The Father's Provision & Forgiveness

If the sun were to disappear in an instant, do you know how long it would take for us to find out on Earth?

8 minutes and 20 seconds to be specific.

That's how long it takes for the light of the sun to reach us here on Earth.

And if the sun were to disappear just in an instant, how long before we all die?

Well, I don't know.

No one knows, but probably not that long.

All life on Earth is dependent on the sun's existence.

And yet, I don't think any one of us woke up this morning at 4 a.m., which is really 3 a.m., and prayed to God earnestly that the sun would rise again today.

We just assume that the sun would rise today as it did yesterday and the day before.

We assume the sun will rise.

We assume in 8 minutes and 20 seconds, the sun will still be shining.

Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father in heaven, give us today our daily bread.

Yet, many of us have enough bread to last three weeks in our pantries.

Jesus taught us to pray, our Father in heaven, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And yet, we who trust in Jesus believe that all of our debt of sin, past, present and future, has already been forgiven when we trusted Jesus.

Forgiveness has been settled past tense.

So, what are we praying for?

Why does Jesus teach us to pray, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors?

The sun rose this morning an hour earlier or later than we thought it would.

And we didn't have to pray for it.

Many of us have not only today's bread sorted, but tomorrow's bread and even next week's bread sorted.

So, what are we praying for?

Why does Jesus teach us to pray, give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors?

Of course, it's a ridiculously privileged question to ask.

But that's the point.

We live here in Hornsby.

I think it's fair to assume most of us have our daily and our weekly bread sorted.

We have received with gratitude all the provision of the Father.

So, what are we praying for?

Jesus of Nazareth is the smartest human being in the history of the world.

He is the wisest teacher of life, the most wise person who ever lived.

He knows everything.

In this Bible in front of us, this scripture, Jesus offers the wisdom of the good life with God.

So, we're going to look at Jesus' wisdom for prayer and life for us today.

What does this part of the Lord's Prayer mean for us to pray in 2024 in Hornsby?

Why does Jesus teach us to pray?

Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

We're in the second of three messages in the Lord's Prayer series, and for me, this is a dream come true because you know what part of the Bible the Lord's Prayer is found within?

The Sermon on the Mount, my favorite part of the Bible.

In fact, Bible Project, I think brilliantly highlight the fact that the Lord's Prayer is the center of the center of the center of the center of the Sermon on the Mount, four centers.

The center of the center of the center of the center of the Sermon on the Mount is the Lord's Prayer.

So I'm super stoked to be in this passage this morning.

Jonathan unpacked for us last week the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

That's the first half.

And the first half is all about God, specifically the fullness of God's name, his kingdom and his will, becoming our reality on earth as it is in heaven.

The first half of the Lord's Prayer is directly about God.

And then in the second half, it pivots to our human needs.

So we're talking today about the fourth and fifth petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

This message is titled The Father's Provision and Forgiveness.

As we talk about the prayer within its larger context in the Sermon on the Mount, I think it's helpful to remember who Jesus is talking to.

When Jesus first gave these words, we see in Matthew 4, just before the Sermon on the Mount, this is what it says.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

News about him spread all over Syria and people brought to Jesus all who were ill with various diseases.

Those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, those having seizures and the paralyzed, and he healed them.

Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan followed him.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.

His disciples came to them and he began to teach them.

He said dot dot dot, insert the sermon on the mount.

Those are the types of people that Jesus is talking to.

He's talking to those with disease and sickness, those suffering severe pain, demon possessed people, people having seizures, paralyzed people.

These are the kinds of people Jesus is talking to.

And you remember how the sermon on the mount starts with the attitudes.

Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and he's looking at them.

Those are the types of people Jesus is talking to.

When Jesus says blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted, they're standing right in front of him.

When Jesus says blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth, these are the ones he is talking to.

Jesus is talking to a world that is very different from our world.

The world of the first hearers of the Sermon on the Mount was very different to ours.

