Sermon: A Good Kind of Dependence

Sermon: “A Good Kind of Dependence” (the Lord’s prayer part 5)
by Matt Kennedy
August 29th, 2010
text: Luke 11:3

Let’s briefly recap the lessons learned so far in our discussion of prayer in Luke 11.

1. Authenticity in prayer is not measured by the emotions you feel when praying but by whether or not you truly mean what you say. It’s what you mean not how you feel.

2. Both written/memorized prayers and free spontaneous prayers can be completely sincere and authentic and both can be insincere and inauthentic.

3. God works through the prayers of his people to accomplish his purposes in the world and in their lives. God has built your prayer into his eternal plan. He uses prayer to change things. Your prayer, then, is powerful not because it changes God’s mind but God uses prayer to change things and people.

4. God is our loving Father who will only give good and perfect gifts to his children. When God says no or delays it is always the best thing for you and for the circumstance.
       
5. God uses prayer to change you. To bring you into conformity with his will.
       
That last point is where we left off last week and where we pick up this week. Naturally, when I come to God, I want many things for me. Left to my own natural inclinations I wouldn’t pray that God’s name be hallowed or for his kingdom to come. I’d just ask for stuff for me. And yet glorifying his holiness and extending his Kingdom, those two things, are why I was created and redeemed. I was born and born again—brought from spiritual death to do just those things. In fact everybody is here to glorify God and pour themselves out in service to his kingdom. If you’re wondering about the meaning of life, congratulations, now you know. You were born to glorify God and you won’t be happy until you start to live in accordance with that purpose.
       
But because I’m a sinner and focused on me, I get confused and tend to think that the purpose of my life is to experience pleasure by amassing stuff and gaining power over others—to rule as the demigod of my own private kingdom. It’s not bad to want happiness—its just that I think serving me is the best way to find it when in fact I will only find joy by giving myself up to Jesus Christ and pleasing him. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:24) Praying for God’s name to be seen as holy is a stretch for me because I don’t feel it, but as I do it, God works in me and my priorities and desires are brought into alignment with the purposes of God. And ultimately my wants and God’s purposes meet. I will always live to please myself but one day, I’ll find pleasure only in doing the things God created me to do. I’ll be a sanctified hedonist. Living for pleasure…but finding pleasure only in doing what God has called me to do.
       
In verses 3-4 the Lord’s prayer takes a turn.
       
“Give us each day our Daily Bread”

Jesus points us back to a significant event in the history of Israel. Who knows what event? How did the Hebrews survive for 40 years of wandering? Every day, save the Sabbath, God covered the ground with bread. Enough for every Hebrew family to be satisfied—not simply to stave off starvation. “whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.”(Exodus 16:18) Who knows what happened to Manna that was saved overnight? It turned rotten. God intended for manna to be daily bread.

Imagine what that must have been like. There were more than 600,000 people in the Exodus. The land could not support them. They all knew that. They knew that their lives, the lives of their families and children were utterly dependent upon God supernaturally giving them bread daily in a land with nothing to eat. That’s the experience Jesus wants us to recall.

As his followers, we’re on an exodus from enslavement to sin that leads to death to freedom from sin and eternal life. To pray for your daily bread is to acknowledge that every step of this exodus, you’re utterly dependent on God alone.

American’s don’t think of ourselves that way. We’re competent, self-reliant. We get the job done. We don’t need anyone’s help. Isn’t Jesus fortunate that we’ve chosen to follow him? Imagine what he could do through people as excellent as we are? That’s the unspoken but implicit boast of our culture. It’s not a new one. “God helps those who themselves”. You work hard and well using you own mental and physical strength and God seeing just how hard and well you’re working comes in to grant you success and prosperity because he’s just so impressed because we’re just awesome. “I’m rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” That was the boast of the church in Laodicea (revelation 3). They thought they had it all together. Externally wealthy, a growing church, a successful church in every way full of competent and accomplished people.

Who knows what Jesus said in response? “You’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” Jesus sees right through the facade.

