SERMONS ON THE LORD’S PRAYER
By
JOHN LEE
This is a wonderful collection
of magnificent sermons by a devout Pastor.
The content and quality of religious information is absolutely
marvelous. The author displays an ability
to intrigue his readers with tough realism and hypnotic prose, which leaves
them eager for more. The pace of writing
is like a novel. If you know the Lord’s
Prayer, you’ll be impressed. If you are
a stranger to the Lord’s Prayer, you’ll be overwhelmed! Amen.
Pastor John Lee demonstrates excellent writing skills and an uncanny ability to sprinkle enough spice to intrigue the reader. Instead of a treatise about traditional theology, the author writes in the contemporary. His analogies hit home and make the reader wonder if he is writing about him or her.
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Copyright 2005
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I express my sincere appreciation to Kristi Dawes for her excellent typing and editorial assistance.
PASTOR JOHN LEE
Our
Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. - For Thine is
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
[Jesus] was
praying in a certain place, and after He had finished, one of His disciples
said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to
them, “When you pray say:
Father, hallowed be Your Name, Your kingdom come.
3Give us each day our daily
bread.
4And forgive us our sins,
For we
ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not
bring us to the time of trial”
5And He said to them,
“Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him,
‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I
have nothing to set before him.” 7 And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has
already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and
give you anything.” 8I
tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is
his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him
whatever he needs.
9”So I say to you, Ask, and it
will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be
opened for you. 10For everyone who asks receives,
and everyone who searches, finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be
opened. 11Is there anyone among you
who, if your child asks for fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 120r if the child asks for an
egg will give a scorpion? 13If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to
your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to
those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:1-13)
DURLNG THE NEXT five
Sundays, including today, we will be pausing during this sermon time to talk
about the Lord’s Prayer. I will be using the Gospel text assigned for each
Sunday to talk about the various petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Today’s Gospel
will initiate this series. The main focus of these sermons will be on teaching
and sharing together and enriching our own spirituality, as well as finding
deeper meaning in the Lord’s Prayer. They are lovely and familiar words that
have been given to us to help us walk closer with God. It is a prayer that we
use each Sunday following the prayer of the church, and it is a community event
that we do at least once a week as we gather for worship. I welcome you to this
series of five sermons on the Lord’s Prayer.
The theme for
this first sermon today is “Our Father.” I would like to share again with you
the verses that follow from verse 5: And He said to them, “Suppose one of you
had a friend, and you go to this friend at midnight and say to him, Friend,
lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have
nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the
door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get
up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give
him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he
will get up and give him whatever he needs.
So I say to you,
“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door
will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches
finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone
among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a
fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who
are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
Well, dear
friends in Christ, today in preaching on the theme of “Our Father,” I would
like to emphasize particularly the meaning of the word “our.” God is our Father.
God is not just my Father. God is not only the Father who protects me
and those whom I love. God is the Father of the Holy Christian Church. God is
the Father of people who are gathered for worship in a variety of places in a
variety of climates during this particular Sunday. Some are in the inner cities
of Chicago or Minneapolis. Some are in far-off lands such as Tanzania, Africa
or China. We have a Father, a Parent, who wants to hear from His people. So it
is our Father. Not just me and Jesus all the way, it is us and them and Jesus
all the way. God is our loving Parent.
As we talked
about in the story of the prodigal son on different occasions, God is a loving
Parent who waits eagerly for us to come home — to come and be with a loving
God.
The story about
these neighbors at midnight is a story about hanging in there and being an
ornery neighbor and speaking up in your time of need. It is a funny story. It’s
about a man and his wife in the time in which Jesus lived. They had just gone
to bed; and I am told that in Bible time’s families, both parents and children
oftentimes slept in one room. So when one of the parents had to go to unlock
the door to let in this persistent neighbor, the parent had to crawl over the
children; they were in the way. We might even visualize in our minds a cartoon
about this man who had just gone to bed. He had worked hard all day watering
his livestock and taking care of his farm, and he hears some pounding on the
door.
I encountered a
similar situation this morning at Bethlehem. Just prior to giving the sermon,
it sounded like somebody right outside had turned the horn on in one of the
cars. It was a rather irritating sound. I think a child had snuck into
someone’s car and very systematically was going “beep, beep;” and I began to
wonder if I was going to have to compete with that during my sermon.
Fortunately, I didn’t. A parent came to the rescue and took the child out.
But, no doubt,
in our Bible character’s fatigue, he also felt irritated. He just wanted to
drop off and go to sleep and get ready for another day’s work. But there was a
persistent knock at the door. So he mumbles to himself, “You keep knocking at
my door. I’m not going to get to sleep unless I deal with you.” So he gets up,
opens the door, and finally the knocking stops. And he listens to his
neighbor’s request.
Then Jesus adds
these words: “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you
will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks
receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the
door will be opened.”
The point seems
to be that the secret of prayer is to be persistent about breaking the silence
in the middle of the night or during the day, to keep at it, to keep speaking
into the darkness even if nothing comes. Speak again and then again and then
again. Finally, the answer will be given.
In today’s
Gospel I would like to emphasize our part. We who stand outside and knock on
the door. God has promised that God will do God’s part. Our part is to be
persistent, to keep knocking, to ask, to seek.
I read an
article some time ago that said our prayer life is oftentimes shaped by our
concept of who God is. Some think of God as a tyrant or a policeman or a judge.
Some think of God as a kindly grandfather or grandmother. Some have even chosen
to use other metaphors that are nonhuman; such as God is a rock or a refuge.
No doubt, some of these non-human metaphors have appealed to some people who
have had very negative experiences with humans — perhaps a father who abused or
a mother who abused. And so the rich tradition of the Scriptures affords us
many opportunities to select from when envisioning. That’s one of the reasons
that the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is very appealing to me. It says
in Step 3: Made a decision to turn my life over to the care of God, as I
understand God. Within those twelve steps is a freedom to call God whatever you
want to call God. Mother. Father. Friend.
In the Lord’s
Prayer, we are asked and invited to use the words of a loving parent. Sometimes
we think of prayer only as a series of “gimmies” from this Parent. A person I
spoke to recently talked about her negative reaction to people who would say a
prayer just for the sake of easy and immediate results. These are certainly
appropriate prayers. We do want good heath. We want a successful surgery. We
want a nurse to be especially attentive to our needs.
Prayer is not only for specific results,
however. Prayer is for our benefit. It is a gift given to us. It keeps us
connected. It keeps us in tune with the fact that God wants to be in our midst
and wants to be with us. Us and them. Not only just my loved ones and me, but
us and them — all people who are children of God. It is a request from us that
the presence of God as described in Romans 8 will become a reality: that
neither sickness nor death will be able to separate us from God’s love in
Christ. It is God’s love in Christ that enables us to call God a Parent, a
Father. It is through God’s love in Christ that we have modeled for us a loving
relationship between a loving God and God’s only Son. We, as the people of God,
are the body of Christ. Just as Jesus had the privilege of walking through the
Garden of Gethsemane and opening His heart to God, we also have the privilege
and the opportunity to open our hearts to God. Jesus has led the way for us.
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