Praying & Acting "Spiritual Symmetry" [3 of 3] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 8/24/2014

all right um we're uh continuing in this series we're almost near the end actually of the series we did for the second half of the summer called spiritual symmetry and uh if you've been following you already know what i'm going to say in the next 30 seconds this has been a series where we're exploring the the biblical uh patterns of what uh the daily life habits and practices and rhythms and routines of the spiritual life of jesus but then also of the earliest christians and then throughout history what are the kinds of life habits that mark jesus and christians throughout history who are growing who are changing or transforming and so on it's a very practical series and uh we've been taking each week to take two practices two of these biblical historic practices that seem like there's maybe tension or they're at odds with each other and figure out how they work together and so today we're talking about prayer talking about praying and acting praying and acting so we're talking about talking to god we're talking about talking to god and then we're talking about going and doing something about what you just talked to god about this in my way that's how i would frame it talking to god but then of course what are you how are you actually living and what are you supposed to go do about these things that you just prayed and talked to god about how those two go together and in as we're going to see today i think in in christian prayer part of what makes christian prayer unique is the way that jesus saw praying and acting as completely bound bound together two sides of the same of the same coin so when i say the word prayer here's my hunch my hunch is that when i said praying and acting or talking about prayer today anytime you talk about prayer in a church setting or a christian setting there's this invisible wave of guilt right that pervades the room right and so it's because half of us you know we know the like oh yeah prayer like that's important that's this thing that should be important to me and somehow it's like that doesn't actually translate into action right and so maybe you know you feel like it it is important that it should be important but you find different struggles with it but that's not everybody so you think of it like a spectrum and my guess is that the whole spectrum is sitting in the room here so yeah some people i call them the direct line people and they just like they're just in tune with with jesus throughout the day and when they pray they're the people you like call or email when you really have a real urgent need or something like that because somehow like they're just they're those people and they pray a lot and it's effective in their lives and the people around them so there's those people and then there's some of us i say prayer and and you think of a practice that brings a lot of solace in your life or comfort it's kind of like a bedrock for you and it's positive it's positive there is kind of the middle of the spectrum which would be like yes i know it's important and it is powerful sometimes it's really dry and i just do it because i know i'm supposed to but it's i don't always get a lot out of it and then there's just the downright confused and frustrated bunch right and uh and i'm i'm kind of in this middle side area over here most of the time and and that's that's not um that's not unexpected there are many of us for whom just the idea of prayer gets our mind spinning on a million questions or like how does it work does it actually work if god like knows what i'm gonna say before i even say it why should do i need to do it you know and does it does god respond to my prayers and how does that whole thing work out and then you find yourself thinking about that when you're supposed to be praying and then you're just like dang it i gotta move on with my day or whatever and then you go and then that's your experience of prayer and so whatever we've got the whole spectrum in the room right now now here's what's interesting i think is that if you i since i've become a christian i've paid attention to the language that i use or that i hear people use to talk about prayer and you hear all these words of like profound and soulless and comfort and and important and confusion and so on paul the apostle uses the word like wrestling like actual physical grappling when he talked about prayer he says he has a friend at the end of colossians who's grappling in prayer on your behalf and you're like yes that's that's how i feel i mean grappling comes to your mind so we have all these words and things that come to our mind when we think about the practice of prayer and one of the things that i almost never hear people talk about when they talk about their experiences of prayer is jesus jesus now you might think what are you talking about like of course jesus is involved in my prayer i end my prayers with the name of jesus right but let's just be honest like that's the equivalent of hitting the send button for most of us you know and it's just kind of like it's that thing that you do to make sure it has extra effect or something like that i don't know but so but that's for many of us that's about what jesus has to do with our prayers and and this is it's not good it is it's not good because i mean just think about it and so here we are again right we're jesus actually cared deeply about the prayer habits of his followers he cared deeply about it he cared that they prayed he both modeled that in his own life and so we explored that earlier on in the series jesus's own habits of solitude and prayer and scripture but he also taught a lot about prayer and he seemed to care deeply about how his followers prayed and what they prayed and he seemed to think that that christian prayer and what he was teaching his disciples to do was unique and it was different jesus acknowledged as we're going to see that lots of people pray off across all kinds of spectrum and religious traditions what makes jesus's followers prayer different and unique and