value the words of this prayer and its significance for how we talk to God. While we do not accept the pope's authority or take his words seriously, they provide a springboard for our study.

Today we will study the second half of the Lord's Prayer for ourselves without the interjection of a pope, priest, or any other religious figure. Jesus gives us the opportunity to study this important prayer so we can learn how to talk to God on our own. As we do, we will consider our theme for this mini-series - prayer builds closeness with and confidence in God. When we talk to our Father, we want to be close, not distant. We approach with confidence, not fear or shame. The pattern for prayer that Jesus gives us satisfies these desires in our hearts to enjoy communion with our God and know that he is listening.

Prayer builds closeness with and confidence in God.

Main Thought

In the introduction to this famous prayer, the Lord warns us against wrong motives and wrong assumptions about prayer. Our motive should never be for public recognition. On the contrary, we should imagine ourselves talking to our Father in the privacy of a small room. We also cannot assume that we will receive a hearing from God if we talk long enough using the same words. Unbelievers may have this misconception about prayer, but Christians should know better. As citizens of Christ's spiritual kingdom, we have our Father's ear because we belong to him as adopted children.

We have already examined the first half of this prayer in verses 9-10, requests which focus on the work that God is doing in the world. He wants his disciples to ask for his name to be set apart or given special attention. His disciples ask for the coming of his earthly kingdom, but also the continued advancement of his spiritual kingdom in the world right now. His disciples also ask for the submission of our world to God's righteous will, which is akin to how his will gets done in heaven. All of these requests may be asked in the confidence that our Father desires fellowship with us.

A Request for Basic Needs

Another request that we may confidently ask from our Father is daily provision. Up to this point, the Lord has instructed his disciples to ask for spiritual requests that deal with his grander plans for the world. Here, we have a petition common to every individual citizen of the kingdom - "Give us this day our daily bread." When Jesus tells us to pray for bread, he is not speaking strictly of bread. He is also not speaking allegorically. Many church fathers in the early history of the church spiritualized the word "bread" to mean the Lord's Table or even God's Word. But the most common and plain understanding of this word is basic provisions of life - food, clothing, health, and shelter.

Some debate over this verse centers around the word "daily." It is not an easy word to translate into English. Some scholars believe that Matthew and Luke (the only NT writers to use the word) coined it. We cannot know this for sure, but the word can have several possible meanings. It can refer to something that is necessary for existence. It can also have a time aspect to it. The word may refer to "bread for today" or "bread for the coming day." The idea inherent in these definitions is that believers can make this request at the beginning (for today) or end of the day (for the coming day) and expect God to provide.

In a sense, the debate over this word presents no problem at all. In either of these definitions, the meaning is the same: God provides for our basic needs in life when we ask for them. In our Western context, we cannot appreciate the full weight and meaning of this prayer. In the ancient world, the average family was not guaranteed three square meals a day. Unless your family had considerable wealth, you expected to live hand-to-mouth most of your life. You survived on whatever your land could produce, or what you could sell in the market. If the crops did not come in, or a natural disaster destroyed your harvest, the well-being of your family hung in the balance. The majority of Jesus' audience faced these harsh realities every day.

A Jewish family hearing this would have been familiar with the traditional Jewish prayer before a meal: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who feedest the whole world with thy goodness …; thou givest food to all flesh.… Through thy goodness food hath never failed us: O may it not fail us for ever and ever.”[2] Jesus hearkens to this Jewish prayer for an important reason. As in the Jewish faith, disciples of Christ must acknowledge that the provision of their daily needs - food or otherwise - comes from God. He is the giver of all these material blessings. Yes, we labor in this world to provide these needs for our families, but God is the ultimate source of these provisions.

How should an American Christian in 2020 apply this prayer? A year ago, we might have wondered how to pray for daily bread when we always have our needs met. But this year, we learned first-hand how quickly the basic provisions of life suddenly do not seem so common anymore. We learned to appreciate the food that stocks our kitchens when we had to wait in long lines for a half hour just to enter the grocery store. We learned to appreciate the health we have when doctors’ offices and hospitals were not open and medical procedures were delayed. We learned to appreciate simple home necessities, especially when all the toilet paper and cleaning supplies were gone from the shelves. We learned to appreciate time spent with loved ones when we could not visit them or have them over our homes.

During the pandemic, did you stop to consider how you talk to God about your basic needs? Many members of our church come from countries where most people live below the poverty line. Many of us got to experience a short period of third world living when we did not know what the grocery store would have in stock. Despite what the United States has endured this year, we still live in the richest, most prosperous country on earth. As Christians who live with such abundant provisions at our disposal, we cannot forget where it all comes from. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17). As life returns to an imperfect sense of normal, do you still remember the one who meets your needs?

