The Lord's Prayer E-Book

Kevin DeYoung

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Foundational Tools for Our Faith
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Bestselling Author Kevin DeYoung Explores Jesus's Foundational Prayer Christians know the importance of prayer, but the act of praying can be a real challenge. Some have the desire, but not always the will; others worry they don't do it well. Books about prayer usually emphasize spiritual discipline, but that can foster more guilt than reassurance. So how can Christians improve their prayer life, embracing the privilege of communicating with God?  In The Lord's Prayer, Kevin DeYoung closely examines Christ's model for prayer, giving readers a deeper understanding of its content and meaning, and how it works in the lives of God's people. Walking through the Lord's Prayer word by word, DeYoung helps believers gain the conviction to develop a stronger prayer life, and a sense of freedom to do so. - Concise, Inspiring Guide to Prayer: Examines Luke 11:1–2 and Matthew 6:5–9, gives biblical and historical context to each part of the Lord's Prayer, and ends with a doxology - Accessible Resource for Many Readers: A great guide for laypeople and students as well as for pastors, church leaders, and ministry leaders - Versatile Resource: A useful reference for seminary review or personal devotional reading

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“The Lord’s Prayer is the most important teaching ever about talking with God. That’s why it’s a subject of universal and perennial interest to followers of Jesus. It’s easy to learn yet infinitely profound. So many have thought so much and so deeply about it, yet no one writer can expound all its riches. Kevin DeYoung has added another helpful volume to the church’s library on the prayer. His book is fresh without trying to be clever, contemporary without forgetting church history, and concise without being simplistic. It’s exactly the kind of work we’ve come to expect from the pen of DeYoung and demonstrates why people find his preaching and writing so edifying.”

Donald S. Whitney, Professor of Biblical Spirituality and Associate Dean, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, Family Worship; Praying the Bible; and Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

“The Lord’s Prayer is familiar to many of us, but how well do we really understand each phrase? Scholarly works on the Lord’s Prayer can turn out to be surprisingly complex. Here is a clear, grace-filled, practical exposition that will benefit readers of all levels. DeYoung helps readers see the place of the Lord’s Prayer in the context of all of Scripture and how it relates to Christ himself.”

Brandon D. Crowe, Professor of New Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary

“As part of listening to a daily liturgy podcast, I pray the Lord’s Prayer. I look forward to it as a highlight of each day, and it never feels like a ritual. Kevin DeYoung’s book encourages me in my daily routine, ignites my passion for praying the Lord’s Prayer, and solidifies my understanding of the petitions I gladly voice. The Lord’s Prayer is clear and direct, concise and profound—so too is DeYoung’s highly recommended book!

Gregg R. Allison, Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, Sojourners and Strangers; Roman Catholic Theology and Practice; and Historical Theology

“Kevin DeYoung has given us a brief, encouraging, insightful look at the Lord’s Prayer. He combines for us his own meditations and learning and adds some ideas about this prayer from the collective wisdom of the past. The result is what we would expect from this author: a pastoral, clear, simple (not simplistic), inspiring, and biblical teaching on the best-known prayer that ever came from the lips of our Lord. ”

Miguel Núñez, Teaching Pastor, International Baptist Church of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Founding President, Wisdom & Integrity Ministries

“In his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, DeYoung reminds us that a glorious vision of our God moves us to pray, and he explains the words of our Lord Jesus that we may know what to pray. Without limiting us to just one form, Kevin shows us that Jesus’s model prayer provides the very foundation we need to sustain a vibrant life of communion with the living God in prayer. If you want to grow in prayer, take up and read. Then put it into practice.”

Juan R. Sanchez, Senior Pastor, High Pointe Baptist Church, Austin, Texas; author, The Leadership Formula

“Even though one of the greatest privileges we have as Christians is to come to our heavenly Father in prayer, we often struggle to pray. The Lord’s Prayer begins with how we should pray, expounds on what Jesus taught us to pray, and ends in a crescendo of God-exalting prayer. It will give you a sense of the greatness of the God who listens to our prayers, which will spur you on to pray. Read this book, then read it again with someone in your church.”

Keri Folmar, Director of Women’s Ministries, United Christian Church of Dubai; author, The Good Portion: Scripture

“Is it true that familiarity breeds contempt? I sure hope not, especially as it relates to the Lord’s Prayer. Many Christians can recite this prayer of Jesus by heart, but they may not realize how helpful it can be to both jump-start and sustain their often inert prayer life. With his usual clarity and profundity, Kevin DeYoung walks us through the Lord’s Prayer, revealing how it can be a foundation for all of our communion with God. So take up and read, because this book will help propel deeper faith in and stronger commitment to the gift that is prayer.”