distinct and he seemed to care about that because he talked a lot about it in fact he actually gave us a prayer he gave us a prayer and for many of us that prayer has become so familiar to us we've just forgotten about it and forgotten his brilliance and it's in its power what am i talking about the prayers that he gave us what do we call it we call it the lord's prayer and there there is i'm convinced of it a a universe inside of the lord's prayer and because of familiarity we've become accustomed to it bored with it you know probably not the familiarity already breeds contempt with lord's prayer but at least boredom or lack of inspiration and so it seems to me we need to come back here again because what mattered most closely to jesus he shared with us in this prayer as he taught us how to pray so i invite you to get out your bibles with me and uh we're gonna we're gonna focus on the lord's the lord's prayer today um it's in matthew chapter six so first book the new testament gospel of matthew chapter chapter six um one cool thing that uh we're excited about so this is gonna be actually the second to uh last sunday teaching in this series and then uh next month in september we're gonna begin a series that will go as far as the eye can see in the gospel of matthew we're just going to start with page one and then just see what happens for the next however long and i'm quite excited about it we're gonna hop out of it a couple of places but um we just we feel that for the next season for our church we just need to camp out in the life and the sayings and the teachings of jesus every sunday for a really long time together done okay matthew chapter six right so who's gonna argue with that um matthew chapter six so look at verse five it's a little introduction jesus has to to his prayer and he's gonna do he's gonna identify two forms of praying that existed in uh for his disciples out there in their culture already and that is true also for us too you know every time you know time magazine or something like that does uh um or the pew research forum or something does surveys on the religious activities of americans or something prayer is always way higher than anybody's religious affiliation with the church or religion or a mosque or the synagogue anything prayer always outnumbers how many people are actually involved in an official religious organization so whatever that means prayer pervades the life of lots and lots of people who are all over the map spiritually jesus recognizes that too and so what makes a disciple of jesus's prayer unique and different what marks it as uh as christian and that's what he's gonna he's gonna explore here so in verse five he just assumes that his disciples will pray he just assumes it he just says and when you all pray he's talking to a big group of disciples on a hillside he says don't be like the hypocrites they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others truly i tell you they have received their reward in full so he's talking about the very pious and religious uh in in their jewish community here and as we're going to see uh in a little bit uh biblical traditions of prayer jewish traditions of prayer was modeled around the structure of prayer three times a day morning when you get up before you go to bed but then after like a midday prayer an afternoon prayer and what the midday prayer creates is the opportunity where you're like in the marketplace or something and like oh it's time for prayer and there was a tendency forming especially among some religious leaders who will like find themselves conveniently stepping up you know a stair or two to be quite visible to others as they like say their prayers or something like that and it's just ego and it's just humans being stupid right but he says that's one extreme don't be like that so here's the first mark of jesus centered prayer is that it's it's personal and you do it in a way that doesn't let on to anybody else that you're actually doing it look at what he says here so he says when you pray go into your room close the door pray to your father who's unseen and your father who sees what's done in secret will reward you for jesus prayer is a deeply personal and relational experience and to it to even risk being in a setting where you will exploit it to look good in some ways just to sabotage the whole thing and so jesus centered prayer is is meant to be done in a very discreet almost like covert type of way nobody else needs to know that you're doing it when you do your midday prayer but then there's another extreme he says look at verse seven he says and when you pray don't be like um you know what what's going wrong with jewish prayer but also don't keep babbling on like pagans for when they think they will be heard because of their many words now let's just stop real quick here you hear the word pagan and do you think positive or negative association word pagan it's mostly negative in english isn't it it's like a a pejorative type of word and that's not the case in the bible this is kind of hard for us to get so the word has come to have all these connections to it that it doesn't actually have in the bible in the bible it's an ethnic term it's always used in the mouth of somebody who's jewish talking about somebody who's not jewish so he's talking about the greeks the greeks or the romans here's the way to go wrong and the way jewish contemporaries are going wrong here's the non-jewish world and how it prays and the prayers are long they're just really long prayers that's the problem jesus thought praying needlessly long is an issue and like a real problem that shouldn't mark the prayers of his followers go think about these things so so i don't know if you've ever had the experience of um reading some of the great you know greek uh or roman classics right like homer's iliad or the odyssey or something like that you should just as like an inhabitant of the western culture you should know about these things you should go read go read homer and what you'll find is that lots of stories and they're often filled with people making prayers to the greek and the roman