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. 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 found 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 mean 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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