Exploring My Strange Bible - The Lord’s Prayer - Gospel of Matthew Part 10

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Specifically, we talk about the meaning and significance of one of the most important things that Jesus ever said to his followers. Jesus passed along his prayer and taught us how to pray, which he addressed in his Sermon on the Mount. Even after I became a follower of Jesus, I still never adopted the Lord's prayer as my own prayer that I prayed regularly. It took me years until I came across other people who really advocated that we should adopt the Lord’s prayer into our daily habits. Listen in to hear more about this on today’s show.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, we are going to keep exploring the gospel according to Matthew. And specifically, we're going to explore the meaning and significance of one of the most

important things that Jesus ever said to his followers, which is passing along to us his prayer, how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. It's found in the Sermon on the Mount in Gospel of Corinth in Matthew, chapter 6. And I remember kind of discovering the Lord's Prayer, rediscovering it. I remember first coming across it and hearing it even before I was a follower of Jesus. But even after I became one of his followers in my early 20s, I still never actually adopted the Lord's prayer as my own prayer that I would pray regularly. It took me years until I finally came across people who really advocated adopting the Lord's prayer as a daily habit, as a way of actually

focusing and guiding my own habits of prayer. And so, what we're going to do is focus in on how this prayer is designed, what Jesus was doing when he said, pass along these words in this way, and also what it would even look like to adopt this prayer and its themes into my own daily rhythms of prayer and connection with the Father through Jesus. So, I offer this teaching to you. I hope that it's as helpful for you as it was for me to learn about and explore and then pass on to others. So, there you go. Let's dive into the Lord's Prayer together. There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear There's a man with a gun over there

Telling me I've got to beware I think it's time we stop Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down There's battle lines being drawn Nobody's right if everybody's wrong Young people speak in their minds Are getting so much resistance

From behind Every time we stop Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down You want it to finish, don't you? It's such a good song. It's such an amazing song. For lots such an amazing song for lots of different reasons. And let's reflect on why it's such an amazing song.

First of all, how many of you have heard that song before? You know it. And just virtually all of us, right? And if you haven't, I don't know where you've been, right? So we've all heard it. How many of you, and don't be bashful, I really want to know, how many of you remember this playing on the radio when it came out? We honor you who have gone before us, right?

So what year? What year are we talking here? 1967. And what band are we listening to in those 60 seconds? Oh, now this is interesting. Eerie Bashful. Well, all of us know this song, but how many of us actually know who wrote it and who sang it?

What band are we listening to? Buffalo Springfield. OK, all right, 20 of you know. Buffalo Springfield. And lead singer, whose voice are we hearing? Who wrote the song? Two of you know, right? So Stephen Stills, who later joined two others to make up... Crosby, Stills, and Nash, you guys!

New Year's resolution, know the history of folk rock in the 70s in the America. Are you guys kidding me? Okay, so Stephen Stills. So what's, actually, that itself is interesting. That whatever, like half a dozen people know who wrote it, 20 people know the name of the band, we've all heard it. And here's actually why I play it for you. And here's why I think this song is significant and why it helps us think about the Lord's Prayer. is as all of us, almost all of us have heard this song, which means that this song conjured up images in your mind,

didn't it, when you heard it, right? It conjured up a time period, certain events, certain milestone moments, certain movies, right? Unless you've heard it, so some of you actually have never heard the whole song, right? You've heard the sample in Public Enemy song, right? You got game. Or you've heard it in Forrest Gump, right? Or you actually understand the importance of music history for understanding America and you actually have listened to this song. But what, name it, what moments in American history, what scenes or images are coming to your mind when you listen to that song? Vietnam, first thing. What else? What's that?

Penn State, protests. What else? Yeah, assassination, Martin Luther King. Almost all of those events, any Woodstock, anybody? Woodstock came to somebody's mind. Or you're thinking of the Grateful Dead, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, so, and what years are we talking here? Assassination, the height of the culmination. This song played a role in the

momentum of the anti-Vietnam War movement. 1968 was one of the years of great cultural upheaval in America. So here's what's so fascinating about this song, is that somehow there emerge in the history of human civilization and human societies, there are turning points in a culture and times of upheaval and new cultural movements when a whole generation and all of a sudden things are getting changed and society takes a different turn, there very often emerge poems and songs out of those movements

