Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13
This week we read a lot about Jesus’ teachings and some of his miracles. Of particular note among his miracles is that Jesus was not just displaying power. He was moved by compassion! His loving heart prompted him to do everything he did, right up to and including his death on the cross. But we haven’t read about that yet. So today I want to focus on Jesus’ teachings, his power, and his compassion. But how could I pick one text out of all this week’s readings that might bind them together? I believe I found it in the Lord’s Prayer, or rather since it is the prayer that he taught us to pray, I like to call it the Christians’ prayer.
The first line speaks of his power. “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
His power is contained and controlled by his authority. He is God and he has the right to rule us. He also has the mighty power to do so, but in his compassion, he refrains from forcing anything on us. Instead he teaches us. And he is very gentle and patient with us.
In addition, we ought always to keep in mind that our mission on earth, even the continuation of this congregation in ministry, depends upon our complete and total dependence upon his will and our willing service as his ambassadors to this world. We are a people who pray strategically: your name, God, be hallowed, your will be done, your Kingdom come.
Today is world Communion Sunday and so it is good for us to take note of the fact that Jesus’ ministry was not to be limited to just the Jewish nation, but was always intended to be a world-wide, universal movement that corrects or rebukes every other religion and every other religion’s errors about who God is and what he wants from us. As I heard recently, “He did not come to take sides. He came to take over.”
After all, if there really is only one God, and he told us about himself through one man, Abraham, who bore one family, that established one culture, that produced the one and only Messiah, who loved the whole world as it says in John 3:16, then no other religious statement or system of belief is either necessary to our salvation or has any standing before God, because it is necessarily inferior to his self-revelation. This means that those people who want to value the merits of all other religions must believe that the one true God has never said anything to anybody that was really for everybody but has for all of eternity left us to ourselves to figure him out.
They would say that everybody in the world who believes that there is a God will all agree that we are all one human race, all created by that one God. They will then explain that different religions arose as people spread out over the earth and family groups lost touch with each other so the stories they all told about God developed and changed over the course of time. Each family remembered its own version of things. Most of them still remember big events, like the flood story. But all the details have changed.
Some believe that as these stories were passed down through the generations by story tellers, and not yet written down, they were sort of fluid and could get more and more different from the earliest versions that everybody started with while the family of man was small and all together. By the time writing was invented to make such traditions more solid, you already had animism in Africa, ancestor worship in Asian cultures and the Great Spirit among the Native Americans. But those diversified too, according to tribal and clan memories, so that eventually there existed nearly infinite varieties of idol worship, different ones for different kingdoms and all localized, politicized and made a matter of patriotism.
In simpler terms, here’s the situation. The liberal theologians think the human race is one large interrelated family, all of whom descended from one father, the creator God. But that God doesn’t speak to us. He is absent! Oh, every now and then somebody has an experience that feels as if God spoke to them. But that only changes some things or starts a new religion! That’s the situation that religious liberals think we’re in. They preach tolerance of other faiths as having equal value because we’re all just trying to do our best with what little understanding of God we’ve got. And satan himself encourages that kind of confusion to keep people from the simple truth.
But we believe that at one point in history, the so-called absent Father God really did show up and started talking to one man, a man we know today as Abraham. Do we, His creatures, have the right to insist that if God wanted to correct human views of him he should have showed up in a way that He could talk to everybody at once, set everything straight in one world-wide broadcast announcement and wipe out all idolatry by giving his Word to everyone in the whole world, all at the same time?
Maybe that sounds like a good idea to you. But then, none of us would be living by faith. All of us would be compelled, either by God’s actual physical presence, or the culture created by his announcement of a single religion for all the world, to at least look like we believe it and go along with it. God is no bully or warlord. He is a gentleman and a lover. He will not compel anyone to love him, that would not be love!
So, God’s idea for undoing all of satan’s deceptions and twisted versions of how man is to relate to God was to start talking to one man, Abraham, and start telling him how things would develop until all the world would be blessed through this one man’s offspring, first the family of Jews in general, with the Law and the Prophets and poets and psalmists and mighty kings, but later by the one man, who we would come to know as, Jesus, the Christ, our Messiah and Lord.