gods to zeus or to apollos or something and you will notice it'll just jump right off the page after they're just like unbearably long they're just really long and they're long for a reason because the whole point is that the greek and roman gods like you don't know if they like you they could wake up with you know you know a chip on their shoulder that day and they they don't care about you or what you're saying to them and so half of it is just rhetoric trying to get the god's attention and convincing them why they should you know give you safe passage on your voyage or something like that and so jesus look at jesus this whole point is like you don't to to go on and on trying to convince god about how important it is shows that you don't actually understand who you're praying to and so he says this he says verse 8 he says don't be like them your father knows what you need before you ask him now here's what's funny i think many of us we read that statement okay don't need to go on and on he already knows what you need and our response to that is he already knows what i need well why should i pray if he already knows what i mean why should i pray and do you see that jesus is drawing the exact opposite conclusion he already knows what you need so pray for goodness sakes do you see his logic here it's completely upside down from us he sees the fact that the father already knows and is already paying attention to you and knows what you need he sees that as precisely the reason why you would pray and then what he goes on to say having avoided the two extremes is to give us uh this beautiful little poetic prayer that is quite short quite short this then is how you should pray and i feel i just feel compelled we should say it aloud together because it's the lord's prayer for goodness sake so would you join me our father in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one now uh some of you have more to the prayer in some of your translations especially if it's from the king james tradition most of you don't but you'll see a footnote and you know that i love those footnotes they're full of endlessly curious things so what uh what's going on is some of you might know the form of the prayer that has an ending and that's what you'll see in the footnote for yours speaking to god yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen that's not original to the prayer jesus did not say that and all of the earliest manuscripts that we have to this prayer are the form that we just read it in in the shorter version but the when that edition was made and how and why it was made actually gives us a clue into how the the lord's prayer began to play a role in the life of christians and in in the worship gatherings so as we're going to come full circle as we as we end uh today's exploration about the lord's prayer we're going to see that this prayer very quickly like almost immediately became adopted as the daily prayer of followers of jesus prayed morning afternoon and evening and prayed in the sunday gatherings and within the first somewhere 50 75 years especially i think in light of the lord's prayer being read like in sunday gatherings which are for worship there was felt a need to conclude the prayer with something that sounds a little bit more like a praise song so yours is the kingdom power and glory that's almost certainly where this edition came from and it's beautiful and i actually think you should say it because it's about how the lord's prayer became the prayer of the church but it's not actually what jesus what jesus said now how's that for dodging a whole complex uh conversation right there so here's here's the prayer that he gave us right here now what do you say what on earth do you say about the lord's prayer you know like you try and say something new you know of course not but there is something about it it's become so familiar to many of us that we we actually stop seeing how profound and brilliant it is and what jesus is trying to get us to be and do as he gives this prayer to us and as i said there's a there's a universe inside this prayer this prayer is meant to actually not close you down by becoming too familiar it's supposed to crack open something that's huge and expansive invite you into all kinds of new experiences so what do you say we're not i'm not going to work our way through every line of the prayer i just want to draw attention to a couple things a couple things look at the prayer and and just pay attention it's structured into two halves there's two halves to the poem to the prayer here and the two halves are depends on the focus the focus if you look at the first half it's about five lines you'll see it's all focused on god's will and god's agenda and his kingdom look it's dominated by the words you and yours do you see that so hallowed be your name may your kingdom come may your will be done do you see that right there you you you so the first half of the poem so think about this that jesus wants his followers before they do anything else before we focus on what's happening in my story and what's not happening according to my will in my life i first recognize that my story is just one little tiny piece of the bigger story of what god is doing in the world and so what i value what i prioritize first is god's reputation his name what i what i value and prioritize first is the story of how his kingdom is is coming and how god's rejoining heaven and earth according to his will right and on earth as it is in heaven and i i do that first it's sort of like that's the set of glasses that i see everything through even my own needs and prayer requests i i see through this first line so that's the first half and then look at the second half then it shifts to us and our give us our daily bread forgive us as we forgive lead us uh not into temptation deliver us do you see that right there do you see the two halves you you you we us we us we apps so what's there's something right there pretty much we're just i just want us to think about that right there because again there's a universe inside of what's happening here what i think how most of