We have had several members of our church learn recently what it means to trust God for daily bread. This year, some of you lost your jobs, were furloughed, or had less income. Jim Teixeira was let go from his sales position shortly after receiving a special recognition for his job performance. By his own admission, he faced a challenging transition from working to job hunting. But all through the process, he trusted the Lord. After about a month of searching, the Lord provided a new sales position that met the needs of his family, and even incorporated his engineering training. I was so blessed this past weekend when he shared this story with our teens of the Lord's goodness to him in providing for his needs.

I think of Tom Wylie and his experience with cancer about a year ago. After learning about his diagnosis, brother Tom was not keen on telling the whole church too quickly. Instead, he waited on the Lord and sought his wisdom for the best treatment. When our church family finally knew, brother Wylie showed nothing but confidence in God's goodness and faith in his sovereign plan. We all were blessed to hear another church member read Tom's testimony on a Sunday morning. After undergoing a special surgery, Tom came out on the other side cancer-free, and we rejoice with him and his family for the Lord providing him with health and life.

If you do not have your own story of God's provision, reflect on his unfailing goodness to you. All of us will face times of need and desperation in our lives at some point. The question is whether we have learned to trust the Lord for our daily provisions already. If you do not trust him, who are you trusting? Your employer? The government? Any other source of income can and has failed people before. But your loving shepherd never fails to care for his sheep (Ps 23:1). Your heavenly Father never fails to feed his children (Ps 37:25). Consider, then, how you talk to God about your basic needs. Do you trust him to provide for you, even in difficult times? Have you taken for granted his gracious provision? Do you thank him for the needs he has provided, no matter how basic they are?

A Request for Relationships

The Lord turns his focus in prayer from physical needs to spiritual needs. Indeed, our communication with God cannot remain in the physical real alone. God is a spirit (John 4:24), and he desires to satisfy the immaterial needs of our souls. Part of that is dealing with the broken state of our humanity and the effect that has on other people. We all exhibit our brokenness in different ways, but the depraved image it draws is the same. Because we fail to be and to do what God has called us to be and to do, we leave hurt, broken people in our wake. That is why we must pray, "Forgive us our debts."

Jesus makes three important assumptions that show us the connection between forgiveness and prayer. The first assumption is that sinful people need God's forgiveness. Debt was a common word for sin at this time. Jewish people understood that they owed obedience to God and his law. To deny this from God was to owe him a debt. To remove this debt, the Lord encourages us to ask forgiveness directly from our heavenly Father. Notice he does not suggest that we offer a sacrifice, go to a priest, or observe any other religious practice. Forgiveness is the only cure for the sinner's soul, and only the Great Physician can provide that cure. You can obtain that cure directly from him. No matter how badly or how often you have failed to live up to God's righteous standard this week, you can find release for your sin debt in his love and mercy.

The second assumption is that sinful people have relationship problems. In a sinful world, we cannot avoid having minor spats and major conflicts with other people. As citizens of the kingdom, we should avoid these problems when we can. Instead, we should seek peace with people who offend us or cause us harm (Rom 12:18; Heb 12:14). But too often, this is not how people resolve these relationship problems. Even God's people fall prey to false resolutions. Instead of accepting wrong (1 Cor 6:7), we hold grudges and refuse to make amends. Instead of seeking peace, we exacerbate the problem through hurtful words and actions. Relationship challenges are an inherent part of our experience, and Jesus teaches us how those challenges may affect our relationship with God.

This leads to the third assumption Jesus makes, and it's found in verses 14-15: forgiveness from God is conditioned on your forgiveness of others. We see this stated in both a positive and negative way. If you forgive other people of their trespasses, then God will forgive you. If you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive you. One clarification is needed at the outset. Jesus is not saying that we earn God's forgiveness when we forgive other people. In other words, he is not obligated to forgive you because you forgave a person who wronged you. Rather, our forgiving attitude toward others is a condition for God's forgiveness of our faults. We have no right to expect his cleansing work in our hearts if we have not shown forgiveness.

Jesus provided a helpful illustration that made this point in Matthew 18:21-35. His disciples asked him how often they should forgive. His answer was that they should do so until seventy times seven (18:22). His point is that for the believer, forgiveness should always be on the table. He then tells them the parable of a royal servant who owed a king an exorbitant amount of money. When he could not pay the debt and faced the prospect of slavery, he pleaded with the king to be patient. The king did so and released the servant from his debt. But when that same man approached a fellow servant about a smaller debt he owed to him, the forgiven man would not forgive. Instead, he called for the guards to arrest the servant in debt to him. The king heard of this, and he punished the servant by imprisoning him.

