Taught to pray

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Thanks very much, Margaret. That's great. Thank you, kids. Sorry, soundmen. I might have messed up, which is which. So, all good. If you've got your Bible there, could I ask you to take that out? Open up to Matthew chapter 6. We are going to continue on with our series today. In actual fact, as Doug mentioned, this is the third week in our series. We're wrapping up today, so we get to take it home and finish it off together, which is wonderful. My name's Dave, one of the pastors here. Great to be able to bring God's word to you this morning. If you've been following along with our series, as we've been going through this taught to pray series looking at Matthew's account of Jesus teaching on prayer here, this is right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, as Doug and Dylan mentioned. Pastor Dylan kicked off the series by asking the question a couple of weeks ago, are you alive? Are we alive? And we discussed the difference between being physically alive and being spiritually alive. And Jesus was teaching his disciples about what it means to be spiritually alive. They need to stay connected to him. If they want to be fruitful, if they want to give God glory, Jesus' disciples need to actually stay close to him. And Jesus used this illustration of a vine and some branches, and Pastor Dylan had a helpful object lesson for us with that on the stage. And you had two options, pretty much, with this illustration. You either stay connected, you be part of the vine, you stay close to Jesus, you cling to him, you allow him to prune you, and Jesus says, if you do that, you'll bear much fruit, and you'll prove yourself to be his disciple. The other option was, you stay physically alive, but disconnected from Jesus, and that leads to spiritual stagnation. Like a branch cut off from a vine, it ultimately withers and dies, and so too our spiritual life. God desires that we bear fruit. Our key verse for the year, for 2026, is from John 15.8, where Jesus was teaching this. He says, this is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. That's what God desires for all of us who would follow after Jesus. The primary ways that we stay connected to Jesus is through studying his word, and by spending time with him, talking and listening in prayer. And it's that second aspect, that listening and talking to God in prayer that we've been focusing on over these last two weeks. We've discovered a bunch of important truths about prayer. Firstly, that prayer is not a performance. We saw that in the first week. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, not like the religious leaders of the day, who used fancy words, they prayed out in public, they wanted everybody to see how religious and devout they were. Jesus says, not for his disciples. Prayer's not about performing for others. It's about relationship. Prayer's not about repeating certain words. Jesus taught his disciples, it's not so much the words that you pray, but it's the heart behind those words that matter. Prayer doesn't have to be long and drawn out. Repeating empty words doesn't mean we'll earn any extra points with God. Prayer's also expected of Jesus' disciples. Jesus says three times in this model prayer, as he's teaching here, when you pray. It's just assumed that God's people will pray. He invites us to prayer. And if we don't take that invitation seriously, we risk not drawing close to him in prayer, and we can be cut off from relationship with him. Prayer's also intimate, meaningful communication with God. Jesus taught that first and foremost, it's just speaking to God. It's meaningful communication with our Heavenly Father. It's as simple as going into our room, shutting the door, and talking to God. And the Bible tells us that not only does he invite us to do that, but he hears and answers our prayers. Prayer is relational. We saw that last week. Pastor Doug helped us to discover that. Jesus begins this model prayer with the words, Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name in verse nine there. And there's so much wrapped up in that statement. You could preach a whole message on it, but we don't have time for that today. If you missed Pastor Doug's sermon last week, jump on the website, check it out. You can download that, you can stream it, you can listen to it. It's also on our YouTube channel as well, I believe. But prayer is relational. And in our tick-and-flick culture, we sometimes come to prayer with the wrong understanding. We come with like a shopping list or a list of things that we just want to tick off in prayer. But Pastor Doug helped us to understand last week that it's relational, not transactional. It's mind-blowing when you think about it. The God of the universe in all of His majesty and splendor, He invites us to draw near and call Him Father. It's a wonderful picture of relationship. And so spending time with God in prayer is a really good way of growing in our relationship with Him. It's how we participate in the mission of God. Prayer is kingdom focused as well. It's more about His will and His way, His plans and His purpose, not just the small list of