Julius J. Kim, President, The Gospel Coalition; Professor of Practical Theology, Westminster Seminary California

The Lord’s Prayer

Other books in the Foundational Tools for Our Faith series:

The Ten Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them (2018)

The Lord’s Prayer

Learning from Jesus on What, Why, and How to Pray

Kevin DeYoung

Foundational Tools for Our Faith series

The Lord’s Prayer: Learning from Jesus on What, Why, and How to Pray

Copyright © 2022 by Kevin DeYoung

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-5971-6 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-5974-7 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-5972-3 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-5973-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: DeYoung, Kevin, author.

Title: The Lord’s prayer : learning from Jesus on what, why, and how to pray / Kevin DeYoung.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2022. | Series: Foundational tools for our faith | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021028858 (print) | LCCN 2021028859 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433559716 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433559723 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433559747 (epub) | ISBN 9781433559730 (mobipocket)

Subjects: LCSH: Lord’s prayer. | Prayer—Christianity. | Jesus Christ—Teachings.

Classification: LCC BV230 .D49 2022 (print) | LCC BV230 (ebook) | DDC 226.9/6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028858

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028859

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-02-08 01:28:43 PM

To the faithful saints at Christ Covenant who pray for their pastor without ceasing

Contents

1  When You Pray

2  Our Father

3  Our Desire

4  Our Daily Bread

5  Our Debts

6  Our Plea

7  His Glory

Study Guide

Notes

General Index

Scripture Index

1

When You Pray

Is there any activity more essential to the Christian life, and yet more discouraging in the Christian’s life, than prayer?

We know we should pray. We want to pray (or at least we want to want to pray). We admire those who do pray. And yet when it comes to actually praying, most of us feel like failures.

If someone asked us right now, “How is your prayer life going?” very few of us would be happy for the question and confident in our response. We wish we prayed more often. We wish we prayed longer. We wish we prayed better. I bet none of us anticipates getting to the end of our lives and thinking to ourselves, “You know what? I feel really good about what my prayer life has been all these years.” We are much more apt to resonate with the question I read from a pastor several years ago as he reflected on his own life and prayer: “How can something I’m so bad at be God’s will for my life?”

I’ve read a lot of books on prayer over the years. The best ones make me hopeful and grateful that God invites my prayers. Too many of the books, however, make even the most earnest Christian feel like a failure for doing anything else besides prayer. I remember reading a classic book on prayer early in my ministry. It was inspirational at first but deflating by the end. The problem may very well have been in my heart, but as I recall the book, it was a relentless exhortation to more committed prayer. In my experience, nonstop focus on the ought of prayer stirs up the Christian at first but quickly wears off, leaving in its wake more guilt than prayer. While there may be a short season where you say, “Yes, I’m going to pray more,” over the long haul you just feel this low- to medium-grade guilt for not praying enough.

But the Lord’s Prayer is different. It doesn’t focus on the will to pray, at least not explicitly. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to pray.

A Prayer for the Ages

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Lord’s Prayer. Throughout church history, new converts and children have been discipled chiefly in three areas: the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. For most of the last two millennia, it was assumed that if you were a Christian, you knew, memorized, and frequently prayed the Lord’s Prayer.

In one sense, John 17 is more precisely the Lord’s Prayer. It is the longest recorded prayer in Scripture from the Lord Jesus. What we know as the Lord’s Prayer is not the prayer Jesus prayed (at least not exactly—how could he say, “Forgive us our debts”?), but the prayer he taught his disciples to pray.

There are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer, one in Luke and the more familiar one in Matthew. I don’t think one prayer is dependent upon the other. A simpler explanation is that Jesus, like any itinerant preacher, taught on the same things over and over, with different words and in slightly different ways.

In Luke 11:1–2 Jesus’s teaching is prompted by the disciples’ request, “Lord, teach us to pray” (v. 1). They must have heard something in the way Jesus was praying that made them think, “We have a lot to learn.” Notice what Jesus did not talk about in response to their request. He didn’t teach them how long their prayers should be, or at what time of day they should pray, or how many times each day they should pray, or what they should feel as they pray, or whether they should be standing or sitting or kneeling, or if they should close their eyes and fold their hands, or whether they should lift their hands and eyes to heaven.

It’s not that concern about those things is wrong. But surely it’s instructive that Jesus was most concerned with what they prayed, more than with when or where or for how long. This may be the most obvious and most important lesson to learn from Jesus about prayer. We can pray in the morning or in the evening, for a long time or a short time, with eyes open or eyes shut. There is freedom in a great many elements of prayer. But (1) we must not neglect praying, and (2) we must pray for the sort of things Jesus tells us to pray for.

The passage in Matthew 6:5–9 is part of Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7). You’ve probably realized that before. What you may not have noticed is that this section in the Sermon on the Mount covers the three foundational acts of Jewish piety: almsgiving (6:1–4), prayer (6:5–15), and fasting (6:16–18). These were the “spiritual disciplines” for first-century Jews (they would have memorized much of the Bible, but most couldn’t read it daily because much of the population was illiterate, and individual families did not have Scripture scrolls in their homes). If they made New Year’s resolutions back then, they would have thought of giving to the poor, praying, and fasting.

