In his sermon 'In This Manner, Therefore Pray,' Jason Dohm explores the essence of prayer as taught by Jesus in the Lord's Prayer. Dohm emphasizes the need for genuine, heartfelt prayer that is distinct from the hypocritical practices of the scribes and Pharisees. He explains that Jesus calls for prayers that are not about being seen by others, but about connecting with God in secret. The sermon highlights the importance of understanding the spirit of the law over the mere letter, focusing on the heart's intentions rather than just actions. Dohm discusses the model prayer's structure, which begins with worship and acknowledgment of God's sovereignty, before moving to requests for daily provision and forgiveness. The sermon underscores the call to forgive others as an essential component of receiving God's forgiveness. Moreover, it emphasizes the need to ask God for guidance away from temptation and deliverance from evil. Dohm concludes by encouraging believers to establish a disciplined prayer life, recognizing prayer as a reflection of peace with God and a vital part of their faith journey.

Your seed may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will himself reward you openly. And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men. Surely I say to you, they have their reward. For you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Therefore do not be like them, for your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, therefore pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your 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. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you or forgive your trespasses. Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites with the sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Surely I say to you, they have their reward.

But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting. But to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And now Lord, we thank you that your blessings will rest upon your infallible and holy word. We pray for our pastor that he would come and preach under the anointing of your Holy Spirit, that we would listen with obedient and humble hearts. This I ask in the name of your one and only Son in whom you have perfect pleasure, even Jesus who is our Messiah.

Amen. In the last section of chapter five, Jesus took on the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees, and he does that through six representative case studies. And In each of those case studies, he takes what the scribes and the Pharisees say that the law taught. And he exposes that as fraudulent, and then he gives a true and accurate exposition of the law. And throughout all six of those representative case studies, he is getting everything back to the spirit of the law.

The scribes and the Pharisees loved the letter of the law. They had a handle on the letter of the law. They knew how to manage the letter of the law. But Jesus is saying that is not enough. It is the spirit of the law which expands the law way out, which is so much more impossible to manage.

And so Jesus is saying it's not just actions, but it's what's happening in your heart. It's not just actions, but it's what's happening in your heart. And now in chapter 6, he's shifting from an evaluation of the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees and their understanding of what the law taught and the problems with their understandings of what the law taught. And he's moving from their teachings into their practices, their actual religious practices. So we're moving from teaching into practices.

And in the first part of chapter 6, He's going to talk about three religious practices, charitable deeds, prayer, and fasting. And all three of these things ought to be part of the exercise of our faith. They're good. They were designed by God for our blessing. And yet, it's possible to do any of the three of these, or all of the three of these, without any love for God in your heart.

It's possible to do them without love for God, love in your heart for your neighbor either. And so Jesus starts each of the three of these practices, his evaluation of these practices, with the fraudulent type of doing this religious practice. And so he talks about charitable deeds and he talks about hypocrites, those who wear a mask and they change masks depending on what is to their advantage. So when they're doing a charitable deed, they're doing it to be seen by men and they have an audience of many. And Jesus says, no, when you do a charitable deed, you should have an audience of one.

You should only care about the applause of God Almighty. And then the same with prayer. The hypocrites, those who wear different masks in different situations, they love to be seen in the synagogues and on the street corners praying. And the reward that they get from that is just what they were after. It's to be seen by men.

And God says, fine, you've been seen by men, but you will have no reward beyond that. But the true disciple of Jesus Christ doesn't do his praying for the other people in the room, but he does his praying to God for the approval of God, for the glory of God. And then God, who sees what's done in secret, actually rewards openly. So Jesus is looking at the hypocrites, those with masks, and he's saying, don't do that and don't be that. Last week, we looked in detail at charitable deeds and at prayer.

And now Jesus, following on the heels of that, just camps on prayer. He's going to stop and just teach on prayer. And then he's going to go to the third of the religious practices, which is fasting. And we'll cover that next week. But Before proceeding to teaching on fasting, Jesus is just going to stop and say, when you pray, this is how you ought to pray.

And he's giving us a model prayer. You say, well, a model prayer. Does that mean that these are the words we should say every time we pray? No. In verse 7, Jesus has already condemned the practice of just praying words for the sake of words, as if there's something magical in the words.

And he says, no vain repetitions, no words only without a heart behind it. And so what Jesus is saying is in this manner, it's the manner of prayer And a direction is being set for us so that as we look at the Lord's Prayer, we see Jesus pointing in a direction. And he says, here's a direction. Pray about this. Here's a direction.

