Category: Devotions

Prayer for the Jew was part of who they were. Blessings, benedictions, petitions and doxologies weaved throughout their whole lives as communities and in their homes. So it is not strange at all that Jesus would focus on prayer. After challenging how the hypocrites had abused prayer he teaches them how they should pray.

Is this in itself a teaching Jesus was giving? Over the next few days we will indeed dissect it, dwell on it and hopefully discover some things.

Is this a model for us to use in our services together? If it is then it has disappeared from many churches and needs a reintroduction.

“‘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.” (Matthew’s version)

However Jesus meant for it to be used we can assume he created the prayer and that he was familiar with praying it and maybe that is all we need to know to make it part of our lives.

“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6 v 9)

The incredible blessing for every Christian today is that they can address God as Father. This personal, intimate, familiar title is given only because of relationship.

No one before Jesus called God this name.

No one after Jesus calls God, Father, except the followers of Jesus.

‘Our’ Father brings us together in community. We are His children.

Hallowed be your name.

When the Jewish scribes write a name or title for God they immediately go and wash their hands, such is the honour they attribute to it. In fact they avoid pronouncing the name God and use names like Yahweh instead, this is the way they choose to hallow the name.

Father, let your name be holy, sacred.

Let people across the world believe in you. Let them obey you. Let them glorify you. This is the desire of God. Jesus shows his disciples that they should begin to pray in line with that desire.

The Jewish history is of course one of being controlled by foreign powers and living in exile among nations not worshipping Yahweh. God raised up prophets to stir His people and to realise that His name would be hallowed. Ezekiel wrote, “I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.” (36:23)

This promise of God to His people is that of redemption through Jesus. Isaiah carried that same promise: “When they see among them their children, the work of my hands, they will keep my name holy; they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.” (29:23)

We are living in times when people are fashioning God into their own image of what they believe God to be, so that they can be who they want to be. They believe in God, they have faith, but perhaps not the God of the Bible.

And before we roll our eyes and point the finger at this group and the next for creating their own version of God, even ‘Bible-believing’ Christians need to be careful. If our prayer life is about us then we will not receive. If we want our Churches to grow bigger than the Church on the opposite side of the road then we will not receive. If we want promotion so that we can get a bigger car, a more luxurious house to live in, more comfort in this life then we will not receive. Yes, pray for provision and Jesus instructs us to do so. But first fall into line. Make your words aligned to the glory, the honour, the hallowing of His Name. Not my will but yours be done.

When people look at us, the Church community, the ‘our’, do they see people glorifying God? That is the point.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?….Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray. –Oswald Chambers

“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.” (Matthew 6 v 5-8)

We may never have witnessed street-corner praying. But we must still learn to close the door when we pray.

Prayer is to close out everything else and close ourselves in with God.

Closing the door is so important for you are shutting out your world outside.

Prayer is not always to stumble in carrying a weight of problems that you just need to get off your chest. “Prayer is getting into perfect communion with God” (Chambers)

When we go into someone’s home, we first wipe our feet, kick off the dirt and leave outside what we don’t want to bring into this home.

“Child, slow down, leave it all outside, you must be tired of all the trouble, close the door. Come enter in, come with me, I want to show you my love, I want to show you how much I care for you. Your worship is beautiful as it comes from a heart of sacrifice. I want to wash you. Come with me, stay awhile. I want to show you my power. I want to show you that I am stronger than anything you will ever have to face. Enjoy my peace, stay in my presence, gaze on my power.”

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1-2)

“Now, child, what’s outside the door?”

As you look again at the problem, no matter how huge it is, you have just experienced the place of prayer with a closed door and it has filled you with confidence in God and because of that you begin to ask with confidence.

Do you ever find yourself struggling with your words with people? You have to be careful what you say realising that there are people listening who would delight in jumping on something you said or to misquote you etc.

Closing the door means confidentiality. We can tell Father anything, everything and in any order. It doesn’t have to be a well-crafted statement. At long last, there is a place where you can use clumsy words, it can just fall out of your mouth with no worry of offence being caused. We can tell Him how it really is, share our hurts, sorrows and joys. We can give Him our frustration, tears and anger. We can admit our weaknesses, failures and sin.

What a wonderful place this is.

Many get so near to this place. But because of preoccupation many have never entered in.

This is the locked down place. The closed door experience. It is the place of prayer.

In 2007, my African friend was deferred a year by my denomination’s Ministerial Selection Board because in his interview he, “came across far too quiet and gave no evidence for having proven ministry.” Yet by the time of his interview he had planted tens of churches and was an avid evangelist to his tribe. So the following year I decided to help my friend succeed at the second attempt. “Let me introduce you to a phrase, for I am going to coach you in the art of Blowing your own horn!” Though I was leading him down the path of ordination my friend thought I was leading him down a sinful path and of course both paths are dissimilar!