If you have heard or read this parable, you may have had this realization: the king's servant never asked for forgiveness. He wanted the king to show patience to him, but he never sought his release from the debt. You might say his plea for the king's mercy was disingenuous. This is demonstrated by his inability to forgive his debtor for a smaller debt. His refusal to forgive exposed his own dishonesty in asking the king for mercy. In other words, he did not understand how to ask for forgiveness, therefore he could not truly receive it or give it to someone else.

In the same way, you cannot rightfully ask God to cleanse your sins and release your debt if you are unwilling to release someone of their debt to you. Everyone has been hurt, offended, or mistreated in some way or another. Some people have endured unspeakable tragedies and abuses. The point here is not that we forget these mistreatments and act like nothing happened; that is impossible, especially for egregious wrongs. The point is forgiveness requires us to release our enemies from their moral debts to us. Forgiveness is a heart decision to not reflect on, mention, or bring up a past wrong you have already released. When you can honestly do that, then you can understand in a better way how to ask forgiveness from God for your own sin.

Confession of sin is an important part of prayer. Without it, God cannot even hear our requests (Isa 59:2). We should be quick to confess our faults to him, but we should also be quick to forgive others; the two go hand in hand. That's why his prayer for us is "Forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors." He expects us to ask for forgiveness for our own sins under the assumption that we already forgive those who harm and mistreat us. If you have not learned to forgive others, then it is likely you do not have the capacity to genuinely ask God to forgive you. It is a difficult reality to face, but less so for children of the kingdom. We know how much we have been forgiven, so we should have less difficulty releasing our enemies from their debts to us.

God expects us to forgive so we can be forgiven. I do not know what challenges you face in obeying this command. I do not know what mistreatments and abuses you have suffered. Whatever you have endured, the standard is the same: forgive, the same way Christ has forgiven you (Eph 4:32). If you struggle with this, reflect on how much the Savior suffered to release you from your debt. You now owe him nothing; how can you hold anything against another person? Then you can confess your own faults in humility, knowing that God has forgiven you. Consider, then, how you talk to God about your relationships. Are you quick to confess your sins to God? Do you keep short accounts with him? Are you quick to forgive others when they wrong you? Do you strive for peace in those relationships, or are you content with strife and anger seething below the surface?

A Request for Spiritual Needs

Praying for our relationships provides a logical bridge between our physical and spiritual requests. After asking God to meet our basic material needs, the Lord models for us how to pray for a healed relationship with God that depends on our relationship with other people. This kind of request is physical because it involves other people, but it is also spiritual because it deals with God's healing of sin in our hearts. The next request points us to the spiritual world and the potential for sin that lies there - "Do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one."

I mentioned in the beginning that this request has received a lot of attention recently. Does the traditional wording of the prayer imply that God leads us to be tempted? Should we change the wording so it is clearer and not prone to misunderstanding? I am not comfortable changing the wording of Scripture, especially if it will vary noticeably from the original language. I think Jesus had a reason for wording this request the way he did. That said, we should not be content with potential misunderstandings of his words. Scripture gives us enough data to understand temptation and God's role in helping us avoid it.

Some people debate the meaning of the word "temptation." The same word is used to describe a test or trial (cf. 1 Pet 4:12). The question is whether this word describes an opportunity to sin (temptation) or a period of suffering or difficulty in which God is maturing us (test). I think the connection that Jesus makes to "the evil one" (or "evil") makes the former description more likely. Satan may sometimes be involved with our trials (2 Cor 12:7), but we can be sure of his evil presence in times of temptation. Furthermore, we know that we will experience various tests and challenges in this life (Jam 1:2). Surely, the Lord would not want us to pray that we would avoid these experiences. Rather, we should pray that we could endure them with patience while continuing to grow in the image of Christ (Jam 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-9).

If Jesus is referring to temptation, we still have an unresolved question: why would we ask God to not lead us into temptation? By making this request, it sounds like Jesus assumes that our Father is responsible for bringing temptation to our doorstep. But the NT teaches that God cannot be tempted with evil, nor would he tempt anyone to sin (Jam 1:13). So, he cannot mean that God is responsible for temptation in our lives. Instead, this as a request that we would not succumb to temptations when they come our way. We should ask that we would not submit to their power or influence, but that God would deliver us.

This is a legitimate prayer request for the believer. When Jesus prayed while his disciples slept in the Garden of Gethsemane, he warned them that unless they watched and prayed, they could enter temptation (Matt 26:41). This reminds us that prayer is a sure weapon against the vulnerability of our sinful hearts. At the same time, we cannot expect that if we pray this request we will never succumb to temptation again. This prayer points us to the Father as the answer for our temptations. He is not responsible for dangling the opportunity in front of us, but he did allow it in his sovereign plan. Since he allowed it, in his faithfulness, he has equipped me to handle it and escape its power over me (1 Cor 10:13). Prayer is central to this victory so that rather than bowing to the temptation, I can take the way of escape he offers.