us pray especially the second half of the prayer we we say us give us if you pray the prayer you say us forgive us but i think most of us in our minds actually say me me and mine and i mean that's how we think of it you're okay god do your thing yep yep okay now on to me all right so my bread my physical well-being my forgiveness relationship with you so i think how most of us read it and that's clear that jesus could have said that he clearly envisioned that this is a personal prayer said in close personal settings right go be by yourself but he doesn't say give me in other words that that plural is crucial and it makes all the difference in the world because once i orient myself to to the story of god's kingdom coming into the world through jesus when i'm turning my attention even when i turn my attention to my own story it's always in the context of me in the place of my my broader community and so i'm not just praying about my needs i'm also mindful of other people's needs because there's a whole lot of other people that need bread and there's a lot of other people that need forgiveness and there's lots of other people who are in difficult trials and so it gets your mind off of yourself in both halves of the prayer on to god's story and then on to the story of me as a part of a broader community we'll come back to that so there's our two two halves now i've already been talking about as much time as you could say the lord's prayer like 50 times so like is this a short prayer does it fit jesus requirements of not long and it's not even if you were to like go up on steps in public that by the time everybody is looking at you to think that you're really religious it's over so you won't actually even like really look very religious saying a prayer that this short and that's jesus point now this isn't the only form of the prayer of the short prayer that jesus gave to his disciples he taught it to his disciples we know on one other occasion and almost certainly on many many occasions in fact almost all of the teachings of jesus he's a traveling teacher and so he's going around from town to town village to village and there you know he does what all traveling teachers do he has a fixed body of stuff that he's saying it's not like he came up with new parables every single village that would be like two million parables or something you know so he developed a body of work of proverbs of sayings of teachings and so he certainly taught this prayer to lots of different people on lots of different occasions and we have one of them and and the comparison is interesting it's in luke chapter 11. so here he's on a hill with a whole bunch of disciples here he's somewhere else and and one day he had been praying in a certain place when he was finished one of his disciples said to him lord teach us to pray just as john taught his disciples and so he said to them when you pray say this father hallowed be your name your kingdom come give us each day our daily bread forgive us our sins as we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation now is that the lord's prayer so say yes say yes all right because is it the lord saying it and is it a prayer yep okay all right done i've convinced you so so yeah is it the lord's prayer as you know it from the occasion you mentioned it matthew no and that shouldn't bother you one ounce what's he's a traveling teacher for goodness sake does he have to say it the exact same way every time he said no of course he doesn't and he's you know and that's just how he's a teacher he's a traveling teacher this is what traveling teachers do now for all that this is actually even a shorter version jesus cared about brevity in prayer by the way it's just clear look he's like okay let's boil it down even more so even though some of the phrases are a little different and and it's even a shorter form are the two halves still there in the same order yeah yeah totally so you can even see the wording is important but look all the key words are there father kingdom your name bread forgiveness uh deliverance from testing and so on it's all right there so we have two wordings of the very same prayer that communicate the same the same exact message and so jesus where where did jesus come up with this what's at the heart of this prayer and what's at the heart of these two halves and if there's two different forms of it it's it's clearly we should not get so much hung up on the precise wording but on the heartbeat of the prayer which is bound up with the key themes and then connected with these two these two halves where did jesus come up with this prayer why did he give it to us in this way and what did he mean to invite us into by inviting us to pray to pray this prayer to explore that put your thumb here and go forward with me about 15 chapters in matthew to matthew chapter 22. matthew 22 and we're going to go down a rabbit hole but curiously the rabbit hole is going to land us precisely at the lord's prayer by the end of it you guys ready rabbit hole matthew 22 we're going to look at verse 34. and this story is in the last week that jesus spent in jerusalem for passover and uh leading up to is his execution so this is really an intense week in the life of jesus chapter 22 verse 34. now hearing that jesus had silenced the sadducees which was one jewish religious group the pharisees another jewish religious group got together and one of them an expert in the law tested him with this question teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law now it's a perfectly good question is it being asked from a right motive no no what's the purpose it's get jesus that's the purpose um this is a loaded question it's a loaded question um think of a politically or religiously charged hot topic in our setting and this person is coming to jesus asking of a question they don't want to learn anything they're trying to peg him in a pigeon hole so that they can get him to line up as far as where he is and where he fits on their map and politically and religiously and so on it would be like in our setting someone coming up being jesus legalization of marijuana go