I like to research where phrases come from. Mark Twain in a letter in 1859 wrote “Permit me to blow my horn”. But the phrase is also found 2 centuries before that.

Let’s see our next verses in Matthew:

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6: 2-4)

Even Muhammed took these words of Jesus when he declared there were 7 people who would be protected from Judgment of Allah, the sixth being, “a person who practices charity so secretly that his left hand does not know what his right hand has given”. In the Old Testament there are numerous references to God’s people seeing the right hand as being strong and the left as weak. In fact in Ecclesiastes 10:2 the left is seen as foolish. Jacob blessed with his right hand; Ezekiel lay on his left side for 390 days in penance for the sins of Israel which was left of Judah and then 40 days on his right side (one day for every year of their sin) for the sins of Judah. Note: if you are left-handed don’t be condemned just switch it and the point remains. There is a side of us that continually wants to weaken the situation by claiming some recognition for achievement. Don’t let it happen when it comes to giving.

The picture Jesus provides is some kind of trumpet blowing when either you or someone within the community is bringing a gift. They did it to be seen.

Jesus says don’t do it to be seen by man but by your Father in heaven. This is the common root of his sermon and the exposure of hypocrisy that runs right through the centre of his message.

Many years ago a Church member offered me £20,000 so long as I told the church who had given the gift. I knew this request was revealing a hidden problem the man had of ego and control. I thanked him and refused the money but thought of the £20,000 for quite some time!

Every year philanthropic lists of people are produced showing how literally billions of dollars are given to charities. Every year people who die are then exposed as being the most wonderful secret givers. But they all give out of their wealth and whether alive or dead are praised by man. But then there are other givers. People like you. People who give out of their income regularly to the church, into a big pot of money to be used to pay ministers/staff to lead a giving church into the community and also to be used for the extension of God’s kingdom through mission and evangelism locally, nationally and overseas. No one knows. You don’t announce it when you give into the bag/plate or by standing order. You just do it and you have done it for years. It is probably the same amount every time but throughout the year you will give special larger amounts because you want to show thankfulness to God primarily. Your Father has rewarded you along the way and you have many stories no doubt but the promise of Jesus is that your Father will reward you. Whatever our life is like the other side it does seem rewards are there for us. Matthew will record later in Jesus’ sermon about storing up treasures in heaven. Secret giving does pay! But it is the Father who pays not people.

One final note: did my tuition in Blowing your own horn succeed for my African friend. Yes! He blew his own horn wonderfully and was accepted and ordained, though he had to repent later for self-promotion! Today this friend has planted innumerable amount of churches and seen thousands and thousands come to Christ.

Monday morning, start of another working week for many, maybe a week of zoom calls, living in a locked-down family unit, with the rise of social media there hasn’t been a time quite like now when our lives are publicly lived out to so many.

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6 v 1)

In a nutshell this sermon of Jesus is about revealing His kingdom. Its motto is ‘what is inside of you counts’. So it is indeed a new chapter as Jesus moves us into the public domain where we practice our righteousness. To practice it is to test and develop it.

Be You.

Don’t let others or the circumstance tempt you to pretend to be someone you are not in order to curry favour and acceptance from them.

Be You.

Don’t try to seek attention through ticking all the boxes of Christian behaviour.

Be You.

It is equally as dangerous to try to do good as it is to do bad; for doing good without making it a performance so that everyone claps will mean there is One who won’t be, the important One. (Thanks to the Message).

Be You.

Do good, it will lead to your reward from the Father. But don’t do it for the reason that you want to be seen. There will be no reward.

I woke early this morning and read an article sent from a colleague about the downfall of one of the Christian world’s leading apologists. He wasn’t the person everyone thought he was. He died last year and with that came the public inquiry not into his death but his life. I read the article with disturbed sadness.

I then read our next verse in Matthew’s gospel and what ends for us chapter 5:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5 v 48)

So that’s easy isn’t it?

I try. Don’t you? I also fail. What about you?

If the Apostle Paul openly talked of his struggle with sin then this Paul certainly is going to struggle!

So how am I going to achieve perfection?

Antony of Egypt (251-356) abandoned his inheritance at the age of 20 after hearing a reading of: If you want to be perfect, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor.

For 20 years he shut himself off from society in a Roman fort on a solitary desert mountain. After which he became a symbol of strength and wisdom for Egypt.

 As a result many became followers of Antony, they were known as the desert fathers. An arm of the desert fathers was the Stylites, an extreme bunch of people who thought perfection was attained by living on top of pillars. Thousands of weak, weather-beaten hermits lived a short life of malnutrition in the pursuit of being like Christ and being perfect.

So in my desire to be perfect do I become a follower of Antony?