that begin to transcend even the original circumstances in which they are written, and they come to symbolize like a whole season, a whole decade of a whole nation. And not only that, they express the change that's happening, but they also begin to create new momentum and new energy for this movement to keep perpetuating itself, which is exactly the role that this song played,

which is why it's so interesting about where this song came from. If you read interviews with Stephen Stills, he's very clear. He's like, I didn't write this as an anti-war song. That just wasn't even on my mind at all. The song is about an experience that they had. Buffalo Springfield was playing a set of clubs on Sunset Strip in LA regularly in 1966 and 67, a number of local businesses got together and passed local legislation to instill a curfew on Sunset Strip so that all music and people had to be off the streets by 11 p.m.

And so they organized a protest of musicians and music club owners and so on and so this takes place and the police show up and it's kind of this intense experience and so steven stills writes a song to reflect on the sunset strip riots is what they came it was a thousand people the police showed up and people left or whatever it wasn't really that gnarly but but and that was in 1967 the song was released as a single, then an album later in the year. What year did it hit the top 10 charts? 68. A year later. The song had been out for a year before it actually hit the Billboard charts. And so what are we observing? The fact that a song can transcend its original circumstances, and then all of a sudden,

I think this room's a good sample, hundreds of millions of Americans, that song just ignites all kinds of associations and feelings and emotions and moments. And it has nothing to do with what Stephen Stills was intending to do. Contrast Jesus, in my opinion, who actually intended to start a movement. He fully intended to start a movement. And when it came to what he thought he could do, to give something to his followers who would then take that and perpetuate the energy and momentum of the movement. What did he do? He gave his disciples a poem.

A poem that he, it seems to me, fully expected they would memorize and use as a guide to keep the movement going full of vitality and energy. And the sad irony, for me this is the sad irony of the fate of this prayer in the history, at least of the Western church, is that for many of us, it's just become dead. It's become dead ritual. And I would encourage you to really reflect on the fact that the problem is not with the poem. The problem is with us and that we've lost the original vitality and dynamism of what this poem is about. And it seems to me in verse 9, when Jesus says to his disciples, hey, when you pray, pray like this. I think he meant it. Like, I think he actually meant it. That when we pray, we should pray like this. And somehow that's just not true of many of us

or most of us. For many of us, prayer is a reactive habit. And my favorite, as soon as I heard this, I was like, yes, this is totally me. It's a little essay by Anne Lamott, if you like her writings on prayer. And she says, basically, here's prayer in my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Help me, help me, help me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And really, it just kind of boils down to that. And what are all of those? They're reactions. Something intense happens in my life, and then I react, oh, I should pray about that. And then that's what we do. Or for others, it's the stream of consciousness, and you get lost in your prayers or whatever. And so Jesus is trying to give to his disciples a proactive means

of cultivating a regular habit of prayer. And because who Jesus is, the movement he's starting, it's so counterintuitive, he knows that it needs a perpetual infusion of fresh breath and energy. And so he gives us a poem. That it seems to me, you look at verse 9, what do you think Jesus means? This is how you should pray.

I think he means that this is how we should pray. I don't know, you draw the conclusion. I actually think he means it. And so what I'd like to do with the time that we have left is mostly share with you stuff that I think is amazing and cool about this prayer and help us think about 2015. What could it look

like for us to make this prayer our prayer? Jesus is not giving a lecture, a dispassionate lecture here. He's giving his followers a gift. Where did this prayer come from? Notice that all of it is shaped in the language of Jesus. It's as if Jesus is praying this prayer,

and that's because he did. He's given us his own prayer. As Jesus, you know, retreated up, praying through the nights oftentimes, up on the Galilean hills, what do you think he was praying? oftentimes, up on the Galilean hills, what do you think he was praying? What do you think guided his own prayers that energized him so that he could come back down off those hills and perpetuate the movement of the kingdom? And I'd submit to you that Jesus is giving his own heartbeat here. This poem, there's no better summary of the whole movement and mission of Jesus than these poetic words right here. Easy to memorize, and you get who Jesus is. And the purpose is not just that we learn about Jesus. The purpose is he wants to make us participants in the very movement that he began.

And so we're just going to, here we go. You guys ready for action? We're just going to dive in. We're going to put the prayer on the screen and just reflect on it. You can see the way I've structured it up here. It has a short introduction and then two sections of equal, roughly equal length. And actually, each of those two sections is marked by three petitions or three requests. Let's just say it together.