Jesus' model prayer concludes with an important request for deliverance from our common spiritual enemy. Many Christians are familiar with the traditional wording for this prayer, "deliver us from evil." The word "evil" can either refer to evil as a presence in the world or a person, Satan himself. The fact that the word "evil" has an article in the Greek ("the evil") lends itself toward a reference to Satan. Indeed, he prowls around like a lion looking for unsuspecting victims to devour (1 Pet 5:8). Jesus prayed for his own disciples that they would not succumb to Satan's tricks in their lives (Luke 22:31-32). This prayer reminds us that Satan is a real enemy waiting to attack us. One of our best defenses against him is prayer. It is in the spiritual realm of prayer that we get on the offense against our spiritual enemy by seeking God's deliverance.

The importance of this request lies in how often it escapes the mind of most believers. We neglect to pray against the influence of Satan and his strategies to tempt us because we cannot see them. We are more aware of the dear sister in church who is in the hospital or the brother who lost his job. These tangible material requests are more accessible to us. How do we pray against an enemy we cannot see? How do we pray for his attacks that we do not know are coming? The key is seeing prayer as preventative care.

Pastor Thomas has often quoted his father's expert advice on vehicle care: preventative maintenance is better than breakdown maintenance. If you take care of your car as a matter of habit, you will prevent most potential problems. In the spiritual realm, we would do well to heed that advice. None of us want spiritual breakdowns in our lives, but we are so often hesitant to take steps to prevent them. One of the prevention tools God has given us is prayer. We can pray against Satan's work in our lives and the lives of our family members. We can pray that his influence in our workday and in our home-life would not impact our walk with Jesus. We can pray that when he tempts us, we are prepared to resist him and take God's exit ramp.

This prayer should include a clear indication that we submit to God and resist Satan's authority and influence in our lives (Jam 4:7). When we can honestly say that our hearts are submitted to God, we are better prepared to stand against the enemy of our souls. Prayer is the place we wage this fight; it is the one activity in which we can influence the spiritual realm. By asking us to pray against temptation and the evil one, Jesus wants us to consider how to pray about spiritual realities. Are you expecting to fall into temptations that dominate your life? Can you prevent those failures by praying about them? Are you aware of the enemy's attempts to bring you down? Can you prevent his work through prayer?

Some people debate the Lord's conclusion to this prayer. Most Jewish people would not conceive of talking to God without a suitable doxology, a closing word that exalts the Lord and his purposes in the world. This is what the end of verse 13 accomplishes - "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen." As we close a conversation with God, we should acknowledge that he is the chief end of prayer. We can pray for ourselves and our loved ones, but the most important thing we can admit to God is that his reputation alone is what counts. When you admit that to God alone belongs his kingdom, power, and glory, you lift him up. You show that you understand his right to rule, his power over all things, and his high exalted position. These things belong to him forever; he will always have a right to claim these privileges for himself.

It is interesting to see Jesus mention his Father's kingdom a second time. He wanted to impress on our minds the importance of his future earthly rule. One day, Christ will reign over a world of peace, righteousness, and justice. We will rule with him. We will have various responsibilities in that kingdom. We will not lack anything in that world. But until then, we have a Father who always makes himself available to his children. Since we can approach him about anything, we should pray for the things he wants - his name, kingdom, and will. We should also pray for the things he wants for us - provision of our needs, forgiveness for sin, and protection from spiritual darkness. In all these things, consider your purpose in prayer. Do you pray to exalt yourself or to exalt God and his purposes? Are you praying with his kingdom, power, and glory in mind?

Prayer is our privilege as children of God. We pray to draw close to him and to gain confidence that he hears us. We will not always have the answers at the time we want them, or in the way we want them. In this model prayer, Christ assures us that we have our Father's ear. He guides us into the kinds of requests that should be on our minds. In your prayer life, think about what requests from the Lord's prayer you already ask for. Build on that discipline and learn how to pray according to your Father's will. In addition, think about what requests you rarely or never mention. Start adding those requests into your prayer time. As you learn to pray the way Jesus taught, the closer you will be to your heavenly Father. Drawing close to him means you can say "Amen" and mean it.

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[1] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/december-web-only/should-lords-prayer-be-changed.html

[2] Freeman, J. M., & Chadwick, H. J. (1998). Manners & customs of the Bible (pp. 414–415). North Brunswick, NJ: Bridge-Logos Publishers.