New Year’s Eve - 2009

“The Man of Faith is a Man of Prayer throughout the New Year”

What will the New Year bring? That is a question asked by many people every year – from the sports writer to the financial advisor to the president to the everyday individual. But it is a question that no one can really know the answer to. The only certainty is that there will be good days and bad; there will be joy and sorrow; there will be trouble-free times and times of trial. In good times, the worldly person boasts of his own resourcefulness, skill, or good luck. While the child of God thanks the Lord for his grace and mercy. In bad times, the worldly person curses his bad luck, feels sorry for himself, or even blames God. While the child of faith turns to the Lord to humbly seek his help and protection. On good days as well as on bad, the Christian is a person of prayer. So as we close one year and enter a New Year, let us again consider how our Savior taught us to pray.

Now, the Lord’s Prayer is not so much a prayer the Lord taught us to pray as it is his instruction on how to pray. In the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer we have an expression for every need of body and soul that we may rightly express to the Lord our God. And right off the bat Jesus teaches us how we are to come to our God in prayer - Our Father who art in heaven.

God is in the heavens and not confined to one spot on this earth as the idols of men. He reveals himself in nature and history, but he reveals himself more fully in the Holy Scriptures. There we see God in three persons and three persons in one God. When we understand him rightly then, it is permissible to address him in prayer by any of his personal names, such as Lord, Christ or Holy Spirit. Understanding him rightly, it is permissible to address him by any of those names which describe his unique Being, such as The Almighty, the Holy One, Savior, or Comforter. The word “Father” merely designates the one true God. This is the One to whom Jesus tells us to address our prayers.

But the word “Father” also designates the special relationship that we believers enjoy with him. Now, God is not our Father in the sense that he created us, for we have proven to be children of the devil by serving him with sin. No, God is the Father of our Savior, Christ Jesus, and we believe that God the Father sent his only begotten Son into this world to be our Savior. That is faith, and without this faith in Christ Jesus, it is not possible for a sinner to be heard by God in prayer.

Because of this faith in Christ Jesus as our Savior, the title “Father” takes on an added significance for the Christian. This significance is expressed in Paul’s words to the Galatians, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26). As our heavenly Father, God loves us and is very concerned about us in this world. He wants us to pour out before him the innermost concerns of our hearts in good times as well as in bad times. He wants us to pray boldly and confidently because by faith we know he is our true Father and we are his true children. Our Father in heaven is more ready to hear our prayers than we are to pray to him.

HYMN: #75 - “Father, Let Me Dedicate”

Petitions for God’s Saving Glory

After the question, “how are we to pray,” the next natural question is “for what should we pray?” And in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gives us the answer as he teaches us seven things for which to pray. The first three seek God’s saving glory.

Hallowed be thy name. Nothing that people can do can change the fact that God’s very nature is holiness.

Therefore, in this petition we are not asking God to help us make his name holy, but that God cause us and others to always think of him rightly and keep his name holy.

Now, God’s name is everything he has revealed to us about himself, and he reveals himself to us in the Bible. Therefore, God’s name is profaned and dishonored by people when they teach something other than what God’s Word teaches. This can happen when a person adds to God’s Word or subtracts from it. It also happens that God’s name is dishonored if someone conceals a truth that God has revealed. Very clearly God said through his prophet Jeremiah, “Let the prophet who… has my word speak it faithfully” (Jeremiah 23:28).

And it is necessary to pray this petition so seriously and earnestly because false doctrine is a tool of the devil to rob people of salvation. It is an ever present danger against which we are always to be on our guard. So in this petition, Jesus teaches us to seek God’s help, to pray that he keep false doctrine and lying teachers from us. At the same time, we ask that he graciously guide us so that we always believe and teach his Word in its truth and purity.

Guiltily, we must also admit there is another way God’s name is profaned and dishonored. I say guiltily because it is so frequently done among us, and that is when we live contrary to his Word. With the words of this petition we seek God’s help to keep his name holy by conforming our minds and our lives to his holy Word at all times and in all places.

Thy Kingdom come. The kingdom of God was established when Jesus, our Savior, died on the cross. It was then that he finished his work of gaining freedom for all people from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil so that all people might serve him in holiness. This kingdom, however, cannot come by a person’s own will and strength. It happens only through Christ’s gracious rule of faith in the heart. Through the message of our salvation, that is the Gospel in God’s Word, our Lord sends the Holy Spirit to live in us, to make our hearts his home, so that we become willing believers and willing servants of God our Savior. This is what God inspired the Apostle Paul to write, “No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Jesus teaches us to pray for God’s help that through the gracious working of the Holy Spirit we will be preserved as citizens of his kingdom unto eternal life. How marvelous this petition, how desperately we need to pray it.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This request follows naturally after the first two. Can the person who is eager to keep God’ s name holy and who desires to remain a member of God’s kingdom be unconcerned about God’s saving will for all people? Again and again God has made that will known to us, “God our Savior … wants all men to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4). God does not want “anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (1 Peter 3:9). “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

But on this earth God’s will is opposed by the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh. We will suffer many attacks and assaults from them in an attempt to hinder and thwart what we ask for in the first two petitions. So, we pray that God curb and hinder all who would oppose his saving will. It is a prayer that seeks God’s help to become more eager and faithful in our use of God’s Word and in spreading his Gospel to the entire world. And our comfort and our boast is that the will and the purposes of the devil and all our foes must and shall go down in utter defeat and destruction, no matter how proudly secure and powerful they think themselves.