Let's just get it all in our heads. Join me. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. It begins with a short introduction saying who we're addressing, who are we praying to, and then we have these two sections here. Now why am I saying these two sections are distinct right here? There's a clue, actually a really clear clue in the words themselves. Notice that the first main section is all dominated by this address to the Father.

It's about your name, your kingdom, your will. But then it shifts to three main petitions about the community of the disciples. Give us bread, forgive us, lead us not into temptation. You guys see that there? It's just very, it's like, oh, that's clear. Thank you, Jesus. It's like it's a poem that has literary artistic structure to it to make it easy to memorize. Imagine Jesus being brilliant, you know? Imagine that. So, and that it's structured in these two sets of three with the introduction here. And, you know, we, back in the summer, we did a whole series on spiritual practices, and I taught a message on this prayer right here. And

so there'll be a little repeat from that, but more new things we're going to explore. One thing that, when somebody pointed out to me, it was just like, oh, duh, how amazing, is the fact that the prayer is actually structured according to what we learn in chapter 5 was Jesus' highest value, the highest value of the kingdom and of the ethic. It's wrapped up in what Jesus called the greatest command, which he said had two sides to it. The command that is made up of the two greatest commands. And in the ethic of the kingdom for a disciple, what is the greatest calling and the greatest command? First, love God, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it,

love your neighbor as yourself. It seems to me that Jesus has given us a prayer that reflects those two priorities, where we first orient ourselves to the Father and express our loyalty and allegiance and love for the Father and His priorities in our world, and then we turn our attention to us. And I think when He says us, he means us, even though in most of our minds, we actually say me when we say that second half of the prayer, give me bread, forgive me, lead me not into temptation. Jesus is perfectly capable of saying the word me,

but he doesn't say that, does he? He says us, which means there's some kind of communal element to that prayer, and we'll explore that in a minute. which means there's some kind of communal element to that prayer, and we'll explore that in a minute. And so, again, this is Jesus condensing the very heartbeat of the kingdom movement he's launching, and he gives us this prayer that reflects the greatest command, which is love God, love your neighbor.

He begins with this address to the Father, and this is significant in and of itself. The first thing we do, think of if Jesus wants us to pray this regularly, I think daily, even multiple times a day, then all of these are things that Jesus believes that we need to have ingrained in us as disciples of Jesus. Otherwise, the kingdom movement will lose its steam, will lose its momentum. So every line reflects something that Jesus thinks we need to say to ourselves daily and to say to the Father daily. And so he begins, Jesus apparently thinks that when you and I pray, we need to constantly

remind ourselves who we're praying to. So our Father who is in heaven. So notice that this is interesting. This is good Bible trivia. Use it at a party this year, you know, sometime. But if you look through the teachings of Jesus, he occasionally calls God by the word God. He almost always refers to God with the word Father. Father. And that's unique. That's something unique about Jesus. There were other rabbis who taught and occasionally called God Father, and they were taking their cue from a handful of Psalms and Israel scriptures that call God a Father. It's not a huge prominent idea in the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus made this a huge, huge emphasis of his own teaching. And this has to do

with Jesus' sense of who he was. He called himself the Son. And he called himself the one who came to reveal who God truly is in his truest nature. And as Jesus refers to God, he calls him the Father. But so you're like, okay, Father, what God am I praying to? I'm praying to Jesus' Father and the God who calls Jesus his Son. But then this invites us into the whole strange, what you could call paradox of Jesus' identity. Because he says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And what you see me cruising around doing, that's actually the Father doing that. And no one can actually know the Father except what you look at me and see me and know me. And no one knows the