Or do I realise that I am just a broken man in need of the Japanese practice of Kintusgi pottery? I need God to mend me, a broken pot, with gold or silver so that I am more beautiful than I was before I broke. Is this now perfection?

Which is it? Let’s read the sentence again.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

‘Therefore’.

This sentence is a conclusion of all Jesus has just said:

Love is to bless those who hurt you; Love is saying sorry; Love is reconciliation; Love is not lust; Love is not being selfish nor being self-righteous; Love is honest; Love says I will not respond the way I am being mistreated; Love your enemy; Love without partiality; Therefore, Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The whole section is to love as God loves. Jesus gives a description of the kingdom whose citizens mirror God’s activity towards them.

The Message says of the verse:  “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

I may never achieve perfection but in my response to people I can reveal a perfect God.

Do people annoy you sometimes? Do you find it hard to love certain people? For a season of my life I believed that I was called to love people but that didn’t mean I had to like them. Yet compared to the love I showed to those people I genuinely liked it was a very small amount of love! I came to the realisation if I wanted to be like Jesus I needed to work on my liking as well as my loving.

Have you ever heard God speak this to you? I love you but I don’t like you.

No.

But you do understand these words: I don’t like what you did, but I like you and I love you.

Let’s talk about love: have a think of people who may have gossiped about you, misrepresented you, complained about you. Now, with those people in mind let’s talk about the demonstration of your love to those people. You don’t like what they did. Can you find something you do like about them? Can you show to love them sacrificially?

Remember the days when you had people come round for dinner? Who did you invite? Nice people?

The goal of our life is to love how God loves. So how does He do it?

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (Matthew 5 v 45-47)

Jesus took a saying of the Jews which said that the resurrection of the dead was for the just but rain was for the just and the wicked. He uses their words to say that within his kingdom people imitate God. They love even the tax-collector (Matthew would know) and the pagan.

Most of the Jews believed that God actually hated the Gentiles but loved them. Think about the following beliefs:
There were 3 things to be thankful for as a Jewish man, you were not a slave, a woman or a GENTILE.
Never help a GENTILE, not at all, no matter how small or how much of an emergency it was. The answer was NO.
Funerals were held for Jews who married GENTILES. They were dead people.

You might disagree with a person’s belief or behaviour but you are stupid to disagree with God’s love!

Jesus’ sermon reveals how to live in his kingdom when we face so many challenging situations. How do we remain a Jesus follower?

The kingdom principle is to do the opposite of what comes your way and not the same response.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven”. (Matthew 5 v 43-45)

The preacher spoke, “I’ll bet that many of us feel as if we have enemies in our lives. So raise your hands if you have many enemies.” And quite a few people raise their hands.

“Now raise your hands if you have only a few enemies.” And about half as many people raise their hands.

“Now raise your hands if you have only one or two enemies.” And even fewer people raised their hands.

“See, most of us feel like we have enemies.”

“Now raise your hands if you have no enemies at all.” And the preacher looks around, and looks around, and finally, way in the back, a very, very old man raises his hand. He stands up and says, “I have no enemies whatsoever!” Delighted, the preacher invited the man to the front of the church. “What a blessing!” the preacher said. “How old are you?

“I’m 98 years old, and I have no enemies.” The preacher said, “What a wonderful Christian life you lead! And tell us all how it is that you have no enemies.”

“All the fools have died!”

A funny story and maybe true?!

The Scribes and Pharisees had brought their own interpretation to Scripture resulting in hating your enemy.

Jesus says the unthinkable. It seems impossible. How can we do this? To love and to pray for those who are against us?

It leads to us having to cope with loss. And that is what the core of love is.

If you have given out more than you have received back then you are venturing into the kingdom life.

There needs to be loss in your life. The loss of loving someone who doesn’t return that love.

The loss of helping those who just take.

Loss because there is no hope of getting anything back from your kindness and generosity.

When you question whether it was worth it; when you ask whether you have been taken for a ride; when you see nothing from your acts of kindness it is then when you enter the kingdom life.

The Kingdom Life is a life where you look like God, especially in front of your enemies. They may be ungrateful and they may not recognise what you do but He sees. God can see you identify with Him for this is who He is and what He has done and does today.

So if today you meet that awkward, self-centred, seemingly unavoidable person then be kind. Lose. Be like God, love, pray for them and you will be doing so from the place of the kingdom.

The next section of Jesus’ sermon isn’t referring to the abused spouse nor is it advocating that criminals can get away with it and neither is it an attempt to abolish whistle-blowing.

We live in a world that says, ‘Don’t let them walk all over you’ and ‘Stand up for yourself’.

Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5 v 38-42)

It has received great attention throughout the centuries of theological debate trying to get to the root of what Jesus was saying. The pacifists and the conscientious objectors have used it along with the anarchists. This was never meant to be a theological blog and there are so many better thinkers who will do a greater justice to this text.

