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[0:00] And turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter 6, Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 to 13. Matthew 6, which is on page 811 in your church.

[0:14] ! So, we are in a series where we're looking at one of the different practices that we do Sunday by Sunday, when we get together in gathered worship.

[0:33] Why do we do what we do? And thinking that these practices, they're not something that just we do each Sunday, but they are things that God is doing to us as we gather to worship.

[0:48] That as we pray, as we sing, as we hear God's word proclaimed, as we confess our sin, as we eat of the bread and drink of the wine, these practices become habits which shape us.

[1:01] They shape what we love in life, what it is we value, and what it is we desire. And it is really important, isn't it, what you love in life, because actually what you love in life determines how you view reality.

[1:16] How you view life in general. What you love shows what you hold to be the good life, and the life that you want, that we are pursuing and striving for. And so we thought of, what does it mean to be called to worship by God?

[1:32] We thought about confession of sin and assurance, things we've already done. We will be thinking about the reading of scripture and preaching. We thought about singing last week.

[1:44] And today we come to what we've done numerous times already this morning in our service. We've done it at least twice. We're going to think about prayer. Prayer in gathered worship.

[1:54] In his book on gathered worship, Jamie Smith occasionally raises the question of what an imaginary visitor from another world, from another planet, would make of our practices on earth.

[2:08] Something secular, something religious. And he mentions these imaginary Martian visitors. As he considers we come to corporate worship and what we do.

[2:18] Here's what he says. We should perhaps try to appreciate how strange corporate worship might look to Martian anthropologists. For here is a group of what seem to be otherwise relatively normal people engaged in a conversation with someone who seems to be absent.

[2:36] And this isn't like just listening to half a conversation on a mobile phone, where we can from experience postulate that there is another human being holding up the other end of the conversation.

[2:47] Rather than the practice of prayer to particularly cynical Martians, it seems more like the scruffy bearded guy on the underground platform who's carrying on an animated conversation with himself.

[2:58] It seems like that.

[3:28] That we are not a person who's carrying on a person who's carrying on a person who's carrying on a person.

[3:58] The gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel of the gospel For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues And then tweet about it And other street corners So they may be seen by others Truly I say to you they've received their reward But when you pray Go into your room, shut the door, pray to your Father in heaven Who is in secret And your Father who sees in secret will reward you And when you pray do not heap up empty phrases As the Gentiles do For they think that they will be heard By their many words Do not be like them For your Father knows what you need before you ask him

[4:58] Pray like this Our Father in heaven Whenever you or I approach someone We make assumptions about them We make assumptions about them as we go up to them About what kind of conversation we can have with them How are we going to interact with this person So after the service you will go up to somebody Hopefully you will have a conversation And you will make an assumption About the kind of conversation that you have Let's say you've just moved to Ealing And you go to the farmer's market in West Ealing On a Sunday morning It's a good place to visit I want to say to you That's quite a friendly place That farmer's market You could stop someone at that farmer's market And ask them for directions For Southall or to Ealing Broadway Or to Hanwell They will be okay with that That won't freak them out If you ask them for directions At that farmer's market They can handle that kind of interaction There's a basis for that interaction I don't know what it is

[5:59] But is it basic humanity? But it's a pretty slim basis Isn't it? To have an exchange You don't know them But you assume you can have this interaction And you really can't go much beyond Can you ask them for directions?

[6:16] Or the time? Or something similar like that You can't go up to a stranger In Eden Broadway And excuse me And say Listen my rucksack has got a hole in it Do you mind if I take yours?

[6:27] You can't do that Or if it's checking it down with rain You say Do you mind if I just take your umbrella And see you later? You can't do that Can you? With a stranger You don't have that basis For that kind of interaction You know you can't do that Because the foundation of relationship Does not exist If you want to have a deeper relationship With this person You need to build it Don't you?

[6:55] It takes time So as Jesus is introducing The subject of prayer He is showing really That there are two basic ways That you can go to God And they are similar To the two main ways That we deal with each other Recognising that there are differences too So the two options You and I have Is that you can basically Have a business relationship With someone Or you can have a family relationship With someone In a business relationship The bottom line is You are saying I have something for you I've got something for you In a family relationship The bottom line is I am someone to you I'm someone to you In the business relationship It is all performance Here is what I can do for you Here is the service That I offer you Here is what will happen If I perform for you But in a family relationship That basis is a commitment Think about it too In terms of a house

[7:56] There are two ways You can live in a house Aren't there? Many of you are tenants You live in a house That you rent Or you can be a family member So as a tenant If you are renting a house You live in that house The person who owns that house Is your landlord You can have a pretty good relationship With your landlord Hopefully you do As long as you pay the rent And you respect the property And as long as the landlord Does what he is supposed to do As long as he does Maintaining the property And that is a good basis For mutual approach But your exchanges With your landlord Well that would be Pretty mechanical Wouldn't they?