Pray about this. Here's a direction. Pray about this. And this is how we should think about it. There's a passage in Luke where it's a very similar circumstances, and it's a very similar prayer.

You can tell by looking at our Matthew text side by side with Luke 11 that they're not exactly the same circumstance, and they're not exactly the same prayer, but it's helpful to look at them together because they're so similar. Luke 11.1 says this, Now it came to pass as he was praying in a certain place when He ceased that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. So this is what's happening back in Matthew. Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray. And so our radar should go on, and we should pay special attention.

We're the disciples of Jesus Christ and He's using this portion of Scripture to teach us how we ought to pray. So let's get right to the text. As we go through these, phrase by phrase, I'll be beginning with the foundational truth that Jesus is weaving into the prayer. In other words, there's something of substance that's beneath each of the things, each of the directions that Jesus is pointing us in. And so we'll be talking about the substance that's there, and then we'll be talking about how that should affect our prayers.

Jesus starts out by saying, in this manner therefore pray. And Just to state the obvious, this is an exhortation to pray. He says, in this manner, therefore, pray. And this is right along with what he was telling us in verse 6 of the chapter, which is go into your room and when you have shut your door, pray. Last week, I hope there was just an urgent appeal that we ought to pray, that we ought to have a pattern in our lives where we actually go into a room and we shut the door when no one else knows that we're there, when no one else knows what we're doing, and we ought to pray to our God because He's there.

When we go into the room and we shut the door, God is there. And so this is a continued exhortation that we actually pray. You only need to be taught how to pray if you intend to pray. These things are not useful to us if we don't have a pattern of life that prays. We don't need to be taught how if we're not going to pray.

So this is our exhortation. Jesus is teaching us how, and he expects us to do something with these words, not just as an intellectual exercise. If we were going to pray, we might pray about these things. No, we ought to pray. So Jesus teaches us to pray.

Then he says, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. You cannot miss that this prayer, this model prayer begins with God. It begins with worship of Almighty God. And what Jesus is teaching us here is that we ought to just set aside our petitions. The things that we really think we need, the things that we would really like to have, we just set those to the side.

And when we go and when we pray in secret and when we pray corporately, those things are set off to the side to take care of the primary business, which is to fall down on our faces before God. Sometimes actually physically and sometimes just in our heart, but we ought to be in a disposition of Worshipping God when we come to pray we shouldn't think that there's a category of prayer and a category of worship of course there There are some some distinctions, but prayer is worship And so when we come to God, this is where we start, by worshiping God. The prayer begins with, oh God, Your name should be great. Oh God, your kingdom should come. Oh God, your will is perfect and ought to be done.

And so as we approach God, this is how we approach him. In worship of God, acknowledging that His name is central, that His kingdom is central, that His will is central. And we'll get to asking for the things that we think that we need later in the prayer. But when we start, we ought to always start with God because worship is the context of prayer. This takes us away from our strictly individual, individualistic prayer, prayers, doesn't it?

That we would come with a disposition where God is on the mind when we come to pray. And all these other things are set to the side for the moment, and we worship God. And it keeps us from coming to pray as if we're actually praying to ourselves. And we're only thinking about ourselves. We're only praying about individualistic things.

Something else that takes us away from that self-centered direction also is just what we see in the prayer, that it is the use of our and us, not mine and me. Do you notice that in the prayer? There's no mine, there's no me in the whole prayer. It's all our, it's all us. We're not just a million disconnected little islands that come to God and ask for things for ourselves.

But we're part of a people. It isn't my father, it's our father. It isn't give me my daily bread, it's give us our daily bread. We've been joined together into one body. We're a people.

God has made us one body in Jesus Christ. If you've been accepted in the beloved, then you are given the right to call him father. You've been adopted. You've been brought into this family. But not just you, it's not a single adoption.

It's a mass adoption. And it's a creation of a people. And so it shouldn't be me and mine when we approach God. It should be us and ours as we see in this prayer. And I don't believe that this just means that this is how we pray in a corporate prayer.

I believe this is a disposition that Jesus is teaching us that we view ourselves as part of the body of Christ, part of the people of God. And we're not just praying for our own daily bread, but we're also praying that our brothers and sisters, that God would give his provision to them as well. Not only is God our Father if we've been adopted, but God is a Father who is in heaven. And this is significant. When Stephen, in Acts 7, has preached this wonderful, brilliant sermon.

