Week 24: The Lord’s Prayer
Week 24: The Lord’s Prayer
We return this week to Jesus’s teaching on prayer, as recorded in Matthew 6:7–15. He now emphasizes that hypocrisy is not the only sin to avoid in prayer; “vain repetitions” (v. 7 KJV) or meaningless, mechanical utterance is another. The former is the folly of the Pharisee, the latter of the Gentile or pagan. Hypocrisy is a misuse of the purpose of prayer (diverting it from the glory of God to the glory of self); verbosity is a misuse of the very nature of prayer (degrading it from a real and personal approach to God into a mere recitation of words). So Jesus contrasts the pagan way of meaningless loquacity with the Christian way of meaningful communion with God, and he illustrates this by the beauty and balance of the Lord’s Prayer.
Sunday: Pagan Prayer
Monday: Christian Prayer
Tuesday: Concern for God’s Glory
Wednesday: Give Us Our Daily Bread
Thursday: Forgive Us Our Sins
Friday: Deliver Us from Evil
Saturday: Our Image of God