Matthew 6 Lord's Prayer

Barb from the Biblically Wired Podcast discusses the Lord's Prayer and its significance. She emphasizes the humanity of Jesus and his role as a bridge between God and humanity. She explains the origins of the prayer and its connection to the Jewish tradition of praying three times a day. Barb highlights the freedom and authenticity of prayer that Jesus teaches, and how forgiveness is a central theme in his teachings. Hey, hey, everyone, it's Barb from the Biblically Wired Podcast. Hello, good day. Whatever you're doing in the next 20 minutes, I am so grateful you're spending it with me. So I heard God, or I felt God calling me to do a podcast, and I realized why. Whenever he calls me to do something, it's primarily for myself, or at least I get so much benefit, I often feel the Holy Spirit rattling through my ribcage like a marble and inspiring me to dig a little deeper into parts of the text. I have a lot of questions, and as I said in my intro, I'm a Bible detective of sorts. So today, we are going to talk about the most memorized portion of Scripture, something I have uttered just out of habit thousands and thousands of times, and we're going to look at it from a completely different angle than you most likely ever have. We are talking about the Lord's Prayer today, and I want to go over what that would have meant to the disciples, to the Israelites of that day, and to the early church, because it's going to blow your hair back if you love this kind of stuff like I do. Okay, first of all, we have to do a tidbit on the theology of the humanity of Jesus. We have to remember his humanity. So theology means theo, which is God, and ology, the study of. Theology is the study of God, which seems impossible, because from our human reasoning, we cannot know God. So the only way we can study God is by his grace. God takes the initiative to make himself known. So recently, we studied how blessed we are, how loved we are by God that he sent Jesus Christ for our sins in the book of Romans, and how distant we are because of his holiness. So now, yes, we have a holy God looking down on his naughty, naughty children, but loving us enough to make himself known. So if anybody asks you, how do I know God, lead them to the story of Abraham, to the story of Moses, who saw him from the crook of a rock pass by, who asked him his name, and had, I think, the most incredible relationship with God that I've seen in writing. Have them look at the story of Joseph and Daniel, who were put into such difficult situations, and see what God does because of his love for them, and his good heart, and their obedience. Now let's look at the person of Jesus Christ. So why am I emphasizing his humanity? This is one thing you need to know, that you know, that you know. Jesus came and he was human. If Jesus was not fully human, then he cannot be the intercessory, the bridge, the high priest between us and God. So Jesus has to be human. This is the number one reason some false teachers might want to dissuade you from the fact. Read the Gospels, Jesus is human. We know he was born from a mother. He was nurtured in the womb, just like us. He knows the vulnerability of being a child. He knows what it would be like to have that parent relationship, arguing, fighting, divorcing. He knows how uncomfortable it is to have siblings annoying each other, persecuting each other, really. Jesus grew up in wisdom and statue in Luke 2. We know he experienced things like hunger from Matthew 4, thirst, John 19, with the woman at the well. In John 4, we see the whole crew was hungry and thirsty and Jesus was tired. We know that. He reasoned, he thought, he had compassion, he loved. So one thing Jesus did as a human being on earth, he did this in a constant way, in a exciting way, Jesus prayed. He not only modeled prayer, he did it from a real place. He prayed all night before he chose the twelve disciples. He prayed all night. That is something I've never been able to do. His prayer revealed a true human, again, revealing a human dependence on God. Okay, so eventually the disciples see this. They see the results of it. They see the power that comes from prayer and they ask him to teach them how to pray. But the foundation of this goes way back farther than that. So the Jewish people of that day would have prayed three times a day, like King David, like Daniel in Babylon. Daniel prayed towards the temple three times a day. So why was that? If you read the story of Solomon in the dedication of his temple, this is, on a side note, the one thing I would want to witness personally in Scripture if I could go back into the Old Testament, Solomon's dedication of the temple. In that dedication, he prays for Gentiles, too, and he prays for God to hear anybody who prays toward his temple. And that's what we see Daniel doing. Okay, so 440 years, I don't want to make your head hurt, but I do want you guys to know this because it is important, a very important piece. 440 years before Christ, the Israelites were coming back from exile and they were led by Ezra. Ezra gathered 120 men or elders. They couldn't have been that old. They probably wouldn't have been old enough to remember the temple. Only but a handful of them would have been that old. In fact, it is recorded that when Ezra and Nehemiah built a new temple, some of the older men grieved because they remembered Solomon's temple. But turning back here, what I'm trying to say is many of these would have been young people, 120 men gathered with Ezra to create a prayer called the Amidah. The goal of this prayer was not only to pray. One of the goals was to bring back all of God's children in this area to the Hebrew language. Many of these people were born in exile, grew up with a mix of Hebrew and the language in their area, returned to Jerusalem, and needed sound Hebrew lessons, really. The Hebrew language was almost obsolete in this time. So Ezra played this important role with these 120 in creating this Amidah. So the Amidah comes from the lives of what they believe is Abraham, who they dedicate the morning prayer to, the Shaharid, the prayer of the dawn, to Isaac, who they dedicate the afternoon prayer, the Miha, which commemorates the flower sacrifice at the temple, and to Jacob, who they dedicate the evening prayer to, the Marev. The Marev is the evening prayer. