My name is Denny Finnegan. I’m the pastor here at Mansfield First, and we welcome you back to join us in this time of worship. For those of you for whom this is your first time, we also welcome you, and I wish that we could be together where I could actually meet you in person. But in light of what the Ohio governor recently decided, it looks like we’re going to be doing these virtual worship services for a while longer. I do look forward to that time when we will have the opportunity to be back together.
Before we move into our time of worship, there are just a few announcements I want to share with you. I will do my best to keep these brief. If you go online and download the PDF for the bulletin, you’ll be able to find these announcements down at the end of the order of worship after the sermon outline.
One announcement is this: I want to say thanks to all the people who are continuing to bring in canned food and fresh food items for People Helping People. As they accumulate, I take them down on Mondays or Tuesdays, and the people really do look forward to these items. So please continue to do this; it is a meaningful ministry we have.
Number two: If this worship service blesses you, there is a link that you can copy and paste and then email to friends to share this service with them.
The third thing is, if you have any particular prayer requests, please call them into the church office. Carrie will get those to me; she is here Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between eight and one. But we also have voicemail, so please leave it either on voicemail or get them to Carrie. She will get them to me, and we will make sure that they get to the prayer chain so that we can continue to support our folks in this season of crisis for all kinds of needs that may arise.
Then just one other thing to mention: We don’t have this in the announcements for this week, but since the governor just announced about these changes—or should I say things that will not change—we will be celebrating virtual communion again on Sunday, May 17th. So I just thought I would give you a forewarning about that.
But now, as we prepare to move to worship, one of the things I believe is very important for us to do, as I’ve mentioned on other Sundays, is to confess together what our church mission statement is. This helps us see how Jesus desires to use this time not only for growing us as children of God but also sending us out as servants of God.
So, if you would join with me, the mission statement is on the screen behind me but will also be on the video feed as well. Please: We serve to build relationships; we build relationships to share the gospel. That is our desire for our congregation, for each one of us to be a minister for Jesus Christ.
Before we begin our call to worship, which is used to help prepare us to give ourselves to Jesus, I am going to ask if you would please pray with me so that the Holy Spirit can make real our mission statement and this act of worship.
Let us pray.
Holy Spirit, we say that you are welcome in our homes, in our lives, and in this church. During this time of worship, we ask that you would be at work to teach us, to write those things on our hearts that we hear through the worship, through the prayer, and through the sermon that will help us to be kingdom people—to help us to grow as children of God. I speak the Lord’s blessing upon all of you who are watching this worship service in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Would you please join with me in our call to worship that comes from Psalm 63? I will do both parts to help lead us in this beginning with mine:
Oh God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name, I will lift up my hands.
And this final part for all of us together: My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night.
For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. Amen.
As a part of our response and preparation for worship, would you join with me now in our prayer of confession? At the end, we’ll pause for a bit to allow each one of us to offer up our own personal prayers, and then I will also give an assurance—a promise of pardon from the scriptures.
Please join with me:
God of mercy, you sent Jesus Christ to seek and save the lost. We confess that we have strayed from you and turned aside from your way. We are misled by pride, for we see ourselves as pure when we are stained, and as great when we are small and broken.
By our sin, we have failed to love, to comfort, and to serve others. We have neglected justice and ignored your holy word. Have mercy, O God, and forgive our sin. Return us to paths of righteousness by the power of the Holy Spirit. Transform our lives that we may become more like Jesus Christ, our Savior. In his name, we pray. Amen.
As we now move to personal confession, whether you close your eyes or keep them open, the word pride really stands out as something that does mislead us. So, ask the Lord where pride may be misleading you from serving and following Jesus in the way you should.
Let us confess privately right now.
Lord Jesus, there are so many subtle and even not-so-subtle ways that we can find ourselves valuing our opinions as the truth rather than simply being our perspective. Our pride can lead us into putting ourselves above other people or even putting other people down.
