Praying Like Jesus (Matthew 5-7) - Harvest Kuala Lumpur

Resource by Eric Weiner

When you read through the gospels, have you ever noticed how polarizing Jesus’s teachings were? It’s almost like he’s separating out the wheat from the chaff as he goes. Plenty of people come in the vicinity of Jesus. Plenty of people hear the teachings of Jesus. But not everybody gives their life to him. The same is true for people who encounter Jesus’s teachings today.

Religious people hate the Sermon of the Mount because they want something they can actually do. They want a moral system that justifies their goodness.But Jesus’s ethical system, sets the bar too high. It contains great ideals that don’t touch ground in the world of reality. What good is a set of morals that no one could ever live up to?

Hearing the sermon on the mount is like holding up a mirror to your soul.

A mirror tells you what’s really there. People don’t typically debate a mirror. Instead, you peer into it, and evaluate yourself according to what you see. A mirror shows you what’s really there.

But here’s the problem. When people who think they’re morally good walk up to the mirror of Jesus’s vision for how to live, it reveals that they’re not as beautiful as they thought. In fact, it’s so out of reach it’s not even worth attempting to do.

It turns them away because it’s unrealistic; nobody could ever live this way. How many of us have ever read the sermon on the mount and thought, if this is what’s required to be a good Christian I might as well stop now? I could never live up to this.

Other people reject Jesus’s teachings because it doesn’t fit their moral paradigm. They find the countercultural nature of Jesus’s sermon offensive. They just don’t see how it offers a better way to live.

I’ve shared before that years ago I spent some time in another part of Southeast Asia.

One time during that stint, my friend Mark and I spent like 4 hours talking with this guy in a coffee shop about the teachings of Jesus. Mark and I would go back and forth trying to answer his questions. And at one point in the conversation, we told him Jesus teaches to love your enemies.

I’ll never forget this. Our friend thinks about it for a second, leans in and says, “So you’re telling me, if Mark kills my fiance, Jesus wants me to love Mark? No. If Mark kills my fiance, I kill Mark.” We both kinda froze. I sat back and said to Mark,“I think he’s talking to you.”

He found the nature of Jesus’s teachings to be too counter to what he thought to be sane, practical, and good. How could loving my enemy possibly be a better way to live?

But see, I’ve also experienced what it’s like to walk in the path of withholding forgiveness and reviling those who hurt me that turned me into a bitter prisoner of someone else’s offense. I would recall the offense over and over again, and I would not wish that way of living on anyone. There’s freedom in forgiveness. There’s freedom in loving those who hurt you.

And then, of course, some people respond in faith. They receive Jesus. They say, no other culture, no other leader, no other faith teaches me how to live like you do. There’s freedom in your words. You have the words of eternal life – teach me.

See, Jesus’s teachings are polarizing. Some reject him and others receive him. But don’t come to hear the words of Jesus this morning expecting him to teach you how to be a good person. He’s not offering a prescription for a better life or saying if you start doing these 7 things you’ll be deserving of my love.

No, he’s giving the norms of what life in his Kingdom looks like. He’s offering a portrait of the kind of character that’s being formed in people who have been saved by grace through faith.

Jesus is not saying, here’s how you enter my kingdom. He’s saying, this is what people in my kingdom are like. Understanding that will change how you approach the Sermon because, first and foremost, you’ll start to see that this is a picture of the character of Jesus. And if you examine the gospels you’ll see that his life bears this out.

In the Sermon, Jesus calls out empty religion. He calls out the hypocrites and their false teachings. He’s saying, that way of life will lead to spiritual rot. Do you know what a hypocrite is? It’s a person who acts like someone they’re not. Or someone who doesn’t practice what he preaches.

But Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no hypocrisy in him. And for those who surrender their lives to him, the Sermon on the Mount becomes a picture of what it will look like for Christ to be formed in you.