you know and it's like oh so you're trying to peg someone because you assume if you know what they think about that you also know what they think about this this and this and jesus always resists people trying to categorize him because he breaks everybody's categories and so the question is is a very jewish one and it's hot hot topic in first century judaism so this guy's an expert in the scriptures the law is don't think american english law or lawyers or anything it's a jewish term referring to the first five books of the scriptures which in jewish tradition are called torah which gets translated as law right here and in in the torah there's a whole bunch of commands you have the story of abraham and then it becomes israel israel comes out of slavery in egypt to the foot of mount sinai they're given the ten commandments and then they're given uh 603 more commandments after that making a grand total of 613 which is a lot i mean that's just a lot of commands already but here's what's interesting those are what's in exodus numbers excuse me exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy but if you look at those 613 there's all kinds of different commands about like you know how to deal with your neighbor's cow if it eats grass in your farm or something and like what kind of clothing you should food you should or shouldn't eat how to do the sacrifices and so on you think holy cow 613. surely that's plenty well actually it's not it's not plenty because there are all these gaps and holes in the commands and how they relate to each other and there's a million other scenarios that the 613 don't envision and so one of the tasks of of jewish scholars after that was to come up with a whole other body of like sub commands that clarify the original 613 commands and so you have jewish students like they're coming to learn the scriptures and then this whole thing and there's like thousands of commands and so a raging debate and discussion in jesus day as well which one's the most important like which is the one that you make sure that you do so that you will end up doing all of the others at the same time or which one is the common denominator underneath all of them right that's the discussion and different groups of jewish people landed in different areas and so here we go we're trying to peg jesus which which kind of jewish teacher are you jesus and ever brilliant this is how he replies jesus replied he says love the lord your god with all of your heart with all of your soul with all of your mind now did he come up with that no what's he doing this is he's quoting the scriptures right and he's quoting from the torah specifically from uh the book of deuteronomy chapter six now even more than he's just quoting torah love the lord your god with all your heart all your soul with all your your mind this comes from a prayer this comes from what's called the shema prayer and i often close our gatherings with it it's the shema prayer that was said uh three times a day uh in jewish tradition it was the the the heartbeat so to speak it was like the jewish creed the closest thing that judaism has to a creed of belief is saying the shema hear o israel the lord our god the lord is one and you shall love the lord your god with all your heart all your soul and so on so jesus quotes that and then he says this he says this is the first and greatest commandment but then he keeps going now what was the guy's question what is the greatest commandment and he says well here's the first and then he says and the second is like it now i think most of us read that as here's the first most important and here's the second most important that's not what he's saying he's saying something much more clever than that right so the guy asked him what's the most important commandment and he said well here is the first greatest commandment love the lord your counsel and here is the other greatest commandment now there's how many greatest commandments are there there's no there's one there's one i mean he's answering there's one greatest commandment and what is it well first is love god and the second is love your neighbor as yourself so which one is the greatest exactly yes right that's exactly jesus come on he's so awesome so the second is like it it's like it well what command is like loving love the lord your god well love your neighbor as yourself and did he come up with that line no he didn't come up with that what's he doing he's quoting your favorite book of the torah what's he quoting right here from leviticus chapter 19. leviticus he was a huge fan of leviticus apparently so and and then look how he sums it up he says all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments all the scriptures the torah the prophets everything the scriptures hangs right here absolutely brilliant so what's the greatest command jesus well here's the first greatest command and then here's the second greatest command but don't think second in terms of height importance do you understand what he's saying it's just awesome i'm trying to say it right but it's so great so in other words jesus sees your personal relation to god as completely interwoven and and inextricable from your relationships to other divine image-bearing human beings so we and all religious traditions no matter where they come from they tend towards this they tend towards well as long as i can maintain this kind of personal relational connection with the deity of some kind then as long as like we do that and the practices that make that healthy then i must be doing great and jesus is like you're kidding me that actually could be the worst deception of the human heart is the religious deception because like your your actual relationships and your lives can be in ruin and you think you're just you think you're doing just fine because you're doing like this thing that's this kind of personal intangible connection here and so jesus is just like no they're utterly interwoven they together are the greatest commandment to love god and to love to love your neighbor if if my personal relationships are are in ruins and if part of part of why