It's so brilliant that people want to kill him. That's how you know when the sermon's good, is that someone wants to kill you. And Stephen has preached such a sermon, and they do want to kill him. And actually, they're in the act of stoning him in Acts 7, 55 and 56. And here's what it says.

But he, but Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God and said, Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. God allowed Stephen a vision of the glory of God in his last minutes here on Earth. The heavens opened up, nobody else could see, but Stephen could see. And he could see God in his glory, and he could see Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of God. And so Stephen gets this vision of the glory of the God of the universe who rules, who sustains everything by the power of his own word.

If God the Father is in heaven, and now Jesus is at his right hand, and if he would allow just the heavens to part for a minute, this is what we would see. We would see God on his throne, ruling, sustaining with everything under the counsel of his own will, doing whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it. We would see God on high. God is in heaven. And so he is a father.

He's very tender. He's very forgiving. He's very mindful of his children, but he's not like your father. He is God Almighty, and he is reigning in heaven. And if the heavens were to pull back Just a little bit, we would see Him in His glory.

We would see Him in majesty ruling over the universe. And because of this, we ought to be concerned with the greatness of His name. Because God is on His throne, ruling over the universe, sustaining everything by the power of His word, we ought to be concerned for the greatness of His name. Now, we could spend the whole day talking about the name of God. When it talks about the name of God here, it's just talking about who God is.

It's all of his attributes rolled up together into his name. I am that I am, the self-existent one. But we could talk about his other names. He's also a provider. He's Jehovah Jireh.

He's also the Lord our banner. He's also the Lord our healer. And we can go on and on. And we could pray in our prayers. We could use this as a tool to pray about the name of God.

But in all these things, the real concern here is that his name would be great. That his fame would spread to the ends of the earth. And so when it says that his name should be hallowed, it means that The name of God ought to be held in awe. It ought to be held in ultimate reverence. In Leviticus 10, verse 3, Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, have offered profane fire.

God never told them to do it, but they did it. And fire comes from God and consumes Nadab and Abihu. And here's what it says following that. By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. And before all the people, I must be glorified.

This was the problem with Nadab and Abihu is when they came offering something that God had never commanded, they weren't considering him to be holy. And so God says, by those who would draw near to me, I must be regarded as holy. So it should not surprise us at all to see at the beginning of the Lord's prayer that this is built in, that regarding God as holy when we're coming and approaching Him, that this is built in to the beginning of our prayers. Oh, God, we know that you are holy. We know that your name ought to be held in the highest esteem, and we hold it that way, God.

Malachi 1.11 says this. For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, my name shall be great among the Gentiles. In every place incense shall be offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts." This is what God is doing. This is what God is doing. This is what God is doing.

He's spreading the greatness of His name. He's causing one person and then another and then another and then another to understand that he is God Almighty, and that he's a merciful God, and that he's a great Redeemer. And he's doing this among the Gentiles. And Malachi 1.11 talks about that. It says, from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, the name of God shall be great among the Gentiles." And so we're just praying what God has already said He's doing.

And we want to spur that along in whatever way we can with our prayers. We want to line up with God in our prayers. He's concerned that His name be great, that it be known from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. And we should pray accordingly. And so this vision of God affects our prayers.

That we see God high and lifted up and ruling from heaven affects our prayers. That he's a father, but that he's a heavenly father. That he's tender-hearted toward his children, but he's also the almighty God who's working out the counsel of his will. And so we come as a people, and we stand in awe of God in prayer. We stand in awe of him.

And prayer is an opportunity for us to worship. And we should never miss that opportunity. What a cheap counterfeit it is to just come and ask things of God. When the opportunity existed, that we would come and bow down before God Almighty and worship Him. And this is how the model prayer that Jesus gives us begins.

Here's what the result of this ought to be. It ought to give us the biggest prayers that God is our Father, that He cares for us, that He treats us like children, and that at the same time He's almighty, ought to give us the biggest, baddest prayers that you've ever seen or you've ever heard. Because we know that God is willing And he's able. He is God in heaven. He's able.

There's nothing that he can't do. But he's willing also, because he's our father. And he desires to give good gifts to us, just like we desire to give good gifts to our children. That's just a small, small little thing. Our desire to give gifts to our children is just a small little thing compared to what God is like, compared to what he desires to do for us.

But we're so unable. We're willing often, but we're so unable. But God's not like that. He's eminently able. And so this should shape our prayers.