things that I want to talk to Him about today. We can bring those things to God, but ultimately prayer helps us to keep the right perspective. It's about His kingdom. It's about Jesus' promise of His kingdom presence with us always. And prayer helps keep us aligned with that. We saw finally last week and in our kids talk this morning that prayer is relying daily on God. In verse 11, prayer is that humble acknowledgement of God's daily provision in our lives, as we pray, give us this day our daily bread. We're going to finish our series this morning by opening up the final verses there in this teaching on prayer from verses 12 to 15. And I've got just two, two lessons that we can add to that list that we've already discovered over the last three weeks. The first one is prayer is a response to the gospel. We'll see that in verse 12. Not only that, prayer is a heart that's postured to follow God, to follow after Jesus. And we'll see that in verse 13. But before we unpack that, let's just pause and pray and ask God to help us as we dig into His Word. Heavenly Father, we do just want to thank You and praise You for this record of Jesus' words, for His teaching on prayer that helps us to understand these wonderful truths, this wonderful gift of prayer that You've given to us. Father, we ask and pray that You'd help us as we dig into these scriptures that we might hear Your voice, that we might be able to comprehend and understand this gift of prayer and what it means to live in light of these truths. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Saviour. Amen. Have a look at Matthew. Just read again from verses 9 to 13. I'll just read again from verses 9 to 13. 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. Just pause our reading there for a moment. Firstly, we see right up there that prayer flows out of an understanding of the gospel. When Jesus teaches us to pray, He assumes our deepest problem isn't lack of money, it's not lack of success, it's not health, it's not lost opportunities, a lack of opportunities in life. No, our deepest problem is sin and our deepest need is forgiveness. The Bible tells us that sin is a rebellion against God. It's a breaking or violating of His divine law. It's loving ourselves more than God. It's living as though we're the center. It's rejecting God's rightful place of ruler in our lives. Sin can be any thought, any word, any desire or action that runs contrary to the word and commands of God, which He set out for our good and for His glory. Sin is complex, but it's serious. And the Bible says that we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And because of that sin, our relationship with God and our relationship with one another has been broken. And yet God in His great love for us His children, He doesn't leave us there in our brokenness. Thankfully, He steps into human history. He makes a way for us to become right with Him. That's the good news of the gospel. That's essentially what that word gospel means. It's good news. It's the good news about Jesus. His death and resurrection for our sin. God's rescue plan to save us from our sin. That's why Jesus came. That's why we can approach God in prayer. It's because we've been forgiven. Jesus paid the price for our sin. And so that leads us to a bit of a puzzling question then. If the good news of the gospel is that Jesus' death on the cross paid that penalty for our sin and it paid it once and for all. The Bible tells us Jesus' death was sufficient. That's enough. His death is enough for all of our sins. Past, present, and future. But if that's the case, why does Jesus in His teaching about prayer tell us that we need to continually come back to Him daily, independence, and ask Him to forgive our debts, our sins? Why does He say to pray, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts? It's a bit of a puzzle. Jesus is actually teaching us something pretty foundational. What He's getting at here is we need to understand forgiveness if we want to pray properly. Not that there's a right way to pray, but it's our understanding of prayer and the relationship that we have with God as we come to Him in prayer. We really need to understand forgiveness because prayer flows out of our understanding of the gospel. When we come to faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sin, the Bible tells us that sin is eradicated. Jesus has the victory over that sin. But sin still remains. While we live in this broken and fallen world, sin is not completely eradicated yet. We look forward to Jesus' return when He comes again. Then sin will finally be done away with once and for all. The truth of the Bible, the truth of the gospel tells us that while sin no longer rules or reigns in our life if we have our faith in Jesus, sin is still present. Sin is still a part of our present reality. I find a helpful way to think about it is like this. When we turn to Jesus in repentance and faith, we can look back on that point in our salvation history. We can look back on the moment maybe, some of us know the day and the time and the hour when we surrendered to Jesus and said, I need your forgiveness for my sins. Others of you like me, you've