We ask, Lord Jesus, that you would show us the subtle and even not-so-subtle ways, Lord Jesus, where our pride and the temptation to pride can lead us into doing all kinds of things we shouldn’t do and not doing the kinds of things that you probably want us to do.
Lord Jesus, we present ourselves to you, and what a wondrous thought it is to know that you have promised that if we confess our sins, we have this blessed assurance that you are faithful and just to cleanse us of our sins, to remove it from us, and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Thank you, Lord Jesus. It is in your precious name that we pray. Amen.
At this time, I do have the privilege and honor to lead us in a time of prayer through song, where we get to declare God’s assurance for us through blessed assurance:
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God. Born of His spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
Perfect submission, perfect delight! Angels descending bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
Perfect all is at rest; I am my Savior; I’m happy and blessed, watching and waiting, looking above…
This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. Amen.
I kind of miss this part of the worship service where we used to be able to have a time with our children. But I know that Ashley is sending out some really good stuff to the families of both the preschool families as well as our church families and the kids and grandkids in there to help the instruction continue.
Even though I can’t do the sermon in the box, something else I also miss out on is this is usually the part of the worship service where we get to worship God with the offering of our tithes. First, I just simply want to say thank you to those who are continuing to send in their tithes, either by a check or through the QR code in online giving.
This church is still ministering to people, and even these services are having an opportunity to get to other people. So I would just encourage you to prayerfully consider the tithe that the Lord would have you give in order for us to continue to serve the Lord through this congregation. For those of you who may not be members, whether or not you tithe, this church finds somewhere where the Lord would have you be a blessing to those people, whatever ministry that might be.
So let’s just pray for those tithes that have come in already and that will be.
Let’s just give thanks.
Lord Jesus, I praise you and thank you that you provide for us in so many amazing ways. And Lord Jesus, even now we give you thanks that people have been continuing to support the ministry that you’re doing in and through this church.
For those gifts that are coming in, Lord, we now lift them up and commit them to you and release them to you, Lord, and ask that you would use them in powerful ways for your kingdom. It’s in Jesus’ precious name that we pray. Amen.
Excuse me. I’m very thankful for the opportunity to share God’s word with you. I also just want to remind you that at the end of the order of worship, right before the announcements and right after the order of worship, there is a sermon outline. If you would like to use this, it could be one way that you could take notes or simply remember some of what the Lord has me share with you today.
Today, we’re going to be continuing on in this worship series, taking a look at Matthew chapter 6 and some of the instruction that Jesus gives in what is known as the larger body of the Sermon on the Mount that begins with Beatitudes in chapter five.
In particular, for us, as we are working our way through Matthew chapter 6, two weeks ago we talked about Jesus’ instruction about how we can get into bad habits in our acts of compassion by trying to make a show of it and not really doing it for God.
Then last week we spoke about Jesus’ instruction about the bad habits that can take place when we pray—how we can get into bad habits. In particular, for this week, what we are going to be looking at is the way that Jesus says is the way God likes us to pray.
We are going to be looking at a very well-known prayer that probably many of us have been praying for a very long time. We’re going to be taking a look at what Jesus teaches in Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 through 15, for that which is known as either the Our Father or the Lord’s Prayer, depending on which tradition we come from in worship.
At this time, before I share these verses with you, I’m going to ask the Holy Spirit to be our teacher and our counselor and prepare for this. So, please join with me in prayer.
Holy Spirit, you are the counselor. You are the one that Jesus said would come alongside us to teach us in all truth and even to teach us about sin and unrighteousness in our world. So, Holy Spirit, we invite you to please help us. As I share the word of God, that you would be speaking into our hearts and going beyond our minds to those depths of our lives where we need to receive your word.
So, Lord Jesus, I present all those who are hearing this word to you right now, and I speak the blessing of the word of God to be received into your hearts in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hear what Jesus taught about prayer to us. He said this:
Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I think that most people would agree that Jesus gave us this prayer to show us how God likes us to pray. But I keep running into many who do not really understand what kind of prayer it is that Jesus gave us. Many Christians look at these several verses and think that this is the prayer Jesus wants us to pray.
