The Lord’s Prayer Part 1 – Matt. 6:9-13

24 11 2009

Prayer begins by addressing God right.

If we don’t address God right it is as bad as not addressing the right God.

We can’t come to God on our terms we have to come to God on his terms. People who “try Jesus” usually try him on their terms and not His.

  • He is “OUR” Father
  • this suggest that we should pray corporately
  • He is the God of Mercy and Grace. (can’t call him Father without it)
  • 2 John 1:3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.
  • He is Father by creator of life.
  • Job 38:7 Angels are said to be son Father in prayers of God
  • So we come to God as our creator Father in prayers of God
  • If we believe in God as creator, then we can trust him to pray as sustainer and giver of all good things.
  • He is Father by creator of spiritual life.
  • John 1:12 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
  • 1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God
  • Does a coffee maker really “Make” coffee?
  • To all others Satan is the only one they can call father. John 8:44
  • Rom. 8:15 adoption we cry Abba Father
  • He is the God who reigns over all. (heaven)

As He is all these things we must honor his name.

  • Ex. 20:7

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Two ways to Pray – Luke 18:9-14

9 11 2009

Jesus talks TO them not about them. 9

It’s easier to talk about people because…

  1. their not there to defend themselves

  2. There is no confrontation

The two ways to pray are…

1. Trusting God for your righteousness

2. Trusting in your righteousness.

It’s easier to trust yourself than God. 9

1. Trusting your righteousness leads to a better than you syndrome. 11

  • This kind of righteousness is compelled to compare because it could not feel righteous any other way.
  • John Denver’s Song “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” is really saying thank God I’m not a city boy.  The same thing is going on in this verse.  What the Pharasee means by “Thank God I’m not like other men” is “Thank God I’m a good person.”

2. Trusting your righteousness leads to RCD (Religious Compulsive Disorder). 12

  • He did religious stuff so he could say thank God I’m a good person.
  • It’s like those who say, “Oh you did pray before you ate your going to get sick.”  As if doing the religious thing would fix everything.  God does not want to do good things so we can say we are good people.  He wants us to do good things because He is a good God.
  • Those who do religious things to earn something from God are no better than the person who does no religious thing.

3. Trusting your righteousness leads to the bobble head effect. 9, 11

  • Boasting is the enemy of the cross.
  • No body likes to be around some one who brags about their self constantly.
  • There is no one in this church who is better than anyone else. If you think you’re better just because you’ve given more money, or worked harder and longer, or because you’ve been here longer, then you are acting like the Pharisee in this passage.
  • 5 “I’s” in the Pharisee’s prayer

4. Trusting your righteousness leads blanket dispassionate praying.

  • When we do righteous deeds to prove your worthy, we tend to be less passionate and just pray in general terms, because after all we just want to be able to say we did the right thing.

God WILL do one of two things… v. 14

1. God will humble the self exalting

2. God will exalt the humble


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Love God with All You’ve Got – Luke 10:25-37

21 10 2009

Loving God with all you’ve got eliminates

1. Loop holes 29

  • I love my neighbors as my self. All the ones that live within a mile. lol
  • We look for loop holes everywhere, don’t we. “I love God, but…” “Just because I don’t _______ doesn’t mean I don’t love God.”

2. Coasting

  • When you begin to coast through life, then you know you are not giving it ALL you’ve got.

3. Racism, Hatred, intolerance

  • Loving God first leads to loving others. If we have a problem loving others, then we have a problem with our love for God.

Loving God with all you’ve got leads to…

1. Compassion 33

  • One reason I’m happy to be a Southern Baptist is because we have the second largest disaster relief program in the nation next to the Red Cross.

  • If you don’t love the stranger, then you don’t love God.

2. Sacrifice

  • this guy gave his money

3. Stress

  • If stress meant what you were doing was bad, then I would quit a lot of good things.

  • If you are going to have stress in your life, have it from doing in the Lord’s work, but worldly things.

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Two Ways to Live – Matt. 7:24-27

14 10 2009

This is the conclusion of the sermon on the mount. The entire sermon on the mount Jesus intends to be culture shifting. He is trying to shatter the major thought patterns of the day and reshape them into kingdom thought patterns.

It is often said that the two ways to live in this parable is a comparison between the good and the wicked, between apples and oranges. A closer look reveals this is a comparison not of the righteous on the rock and the wicked on the sand, but of the religious who call out Lord, Lord while being founded on the sand and the truly saved who obey and trust in Jesus day by day. So it is not a comparison between apples and oranges, but between apples and apples with rotten cores.

What is the same?