See, Jesus is the Good Gardener, if you will. He knows how to cultivate good spiritual fruit. So let him tend the soil of your heart. Trusting in him makes all the difference. And the opening verses start to bear this out:

[1] – Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I want to state something obvious here. It’s called the sermon on the mount for reason. But I want to see if you notice the connection. Jesus went up on the mountain to teach. And his word was Law. If you look at the bookends, it says at the end of Matthew 7, people were astonished because “[Jesus] was teaching them as one who had authority” (Matt. 7:29).

What Jesus is doing here, is meant to remind you of another great teacher who ascended the mountain to teach people the Law of God. Moses.

Remember, God rescues his people from slavery in Egypt, he delivers them through the Red Sea, he brings them to Mount Sinai where Moses goes up the mountain. He gives them the Law. Does anyone remember what kind of response Israel had? This is right after the people heard the 10 Commandments:

[Ex. 20:18] – When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

BTW – this is the reason why there’s not an 11th commandment. As soon as God got to 10, people were holding their ears and closing their eyes. Can God stop talking to us? This is too much for us.

Do you see the connection? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes up on the mountain to teach. And in the sermon, not only does Jesus affirm the Law as good, but he starts to unpack the fullness of its intent.

He starts saying things like, you think murder is wrong, but I’m telling you anger is murder in seed form. Don’t cultivate it.

You think adultery is wrong, but I’m telling you lusting after someone not your spouse is adultery in seed form. Don’t cultivate it.

What you practice in private will eventually be cultivated for public consumption, and these habits produce all kinds of wicked and destructive fruit.

And then, when summarizing this whole first section, Jesus says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

But when you see that word perfect, don’t think some of one who aced the test. Someone who got all the answers right. I want you to think of fruit. The idea of being perfect means becoming fully grown. For a fruit to reach completion it means that it’s fully ripened. And when you go to pick a fruit it’s either good to eat or rotten waste.

Jesus is saying, when it’s finally time to pick the fruit off the tree, I want you to be spiritually healthy. And the only way to be spiritually healthy is to abide in Jesus and to trust what he’s cultivating in you.

I want to point out 2 general thoughts from those first few verses: FIRST, true disciples go all in for Jesus.

[5:1] – says, seeing the crowds Jesus went up the mountain and his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them.

Jesus wasn’t offering teachings to the general public. He was teaching his disciples. IOW – there’s a difference between being among the crowd and being a committed follower.

Followers of Jesus actually step out of the crowd. They actually come to Jesus with a posture that’s open to receive his teachings. They draw near to the one who’s drawn near to save them.

Maybe you think being here this morning is what counts you among the disciples. You’ve attended plenty of churches. You’ve heard lots of sermons. You may even call yourself a Christian. Or maybe you’ve been evaluating the claims of Jesus. But you’ve never stepped out of the crowd.

You’ve never actually stepped forward to receive Jesus. You’ve never put your yes on the table. You’ve never told him, I will go wherever you call me to go, and I will do whatever you call me to do. But Jesus desires people to go all in for him. At some point you have to make a decision to come out of the crowd. At some point, you have to actually choose a life of surrender.

BTW – I’ve often heard people from other faiths refer to someone as either a good or bad follower. And the designation of good or bad typically refers to how closely they follow the religious practices of their faith.

But the Bible NEVER uses these categories. There’s no such thing as a good or bad Christian because our relationship with God does not depend on how good we are, but on how gracious God has been to us. So, either you’re a Christian or you’re not. Either you are dead in your sins or alive in Christ. There’s no middle ground. At some point you have to step out of the crowd.

SECOND, true disciples devote themselves to a life of dependence on Jesus.

[Matt. 5:3] – “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” We could keep going in reading the Beatitudes, and people who truly live like this Jesus calls the salt and light of the world. But I think understanding the first beatitude unlocks all the rest.

Being poor in spirit means that you come to realize that you actually can’t navigate life on your own. But that’s the negative side. The positive side of being poor in spirit is that you’ve discovered that God is sufficient to satisfy all your needs. And so you’re learning to live a life that’s totally dependent on him. You’ve yoked yourself to Jesus.

And this is where I want to pivot to the center of the whole sermon. This is Matthew 6.

