PRAYER
PRAYERS OF PETITION
DR. JIM DIXON
JULY 28, 2013
MATTHEW 7:7
On September 11th, 2001, United Airlines flight in 93 nose-dived into the earth, 80 miles southeast of the city of Pittsburgh, leaving a crater 40 feet deep. The plane had been hijacked by radical Islamic terrorists. They were, it appears, targeting Washington DC—perhaps the capitol, perhaps the White House itself. But they did not succeed. On that United flight 93, there was a man named Todd Beamer. Todd went to Wheaton College, a wonderful Christian college, and Todd was a great Christian young man. His wife Lisa also went to Wheaton College. They had fallen in love and they were married.
They had just returned, prior to this September 11th, from a romantic trip to Italy. They returned on September 10th from that trip to Italy, and they could not wait to see their kids at home in New Jersey. They had their son, David, who was three, and Andrew, who was one, and a third child who was in Lisa’s womb. So Todd knew that it would only be one day to reunite with the kids, and then he’d have to fly out again on the 11th because he worked for Oracle and they had a conference in Northern California. So that’s why he was on that flight United Flight 93. He was an hour into that flight when the terrorists hijacked the plane and seized it. Todd, during that period of time, was able to use the onboard phone system, and he dialed zero and got the GTE operator in Chicago. And they talked. In the midst of what was going on the plane, Todd talked to the GTE operator in Chicago for 13 minutes.
The gal in Chicago that Todd talked to on the phone was named Lisa Jefferson, and she informed Todd what had happened in New York City with the Twin Towers. So he was in the know, and he knew what was likely to happen on his flight. He told her everything that was going on on United Flight 93. As they talked, she confessed that she too was a Christian. Todd had shared that he was a Christian. And so they said the Lord’s Prayer together. And she said that right after they completed the Lord’s Prayer she heard him say, “Help me God, help me Jesus.” And then the final words she heard were, “Are you ready, guys? Let’s roll.”
You think about how, in Todd’s final moments, he said the Lord’s Prayer and how he was able to say it with the GTE operator on the phone. You think about the petition he made, “Deliver us from evil,” and you might think, well, how was that prayer answered? Did God deliver him from evil? And I would submit to you today that yes, God is always at work and certainly in the ultimate sense (I mean, this is the very foundation of our faith) Todd was delivered from evil, as Christ has taken him into His presence into heaven itself. Todd has entered into his eternal reward. But beyond that, I believe that God, that day, by his grace, used Todd to save many lives. Who knows how many would’ve died in Washington, DC, perhaps at the Capitol, perhaps even at the White House, had Todd not done what he’d done and had God not shown some mercy there.
I don’t know how you feel as you approach crises in your life and situations in your life. Sometimes you pray and panic. Sometimes you pray with great worry, great concern. I know we all make many petitions, and that’s what we’re going to look at today: prayers of petition, the things we ask God for, and what the Bible says to us. We have two teachings with regard to prayers of petition.
The first teaching is that God does want you to ask for stuff. That’s the first thing the Bible’s very clear about. God wants us to pray for stuff. He wants us to petition Him, to make requests of Him, to ask Him. Even the Lord’s Prayer has seven petitions. The Lord’s Prayer is primarily petition. It’s the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, so do not feel guilty because you spend such time in petition. God wants us to make prayers of petition.
We see this in the parables of Jesus. Jesus oftentimes taught through means of parables. You look at Luke chapter 11, and Jesus tells the parable of the friend at midnight, the friend who wanted three loaves of bread at midnight because company was going to be coming. And then you look at the parable in Luke 18 of the widow and the judge, and in both of these parables told by Jesus, Jesus said, “Ask.” And He’s saying, “Ask and ask again and keep on asking.” And there’s a certain persistence. Through these parables in Luke 11 and Luke 18, Christ invites us to participate in persistent asking.
I’m reminded of a story that really is a story that took 101 years to work itself out. It concluded on December 6th in the year 1884, when six guys put the final cone on top of the Washington Monument. That cone that you see on the top of the Washington Monument is called a pyramidion. And that was placed on the top of the monument on December 6th, 1884, by these six guys. I don’t know how many women it would’ve taken—probably fewer. But it took six guys to put this cone on the top of the Washington Monument in 1884.
The amazing thing is that that monument had been planned for 101 years. It was in 1783 that this nation decided to build a monument in honor of George Washington. Washington wasn’t even president yet. He was simply the great hero, the great leader in the War of Independence, and our nation wanted to honor him.
