Our subject is
The LORD’s Prayer recorded in the beginning verses of Luke chapter 11. Be sure the disciples knew how to pray, yet they specifically asked the LORD to teach them to pray. Did they not hear many great and eloquent praying in the synagogues and on street corners? Had they not seen the Pharisees performing their rituals? But now they are witnessing the LORD Himself praying His prayer to His Father. They see His face shine with transfiguring glory reflected upon His face, like the light of the Sh’khinah on the face of Moses as he came down from Mount Horeb. Perhaps the words from Deuteronomy 18, verse 15 came to mind.
‘The LORD your GOD will raise up for you a Prophet like me,’ said Moses, ‘from your midst. Him you shall hear.’
Such a One as was prophesied of old, stood before them, the Man YESHUA, the Son of the Living GOD, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His wings. The only words they could utter were,
‘LORD, teach us to pray.’ So He said to them, ‘When you pray say: Our Father in Heaven.’
With these few remarkable words, He showed them and all followers of Messiah, YESHUA, thereafter that we have all been brought into His family, the family of GOD, His Father, our Heavenly Father.
Hallowed be Thy Name.
No one can expect to come before the Almighty GOD in sanctified worship, unless we have an uncommon attitude of holy reverence. The acknowledgement or awareness that at such times, we are upon holy ground. Only then can we expect to draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Here we have two seemingly separate statements, yet complementary. For the kingdom requires His will be done, otherwise it will perish. Our fervent prayer should be that ‘His will be done’ so that His kingdom will come. LORD, come quickly to claim Your kingdom. Children of GOD, listen to the words of LORD as He preached to the multitude: Then He lifted up His eyes towards His disciples and said, ‘Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of GOD.
(Luke 6, verse 20.)
Evidently the LORD came into our human history to lay claim to His kingdom, and establish it upon earth by enabling us to receive it within our very being. This must be one of the many great and wonderful mysteries of GOD’s will, hardly comprehensible to our finite minds; But it is GOD Who works in you, both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
(Philippians 2, verse 13.)
Give us this day our daily bread.
Oh, how this must have brought to life the memory of the words of Moses to His disciples, how the LORD fed the children of Israel for forty years in the wilderness with the manna, the heavenly bread, to feed the whole man, body, soul, and spirit. I Am the Bread of Life, he who comes to Me shall never hunger.
(John 6: 35). Were it not for GOD’s provisions, none of us would survive. Does He not supply all our needs, daily? Or are we self-satisfied, believing in our own efforts? Can we be so conceited in thinking we can manage now quite well without Your intervention, thank you? Remember the children of Israel grumbled; they became dissatisfied with the heavenly bread and craved for the things they left behind in Egypt. Friends, beware! Satan is very subtle. He will satisfy our craving hearts. He will try and trick us in our own poverty, or in our wealth, to look back to our Egypt and destroy our appetite for the things of GOD. But the LORD clearly safeguards with the sufficiency of His daily bread.
And forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Oh, what a marvellous act of grace this is! Our debts, all our debts, forgiven! The slate wiped clean! But what is this added clause? ....as we forgive our debtors, those who have trespassed against us.
‘Is it possible for a sinful man like me to forgive?’ I may ask. The Bible teaches us conclusively that GOD alone enables us to forgive others. For everyone who has been forgiven his sins can, (and I purposely emphasize ‘can’), because not all do. But we should forgive those who trespass against us. He gave us the power to do so. If not forgiving happens to be the case, then we have a problem, don’t we? For if we hold back our forgiveness when we have been forgiven, then we must expect a breach in communion, obviously with the one whom you have not forgiven, and because of this, also with GOD. That is why we read in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 28: But let a man examine himself,
and, ...do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
Remember, this is the LORD’s prayer: He,
(the Father), knows the things you have need of before you even ask Him. In this manner, therefore, pray.
(Matthew 6, verses 8 and 9).
YESHUA was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
(Matthew 4, verse 1). ‘Yet He had no sin in Him’. Therefore for us, who were brought forth in iniquity, And in sin, my mother conceived me,
to quote in part from Psalm 51; asking GOD in this portion of the LORD’s prayer, not to bring us to a place of supreme testing, is to believe that He has control over our affairs. The fact that our lives, as followers of Messiah YESHUA, JESUS, are in the hands of a loving, all-seeing, and all-knowing, heavenly Father, and that His Son is always interceding on our behalf as our High Priest, in the Sanctuary, not made by man,
is a cause for tremendous rejoicing. We acknowledge this as we ask Him, ... to lead us not into temptation.
Halleluyah! We have been delivered! For Yours is the kingdom and power and the glory forever. Amen.
