Well, we're in the middle of our study of the Lord's Prayer.
And this is, Jesus has given us a model of prayer,
and we have said in the past,
it's a pattern, not a performance.
It's a pattern, not a performance,
but we wanna learn this pattern
so that as we go to places of prayer,
as we go to times when we approach God,
that we have the right attitude and focus before Him.
And so we're gonna go ahead and say together
the Lord's Prayer out of the CSB.
It's gonna be up here on the screen
for us to say in unison together.
Join me.
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
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.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
There was a little delay there on each chain, sorry guys.
Just enough time for a breath.
And the opening address that we've looked at
the last few weeks,
along with the first three petitions,
or three requests of the Lord's Prayer,
were designed to help us calibrate our reality
around God, who He is, His nature,
and our relationship to Him.
And that was the beginning of prayer.
Prayer begins with calibrating or recalibrating
our reality around the reality of who God is
and what He is doing or what He has done
and our relationship to Him.
And it began with our Father in heaven.
And in God's fatherhood, we are His children.
We are His children.
All of us at one point in time were children.
Some of us have children and we know
what it's like to have that relationship
between a parent and a child.
And in His fatherhood, we are His children
and that underscores our humility before Him.
And this communal nature of prayer, our Father,
not just my Father, but our Father,
there's a communal and usness to prayer
that we have to bring.
And that also changes the way we pray
because it's not just a me-centric prayers anymore.
We're praying an usness to our prayers.
It's not me against anyone else.
It's us and we and our.
And in light of His heavenly authority,
we're reminded of our limited understanding
and the smallness of us before Him.
Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy.
His name is great and it reflects the character,
the attributes of who God is, His infinite wisdom,
His unmatched power, His perfect love
and how awesome in judgment He is and His mercy.
And they embody who He is and we say,
we want Your name.
Our first petition is, God, Your name be honored as holy.
This is what we want.
And again, this reshapes and recalibrates our prayers.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Whose kingdom and whose will are we seeking?
Do we want our will done or His will done?
Do we want our kingdom to be built and revealed,
or do we want His kingdom to be built and revealed?
And so the Lord's, the opening address
in the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer
help us to calibrate our reality around God.
They reveal something about God as well.
They reveal that God is holy
and completely independent of us.
He is our heavenly Father.
He has ultimate authority, His will, His kingdom,
reign over all other will, His will be done on earth.
He is holy and independent of us and not dependent.
And so now when we turn in the Lord's Prayer
to this next phrase, this next part of it,
we see the reverse, that we are holy
and completely dependent on Him.
independence, a culture of independence.
Give us today our daily bread.
we're given allowances or
We live in a society that prizes independence
ח
in self-sufficiency.
If you are taking notes, the first thing I'll have you
And from a very young age, we're taught to stand
write down the heading is that we live in a culture
to thrive in the kingdom of the Lord.
We resent God, we resent God, we demonstrate
His 성itas, we criticize God.
But we CCBZ are His changes for you.
At every young age, we're taught to stand on our own,
to rely on ourselves, and to make our own way.
Independence is heralded as a strength,
a sign of maturity and success.
And it's so ingrained in us that we oftentimes don't realize
how it shapes our values, our choices, our self-worth,
or even how we approach God.
We are trained to believe that the ultimate success
is reaching a place where we don't need anyone else.
And this ideal of independence shows up
in various forms in our life.
It'd be financially, we might strive to be self-sufficient
and aim to accumulate enough wealth to protect ourselves
against the uncertainties of the future.
Don't you guys know we use wealth and money as a shield
against whatever the future might hold, the scary future?
If I could just build up enough wealth,
if I could, my bank account could be padded enough,
I'll be okay, I'll be good.
I remember as a young family,
we had three young kids at the time,
and hey, you got a child tax credit, right?
And this came back in the form of a check every year.
And man, talk about being hungry
and being really, really terrible
with our finances at the time.
But our years were marked by when that check would come in.
Like, that was when we finally felt secure,
finally felt like we were gonna make it,
life was gonna be okay, and as soon as it hit the bank,
we'd go, well now let's go out to eat.
Let's hit that restaurant we haven't gone to.
Let's buy that one thing we've always wanted.
And then a couple weeks later,
you'd wake up and go, where did it go?
Where did it go?
It's like putting sand in a pocket that has holes,
it's gone as quickly as it's put in there.
In our careers, we work to prove ourselves capable,
that we're indispensable, that we're in control.
Even in our relationships, sometimes we hesitate
to lean too much on others.
And some of it may be, hey, I don't wanna bother them,
but some of it, for some of us,
is revealing a weakness in us,
and we don't wanna reveal that weakness
that somehow we're dependent on someone else.