At the center of the whole sermon is teaching on the devotional life and at the center of our devotional life with God is a call to prayer.

[Matt. 6:5ff] – “And 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. 6 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.

The hypocrites are the religious leaders. They’re not looking to store up treasure in heaven by cultivating a life of spiritual health. Their reward is in the realm of man where moth and rust destroy.

7 “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. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

10 Your kingdom come,

your 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 lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

And so, this has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. Most of you have probably heard this prayer thousands of times. You’ve recited this prayer hundreds of times. It’s like the model for how to pray like Jesus.

Let’s think about this for a second: Why would prayer be at the center of Jesus’s most consequential sermon? Why would his depiction of kingdom living give prayer such a prominent place?

First, because prayer is about communing with the Lord. You cannot grow in your relationship with God if you don’t spend time with him. And prayer is one way God has chosen to establish that relationship. He wants you to come to him as a child comes to a parent.

As a general rule of thumb, a child is always more self-absorbed than a parent is. Watchful parents tend to know the needs of their child before they even come to them. But as a parent, you still want your child to come to you.

And children make the best examples of the kind of grit and determination we should have in prayer. They are not worried about hearing no at all. They are relentless.

Paul Miller says, “When we slow down to pray, we are immediately confronted with how unspiritual we are. … In contrast, children never get frozen by their selfishness. They come just as they are, totally self-absorbed. Jesus tells us to become like a little child when we pray. … How do little children ask? They just say what is on their minds. They have no awareness of what is appropriate or inappropriate. This isn’t just a random observation about how parents respond to little children. This is the gospel.”

A life of prayer is teaching us that we can walk with God openly and freely without fear. We can enter into relationship with him because he’s done everything necessary to adopt us as his children. And the adoption process is decision that’s made by the Parent regardless of the child’s behavior.

Second, prayer actually puts into practice the happy life described in the Beatitudes. If you’re truly poor in spirit – that doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot of money; that means you’re spiritually bankrupt, in need a Savior, and you know it.

Prayer is the practical application of the conviction that we are completely dependent on God for everything.

And so now that we know we can come to God like this, Jesus offers six petitions to reshape what we ask for that’s filled with gospel-hope:

1. Ask that God would be honored as God.For God’s name to be hallowed isn’t a request for him to make his name holy or for him to do some mighty act to prove himself. Rather, it’s a request that all of creation would give proper weight to his Name. That the earth would be filled with people who rightly honor God as God.

2. Ask that God’s Kingdom would advance.We want to move our hearts to desire the advance of Christ’s kingdom here on earth. That the Law of Christ would reign in the hearts of men and that the world would be filled with people who love and obey Jesus. Lord knows, we see what it’s like when we don’t.

3. Ask that God would get his way. We want God to remove every hindrance and sin that keeps people from trusting in the Lord. Plenty of us will come to God saying, “Give me what I want.” But by asking for God’s will to be done were learning to ask God to give us what He wants.

Asking for God’s will to be done is not a reason to pray soft prayers. Prayers where you hedge your bets. Where you say, God, here’s what I’m asking for, but only if you will it. No, asking for God’s will to be done, means to boldly ask him to fulfill every promise he gives through His Word.

4. Ask that God would provide your daily needs.This is an affront in most cultures because it’s teaching us to turn away from self-sufficiency and to trust God to supply us with all of our daily needs.

5. Ask that God would teach you a life of forgiveness.When Jesus talks about debts being forgiven, he’s not talking about financial debt. He’s talking about spiritual and relational debt. Every sin we commit is ultimately against God. And a life of repentance teaches us we have much to be forgiven of. Who are we to ask God to forgive us, and then turnaround and withhold forgiveness from someone else? To withhold forgiveness is a symptom that you are either unaware of your own spiritual debt or unchanged by God’s gracious provision.

6. Ask that God would protect you from evil.Here, Jesus is teaching us to resist the Enemy by asking for the Lord’s protection. The Enemy wants to tempt you to despair, but the Lord will hold you firmly in the truth. And when you’re tempted to believe lies or to take the easy way out, pray that God would hold you according to his saving love.