grown up with the gospel. You've heard it from a young age and you've had a belief in God since you can remember. You can't put your finger on a particular day or time or hour when you said yes to Jesus. But you know there was a season of your life where you realized for yourself, hey, this is what I believe. Not just because mom and dad told me that this was true and that this was God's word, you'd actually done the work and figured it out in your mind and you thought, yeah, this makes sense. Jesus lived, he died, he rose again for my sin. The Bible tells us that we can look back on that moment and we can say we have been saved from sin's penalty because the Bible tells us that Jesus paid that price. So we can look back and we can see that we have been saved from sin. We look forward though to Jesus' return. After he had been raised from the dead and appeared to a whole bunch of people and spent more time teaching and preaching the good news, he ascended back into heaven. And when he left, the angels said that he would return once more. Once more, like he came. And when he returns, he comes back to judge the world. He comes back to take us to be with him. And those of us who put our faith and hope and trust in him, we get to live forever in heaven with him. It's a wonderful thing to look forward to, Jesus' return. And so we look forward to Jesus coming back and when he takes us to heaven, we will be saved from sin because the Bible tells us that in heaven there's no more sin. There's no more possibility for sin because the old order of things is done away with. It's going to be a really different experience, one that we look forward to with great joy. So we look back and we see we've been saved from sin's penalty. We look forward and we know that we will be saved from sin because it will be done away with. What do we do in the middle? Well, that's kind of where we find ourselves now, waiting for Jesus. And so right now, in this present reality, as we wait for Jesus to return, we can say we are being saved from sin's power. We're no longer slaves to sin like we were prior to coming to faith in Jesus, but we still feel that daily struggle of our sinful nature. We still live in a broken and fallen world. There are times when we stumble and fall. We struggle daily with the temptation to sin. And this is why Jesus says that we're to pray to our heavenly Father in this spirit of daily dependence, and we're to seek his forgiveness. Not because we've lost our salvation or that our right relationship with God is somehow damaged, but because our enjoyment of that relationship has been affected by our sin today. When we step out of line, when we act in or behave in a way that's contrary to God's word, we know, we feel the effect of that. And we lose some of that enjoyment of the relationship because it's been affected by our sin. Let me try and illustrate that with a story. When I was a teenager, I like to spend time on the weekends with my friends, hanging out with them. I lived on the north side. Most of my friends were on the south side because school was on the south side. We would catch the train into the city. We would hang out in there, go to the video game arcades, go to the pool hall. There used to be this amusement center up the top of the Maya center in Brisbane that we'd go and hang out in. That was a lot of fun. And one time, we were actually going out in the evening. I can't actually remember what it was. It might have been a concert or a band or something at the river stage. I don't know. What I do remember is when I asked mum and dad could I go and hang out with my friends that night, they said, yep, all good, no worries. I was driving by then, so I could drive myself in, didn't have to take the train. But they said, Dave, you've got to make sure you're back by midnight. That was the only restriction that was placed on me. A curfew, which was pretty wise, I think. Anyway, we went out. We had a great time and I had so much fun that I lost track of the time and I didn't leave enough time to drive home to meet my curfew. I arrived late. It wasn't super late, but it was late enough that it was late. Dad was still awake and I opened the door and the light was on and I thought, yep, I'm in trouble. Dad was pretty gracious at the time. It was late. Maybe he was tired, I don't know. But he sort of nodded at me and I knew, okay, this is not good. And he said, buddy, hurry up and get to bed. We'll have a chat about this in the morning. I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep. Because I knew I disobeyed his instruction. But anyway, the next morning get up to breakfast and Dad's awake, he's in the kitchen and sitting at the breakfast table. There's this sense of awkwardness in the air. There's this cloud hanging over the table. Now our relationship was intact. I was still his son. He was still my dad. He hadn't disowned me because I turned up late. But there was something broken in that moment. The enjoyment that we usually enjoyed, that richness of the fellowship that we had, it was a bit out because of my sin. In order to fix that, something needed to happen. I needed to confess my sin. I needed to ask for forgiveness. There