For one, it's 2,000 years old.

That's quite different.

Secondly, it's on almost the exact other side of the planet.

And third, the world of Jesus' day was what scholars and economists call a subsistence agricultural economy.

Meaning, that the world of Jesus' day was an economy, the passing around of money and goods, was dominated by agriculture, the things that people grow and the livestock that they farm.

But the difference is, it was not agriculture that you would take your livestock and your farm produce and sell it in the market to receive money to buy your food.

In a subsistence agricultural economy, your household, your family grows the food that you eat yourself.

And so families and households across the first century world were at a subsistence level surviving on the things that they grew.

These are the types of people that Jesus is speaking to.

If you weren't a farmer in that day, you were a fisherman or a carpenter or a day laborer who was paid by the day.

So this is a world where people are often unsure of where tomorrow's work is going to come from, where tomorrow's bread is going to come from.

That's the world that Jesus is speaking in to.

So in this Lord's Prayer, the center of the center of the center of the center of the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches these types of people to pray, give us today our daily bread, and it makes sense.

These are people living at the subsistence level, often unsure of where tomorrow's meal is going to come from.

And so they pray for the Father's provision.

These are poor, underprivileged Jewish and some gentile farmers, servants, fishermen, and day laborers living under the oppressive regime of Rome, often unsure of where today's bread is going to come from.

And so they pray as Jesus taught them to give us today our daily bread.

It's a prayer of dependence on the Father's provision, and it is so real to them.

That's the world of the sermon on the mount.

But that's not the world we live in.

Obviously, we live 2,000 years later on the other side of the planet in a capitalistic economy, and the truth is, I think it's fair to assume most of us have our daily bread sorted.

We have our weekly bread.

I wouldn't say monthly bread, because it's probably going to go moldy in a month.

But at least our weekly bread sorted.

And praise God, we receive with gratitude the provision of the Father, but we live in a very different world to the world of the first hearers of the Lord's Prayer.

If you were to ask the average person in the crowd of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, where does your daily bread come from?

Ask the average person back then, where does your daily bread come from?

They almost certainly would have answered from God.

My daily bread comes from God.

Even though, in a subsistence agricultural economy, those people would be far more aware than I am of the process of making bread.

If they didn't make their own bread, then someone in their family or their household made the bread that they eat.

They know where the bread comes from.

But in the pre-modern world of Jesus' day, there was this universal world view that our daily bread comes from the hand of God.

God gives us our daily bread.

Cut to today, if you asked the average person on the street, where does your daily bread come from?

What would they say?

Woolies, Coles, maybe Aldi.

If you're doing well in life, baker's delight.

But that's the post-modern view of where our bread comes from.

Of course, if you were to dig into that question a bit more, where does your daily bread come from?

They would say, well, the wheat is grown in farms around New South Wales.

It's processed into flour.

You add water, yeast and salt.

It makes bread.

You package it up and I buy it from the shops.

And that's where my daily bread comes from.

It is this view that bread is flour plus yeast plus water plus salt.

Daily bread is not a gift from God in the modern world.

You see the difference between those two world views.

One of the main differences between the ancient world of Jesus Day and our world today in Hornsby in 2024 is disenchantment.

Disenchantment is this idea which is so core to this modern world that we live in that we have separated, disenchanted the spiritual world from the material world.

God from humanity, heaven from earth.

As Nietzsche said, God is dead.

Humanity and God, heaven and earth have been separated.

And so we live in a disenchanted world.

And ever since the Enlightenment in the 18th century, we, the royal we of culture, no longer use spiritual or religious language to explain the things of life, the way that humans did for millennia before the 18th century.

Now we use science, reason, rationality.

We think in order to understand the world.

As Descartes said, I think, therefore I am.

Heaven and Earth have been violently torn apart in the modern understanding of reality.

We are in today's world disenchanted to the point where we would think our daily bread is water plus flour plus yeast plus salt.