But now I’m going to say something that will probably shock many of you, maybe even upset some of you: These verses are not the prayer Jesus meant for us to pray.
What do I mean by that? In Jesus’ day, rabbis gave prayer outlines to be the prayer topics their followers were meant to pray, which is what these verses are—prayer topics.
And to support what I am saying, let me use Jesus’ own words from Matthew 6:7 when Jesus said this: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.”
Why would Jesus give that instruction to his followers and then teach them a prayer that would end up doing exactly that—heap up empty phrases?
Because I know many people who will recite these verses as their prayer, but they never once stopped to think about what it is that Jesus told them to pray. The whole purpose Jesus had in giving these verses to us is so that these verses would become our topics for prayer.
Jesus wants us to actually stop, listen, and interact in the secret place with our Father in heaven through these verses.
So this morning, I am going to greatly challenge many of you to rethink your understanding of how to pray this prayer. My hope is to show how Jesus meant for us to pray it as a list of prayer topics.
We will begin where Jesus began: Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
That’s verse 9. Jesus starts off our instruction for prayer with this declaration for very important reasons. Because if we cannot get this part of our relationship with God the Father right, then the whole rest of the prayer could end up becoming nothing more than heaps of empty phrases.
Consider what Jesus is asking us to declare about God through the statement: Take the first phrase, “Our Father in heaven.” To declare God to be our Father is to say that our Father in heaven is our only source of existence, and that is the basic meaning of the word Father.
We exist and have our life only by the good pleasure and will of our Father in heaven. But what kind of heavenly Father is He?
And that’s why the next phrase is just as important: “Hallowed be your name.” The word hallowed also means sacred, respected, and blessed. This verse, with these phrases together, is a declaration of God’s supreme and unique holiness. To declare this when we pray is to believe that God’s very character can only be holy and that nothing can come into existence apart from Him.
This verse is why Jesus calls us into the secret place with our Father in heaven, because God does not want us to just have intellectual theory about His greatness, His majesty, and His holiness. God wants us to know deep in our heart what it means to experience Him in His greatness, His majesty, and His holiness as His beloved child.
So when we pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,” Jesus wants us to rejoice in who God our Father is. Would you like to know how?
Here is a personal application: Begin your times of prayer with praise. Now, like me, you’ll probably experience that there will be times when our hearts may feel too heavy or too sad to praise. So many things are happening in our world that can rob us of joy. But I’ve learned that God understands that and still welcomes us in those times.
But praise is a powerful way to transform our sadness into singing as we remember who God is. So, there will be times when praise must be a choice and not a feeling.
Particularly when I need to change my attitude into praise, I practice what is called the ABCs of praise. Some of you may have heard this before. But what you do is you take the letter A, and then you think of at least one characteristic of God that begins with the letter A, such as God is Awesome, God is Amazing—God, you are Absolute and All-knowing. God, you are All-powerful.
You turn those characteristics into declarations of praise, and if you’re really eager, you can work your way through the alphabet. But I would encourage you not to rush through this time of praise with God because sometimes I found that just one letter from the alphabet, whether it’s one word or several words from that part of the alphabet, evoke all kinds of praise for the character of God.
This is another reason why we need to be in the secret place with God, so we have the freedom to practice praise without worrying what others think.
When our sense of trust in the greatness, the majesty, and the holiness of God strengthens through our praise, only then it seems, I believe, are we ready for what Jesus teaches next: Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
That’s in Matthew 6:10. This declaration of prayer is about surrender—surrender to God’s will over our own. But why would we ever want to surrender to God’s will if we do not really have any confidence whatsoever in God’s greatness, His majesty, and His holiness?
For example, if you go for a boat ride, we need to have confidence that the boat will keep us afloat wherever we plan to travel. And in order for the boat to do its job, we have to surrender to the character and nature of the boat we have chosen.