they're being a ruin or maybe even the whole reason why they're in ruin it's because of like stupid sinful stuff that i'm doing or that's inside of me jesus would say you you think you love god but you actually don't you need to love the you need to love god by first of all loving those people and humbling yourself and making that right and it's two sides of the same coin two sides of the same coin so what for jesus this is what uh one of my favorite new testament scholars a guy named scott mcknight he wrote a whole wonderful wonderful little book right here on this story and he summarizes what jesus is saying here he calls it the jesus creed because what is unique about what jesus is doing it's not the so he's just quoting the scriptures but he's combined them in a new and profound way you love god you love people and the two of those are so closely connected that they are together the greatest commandment this is a unique to jesus and he uh it summarizes like the ethic of jesus and what he called his followers too it's the jesus creed so okay here we are why what does it have to do with the lord's prayer it has everything to do with the lord's prayer because i think it actually it forms the the background it's giving us a window into the very heartbeat of what jesus was about it gives us a window into what he believed human existence was about is to live in right covenant relationship and loyalty to the one true creator god and to express that through right healthy relationships and seeking the well-being of the other humans who bear god's image around me and this is this is this is who jesus is and this is i believe what's at work in the lord's prayer the lord's prayer i would i would put it to you is the jesus creed turned into a prayer love god you love your neighbor go back to matthew chapter 6 with me how you guys doing okay jesus takes the scriptures he takes the jewish tradition in his day he reorders it and adapts it to become something unique to him and what he's doing and this is exactly what he's what he's doing in the lord's prayer there was a jewish prayer that existed in jesus's day it was mostly said at synagogue gatherings but also on other occasions as well some of the some of the great feasts and so on um and this prayer it was very biblical prayer most of the language is borrowed from the book of psalms and so on but it was a popular prayer in jesus day it's called the kadish and let me read it to you and you'll just you'll just see what's going on here so this prayer pre-existed jesus it was being said in synagogues and so on and it reads may god's great name be exalted and hallowed in the world which he created according to his will may he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime of the house of israel speedily and soon amen and amen now do you just see it right there can you just see all the key words right there the overlap uh with the lord's prayer god's name being hallowed god's will god's kingdom coming and so on so jesus even the first half of the lord's prayer and both of these are looking at different biblical passages right so but but notice which um which half of the lord's prayer does this match up with yeah isn't it interesting it's interesting so in other words jesus along with the scriptures and jewish contemporary he's happy to emphasize and to put first and foremost this orienting myself to god's will and god's mission and god's story first of all that's just what you do but then what he's done is he's done a jesus creed on this thing right he's made it uniquely his own to mark what he thinks is the greatest commandment which is i mean this is a it's a form of loving god you're valuing what god values by placing it first and foremost it's like what jesus said seek first the kingdom everything else will sort itself out pray about the kingdom pray for the kingdom to come but don't think that you're done yet right because the whole question is well how is how is loving god expressed how is it that god's kingdom actually starts coming and it seems to me that's precisely what the second half of the lord's prayer is about if the first half is about loving god the second half is about loving your neighbor now come back to the prayer matthew 6 and look at look at this second half and i highlighted this notice jesus did not teach us to pray give me the bread that i need today what if you're praying this prayer praying the lord's prayer like you do right and and you have enough bread in fact you have no question where your next three meals are coming from your next like 21 meals or whatever like you just you have enough food but you're not just praying about your bread are you are you no you're praying about our bread in other words this prayer is meant to also direct your mind to us and to our i have enough bread can i think of anybody i know who doesn't have enough bread and unless you like walk around the city of portland going like this you're likely to notice like that people don't have bread what are you going to do about that what does it mean for god's kingdom to come for his will to be done i'm somebody who says i love god but jesus says yeah that's great so how are you loving your neighbor are you with me here so you know forgive us forgive me god i'm really screwed up forgive me and at the same time jesus says yeah and also look outward who is it that you haven't forgiven he immediately pushes you out towards us lead us not into temptation deliver us from the evil one you may be in a season where you're going through an incredibly difficult trial and your faithfulness to jesus is being tested you may not my guess is you know somebody who is undergoing this time of testing and and what the prayer is meant to do is get your mind off of yourself and out onto how god's kingdom can come in and through you loving god and loving your neighbor by actually like doing something in other words the second half of the prayer is both a prayer but assumes that god's people will begin to become the answers to that prayer in their very actions you guys with me here so it seems to me what jesus has given us is something