“Wait a minute, I work hard. I’ve always done my best and my best is pretty good. I’ve made my way in this world through brains, ingenuity and sweat.” How eager we are to boast, to claim personal and corporate credit for the gifts of God. That reminds me of the scientist—and I’m sure you’ve all heard this before or had it forwarded to you but it fits so I’m using it anyway—who said to God, “Creating life isn’t all that big a deal. I’ll do it in my test tube just as easily as you did it in the beginning.” “Okay, go for it.” So the scientist bent down and started to scoop up some dirt into his beaker and the Lord says, “oh no. You make your own dirt.”

The dirt, your mental capacity, natural skill, the strength of your body, the ingenuity, comes directly from God…not to mention literally every breath you take. “In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.” (Job 12:10) Every breath is an undeserved, unmerited, gift directly from God. Were he to remove his sustaining hand for one moment, I’d drop dead, the Cosmos would cease to exist. From God’s perspective atheism is pretty funny. Can you imagine sustaining, breath by breath, someone who uses the breath you give to run around claiming you don’t exist. Or when Christians who’ve been given one set of skills or gifts by grace look down their noses at other Christians who’ve been given less or different set of skills.

Christians of all people have no room to boast. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6-8) God did not help those who helped themselves, he came to us in Jesus Christ while we were helpless because we were helpless.

Praying for your daily bread daily, keeps that truth before your eyes. It humbles us in a good way. You might feel selfish when you ask God for money or clothes or a better job or success in various projects. You might feel sheepish when you ask God to help you out of a hole, especially if its one that you dug yourself…but not only is it not selfish to pray for those things, it’s vanity not to do so.

“I’ll pray for my friends because they need lots of help but me, hey I’m okay, I can manage.”

You can’t even manage to breath on your own, how can you get yourself out of that hole? How can you get that job or afford this or afford that. All things come from God—strength, food, shelter, breath. So come to him for everything. He wants you to. He invites you to. All good things in your life flow directly from his throne and both be grateful and seek more.
       
‘forgive us our sins”
       
This prayer, remember, is for believers in Jesus Christ. That’s important. Repentance is for disciples.
       
There are two ways to get confused here. The first is to assume the following: When I repented and trusted in Jesus, all my sins, past present and future, were forgiven, so I no longer need to repent.
       
The second way is to assume: When I came to Christ my sins up to that point were forgiven but no more. So every time I sin, I must repent otherwise I’ll lose my salvation.
     
The truth is right down the middle. Whoever turns away from himself and commits his or her life to Jesus Christ is covered by the righteousness of Christ and his sins, past present and future are transferred to Jesus and the punishment that is due to you is suffered by Jesus Christ on the cross. “But Jesus died 2000 years ago?” Yes, but God is eternal, he sees all time at once. Before you were conceived God saw every sin you would commit and he is able to apply that sin to the cross. So if you commit your life to Christ, your sin all of it, past present and future, is punished in and through Jesus’ death “God made him who had no since become sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God.” (2 cor 5:21)

Your present and future sins cannot endanger your eternal life with God. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1) “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27-28) If you are in Christ your sins do not and cannot stand between you and eternal life with God.

They can, however, and do impede your present personal relationship with him.

Every night the kids get a glass of milk before brushing their teeth and heading off to bed. Aedan and Rowan fight over who gets the spider man cup. Thursday night, Rowan got the cup first. He was standing in the kitchen holding onto it waiting for milk. Aedan, not knowing I was watching, grabbed the cup out of Rowan’s hand. Rowan screams. Aedan says: “Rowan had tried to steal my cup.” I wasn’t pleased. I was even angry. Aedan went tp bed without milk and had to apologize to Rowan. At no time was Aedan in danger of being disowned. He was certainly in danger of discipline but not in danger of being unfamilied. Aedan will always be my son because he was born that way. But he still has to repent when he does something to damage his relationship with me or anyone else in the family. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you were reborn into your Father’s household. You are always your father’s son or daughter. Nothing can change that. You will never be disowned. But you still have to repent when you sin. You can’t just go around hurting people and breaking things in the house with no consequences. And so since we, as sinners, are always breaking things and hurting people we are called to repent daily, repeatedly to God and to each other. That’s just part of being a member of God’s family.

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