Because our world and our culture says,
independence is the prize.
But here's the irony that,
while independence promises us freedom,
it actually leads often to something quite different.
Instead of peace, it breeds anxiety,
instead of connection, it fosters isolation,
it contributes to this loneliness epidemic
that we see in the West, especially among young people
who say on a daily basis, something like 30, 35%
of young people say on a daily basis, they feel lonely.
And instead of true freedom,
independence often brings a new kind of bondage,
this nagging worry that everything depends on us,
and that if we slip up, everything we have built
will come crashing down.
The pursuit of independent security
can paradoxically result in insecurity.
We're told that if we work hard and we save enough
and we stay vigilant, we'll be safe,
but we're never truly in control of everything.
And there are aspects of life
that no amount of planning can shield us from.
And so we're pushing back against the culture
of independence.
The second thing I'll have you write down is
a prayer of dependence.
Here in the text, we find in verse 11,
a prayer of dependence.
When Jesus taught us to pray here,
he says, give us today our daily bread.
It's kind of an interesting wording here,
because the word daily is a Greek word
in the original text that is not found anywhere else.
In any other writings, they've not found this Greek word.
And it was presumed by some of the early church fathers,
early church fathers would be those who kind of led
the church in the first few centuries
or first few generations after the apostles and Jesus.
Some of the early church fathers even thought
that Matthew made the word up to describe something,
and some of them even attributed it to the act of communion,
that this was a special word that was invented
to mean communion, even though it's not referenced
anywhere else.
That was at least until the last 40 or 50 years
when they came across, in Greek,
a scroll or a tablet of some sort,
and it was a receipt for a trade.
Basically, it was grain trading, right?
And they found a receipt that listed grain
and different items for food and sustenance,
and they found on this receipt that word,
the only other place, and what they found
is it related something to do with rationed bread,
the rationing, right?
Just enough for sustenance, just enough to be said
aside to keep the population alive.
Just enough, give me just enough,
whatever it is that I need, just enough,
the rationed bread or the necessary bread.
Give us today our necessary bread.
To pray that is to admit that we're not in control.
It's to buck against the culture of independence
with a prayer of dependence, and this prayer
brings us to God daily, not with a list of accomplishments
or a stockpile of resources, but with open hands
that say, God, I am not enough on my own.
I need you to provide what I cannot.
See, some of us, we have grown accustomed,
we have the habit of going to God as if he is a genie
and not a father.
God as a genie, and so I sat and thought,
what is God as a genie versus God as a father?
Well, a genie, I go to him when I want results.
I want results.
I want a specific outcome to happen.
But a father, a father is a relational term.
It's how I relate to someone.
A father is about relationship.
It's about love, it's about trust, it's about having faith.
With results-based, no or wait is devastating.
No or wait goes right against the results that I want.
If I'm told no, no, not now, or wait, I can't handle that,
and that creates anxiety and anger in me.
And so it's very likely or possible that when we go to God
and we have our prayer and our requests that we lay
before him and he doesn't deliver in the time that we have,
we want, or we're told to wait, if we find that there's anger
and anxiety that's resulting in it,
then we've probably gone to him in the wrong relationship
as a genie who is to give me results versus a father
that I'm to love and trust, and that the relationship
is more important than the results.
A genie I want at my beck and call, I want him ready to serve.
A genie, I have to bring the right requests to a genie.
I have to know, do you guys remember the movie Aladdin?
Right, and he has these wishes, right?
But there's actually some deliberation,
like what do I wish for, oh my goodness,
I've gotta figure this out, I've gotta game the system,
I've gotta ask for the right things
because I only get three of them.
And if I ask for the wrong things,
then I'm gonna miss out on something.
I have to have the right answers,
I have to make the right requests,
and I have the stress of having to know what to ask for
in order to get the things that I want.
One of the things that my wife was sharing with me,
something that Timothy Keller was sharing,
and I really resonated with me,
he was talking about a father,
and how as a father versus a genie
who I have to go to with the right request
and he's gonna give me exactly what I said
and I have to word it just right, right?
If you word the request to the genie just wrong,
you're gonna get exactly what you asked for,
and nothing more, nothing less.
With a father, a father actually interprets my needs
from my request.
So there's a, it's just inevitable that when you have kids,
they become illustrations for every sermon,
but sorry boys.
But there's a phenomenon that has happened in our family
when we had two cars and we come to the same location,
and that is the ride phenomenon.
Who's going with who, right?
And there are times where,
well, I'm gonna go with the right person,
and I'm gonna go with the wrong person,
and there are times where we'll have one of the boys
who will assert their dominance and leadership
and tell the other boys where they're going.
