Pray Then Like This (Part 2)--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Today, we’re going to pick up where we left off last week in our discussion of prayer, and in a way, I think that’s a fitting way to discuss this subject. Its similar to the way that we might actually think of our own prayer lives—one extended conversation that’s interrupted every so often but that we just take up again with a statement like, “now as I was saying.” We might not actually begin our prayers with a statement like, “now as I was saying,” but that can be a helpful way to think about our habit of prayer. Our prayer lives should be like one ongoing conversation that we just keep coming back to time and time again.

            And we don’t necessarily have to pray for a long time every time we pray. One thing that many people have pointed out about this model prayer that we call The Lord’s Prayer is that its very short—it doesn’t take much more than about 30 seconds to recite it out loud. Now on one level, that makes sense, because this passage is part of a larger sermon, and the sermon overall isn’t really about prayer. So its understandable that Jesus didn’t spend too much time talking about prayer on that particular occasion, but I think we can draw the lesson that we don’t always have to pray for long stretches of time.

            Last week, we drew four lessons from The Lord’s Prayer. We learned that pray should be offered in…

1. A manner that is personal

2. A manner that is respectful

3. A manner that is worshipful

4. A manner that is confident

We’ll continue today with three more lessons.

5. A manner that is submissive

            We learn this lesson from v. 10—“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This verse presents us with a reminder that prayer is not about an attempt to get God to do our will. We can certainly bring our requests to Him, but the bottom line is that we are to align ourselves with God’s will, not the other way around.

            Its like the old joke about the sea captain who noticed a light directly in the path of his ship. So he got on the radio and said, “This is Captain Jones of the US Navy. Our boats are on a collision course. Please change your course by 10 degrees.” The person on the other end said, “This is Ensign Smith of the US Navy. Please change your course by 10 degrees.” But the Captain said, “I am a captain and you are a ensign. You change your course by 10 degrees.” But Ensign Smith replied, “You change your course by 10 degrees.” Finally, Captain Jones said, “Smith! I am the captain of a US Navy destroyer! You change your course by 10 degrees!” And Ensign Smith replied, “I am a radio operator in a lighthouse. You change your course by 10 degrees.” God is not the one who needs to change course—we need to get our course in line with His.

            As I mentioned last week, this request for God’s kingdom to come is a reference to the many prophecies in the Old Testament in which God said He was planning to establish a kingdom in this world. When Jesus taught His audience to express this desire, He was building on the fact that they were familiar with these prophecies about the kingdom. In other words, they were knowledgeable about the Bible they had at that time, which was the Old Testament.

            This observation should teach us that knowledge of the Bible and effective praying go hand in hand. After all, if we’re going to pray for God’s will to be done, we need to be familiar with His will, and the place to gain that knowledge is the Bible. As we learn more about the way that God wants us to live, we gain an almost limitless source of inspiration for prayer. We learn, for example, that God wants us to be humble, so we can pray for God to help us become humble. That may bring to mind certain situations that really tempt us to be proud, so we can pray more specifically by praying about those particular situations.

            Bible study and prayer form a cycle of communication that belong together and feed off of each other. If you often feel like you just don’t know what to say in prayer, it could be that you just need to become more familiar with God’s desires for you as He’s expressed them in the Bible. You can’t knowingly submit to a plan that you’re not familiar with; likewise, we can only pray for God’s will to be done as we become more familiar with His will.

            As in basically all matters, the Lord Jesus is our best example for what it looks like to pray submissively. You may remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was about to be arrested and crucified, He made a very clear request of God the Father. He said, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me (which was a reference to the suffering He was about to endure).” He certainly made a request, but He ended His prayer by saying, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” We can certainly bring our requests to God, but it must always be in a submissive manner.

6. A manner that is petitionary

            This simply means that we come to God as people who are in need and asking for help. We learn this lesson in vv. 11-13, where Jesus teaches us to make specific requests about our various needs. Notice that He mentions both physical needs—like daily bread—and spiritual needs—like forgiveness and protection from temptation. As Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Thus, as we pray so often about our physical needs, let’s not forget that we have many spiritual needs as well.

            But let’s do focus for a moment on our physical needs as Jesus expressed them in v. 11—“Give us this day our daily bread.” When Jesus told us back in v. 6 that God knows what we need before we ask Him, He wasn’t telling us not to pray about our needs. In fact, I think He was encouraging us to pray about them with even more confidence in God’s faithfulness to meet our needs. After all, we must have confidence in God’s faithfulness to pray such a modest request as we find in v. 11. Notice how modest it really is—if I may paraphrase, the request is, “Give us the food we need for today.” That’s a very modest request.

            Now if you’re like me, you feel more like praying, “Lord, give me what I need for the next ten years, then I’ll handle it from here.” After all, I listen to Dave Ramsey! I’ll just make an envelope for each year over the next ten years, and I’ll have it taken care of! That’s what I feel like praying for—a big, lump-sum payment that I can manage myself.