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all illustrated in this Amidah, the patriarchs of their faith. So the Amidah covers 18 different portions of prayer. This is what the disciples would have known. These prayers were done at the temple during the morning, afternoon, and evening sacrifice. So this is a huge deal in their culture, humongous. I don't know what could have been bigger than this, other than the sacrifices. It is almost like the cross to us, because they didn't have the Messiah yet, this was one of their big, big pieces. So I'm going to list really quickly the 18 things they prayed for. Of note, they stood during these prayers with their feet together. If you go to Israel today, you will see men in a room next to the wailing wall, reciting these prayers with their tassels on their hem of their robe, and they are, some of them rocking back and forth, some of them leaning on the wall, some of them pacing, mostly standing. So they pray for God's power, life, and holiness is praised about. Then they pray for wisdom, repentance, pardon or forgiveness, rescue, healing, finances. They prayed that more Israelites return to the land for justice, to remove their enemies for security, that Jerusalem is rebuilt, that the Messiah comes, and they pray that God accepts their prayers and accepts their worship. Of note, in recent years, way past the time of Jesus, they added a 19th piece, which is gratitude. So we can see some of these pieces in the Lord's Prayer. I'm just going to read it out loud, Matthew chapter 6, 9 through 13. Pray then in this way, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. So Jesus never put the doxology on the end, but we have added that. And that is, for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, amen. Amen means let it be. So Jesus gives the disciples this prayer. Okay, so it's not covering the 18 things in the Amida, because the kingdom has come. The Messiah has come. Things have changed. But the most blow-your-hair-back thing that Jesus does in this portion, the thing that disrupts everything, is Jesus gives this prayer in Aramaic. Okay, so the Israelites believed prayer had to be done in Hebrew. It was a huge deal to Ezra. It was a way they preserved their language going forward. And then Jesus Christ comes and speaks it in Aramaic. Okay, so the disciples, first of all, Jesus never asked them to pray three times a day. Okay, so that's kind of wild, they're thinking. But also, he's speaking the prayer in Aramaic. What is going on here? This is super cool, guys, because this is freedom. Jesus came to set the captives free. God has never, ever been about rote prayers. God is always about the heart. Yes, we can say the Lord's Prayer with all our heart, and that will be received wonderfully by God. But how many times do we blubber through it so we can go to sleep? Now in Luke 11, the disciples also ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and it is not the same prayer. So Jesus never meant for this to be the memorized big thing of our culture. Here in Luke 11, he says, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins. For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. So what is this? First, I'm going to say who Father is, that his kingdom is here. I'm going to talk about provisions, ask for forgiveness, forgive others, and avoid temptation. That's only six parts. That is only six parts in that prayer. So what is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying when you're praying to God, keep it authentic, keep it about the heart, acknowledge who he is, bring your needs to the throne, and remember, above all, Jesus reflected forgiveness. So forgiveness has a lot of different theologies around it, and forgiveness often takes time. Sometimes I have told God to give me a desire to forgive the person I know I need to forgive, and admitted I need to even start with a desire to do this. And God, I know, appreciates honesty. He does not want us to come to the throne with a mask, with the perfect things to say, but with humility and honesty from the heart, as he already knows the mess we're in anyways. So guys, here is a really huge piece now for the early church in regards to this prayer. Because of this prayer that Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the early church voted that the Bible can be translated into different languages, and that people did not have to understand the Bible in Hebrew or Greek. So because Jesus spoke the prayer in Aramaic, we have a translated Bible in our language. I mean, this is huge stuff. When Jesus sets an example of anything, it is an example that will transcend through generations. So obviously that's not the only reason we have the Bible in English, but it was the litmus test for the early church to create other translated books of the word. Woohoo, because learning Greek and Hebrew is super, super hard. So I hope that was fun to look at the Lord's Prayer from a little different angle. I hope it encourages you to branch off and pray to God from your heart, right where you're at. Isn't it so encouraging that Jesus and God want to meet us in our mud puddle? They want to meet us on our mountaintops and in the valleys of our life. God is so good, and He's after us, and I love it. So I sure pray that you enjoyed this and that you pass it on to anybody who's kind of a biblical detective themselves, and that we can continue to have fun together. I feel like I need a drumroll sound before I make my big announcement. I just am so excited that every part of Jesus's life in the gospel transcends to huge epiphanies in our generation. He wasn't just about the people on the ground at the time. He was always looking laser-focused on all of us, too. Thank you, Jesus. Well, it's goodbye for now. I sure pray you have a great day and that you keep your knees bowed and that chin up in Jesus's name.