People don’t pay for a cruise just to stand on the wharf and wave goodbye as the people sail away, nor do they put life vests on while they’re standing there.
So, when we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are declaring our confidence that only God can keep the different areas of our lives and our world afloat, just as God is already doing in heaven.
If there is fear or anxiousness in certain areas of our lives, then most likely the boat we’re clinging to is not God’s character, or our confidence in God’s greatness, His majesty, and holiness has leaks.
Joy is a choice that comes from our trust in the character of God. Would you like your confidence in God’s character to grow?
Well, here is another personal application: Surrender to God’s kingdom desires. There are two ways that we can do this.
First of all, think of an area in your life where you are currently experiencing fear or anxiousness. Now go to God with it and ask for His help to surrender it to Him. Again, this is another reason why we need to go in the secret place with God.
I’ve discovered that sometimes we need privacy for our panic. It’s hard to surrender our control to God and stay in that secret place until you’re able to let go of it, at least one finger at a time, surrendering it to God. Repeat this daily until God’s peace in you grows along with your surrender to Him.
Here’s the second way I’ll mention to practice surrender to God: Think of an area in your life where you know you have never really asked God for His opinions about it, let alone really wanted to surrender it to God.
Then again, stay there until you start releasing control of it to God. Again, repeat this as often as you need to until God’s peace in you grows along with your sense of surrender.
We should also be praying in this way for our families, our jobs, our communities, our nation, and so on and so forth.
Now, those are the first two parts that we’ve looked at of this topic for prayer. Are you ready for the third one? Because here is the third way that Jesus taught us to pray, and this is also an area of surrender.
Jesus said, “Pray, give us this day our daily bread.”
Now, if you thought it took confidence in God’s greatness, His majesty, and His holiness to surrender to His will, think about the level of confidence we also need in Him for His provision.
Well, “Your kingdom come” seeks the provision of God’s will to be done throughout the earth as it is in heaven. “Give us this day our daily bread” seeks the will of God’s provision to be done in and through our lives and our world.
Believe it or not, an important part of God’s will is His care for our daily needs.
So as a personal application, seek God’s kingdom desires for our daily needs.
What is an area of your life you are currently experiencing fear or anxiousness, like we asked before? Think about a daily need that you’re concerned about. Go to God with it, and ask for His help.
Sometimes God says yes; sometimes He says no; and sometimes He says wait. But keep praying about it until you sense God’s peace to let go of it or until you see His answer.
Now, let’s go to the fourth topic of prayer, which might even be more challenging than what we’ve already looked at.
Jesus said we are to pray, “And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Now here again is another act of surrender to the kingdom will of God, because it is God’s desire for us to treat others in the same way He treats us—with God’s mercy and God’s grace.
In fact, living in God’s forgiveness is such an important part of God’s will for our lives that Jesus gave two more verses of instruction and command about it in Matthew 6, verses 14 through 15, saying:
“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Jesus intentionally used two different words to describe the completeness not only of what God forgives us for but also what we are to forgive others for.
The two words are “debtors” and “trespasses.” Now when you bring both these words together, they point to what people owe us that they have taken from us.
Now, this could be material things that God has provided to us, or it could be non-material things God gives to us, like the truth, honor, and respect He desires for us to have.
As forgiveness relates to God because it says, “Forgive us our debts,” it points to what we have deprived God of that God deserves from us—truth, honor, respect, worship, and our service.
Both these words for sin point back to the Ten Commandments.
So how would we practice praying this? Well, again, let me offer you another personal application: It’s where we need to learn to surrender anger and grudges to God.
Now, I am not saying that anger is a sign of unforgiveness. Anger, first and foremost, is a sign of pain—of something that has been hurt in our lives that needs to be healed. But like we’ve discovered with physical wounds, if they are left untreated, they can fester and become infectious.