            But that’s not the request of v. 11—the request is, “Give us the food we need for today.” I think its very likely that Jesus meant for us to think back to the story of God providing manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness. When the people of Israel left their slavery in Egypt, they were a family of at least 1 million people (perhaps more like 2 million depending on how many children they had). That would be a logistical nightmare to feed that many people every day, but God fed them every day with what Exodus 16 calls a “flake-like” substance that was left behind on the ground every morning after the dew had evaporated. The people were able to gather these flakes and make them into flour that they would then bake into bread. Exodus 16:31 says it was like coriander seed and tasted like it was sweetened with honey. The first time the people saw it, they asked each other, “What is it?” which in Hebrew is simply man. Before long they simply decided to call it man, so its name means “what is this stuff?”

            Now God gave the people a regulation about the manna—each day, they were only supposed to gather the amount they needed for that day and no more. God actually caused it to spoil overnight if the people tried to store more than they needed. The only exception was on the day before the weekly day of rest. On that day, the people were supposed to gather enough for two days, and the Lord kept it from spoiling overnight.

            So each day, the people received enough for that day but no more. Talk about a faith-building experience! Every day, you would wake up with no food, but God’s rations for you were there for you to gather so that you would be fed. It is this kind of daily, moment-by-moment dependence on God that Jesus calls us to have when we pray about our needs. In light of such a humble request, many of us have more thanking to do than requesting, because we already have our daily needs met for many days to come. Perhaps an appropriate challenge for us, then, is to consider how we should be generous with our excess and how we need to cultivate contentment rather than placing an ever-growing number of things into the category of “needs.”

            But let us do remember this lesson that Jesus teaches us to pray to God about our needs. And as we see in this model prayer, our needs extend beyond merely our physical needs. We have spiritual needs as well, such as the need for forgiveness. And so we are also taught to pray in…

7. A manner that is repentant

            We find this lesson in v. 12 with the phrase, “forgive us our debts.” Some of you may have memorized The Lord’s Prayer with the word “trespasses,” which simply comes from the other record of The Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11. Jesus offered The Lord’s Prayer as a model prayer on another occasion as well, and on that occasion He used the word “trespasses,” but on this occasion in Matthew 6 He used the word “debts” to create a metaphor that compares our sins to financial debts that we might incur.

            The meaning of the phrase is clear—it is a request for God to cancel those debts; to forgive our sins so that they are no longer held against us. Some people have taught that once we are saved, once we become Christians, it is no longer necessary for us to ask God for forgiveness. In fact, they would say that it is inappropriate and wrong for us to ask God for forgiveness. To them, such a request dishonors and disregards the forgiveness that we have already received.

            But I think the context of this statement teaches us that it is fully appropriate for Christians to ask God for forgiveness. Just think again about what Jesus has already taught us to pray—He has taught us to call God “our Father,” to express a desire that God’s reputation be honored and that His will would be perfectly accomplished. These are statements that can only be genuinely expressed by Christians. Only Christians may call God “Father;” only Christians would even want God’s will to be perfectly accomplished. So when we get to v. 12, why would we think that Jesus would mention something that is only appropriate for non-Christians to pray? The Lord’s Prayer is given as a model prayer for those who are already saved; thus, everything in it is appropriate for a Christian to pray.

            To understand our continued need to ask for forgiveness, we simply need to understand how our relationship to God changed when we were saved. Before we repented of our sins and accepted Christ, we related to God as our Creator and Judge. We had broken God’s laws, and we deserved to pay the penalty for our law-breaking. But when Jesus died, He paid that penalty for us, so that when we repent of our sins and accept Christ, the payment He made is applied to us, and on that basis God declares that our case is closed. The penalty has been paid in full and our legal troubles in God’s court of law are settled.

            According to Scripture, God then adopts us into His own spiritual family, so that now we relate to God as our Savior and Father. Now in our biological families, when we disobeyed our parents, it was appropriate for us to ask for their forgiveness—not from any sort of legal penalty, as though they were pressing charges against us, but from the hurt and pain we had caused them, from the damage we had done to our relationship.

            That is the sense in which we as Christians come before God to ask for forgiveness. We’re not asking Him to once again forgive the legal penalty of our sins, because that case has been closed. Instead, we’re asking Him to forgive us for the damage we’ve caused to our relationship, in the same way that we should ask our parents for forgiveness.

            We’ll continue with a few more lessons next week, but let’s briefly review what we’ve learned today. We should pray in a manner that is submissive. Our attitude should reflect a willingness to adjust our lives to God’s will, rather than thinking that prayer is a way to get God to adjust to our will. I think we encouraged to have this kind of attitude when we remember the great many needs that we have, and that God alone is able to meet those needs. We thus humbly come before him with our requests, and one of those requests that we should make is to be forgiven of the sins that we’ve committed, so that our intimacy with God will be all that it can be.

