Luke 11:1-5 "Lord's Prayer 1"
A few months ago some of us were at Kemper’s dad’s funeral in San Antonio. Kemper’s dad (who was also named Kemper) was a missionary to India and Africa—he did a lot of amazing things for the Gospel. At the funeral, a pastor got up to speak who had gone on a little mission trip with him.
He said the first day they were there he got up early and Kemper was already up praying by a campfire. The pastor asked him what they were going to do on their first day, and Kemper said, “Today we’re going to pray.”
The pastor was like, “All day?”
And Kemper said, “Well, I figured we should find out what God wants us to do before we start doing it so we don’t waste any time.”
So they sat there in silence for a couple hours. After a while, the pastor asked, “So, what do you say when you’re praying like this?”
Kemper didn’t hesitate, he said, “Oh, I don’t say much. I mostly listen.”
The pastor asked, “Well, then what does God say?”
And I love Kemper’s answer. He said, “Oh, He mostly listens too—and if you don’t understand what I mean by that I’m not sure I can help you.”
Prayer is usually thought of as talking to God. Saying our prayers. But it’s more like sitting with God around a campfire. A little talking, a little listening. It’s being with God.
But seriously, two hours? All day? Do you ever feel like you should pray more? Ever feel guilty about it? How long should we pray? What should we say? How much emotion should we bring to it?
There’s a quote attributed to Luther but he probably didn’t really say it. Supposedly he said, “I usually pray for two hours each morning but if I have a particularly busy day… then I pray for three hours.”
I’ve heard the quote attributed to other people, too.
I don’t think any of them said it. I think someone who wanted to guilt people into praying more made it up. When the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him to teach them how to pray, He didn’t put this big heavy burden on them.
Luke 11, verse 1…
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
Jesus and the gang are on the road, heading to Jerusalem. Luke doesn’t tell us where they are at this point but it does tie into the story from last week. Jesus was at Mary and Martha’s house, Martha was busy doing stuff, but Mary was sitting at His feet listening to Him. Abiding in His presence.
And then the very next thing Luke brings up is how to abide in His presence when He’s not around. Prayer.
Jesus prayed a lot. The disciples had noticed.
It seems like Jesus had stepped away from the group but they knew He was praying, probably couldn’t hear what He was saying. When He came back, one of the disciples, likely not one of the Twelve, one of the others, asked Jesus to teach them how He wanted them to pray. They had learned how to pray growing up as a Jew, some of them used to be disciples of John the Baptist—who had apparently taught them how to pray but now they wanted to know what their new Rabbi wanted them to do in their prayer time.
We don’t know anything about what John had taught them. Some of the other Rabbis taught their followers these long, elaborate prayers that they were supposed to say multiple times a day, on their faces toward the Temple in Jerusalem.
Since Jesus is greater than John, oh boy, they probably thought His prayers were going to be extreme. Like really long and complicated. Have to dress a certain way, feel a certain way, drum up all kinds of enthusiasm and emotion, cry tears and beat their chest. Sing worship songs until they were really in the mood! I wonder if any of the other disciples cringed when that guy asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Like the teacher's pet who raises their hand and reminds them to assign homework for the weekend.
Verse 2…
And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” Luke 11:2-4
AMEN. The end. Fifteen seconds if you say it slowly.
Father. Hallowed. Kingdom. Bread. Forgive. Temptation.
This is the bare bones of the Lord’s Prayer. It is the Lord’s Prayer. But if I put this one on the screens at the end of the service, you’d all be like, “What the heck was that? Why’d we only say half the Lord’s Prayer today? Why’s Pastor Frank cutting words out of Scripture?!” Well, this is Scripture, too.
The version we say is mostly from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus would have taught this prayer on different occasions—it wasn’t really meant to be said word-for-word as much as it was intended to be a framework for how to pray. In Matthew, Jesus goes on to say don’t pray using “vain repetitions” but that’s exactly what a lot of people do when they say the Lord’s Prayer. To call that irony is an understatement.
Obviously, I love saying the Lord’s Prayer, we say it every week. But the reason is so we can have the pattern of how to pray embedded deeply into our souls.
The early Christians prayed the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. Once in the morning, at Noon, and once in the evening. We should probably do the same.
Luther suggested the best way to pray is to say the Lord’s Prayer as we’ve learned it, word-for-word, and then go back through the big ideas, praying in your own words for whatever is going on in your life.
Father. Hallowed. Kingdom. Bread. Forgive. Temptation.
Let’s walk through the different parts:
Father
In Matthew it says “Our Father” but in Luke, it’s just “Father.” It means the same thing.
The Greek word for “Father” is “Abba.” There’s a popular idea that this is a child’s word for father. Like “daddy.” Sorry to ruin it for you but that’s not true at all. Abba just means Father. It is what a child would call his dad but it’s also what a grown man would call his father. It’s not baby talk. It’s not “Daddy God.”
The Holy Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus says, “When you pray, you should pray like I do—pray to my Father—because He’s Your Father now, too.” Don’t call Him “Mr God.” Call Him “Father.”
And if a child is adopted, that means they take their father’s name. You’ve been adopted. His name is your name now. So…
Hallowed be your name.
Hallowed means Holy. God’s name is holy and since you carry His name now, you need to keep His name holy. What you say. What you do. Live up to the name you were freely given because Jesus shared His Father with you.
Every day when I pray, I start with “Father in heaven, help me to keep Your name holy. In what I say, in what I do, in how I deal with my emotions, in how I think about You.” “Father, Your name is holy. Since I carry Your name, help me live up to it.
Which is what the next line is getting at, too…
Your kingdom come.
