SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/2/2020 9:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “God’s
Purpose”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
6:9-15)
Message of the verses: “9 “Pray, then, in
this way: ’Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. 10’Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 11 ’Give us this day our
daily bread. 12 ’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors. 13 ’And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.’ 14 “For
if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also
forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not
forgive your transgressions.”
As
we look at what Jesus says in these verses there are times when we think that
perhaps that this was new teaching, but it was not new teaching as these
principles about prayer were taught in the Old Testament. We know that the scribes and the Pharisees
perverted what the Bible said about many things including prayer as we have
already looked at. However rabbinic
tradition was truer to Scripture in its teachings about prayer than perhaps about
anything else. We can see in both the
Talmud and the Midrash contains many great and lofty and also helpful teachings
about prayer.
From
the Jewish leaders knowledge of Scripture they believed that God wanted them to
pray, that He heard and He also responded to their prayers, and that praying
should be continual, similar to what Paul has written. Speaking of Paul and his writings we know
that Paul had a great deal of knowledge about the Old Testament as that was
what he was doing most of his life before the Lord called Him to Himself on the
road to Damascus as seen in Acts chapter nine.
MacArthur writes “From Scripture they also knew that prayer should
incorporate certain holiness, the desire to obey His commands, confession of
sin, concern for others, perseverance, and humility.
With
all of this said we know that something had gone wrong, and by Jesus’ day most
Jews had forgotten what the teaching of Scripture were and even forgot the
sound biblical teaching of their traditions.
There is nothing wrong with traditions as long as they go along with
what the Scripture teaches. The problem
was that most of the “new” traditions founded during Jesus’ day was not sound
as it seems that the scribes and Pharisees knew that they could not do the
things that were taught in the Word of God and so they tried to “take short
cuts” in order to satisfy themselves.
People still do this today, but instead the Bible teaches that we are
all sinners and can do nothing good for ourselves as far as taking care of our
sin problem and so we must realize this truth and turn to Jesus Christ who took
all of our sin upon us as He suffered and died on the cross and that death was
what satisfied God so He can now forgive us through Jesus Christ.
MacArthur
writes “After warning against those perversions that had so corrupted Jewish
prayer life, our Lord now gives a divine pattern by which kingdom citizens can pray in a way
that is pleasing to God.
“That
the prayer Jesus is about to give was not meant to be repeated as a prayer itself
is clear for several reasons. First, in
the present passage it is introduced with the words, ‘Pray, then, in this
way.’ In the account in Luke the
disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them to a prayer but to teach them how to
pray (Luke 11:1). Houtos oun (then, in this way) means literally, ‘Thus therefore,’
and frequently carried the idea of ‘along these lines’ or ‘in the following
manner.’ Second, Jesus had just warned
His followers not to pray with ‘meaningless repetition’ (v. 7). To then give a prayer whose primary purpose
was to be recited verbatim would have been an obvious contradiction of
Himself. Third, nowhere is the New
Testament—repeated by anyone or used in a repetitious, ritualistic manner by a
group.”
It
is my desire to finish this section in our next SD as there are still some
important things left in this section.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Remember that this is not a prayer to be
repeated, but to learn from how it is that I should pray.
My Steps of Prayer for Today: I desire to totally keep in mind that God is
still on the throne and desires me to trust Him with everything that is going
on in our country at this time of history.
11/2/2020 10:32 AM
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