And then finally, in 1848, the Washington Monument began to rise from the ground. It would take another 36 years. They had problems with the architects, problems with the construction companies, problems with the weather again and again and again. But finally, after 101 years, the Washington Monument was completed. And you go there today and you see this great monument expressing gratitude and respect for our first president of these United States.
I think, in life, a lot of things are kind of like that. It takes persistence. Worthwhile things that are significant oftentimes takes persistence. Jesus is saying to us it’s that way in prayer? Oftentimes, if your prayers would be effectual, then you must persist in prayer and you must ask again and again and again. So I think God knows that, in encouraging us to ask again and again, that He’s drawing us closer—ever closer—to Himself. As we plead with Him, and as we persist in this, we are actually drawn closer to Him.
You know of my Aunt Elsie. My Aunt Elsie is my mom’s sister. Elsie is almost a hundred years old. My mom lived almost to 95. So we have some longevity there. And Elsie prayed for decades for her husband Fred, that he would fall in love with Christ and that he would become a Christian and that he would be saved. And he resisted. He was kind of an entrenched atheist, or at least an agnostic. He would not even allow mealtime prayer in his house. But Elsie continued to pray, and God honored those prayers. And finally, my Uncle Fred gave his heart to Jesus Christ and invited Jesus to be his Lord and Savior. Fred is with Jesus today in heaven because of persistent prayer, persistent petition. And this is what God wants from us: persistent petition.
“Ask, seek knock.” That’s our passage of scripture for today, in Matthew chapter seven. “Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock,” (Keep on knocking is the tense of the Greek), “knock, and it shall be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks it shall be open.” But again, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. This is the force of the Greek. This teaching of Christ is brought up again in Luke chapter 11. Jesus repeats it because it’s so important.
And the apostles caught on. So in James chapter four, you see the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ, James, who became the great head of the Jerusalem church, saying, “You have not because you ask not.” Surely he was thinking of the words of his Lord and brother Jesus Christ. “You have not because you ask not.” This is what we’re consistently taught in scripture.
Now, in the Lord’s Prayer, of the seven petitions, I think for most of us, perhaps when we think of asking maybe the petition we think of most is the simple, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And I think we would view that as a request for the physical sustenance and the physical needs of our life. “Give us this day our daily bread,” our physical needs. Please provide for us, Lord. And there’s some of that in it for sure. Understand, though, the word “artos,” the word for bread, can refer to physical bread or spiritual bread. It can refer to bread for the body that feeds the body or bread for the soul that feeds the soul. The word artos, in fact, can refer not simply to bread, but to food in general, and that would be food for the body or food for the soul.
So we look at that request, that petition, “give us this day our daily bread,” and we see the word “daily.” Doesn’t that sound kind of redundant? Give us “this day” our “daily” bread. And the word daily is the problem in terms of interpretation. It’s the Greek word “epiousion.” And epiousion might not mean daily at all. So, the problem is that very little is known about the word epiousion. It’s only found in two places, and both of them are in the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not found anywhere else in the Bible. And for centuries it was believed that it wasn’t found anywhere else in the Greek language, that Luke and Matthew had just created this word that is found nowhere else.
Now, rare instances of it have been found, but its meaning is difficult. What does epiousion mean? And there are arguments in the scholarly community regarding its etymology. And some believe that epiousion comes from “eimi,” and that’s the verb “to be,” or the verb “to go.” And so the idea would be, “give me this day the bread to keep on going and to keep on being.” That’s one possibility which would kind of be similar to the concept of daily bread. “The bread to keep on going, the bread to keep on being.”
But that’s not likely the meaning here, because it’s unlikely that epiousion comes from eimi. It’s far more likely that ion comes from “ousia.” And this is what most Greek scholars believe, that epiousion comes from ousia, which can mean “natural,” or it can mean “substantial.” And they know that the word epi is the prefix. Epi is an intensification. It’s a prefix of intensification. It’s like adding the word “super,” or “above,” or “beyond.” So it’s like, “Give me the supernatural bread, the super substantial bread. Give me the bread that is above and beyond nature.” That would be the force of epiousion.
That would really change the prayer requests that you’re making here and make it a little more difficult. And we’re going to get to that in just a second, because it’s very, very important. But at this point, what I want you to understand is that when you say the Lord’s Prayer and you say, “Give me this day my daily bread,” you should think of that both physically and spiritually—food for your bodies and food for your souls. Think of it as earthly food and think of it also as heavenly food. And we’ll revisit that in a moment.