This should have us praying big prayers, knowing that God is our Father and that God is in heaven. Verse 10, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we pray, we come expressing a willing submission to God's plans and His purposes. That's what this is, isn't it? Your kingdom come.

This is a yielding, a willing embrace of God's plans and His purposes. And we come and we say, King Jesus, We are yours. We are at your disposal. We are at your leisure. Do with us whatever you want to do.

Your will, not our will. Your kingdom, not our kingdom. But we come yielding ourselves to you. This is how we ought to come in prayer. After we've expressed our awe of him, we ought to yield up to his plans and his purposes.

This brings us back to the kingdom of heaven. And We've kind of not talked about that in a while, but it's been in so many of the texts that we've covered. In Matthew, the kingdom of heaven is 31 times. It's more than once per chapter on average. And so Jesus talking about the kingdom of heaven is all over Matthew.

Matthew is consumed with this topic. In chapter three, John the Baptist has said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In chapter four, Jesus has said the exact same words, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In chapter 5, we saw the eight beatitudes. The bookends, the first beatitude and the last beatitude, both have the blessing being that you are part of the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. That's the first bookend. And then the last bookend is blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And it's interesting because it's present tense. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Now the other Beatitudes aren't like that. Now there's eight of them, and two of them have to do with the kingdom of heaven. And they're the only two that are present tense. The others are shall be. The others are future tense.

But not the kingdom of heaven. It's present tense. It's a present reality for those who have embraced Jesus Christ. And this is confirmed by Jesus in Luke 17. In Luke 17 verses 20 and 21 says this, now when he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor do they say, see here or See there, for indeed the kingdom of God is within you.

For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. It's not geographical. It's not political. It's wherever people have repented and received Jesus Christ as king. And they've been born again.

And they've been transferred out of one kingdom that was destroying them into another kingdom, which is all to their blessing. And this is the nature of the kingdom of God. And when we pray, we plead for an expansion of that. The kingdom of God has come. The kingdom of God is coming.

Every time one of your neighbors gets born again, the kingdom of God has expanded. It's just gotten a little bit bigger. Every time one of our children comes to know Jesus Christ as Lord, the kingdom of God has just expanded a little bit more. And so this is the nature of it. And it's expanding always as people are born again.

So we might say, where's the Great Commission in Jesus' prayer, in Jesus' model prayer. Well, here it is. It's about the kingdom of God coming. It's about people being transferred out of one kingdom into another kingdom. Here's the Great Commission.

It's sinners saved by God, submitting themselves to the King, and then being made more pleasing to God and more pleasing to God and more pleasing to God, doing, learning to love the things that he loves, learning to hate the things that he hates. This is what it means that his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Every time that increases, every time somebody's added to his kingdom or those who are in his kingdom learn to be more obedient, it is a little more of the will of God being done on earth as it is in heaven. And so the kingdom of God has come, the kingdom of God is coming, and the kingdom of God will come. In other words, there's a consummation point here where Jesus comes for the second time and then everything will be done.

All of His will will be done, everywhere as it is in heaven. Verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread. This represents a shift away from a complete God focus to something that pertains to us. But I want to say sort of.

Sort of. It's sort of a shift because It's based on an acknowledgement that only God can sustain us. And so it's not really a shift away from God. We begin to become included in these prayers, but God is still at the center of them. We're praying to God for our daily bread.

And it's an acknowledgement that only He can sustain us. And this should be our disposition when we come to God. Oh, God, you are the one who gives me my bread every day. God, here we are today. I need bread today.

Please, please give it to me. Job was blameless and upright, one who feared God and shunned evil. That's how Job is described in Job 1.1. Blameless, he feared God and he shunned evil. And that he's a rich man and God strips all this away from Job.

And here's what Job says after all of his riches have been stripped away. And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. This is the disposition of a Christian in prayer, knowing that everything is God's and that he can move around resources effortlessly.

God owns the cattle on 1, 000 hills, and He moves those cattle just effortlessly wherever He needs them, whenever He needs them. And sometimes He chooses to give, and sometimes He chooses to withhold. But all that is within His plan. All that is within his wisdom. All that is for his own good purposes and for his glory.

And so we come like that. God, I was born naked. God, when I die, I'll still be naked. And you gave and you take away. Blessed be your name.

And so we come humbly and we come praying for the day's provisions. And what a rich history the people of God have with Daily provision. You can't think about daily provision without going back to the wilderness and thinking about the Israelites coming out of their tent on year 38 or year 32 or year 25. And there it is. There's the manna again on the ground.