like um something like this so i have just hear sheep music right here just it was just right there um from this valley so here's the what are you supposed to do with this here's the text of his song what are you supposed to do with it well well and if you look it's not just the lyrics it has the title and then it has all these letters like b and f sharp and e and so on like in between the lines and then chorus and then times two and then chorus with tag some of you know what that means that's code or something like that so well if i were to give this to you what you should not do with it is like go like like put it in your pocket and then go out for a cup of coffee tomorrow and just be like read it and be like hmm that's really interesting or something no the point of these words on this page is to perform them right and it actually has all of these little things in there that tell you how to do it and how to carry it out it seems to me that that's exactly what the lord's prayer is it both tells you what god is up to and then it immediately and so you align yourself with that but then you immediately force yourself to start praying for how you are going to be a part of what god is doing to bring his kingdom jesus is brilliant let's just give it to him right now i mean it's amazing this is really an amazing prayer and so now all of a sudden it this saying this prayer isn't about just like saying the words these prayers because these words become a window for how you're living your life this is a prayer that's meant to become like scaffolding as it were that we build our lives on and every day you're out there wondering like holy cow who do i need to forgive what so so okay you guys with me here on that part i could riff on that for a long time but i think i've made my point we'll come back to it so how how how often like when did jesus envision that we say this prayer because i think he actually like had something in mind when he said when you pray pray this i think he meant it i don't know you guys i think he actually meant it like we're actually like supposed to not that this should only be the only thing we pray surely there's spontaneous prayer there's group prayer thanksgiving and so on but jesus seems to actually think that this prayer again the wording short long but the core is the heart of it and the two halves jesus seemed to think that this prayer plays some sort of regular role in the lives of his disciples how and what does that look like well let's go back to uh the sources right i mean he just says it right there when you pray say it i think he means that so where where did jesus learn to pray and what were the patterns of prayer that jesus adopted well let's go to the prayer that he quoted from in the story that we just read in the greatest commandment he quoted the greatest prayer of judaism called the shema and look how the shema begins it says hear o israel the lord our god the lord lord is our god the lord alone there's some translation issues there or the lord our god the lord is one you shall love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul with all your might keep these words that i'm commanding you today in your heart how do you keep words in your heart so that these words form the center of how you see everything and live oh i have an idea how about like saying them often that's one way all right so recite them to your children and talk about them when you're at home and when you're away when you lie down and when you rise so you know it's like the western protestant christian of course we want to dodge all of this and we're just like sure it's just truly a recommendation that we might think about praying two times a day it's like actually it doesn't seem like that does it it seems like no this is if you like want to associate yourself with this tradition this is how you roll uh you do it and when you lie down and when you rise so we're at least talking what at least twice but then there's all this you know when you're home when you're away throughout the day so what's that what's that about and so you got moses here uh 500 years later we hear a reference uh by david to not just prayer at the beginning but also a midday prayer so psalm 55 david says as for me i call to god and the lord saves me evening morning noon i cry out in distress he hears hears my voice 500 years after david we find uh daniel and he's in babylon and this is developed into a full-blown this is just what you do so when daniel learned that the decree of his execution had been published he went upstairs to his room and the windows opened to jerusalem three times a day he got down on his knees and he prayed and then in the 500 years from daniel to jesus all the the jewish writing and tradition that we have just assumes this this is just what you do you pray morning afternoon evening and what do you pray you pray the shema you pray the shema prayer that's just what you do so when jesus here begins and says when you all pray don't be like the hypocrites i think many of us we've kind of said to ourselves yeah exactly the hypocrites because they like have turned prayer into an old dead ritual and they do it at set times and they don't even mean it but that's not actually what he says is it he doesn't say like don't have habits and rhythms of prayer the problem with prayer becoming dead ritual is us not the practice you guys with me the problem is us jesus seems to think the practice is really important so he just assumes it when you all pray pray like this and so notice what he's doing he's asking his followers to to transform the shema into something even bigger love the lord your god but love your neighbor as yourself because the lord's prayer is a way of saying love god and love and love people and the first clues we have about the prayer lives of the earliest christians show exactly this this pattern right here i'm just inundating you on purpose right now just to show you that i'm not making this up so in the book of acts chapter two all the disciples are there uh they're following what they're following the apostles teaching fellowship the breaking of