Our daily bread is not a gift from God, because we live in a very different world from the world of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

And I think that affects the way that we pray.

We live in a very different world, but here's the next crucial piece.

Don't miss this.

That followers of Jesus today, that's you and me, if we trust Jesus, we live in fact torn between these two worlds.

To be a follower of Jesus is to be torn between two worlds, because on the one hand, we live in the secular disenchanted West that has separated heaven from earth and then effectively ditched the heaven part and just live exclusively in the earth part.

We live in the disenchanted secular West, yet at the same time, to be a follower of Jesus means you have a world view at the core level that affirms that there is a spiritual realm called heaven and an earthly realm.

To follow Jesus means to affirm the reality of heaven and earth.

Genesis 1, 1, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The Christian world view affirms heaven and earth are the two realities.

And yet, we find ourselves today, I think, torn between two worlds, the world of Jesus' day and the world of today, because we affirm with Jesus that heaven and earth are the two realities in the universe.

And yet, we affirm with the secular disenchanted west that heaven and earth have been torn apart, separated.

We find ourselves living in this tension.

Is heaven and earth united or separate if we affirm that?

And I think that that does have implications for the way that we follow Jesus, for the way that we pray.

Because we find ourselves torn between these two worlds, we adopt these modern disenchanted categories for life, secular and sacred, spiritual and non-spiritual, earthly and heavenly, from God and from the world.

We adopt these two categories as though it's either spiritual or it's non-spiritual.

So, daily bread, that's earthly.

That's flour plus water plus yeast plus salt.

But salvation, that's heavenly.

That's going to heaven when you die.

Going to work, well, that's non-spiritual.

But going to church, that's spiritual.

Listening to a worship song, that's sacred.

Listening to a pop song, that's secular.

Studying at university, that's earthly.

But studying the Bible, that's heavenly.

We are torn between these two worlds because we adopt these categories of either or.

It's either spiritual or it's material.

That's what it is to be torn between the world of Jesus Day and the world of today.

And I think we bring that into the Lord's Prayer.

And we even pivot violently between these categories.

When we pray in the Lord's Prayer, our Father in heaven, this is heaven language, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We subconsciously say, okay, that's enough about the heaven part.

Let's talk now about the earth part.

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.

Heaven and earth in the modern conception are separate and entirely apart from each other.

It's so deep in our culture, this trend of disenchantment, of separating heaven and earth, and it really affects the way we follow Jesus when we conceive of church as spiritual and work as non-spiritual, as the Bible as spiritual and a fictional book as non-spiritual.

Of course, the Bible is special above those books, but we tear ourselves between these two worlds.

But the truth is, if there is one picture that dominates the story of the Bible as a whole, it is that in the person and work of Jesus the Messiah, heaven and earth are one again.

Jesus, in his very person, is son of God and son of man.

Jesus brings heaven and earth together in his person.

And in Jesus' work on the cross, he brought heaven and earth together.

He brought heaven down to earth.

It should come as no surprise to you that the central message Jesus proclaimed was the kingdom of God in Matthew 417, which is just before the Sermon on the Mount.

From that time on, Jesus began to preach.

This is his message.

The core message of Jesus, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

The message that Jesus brought was that life with God, the kingdom of heaven has come to earth in and through the person of Jesus.

King Jesus brings the reality of heaven to earth.

And what I think is insane is that prayer is built on this reality.

Prayer, the way that Jesus prayed, does not conceive of earth and heaven as separate, disenchanted categories, but as interconnected.

That's the way Jesus taught us to pray, that heaven and earth are coming together.

And prayer, the Jesus way, exists in the overlap between those two.

Jesus taught us to pray by stepping into the overlap of heaven and earth.

In a sense, when we pray, we stand with one foot planted in the reality of heaven and the other foot planted in the reality of earth.

And with one foot in each, we pray, Father, may it be on earth as it is in heaven.

May your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When we pray, we step into the overlap between heaven and earth.