[8:36] That would be ones of goods And services I pay my money You do this Because I pay my money But imagine you Are not living in the house As a tenant But you are living in the house As a child That paradigm Becomes very very different Doesn't it?

[8:54] In the business paradigm If you perform You do what you are supposed to do You pay your money You are accepted You pay the rent You take care of the property The landlord accepts you In the family paradigm You are accepted already Because of that bottom line Fundamental relationship You know I am accepted I belong And you perform because of that It's two isn't it?

[9:24] Very very different ways Of doing things All of that is to say this Jesus makes the revolutionary observation Here that prayer For the Christian Is not on a business basis It's on a family business That you and I Come to God As those who are In Christ this morning In prayer And we address him As Father Our father in heaven We talk to him As family Now one question That raises right at the front Right at the front In the light of the Bible's verdict On how you and I Have treated God This week And in our lives How can that be?

[10:10] How can you and I Address The sovereign God Of the universe The creator God of the universe As father When your track record And my track record Is one of Scorning him Of rebelling against his ways Of going our own way Wanting to make other things The centre of our lives How can you call him father?

[10:35] And the reason we can pray to God As father Has everything to do with Secondly Who we pray with Who we pray with Who we pray to Is determined by Who we pray with So look again What Jesus says In verse 9 Our father In heaven Every now and then In church life You come across somebody Who wants to be pretty smart About this prayer And they would say to you You do know That it is wrong To call it The Lord's Prayer Do you know that?

[11:11] Have you met those people? Maybe you've said it I used to say it It's not the Lord's Prayer It's really The disciples' prayer Because Jesus could never Have prayed these words And I know that those people Are trying to say And that they're trying to be smart Because I used to be one of them But here's part of the objection Jesus could never have prayed This prayer himself Because it would have been Inappropriate for him To pray the fifth petition Do you see that?

[11:35] Verse 12 Forgive us our debts Jesus did not really sense To be forgiven He is the perfect son of God So you cannot call this The Lord's Prayer In the end however It doesn't really matter What you call this prayer But you need to grasp this It is The Lord's Prayer It is And what I mean by that Is that this prayer Covers the kind of petitions That you hear Jesus praying Over and over and over again Throughout his life and ministry As we read them in the Gospels As you read through the Gospels You find Jesus praying For God's will To be done You find Jesus praying That God's name Would be hallowed And praised You find him praying For daily bread You find him praying For protection From temptation But the most fundamental thing We see Why this is Jesus' prayer This is the Lord's Prayer

[12:35] It is in the opening Two words Can you see that? Our Father With those two words Jesus is introducing A whole new way To relate to God As family The Old Testament Certainly had the idea Of the Fatherhood of God It is there Occasionally you read That God is the Father of Israel But you will not find God referred to directly In prayer as Father It is Jesus Who makes this Fatherhood of God Absolutely central To prayer Jesus calls God Father About 60 times In the Gospels Here is the mind Blowing thing This is what Jesus Has called God From all eternity And think about this Before God Ever created Anything Before he was A creator

[13:35] Before he ruled Over anything Before he was The ruler of the universe God was a Father Loving his Son Jesus himself says it Doesn't he In John 17 Verse 24 Father you loved me Before the creation Of the world And I think that is Really really important For you and I To get our heads around Before all things God is a Father He's not primarily Creator Not primarily ruler But Father And so implicit in that All his ways Are Fatherly It's not that God Does this kind of thing In his day job In his day job He's a Father But then he kicks back And says well I'm just Just plain old God Tonight You know that's like

[14:36] He was a dad I am a dad But tonight I'm just My own I'm back to being The single man I was before I'm going to sit In front of the sofa And watch the telly I'm not dad tonight God never does that I'll do the father Again thing tomorrow It's not that he is God With a nice blob Of fatherly I sing on top No He is Father All the way down And that is all That Jesus has ever Known In terms of his Relationship with the Father With God And so he starts The Lord's Prayer Calling God Father Because he's never Known God any other Way From all eternity He doesn't say To his disciples Though Do you see it Here is how I pray Here is my Father No he begins Our Father And the question is

