The Sermon on the Mount XII

Subtitle:  Correcting the Righteousness of the Hypocrites III

Matthew 6:11-15.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 25, 2024.

We are picking up in the middle of the Lord’s prayer.  This is the center point of the Sermon on the Mount, and it is also a central issue, that of prayer.

Jesus is speaking to the way of righteousness in the area of prayer.  There was a lot of praying that happened in first century Israel, but not many righteous prayers.  Righteous prayer is not about quantity, but instead, it is about quality.  Thus, Jesus has pointed out that our desire for others to think well and highly of us can lead us off the righteous path in this area.

The first half of the prayer is praying for God’s purposes, i.e., His Name, His Kingdom and His will.  Of course, there is no question that these things are done in heaven.  The prayer is for these things to also be done on the earth.  Let your purposes be done on earth as they are done in heaven!

The emphasis here can be boiled down to praying in a way that demonstrates that we love God first.  We can also notice that the second half of the prayer focuses on our love for our brother or neighbor.  We not only should pray for God’s purposes because we love Him, but even when we ask for things from Him, there should be an aspect of love for others wrapped up in it- more on that later.

Let’s look at our passage.

The model prayer: prayer in relation to love for others (v. 11-13)

If a person didn’t get the imagery through the use of the term “kingdom” throughout this sermon, you should catch it here in this first request.  Jesus is in the wilderness preaching to the people, and he teaches them to ask God for their daily bread.  This would have stirred up the imagery of Israel in the wilderness receiving the supernatural manna each day.  It the recognition that we are dependent upon God for our daily bread.

We should not be too quick to jump over the natural aspect of this.  Just as Israel would have literally died in the wilderness, if God had not fed them, so we are mortal and in need of physical food.  Bread is often called a staple of life.  A staple food was the predominant food in any group’s diet.  We are spoiled today, but throughout most of history, regions had particular food that was the main source of their diet.  If it was destroyed, or ruined, then their lives were in jeopardy.  Thus, bread took on the metaphorical connotation of life itself.  No bread…no life.   Humans must eat, that is how God has designed us.  We don’t have to eat all of the time.  We don’t have to eat fancy stuff, but we do need to eat periodically.

This biological reality of life is recognized in this prayer.  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  However, God always uses natural, or material, things to teach us spiritual realities.  This is why Jesus taught using parables regarding the everyday life experience of first century Judeans.

Moses told Israel in Deuteronomy 8:3 that God had allowed them first to know hunger, and then to know His gracious supply of food in order to learn a spiritual lesson.  Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Thus, the literal bread that we ask of God connotes our need of spiritual bread.

In John 6:341 and following, Jesus said that “the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  He then said, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never hunger.”  That is an amazing statement.  It is the same statement that he gives to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:14.  “[W]hoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.”  Jesus is the spiritual water and bread that we need in this spiritual wilderness.  In Jesus, God supplies spiritual food to sustain your daily walk of faith with God.  Prayer is an important part of that.

We should also notice that the prayer is couched in us language.  Yes,  you need bread, natural and spiritual.  However, you are not alone and should pray as a part of a community.  This is easiest to see in a parent approaching God.  Of course, you pray for your daily bread, but I have kids who need to eat too.  A parent approaches God in prayer for the sake of the family, not just as an individual.  Yet, this dynamic needs to scope out to our extended family, our town, our county, our State, our Republic (or nation as the case may be), even to the whole of humanity.  I may pray alone in the secret place, but I am not to separate myself from others as I ask God for help.  Lord, help me so that I may be part of your help to others.

In fact, let us recognize that some people have plenty of food and money, but they still commit suicide because they have no hope or faith in the future.  This is a spiritual need that no food and money can supply, only Jesus.

I get it that people look at our world today (particularly in our cities), and they lack faith or hope.  Yet, Jesus lived in such a devastated time, and he said, “the fields are white unto harvest.”  He could do that because he spent time with the Father in prayer.  He had spiritual reserves that we are often ignorant of.  Even in the United States of America, we need a miracle of God to supply our daily spiritual bread, so that we might continue in faith, rather than fainting in death.