Everywhere we see the word “kingdom” in the Gospels we should think of it as “reign.” The kingdom of God is wherever God reigns. God reigns wherever His loyal subjects do what He says, what He commands, what He wants—wherever His people are subject to Him. It’s more about the influence the King has over His people than what we normally associate with “kingdoms”—like land, territory, and borders. It’s the people the King rules—that’s the reign of God, the reign of heaven.
So, when you say “Your kingdom come,” your saying, “reign in me and through me to live out Your holiness in the world.” Which we can only do by asking God to work through us and in us.
As we do what God wants us to do, we’re going to need His help. So, we ask Him to…
Give us each day our daily bread,
We trust God will give us what we need—He wants us to ask. Luther taught that “daily bread” was everything we need to survive in this world but also God’s spiritual provision to give us life now and eternal life in the age to come. This is where we ask for money, healing, opportunities, help at work, resolving problems in relationships, whatever we need and whatever the people in our lives need. So bread is like manna in the wilderness, food, but it’s also like Communion Bread with its promise of forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
Which leads to the next big idea:
and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
It should be a great comfort to you that in this tiny little daily prayer Jesus expects us to need our sins forgiven. Anyone who gets discouraged because you blow it every day and need to come crawling back to God for the same forgiveness of the same sin. Day after day after day. Anyone who thinks, “God has to be getting tired of this by now. He probably didn’t expect me to be such a screwup.”
Well, you’re wrong about that, too! Ha. You can’t get anything right, can you?
Jesus expects His followers to pray this prayer multiple times a day. He expects His followers to NEED forgiveness from sin MULTIPLE times a day. He’s not surprised. He built it right into the prayer.
But don’t skip the second half. “For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”
He wants to forgive us. He also expects us to forgive others.
Why is this so hard? I mean, you just asked God to forgive you of your sins. Not forgiving other people is a sin. Why do you want immediately mess up your clean slate? That’s like cleaning off the windshield of your car, getting it absolutely perfect, and then immediately throwing a bucket of mud on it—smearing it in with your wipers. Hopping in the car and blindly driving into traffic. It’s a bad idea! You’re going to crash. You’re going to hurt people and hurt yourself.
Forgiving other people isn’t for them. Most of the time, they won’t even know. Wouldn’t care if they did. It’d probably just make them mad. “How dare you forgive me! I didn’t do anything wrong!”
No. You forgive other people for you. So your heart isn’t black with poison. Carrying a grudge against someone only hurts you.
People think staying mad at someone is being tough! Something strong people do! That’s backward. Holding a grudge makes you weak. It shows a lack of strength and character.
And Christians don’t wait for the other person to apologize. This isn’t a transaction between people. We just forgive. We might not even tell them about it.
It’s like when Jesus was hanging on the cross, because of all our sin, all the ways we have ever and will ever sin against Him. He said, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” They weren’t sorry. Nobody stopped what they were doing. No one apologized. The religious leaders were still mocking, the Roman soldiers were still making sure He died. He forgave them anyway.
Do that.
And then Jesus changes the metaphor from God forgiving our sins to us forgiving people who are indebted to us. Sin always leaves a debt. Does that mean we have to forgive someone if they owe us money? It might—if they don’t pay us back.
Jesus talks about forgiveness a lot. I think He means it. In Matthew, Jesus says, “if you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven.” He’s very serious about this forgiveness thing.
I always pray, “Lord forgive me for all the stupid things I do, and help me remember to treat people like I’ve forgiven them, too.”
Then the final line…
And lead us not into temptation.
Lead us away from temptation. You know those dumb things I’m so tempted to do? Help me to not do them. If there are particular things that you are being tempted to do in the moment (which there will be, all the time, every day) He wants you to bring them up. Talk honestly and openly about what’s going on. Ask for the strength and self-control to not give in to temptation.
Father. Hallowed. Kingdom. Bread. Forgive. Temptation. Say it with me…
That’s our pattern for when we pray. Short, sweet, to the point.
Back to my question when I started:
Do you ever feel like you should pray more? Ever feel guilty about it?
I don’t think Jesus wants us to look at prayer as a burden. Prayer is a gift.
God didn’t give us the gift of prayer so we’d feel guilty about it.
Everybody can always pray more. That’s not the point.
The point might actually be to pray less. Or at least with deliberate purpose. To get to the point.
Long prayers, sitting by the campfire with God, talking and listening. That’s good.
So is getting out of bed and saying, “Good morning, Lord. Help me keep Your name holy today.”
How many words does it take to tell someone you love them? Three? “I love you.” Two? “Love you!” At our house it only takes one, we just say “Love!” That’s how we say hello, that’s how we say goodbye, good night. “Love.”
How weird would it be if Kim always expected me to talk to her the way some of us pray, “Precious, sweet Kim, my beautiful and darling wife, (in a strange, sugary voice that I never use for anything else) O Kim, the one who married me and gave your life to me, I just want to tell you how much I love you Kim, precious Kim, I just come to you today and…”
Seriously. That’s not a conversation. That’s an impromptu poem. Save it for a Valentine’s Day card!
When you pray, pray like this: Father, Your name is holy, help me keep it holy. Your kingdom come, reign in me. Give us what we need for today, and forgive our sins, help us to forgive everyone else. And lead me away from temptation.
Father. Hallowed. Kingdom. Bread. Forgive. Temptation.
Pretty much covers everything. Pray something like that when you wake up, sometime during the day, and before you go to bed. Do that every day. Most days it’s probably not even a five-minute commitment. Other days, sit down by the campfire, take off your shoes, recognize the holy ground you’re on, and listen to God as He’s listening to you.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. AMEN.