[15:36] How can he include Other people In this prayer We have not We have not Been in an eternal Relationship with God As Jesus has In fact Our natural state According to the Bible Our natural state Is that of being orphans That we are like The younger prodigal Said in that story We have run away From the Father We have essentially Wished our Father Dead So we don't have to Deal with him Or answer to him And Jesus knows Our nature We are orphans But as he Prays this prayer He is anticipating Isn't he What he has come To do in his Mission on earth That he came Into this world On a rescue mission So that you and I Could be reconciled To the Father So that we would Be adopted Into his family So there is one Time isn't there There is one time Recorded in the Gospels Where Jesus Does not use The language

[16:36] Of Father In prayer You read it Of course On the cross When Jesus Cries out My God My God Why have you Forsaken me And that is Hugely significant Earth And heaven Echo As Jesus Cries out Those words My God My God That Jesus There Is undergoing Isn't he The wrath of the Father We need to be Very careful But I think We can say There is a Sense There is a Sense In which Jesus Loses a Sense Of the Fatherhood Of God The first Time In the Only Time But at That very Moment When Jesus Is bearing All our Guilt All our Sin Every Last Ounce Taking The just Punishment

[17:36] For what We deserve Ourselves And in So In doing So There is A sense His Relationship With God Is not Ruptured In any Way But he Loses That sense Of the Fatherly Care That eternal Relationship That he's Had With the One he's Known From all Eternity With the One he has Called Father From all Eternity But the Whole thing Is this That he Did that For you And for Me I can be So bold As to Say this He lost The Father So you And I Could Gain The Father So that You and I Could be Adopted He was Forsaken So we Could be Forgiven And adopted Into his Family So I Think there Is a Sense in Which this Prayer The Lord's Prayer Jesus does Include himself In the Petition And forgive Us our Debt Jesus of Course He had No sins Of his Own But the

[18:37] Reason Jesus came Into the World Was to Assume Our Debt God Made him Who knew No sin To be Sin for Us So that When Jesus Christ died On the Cross Was he Not asking The Father At least In his Actions If not With his Words He is Crying On the Cross Forgive Us Our Debt That's Exactly What he's Doing He was Not seeking Forgiveness For his Own Sins But for Our Sins Sins That he Has Taken Upon Himself That have Been Imputed To his Account Forsaken So that You and I can Be Forgiven And Restored And Adopted So that In these First two Words Of the Lord's Prayer We have This Monumental Implication Of how We pray We pray Our Father And the Lord's Prayer Becomes Our Prayer I Hear How Hard It Is For Naturally Born Children In a Family When the

[19:38] Family Adopts A New Child You can Imagine it Being said You know That you Were Born Born To Your Parents But This New Person In The Family They Were Born To Someone Else And They Been Brought Into Your Family And They Be Given The Same Rights And The Same Privileges As You Have And Perhaps There's That Feeling In the Back Of Your Head To Say To That Person Who Has Been Adopted Yeah Yeah Well I Know You're Part Of The Family But You're You Can't Say That But There's None Of That In Jesus Attitude To Us There's None Of That In Jesus Attitude In As Being Adopted Into His Family There's None Of Jesus Saying Or Thinking Yeah Yeah Yeah You Can Call God Father But Do Know I've Been Calling Father For All Eternity You're

[20:40] Coming In Very Late In The Game Or I Hope You're Feeling Indebted To Me That You Have The Privilege Of Calling Him Father There's None Of That The Whole Reason That Jesus Went To The Cross Was To Make Our Adoption Possible So That Jesus Delights Sunday By Sunday To Lead Us In Prayer And So Sunday By Sunday Not Only In The Lord's Prayer But In Our Prayer We Are Being Led By The Praying!

[21:11] Savior Jesus Is Very! So far We've Seen That He Is The Calling Savior That Jesus Stands At The Forefront Of Our Worship And He Calls You To Worship Him And To Worship His Father And We Saw Last Week That Jesus Is The Singing Savior That As We Sing Praises To The Father We See Jesus In The Midst Of Us By His Spirit Singing!

[21:38] We Will See In A Few Weeks That And At The Benediction At The End Of The Service We See That Jesus Is The Blessing Savior That As The Elder Gives The Benediction He Speaks On Behalf Of Christ And Says The Lord Bless You And Keep You And Now We Find That Jesus Is The Praying Savior That He's Leading Us In Prayer Can We Read Hebrews Chapter 8 Verse!

