The Rhythm of Prayer (Week 2): God's Kingdom (Matthew 6:5-13)

Throughout our series, The Rhythm of Prayer, we will delve into the transformative experience of prayer, focusing on the Lord’s Prayer to cultivate greater intentionality, intimacy, and illumination, seeking a rejuvenated prayer discipline that sustains spiritual renewal and challenges traditional, duty-bound approaches.

In Week 2, Pastor Jeff McLain looked at Matthew 6:5-13, and how the Lord's Prayer intentionally focuses on God's Kingdom. Prayers become more effective when we deliberately focus on and reflect upon the Kingdom of God, fostering intimacy with the rule and reign of God that transforms our world and  has a transformative impact on our hearts, characters, outlook, choices, and actions.

Who we are together.
River Corner Church is a growing church community of everyday people who gather to worship God, follow Jesus, and journey through life together.

What we practice together.
Our small church community is uniquely caring, simple, laid-back, and intergenerational. As a church, we want to be a welcoming, safe, and healing community for those who are seeking, hurting, or need a place to belong. Our practices are contemplative (reflective) charismatic (Spirit-driven), conversational, and informative. The times we share together are intentional and intimate, and a mix between modern and traditional. We want to be a place in which love and honor are lived out, where humility is central, and where hospitality is woven into the threads of our community. There is room at the table.

When we gather together.
River Corner Church gathers weekly on Sunday mornings at 10:00 AM to worship and experience God, study the scriptures, journey through life together, and partner with the Holy Spirit. We meet in a simple worship meeting house at 524 River Corner Road in Conestoga, Pennsylvania. You are welcome as you are, just be yourself. There are other times that we hold small groups, events, and more.

Our Pastoral Leader.
Jeff McLain has served as our pastoral leader since April 2022. He is currently a doctoral student at Fuller Seminary, where he also has earned two master's degrees - one in Theology and Ministry and another in Leadership. Jeff also holds a Graduate Certificate in Non-profit Management from City Vision University. In addition to serving River Corner Church, Jeff serves full-time as the Director of Pastoral Ministries at Water Street Mission. In addition to over 13 years of pastoral ministry, Jeff has enjoyed event promotion, leadership coaching, blogging, and podcasting. For over 17 years, Jeff has been happily married to Katie. Jeff, Katie, and their three wander-filled daughters are avid fans of road trips, baseball, boardwalks, beaches, and books.

Learn more about us at rivercornerchurch.com.

Transcript

Introduction

When I was growing up I had a white cat with brown spots named Friskis. This resilient cat lived to be like 17 years old. As a spunky cat, he often spent time outside. My father had built a leash on the washline system that allowed him a fairly free reign of our yard. Our house sat on the edge of some woods, and there were times Frikis would climb a tree to chase some birds, or make an adventure, and not be able to get back down out of fear, or because he had tangled himself. That cat knew that on his own power, he was helpless, and so he would cry. Even if I came outside, he would cry out in the uttermost ugly cry, until my father came out. Then my father would get out a ladder, he would extend it to the tree, and climb it to untangle and carry the cat to safety. Friskis knew only my father had the power to transform his reality. It was the presence and authority that my father had that made things different for him. This morning, as we continue to look at the Lord’s Prayer, we are going to see the way God’s presence makes a difference in our lives, and in the Lord’s Prayer, we are reminded to call out for his rule and reign to transform our realities.

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As I said last week, while most of us maintain a dedicated practice of prayer, integrating prayer into our daily lives. In our practice of prayer, we certainly experience moments of peace, but I think Jesus gives us a prayer that should bring about more than just peace. The Lord’s Prayer summarizes all of Jesus’ teachings and invites God to be part of our lives and our world in some powerful, revolutionary ways. Too often our approach to prayer is marked with a duty-bound sense of obligation and fluctuating consistency. Though I do not think that every prayer we pray will always be otherworldly, I do think our practice of prayer should be more expectant and experiential than we usually believe it to be. That is the point of the Lord’s Prayer.

This morning we continue our series, "The Rhythm of Prayer.”  Our series explores what it means to develop a more effective discipline of prayer. Through the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus has gifted us with a practice of prayer that is important to our spiritual formation. In this prayer, Jesus teaches us the secret of his relationship with God the Father. Through the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to have an intentional and intimate relationship with God the Father as he did.

Through the rhythm of this essential prayer, we are renewed and reminded about God the Father’s character, kingdom, provision, forgiveness, guidance, and protection. Throughout this series, we will explore each line of the Lord’s Prayer to uncover what the Lord’s Prayer can teach us about the Spirit-filled life. The hope is that we can cultivate new insights to foster a greater sense of intentionality, intimacy, and illumination in our prayer experience. 