They never sowed anything. They didn't plant. They haven't watered. But they walk out of their tent again. And the day's provision is just on the ground to be collected.

And God can always do that. Asking for daily bread is like just relying on manna from heaven, knowing that God is faithful. When you walk out of the tent, there will be something on the ground because God said He will not forsake his people. The whole second half of chapter 6 is going to be devoted to this. And Jesus is going to be pounding away.

Don't worry. The lilies of the field, they're clothed. The sparrows of the air are fed. You're more important than the lilies. You're more important to God than the sparrows.

If the lilies are clothed and the sparrows are fed, don't worry. And then It culminates in verse 34. Do not worry about tomorrow sufficient for the day as its own troubles. And so we shouldn't worry. We should pray.

We should call out to God every day and acknowledge him. Not presume that the manna will be there, but actually ask him for the manna. It's not right for us to presume upon the provision of God. We shouldn't do that. If you have a job that gives you extra provision, that is not an excuse to presume on the goodness of God, as if this is something that you've somehow generated and now you don't need God to give you your daily bread.

That's wrong. We need every day to come and ask God for our provision. And if He's already given you today's provision and next week's provision, that also has come through the hand of God. And that also can be taken away in the blink of an eye, in the snap of a finger. And so we should always, when we pray, every day, ask God for His provision.

Not presuming, but asking. Now, verse 12, I'd like to just go ahead and marry verse 12 up with 14 and 15. Verse 12, Jesus teaches us to pray for something. And then after the prayer is ended in verses 14 and 15, he comes back And actually, it's the only thing in prayer that he gives more exposition of after the Amen. And so I just want to, since there's an explanation afterwards, I just want to treat the whole subject right now.

Verse 12, then 14 and 15. And then we'll come back and do 13. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." So this begins with an acknowledgement of our debts.

Kind of stating the obvious, isn't it? God, we owe things that we can't pay. We're debtors, and we can't pay the debt. And we need you, God, to forgive the debt. Matthew Henry says this.

And he's talking about the transition of asking for daily bread into asking for forgiveness. Matthew Henry, our daily bread does but feed us as lambs for the slaughter if our sins be not pardoned. Did you get that? Our daily bread does but feed us as lambs for the slaughter if our sins be not pardoned. In other words, who cares if you have daily bread if God Almighty is holding your sins against you and at the end of your life they will be held in your account.

And you'll have nothing to pay for it. And you'll spend eternity in hell. Who cares if you don't have breakfast if your sins aren't pardoned? And so Matthew Henry says, of course, asking for pardon follows on the heels of asking for your daily bread. Otherwise, you're just being fattened up for the slaughter if God will hold your sins against you.

And so we come to God, and we have the knowledge that we've sinned against an Almighty and a Holy God. And we ask our Father to forgive these deaths because we have nothing to pay with. We have nothing that God needs from us. And so our transgressions against Him can only be handled if he himself will pay the penalty and forgive our debts. And this is a holy moment in prayer.

Maybe you've found yourself like me, that this just becomes a very mechanical time. Let's get the confession out of the way so we can move on to the important things of prayer. No. This ought to be a time in our prayer where we figuratively take off our sandals because we're on holy ground. We're on the ground of Calvary, the ground of provision for our sins, the ground of the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

When we come asking that God would forgive us our debts, this is the ground that we're on, and it's holy ground. And These ought to be holy moments when we pray, when we're confessing our sins to God. These ought to be holy moments. And we should slow down, and we should think on the depth of our sin, and we should think on the depth of the love of God who would come and offer himself for sinners. Think about who is teaching us to pray this.

It's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That's who is exhorting us to pray that our debts would be forgiven. It's Jesus Christ. It's the great sacrifice himself. And it's only through the work that he'll do in his lifetime that he can even exhort us to pray this, because he's made a way that the Father actually can forgive us our debts, because he offered himself in our place.

So after asking God to forgive us of our debts, then Jesus tells us to proceed to a declaration that we forgive others. Says as we forgive our debtors. This is a declaration that we forgive those who have sinned against us. And God, it's so significant that God builds this into the model prayer. It means that every time we come to God, we ought to ask him to forgive our debts, and we ought to declare that we forgive the debts of those who have sinned against us.