Jesus is bringing in his kingdom, it is deeper and higher than the kingdom of the world. It is an upside-down kingdom. The one major point in his sermon is that of hypocrisy that was so prevalent and still is.

Slapped on the cheek, sued for your shirt, forced to go a mile, begged or borrowed. Five instances of people taking from you.

The message is found in the response.

Here’s the big thing and I simply write it in a number of different ways, my own responses to the attacks that come our way:

“I will not do life like you do life. I belong to a different kingdom to you. I choose a higher level. Not out of arrogance or pompous attitude but simply because I will not stoop down to a level of the world which says I should retaliate by ‘hitting your cheek or saying NO to my shirt, that mile, that ask or the loan.”

“Look down on me, make me look unequal to you and my response to you will show the world that we are indeed not equal.”

“Make my life hard and I will expose your injustice by making your life easy.”

“Make me look like some cattle carrying your bags for a mile (the Romans practiced conscription amongst the citizens) and I will show you I will not be demeaned for I will go the extra mile. My generosity will defeat your conscription”

“Humiliate me but I will not be humiliated in my heart.”

“My humanity will expose your violent humanity by revealing a bigger heart than what is being shown.”

“I will fight within the Kingdom of Jesus not within your kingdom.”

That’s what I think Jesus is saying.

For those who don’t want to be like a doormat then decide to be a shoe polisher as well and you will turn the demeaning kingdom upside down.

You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit Adultery; and we know the next one? You shall not steal.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5 v 33-37)

So why doesn’t Jesus speak about stealing?

He does, this is it, but it is stealing with words. He is following an order that is seen elsewhere, in Jeremiah 7: 9 when God is telling His people He knows exactly what is going on and sees through their falseness, “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely …”

A BBC report today says that scamming someone out of money by pretending to want a relationship has been on the rise during lockdown. It reports of a terrible story where one widow in her 50s was defrauded of £320,000 by a simple, but evil, false talk.

These are extreme but real situations of perjury.

Also today the headlines of newspapers are pretty much all saying the same thing- 10 days quarantining after entering the UK or if you lie about where you have flown in from then it’s 10 years in a cell! I swear on my mother’s grave!

What about the times when you want to say yes or no but you know it is going to be really difficult to do so? Have you ever been tempted to make up a story to go along with your NO because you want to let someone down gently?

The heart of the Sermon of Jesus on that mountainside was hypocrisy. That was his main target when speaking to the Pharisees throughout the gospel. They were constantly pulling the wool over people’s eyes. It seems that the religious would make great promises that they had no intention of keeping. Jesus is not saying that oaths should never be made. He has just spoken about the sanctity of marriage and divorce. But he is telling his disciples in the hearing of the crowd not to be fooled by elaborate words and promises and indeed not to make them.

The pain that many have received from the Church because of the verses we will read today!

 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5 v 31-32)

In their failure to keep a marriage together some of the loveliest of people have found themselves in the outer courts of the Church. We must do better with our marriages and with other people’s divorces.

The Talmud says that when a couple get divorced, it is as if the Altar sheds tears.

So what was Jesus saying?

Is he giving the grounds for divorce? If so, he only mentions sexual immorality, what about physical abuse? Also can the wife divorce her husband, it appears it is only one way?

Jesus continues his fulfilment of the law bringing a deeper intended meaning. The Pharisee thought they were fulfilling the Law of Moses by issuing a certificate of divorce. They prided themselves on not just walking away from their wife but making it all legal. The Message helps us: “Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure.”

Jesus was living in a time when the Pharisees and teachers of the law were divorcing their wives for the craziest of reasons but were gloating that they never broke the commandments, like the 7^th one, adultery. They were interpreting Deuteronomy 24:1, “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her …” with the focus on he is displeased and has found something indecent about her. The indecency was anything that displeased him. Surreal that it may sound but that included permission to divorce her for spoiling his dinner!

Jesus is not saying divorce should never happen.

Jesus is not saying that adultery should lead to divorce.

Jesus is not saying remarriage is wrong.

Jesus is not saying divorce without grounds is blasphemy and the unforgivable sin.

But Jesus is saying that people should stop pretending they are carrying out the will of God when they are treating the sanctity of marriage so badly.

If a spouse divorces in order to marry someone else, if that is the reason, no matter if you follow the whole legal process, you are doing what an adulterer does and have broken the 7^th commandment.

It is the reason, the motivation, it is pursuing a course of action for your own personal gain. It is a matter of the heart. That is always the secret to the kingdom.

Can I have a divorce? Yes. But your selfishness and self-righteousness may reveal the answer is NO. The condition of your heart is everything.

If you got it wrong, then don’t worry, I know a Saviour who specialises in this kind of thing.