When we do not deal with someone’s trespasses against us through the power of God’s forgiveness, we allow their trespasses against us to take up residence in our lives rent-free. It becomes a grudge, an offense, or a resentment.
In other words, the power of their trespasses against us continues to live in our lives. The way to practice forgiveness begins when we are willing to be honest with Jesus about how we feel, as well as let Jesus be honest with us about how He feels about what we feel.
Because sometimes the things we’re offended by aren’t really someone else’s sin; it might be our own.
The word forgive means to let go. So when we find ourselves in this situation of anger that persists, that may even become a grudge, we need to ask Jesus first of all to show us who that person is that we’re holding onto grudges, offenses, or resentments with.
Then we need to ask Jesus to help us let go of what we believe they owe us.
Here is just one last topic of prayer that we’re going to look at that Jesus challenges us to practice: “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Some translate this as “from evil.” I believe it’s better translated as “from the evil one.”
Now why is this prayer topic important? Well, in case you haven’t noticed, sometimes our world is not a very nice place. And that is not God’s fault.
But what is our privilege is to see God transform our world back into what He originally designed it to be before human beings started sinning and messing things up. God never meant for us to be passive about this. The topic of prayer that we’re looking at—“your kingdom come, deliver us from the evil one”—is also another way to pray your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven through each one of us.
The Lord wants to place the devil and the kingdom of darkness on notice that Jesus has conquered the power of sin and death—that Jesus has overcome this world.
This practice of prayer is meant to be proactive, not reactive, so that we can demonstrate Jesus’ victory first in our lives and then secondly through our lives as we pray for our families and our communities to be victorious for God’s kingdom.
So how would we practice praying this? One last application that I’m going to ask you to practice at home: Pray for God’s victory to go forth.
I will mention two different ways we can pray this.
The first way is this: Praying for personal victory. Go to the secret place with Jesus. Ask Jesus to show you just one area of your life where He wants to give you victory over sin.
It could be a way that you keep trespassing against someone else or against God. It could be even for victory over the ways we allow the devil to lie to us that evokes fear in our lives.
Let Jesus be honest with you about this. Help you just let Him help you see it as He sees it. And then, like Jesus did in the wilderness, as Jesus reveals the truth about this, tell the devil that you reject his advice and invitations on how to deal with this part of your life.
Then tell Jesus that you will take His invitation and guidance for what’s going on in this part of your life.
But then there’s a second area that we can pray for: We need to pray for community victory. Ask Jesus to show you just one thing that’s going on in your community, in your state, or our world that gets Him angry. Then ask Jesus how He would have you pray about it. Then do it.
To close and to summarize, here are three things to remember about how Jesus likes us to pray:
First thing is this: That’s really important—Jesus did not give us the Our Father or the Lord’s Prayer for meaningless repetition.
Second, Jesus meant this prayer He taught us to be our topics for prayer, where we linger and spend time with it.
And then finally, Jesus will always help us pray as we ought to pray.
So let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, I praise you and thank you that you’re amazing. All the different things you taught us are so practical, so powerful, so world-overcoming. Your kingdom is meant to come, and your will to be done on earth as it is already being done in heaven.
This prayer you taught us, if we pause and if we spend time with each verse, can be powerful to transform not only our own lives but our families, our communities, and the world around us.
So Lord, I lift up my brothers and sisters who are hearing this; let them take up that challenge, Lord Jesus. Let them not try to rush through this prayer, but help us, Lord, to linger with you in these prayer topics as we grow closer to you through it and with you.
May you be blessed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’m very thankful for the many truths that come out in scripture, and like we already sang with that blessed assurance, there are so many different ways that God blesses us in both the good times and the bad.
I’m going to ask for you to join with me in this other declaration of God’s blessing. If you don’t know the words…
[Applause]
Your name in the land that is…
When I’m found in the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness…
[Applause]
Every blessing you pour out, I’ll turn back to praise.
When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord; blessed be