Anyone who has trespassed against us, we have a stopping point in the model prayer that would cause us to say, people have trespassed against me, but I forgive them. God, forgive me of what I can't pay, and I forgive. I declare that I forgive those who have trespassed against me. Jesus has given us this model prayer. And in it are the essential elements that we ought to have in our prayer.

And one of those essential elements is forgiving others when they have sinned against us. Every time. Every time we go to God, every time we confess our sins, there ought to be a declaration that we forgive others who have sinned against us. I mentioned this other prayer in Luke 11 that's so much like the Lord's Prayer here in Matthew 6. Here's what Luke 11, 4 says, and forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

So it's exactly the same sense, but it says it in a different way that makes it so clear that it's a declaration that those who have trespassed against us are off the hook. They've been forgiven. Listen again. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. In Mark 11 25, Jesus says this, and whenever you stand praying, I want you to just listen for categorical language in what Jesus is saying in Mark 11 25.

Look for the language that won't allow you to weasel out. These are the words that we're looking for. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him that your Father in heaven may also forgive your trespasses. So whenever you stand praying, all the time, every prayer, If you have anything against anyone, he's just piling up the categorical language so that we know that there's no out here. There is no escape hatch that we can drop through to get away from this.

Whenever we stand praying, if we have anything against anyone, we forgive them so that God will forgive us of our sins. And if we have this pattern before us, how can a Christian harbor unforgiveness? Now, I've given you three places where Jesus has said exactly the same thing. When you're praying, forgive your brother. And so he's repeating it, and we ought to be paying attention.

Now, if this is the pattern that Jesus has given us, How does a Christian harbor unforgiveness? How can this be? Matthew 18, verses 21 through 25. And we won't go there, but I'll talk about it. It's the parable of the unforgiving servant.

You're very familiar with it. The servant owes the master 10, 000 talents. He can't pay the master, so the master's going to sell him off with his family. He pleads for mercy and the master says, okay, I know you can't pay it. I forgive the whole debt.

Then the servant goes to a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii. And he says, pay me. He has him by the collar, pay me. And he's unable to pay him. So he has the fellow servant sold off with his family to pay the 100 denarii.

Now, we're so familiar with this parable, but do you know what the math means here? A denarius is a day's wage for a laborer. A guy who works in the field makes a denarius a day. So his fellow servant owes him a hundred denarii. So if you work six days a week, then in four months, his fellow servant can pay him off.

Four months worth of labor is what his fellow servant owes him. That's what he's got him by the collar for, is four months worth of work. But he owed his master 10, 000 talents. So that is the equivalent of 200, 000 years of wages for a guy who works in the field. So his fellow servant owes him four months worth of wages.

But he owes his master 200, 000 years. How do you pay off a debt that requires 200, 000 years worth of labor? Do you know what that ratio is? That ratio is 600, 000 to one. His master forgave him 600, 000, but he wouldn't forgive his fellow servant.

One. That is the ratio. I didn't really understand that, so I started looking at the parable this week. And I'm working on it. That can't be right.

I came at it from different angles. And I had my math major wife check me on the math. And the ratio is 600, 000 to 1. In other words, your fellow servant's sins against you are lost in the rounding. They're not worth mentioning.

When you make the scale, it's not even visible. When you pile up your $600, 000 that you owe to your master, you can't even see on that scale what your fellow servant owes to you. So understand the absurdity of a Christian who doesn't forgive, because they owed $600, 000 and it's been forgiven them. But they want to extract one from their fellow servant. Can this be?

If you show by your behavior that you are blind to this, then could it be that your eyes have never been opened? If you're saying, there's just that person, I can't forgive, it was too terrible. Can it be that that is because your eyes have never been opened? The essential nature of a true Christian is one who is poor in spirit, who mourns over sin, who is meek. This was the Beatitudes in chapter 5, right?

This is the essence. This is the nature of someone who's been born again, who's been transformed by the power of the gospel, who's repented and gone from one kingdom into another kingdom. Now you're telling me someone whose essential nature is poor in spirit, is mourning over sin, is meek. Now, doesn't understand this about forgiveness? This doesn't make sense.

If there is someone that you will not forgive, is it possible that you're dead in your sins? That you've deceived yourself in thinking that you're a Christian, but you're not a Christian at all. Not because you can somehow earn forgiveness by forgiving. That's not what Jesus is teaching here. He's not teaching us to earn our forgiveness by forgiving other people.