The second request asks for forgiveness for our sins, or debts.  In Luke 11, Jesus shares this prayer and asks, “forgive us our sins,” instead of “debts.”  There really is no difference.  The concept of debts had connotations of sin.  When someone sins against you, it is pictured as a debt that needs to be paid off through repentance and making it right.  We are asking God to forgive our sins.

However, it is connected to our forgiveness of others sins, or debts to us.  The preposition “as” is not giving a timing element.  It is not asking God to forgive us at the same time of our forgiving of others.  Rather, the word “as” is establishing a fact that should motivate God to forgive us, “as in fact, we forgive our debtors.  In Luke 11, it says, “for [because] we also are forgiving everyone who is indebted to us.”

In our private prayers, there is a strange sense in which others are always there, at least in principle.  This is my relationship with God, but I cannot relate with God without recognizing that He loves others.  If I ignore that, then it affects my relationship with Him.  This contingency recognizes that if I want God to forgive me, then I need to be forgiving of others.  Our relationships with one another affect our relationship with God, as far as it depends upon you.

This does beg the other side of the equation, i.e., when I have sinned against others.  We can demand that others forgive us, even pointing to the Bible, but that is between them and God.  It is your job to be truly repentant when you have sinned against others.  The rest is between them and God.  A truly repentant heart doesn’t require others to act perfectly.  Duh, we are admitting that we have done wrong and want others to have mercy on us.  None of this (repenting or giving forgiveness) will ever be done perfectly, without error.  Can you forgive someone for not perfectly forgiving you for your imperfection (sin)?  Of course, we can, but the truth is that too often we do not desire it.

This should remind us of Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”

The third request is generally translated as being about temptation, but the word is bigger than that, and it should be seen as properly a time of testing.  “Lead us not into testing..”  We should again imagine Israel in the wilderness.  The wilderness is not in and of itself temptation, but you had better believe that temptation is a component of what goes on in the wilderness.

God took Israel through the wilderness for several reasons.  They weren’t ready to fight all the Egyptian armies they would continue to run into along the coastal plain.  Also, they needed some time alone with God in order to get to know Him better.  This allowed a covenant to be made with God at Sinai.  Lastly, the wilderness would test their metal.  The wilderness is tough on the flesh.  There isn’t much provision in the wilderness for our flesh.  We do become tempted by the devil and the world around us, but we are just as much tempted by what our flesh likes and doesn’t like.

God often leads us into wilderness times of testing. However, we should not think that God is doing that in order to tempt us.  God leads you there because it will make you stronger spiritually, if you trust Him.  You see, when ore is tested, it is what it is.  You crush it and heat it up.  A certain amount of metal comes out of the ore and an assayer can determine how rich the ore is.  However, people are not inanimate objects.  Even as we are being melted down (thief on the cross), we can choose to put our faith in God.  In that moment, something valuable springs into existence that wasn’t there earlier.  The mercy and grace of God is with us in the time of testing.  We can choose, have faith, humble ourselves, and ask for help.  And, guess what!  There He is to help us in time of need.

There are some subtleties happening in the verbs of this section.  It can be explained easiest by translating the words this way, “Don’t just lead us into testing, but deliver us from evil.”  The point is really the heart of God anyways.  God deliver me from the evil (bad things) that I will run into in the time of testing, and there are a plethora of these.

By the way, some translations will say “evil one.”  It is true that we need deliverance from the devil and the lying demonic spirits that work for him.  However, the Greek here is simply an adjective that is being used substantively (like a noun).  The context is supposed to supply whether it is an evil man, woman, thing, or one.  In this case, there is some ambiguity, and I believe that is one purpose.  The bad things that can destroy us in the time of testing are the devil, his demons, worldly friends and societies, even my own stinking thinking.  We need delivered from any bad thing that would tempt us away from trusting God.

Are we not in a time of testing right now, as a republic and as individuals?  Yes, we are.  We do not have to be afraid of the wilderness.  If God delivers us from the evil, then only the good will remain.  The wilderness was good for Joshua and Caleb.  Do you know why they could defeat giants?  It wasn’t because they had honed the art of slaying giants while in the wilderness.  It was because they had learned that God could be trusted with even their very life.  They had learned to trust God.  Caleb was not the original trash talker trying to manipulate people into fighting giants, and scare giants with his crazy talk.  Rather, he knew that his God was greater than those giants who made him look like a grasshopper.