Father except the one whom the Father draws to see who the... So there you go, right? So we're in the Trinity and that whole deal. And so I'll just take 60 seconds to explain that. We'll wrap that up real quick, right? So no, no. We did a whole series on that earlier in the year. Feel free to go listen to those messages online. But so Jesus apparently, here's why this is important. Apparently, he knows that his disciples will have a hard time remembering what God they're praying to. And that's because there's cultural forces at work and the way that our culture depicts God or uses the word God that has nothing to do with the Father of Jesus. So Jesus is trying to redefine God for his disciples. And he says, look at me and what I'm doing. And I reveal the Father's heart, Jesus says. And so what do you see? You

see a God who's generous, who's gracious, who is seeking the lost, who's moving towards people and their sin and brokenness and inviting them to these feasts, these forgiveness parties, and these banquets to celebrate the kingdom. And we see a God who will hold this world and humanity accountable for what we've done to the place, but he invites us to repentance and forgiveness and new humanity and new life. That's the God revealed in Jesus. And that God is so counterintuitive. It's like we're so prone to seeing God as some volatile, ticked off, absentee landlord thing. He invites us to every single day redefine who God is to us by saying, yes, what am I praying to the Father who's revealed to me through the Son? And when I do that, all of a sudden,

the particular concerns of the Father of Jesus become clear to me. And that's what the first section of this prayer is about. So the you and the yours. And there's three petitions as we orient ourselves to God. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. First is about God's name. Second is about God's kingdom. And then the third is about God's will. Now, hallowed be your name. So hallowed. Who says that anymore? Hallowed. We say it in Halloween. It's the same root word at least. Halloween, all hallows, hallows Eve. Our English word hallowed has a history, but it's connected to another

English word, the root word, what? Holy. Yeah, holy. All our words, holy, consecrate, purify, sanctify, all this, these all come from a set of words in the Bible that refer to holiness, which is about uniqueness and being one of a kind, set apart from all others. So stop. Again,

let the familiarity of the words. What on earth are we praying when you pray that? Hallowed may your name be holy or be recognized as holy. Now, what does that mean? Isn't God already holy? Why does he need me to pray that he become more holy? What does that even mean? Does he need me to hallow his name? Why does he need me? He's God. Can't he just be holy by himself? Does he need me? What is this prayer about here? It's about God's name. It's about God's reputation. And somehow Jesus knows that we need to remind ourselves of a story, that somehow God's name is not being treated as unique and one of a kind, and that God's reputation is in the process of being restored, and that we need to pray for its restoration. So think of it like this. This is

actually, this is how my mind works, and just go with me here. 2015. This could be the year, you guys. This could be the year. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, there was a trilogy, a film trilogy, released that is utterly unique. It was set apart from all sci-fi before it, and in my opinion, after it, right? Especially Star Trek, right? Totally set apart and holy from that. It sparked people's imaginations. It grounded people's whole sense of reality, like young children who watched it when they were growing up. And it is a cinemagraphic feat that has yet to be equaled in film history, right? So Star Wars. A decade and a half later, late 90s and early 2000s, the name and reputation of Star Wars

was utterly defiled. Utterly defiled, right? And it was associated with these stupid, puffy cartoon characters and flappy ears and stupid plots and weird modernist attempts to explain mystery and just stupid. It was just stupid. The whole thing was stupid, right? It was just horrible. And so here we are in the state, 2015, my simple prayer is to J.J. Abrams to just not mess it up, you know, and to reestablish the holiness and the uniqueness and the creativity and the one-of-a-kindness of this storyline and of this universe within December. It's 11 days and 11 months, right? December 15th, I believe, right? From right now.

So if I were to... That's what we're talking about here. Somehow, something that is unique and holy and good has been defiled, has been mistreated, has been misunderstood, and this prayer is about the restoration of that great, beautiful thing. In Jesus' Star Wars, this is much nobler and much more important, but you get the point. You get the point, right? So somehow Jesus is inviting us into a story here where image-bearing human beings were meant to

have a close connection to our Creator as father, but somehow that has all gone horribly wrong, and pages one through three of your Bible will tell you all about that. And Jesus is here to somehow set all that right. This is a cultural movement, a new turning point in history, and Jesus, the first line of the thing that we're praying for, how? How is God's reputation going to be recognized as holy and unique and beautiful and set apart from all others? It's going to happen through God's kingdom coming, through your kingdom come and your will be done. Where? Here. Here, just as it is in heaven. I'm going to draw a drawing that many of you have seen me draw before, but it's been

immensely helpful for me to help process what the Bible is actually trying to say about these things. For many of us, when we think about the concepts of especially heaven and earth, we're God's kingdom. We think in terms like this. We think of like here we are on earth, and the challenging thing is many of us think that this is actually what the Bible teaches. So here we are on earth, and it's the physical world and so on. God lives in heaven, which is maybe a non-physical, you know, spiritual kind of existence. This was meant to be good, but it's gotten, we've turned it all horribly wrong, and there are powers of evil that made it all horribly wrong. And so the main point of Jesus was to drop into here,