These are the petitions for God’s saving glory.

HYMN: #249 - “God of Mercy, God of Grace”

Petitions for Our Welfare

In addition to teaching us to seek God’s saving glory in prayer, Jesus also teaches us petitions for our own welfare. The first of these is: Give us this day our daily bread.

Daily bread refers to everything we need for our bodily welfare, and in his gracious mercy, God grants them even without our asking. But it really comes as no surprise that God loves us enough to richly provide us with food, clothing, and shelter every day since God loved us enough to give his own Son into death. So what is Jesus teaching us with this petition? Jesus teaches us that we are to remember that everything we receive for our bodily needs is a gracious gift of our heavenly Father. If God did not bless us we would not receive. He teaches us that we are to appreciate and to receive with thanksgiving all that God grants to us. And finally, by teaching us to ask for bread only for today, he teaches us to trust God to supply what we need each day and not worry about the future. This is a reminder that we are to concentrate on our spiritual needs first of all, as Jesus said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). When we do this, God helps us learn to want what we have.

Next comes forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. With these words Jesus reminds us of our greatest need – forgiveness. Trespasses, or debts (the word used in Matthew’s gospel), are our failures to give God the holiness, the perfection that he demands and has the right to demand from his creatures. Trespasses and debts are all those times we’ve run God’s name through the mud and trampled on it by our unholy living. Trespasses and debts are all those times we’ve hindered Christ’s kingdom rule in our hearts because we’ve excused ourselves from the Word. Trespasses and debts are all those times we’ve been upset with God because he didn’t give us what we thought he needed.

And if God did not forgive our trespasses and debts freely by his grace, then we would surely suffer the punishment for them eternally in hell. But Jesus earned God’s forgiveness for us all with his perfect life and innocent sufferings and death on the cross. That forgiveness becomes real (effective) for us, the sinner, as we look to the cross with repentant hearts, believing that the blood of Jesus has washed away all our sin and guilt. True repentance, and that humble attitude of heart it reflects, will also be evident in our dealing with our fellow man; for the sinner who will not forgive his fellow man is not worthy of God’s forgiveness.

Indeed, daily forgiveness is certainly our greatest need. So, with that in mind let us confess our sin and guilt to God, and then joyfully, humbly, repentantly come to the Lord’s Supper where God individually grants forgiveness to each believer when he receives with the bread and wine the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

CONFESSION OF SINS

THE SACRAMENT

Lead us not into temptation. God’s Word is clear enough, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (James 1:13). God tempts no one in the sense of trying to get a person to sin. Instead, it is the evil three – the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh – that tempt us into misbelief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. And how severe and great these temptations are which every Christian must endure!

But how weak we are! Our life is such that one who is standing firm today may falls tomorrow. Therefore, we are compelled to cry out and pray every hour that God would not allow us to become faint and weary and to fall back into sin. If we don’t, it is impossible to overcome even the very slightest temptation. So you see, “leading us not into temptation” consists of God giving us the power and strength to resist whatever tribulation or temptation is allowed to enter into our lives. Just as Scripture tells us, “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Therefore we Christians must keep ourselves well armed for those days when, in his perfect wisdom, God does not prevent the temptation but allows it into our lives for our good. Armed with his Word and with his prayer and with his strength we will not fall down into these temptations and be drowned!

It is very evident in our own life that temptations are and always will be a part of living on this earth. How comforting it is, then, to know God is with us to lend his counsel and aid in time of trouble, sorrow, hardship, and in any condition of life that brings temptation. Jesus knows what sorrows and woes sin brings to earthly life. He knows they will worsen as the end of all things draws nearer. So he gives us this petition. Deliver us from evil (the evil one).

This prayer, however, is not a plea for making our lives on earth a heaven. It is a plea for the Lord to deliver us completely from this earthly life to the glories of our eternal home in heaven. Of course, the time for this is for the Lord to determine. Therefore, we are also asking in this prayer that the Lord help us through this earthly life and make conditions bearable, even pleasant, to whatever degree he knows will be beneficial to us. And he does! “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

This prayer, then, asks the Lord to safely lead us through this life to heaven, while also expressing John’s wish from Revelation 22:20, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

HYMN: 411 - “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

The Doxology

One final aspect of the Lord’s Prayer worth considering is the doxology: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, amen. A doxology is a simple hymn of praise that expresses the confidence that God will hear and answer all our prayers. And this confidence is not misplaced because we know that in accordance with his excellent Being, and with his ability as the Almighty God, and with the promise that he is our Father through faith in Jesus Christ – hear and answer our prayers he will do!

So, with these words Jesus teaches us how to pray; to whom to address our prayers; what things we may and should ask for in prayer; and why we may have the confidence to pray. God help us to carry these simple confirmation truths with us into the New Year as the Holy Spirit helps each of us to be a person of prayer throughout the New Year. Amen.

Offering