And that means we look at the injustice in our world, famine and slavery and the terrible things that happen.

And we think of our father's character.

We think that he is the one who defends the cause of the oppressed.

And we pray, Father, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We look at the violence of war in this world, in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

And we think of the peace, the shalom, the wholeness that God intends for the world.

And we pray, Father, let heaven come to earth.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When we look at the idolatry in our world, people worshiping things other than God, and we think about God, the one who will not yield his glory to another, who's, as the song we sing says, whose glory taught the stars to shine.

We pray, Father, may it be on earth as it is in heaven.

Prayer, the way Jesus taught us to pray, is stepping into the overlap between heaven and earth.

That's kingdom prayer, the way Jesus taught us to pray.

It means standing with one foot in the gritty, brutal, painful, heart-wrenching reality of life on earth, with another foot in the glorious, tearless reality of heaven, and praying, Father, may it be on earth as it is in heaven.

That's the wonder of prayer that Jesus invites us into.

That means that your world, your earth, your family, your marriage, your job, your university, your life is the overlap of heaven and earth, because God wants to bring the kingdom of heaven, the rule and reign of God, into your life.

And so in prayer, we bring ourselves, our struggles, our needs, our wants, our desires, our lives into the presence of the Father.

We step into the overlap between heaven and earth, and we pray for things in the Father's name.

And as we pray, we find one of the great mysteries of prayer, and that is unanswered prayer.

What do you do when you pray for something and God doesn't answer the way you want him to?

Of course, there can be no simple answers to that question.

But certainly, I think one of the quickest ways to receive an unanswered prayer is to pray for something that is flatly outside the heart of God, revealed in the Bible.

If we are praying for something that is so contrary to the heart of God, it will not be answered.

Instead, Jesus invites us to renew our mind, as Romans 12.2 says, in Scripture.

To fill our minds with a vision of the kingdom of heaven, of the goodness, truth, and beauty of God.

Fill our mind with that reality.

And then, with eyes open, ears open, feet planted on earth, bring that before the Father in prayer.

We think about the reality of heaven, that God is a God of love and justice and grace and compassion and holiness.

And we pray, would you be that Father to us?

Would you transform our world?

That's kingdom prayer.

That's the way Jesus taught us to pray.

Because Jesus brings heaven and earth together, and he invites us to step into the overlap.

That's kingdom prayer.

And I think when we pray in the overlap of heaven and earth, something crazy happens.

We find ourselves taking our place in the story of God.

One of my lecturers at college talked about prayer as being self-involving.

Prayer in the kingdom involves you in the prayer.

You've heard it said, be careful what you pray for, because you might just be part of the answer to your own prayer.

When we pray, we draw ourselves into, or God draws us into, the story of God in this world.

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

That means, let your name be recognized as holy.

Where?

Here.

Let your name be recognized as holy in and through us to the world.

Kingdom Prayer is self-involving.

It draws us into the story of God.

When we pray, Father, let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, that's happening in and through us to the world.

Kingdom Prayer is self-involving.

It draws us into the story of God, who is making all things new as heaven comes to earth in Jesus.

If you still don't follow, and that's fair enough, imagine a player on a sporting team.

Many of us play on sporting teams.

Imagine a player saying to their coach, Coach, may your team win the championship this year.

May we win the trophy.

The coach would say, Amen.

Now let's get to work.

Because if the coach's team is gonna win, it involves the players.

In the same way, when we pray, Father, let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, it self-involves us.

The Father draws us into His story in this world.

Kingdom prayer is self-involving.

And that means that it's so much more than a shopping list.

Sometimes I feel guilty that all I do in prayer to God is just give him a list of the things that I need and want.

And that's okay.

He has big shoulders, he can handle that.

But kingdom prayer is so much more than that.

It's not that we write a list of things that we want to give to God, give it to him, make sure he receives it, and then we run away and have no part to play in the answer to that prayer.