needed to be some consequence for my sin. Dad needed to forgive me. And then we forget it and move on. And that's what we did. I said, sorry to Dad. I asked for his forgiveness. I accepted the consequence that came. Dad forgave me. We moved on. The joy returned. It was almost instant. Straight away, I forgive you, son. I love you. So good that heavy weight just lifted. Friends, it's the same in our journey with Jesus. We're encouraged to seek his forgiveness daily, just as we seek his provision of physical needs. And that's because in this fallen world that we live in, with our sin nature, while sin no longer has that power over us, this is something that we're growing into day by day as we become more and more like Jesus, as we surrender to his will. So when we make a mistake, we come to him and we ask for forgiveness. The Bible tells us that we're to cultivate this posture of continual repentance. 1 John 1.8 tells us that if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We all sin. We all fall short of the glory of God. John continues in 1 John 2 verse 1. He says, my dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. John's like, look, I'm giving you some commands of Jesus. I'm writing these things down, protecting them so that you can understand what it means to live as obedient disciples of Jesus. I really love that you wouldn't sin, John says. But if you do, it's okay. We have an advocate. Jesus will forgive us. He has forgiven us. We just come to him and ask. 1 John 1.9 says that if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and will forgive us our sin and purify us from all unrighteousness. What a wonderful truth. I was thinking about this during the week, this idea of keeping short accounts with God, of daily coming to him and doing a personal inventory and just thinking about my day, thinking about my thoughts, thinking about my actions, thinking about my week. Where might I have stepped out of line with the Lord? What might I need to ask for forgiveness for? I was challenged by a story of a group of Scottish pastors, a really long time ago, 1651. These Scottish pastors got together at a critical time in their nation's history. It was a critical juncture for their church in Scotland at the time. A little bit like we're coming into this season of prayer at a critical junction for our church, bursting at the seams, wondering what does God want us to do in the next 5, 10 years? How do we respond to the move of God across the Cabulcha and Morayfield region? We want to be obedient to him. These Scottish pastors at this critical junction in their time, they took this instruction from Jesus in Matthew chapter 6, verse 12, and they did an inventory. They took this seriously. They looked at their own hearts. These are church leaders, and they wrote out this list of potential areas of sin as a kind of prayer of confession to God, acknowledging all the ways that they were falling short and in need of God's forgiveness. Listen to some of the items that they wrote down. I've kind of put them in modern language to make it a bit easier for us to understand. Some of the things they wrote down, some of the sins or areas where they felt they were falling short, deep selfishness in much of what we do, living for ourselves rather than for God and for others. Secret pride that compares, feeling okay or even pleased when others fail because it makes us look better. Neglective private prayer, maybe praying mainly when it helps our public ministry or when other people are around, but neglecting that on our own. Excusemaking or a neglect of duty, especially neglecting private Bible reading and honest self-examination, letting God's word transform us. Avoiding the cost of following Jesus, shrinking back from suffering or shame for his name, not taking to heart the sufferings of God's people and the slow growth of Christ's kingdom. Being quick to spot the faults in others and slow to face our own, measuring ourselves by other people's opinions. Coldness towards those that we disagree with. Praying little for them, keeping distance, speaking about them rather than to them. Craving approval and fearing people, holding back hard truths and failing to warn others lovingly about sin. It's a challenging list. Perhaps we ought to pray for ourselves in a similar way. Make your own list. Seek the Lord's forgiveness for our sins. I wonder does your prayer time include a confession on a regular basis? If it doesn't, I'd encourage you to add it in. Jesus tells us this is important for his disciples. Not only that, that he doesn't just ask us to ask him for forgiveness, he actually teaches us to give it as well. Look at the second half of verse 12. You've got to be careful here. He's not saying, because I forgave someone, we're not saying to Jesus in our prayer, Lord, because I forgave someone, now you have to forgive me. That's not what he says here. The Bible's really clear. We're only forgiven by grace alone, through faith alone, because of what Christ alone has done for us on the cross. So what does Jesus mean when he says that we need to ask for forgiveness as we forgive others their sin? Well, I think it's because a forgiving spirit