[22:08] 1 Hebrews Chapter 8 1 So Page Hebrews Chapter 8 Verse 1 I'm Going to Blow my nose So Let me Take My Microphone off Alright Is That Okay Sorry That's The Problem With This Mic Hebrews Chapter 8 Verse 1 Hebrews Chapter 8 Verse 1 Now The Point Of What We Are Saying Is This We Have Such A High Priest One Who Is Seated At The Right Hand Of The Throne Of The Majesty In Heaven And Minister In The Holy Places The True Tent So Remember Hebrews 2 Told Us Last Week He Is The Singing Saviour He Is The Preaching Saviour And Now He Invites Us To See That Right Now Right This Morning Jesus Is Serving In The Holy Place The True Tent

[23:09] In Heaven Where It Says The The Worship Leader Jesus Is The Worship Leader Who Is Our High Priest Who Is Interceding For Us Who Is Praying For Us which is such a beautiful thought isn't it?

[23:30] that there is not a moment of any day where Jesus is not interceding I'm praying to the Father for you and for me you young people when you're in French and you're despairing of French like I used to despair of French the Lord Jesus is interceding I'm praying to the Father for you when you're in the office he is praying for us but the point of Hebrews 8 is not just that he is praying for us but he is praying with us he is our worship leader he is the liturgist every time we gather together it's like we are swept up into this heavenly sanctuary we are lifted up to the saints in heaven and Jesus invites us to join with him in prayer and he says ok, let's all say it together our Father in heaven that's what happens on Sunday morning our Father and we join with the saints around the world so the reason we can pray to God as Father is everything we do with the one we pray with we pray with the one who has made it possible we pray with Jesus but we've also got to see that we pray with one another but when Jesus is asked by his disciples how to pray his default is not to personal private prayer his default is to corporate gathered prayer with the people of God he assumes that you and I are going to pray together so let me just say that as a Christian who are you praying with?

[25:12] pray with us come Sunday by Sunday I hope you come to pray with Jesus who are you praying with? of course he's not ruling out personal prayer not at all Jesus prayed on his own he expects us to pray on our own to the Father that relationship individually but also he expects us to pray in gathered worship prayer that is frequent and ongoing but surely the fact that Jesus as he gives us a model for prayer here and he begins it indicates that prayer is not just to be a private thing no Jesus says my people are to pray together our Father here's a poem that I read this week from rugged individuals you cannot pray the Lord's Prayer and even once say I you cannot say the Lord's Prayer and even once say my nor can you pray the Lord's Prayer and not pray for one another for when you ask for daily bread you must include your brother for others are included in each and every plea from the beginning to the end of it it never not once says me it's that profound poetry

[26:26] Sunday by Sunday we gather together and one of the things we do is we pray corporately we pray with Jesus and we pray with each other and we pray for one another now the corporate prayers on Sundays tend to be led by one person but these prayers are in a sense somebody said to me this week they are in a sense training for the rest of the week so football players they train six days to perform on one day as Christians we gather to worship on one day to train to perform on the other six days in other words these practices in gathered worship train us how we are going to live in our scattered worship they give us a model for how we are going to live when we leave this place and knowing that that relationship with God is not based on a performance it's not based on what I do but it's based on Jesus' death and on the cross in my place that gives me unbelievable freedom in how we pray we are praying to our heavenly father and Jesus wants us to be without pretense when we can instead we often come don't we wanting to be something that we're not the problem of trying to be spiritual we don't need to clean up our act in order to become a Christian but when it comes to praying with each other we certainly think we need to if we try to fix ourselves up well in contrast

[27:59] Jesus wants us to come like well look verse 9 like little children to our father now that's the bulk of the sermon and we carry two words alright Jesus says when you pray pray our father now what do you pray for?

[28:17] what do you pray for? let's look at the rest of that line our father in heaven let's face two words in the Lord's Prayer they highlight intimacy the security of a relationship with God as father the delight of a relationship that we now enjoy with God because of Jesus but the second two words of that first line of the Lord's Prayer tell us indicate to us that we are coming to a father who is almighty who is sovereign who is powerful who's got the resources beyond our wildest imaginations at his disposal that this God is holy and majestic he is the God of heaven he is the almighty he is God over heaven and earth and there's nothing we can ask of this God that is beyond his capabilities there is nothing impossible with God and those four words set up everything that is to come in the Lord's Prayer they set up the context for every time you come to God in prayer because every time we pray we are praying to the all loving father and the all powerful

[29:35] Lord he has the power to do all things and yet he constrains his power he only uses it in the loving way that the greatest father possibly could so as you pray the Lord's Prayer you pray with complete confidence and trust we say your kingdom come your will be done because we completely trust that the father in heaven his will is going to be perfect his kingdom is going to be glorious we come to him with complete dependence as we pray for our daily bread because we know that the almighty father is the one that supplies all our needs and we pray for forgiveness and protection from temptation because he is more than able and he is more than willing and through all the prayer we pray to God who is father who is almighty with great boldness and because of who we are praying to we will increasingly pray what one writer calls frontline prayers prayers as opposed to maintenance prayers maintenance prayers are the more mechanical things they are focused on our physical needs on the physical needs of the church and of course