and then to get us all out of here to go here. And we think that's, many of us at least think that's what the basic storyline of the Bible is about. The problem comes when you actually read the Bible. And you realize that this is, it's at best a half-truth. In my opinion, just a sad distortion of what Jesus is actually trying to say. The story of the Bible begins, think of your classic images of page 1 through 3,

the Garden of Eden and so on, as heaven and earth completely overlapping. God's space and human space totally united and connected. But God has given these image-bearing creatures the remarkable dignity and honor of will and choice and freedom to begin to build the world either in harmony with God or independently of him on our own. And so that's the story on page three. And what happens is that human beings declare independence. And we choose to build a world with our own definitions of good and evil instead of God's definitions of good and evil. And so heaven and earth become, we're like ripped apart as it were. But how ridiculous to think that human beings

could ever drive God out of his own world, right. And so in the Bible, heaven and earth are not separate spaces. They're distinct, but they always remain overlapping. You can't drive God out of his world. And the story of the Bible is the story about this movement right here. It's about heaven invading earth and taking it back over again and reclaiming not just the world, but actually restoring human beings to who we were actually made to be and who we're called to be. And the great claim of Jesus is that he is the one doing that. And so Jesus, you know, gives words like, he calls it this age

sometimes, or the apostle Paul will often call it this age. In the letters, in the gospel of John, this is called the world. But then Jesus calls this heaven, or he calls it the age to come. Or Jesus, you'll call this the kingdom too. Holy, can't spell this morning. So the kingdom. Two, holy, can't spell this morning. So the kingdom. And remember, the kingdom is Jesus' main announcement. This is what he's here to bring and to inaugurate. And remember his first words when he comes on to the public scene.

Matthew tells us, he says, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is, it's arrived. Like it's here in him and in what he's doing you see him you see the father invading his world and so the story of jesus and the story of the bible is about heaven invading earth and literally and metaphorically it's about jesus bringing heaven to get the hell out of earth really right so and the story of the Bible ends with God's space completely overlapping and connected with human space, which is a physical world, a restored creation with restored human beings actually being what we were all called to be in the first place. And so that's what Jesus is praying for. So in other words, has God's kingdom come? Has it come? If I'm a disciple of

Jesus, do I believe that the kingdom has come? Yes. Has it come and fully permeated every inch of God's good world? No. Has the kingdom come in your life if you're a disciple of Jesus? Yes. It's called the Holy Spirit. Has the Holy Spirit been allowed full access to transform every single inch of your life? Yeah, not yet, and odds are that's going to be a really slow process or fast. I don't know. That's up to the Holy Spirit and you, right? So that's the dynamic. The kingdom is here. It's here. Like it's, look at Jesus and look at his continued presence in the spirit. And so what we're praying for is for more and more of heaven to take over more and more of earth, for more and more of God's kingdom to take over more and more of my life and to restore wholeness, both to the world, but then also to me as a human and as a disciple,

as a disciple of Jesus. And Jesus apparently thinks that this story is, like, this is the story of a disciple of Jesus. This is our vision of the world and of ourselves and of who the Father is and what the Father is up to. It's so important. It's so, it's such a condensed summary of everything Jesus is about. He condenses it into a little three-line section of a poem and says, pray like this every day, right? So that this actually becomes the ground of your existence as a disciple of Jesus. He's really smart. I mean, I think he knew what he was doing. Somehow we've just lost a sense of what this whole prayer is about. So 2015, no more, no more. Here we are, January 4th, Star Wars later this year, Lord's Prayer today. Let's just start that

one today, right? So that's the first half of the poem, is orienting ourselves in allegiance and loving response to the grace and the generosity of the Father who is revealed to us through Jesus and the movement of the kingdom. Only after we orient and ground ourselves in that story, then do we turn our attention to loving our neighbor as ourselves. And there's three things that Jesus apparently thinks we need to put before the Father and bring to the Father every single day.

And that involves bread, forgiveness, and deliverance. Bread, forgiveness, and deliverance. So he first is give us today our daily bread. And here Jesus is doing what he always does. He always has two layers. He's always alluding to some story or something from the Hebrew Scriptures as well as giving a new teaching right at the same time. So can you think of a story in the Hebrew Scriptures

about people who had to depend on God daily for just basic bread? Oh, right, that story, right? So the story about the manna, the manna, or in Hebrew it's manna, which means what? With exclamation and a question mark. That's what manna means, like what? What's that, right? So that's what manna means.