Be careful of thinking the lesson of this time is that Joshua and Caleb were better than the others.  No.  Joshua and Caleb were the same as all those others.  However, they trusted God over the top of the fears of their flesh.  We can all fail in time of testing, but the good news is that we can all succeed in the time of testing by trusting God with our life.

There is a question about how the prayer ends.  The second part of verse 13 is not in the earliest manuscripts.  It does show up in a 2^nd century writing called the Didache (Greek for “Teaching”).  This was a discipleship manual for early Christians and dates back to at least A.D. 130.  However, it is in a shortened form (I believe it only mentions the power and glory, leaving out the kingdom).

Regardless of whether it was original or not, it is a very biblical thing to pray, and we find it in 1 Chronicles 29:10-11.  David has been calling Israel to join him in bringing forth donations for the Temple that was to be built.  His prayer uses the same themes that are found in this closing and even matches much of the whole prayer, e.g., using the phrase “our Father.”

David was recognizing that they were all donating stuff that they had.  Yet, at the same time, all of this stuff had come from God.  We must never forget that everything we receive from God in this life (including our body and breath) is His.  The Church has often made this mistake through history.  God would give them power over natural kingdoms, but we forget it is still His.  Yes, we are His representatives on the earth, but it is always still His.  We are only stewards of His stuff.  We will one day stand before Him and give account for what we did with His stuff.  This is what is meant in Romans 11:36.  “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be glory forever. Amen.”  It all comes from Him, even through Him to us.  However, all we do with it is to be to Him, i.e., for His glory.  He is the source, the channel and the goal of it all.  When we forget that, we make it about ourselves and fall into the trap of the devil.

Let’s look at the last verses of this section on prayer.

An added explanation on prayer (v. 14, 15)

There is not much interpretation needed here.  Jesus is not teaching that we don’t need his death on the cross, that we can save ourselves by simply forgiving others.  Rather, he is showing us his heart (the Father’s heart).  This is who he is.  He loves the brother that you have trouble loving.  If you truly have faith in him, and love him, then you will trust his way, his path, of forgiveness.  This is in the category of things that are easier said than done.  It becomes a litmus test of our faith and love for Jesus.

In truth, none of us can forgive those who sin against us without the help of the Spirit of God, which Jesus has supplied to us.  Still, this is a challenge from our Lord to be the merciful ones of Matthew 5:7.

We see this principle throughout the teachings of Jesus, especially in Matthew 7, the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  There, he speaks about judging your brother.

No matter how much you believe on Jesus to forgive your sins, and no matter how willing He is to cover them, He will not do so if you continue to refuse to forgive others.

In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus gives us the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.  The servant owed the king 10,000 talents.  When he couldn’t pay and begged the king, the king had mercy on him and forgave the large sum of money.  The man then went out and found someone who owed him 2% of 1 talent.   Thus, if we treated the 10,000 talents as $10,000 (believe me that it was much higher than this), then he was throwing a man into debtors prison over 2 cents.  Of course, the king was incensed when he found out.

Jesus uses this story to get our attention.  Yet, in our flesh, we tend to think that God may have forgiven us 10,000 talents, but my brother’s sin against me is like 10 million talents!  The beam in our eye always measures our sin in small quantities, and the sin of others in great quantities.

Perhaps, we should look at it differently.  The story hinges on what we owe the king versus what we owe one another.  Have you ever thought that our sins against one another, that seem so huge, are a pittance compared to our sins against God.  When you sin against me, it is understandable because I am a sinful human myself.  I should be able to forgive it easily because I sin myself.  Yet, our sin against God is not understandable.  God is perfect, and has only loved us.  Our sins against Him are so great as to be impossible to quantify.  It is an eternal debt.  If I want God to forgive my eternal debt, then I would be smart to forgive people their small debts to me.  Which do you want, two cents from your brother, or a clean slate with God?

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