The Lord’s Prayer is meant to be a relational encounter with the living and good God that encourages us and reprioritizes and reshapes our outlook, choices, actions, and faith. Throughout this series, I hope we find a rejuvenated prayer discipline “that sustains a sense of renewal in our spiritual journeys and challenges any duty-bound sense of prayer. We are diving into the transformative experience of prayer, focusing on the Lord’s Prayer to cultivate greater intentionality, intimacy, and illumination, seeking a rejuvenated prayer discipline that sustains spiritual renewal and challenges traditional, duty-bound approaches.”

Scripture Passage

This morning we will be reading from Matthew 6:4-13. I invite you to follow along as I read from Matthew 6:4-13. I will be reading from the New International Version. As you follow along, I invite you to look at this passage with fresh eyes. Allow this story that may be familiar to you, to captivate you in new ways. Matthew 6:4-13 reads like this.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

Last week, when we looked at the Lord’s Prayer in Luke’s narrative, we saw that prayer was significant among the Jewish people, but for many, it had unfortunately become deeply rooted in tradition and duty-bound obligation. Truthfully, the same happens today, and at times it happens to all of us if we aren’t careful. In Jesus’ practice of prayer, Jesus’ followers saw something different. They didn’t see duty-bound obligation, rather they recognized the uniqueness of his discipline of prayer was central to Jesus’ relationship with God the Father.

In this Matthew 6:5-13 passage, Jesus is giving a rhythm to define our prayers, but Jesus also gives some warnings on ways that we should not pray like. At first glance, it may look like Jesus is against praying in public, but more so Jesus is challenging prayer that is done to be seen. Jesus gives us the posture for effective prayers, prayers that are done for the audience of one. James the brother of Jesus, later writes, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” That effectiveness, we will see, is that God’s presence comes through prayer.

Jesus did not have a problem if they prayed in the park, but he did have a problem if they would have prayed on the street as a sign of performance. He recommended an approach to prayer that avoided any temptation of being a performance by moving away from others into a space that was private and away from others. 

In the past few years, I have noticed more and more protests, rallies, political outings, and other public events have taken to the public sphere with a very visible practice of prayer. In this way, prayer feels like an event, a protest, or even a demonstration for or against something. Let us not be infatuated or ignorant of Jesus’ warning in this passage. Though this is not exactly what Jesus was coming against, I think it borders too closely to the territory Jesus is warning against in this passage enough that we should be careful. The nature of prayer in this passage is not ever to make a scene, show, or spectacle but rather it is a serene, serious, and sincere act.

Jesus instructs them that when they practice the discipline of prayer, they are not to be like the hypocrites. Actors and street performers of this day were referred to as hypocrites. They were people who performed as others by wearing a mask to hide who they were, to show the audience who they were pretending to be. Jesus states that there are some people in their day who put on a show with their prayers. These hypocritical people who pray in essence are praying in a way that their prayers are not coming from who they truly are, but rather they are praying in a way that masks who they are so that others think they are someone different. This way of praying was a show for those watching, but it was not a discipline that brought reward from God’s favor. The nature of prayer in this passage is to never make a scene, show, or spectacle but rather it is a serene, serious, and sincere act. 

Jesus says that when these hypocrites are seen by others in their prayers, this sense of being “seen” is the only reward they will receive. In that passage, Jesus uses a word for “reward” which is a financial term. It is a word that speaks to the wages a person makes for their efforts in a day’s work for their own efforts. The prayers we do in our own power don’t receive God’s blessings, they only achieve what we get out of our own selfish power. I take this to mean that God doesn’t honor prayers that are not sincere. The state, and intent, of our hearts matter and we must note that we can pray in a wrong and ineffective way.

Jesus goes on to say that if someone prays in their room, or closet (depending on the translation you are using), they will receive a reward from God the Father. There is an important contrast here. One receives rewards for their efforts, and the other one receives rewards from the favor of God. That word reward that Jesus uses for those who pray well, is much different than the wages for a day’s work. Rather, the word for a reward that Jesus uses here implies an award, repayment, or yield on an investment. If you make a wise investment, and that investment makes money or interest, that extra abundance is sort of what Jesus is alluding to here. The prayers that are serene, serious, and sincere are prayers that are intimate prayers with the favor of God. Ineffective prayers are easy, effective prayers take great intentionality.  

Jesus speaks about them praying in a room that has a door and is secret, secluded, is an inner room of their house. Some other translations call this a closet. However, homes in this era did not have closets. Katie and I had an apartment in the city when we first got married, it was just shy of 500 square feet, it was on the third floor, and it was laid out weirdly. To access the bathroom you had to walk through our bedroom. The hallway was so skinny we could only get a full-size bed through. Closets in this place were an afterthought. We had one in the bedroom that was not deep enough for a hanger, so you had to put your clothes on a 45-degree angle. We also had a closet that we called a pantry, near the kitchen, which was just an old closed-off staircase to an attic. Our apartment was older than the closets. When Jesus was talking to his disciples and listeners, he did not intend for them to think of a closet as we know it. Rather, some houses had a small pantry-like room for treasures or food. Most likely, this is the sort of room in which Jesus is talking about. Jesus is speaking to a room that is intentionally away from the public, without a window, or chance of being seen outside. With such a serene, serious, and sincere approach to prayer, our focus can be on God alone, without distraction. A prayer in public is distracted and comes with temptations, but a prayer in private comes from the heart and is undistracted. 