1. They both hear word

  • Jesus is speaking into a religious world. He is not contrasting those who are religious and those who aren’t. He is contrasting those who are religious and those who follow him.

2. They both build a house

  • Both work hard and look good.
  • Is seems that might have even used the same substance to build their house.
  • This is not the story of the big bad wolf come to blow their house down.
  • Both houses might looked the same from the outside.

3. Both experienced the same difficulty.

  • Ecc. 9:2 the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked,
  • When you get squeezed what comes out?
  • When you get pricked what kind of blood do you bleed?
  • When you get insulted what kind of words come out of your mouth?

What is different?

1. one obeyed, one didn’t

  • he is contrasting those who say Lord, Lord and don’t with those who say it and do.

2. One built on rock, the other on sand

  • you can build the way of Jesus or the way of religion.
  • Or you can build the way of the religious
  • “Jesus calls for his audience to decide between himself and the religious establishment” ESV Study Bible
  • They both follow the city codes and regulations for building a house.   Neither one of them took short cuts when in came to the building itself.
  • Neither of them build with the intention of their house falling apart. They are both confident in their works. If you asked them is your house solid? They would say yes.

3. One house remained, the other fell.

  • In this parable the difference is the foundation.

Which foundation are you?

1. Where do you get your beliefs.

2. Do you stop doing what Jesus say, when the storm comes?


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NFL 7 – The Victory Speech – Gen. 50:19-21

6 10 2009

Gen. 50:19-21 is like Joseph’s victory speech.  It is important to learn how to honor God in our victory speech.  What do we say when God blesses are lives?  Do we point to ourselves or to our God.

We are not God.

  • “am I in the place of God”
  • Adidas – Impossible is nothing
  • Who died and left you in charge.

Remeber revenge is the Lord’s

  • Rom. 12:17 & 19 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
  • revenge says I’m god
  • revenge destroys the gospel
  • revenge fail to care
  • If you seek revenge you are not giving the credit to God.
  • Just punishment is the gospel

Don’t water down evil, lift up forgiveness.

  • Joseph didn’t say their sin was not that bad in order to make everything ok.
  • Jesus didn’t say “Father forgive them” because what they were doing wasn’t that bad.
  • We diminish love.
  • When we do this we give the impression that there are some sins that are forgivable and others that are not.
  • God doesn’t forgive us because are sins are less bad than others. He forgives us even though our sins are evil. That’s love

Remember God is still in control when evil is happening

  • The purpose is unseen at least for awhile
  • The purpose here was salvation from famine.
  • God put me here for you says Joseph
  • God works all for good!

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NFL 6 – The Scouting Report – Gen. 44-46

28 09 2009

There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness is one thing, reconciliation is trusting them again.

How do you know if you’ve forgiven someone?

  1. When you are not seeking revenge.
  2. When you are being kind to them.
  3. When you are seeking reconciliation.

Don’t trust people who have wronged you until they have been tested and found worthy.

1. People who have sinned against you should not be trusted again right away.

  • Joseph forgave but he didn’t trust his brothers.

2. People who have sinned against you should be tested.

  • Joseph tested his brothers to see if they were still going to act the way they did when they tried to kill him and then decided to sale him into slavery instead2. .

3. The person who has done the sinning needs to be the one putting the most effort toward making it right.

  • It was the brothers who had to put forth the effort to show they could be trusted not Joseph.  Joseph didn’t need to prove himself.

He is testing their honesty.

  • 42:20
  • Money in bag passed – 43:20ff
  • “No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.”  ~Abraham Lincoln
  • On a scale of 1 to 10 how is your honesty?

He tested their jealousy.

  • By giving one brother more – 43:34
  • by seeing how they will react when that brother is taken from them. 44

Joseph weeps for his brothers who wronged him. 43:30

Salvation and Joseph

The very thing that we resist is many times the thing we need to do to find salvation. 43:1-10

  • The brothers dreaded going back to Egypt and they never would have went if they would not have been desperate enough.  God lead them to desperation so that they would do what they previously didn’t want to do so that they would be saved from starving to death.
  • You may say your not going to do what God wants, but you are more in need spiritually than Joseph’s brothers were physically.
  • When you get to desperation you have a whatever it takes mentality.
  • “Okay God, whatever you want,” becomes your prayer.

You get what you don’t deserve.

When they finally did what they didn’t want to do they were amazed at what happened.

  • They got Joseph back 45:3
  • They got provisions for the journey. 45:16ff
  • They provision to save their life 45:7
  • They got a new home 46:6

When we follow God we will be amazed at what God does on our behalf even though we don’t deserve it.


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