The Giving of The Lord's Prayer For Worldwide Evangelisation (11:1-4).
Learning to pray follows aptly on from Mary sitting at His feet, so this follows on the previous passage very satisfactorily. It was quite normal for disciples to seek a guide to prayer from their teachers, and here we find Jesus' disciples doing the same. Jewish Rabbis regularly composed special prayers for their disciples. So Jesus is asked to do the same. His model prayer brings out what we should be emphasising when we pray. It was a pattern to follow, not a rhyme to recite, with its six headings giving a full pattern of prayer. Matthew 6:9-13 fills it out more fully when Jesus provides it at a different time in a different context.
Many pray from a list, but that list is not usually like this. It is usually full of our own near concerns. To us it is our little world that is important. The prayer that Jesus taught, however, emphasised rather the wider concerns of God. Indeed in Matthew, in the context of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6), He points out that we should leave our detailed anxieties in our Father's hand and rather be assisting in establishing the Kingly Rule of God and His righteousness. We should be like Mary rather than Martha, concentrating on things above.
As we have seen this prayer is central to this section. It reveals all that Jesus has come to do and achieve. All His effort is expended towards these ends. He has come to hallow God's name, to bring in His Kingly rule, to feed His people, to bring them forgiveness, and to deliver them from all testing. And His disciples can participate in it with Him, both through their activities and through their prayers. It is Jesus' timetable of events, God's blueprint of what our lives should be.
Analysis.
The analysis is simple consisting of two parts:
· As He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.”
· ‘And he said to them, “When you pray, say,
Father, Hallowed be your name. Your Kingly Rule come. Give us today Tomorrow's bread. And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive every one who is indebted to us. And bring us not into testing.”