After convincing them of how to posture their prayers, Jesus gives them his rhythm to prayer. We looked at Luke’s telling of this story last week. There are slight differences in the two prayers. Matthew’s reading is much more poetic. Most of us practice the Lord’s Prayer in the way Matthew records it. There are some ways to think about these contrasts. First, it could be that Luke trims down Jesus’ teaching, assuming that the readers would understand the parts included in Matthew’s telling. Some scholars suspect that Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer more than once, which is believable, and maybe Jesus changed the way slightly. We can speculate several other reasons as well. Overall, it is the same rhythm to prayer.

You may also notice that both Luke and Matthew have a line that is missing from the way we often pray the Lord’s Prayer. We normally end the prayer with, “For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever amen.” This section, which is not present in either Matthew or Luke’s narrative,  doesn’t appear in any of the manuscripts. This closing line was added by the early church. This closing line first appears in a document from the earliest churches in Jerusalem from about 55 -150 AD, called the Didache (Did-a-kay). The Didache (Did-a-kay) is a document that just translates as the “Teaching,” and is an early document that collected Jesus’ teachings as told by the Apostles. In this document, the Lord’s Prayer is present, similar to the way Matthew tells it, and ends with the line “For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever amen.” Like Matthew, the Didache (Did-a-kay) prefaces the Lord’s prayer with the command to “not pray as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel.” The teaching on the Lord’s Prayer ends with the command “Three times a day pray this.” The command to pray this prayer three times a day is not meant to be some heavy legalistic, duty-bound obligation, but rather it shows the way the early church saw great power in the way Jesus prayed and wanted the same for their followers, churches, and disciples.

Where most Jews of this day saw prayer as an act of centering on God’s reverence, Greeks saw prayer as a way of getting something. Jesus challenges both of these ways. In Greek prayers, praying meant piling up as many titles of the deity as much as possible in hopes of earning favor by gaining their attention and getting something. One approach to prayer just gives God reverence, the other looks to get from God so others see them as blessed, and in some ways. In many ways, I think both approaches to prayer still happen today in our churches and prayer lives. Prayer is more than an ask for something and it is more than worship. It is a relationship. Theologian Craig Keener remarks that Jesus is affirming “effective prayer on a relationship of intimacy, not a business partnership model.”

Main Focus 

In many ways, this prayer Matthew records was something completely new, and in some ways, it was something completely familiar. Many Jewish prayers utilize similar language to what Jesus uses. Though, Jesus uniquely takes the best of many prayers from their day and gives us a new, intimate, and intentional rhythm for our prayers.

In the Kedushat Hasheem prayer, a third blessing of the weekday prayer, we see a line similar to what we looked at last week - “holy is your name.” Last week, we saw the way the Lord’s Prayer first calls us to focus on God’s character. This intimate yet reverent address to God signifies a unique relationship where God is both close and holy, teaching believers to approach God with awe and familiarity. Through prayer, we are reminded to reflect on and experience God's love, goodness, holiness, and mercy, which transforms our prayer life and fosters spiritual renewal. By recognizing God's character we allow God’s character to bring about spiritual transformation and a deeper connection with God the Father. At the outset of our prayer, Jesus invites us to acknowledge our identity as children of God and to trust in God as the ultimate provider of all our needs.

This morning I want us to focus our remaining time on the second line of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In the Jewish Mourner’s Kaddish Prayer, we get a similar line that reads, “May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon.” This Mourner’s prayer was a request for the swift arrival of the Messianic Kingdom, as long as it was God's divine will to bring it about. That’s what many in Jesus’ time were longing for, for God to set up shop, bring justice, and make wrongs right.

It is in this line that Jesus teaches, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” that Jesus reminds us he did establish the kingdom of God. It is in this line that we are reminded that we can pray in a way that brings heaven, the place God is, the place we will be in eternity, into here and now, into the present. In this prayer, we remember that we are ambassadors of a kingdom that is not of this world. Jesus intends us to be co-collaborators of the Kingdom of God, individuals who are sincerely seeking and acting in concordance for God’s will to be done in their lives, in the lives of others, and the world around them. This line reminds us that effective prayer realigns us back to the ways of God’s rule and reign, it helps us reorient to the reigning, loving, goodness, and good news of God and what it longs to do in us, with and through us in the places we live, work, and play.