is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that you've received God's forgiveness. It's a mark of discipleship. If you are willing to forgive others, you've understood forgiveness, right? John Stott, a pastor and a theologian, he wrote this in one of his books. He said, this certainly, talking about this verse, this certainly doesn't mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. It's rather that God forgives only the penitent, that just means repentant. You've changed your mind about your sin and you've come to God for forgiveness. It's rather that God forgives only the penitent and that one of the chief evidence of true repentance, true penitence, is a forgiving spirit. Once our eyes are open to see the enormity of our offense against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. If, on the other hand, we've an exaggerated view of the offenses of others, it proves that we've minimized our own. It's clear. If we hold on to bitterness in our hearts, if we hold grudges, if we harbor unforgiveness in our heart, it calls into question whether we've understood the true nature of forgiveness at all because prayer is a response to the gospel. In Luke 6, verse 37, Jesus warns us, do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Again, in Matthew 7, verse 2, he says, in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. In other words, there's this link between our own experience of God's forgiveness in our lives and how we're called to pass on grace to forgive others who sin against us. Friends, forgiven people, as we are, followers of Jesus by faith, we're forgiven people. The Bible tells us that. Forgiven people forgive people. Forgiven people are called to forgive people. Another commentator I came across during the week, he said that the absence of practical forgiveness might be the major hindrance to blessing in our churches, in our families, in our personal relationships. The unforgiving spirit is the number one killer of spiritual life. You want to be spiritually useless? Let me tell you what to do. Refuse to forgive others and you'll be spiritually ineffective so fast, it'll make your head spin. It's the forgiveness of other people's sins against us that we reveal the fact that we have discovered God's forgiveness. It's clear. Jesus underlines the seriousness of that in Matthew 6, verses 14 to 15. In fact, Jesus kind of circles it, highlights it, underlines it. Have a look at what he says in verses 14 to 15 of Matthew 6. Jesus says immediately after this command to pray for forgiveness and as we forgive others. He says, if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. You should make us sit up and listen. In Matthew chapter 18, Jesus responds to a question from one of his disciples, Peter. Peter actually comes to Jesus. He must have been thinking about this teaching on forgiveness for some time. He comes to Jesus in Matthew 18 and he says, Lord, how many times do I need to forgive somebody if they sin against me? Is it like seven times? And Jesus says, no, Pete, it's not seven times, like 77 times. You know, Jesus is kind of picking this huge number, saying there should be over and over and over and over again forgiveness. It's like there's no limit to the forgiveness we should offer because there's no limit to the Lord's forgiveness. Jesus begins to tell a story in response to that for Peter and those who are listening. And this is a parable. It's one of the stories that Jesus told. And it's about a king who had a servant who owed this impossible amount of money. The Bible says it's 10,000 talents. A talent is like 20 years' wages for a laborer. So you imagine a laborer, whatever he gets in a year, 20 years' worth of that, one talent. This servant owed the king 10,000 talents. It's like 200,000 years' worth of wages. You can never pay it back. The servant begs for mercy. The king does something shocking. He cancels the whole debt. Humongous, wiped, canceled. You're forgiven. What does the servant do? Straight away he goes out and he finds somebody else that owes him 100 bucks. Just a small amount. And he grabs that guy and he demands payment. Pay up or else. The guy can't pay. He begs for mercy. And that servant, he punishes him. The other servants, well, they're obviously offended. They're outraged and rightly so. They report all this back to the king. And the king hears about it and he drags that servant in and he says, you wicked servant. You know, I showed you huge mercy. How could you not show some mercy to somebody for something so small? The king reverses his decision to cancel that debt and he punishes the servant. And Jesus ends the parable in Matthew 18 verse 35 with these words. He says, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. A couple of things quickly about what forgiveness is not. It's not pretending it didn't hurt or didn't affect us. It's not wiping it under the carpet or hiding it, pretending it didn't happen. It's not saying that the sin wasn't serious. It's not removing the consequence for the one who did the sin. It doesn't mean that we instantly can restore trust or be reconciled to that person. That may be the goal. But it might not be safe. And it