Now is the time of amnesty. God has charged us who believe in him with the awesome joy of sharing the good news that can save everybody else from hell if they will listen. And we had better be about our business because time is running out and one day soon, God knows when, he will show up in a way that He could talk to everybody at once, set everything straight in one world-wide broadcast announcement and wipe out all idolatry by giving his Word to everyone in the whole world, all at the same time. We call it the Second Coming of Jesus the Christ. That’s the power of God in the first line of the Christian’s prayer, tempered by the compassion of God and accompanied by the teachings of God, as given by our Lord Jesus Christ. That power and rule and authority is the first thing the prayer teaches us.
The next line teaches us about our absolute dependence upon the creator for our daily sustenance. “Give us today the food we need.” Understanding that and living by that is why Jesus also taught us things like: Do not to worry about what you will wear or what you will eat. For God cares about sparrows and he cares about you more. And more than wisdom for earthly living, Jesus taught us about heaven and eternity. Jesus taught us about laying up treasures in heaven, and you can’t serve both God and money, so pick the right one.
Jesus teachings include his instructions about forgiveness that come up in the next line of our prayer. “And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.” Included in this teaching is Jesus’ warning in Matt. 6:14-15. It says, “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” That presents a problem for some people. They will say, “Wait, I thought I was saved by grace through faith alone in Jesus.”
The answer is, “Yes, but if you do not forgive others you show that you have not yet received God’s grace in a genuine manner. When you do receive God grace he puts his Spirit in you and that Spirit forgives others.” That’s the power of God to change a heart so that it lives up to the teaching of God and demonstrates the compassion of God. God’s forgiveness of us is an expression of God’s compassion for us. His ability to prove he has forgiven us, by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is another sign of his great power.
And because of his great power at work in us and to which we can appeal when we pray for his help, it is right for us to petition him like this: “Don’t let us yield to temptation but rescue us from the evil one.” “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” These are forces that are greater than us! But the one who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
We dare not think we are strong enough to stand against evil without God’s help. 1 Corinthians 10:12 warns us. “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” Watch out, because when you have too much confidence in yourself that’s when you’re most likely to fall again. And the battle we fight against sin is very subtle.
The devil is actually very weak you know. He can’t make you do anything. So, we can never excuse ourselves from sin by saying “The devil made me do it.” All he can do is talk you into it by making it sound like a good idea and even getting you to think it was your idea in the first place. That’s the height of subtlety. That’s how he got Adam and Eve to sin in the first place. He didn’t make them do it. He just talked them into it, and Eve actually took the fruit when it became her own idea. She saw that it was good. And don’t worry ladies. I’m not letting Adam off the hook. Eve didn’t force feed Adam either.
We must appeal to God for help to believe what is really true. His Word has the power to undo satan’s lies and protect us from the harm that sin brings in. So, Jesus performed miracles to help us believe in his power and he gave us his teaching to guide us into all truth, and both are given out of the compassion of God’s heart.
We more clearly see the compassion of Jesus in the reasons why he did some of his miracles. This struck me most deeply in the story of the widow going to her son’s funeral. In Luke 7 we read, “A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry!” he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. “Young man,” he said, “I tell you, get up.” Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.” She didn’t even have to ask for it. She didn’t even have to demonstrate any faith in Jesus. All it took was for Jesus to see the need. His heart overflowed with compassion and he took action!
And isn’t that really why he came to earth to walk among us in the first place? God’s heart overflows with compassion for us, for while we were dead in our sins, foolish and rebellious and on our way to eternal destruction, Christ died for us! Jesus is saying to the whole world. “Don’t cry!” And to each and every dead sinner he says, “Get up and live!” Sadly, not all the dead will hear and obey. But thanks be to God for those who did and for those who will!
So, my friends, the Christian’s Prayer is something that Jesus taught us to say because he has compassion for our need. And out of that same compassion he sends his mighty power to answer our prayers! Jesus’ power, teaching and compassion are all wrapped up in and expressed by that prayer. So, before we move on, let’s pray that prayer together now with thanksgiving for God’s compassion that provides his teaching and moves his power in our favor. It will be on screen so we all use the same words:
Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Now there is another place in which God’s compassion, power and teaching all are gathered together. We just haven’t read about it yet in our chronological journey through the Bible this year. But we do already know about it and we are going to celebrate it in the Lord’s Supper in a few moments. It is a teaching because Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We are supposed to remember what we have been taught about God through this great sacrificial act performed on our behalf by our Great High Priest, Jesus, the Messiah. He came to do this for us out of his heart overflowing with compassion for us and our need of forgiveness and grace. And the fact that he is raised again from the dead, and that this bread and cup are spiritual food to us, are both a demonstration of his great power to give us life though we were dead in our sins! Amen.