It was just bread evaporated crystals, bread crystals, bizarre, right? But that's the story. And so think of what Jesus is conjuring up here. That's the story about after the people are liberated from slavery by God's grace, and then they're on their way to the promised land, but they're in this in-between space in the wilderness. And in that in-between space,

they need to daily depend on the Father's generosity to give them basic necessities and to see those basic necessities and to see those basic necessities and that provision as a gift. And I think Jesus, he's very intentional here. He sees his disciples. Again, if we've prayed the first part and cultivated that and burned that into our minds and hearts, we recognize that we have a foot in both of these worlds, a foot in this age, a foot in the age to come. And we're on this journey towards the new creation as heaven invades earth through Jesus. And so we're in this in-between

time, this wilderness period, and there's this competition for our loyalties and for our attention. Because there's all kinds of other stories out there that are like, hey, you know, you're the captain of your own ship. And of course, you know, just a little ingenuity and hard work and a high work ethic, and you'll be able to make it in this world, you know, become your own person. And so it's these stories that are good in that it compels us to work hard in Portland, maybe not so much, but you know, for the history of an American work ethic, right, you get the idea. But that's a story that can be very deceiving. Because that's a story that tells you that everything you have is because you worked for it.

And you wouldn't have nothing if you don't work for it. Because nothing is for free in this world. And the mindset of a disciple of Jesus, give us daily bread. So there may be some of his disciples, there may be some people here at Door of Hope for whom the straight up like your next meal or next week's like provision or rent or the meals in the days ahead, like you don't know where that's coming from. My hunch is that's not the majority of us. But, and surely Jesus knows that. I mean, although he's on a hillside in first century Palestine,

and remember, who is he talking to? Mostly poor, sick, hurting people. So he's probably describing the day-to-day life of most of the people sitting on that hillside. But not everybody. Matthew, the tax collector, was loaded. So he's not wondering where his next meal is coming from. But he wants all of his disciples,

regardless of where you think your next meal is coming from. But he wants all of his disciples, regardless of where you think your next meal's coming from, to cultivate the mindset of like a day laborer or a beggar who views each day's basic provision as a gift and not to be taken for granted. And whether that's your reality or not, he apparently wants us to cultivate that mindset as if that's the case. Because there's something about this mindset of just the basics, just simple, food, shelter, clothing, relationships, community, healthy family relationships, to just see those basic things when I view them as total gift that I have not earned, that I don't actually deserve. They're just a gift from the father of lights, as James calls it.

The Father of Lights who gives every good gift. It does something to you. It changes how you view your stuff. It changes how you view bread. Which is why I think the us is intentional. Because what, just think of this. The disciples of Jesus, just like a few years on, and then after Jesus' resurrection and the gift of his spirit,

what do we see the disciples of Jesus doing in the book of Acts? What are they doing with their stuff, with their bread? They're sharing it. And they're like wholly donating all kinds of crazy amounts of their stuff because their other disciples, like, yeah, they don't have those basic provision. And I'm a disciple of Jesus, and they're a disciple of Jesus. Like, I need to share my stuff, because that's just what disciples of Jesus do.

And I happen to have, like, more stuff than I actually need right now. And so, like, they get that stuff. Like, that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Jesus. Like, what kind of prayer inspires generosity? And it seems to me it's a prayer like this, where every day I just, I

recognize that all basics and over and beyond the basics that I have, it's just gift. It's a gift. And so it's a prayer that both reorients my day-to-day relationship to the Father, but also makes me think about people other than myself and how we are doing together for bread. First thing, daily bread. Apparently that's an important mindset as a disciple of Jesus. The second thing is forgiveness. Forgive us our debts as we've forgiven our debtors. So Jesus already explored the importance of forgiveness, right? That was back in chapter 5.

He's going to explore it again in his teachings as we go through the Gospel of Matthew. And this is such forgiveness is so at the heart of the kingdom movement. There's something about the power of forgiveness as heaven takes over earth. That Jesus thinks we need to daily burn this into our brains. I am forgiven. I am called as a disciple of Jesus to forgive. And a part of what Jesus sees so utterly wrong with humanity is the fact that we keep asserting our rights to get even.