doesn't mean staying in harm's way either. Forgiveness ultimately is about releasing vengeance. It's handing that justice over to God. It's refusing to be the judge and the executioner yourself. It's trusting God. He's the one in Romans 12 19 who said, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. The Bible's clear on that. It tells us when Jesus comes back, he's going to judge the earth. Men and women for the things that we've done, maybe good things we should have done that we didn't do. Those of us who've got our faith and hope and trust in Jesus, we need not fear that day because when it comes to our account, it's going to say paid for by Jesus. We know that we don't get to heaven on the basis of our own merit, but on faith in what he's done alone. But if you're far from God, if you don't have a relationship with him, then that idea that you'll have to give an account for the careless things that you've said, for the wrong things that you've done, for those things that all of us have hidden away, that we'd be ashamed if people knew. That should give you pause. It doesn't have to be that way. Jesus invites you to come, to receive him, to believe in him in what he's done for you. And he offers you that same forgiveness that he's offered to all of us. Church, if we're about to seek God together over these next five weeks of concerted prayer and we're carrying grudges, bitterness, coldness towards one another, then it's like we're asking God to pour out his blessing and hands that are clenched into fists. We want to come to God in a posture of receiving what he has for us. So we need to let go, we need to forgive. We need to give it over to him. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32 says, Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. We've been forgiven, so we need to forgive. Prayer is connected to, it's a response to the gospel. Not only that, prayer, just briefly, it's a heart that's postured to follow. Have a look at verse 13. Jesus says to his disciples there, Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. We pray as dependent disciples submitting to God's will, relying on his strength to obey. We don't just rely on his strength for provision of our daily needs, we rely on his strength, on his Holy Spirit to obey what he's commanded us to do. As we go out into the world, as we've been called on mission with Jesus to share that good news with those that are lost, as we go out, we rely on God's Spirit to make us effective in that, to help us to obey all that he's commanded us to do. We need this posture of humble dependence, a desire to remain close to Jesus, to stay obedient to God. And Jesus says that we are to pray in that way. Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil one. Does this mean that God leads us into temptation? I mean we're kind of saying God don't take me that way. Are we praying that because he might? No. The Bible's absolutely clear on this. God doesn't tempt us. James chapter 1 verse 13 tells us that. James says when we're tempted, no one should say God is tempting me, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. The temptation that we face is our own sinful nature that desires those things. It's the enemy that is against the purposes and plans of God. He's against the people of God. He wants to hold up these things that are not of God and make them look attractive and tell us that that's what we need to have a happy life. That's where the temptation comes from. Our own sin nature from the enemy, from the evil one. It doesn't come from God. God doesn't tempt us friends, but he can test us. Sometimes things happen to us and God allows that or uses that to refine and strengthen our faith. James also said in James chapter 1 verses 2 to 4, he says, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Testing and trial, difficult seasons in our life, sometimes they just happen because of the nature of the fallen broken world that we live in. God in his grace, he redeems even those rubbish things that we go through. And if we allow ourselves to lean in close to him, to stay connected to Jesus, to not fall away into temptation, he can use even those difficult seasons of our life to refine and shape our character, to make us more like Christ and to strengthen our faith in him. Many of you in this room have that testimony in your life. It's encouraging. The prayer for God to not lead us in temptation is probably better understood this way. Heavenly Father, when I face trials and tests, don't let me fall into temptation. If you've got the New Living Bible, Matthew 6 verse 13, kind of reads that way. It says, and don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. It's a little bit easier to understand what Jesus is saying there. It's a petition to keep us from situations that would cause us to sin. Finally, deliver us from the evil one. Scripture talks about other types of evil beside the devil. In kind of three broad categories, I guess, in the Bible, there's three big categories of evil that we need to be delivered from. Number one is the world. We're not talking about the created world or humankind that God's placed in the world, but the fallen system of values that our world adopts that's against and opposed to the kingdom of God and His values. 