This week we read a lot about Jesus’ teachings and some of his miracles. Of particular note among his miracles is that Jesus was not just displaying power. He was moved by compassion! His loving heart prompted him to do everything he did, right up to and including his death on the cross. But we haven’t read about that yet. So today I want to focus on Jesus’ teachings, his power, and his compassion. But how could I pick one text out of all this week’s readings that might bind them together? I believe I found it in the Lord’s Prayer, or rather since it is the prayer that he taught us to pray, I like to call it the Christians’ prayer.
The first line speaks of his power. “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
His power is contained and controlled by his authority. He is God and he has the right to rule us. He also has the mighty power to do so, but in his compassion, he refrains from forcing anything on us. Instead he teaches us. And he is very gentle and patient with us.
In addition, we ought always to keep in mind that our mission on earth, even the continuation of this congregation in ministry, depends upon our complete and total dependence upon his will and our willing service as his ambassadors to this world. We are a people who pray strategically: your name, God, be hallowed, your will be done, your Kingdom come.
Today is world Communion Sunday and so it is good for us to take note of the fact that Jesus’ ministry was not to be limited to just the Jewish nation, but was always intended to be a world-wide, universal movement that corrects or rebukes every other religion and every other religion’s errors about who God is and what he wants from us. As I heard recently, “He did not come to take sides. He came to take over.”
After all, if there really is only one God, and he told us about himself through one man, Abraham, who bore one family, that established one culture, that produced the one and only Messiah, who loved the whole world as it says in John 3:16, then no other religious statement or system of belief is either necessary to our salvation or has any standing before God, because it is necessarily inferior to his self-revelation. This means that those people who want to value the merits of all other religions must believe that the one true God has never said anything to anybody that was really for everybody but has for all of eternity left us to ourselves to figure him out.
They would say that everybody in the world who believes that there is a God will all agree that we are all one human race, all created by that one God. They will then explain that different religions arose as people spread out over the earth and family groups lost touch with each other so the stories they all told about God developed and changed over the course of time. Each family remembered its own version of things. Most of them still remember big events, like the flood story. But all the details have changed.
Some believe that as these stories were passed down through the generations by story tellers, and not yet written down, they were sort of fluid and could get more and more different from the earliest versions that everybody started with while the family of man was small and all together. By the time writing was invented to make such traditions more solid, you already had animism in Africa, ancestor worship in Asian cultures and the Great Spirit among the Native Americans. But those diversified too, according to tribal and clan memories, so that eventually there existed nearly infinite varieties of idol worship, different ones for different kingdoms and all localized, politicized and made a matter of patriotism.
In simpler terms, here’s the situation. The liberal theologians think the human race is one large interrelated family, all of whom descended from one father, the creator God. But that God doesn’t speak to us. He is absent! Oh, every now and then somebody has an experience that feels as if God spoke to them. But that only changes some things or starts a new religion! That’s the situation that religious liberals think we’re in. They preach tolerance of other faiths as having equal value because we’re all just trying to do our best with what little understanding of God we’ve got. And satan himself encourages that kind of confusion to keep people from the simple truth.
But we believe that at one point in history, the so-called absent Father God really did show up and started talking to one man, a man we know today as Abraham. Do we, His creatures, have the right to insist that if God wanted to correct human views of him he should have showed up in a way that He could talk to everybody at once, set everything straight in one world-wide broadcast announcement and wipe out all idolatry by giving his Word to everyone in the whole world, all at the same time?
Maybe that sounds like a good idea to you. But then, none of us would be living by faith. All of us would be compelled, either by God’s actual physical presence, or the culture created by his announcement of a single religion for all the world, to at least look like we believe it and go along with it. God is no bully or warlord. He is a gentleman and a lover. He will not compel anyone to love him, that would not be love!
So, God’s idea for undoing all of satan’s deceptions and twisted versions of how man is to relate to God was to start talking to one man, Abraham, and start telling him how things would develop until all the world would be blessed through this one man’s offspring, first the family of Jews in general, with the Law and the Prophets and poets and psalmists and mighty kings, but later by the one man, who we would come to know as, Jesus, the Christ, our Messiah and Lord.