Moving Beyond "I'm Sorry"--Arriving at Forgiveness

The task of coaching has been described as getting someone to do what they don’t want to do so they can be what they want to be. A good coach knows that if his athletes are going to achieve their dreams, he will have to push them harder than they would naturally push themselves.

In some ways, a pastor is like a spiritual coach. Every week, I stand at this pulpit and encourage you to be what God wants you to be. But God’s desires for us go against the natural desires that flow out our sinful natures. So if we are going to obey God, we have to push beyond our natural desires.

This is very obvious when we think about the subject of forgiveness. The whole idea cuts against the grain of our sinful natures. We don’t want to forgive people after they have hurt us, nor do we want to ask for forgiveness because we don’t like to admit that we’re wrong. So as we talk about this subject, my desire as a spiritual coach is to push all of us past our natural desires.

A good coach also knows that he must make the fundamentals the main focus for his athletes. It is said that Vince Lombardi used to open training camp with the Green Bay Packers every year by huddling his team around a football and saying, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Then, during camp, they would talk about the fundamentals of football over and over and over.

Today we are going to start talking about arriving at forgiveness. The things we’re about to discuss may seem rather basic, but as is true in any sport, we will fail to meet our goals if we forget about the fundamentals. So today we’ll answer this question:

How should I ask for forgiveness?

First let’s turn to Matthew 5:21–24 to read a command from Jesus on this matter [READ Matt. 5:21–24]. According to Jesus, it is more important to make peace with someone that you have sinned against than it is to offer acts of worship to God. Obviously, its important to offer acts of worship to God, but it is even more important to ask a person to forgive you after you have sinned against them.

But how should we do that? What should we plan to say in a conversation when we need to ask someone for forgiveness? I believe the biblical concepts can be expressed in just a few basic steps.

1. Repent of your sin

Luke 17:4 uses the phrase “I repent” as the basic statement from a person who is asking for forgiveness, so this concept should make up part of our request for forgiveness. The Greek word for repentance is metanoeō, which consists of the prefix meta-, which means “after,” and the verb noeō, which means “to think or consider.” So the idea of repentance is that of reconsidering an action after you have done it and coming to a different conclusion about it.

When we sin against other people, we were either not thinking about our actions, or we were thinking that a sinful behavior was in fact okay. But when we repent, we change our mind about the way we acted. We come to believe that our actions were in fact sinful and thus wrong.

Repentance will actually take place in our hearts before we ask someone for forgiveness, but its very helpful to express our change of mind when we’re talking to the person that we have wronged. This will help them understand that we’re not trying to make a superficial apology, but instead we are talking to them because we have truly come to realize that we sinned against them.

2. Confess your sin

We talked about the word “confess” a couple of weeks ago, but it will be helpful to review it here. The Greek word for confess is homologeō, which consists of the prefix homo-, which means “the same,” and the verb logeō, which means “to say or speak.” Thus, the idea of confession is saying the same thing about your sin that the other person says about it, or agreeing with them about the sinfulness of your actions. Confession is really the expression of your repentance, because by repenting you have changed your mind about your actions and you have come into agreement with the other person who feels that you have sinned.

So when you’re talking to the person that you have wronged, you should call your sin what it is, just as God and the other person have already. If you’re asking another Christian to forgive you, it can be helpful to point out a specific command from the Bible that you have broken. That could also be beneficial if you’re asking an unbeliever for forgiveness. It may not be very meaningful for them, but it could be a good testimony to them to show them that you’re willing to acknowledge that you’re not perfect and you don’t always obey God as you desire to.

3. Offer to make restitution

“Restitution” is just a fancy word that means making things right. It’s the idea of restoring things to the way they used to be. So if your sin caused property damage, then making restitution would mean that you pay for the cost of the repairs. Or if your sin damaged the other person’s reputation, making restitution would mean that you do what you can to restore their good name.

Now at first, the idea of making restitution may not seem to fit with forgiveness. After all, the Bible compares forgiveness to the idea of forgiving a debt, and if a debt is forgiven that means you don’t have to repay it. But if you think about, even when you are forgiven of a debt, the debt is still paid—its simply paid by the person who forgave the debt; or in other words, they just absorb the loss of the debt that they forgave you.

In reality, ALL forgiveness is based on restitution—even the forgiveness that we enjoy from God. We don’t have to pay the debt of our sins because Jesus paid it for us. He made restitution, and we receive the forgiveness. But note this—God didn’t leave our sin debt unsettled. He simply chose to pay it Himself so that we wouldn’t have to, but nevertheless, restitution was made.