1 John 5 verse 19 says, We know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. There's a whole system of this world that's opposed to God. Our world is held captive by the evil one's influence and he's called in the Bible the God of this world. Through this world system, the devil tries to get us to find life and meaning apart from God. That's one evil we need to be delivered from. The second is the flesh. We're not talking about our physical body, but our fallen, sinful nature. Paul describes in Romans chapter 7 how the flesh wages war against the spirit. Paul desires to live an obedient life, but he's got this battle going on within him. In Romans 7 verse 18 he says, I know that nothing good dwells in me. That is in my flesh. I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out for the... I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I don't want. That's what I keep on doing. He goes on to say, this battle, sometimes I feel so wretched, like I'm not going to win, but thanks be to God. Because of Jesus, he's won the victory over that sin and death. And with his help, we can resist temptation and not give in to the flesh. Finally, the devil. And just a couple of things about that. He is a real spiritual being. It's not a metaphor for evil. The devil is real. He's got the fun guy in the cartoons. He's not the one that shows up to your party. He is evil. He thinks, acts and has a will. He's got things that he's trying to accomplish. He's a created being. That caricature that we put on the devil is that often he's put as an equal opposite to God. You've got God and God's plans, and you've got the devil and his plans. And the caricature is they're on even footing. That couldn't be further from the truth. The devil is a created being. He's a created angel. He just managed to convince some of the angels that they wanted to be like God. They wanted to rule in the place of God. And so they got kicked out of heaven and came to earth, and he's not equal to God at all. He's subservient to God. He's a created being. He rebelled against God, and he's actively opposed to God and his people. Second Corinthians 4.4 says, God of this age, that's the devil, has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. What a good prayer to pray then deliver us from evil. All kinds of evil, those three broad categories. We need to be delivered from that. We should pray that prayer for our unsaved friends, for the world out there that doesn't know Jesus. Many of them walking through life, ignorant of God and his plans, unaware of the future judgment that's coming, blinded their eyes of their heart by the devil. Pray that they won't fall into temptation, that God's spirit would reach them, draw them, show them the beauty of the gospel. We need to finish here friends, but if that's you this morning, if you haven't yet come into a relationship with Jesus, I just invite you to think about that this morning. I'm going to close in prayer and I'm just going to have a few moments of silence. All of us in this room have some sin that we may need to confess. Spend that time, we just tell God, I'm sorry Lord, I have failed to live according to your plan. I've rejected you, I've put you away, I've tried to make myself the king. Would you come and put your spirit in me? Because I want to trust in Jesus' death and resurrection for my sin. You can pray that prayer today, you can be free. You can become a follower of Jesus. I'll give you that opportunity just now. Just in the quietness of your own heart. Just reflect. It can be as simple as Lord God. I've heard your gospel, the good news of forgiveness from sin through faith in Jesus. And I recognize here today my need for that forgiveness. I want to receive that gift to know your plan and your purpose for my life for this world. I put my faith and hope and trust in Jesus. If you pray that prayer from your heart, the Bible is clear, you are forgiven. You can know the joy and the hope of eternity with Him. Father God, we do just thank you and praise you for your word. We thank you for Jesus, our Savior, the one you sent to rescue us from our sin. Father, we just pray and ask as we come into this season of concerted prayer as a church family, as we seek your will for us for the future. Lord, we want to be disciples of Jesus who are obedient to you in every way. Help us Lord to take these lessons on prayer that you've been speaking into our lives over these last three weeks. Lord, we don't just want to hear these good lessons, but Lord, we want to put into practice what it is that you're telling us to do. We thank you for the grace that we find in Jesus and for the hope that we have in Him. Help us this week to stay connected to Him in prayer. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. If you are here this morning, you prayed that prayer. You invited Jesus into your life this morning. I'd encourage you to come and let me know. I'd love to just pray with you to encourage you. If you've got to go talk to someone that you came with, don't walk out without letting somebody know that you've met Jesus.