And so one wrong is responded to by creating another wrong. And then one wrong is responded to by creating another wrong and it's just this downward spiral. And so on the cross, like both in the kingdom announcement, but just straight up in this moment right here, Jesus declares that the spiral stops. And as humanity's representative,

he takes the hit. He absorbs all of the consequences of human sin and broken relationships into himself, and he doesn't get even. And he forgives. It's his words from the cross. He says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing as he's like getting nailed up there. And then Jesus invites his followers to see that what he did right here was for them,

so that they too could experience that forgiveness. But then Jesus fully intends that this forgiveness is something that spills out into the world, that we forgive as we have been forgiven. Now, forgiven is complex and really, really practical and difficult, and it's easily misunderstood, Jesus' teachings on forgiveness. Forgiveness is not in the teachings of Jesus just brushing wrongdoing under the rug or ignoring it or somehow condoning it by saying, it wasn't that big of a deal, I forgive you. That's not Christian forgiveness. If you look at Jesus' teachings, Matthew 5, we'll get there again later on in chapter 18, Jesus' view of forgiveness is fully naming and drawing attention to the wrong that has been done.

You fully, like it's right there, name it for what it is, horrible, wrong, stupid, selfish. That was lame. But the move that you pull at that point is to choose to release your right for full recompense or getting even. And again, look at Jesus' teachings, Matthew 18. It doesn't mean there are no consequences for what they did to you. And it certainly doesn't mean that you're best friends again. Actually, Jesus fully intends,

like if the appeal for forgiveness doesn't work out and they reject you, then you go back with a few others and you go back with some more but you're never alone with that person ever again. You create these barriers around you of safety in the community and forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation

in Jesus' teachings. Reconciliation requires two people to humble themselves, to own what has been done, to extend the offer to forgive, and then the relationship is repaired. But as you well know, that is not always possible because that requires two parties, but not forgiveness. In Jesus' view, forgiveness takes one, and the disciple of Jesus, to give up their right to retaliate, and to say, I'm going to choose to give up that right, because Jesus gave up that right to me. And I begin this journey to begin to view this person as a human being, still bearing God's image and dignity. They're

really screwed up, and I don't ever want to be alone with them again. But all to say, I'm like, they're a human being, and I need to come to a place where I can at least somehow wish them well. It's the movement of forgiveness. And notice that Jesus, he knows that this is so gnarly. Look at this. So verse 12, he actually follows this up after the prayer. Did you see it? He says, it's like, yeah, I know that was a hard line, so let me make it even more difficult. Look at verse 15. He says, for if you forgive yeah, I know that was a hard line, so let me make it even more difficult. Look at verse 15. He says, for if you forgive people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. And if you don't forgive others their sins,

your heavenly Father will not forgive your sins. Well, that's convenient. And really, leave it to Jesus to just say something so stark like that. But apparently Jesus thinks that this is so at the heart of the Jesus movement and the kingdom movement that he doesn't say if you struggle to forgive, and he doesn't say if it takes time for you to forgive. He says if you refuse. If you do not forgive, what you're showing is that you have not actually internalized the grace and the forgiveness that has been shown towards you in the first place. That Jesus, apparently for Jesus,

the number one sign that the grace of God has really sunk in deep in my heart and mind is my ability to both receive it and out that same pipeline to give it right back out towards others it's not the same as reconciliation but it is this movement of the heart towards that person and this is the heart of the gospel and so jesus knows this is hard and so every single day he wants us to internalize this and to and to pray for strength and power in the forgiveness movement of Jesus' people. How you guys doing? I told you this is a condensed summary of everything that Jesus is about. So let's say that you remind yourself daily of who the Father is and who you're praying to, the Father revealed through the Son, and you get your head in this storyline and and all of a sudden, like, this prayer is not just asking God to act.

Like, who's being asked to act here? Who's hallowing God's name? And who, this is about God bringing his kingdom, but he's doing that through Jesus, and then Jesus gave this prayer to his disciples. So, in many ways, you finish praying this prayer, and then you're like, okay, yeah, what am I doing about that today? Right? Because Jesus fully intends us to become participants in this storyline.

