In Matthew 6:11-15, Jesus teaches us three requests to help us survive the spiritual battle: (1) provision; (2) forgiveness; and (3) deliverance. "Prayer in the Trenches" is part 5 of "Messiah's Reward," Bryan Craddock's expository sermon series on Matthew 6 & 7.
At the end of 1941, the United States was drawn into World War II. Over 16 million people served in the armed forces during that period. But as huge as that number is, it was only 12 percent of the population. So, 88 percent of Americans remained far from the battles raging overseas.
Though they never saw any fighting, a lot of those civilians gave up some of their freedoms and comforts as they devoted themselves to a wartime mindset. They purchased war bonds. They planted “victory gardens” to grow extra vegetables. They accepted the rationing of goods like gas, rubber, sugar, meat, coffee, and butter. Many women went to work in factories to help assemble aircraft, build ships, and manufacture ammunition. The war could not have been won without their commitment.
We are all caught up in a spiritual war. In Ephesians 6:10-12, Paul says,
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
This battle rages all around us. Many people do not see it because they are blinded and held captive by Satan to do his will (2 Cor 4:4; 2 Tim 2:26). But God has rescued some of us. In Colossians 1:13-14, Paul describes our salvation by saying,
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
When we believe in Christ, he redeems us from the bondage and condemnation of our sin. We receive forgiveness and become citizens of his kingdom, waiting for the victory that he will bring when he returns. So, until that day comes, we live under fire in the trenches of this great battle. But are we devoted to a wartime mindset or are we complacent? Are we more concerned about enjoying our freedoms and comforts?
As we just saw in Ephesians 6, Paul calls us to put on the armor of God. He goes on to explain that God gives us spiritual resources to defend ourselves: the belt of truth, the breastplate of Christ’s righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit. Then in verse 18 he says that we should be,
praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.
Prayer is our lifeline in the battle. But how should we pray? The model prayer that Jesus gave us in his Sermon on the Mount is a good place to start. Matthew 6:9-13 tells us that he said,
Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day 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 evil.
In this part of his sermon, Jesus is speaking of the things that God rewards. He talks about practicing righteousness, giving to meet needs, and praying. God rewards prayer that expresses sincere faith in him as our heavenly Father who knows our needs, and this model prayer does that. We have seen that its first three requests align our hearts with the Lord and help us see the big picture of what he is doing--leading people to treat his name as holy by bringing his kingdom so that his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. That victory is guaranteed. So, praying for these requests builds our hope in the Lord.
The second half of the Lord’s Prayer relates to our daily struggles. We could call it “Prayer in the Trenches.” Jesus teaches us three requests to help us survive the spiritual battles of daily life. Praying for these things keeps us alert and counteracts our tendency to become complacent. It also strengthens our faith by reminding us how much we must depend upon the Lord. So, what should we pray?
Provision
Have you ever experienced a desert? The barrenness of it makes the sky seem bigger and more vibrant. It can be beautiful, peaceful, and quiet. But it is also a harsh environment with extreme temperatures and very little water. It’s not easy to survive there.
When God rescued the people of Israel from Egypt, he led them into the barren wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. The Book of Exodus says that there were about 600 thousand men plus women, children, and a mixed multitude of non-Jewish people (12:37-38). To survive in that harsh environment, they needed a huge amount of food. Trusting the Lord to provide was a daily spiritual battle.
God’s answer was to rain down bread from heaven. Each morning as the dew evaporated, they found flakes of something that they called manna. That was probably almost 1,500 years before Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount. But I cannot help but wonder if he had that story in mind as he taught his followers to pray for God’s provision. According to Matthew 6:11, he told them to say,
Give us this day our daily bread,
This request looks to God as the giver and sustainer of life. It acknowledges that everything we need to survive comes from him. Even when you work hard to provide for yourself and your family, even when your pantry is full and you have plenty of money to go buy more food, circumstances can change in the blink of an eye. A disaster, a pandemic, or some other crisis could come along and wipe out your supply. So, each day we must ask God to provide what we need.
There is great wisdom in cultivating this mindset of daily dependence upon the Lord. It’s explained in an Old Testament prayer for God’s provision recorded in Proverbs 30:8-9. The author says,
Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
There are temptations on both sides. Abundance tempts us to forget the Lord and to trust in ourselves. Desperation tempts us to get what we need in ways that dishonor God. No matter which circumstance we are facing, the key to maintaining the right outlook is to humbly ask for God’s provision each day and then to give thanks for whatever he provides.