These are the requests Jesus wants us to store up in our hearts for safe keeping. These are the things we’re asking for when we make our way through the Lord’s Prayer.

What if we made this prayer a regular rhythm of our prayer lives? What if we really owned this prayer? What if these requests became a regular expression of our private and public walk with the Lord? What kind of church would we become if we really committed these things to prayer?

And let me be clear here – I’m not talking about reciting the Lord’s Prayer every week. I’m talking about letting God engrave this prayer on your heart. To let it shape your thought life and to become the building blocks in your practice of prayer.

Pastor JD Greear suggests that we should: “Use the Lord’s Prayer like a jazz musician uses a melody line. Jazz musicians don’t play completely chaotic notes. They personalize a melody. And I think that’s the way that Jesus intended for us to use the Model Prayer.”

We’re to personalize the melody. But before we can do that we have to start practicing the notes and rhythms. We have to get the tune of this prayer in us.

I think if we really committed to praying like this the city of Kuala Lumpur would see Christ’s kingdom advancing. It would see the character of Christ being lived out.

Because for Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer was not some abstract teaching, but something that was clearly embedded in his private life. So when Jesus instructs us on the Lord’s Prayer, in one sense, it’s like he’s pulling back the curtains to his own devotional life.

How do I know that? Because, as a general rule of thumb, what you cultivate in private always bears fruit in public. That’s something we see throughout the Sermon.

Jesus says, if you want to cultivate a life consistent with the kingdom – pray like this. Allow this prayer to be the seed form that cultivates a heart that loves God and a mind that desires to see the things of God come to light on earth as it is in heaven.

This is a gospel prayer that Jesus bore out in his own life. Consider this:

When we are under pressure we go into default mode. It’s fight or flight. We become more reactionary. Typically, whatever is in us in that moment is what will rise to the surface. That’s how people work.

So, what was Jesus like under pressure? Joyful. A man of integrity. Meek. Pure in heart. A peacemaker who was our peace. Someone who desired all that God willed to be accomplished – especially the salvation of many. Watch this:

During the final week of Jesus’s life he entered Jerusalem on a donkey. After that, he went to the Temple. You’ve heard these things before. In John’s gospel, Jesus recognized that he was going to be put to death for the sins of the many, and so he prayed: “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” (John 12:27-28)

Let your name be hallowed. Let others make much of you, God, through the death and resurrection.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before Jesus’s crucifixion, Jesus asks his disciples to pray with him – do you know what he asks them to pray? In Jesus’s greatest moment of need, in his hour to come he says, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Lk. 22:40). These are the words that are on Jesus’s mind.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. You’re about to enter a great test, ask God to keep you safe.

In Matthew’s account of the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is agonizing over what’s about to take place. While he asks the disciples to pray, he goes off by himself and spends time praying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39).

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

On the Cross, Jesus cried out for those who were killing him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And if Jesus advocated for the forgiveness of those who were killing him on the Cross, is there any sin he won’t forgive?

See, Jesus’s life measured up. When you look at Jesus’s life, he was able to bear the ethical weight of his teaching. When he looked into the mirror of God’s Word he saw himself as he truly is and when we look at him, we see the One who’s both qualified and able to save us.

Jesus devoted himself to a life of prayer. For us, prayer is the fuel that fans the flames of our faith. God uses prayer to conform our hearts and minds to desire the things that God desires. He uses prayer to strengthen us as we commit to do his will; to walk in faith and to hope in the future kingdom he’s building.

God cultivates this inner life of purity in us through prayer. When you pray, let the words of God in. Let Scripture shape your inner life and motivate the things you most desire. And then watch as the Lord fulfills these things in the hearts of those around you.

Have you stepped out of the crowd yet? The road to heaven is not some 7 step plan to living a better life. It’s surrender to the God who died on the Cross to save you. He wants you to really live. So, have you let him in?

Our job is to keep coming to Jesus and then let him do the rest. Watch him transform you from one degree of glory to the next. Ask for it.

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