So what is clear is God wants us to ask. He wants us to ask for physical things. He wants us to ask for spiritual things. He wants to do this for ourselves. He wants us to do it for others. He wants us to petition him. And when you look at the titles of God, when you look at the titles of Christ (which we did last week), you think of Jehovah Jireh (or Yahweh Jireh, or as the Hebrew would say, Yahweh Yireh) and that title, the Lord Who Provides, tells us that God wants us to petition Him. He is the Lord who provides. He wants us to ask for His provision and His protection. And we need to ask for this every day. I need to ask for the Lord’s provision and protection every single day. This is why Jesus taught us to say the Lord’s Prayer, so that the Lord’s Prayer might be a model for daily prayer every day.
We need to pray for these things. And the world’s dangerous. You know, Friday’s my day off, and Friday morning Barb went on a hike with some of her friends. So I thought, well, I’ll just go down the street and go to Starbucks. When I have nothing else to do, I go to Starbucks (not really). Anyway, I go down the street to Starbucks, and I get down there and I see four or five folks from the church. This is the Starbucks in my neighborhood, just two miles from our house. We’re in Castle Pines North, so it’s on Castle Pines Parkway there. So I pull into the Starbucks there, and there are three or four of you sitting out on the front patio, and we talk and say hi. Then I go in and there are three or four more from the church. And that’s wonderful. I mean, I don’t go to Starbucks to be alone. If I want to be alone, I stay home.
But in any event, I’m inside Starbucks and I’m just talking to some of you. And suddenly we see these flashing lights just go and sirens blaring as a big firetruck just races down Castle Pines Parkway. And we’re all like, wow, what’s going on? I wonder what’s going on?
Well, I get my coffee and a couple of minutes later I get in the car and I think, well, (as I’m driving back to the house), maybe I’ll see where the firetruck went. I was kind of curious. So I’m driving back Castle Pines Parkway, and I’m looking off every side road. I don’t see the firetruck anywhere. So I’m thinking, well, I don’t know where it went. Finally, I pull into our neighborhood and take a couple of rights and I’m into my cul-de-sac. I turn into my cul-de-sac, and there’s the firetruck right in front of my house. I can’t even get in the driveway. So I’m thinking, what is going on? I notice that all the neighbors have gathered in the front yard, just on one part of the cul-de-sac, and are talking. As I drive up, I roll down the window and say, “What’s going on?” And Paul and Tracy, who live right next to us—wonderful Christians—had some kind of a big gas leak in their house, and they were afraid that the whole house was going to launch. They were afraid the whole house was just going to go airborne. Everybody was out of their houses and down the street from Paul and Tracy’s house, because nobody wants to be part of the event that might happen.
The firemen go right into the house. Thank God for firemen and for cops and police officers and people who put their lives in harm’s way for us. I mean, really, truly. But every day there’s danger. And we need to pray. I mean, when you make petition, pray for safety. And who knows the mercy of God? Who knows the number of times, even now, God has spared you, that you don’t even know about it? Who knows the things that almost happened that He protected you from. So pray, but don’t feel bad about praying for protection and provision. And do it every single day. God wants us to ask for this stuff.
Now, there’s a second and final teaching, and that is this: God wants us to ask for the right stuff. He wants us to petition Him. He wants us to ask for things, but always remember that He wants us to ask for the right things. And when you go back to James chapter four, we saw how the apostle said, “You have not because you asked not.” But then the apostle in his teaching goes on to give further clarification. “You have not, because you ask not. And you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly.” So we need to ask in the right way for the right things. So he goes on to say, “You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” That’s what James tells us.
Now, the word for passions is the great word “epithumia,” generally rendered lust. So James is saying, “When you’re praying, you’re praying lustfully, and this does not please God. And that’s why you’re not receiving.” Now, this word epithumia refers to two types of problems relating to desire. The first is excessive desire. When you’re praying, you’re praying for something you already have enough of. What you’re asking for is fine, except you already have enough of it. So your petition, your request, is excessive. That’s one meaning of epithumia. The other meaning of epithumia is not excessive desire, but improper desire. You’re asking for something you shouldn’t even be asking for. It isn’t right.
So those are the two possibilities. You’re asking for something you already have enough of, or you’re asking for something that isn’t even right for you—maybe not right for anybody. And so you ask and do not receive. That’s what James tells us.
Now, we know from the scriptures that there are certain things that God does want us to pray for. One thing is He wants us to pray for others. He wants us to pray for ourselves, but our prayers should be primarily external in their focus. So it’s great to pray for yourselves. God understands that. God loves you, God cares about you; you’re precious and your needs are important to Him. But our prayer should, if we’re really going to please God, have an external focus. In fact, we should be in committed relationships with other Christians so that they’re praying for us so that they can have an external focus and we’re part of it. That’s why we’re always inviting you into prayer groups, small groups, so that you can have a covenant relationship with other brothers and sisters in Christ, knowing that you don’t have to always pray for yourself because you got a bunch of people praying for you and they have a bunch of people praying for them, and you’re one of those praying for them. So you have this external focus in prayer.