Now even though this request focuses on our physical needs, it still has a spiritual purpose. Moses pointed out that connection after forty years of eating manna in the wilderness. According to Deuteronomy 8:3, he spoke of God and told the people,
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
In other words, the Lord wants us to depend upon his physical provision, so that we will also rely upon his word for spiritual direction. Jesus made the same point after he multiplied the loaves and fishes. Some of the crowd tracked him down the next day on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. They wanted more food, but they failed to grasp why he had provided it in such a miraculous way. John 6:35 tells us,
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Our experience with hunger and thirst teaches us about our need for God. We tend to look to food and drink for comfort and fulfillment that it cannot provide. We will only find that ultimate satisfaction in eternity in the presence of the Lord, and we cannot have that eternal life apart from Jesus. He is the bread that gives us true life through his death and resurrection. He is the fountain of living water that quenches our thirst.
So, to survive the spiritual battle in our spiritual wilderness, we must pray for Jesus to give us strength and to sustain us each day physically and spiritually. That leads us to a second request.
Forgiveness
If you have a lot of debt, it can feel as if you are someone’s slave. In our society, it’s all just numbers in a computer. But that makes it even easier to run up huge expenses without realizing it. There are no physical chains restraining you, but the burden is still there.
In ancient times, debtors really could be forced into slavery. In fact, Jesus used that scenario in a parable recorded in Matthew 18:23-35. He spoke of a slave who owed ten thousand talents to the king who was his master. That was a ridiculously huge amount. Today it would be worth millions of dollars. There was no conceivable way that the servant could ever repay it. But when he pleads for more time, the king graciously releases him and forgives all his debt.
Now Jesus was not trying to give financial advice with that story. He was using the concept of debt to illustrate our great need for God’s forgiveness. In fact, he uses the same analogy in the model prayer in his Sermon on the Mount. According to Matthew 6:12, he said that we should pray,
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
After concluding the prayer, he offered a footnote so that no one would misunderstand. In Matthew 6:14-15, he explained,
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
So, the debt that he was talking about in verse 12 comes from our trespasses. Other translations say transgressions or offenses. The idea is that God has set boundaries for us. They are mapped out in his commands, and whenever we cross over those lines, we incur a penalty. But in Matthew 5, Jesus argued that it is not enough to stop short of murder or adultery. God is concerned about the heart, so he wants us to avoid the murderous heart that comes out in our anger and the adulterous heart that comes out in our lust. His standard is nothing less than perfection.
The just penalty for a single trespass against an infinitely holy God is death. So, we owe far more penalties to God than we could ever repay. For God to simply forgive that debt would be unjust. But in his grace, he sent his Son to pay the penalty by dying in our place. Romans 4:25 says that he was delivered up for our trespasses. Colossians 2:14 assures us that our record of debt was nailed to the cross. Jesus paid it all!
To receive God’s forgiveness, we simply need to ask. That’s how we begin the Christian life and how we continue in it. As we have seen, we are in a spiritual battle. We are constantly under attack. So, whenever we fall back into another trespass, we must humbly seek God’s forgiveness again.
But Jesus includes a qualification. He says that we must forgive those who trespass against us. Our sinful deeds do not just offend God. They impact people. Six of the Ten Commandments relate to how we treat people, and those sinful deeds can leave deep scars.
So, we might think that someone should seek our forgiveness before God forgives them. But Jesus turns it around the other way. For you and I to receive God’s forgiveness, we must be willing to extend forgiveness to those whose sins have hurt us. Why does God require that?
Jesus gives us an explanation in that parable about the slave. Another servant owed him a hundred denarii. That’s a significant debt. Today it might be worth more than $10,000. But when that man asked for more time to repay his debt, the forgiven slave had him thrown into prison. Jesus continues the story in Matthew 18:32-35 by saying,
Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."
If I refuse to forgive others, it shows that I have no sense of the ridiculously huge amount of my debt with God. Nor do I appreciate the price that Jesus paid for me when he was abandoned by his friends, rejected, mocked, beaten, scourged, humiliated, and crucified by men, and forsaken by his heavenly Father. In this spiritual battle, people will continue to do things that hurt or offend us. Reconciliation may not always be wise or possible. But Jesus does not want us to hold onto grudges. We must let them go by praying, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus adds one more request.