But because you're displaying evidence that you've never been given eyes to see and ears to hear. If you're blind to this, how could it be that you've understood the true gospel? Matthew Henry says this, he that relents toward his brother, In other words, he that forgives his brother. He that relents towards his brother thereby shows that he repents towards his God. Matthew Henry sees the connection between how we view our brother who's trespassed against us and how We see our God who's forgiven us the 600, 000 Verse 13 and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Many translations render it evil, not evil one. And you just can't tell. It could be either in the Greek. So some say evil, deliver us from evil. Some say the evil one.

The point doesn't really change. So there's a translational variation there. But at the end of the day, the point is still the point. I don't believe that we give this the attention that it deserves. I don't believe that we give this the attention that it deserves.

I don't believe that we give it the attention that Jesus gives to it. Since the garden, since the fall of mankind, sin is crouching at the door, desiring to rule over us. But God says we should rule over it. And that is the nature of this prayer, that there's an acknowledgment that sin is crouching at the door, that there's a roaring lion that wants to devour, and yet that we should have mastery of these things. This is our calling from God, is to not be mastered by it, but to master it.

In chapter 4, Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He wasn't enticed by God to sin. That's what James 1 says. Don't say that you've been tempted by God. God was not enticing Jesus to sin.

The devil was enticing Jesus to sin, but God was not doing that. God had a completely other purpose. And then it was that Jesus would be tried and he was actually, Jesus was actually being qualified to be a compassionate high priest. That's a lot of what is happening in chapter 4. Jesus is being qualified to be a compassionate high priest, to know what it's like to be tempted by the devil.

And he was proven to be faithful, which makes him a spotless lamb. So that's what God was doing, even though the devil had very different designs. But Jesus wants us to plead with God for mercy, that we wouldn't be led into temptation. Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. But Jesus tells us, plead with God that he would have mercy on you, that you wouldn't be led into temptation.

Think of Job. Think of Peter. In both of these cases, the devil, Satan, asks he wants to sift them like wheat. Now that's the words used for Peter, but that's exactly what happened with Job as well. The devil wants to sift these men like wheat, but God has compassion.

God shows mercy and he sets boundaries on what the devil can do so that their faith will not fail. That's what Jesus says to Peter. The devil has asked that he might sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. So we shouldn't here obsess about the ins and out of temptation. What does God do?

What does the devil do? Where are the boundaries here? That's not the point. The point of this is clear, which is that we should ask God for help. We should plead with God for mercy and that he would help us, that he wouldn't lead us into temptation, but that he would deliver us from evil, or that he would deliver us from the evil one.

Having asked that God would forgive us for our sins, we should be tender towards the fact that we have sinned against God and have a fervent desire in our heart that we would not return there. We've just asked God to forgive us of our debts. And now we ask God, oh God, keep me from this. Keep me from being back here again having sinned against you. And we pray to be kept clear of temptation.

We pray to be delivered from the roaring lion that is roaming, seeking who he may devour. How pathetic to be harmed simply because we didn't ask the one who can deliver us. How pathetic to be in temptation or to be assaulted by the devil because we didn't ask the deliverer. Jesus is telling us to ask the deliverer for help and we ought to do it. Turn to 2nd Corinthians 12.

In 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul has been sent a messenger by the devil. He calls it a thorn in the flesh. We don't know exactly what this was. It doesn't matter. We know what we need to know from the passage.

And it has a bearing on what Jesus is teaching us to pray. 2 Corinthians 12, 7 through the first part of 9. And lest I, Paul, should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." Paul being assaulted by the devil, prays not to be led into temptation, prays to be delivered from the evil one.

And he actually prays it three times, because he's not getting the results. And the response back to him is that God's grace is sufficient. And this is what we're being taught in the Lord's Prayer, that we ought to ask God not to lead us into temptation. Sometimes God will think it is wise to lead you into temptation. And if he thinks it's a good idea, we ought to accept that it's a good idea.

And yet, we have an exhortation to plead that we would not be led into temptation. So our duty is clear. We ought to ask God that He would not lead us into temptation, that He would deliver us from evil. Knowing that, sometimes in His wisdom, it will be a good idea for His own purposes to bring certain levels of maturity in certain areas of our life. And He'll not answer that prayer in the way that we've prayed it and yet we still have a promise in 1st Corinthians 10 verses 13.

No temptation has overtaken you except such as common to man but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. But with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. And so God tells us to ask not to be led into temptation, to ask to be delivered from evil. Sometimes he will answer it just as we prayed, and sometimes he'll cause his grace to be sufficient. Sometimes he'll give us a way out of the temptation.