One of the words for prayer is the word “enteuxis.” And this is a beautiful biblical word for prayer, enteuxis. And in the time of Christ, it literally meant, “to petition the king,” but it was always an intercession for somebody else. You petition the king for somebody else. It’s intercession. So Christ is wanting us to make petition, but He wants our focus in prayer to be for other people and petition for them.
Now, I thank God for the fact that you pray for me, and I want you to know I pray for you. I don’t pray for all of you by name, but I do pray for some of you by name and I certainly pray for you as a congregation and as a flock. I know that you have interceded for my family. Three years ago our grandson, Dixon, was born and two neurologists told us that Dixon would likely be mentally retarded and have a short life. And he was born normal, by the mercy of God. And then, more recently, Kenzie was born, and you know her story. We were told that she could be paralyzed for life, and through intercession God delivered her. Kenzie and our son Drew and his wife Rachel are coming tonight and they’re going to visit us for the week. And that’s all the mercy of God.
And you’ve prayed for our grandson Eli. We prayed for a year for Eli. We didn’t think we’d ever get him out of Ethiopia. But now Eli’s home. We prayed because his mother was HIV positive when she dropped him off at the orphanage. And we were praying that Eli would not be HIV positive, and he is not. And he’s got some developmental issues, but we keep praying.
I just am thankful for the fact that you’ve prayed for me. And every night when I go to bed, I have a list of you that I know have cancer. I put you on a list and I pray for you. I just feel like this is the will of God for us in prayer, that we intercede for each other and then we see God’s power come down on us. We see His power come down on us as we learn to pray for each other. And this is part of the way God brings us closer to Him, but it’s also part of the way He brings us closer to each other. We really learned to intercede for each other in prayer and it brings us closer together. And then His power is released in all of that.
Here’s the thing I want you to remember. Above all else, in making your prayers of petition the biggest subject in your heart and your mind should be the kingdom of God. What you should pray for most is the kingdom of God. This is clear from all over the Bible. It’s totally clear in the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus taught us to pray every day for the kingdom. And think about it. When was the last time you ever prayed for the kingdom? Jesus asked you to pray every day for His kingdom. When you look at the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, most of them (and perhaps all of them) are tied to the kingdom. And He wants us to pray every day and be praying every day for the cause of the kingdom. And yet, I think some of us go years and never give the kingdom a thought. Something’s wrong with that.
I have many different sets of commentaries in my office at home, and here at the church. My favorite commentaries are the Word Biblical Commentaries. And I would encourage you all to get the Word Biblical Commentaries, except you’d have to save your money, because to get the commentaries on all 66 books—the 39 Old Testament and the 27 New Testament—it’s going to take… they’re very scholarly. They’re all hard bound. These are the greatest Greek and Hebrew scholars from around the world assembled. And when they look at the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and in Luke in the Word Biblical Commentaries, the conclusion is that this is an eschatological kingdom prayer. This is an eschatological kingdom prayer that Jesus taught us to pray every day. So I want to just take a fresh look at it.
“Our Father who art in heaven.” This is a typical beginning to a Jewish prayer. It’s, “Our exalted Father, our transcendent Father, our Father who art in heaven.” So you begin with His transcendence and His exaltation, and now you start your petitions.
“Hallowed be thy name.” Now, this is an aorist imperative. The first three petitions are all aorist imperatives. So the force of this is urgent. It’s urgent. And the likely force is, “Vindicate Your name.” “Our exalted, transcendent Father, vindicate your name.” Hallow Your name. Set it apart. Show it holy. Your name, which has been slandered on this earth, vindicate it.
Now that we saw last week that we honor His name in prayer and we set it apart and we look at the names of God to see the holiness of God. But this prayer probably has the force of saying, “Vindicate Thy holy name. Vindicate all of Your divine names in a world that has slandered You.” Urgency.
Then the next phrase, the next petition, follows right on it. “Thy kingdom come.” This is also an aorist imperative. Urgency. It’s like maranatha: “Come quickly.” Thy kingdom come now. Vindicate Your name now, exalted Father.
And then the next phrase, the third petition, is also an aorist imperative. It has that same urgency. “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Thy will be done on earth now. Overcome your enemies, overcome evil, that Your will may be done here as it is there. It’s urgency.