Now is the time of amnesty. God has charged us who believe in him with the awesome joy of sharing the good news that can save everybody else from hell if they will listen. And we had better be about our business because time is running out and one day soon, God knows when, he will show up in a way that He could talk to everybody at once, set everything straight in one world-wide broadcast announcement and wipe out all idolatry by giving his Word to everyone in the whole world, all at the same time. We call it the Second Coming of Jesus the Christ. That’s the power of God in the first line of the Christian’s prayer, tempered by the compassion of God and accompanied by the teachings of God, as given by our Lord Jesus Christ. That power and rule and authority is the first thing the prayer teaches us.
The next line teaches us about our absolute dependence upon the creator for our daily sustenance. “Give us today the food we need.” Understanding that and living by that is why Jesus also taught us things like: Do not to worry about what you will wear or what you will eat. For God cares about sparrows and he cares about you more. And more than wisdom for earthly living, Jesus taught us about heaven and eternity. Jesus taught us about laying up treasures in heaven, and you can’t serve both God and money, so pick the right one.
Jesus teachings include his instructions about forgiveness that come up in the next line of our prayer. “And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.” Included in this teaching is Jesus’ warning in Matt. 6:14-15. It says, “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” That presents a problem for some people. They will say, “Wait, I thought I was saved by grace through faith alone in Jesus.”
The answer is, “Yes, but if you do not forgive others you show that you have not yet received God’s grace in a genuine manner. When you do receive God grace he puts his Spirit in you and that Spirit forgives others.” That’s the power of God to change a heart so that it lives up to the teaching of God and demonstrates the compassion of God. God’s forgiveness of us is an expression of God’s compassion for us. His ability to prove he has forgiven us, by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is another sign of his great power.
And because of his great power at work in us and to which we can appeal when we pray for his help, it is right for us to petition him like this: “Don’t let us yield to temptation but rescue us from the evil one.” “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” These are forces that are greater than us! But the one who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
We dare not think we are strong enough to stand against evil without God’s help. 1 Corinthians 10:12 warns us. “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” Watch out, because when you have too much confidence in yourself that’s when you’re most likely to fall again. And the battle we fight against sin is very subtle.
The devil is actually very weak you know. He can’t make you do anything. So, we can never excuse ourselves from sin by saying “The devil made me do it.” All he can do is talk you into it by making it sound like a good idea and even getting you to think it was your idea in the first place. That’s the height of subtlety. That’s how he got Adam and Eve to sin in the first place. He didn’t make them do it. He just talked them into it, and Eve actually took the fruit when it became her own idea. She saw that it was good. And don’t worry ladies. I’m not letting Adam off the hook. Eve didn’t force feed Adam either.
We must appeal to God for help to believe what is really true. His Word has the power to undo satan’s lies and protect us from the harm that sin brings in. So, Jesus performed miracles to help us believe in his power and he gave us his teaching to guide us into all truth, and both are given out of the compassion of God’s heart.
We more clearly see the compassion of Jesus in the reasons why he did some of his miracles. This struck me most deeply in the story of the widow going to her son’s funeral. In Luke 7 we read, “A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry!” he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. “Young man,” he said, “I tell you, get up.” Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.” She didn’t even have to ask for it. She didn’t even have to demonstrate any faith in Jesus. All it took was for Jesus to see the need. His heart overflowed with compassion and he took action!
And isn’t that really why he came to earth to walk among us in the first place? God’s heart overflows with compassion for us, for while we were dead in our sins, foolish and rebellious and on our way to eternal destruction, Christ died for us! Jesus is saying to the whole world. “Don’t cry!” And to each and every dead sinner he says, “Get up and live!” Sadly, not all the dead will hear and obey. But thanks be to God for those who did and for those who will!
So, my friends, the Christian’s Prayer is something that Jesus taught us to say because he has compassion for our need. And out of that same compassion he sends his mighty power to answer our prayers! Jesus’ power, teaching and compassion are all wrapped up in and expressed by that prayer. So, before we move on, let’s pray that prayer together now with thanksgiving for God’s compassion that provides his teaching and moves his power in our favor. It will be on screen so we all use the same words:
Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Now there is another place in which God’s compassion, power and teaching all are gathered together. We just haven’t read about it yet in our chronological journey through the Bible this year. But we do already know about it and we are going to celebrate it in the Lord’s Supper in a few moments. It is a teaching because Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We are supposed to remember what we have been taught about God through this great sacrificial act performed on our behalf by our Great High Priest, Jesus, the Messiah. He came to do this for us out of his heart overflowing with compassion for us and our need of forgiveness and grace. And the fact that he is raised again from the dead, and that this bread and cup are spiritual food to us, are both a demonstration of his great power to give us life though we were dead in our sins! Amen.
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