[30:59] God wants you to pray for those things it's why he gives us the petition give us our daily bread but in a sense as you look at the Lord's Prayer you see the balance but what Jesus does is he front loads the Lord's Prayer with frontline prayers for his kingdom to come pleading with God that his will would be done on earth praying that his church would flourish that our friends and neighbours would come into the kingdom and that the gospel would go deeper into our lives so that we would live increasingly radically transformed lives you read Paul's letters and that's where you find Paul praying about you you find that they are the great examples of frontline prayers that the gospel would bear more and more fruit in our lives and in the lives of others that we want God to work miraculously to bring people to faith and we see the gospel going deeper and deeper frontline prayer works but then it realised the gospel is so powerful that this loving father is so almighty that God is so gracious he is so caring that there is no marriage that is beyond

[32:20] God's ability to save it there is no addict who is in too deep that God cannot rescue there is no resentment or bitterness that is in our heart that cannot be dealt with by the loving father and no person no person is unreachable by the grace of God and why can we pray with such confidence because of who we are praying to our father in heaven lastly all through this series I've been trying to say what we do on Sundays shapes us it forms us it moulds our identities and we just need to think for a moment how does prayer do that as we pray together each Sunday speaking the language of our father in heaven the almighty God who reigns and rules in a sense what we're doing is we are pressing the reset button on how we do God because through the week we are bombarding aren't we we are tested our hearts so wicked so corrupt think wrong thoughts about

[33:35] God we hear other people say stuff and this prayer is like the reset button where we come and we say no this is who I'm praying to this is who I worship and every time you pray to God using this kind of language and that is important isn't it because your view of God determines how you are going to live your life this week if you go into this week banking your life on the God who has revealed himself as father almighty it's going to change how you live it's going to change how you deal with pressure and anxiety and fear and it's going to change you the better I've stolen this phrase but I can't remember where I've stolen it from in our prayers we worship God with pendulum prayers pendulum prayers until we are humble and bold at the same time we will not know the joy of prayer what do I mean by pendulum prayers think about the opening line in this Lord's prayer our praise really operates like a pendulum if you know what a pendulum is it's a weight on a rope it swings from one side of the back you got it so our praise operates like a pendulum we are praying our father on the one hand aren't we we are thinking we are praying we are meditating we are rejoicing how loving

[35:14] God is how merciful God is how gracious God is how sacrificial God was in giving up his son so that we could become sons and daughters but then the pendulum swings to the other side and we think about our father who is in heaven and we're thinking about how majestic how holy how high how lofty how powerful how other he is and the thing is about pendulum praise is it's constantly swinging from one side to the other and back again and every single one of us has got a tendency to tie the pendulum out to one side you either want to think of God as more loving more than holy or you want to think he is more holy than loving but the thing about pendulum praise is you've got to let it swing back and forth back and forth and the beauty of this is that the further you let it go on the one side the further it swings to the other side and so the more that you are able to see the love of God the father and what he's done for you out of that love the more then that his might and his holiness and his justice and his power they come into greater for you and the more that you pray and meditate and reflect and praise him for his might and his holiness and his justice and his righteousness the more beautiful appears his love back and forth back and forth back and forth that prayer will change you because as you reflect on his might and holiness it humbles you you realise how undeserving you are face to face with this glorious

[36:56] God and yet it gives you incredible boldness that you are cherished and you are delighted in by the God of this universe and we are changed we are changed by how we pray and that change is then how we pray it takes us deeper deeper deeper into the gospel there's a story of Alexander the Great it's probably apocryphal and it goes like this Alexander the Great was once asked by one of his generals for an enormous sum of money that's what the general wanted an enormous sum of money so that he can marry his daughter off and Alexander the Great says ok I'll give it to you his treasurer gets wind of it as treasurers do and the treasurer isn't too happy and he comes to Alexander the Great and he says why on earth are you giving this man so much money don't you realise it's ten times more than anyone has ever paid to marry someone off this is ridiculous Alexander the Great says don't you understand this man asks for this ridiculous sum of money and as he does so he gives me great honour what are you talking about

[38:06]  Alexander Alexander says by asking for such a ridiculous amount of money the general shows that I am both rich and generous and so it is that John Newton wrote this you are coming to a king large petitions would you bring for his grace and power are such no one can ever ask too much Amen