Then we look at that fourth petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And that word epiousion starts to have a little different feel, doesn’t it? What is this supernatural bread? “Give us this day our heavenly bread. Give us this day our supernatural bread.” And it’s just possible that the reference is to the heavenly banquet, the marriage supper of the Lamb. “Let thy kingdom come. Let’s sit down and eat.” Remember the words of Jesus to the disciples in the upper room as He instituted of the Last Supper. “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.”
So, give us this day our super substantial, our supernatural, bread. I’m not denying that we pray for our physical bread and our physical needs. I’m just saying this prayer has scope and there’s definitely a kingdom thrust and there’s definitely an eschatological thrust.
“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” That is the fifth petition. And this is the way of the kingdom, that we forgive those who sin against us. This is only the way of the kingdom. It was Jesus who taught us, “You’ve heard it said of old, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, if anyone strikes you on the one cheek, offer him the other as well.” This is the way of the kingdom. And we know that when the kingdom comes in fullness, sin will be completely eradicated from our lives and there will come a holiness in sanctification we’ve never seen before.
Then the six petition is, “Lead us not into testing or temptation.” “Peirazo” means both. “Lead us not into testing or temptation.” And the reference may be to the apocalypse. The reference may be to the apostasy and the tribulation that precedes the dawning of the new day and the age of the kingdom to come. “Lead us not into testing or temptation, but deliver us from evil,” which has the force of, “Deliver us from the evil one.” And that’s what will happen when Christ’s kingdom comes in full power. The devil will be cast down.
So I’m just saying, when you say the Lord’s prayer, you might give it a little different thrust every once in a while. This isn’t just praying for daily stuff in this life and in this fallen world. You’re making a kingdom prayer. You’re praying for the coming of His kingdom, the descent of His will upon this earth—for His name to be vindicated, and for that heavenly banquet and that cleansing that only come when we see Him face-to-face. And that deliverance from evil that cannot happen in this age of the world.
So this is to be constantly on our minds, constantly in our hearts, and it’s to be on our tongues as we pray. So we pray for the kingdom, and as we saw before, even this word enteuxis, this key biblical word for prayer, means to petition the king. Everything is king and kingdom.
One of the reasons I love the Alliance Defending Freedom conference that I went to… I was thinking, why did I love that so much? And then, it was just great being with so many Christians. I never heard a slate of better speakers. I mean, that was really wonderful to hear, but I loved it because it was so kingdom focused. It was all about the kingdom of Christ and Christians coming together to serve the greater cause of the kingdom of Christ, longing for that kingdom to come in fullness of power but serving the kingdom even now.
We had that legal division of the Alliance Defending Freedom, with 2,300 attorneys, all Christians, all saying, how can we serve the kingdom of Christ? There were 2,300 attorneys saying, let’s serve the kingdom of Christ. That’s a wonderful image. Then you have the clergy track and you have all these pastors from across the country saying, how can we serve the kingdom of Christ? Then you have all these media people from all over the country coming together saying, how can we serve the kingdom of Christ? What can we do for the cause of Christ and the kingdom of heaven? And we have a collegiate track with young men and women looking to the future saying, how can we serve the kingdom of God?
This is to be on our hearts and in our minds. And time is short. You know, you have 86,400 seconds every day. The sands are moving through the hourglass. I mean, it’s just seems like, wow, as the days go by, the sand seems to be going faster and faster. What are you doing with your life? What are you doing with your time? I mean, the Bible says that God has appointed unto us three score and 10, perhaps 70 years, and for good measure and by way of blessing, fourscore, 80 years. I hope you’re blessed with a hundred years, all of you, but what are you doing with it? Are you praying for the right things? Are you living for the right things? Take a look at your prayer life and it’ll tell you what you’re living for.
Don’t be deceived. You’ve all heard of George Harrison, who was a member of the Beatles, the lead guitar player for the Beatles. He died in 2001, at the age of 58, greatly deceived. He had poured his life into the Eastern religions. He just poured his life into Buddhist and Hindu readings. And upon his death, he demanded that his remains be taken to the Ganges River in India, an allegedly sacred and very polluted river. He demanded that his remains be thrown in there, thinking of samsara, thinking of reincarnation, thinking of karma, thinking that the sands will just keep coming and there’ll be more lives and more lives and endless lives, no limit to time.
It’s a lie. The Bible says, “It’s appointed unto man once to die. And after that, the judgment.” So what are you doing with your one shot? What are you living for? What am I living for in the time that remains? So let’s pray for the right stuff. Let’s pray for others and make sure we have others praying for us. Let’s pray for the kingdom and let’s be faithful. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.