I was never a fan of wrestling, but there was a move in televised wrestling throughout the 1980s called “Tag Team.” This is where a wrestler could tag his friends to come in and help him if he felt he was losing. The tag team move was like bringing a new set of support, power, and strength, into the ring with you. Jesus intends his disciples to understand the Lord’s Prayer in the same way, that God’s presence and power can be with us now, this is why it is important to pray away from the distracted places because we are learning to focus on God’s strength, not our own. The word Jesus uses for Kingdom is a word used to describe a King’s right to rule and reign in an area. God’s right to rule and reign is a reality in our hearts and lives, but it is also a reality that God longs to invade and liberate the world around us with his justice, goodness, and good news. In this step of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus intends us to see that no matter what situation we are facing, no matter what reality is knocking at our doors, we reflect and remember that God’s Kingdom can break into the moment and transform it. God’s Kingdom is the realm where God resides, and it is coming to redeem and restore the earth, to push back on the darkness, to liberate captives of sin and brokenness, and to restore creation to its creator. 

In Luke 4, Jesus defines Spirit-filled Kingdom living when he came out of the desert, full of God's Spirit, and reads from Isaiah in the Synagogue. He read, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”  In the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking for God’s Kingdom to come with power and might, with good news, freedom, recovery, liberation, and the Lord’s favor in the way it did through Jesus. We are asking for these things to invade every area and arena of our lives, and the spheres in which we live, work, worship, and play.

Even today ongoing prayers within Jewish synagogues, such as the Amidah's 14th and 15th petitions, reflect a collective longing for the Messiah's Kingdom. While we agree with them that the full realization of the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled when Jesus returns for good, the Lord’s Prayer is meant to remind us that the inauguration of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God began about 2,000 years ago, in the life of Jesus’ ministry, and it continues today as God wills. It is our job to make sure we are aligned, reoriented to, and in collaboration with God’s Kingdom. We are reminded to be part of it today, not just see it as something that is yet to happen. In Revelation 21:1-4, John (an early follower of Jesus) declares that he has this vision of a new heaven and earth, a place in which "God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.” This second line in the Lord’s Prayer helps us to prophetically begin to see and experience that God is already beginning to make all things new. Through prayer, God is already beginning to dwell with the people of God as the rule and reign of God are invited into our hearts and lives.

Author Michael Breen remarks that in this part of the Lord’s Prayer we are in essence saying to God the Father, “I want what you want, Daddy. Your kingdom is an awesome kingdom of light and love, and I want your kingdom to advance in this world of darkness and hate. My desire is the same as your desire: to see everyone come out of this world of sin and into your kingdom.” Dallas Willard defines heaven in this way, “Heaven is God breaking into our reality.” In this way, the Lord’s Prayer reminds us the way it was in the beginning, the way it shall be in eternity, is now breaking in and transforming our reality. 

Jesus teaches us a prayer that challenges prayers that are duty-bound obligations. This prayer, if we reflect on it deeply, each line by line, will not keep us in the shallow end of the pool. In this prayer, we are reminded of the ways, words, and works of Jesus, and Jesus calls us to develop an effective discipline of prayer by reminding ourselves that God’s ways can redeem the present, that eternity is coming and we see the signs of it now. Our Heavenly Father is a King who has our interests at heart. This line of the prayer retrains our eyes to see God at work.

Application

1. Our prayers experience greater effectiveness when we approach them in a serene, serious, and sincere way.
2. We should intentionally invite God’s Kingdom into our reality.
3. The more we reflect on God’s Kingdom in our prayers, the more intimately we will see God at work around us.
4. We pray for God’s rule and reign because it is meant to be experienced in our hearts and lives.
5. The more we focus on God’s Kingdom in our prayers, the more God’s presence will renovate our hearts and world, renovating our outlook, choices, and actions.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul remarks "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances.” Paul calls us to always be in a state of worship, prayer, and gratitude. David reminds us in Psalm 145:18, that the power of our prayers is it reminds us that the Lord is near. David remarks, "The Lord is near to all who call on him.” This is what Jesus is teaching us through the Lord’s Prayer as we invite God’s rule and reign to come and have its will in our lives. In response to this challenge of ongoing prayer, this week, I hope you will utilize the rhythm of the Lord’s Prayer, and incorporate an invitation to God’s right to rule and reign in your life and the situations of your life. In prayer, we remember that God is near to us. That means that for those who pray in a serene, serious, and sincere way, God’s rule and reign come close and as a result, there is no place in your life, that our Father and King, cannot come in and flex his right to rule, reign, and transform that situation. 

Thank you for continuing to journey with me through this series. May God’s rule and reign become more central to your times of prayer. That is my hope for my prayer time as well. Next week, we will examine how God’s Provision is an important aspect of prayer.