Unlike Jesus’s teaching in Luke, here in Matthew Jesus is concerned not just with the what of prayer but with the how of prayer. Specifically, Jesus wants to make sure we are praying for the right reasons from the right heart. In fact, that is his central concern in discussing all three acts of piety. When you give to the needy, don’t make a big deal out of it. When you pray, don’t do it to look good. And when you fast, don’t draw attention to yourself. Jesus understands the pride and vanity that dwell in every human heart. Being religious doesn’t mean you no longer seek vainglory. In fact, being religious is one of the chief ways in almost every culture that men and women find ways to nurture their pride and their vanity. What better way to look impressive before others than to be spiritually impressive?

So don’t think for a moment, “Well, I’m a Christian, I go to church, and I’m spiritual and religious. I’m not in danger of these things.” Actually those realities may mean we are in particular danger.

Of Course We Pray

Before we get into those specifics, however, look at the first four words of Matthew 6:5: “And when you pray . . .” Jesus doesn’t have to teach his disciples that they should pray. That was already a given. He assumed they would pray, and they would have understood that prayer was not something for super-spiritual people but something that every Jew did. Don’t think, “Prayer is what pastors and missionaries do,” or, “Prayer is something I will do when I’m older.” Prayer is for everyone who is a true follower of God.

While it can be hard to know exactly when certain Jewish traditions developed, it seems clear that by the time of Jesus, prayer was offered in the synagogue three times a day.1 This may have grown up out of Daniel’s practice of praying three times a day (Dan. 6:10), or perhaps it goes back to Psalm 55:17: “Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.” Typically, the time of synagogue prayer began with a recitation of the Shema (Deut. 6:4) followed by the Eighteen Benedictions. These benedictions are not in your Bible, but they deal with biblical themes. In fact, you can hear echoes in the Lord’s Prayer of some of the language in them. These were a series of prayers asking God to bless Israel. We don’t know exactly when they were codified, but the main development of the prayer almost certainly took place before the destruction of the temple in AD 70.2

If that’s the case, Jesus and his disciples would have been familiar with these prayers. Jesus could assume not only that his disciples would have times of private prayer (like Jesus did), but more obviously that they would regularly attend times of corporate prayer (think of the words “our” and “us” in the Lord’s Prayer). When someone asks, “How is your prayer life?” we probably think, “How am I doing with my daily devotionals first thing in the morning?” That’s not bad. But Jesus’s disciples probably thought of corporate gatherings where they came together and prayed. Think about the Lord’s Prayer itself. There is not one example of a singular pronoun in the model prayer Jesus gave to his disciples.

No one—not Jesus, not his followers—questioned that God’s people would pray. The same is no less true today. If you are a part of the family of God, you will talk to your Father. If you never talk to your earthly father (if he is alive), especially if you live in the same house, something is very dysfunctional. Of course we talk to God in prayer. He is our heavenly Father. You can’t be a Christian and not pray. There is no such thing as a nonpraying Christian.

How Should We Pray?

We will get to the Lord’s Prayer itself in the next chapter. That is the what of prayer. For this chapter, we need to focus on the how.

According to Jesus, there are two big no-no’s when it comes to how we pray: don’t be like the hypocrites, and don’t be like the pagans. First, then, Jesus does not want us to be like hypocrites when we pray:

When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt. 6:5–6)

Let’s make sure we understand the word hypocrite. The Greek word hypokrites means “play actor.” As a negative label, it means someone who puts on a mask and plays a part, someone who pretends to be something he is not. And that’s very much the meaning of our English word hypocrite. Hypocrites profess to believe one thing but actually live a completely different way. A well-known vegetarian who eats bacon every night, a loud opponent of the tobacco industry who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, a champion of family values who sleeps with prostitutes—these are hypocrites. They pretend to be what they are not. And specifically, their pretense is for the applause and esteem of others.

Too often, Christians think of hypocrites as people who do one thing but feel another. But that’s not hypocrisy. Hypocrites publicize one set of beliefs but live by a different set of beliefs. When you come to church but don’t feel like it, that’s more like faithfulness. When you do the right thing in your marriage even when you don’t feel much in love, that’s fidelity. I’ve heard too many times, “Pastor, I would be a hypocrite to stay in this marriage because I’m not in love anymore.” Or, “I would be a hypocrite to come to worship when I don’t feel like worshiping.” Or, “I would be a hypocrite to pray since I’m not sure what I believe and feel distant.” Doing what is right when you don’t feel like doing what is right is maturity. Professing one thing in public but living a different way in private is hypocrisy.

We can clearly see what Jesus has in mind from Matthew