Jesus even praised the idea of restitution as an expression of a genuine change of heart. You may remember the story of His encounter with Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Why don’t you turn there with me? Now Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he, so when Jesus was traveling through his town and Zacchaeus couldn’t see over the crowds, he climbed up in a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus saw him in the tree and told him to come down because He planned to stay at his house. Now during the course of that visit, Zacchaeus became a believer in Jesus, and he demonstrated that by his statement in Luke 19:8–9 [READ Luke 19:8–9]. Now Jesus was saying that it was obvious Zacchaeus had been saved because his offer to make restitution revealed his change of heart.

So when we ask for someone’s forgiveness, we should offer to make restitution. This offer is really just an act of love toward the person that we have harmed through our sin. It is an expression of our repentance—an expression of the change of mind that we have had. Previously, we had thought about our behavior in a way that lead to the other person’s harm, but now, we are thinking about our behavior in a way that leads us to desire their good.

Now the other person may say that restitution is unnecessary, and that’s fine. That’s up to them; they can choose to absorb the cost of your sin if they want. But on your part, you should offer to make restitution however you can, and tell the other person how you plan to do it. Offering to make things right will normally melt even the coldest heart, and it will unlock the door to the forgiveness that you are seeking.

4. Ask for forgiveness

After you have stated your repentance and confession and you have offered to make restitution, all that’s left is to ask the other person to forgive you. When you make that request, you are asking the other person to make the four promises of forgiveness that we discussed last week:
• I will not dwell on this incident
• I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you
• I will not talk to others about this incident
• I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship.

Now of course, the person that you are talking to may not understand forgiveness in quite the same way that we are learning to understand it in this series, so it might be helpful to subtly mention these promises—not by sitting the other person down and saying, “Okay here’s what I expect from you,” but simply by mentioning these ideas when you ask for forgiveness. After you have offered to make restitution, you could simply say, “I hope my sin won’t dominate the way you think about me, and I hope it won’t hinder our relationship from now on. Will you forgive me?” I didn’t explicitly mention all four of the promises, but a simple statement like that will give the other person an idea of what you’re hoping for when they say, “I forgive you.”

Now, we’ve gone through these four steps, but how would this actually sound in a real conversation? Let’s think about two scenarios, and I’ll describe how it might actually sound to ask for forgiveness with these biblical concepts in mind.

First, let’s think about a scenario in which I have damaged someone’s property. Let’s say that I’m backing out of my driveway one day, and I didn’t notice my neighbor’s car parked in the street. I accidentally back into her car, but instead of taking responsibility for it, I drive away and hope that no one saw me. Now, my carelessness and dishonesty have left her with a damaged car and a repair bill.

But now let’s say that just a day or so later, my conscience convicts me and I go to my neighbor’s house to ask for her forgiveness. Based on these biblical concepts, my confession might sound like this: “Ma’am, I’m sure you’ve noticed that someone damaged your car the other day, and I wanted to tell you that it was me. I accidentally backed into it, and instead of owning up to it, I drove off and didn’t tell you. I realize now how wrong it was to do that and how much that must have upset you. That’s not how God wants me to act, and that’s no way for me to treat my neighbor. I’d like to pay for the damage that I caused, and I just hope this won’t change the way you think about me or hurt our relationship in the future. Will you forgive me?”

Now of course, that’s just an example, and in a real conversation you may not be able to say all that at once because the other person may jump in and speak. But by the time you’ve finished the conversation, you want to make sure that you’ve expressed those four ideas.

Now let’s think about a scenario in which I have damaged someone’s reputation. Let’s say that out of jealousy toward someone, a spread a lie about them. That person then finds out that a lie has been told about them, but they don’t know who started it. Finally, my conscience convicts me, so I approach that person and say something like this: “John, I know you’ve heard some gossip that’s been going around about you, and I want to confess that I started it. I was jealous of you, and so I made up this lie about you and started to spread it. I realize how wrong it was for me to do that, and my actions must have caused you a lot of pain. You and I both know that God commands us to love each other, but I disobeyed Him and I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry for that. I want you to know that I plan to talk to every person that I know of who has heard my lie, and I plan to tell them that I started this gossip and that its not true. I hope my actions won’t define the way you think about me, and I hope that my sins won’t hurt our relationship in the future. Will you forgive me for what I’ve done?”

A confession like that sounds sincere, doesn’t it? And if you were the one whose car had been damaged, or the one who was the victim of gossip, wouldn’t a confession like that make it just a bit easier for you to say “I forgive you” and really mean it? You see, when we base our request for forgiveness on a biblical model, it paves the way for us to truly put sins behind us and restore our relationships. We can help the other person start to trust us again by revealing the sincerity of our motives and intentions. At some point, we will all need to ask someone to forgive us of a sin, so let’s ask God to help us do it according to the pattern of His Word.