And so I do that also by cultivating this daily dependence. I do it by reminding myself of the heart of the Jesus movement, which is about forgiveness. And the last thing Jesus wants to ingrain in our minds is that if you do this, if you let this prayer become what it was meant to be and inspire by his breath and his spirit new kingdom activity and movement through you, expect opposition. Expect it to be very difficult. Expect temptation.

And I think for many of us, we look at that last line, lead us not into temptation. So we're asking God not to lead me into temptation. Is God in the habit of leading me into temptation? And if so, what does that actually mean? Does that mean that God plants little traps and enticements along my way, like seeing if I'm going to pass the test or something? Is that what that means? So no. So get that story out of your head. Let Jesus define what he means by this line in the prayer. And I think the best way to explain what Jesus is getting at here is to look at the two stories where Jesus was led into temptation and testing and was delivered from the evil one. Can you think of any tests that Jesus endured? So there was one in the desert

at the beginning of the kingdom movement, and then there was another one in the garden right before he was executed. And in both of these, Jesus was led into a test. And what's being tested? What was tested in the wilderness was his loyalty and allegiance to the Father, What was tested in the wilderness was his loyalty and allegiance to the Father, was whether he was going to actually bring the kingdom, which was not about seizing power or through violence or powering up on people, but it was going to be the kingdom that was launched through humble, self-giving service and forgiveness and love. And was Jesus going to reject the loving, self-sacrificial version of being the Messiah, or was he going to embrace the worship, self-sacrificial version of being the Messiah, or was he going to embrace the, worship me, says the power of evil, and I'll give you

authority over all the nations of the earth? And so Jesus, did you think Jesus' 40 days in that test, do you think that was enjoyable for him? It's horrible. What a horrible experience, right? But did Jesus remain faithful through it? Yes. Yes. So apparently Jesus envisions that difficult times are ahead, and we have full permission to ask God in an earnest, genuine request, like, yeah, I don't really want to go

through that, right? Look at the last test in the garden. What does Jesus say? Does he actually want to go through with the cross? He says, no. He's like, I don't really want to do this, Father, you know. Please take this cup from me, he says, multiple times. But at the end, he comes to this place of surrender. So he asks that God not lead him into the test, but he knows that in God's wisdom and grace, this is how the kingdom is going to come. And so the second matching prayer is, if I am going to go through the test, deliver me by your presence and power. Help me to resist and remain faithful to you, even though the powers of evil, these voices that come to Jesus in the desert, these voices of Satan, of the power of evil, these voices that come to Jesus in the desert, these voices of Satan,

of the power of evil, try to get him to question the Father's goodness and gracious. Surely if the Father loved you, he wouldn't ask you to give everything. Surely if the Father loved you, you wouldn't be out here starving in the desert. Surely this is a sign that he's abandoned you. He wouldn't ask you to give up everything to make the kingdom come. And Jesus rejects those voices, and he trusts that his daily bread, that his very life is a gift to him, and that if the Father is going to lead him into this trial, he's going to deliver him. And so Jesus acknowledges that every day we need to be reminded that following Jesus is hard and that great tests and trials will come our way

and to remind ourselves that they are not signs that the Father has abandoned us. They actually, paradoxically, are signs that the Father is with us and that he will deliver us through in some way. Though for many it has meant giving up their life, and that included Jesus. So there you go. How you guys doing? It's the Lord's Prayer. It's amazing. You guys, this is amazing. And he gave this to us as a gift, you know what I'm saying? That we actually like use it. That we use it. And whether it's memorizing it, which I think is a great place to start, that we use it.

And whether it's memorizing it, which I think is a great place to start, and you would say the very words themselves, there have been seasons where, for me, it's getting the flow of it into my own mind and then I just fully translate it in light of the circumstances I find myself in that very day. But apparently Jesus really meant for us

to use this prayer as a way of joining arms with him and and sensing his presence with us this is the heartbeat of jesus and so here's um what i what i'd like to do is leading us into a time of worship and reflection and taking the bread and the cup um some of you have new year's 20 of you have made new year's resolutions right i would i would encourage all of us to really pay attention to his words to say like, yeah, when you pray, pray this way. And so what role could this prayer have? To not just be a relic from the past, but to rise above that Galilean hillside and inspire the movement of Jesus' people into our generation and beyond. Amen.

You guys, thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible. We'll be exploring the Gospel of Gordon and Matthew continuing on from here. So, cheers. We'll see you next time.