This is usually one of the kids.
I won't name names.
It's the hair sticking up above the monitor back there.
And in asserting the dominance,
he'll say to the other boys, you're going with mom.
Well, no, I think, nope, you're going with mom.
She's got a perfectly good seat there.
Go with mom, right?
Go with mom.
And then it'll become a fight,
and then pretty soon the parents need to intercede, right?
And I could look at that and go,
okay, this is just a mere request or demand, actually,
from him.
But something that we've learned in this process
is to interpret the need.
What is the need here?
And it's not only him.
The other boys have done it in the past, too.
And it almost inevitably means
that there's a need to spend time with dad alone.
And the need underneath all of the hubbub
and all of the chaos is I wanna spend time alone with dad.
And as a father, I could just take the request
or the demand, or I could tell them,
be quiet and I'll go with mom,
because I need my quiet.
I have done that before, too.
But as a father, I get the privilege and honor
of interpreting the requests of my kids
to see what is the need underneath
the need that they think they have.
And you can think of a thousand ways that a parent does this.
But when we approach God as a genie,
it's like I've gotta have the right request.
I've gotta phrase it right.
As a father, I just get to come
and put it in the words that I know how to put it,
and then pray and trust that God will interpret
the need underneath the need.
Another thing that Keller says
is that the things that we want,
this is just the reality of being in a broken world,
the things that we want are in need of healing.
The things that we want are in need of healing.
And so we oftentimes bring our wants to God,
thinking they're right,
oftentimes thinking we're justified in bringing them,
and they're actually good and right,
and God should honor them.
But in a broken world,
our wants are oftentimes or most often in need of healing.
And so we bring them to a father
who can provide healing for our needs.
And what that means is he interprets our needs
to the need that's under that, under the need,
in order to give us what we truly need for flourishing.
There was a lot of needs there, sorry.
Another thing about the father
is that he's most concerned with the inside,
the person that I am, not what I adorn myself with,
be it the clothes or the kind of food
or the house that I live in
or the status that I can build for myself.
He's most concerned about what you are becoming.
Jesus illustrates the point of misplaced security
in a parable that he tells in Luke chapter 12.
In Luke 12, beginning in verse 13, he said,
someone from the crowd, so he's teaching,
and someone from the crowd yells out and says,
teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.
And Jesus says, friend,
who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you?
He then told them, watch out,
and be on guard against all greed,
because one's life is not in the abundance of his possessions.
And then he tells this parable.
A rich man's land was very productive,
and he thought to himself, what should I do?
Since I don't have anywhere to store my crops,
I will do this, he said.
I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones
and store all my grain and goods there.
And then I'll say to myself, you have many goods
stored up for many years, take it easy,
eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.
But God said to him, you fool,
this very night your life is demanded of you,
and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
That's how it is with the one who stores up treasure
for himself and is not rich.
Toward God.
So the rich man's pleased with himself,
and he's confident in all the provisions
that he's stored away.
But what he's missed is the very thing we often miss,
which is that our lives are not as stable as we imagine.
We're not in ultimate control,
and wealth or possessions cannot secure our future.
The rich man in that story
found his confidence in the wrong place.
Instead, he found his confidence in the wrong place.
Instead of seeing his resources as a means to bless others
and to live dependently upon God,
he hoards them for himself and for his own security
and his own comfort.
And his fatal mistake was believing that he could control
his own destiny through wealth.
In Jesus' words in verse 15,
one's life is not in the abundance of his possessions.
Man, they cut through.
When we store up treasures for ourselves,
we risk losing sight of what truly matters.
The rich man's barns were full, but his soul was empty.
Empty of dependence on God.
It was empty of gratitude and empty of a relationship
with the one who gave every good thing.
Augustine once said that God is always trying
to give good things to us,
but our hands are too full to receive them.
Give us our daily bread is a cry for dependence upon God.
It's a cry to empty ourselves and empty our hands
so that we can receive the things he wants to give us.
The father who looks at our needs and looks at our wants
and even our requests and looks underneath
to the thing we actually need.
We really need to be built up and to flourish
and to give us that.
This prayer invites us to rely on God,
not only as just a theoretical provider,
but as a practical daily sustainer of our life.
The last point I'll have you write down is
that there is freedom in dependence.
Freedom in dependence.
There is an incredible freedom that comes
when we embrace dependence on God.
It's a freedom that's actually rooted
in the very heart of the gospel of Jesus.
It's in our culture, dependence often feels like weakness.
We're told to be self-sufficient,
to take control of our lives, to build our own security,
but the gospel tells us a completely different story.
One where true freedom isn't found in our strength
but in our surrender.
