Matthew 6:11
For more than a month we have been studying the Lord’s Prayer in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. The entire sermon is a revelation of the kingdom of God; its focus is on what it means to have righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, a righteousness that is defined by the posture and intents of the heart. The teaching of the Lord’s Prayer is in the midst of this section of the sermon in which Jesus is teaching what true worship is, that it is giving, it is praying, it is fasting, it is anything and everything that we do in obedience to God and for the glory of God. True worship must be initiated by God and it must be done for the glory of God, the moment we act of our own desire or for anyone’s eyes other than God’s we have moved out of worship into something far less. Jesus has taught us not to pray so that men see us and not to pray in a manner that attempts to get God to do what we want Him to do but instead He teaches us “In this manner, therefore, pray:”
“Our Father, in heaven”—Prayer is, first and foremost, children approaching their Father. That is how God views it, it is why God created it and so it has to become our understanding, our posture and the thing that captures our hearts. To become people of prayer, the burning ones who long for the presence of God, that desire His voice and His heart we have to see that prayer is not a religious act, it is not a ritual and it is not something that we become skilled at, it is, above all else, the lifeblood of our intimacy with God. Prayer is how we “come boldly before the throne of grace”, children who know they are loved by God and who long to respond with love to their Father.
The first request of the prayer, “Hallowed be Your name”, is for God to be glorified, the second request, “Your kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, is for the Spirit and the Word to have complete leadership of our lives so that the first request can be fulfilled and God can be seen as great. Jesus teaches us that the first priority of prayer must be God, His glory, His Spirit, His will. Again, worshipful prayer must be initiated by God and offered up for God.
That brings us to today’s text, “Give us this day our daily bread”. This request, taught to us by Jesus sounds simple but is actually very profound. This one prayer teaches us that God is concerned with us; that He knows and cares about our needs. It teaches us that He actually enjoys our requests, we are not a burden or a bother, we are His delight and it pleases our Father to be needed and desired by His children. It teaches us that there is a corporate component to all of creation that must not be overlooked and finally this one petition of prayer reveals that we were created for dependence upon God. Those will be the points we will try to cover today: God is concerned with our needs; God enjoys our requests; God desires for us to see our needs corporately as much as individually and God created us to mature into greater dependence upon Him.