bread and their devoting themselves to the prayers to the prayers some of your english translations don't include that plural i don't know why because it's right there in the original language they're devoting themselves to prayers some of your english translations do have plural right there and that's right because it's a reference to morning afternoon evening prayer it's just assumed chapter three one day peter and john were going up to the temple at the time of prayer about three in the afternoon now this this is introducing a story about peter and john it's not about prayer at all it's just something else happens but it's just assumed like you know like christians do you pray at 3 p.m right we're all like american protestants we're all like oh look what it's like nah that's just what what you do what you do chapter 10 this one's really interesting this is a non-jewish person who's become a christian at caesarea there's a man named cornelius he was a centurion he's served in the roman army for goodness sakes uh what was known as the italian cohort he was a devout man he feared god with his household he gave alms generously to the people he prayed continually to god what does that mean what does the life marked by continual prayer look like well he says it later on in the chapter he says about four days ago about this hour i was praying in my house at the ninth hour which by their clock is what we would call three it's just what you do and you go out of the new testament and the earliest traditions we have to like the 100s of the uh of christian early christianity it's clear teachings about christians praying the lord's prayer three times a day so as i've done a number of times in this series so there you go i'm just gonna lob that at you and you know my whole point of like showing you all of this is just to say like this isn't about this is you and jesus and and you in the scriptures and whether you think this practice is not biblical i just leave you to use your brain and think about that one right so but just just think about what's happening are we talking about three times a day you go spend an hour in prayer is that what jesus is talking about it takes you 45 seconds to say the prayer so the point is this habit you you you intentionally interrupt your life to remind yourself about the jesus creed and of who jesus is and what's most important to him and what's most important to me is one of one of his followers and as as i've just kind of rediscovered or adopted this practice in my life in the last few years it's actually the midday prayer that has become the most awesome experience because the whole point is don't let people know you're doing it like just just pause and do it and nobody should know and here's what you'll find yourself doing you'll find yourself at the oddest random places saying the lord's prayer and all of a sudden these words that you are so familiar with they are connecting and there's new things happening because of where you were saying it you'll see somebody you'll see somebody who doesn't clearly does not have bread when you're saying the lord's prayer and like just let jesus mess with you on that one right you'll you'll see you'll be in your workplace and there's all these crabby people who hate each other you know your workplace right and then praying for forgiveness in that kind of setting whoa and it gets your mind spinning and then of course if you just prayed may your kingdom come and if i'm one of your followers and i'm a part of your kingdom coming then what on earth do i need to do about that and there you go it'll mess with you especially the midday prayer i have found and so so there you go i i trust that the holy spirit will guide us as a church to become the kinds of praying people that the spirit wants us wants us to become but this is very powerful and the lord's prayer there's a universe in it and there's a whole life to be discovered by weaving weaving this prayer into our hearts into our minds so i just want that's enough i just want to let you sit with that but as we close and as we transition into worship which is our time to reflect and to pray and to think about what it means to to respond to this i want to play play you something it's uh it's it's a syrian nun singing the lord's prayer in aramaic aramaic was the language that jesus spoke this prayer in and there's a church in the old city of jerusalem called saint mark's a syrian orthodox church it's one of the oldest churches in in the world um and uh all of the the liturgy their prayers and people's praying prayers monks and nuns there and they're praying the liturgy mostly in aramaic which was the language that the first christians mostly prayed in and there's a precious nun none there i was there about seven years ago and i was there i just had a friend who was there recently and the same nun is there in the same little church in that old little alleyway in jerusalem and three times a day she leads whoever is there in saying the lord's prayer and she sings it in aramaic and so i'd like to play it for you and uh it's long she goes through it very slow three minutes three minutes long but you know three minutes versus you'd be like is she really still saying the lord's prayer like could it take that long but yeah she's talking really slow but i just encourage you to just let be open-minded to this and let the lord really guide you as to what it would look like for you to somehow respond to jesus teachings about prayer after that the worship teams will just come up and we'll have the tables open for the bread and the cup and the prayer room will be open but the time is ours just to respond to jesus now so it's good to have you guys here [Applause] [Music] [Music] i [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] glory [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] i mean

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

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Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project

Id: PQY0-4IeKsA

Length: 55min 19sec (3319 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021