And this will all be according to his purposes. But his people ought to have a heart to be put thrust away from sin, thrust away from the things that prey on the weaknesses of our natures. We ought to plead to God for that, that he would deliver us from the evil one, that he would keep us from sin. Psalms 23, verse 3. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

This is the essence of this part of the prayer. That God would lead us into the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. That His name might be known as great. That He would keep us from sin. That He would keep our feet on the paths of righteousness for His own namesake.

Finally, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. It ends as it begins with our hearts bowed down before God, worshiping Him, knowing that the kingdom is His, the power is His, the glory is His, and there will be no end to it. It will always be His. It will be His forever.

Amen. And the prayer finds us at the end where it had us at the beginning, which is worshiping God. Revelation 4 says this, Revelation 4, 9 through 11. Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever and casts their crowns before the throne saying, you are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things. And by your will, they exist and were created.

When we pray this yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory it is a down payment for another day for a better day we'll be in heaven and we will be glorifying God and we'll be saying many of the same words that we pray if we use the template and the pattern and the model that Jesus gave us. It's a head start of what it will be like to be together with the elders and the living creatures bowing down before God and acknowledging his goodness and that his dominion is forever and ever and ever. In conclusion, this text just keeps pounding away at what last week's text pounded away at, which is that we need to pray. We need to be a praying people. How futile these exhortations, how futile to have a pattern if we don't actually establish a pattern in our lives that carves out time to go into the room and shut the door and pray.

Jesus gives us this model prayer which helps us, and It's a God-centered prayer. It's that his name would be hallowed, that it would be honored to the ends of the earth. It's that his kingdom would come, that there would be expansion, that there would be people being transferred out of one kingdom and into another kingdom. It's that his will would be done, that those who are in his kingdom would learn to love what he loves. They would learn to hate what he hates.

And that more and more, we would find ourselves lining up with God in how we talk, how we think, what we do. And then in this prayer we acknowledge the ways in which we need his help, that we need his provision every day, that if God doesn't provide us for us every day that we won't be provided for, that we need His forgiveness, that we have debts, that we have nothing to offer for our debts, but that God would forgive them through Christ. And also, to have this checkpoint where we're forgiving those who have trespassed against us because we've been forgiven. The 600, 000 will not hold out for the one. And then finally, protection from temptation and the devil, that we will find ourselves growing, being sanctified, sinning less, and pleading with God to help us in this.

The beauty of this prayer is that it gives us all the essential categories of prayer. You can pray a 10-minute prayer, Lord's Prayer, model prayer. You can pray all night in these categories. This is not just a short prayer. It can be a short prayer, but it doesn't have to be.

It's not giving us words to say, it's giving us directions. It's giving us categories that we can labor in that we ought to labor in. This is how Jesus prayed. This is how Jesus is telling us to pray. And sometimes he went away and prayed all night long.

And he was using these directions and these categories to direct them. So brothers and sisters, wear it out. We've been given a pattern. Wear it out. Wear the template out.

Use it every day. Use it when you pray to be God-centered in your prayers and to Ask for the things that you need. Go into your room and when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Finally, do you know what it means that we are invited to pray?

Do you know what it means that we are invited to pray? It means that the enmity between us and God, the warfare between us and God for those who can truly call Him Father because they've been adopted. The warfare is at an end. We are at peace with God and we are invited into His audience, into his presence. And we ought to treat this as a treasure and a privilege.

It ought to cause us to want to pray. The fact that the enmity has been removed, that we're not rebels anymore who are being persecuted by Almighty God, but we're sons who are invited to come and to pray. These should be precious words to us that Jesus is telling us to pray because it means that the war is at an end, that there's peace with God through Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, may you find us on our knees more.

May you find us praying more. May you find us praying more appropriately, heeding what you say when you say in this manner, therefore pray. May you find us praying Now you find us praying in this manner, Lord. God, I thank you. I've been a part of your people for several decades now.

This week, I kept thinking that I couldn't possibly have ever read this before because of my patterns. Forgive me, Lord. Forgive us for how we've taken things that are so clear, so plain, and just skimmed right over the top of them and not squeeze the benefit out of them. But I thank you God that you have used this text to refresh me and to redirect me. And God I pray that you would cause me to be faithful to it and not me alone but us God.

That we would be a faithful people to go and to pray in secret and to pray corporately and to use this. We would be found praying in this manner, God, in Jesus' name, amen.