Kingdom prayer is self-involving because it draws us into the story of God, that as we step into the overlap between heaven and earth, it may just be that the Father wants to enact his answer to that prayer, in and through us, to the world.

And so when Jesus taught us to pray, Our Father in heaven, give us today our daily bread.

He didn't teach us to ask for a week's worth of bread.

If we asked for a week's worth of bread, then we would say, thanks Lord for the bread, I'll be back here next time, this time next week.

We would take our answer and nick off.

Instead, Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread.

In order that we would come back to the Father in that posture of dependence on His provision.

And so yes, God is a loving Father who knows what we need even before we ask it.

And He invites us to ask for things, for our daily bread, our provision of what we need.

But even more than that, the Father wants you to come into His presence.

He doesn't want to give us a week's worth of bread and then see us same time next week.

He wants us to be drawn into the story of what God is doing in this world.

Kingdom prayer involves us into the story.

That's why it's daily bread.

And when Jesus taught us to pray, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, He's saying something astonishing, that our forgiveness, the forgiveness we receive from the Father, is meant to be breathed in and out.

That the Father isn't interested in clearing our debt once for all, 15 years ago, when I first prayed that prayer, in order that I may never come back to Him again because the forgiveness has been given.

The Father is interested in forming us into the image of His Son, Jesus, that we would be people who receive forgiveness daily and forgive others.

That we would receive His grace, His love and mercy, and we would, empowered by His spirit, give that to other people.

The Father wants us in prayer.

That's why forgiveness is not one and done.

That's it.

We are drawn into the story of God bringing heaven to earth.

So what do you want to pray for?

What do you need?

Yes, we need bread, we need water, we need shelter, we need clothing, we need those things.

And as Jesus says later in the Sermon on the Mount, your Father knows you need them and He cares for us.

But if we would not be anxious about those things, but seek first the kingdom and the righteousness of God, those things will be given to us.

What do you need?

What do you need to take your part in the story of God bringing heaven to earth here in Hornsby?

Well, I need grace.

I need forgiveness for the times that I fall short, in order that by the spirit of God, that forgiveness might flow through me to other people.

You need forgiveness.

You need grace.

We all need the love and mercy and empowering presence of God.

That's why it's daily, this prayer.

That's why the Lord invites us, Jesus taught us to pray daily, this prayer, that we would be in a constant sense of our awareness of God's power in and through us.

That's kingdom prayer.

What do you want to pray for?

We have no certainty that the Son will still be here in eight minutes and 20 seconds.

But if it is, then King Jesus is bringing heaven and earth together, and you and I are invited to step into the overlap of heaven and earth and take our place in the story.

So what do you want to pray for?

We pray for the things that we need, that the Father would bring the kingdom of heaven to earth in and through us.

And so we fill our mind with a vision of the kingdom of heaven.

We renew our mind around the character of the Father and the kind of world that he wants to bring to earth.

And then we pray the way Jesus taught us to on earth as it is in heaven.

Let me pray.

Our Father in heaven, we pray that your name would be recognized as holy in our lives, in our church.

Yahweh, you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.

You are love and justice perfectly married together.

And so we want to honor your name and give you glory.

We pray that your perfect rule, your reign, your kingdom would come, that your will would be done in and through us in order that earth may be like heaven.

And Father, as we step into that reality of the overlap, we have needs.

You know that we do.

And so we pray for all that we need.

We pray for our daily bread.

For those of us who have bread enough for the rest of this week, we're grateful for your provision.

And for those that are struggling, we thank you that you're a father who sees us, who knows what we need.

We pray for our daily bread.

And father, would you forgive us our debt?

We thank you that we have confidence that you will answer that prayer because of what the Lord Jesus has done.

He has taken our debt on himself on the cross.

And now we can live debt free alive in you.

So forgive us our debts, Lord.

And then help us to forgive those who have a debt against us.

Help us to receive your grace and then to breathe it out again.

And Father, don't lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Protect us.

In the name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

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