Deliverance
When I was young, I had a classic set of little green plastic army men. They weren’t the most exciting toys, but the least interesting character of the bunch was the radio operator. He had a big box with an antenna strapped to his back, and he was holding a telephone handset up to his ear. Kids today would not have any idea what he was doing. So, I don’t think that they make that one anymore.
In World War II, a radio operator would periodically receive orders, send information back, and maybe call in coordinates for an artillery strike. Troops were more or less on their own, fighting blind. With modern technology, however, soldiers can receive vital real-time information to guide them through the threats they face. Communication is more important than ever.
Communication is even more vital in our spiritual battle, and we don’t need any high-tech equipment to do it. Believers have always been able to speak to the Lord and trust his guidance. So, Jesus included a two-part request for deliverance in his model prayer. According to Matthew 6:13, he said,
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The King James Version continues the verse by saying, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” But that great doxology is not in our earliest Greek manuscripts of the passage. Later manuscripts even have different variations of it. Perhaps early believers used it, and a scribe wrote it in the margin. In time, others might have assumed that it was part of the text. So, most modern translations like the ESV place it in a footnote.
As for the request itself, it includes a proactive part and a reactive one. Proactively, we should pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” This does not mean that our heavenly Father is the source of the temptations we face. James 1:13-14 makes this clear when it says,
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
The real battleground in this spiritual war is our own hearts. When we repent and believe in Christ, we are saved and born again. But we must still resist the pull of our old sinful desires. To make matters worse, we have an enemy who seeks to manipulate circumstances to provoke our evil desires. Jesus told Peter that Satan demanded to sift him like wheat (Lu 22:31), and in Ephesians 6:16, Paul spoke of all Christians as targets for the fiery darts of the evil one.
How should we respond to this threat? We should pray! Matthew 26:41 tells us that as Jesus led his disciples into Gethsemane, he said,
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
We need to stay in constant proactive communication with the Lord about the temptations we might face. He will not always remove them from our path. But in 1 Corinthians 10:13, Paul gives us this important promise.
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
That “way of escape” is probably what Jesus had in mind when he said that we should pray, “deliver us from evil.” That is our reactive request in the heat of the moment. Earlier we saw in Colossians 1:13 that the Christian life starts with deliverance. We are delivered from the domain of darkness so that we are no longer under power of the evil one. But we must continue to rely upon the Lord to deliver us from the pull of evil that we still feel in our hearts. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:13, God often delivers us by enabling us to endure the temptation without succumbing to it.
But our request for deliverance from evil is not limited to the here and now. The ultimate answer to that prayer will come when Jesus returns. That thought takes us back to the beginning of Jesus’ model prayer. We pray for the kingdom to come so that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Then evil will be conquered and God’s name will be hallowed as he truly deserves.
__________
So, we are in the midst of a great spiritual battle. But we can look to our heavenly Father to carry us through. Jesus teaches us to pray for the provision of our daily bread to meet our physical needs and build our faith. He urges us to humbly seek God’s forgiveness realizing the enormity of our spiritual debt and showing mercy to others. Finally, we must ask for God’s deliverance from the temptation itself when possible or from the evil choices that we would make without his help.
What’s your response to this part of the Lord’s Prayer? Are you seeking God’s forgiveness? You don’t need to carry the burden of guilt. You can be set free. God sent his Son to provide the way for us to be reconciled through his death and resurrection. Start confessing your sins and place your faith in him. If you want to learn more about forgiveness, I encourage you to read Matthew 18 where Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant.
If you’re trusting in the Lord, let me ask again, “Do you need to change how you pray?” Don’t try to survive this spiritual battle on your own. Keep listening to God’s word and communicating back to him in prayer. Follow the outline of the Lord’s Prayer that changes our outlook, giving us hope for the future and strength to persevere. Let it shape your view of people. They are not the enemy. They need to be saved. So, show them the mercy that you’ve received.
May we walk by faith!
Reflect
Which of these requests do you pray most? Why?
Which of these requests do you most need to focus on? Why?
How do these requests change your outlook?