The gospel reminds us that our ultimate security
isn't found in what we can do for ourselves,
it's found in what Christ has already done for us.
On the cross, Jesus took on himself the whole weight
of sin, the whole weight of our failures,
and our need to prove our worth.
And he paid the price we could never pay,
and in doing so, he secured for us a future
we could never earn.
And this is the good news that in Christ,
we are fully known, fully loved, fully provided for,
not because of our efforts, but because of his grace.
In Luke chapter 12, the tragedy of the rich fool
isn't just that he had misplaced priorities,
it's that he failed to recognize his need for God.
He trusted in his riches instead of trusting
in the one who gives life itself.
And Jesus' point is clear, that true security and peace
can never come from our own resources,
but only from a relationship with God.
When we understand the gospel, we see that dependence
on God isn't a limitation, but it's actually the truth.
It's actually liberation.
It is our freedom.
It's the freedom to let go of our striving,
to stop trying to earn what God has freely given us
in Christ.
We're invited to rest in the assurance that God
is our provider, our protector, and our sustainer.
God gets great joy when we depend on him.
And that great joy is given to us,
and we lay our life upon him, depend upon him
for everything.
In C.S. Lewis's book, The Weight of Glory,
he said, he who has God and everything else
has no more than he who has God only.
He who has God and everything else has no more
than he who has God only.
Do we believe that?
And does that belief work itself out in faith, in action?
Is that how we look at our life and our security?
I lived most of my life paycheck to paycheck.
Everything was about when the money would hit.
And I recognize this about myself that at that time,
living in that way, I got this sense of security
and this breath of fresh air on payday.
Like the world was my oyster and anything was possible.
And then as the days went on away from payday
and got closer to the next one,
the days right before was stress and anxiety.
Dark, the world was a lot darker.
There was no opportunity whatsoever
because there was no money.
Sometimes there was a negative in front of the bank account.
And it was, I've gotta wait till the next check hits.
He who has God and everything else has no more
than he who has God only.
Give us today our daily bread as a reminder,
grounded in the gospel.
It acknowledges that the same God who met
our deepest need in Christ will also meet our daily needs.
If he has given us this great salvation,
if he has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness
to the kingdom of light, if he has bestowed upon us
sonship, if we are called sons and daughters of the king,
how much more will he provide what we need?
In fact, that's the very place that in Luke chapter 12
it goes to.
Luke chapter 12, Jesus told that parable,
you know what the very next part is?
The very next part after telling the parable
of the rich man or the rich fool,
he says, then he said to his disciples,
he tells the parables, he turns to his disciples
and he says, therefore, in light of that, I tell you,
don't worry about your life.
What you will eat or about the body, what you will wear,
for life is more than food and the body more than clothing.
Consider the ravens, they don't sow or reap,
they don't have a store room or a barn, yet God feeds them.
Aren't you worth much more than the birds?
Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying?
If then you're not able to do even a little thing,
why worry about the rest?
Why worry about the rest?
Consider how the wildflowers grow,
they don't labor or spend thread, yet I tell you,
not even Solomon in all his splendor
was adorned like one of these.
If that's how God closed the grass,
which is in the field today
and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow,
how much more will he do for you, you of little faith?
Don't strive for what you should eat
and what you should drink and don't be anxious
for the Gentile world eagerly seeks all these things
and your father knows what you need.
But seek first his kingdom
and these things will be provided for you.
Don't be afraid, little flock,
because your father delights to give you the kingdom.
Sell your possessions and give to the poor,
make money bags for yourselves that won't grow old
in inexhaustible treasure in heaven
where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
For where your treasure is, there your hearts will be also.
This life of dependence is not just,
God, I'm gonna depend on you to give me stuff.
It's, God, all that you have given,
it has been given to me from your hand freely
and it actually liberates not only us
from the bondage of striving after stuff,
but it liberates us to generosity, to bless others,
to give, to sell everything that we have
because won't my father take care of me?
Won't he give me all that I need?
We live with a open hand before our God,
both in receiving and giving.
And that's the freedom of dependence.
My kids experienced it when they were younger.
They didn't pay for a thing.
Yet they ate, they were clothed, they had good times.
We went on trips, we went places.
I knew their need, I provided it.
Imperfectly oftentimes, but I provided, I tried.
Sometimes I was late, sometimes I was wrong.
How much more your heavenly father
your heavenly father,
there's great freedom in dependence.
I'm gonna invite the worship team to come on up
and invite us to live with an open hand
and a peaceful heart.
That we would trust in God's provision for today,
that we would trust in God's provision for tomorrow
when tomorrow comes.
In Christ, you have all you need.
And that is the greatest freedom you could ever know.