Spiritual Dependence (Values of the Cross): The way of Jesus is fundamentally different from the ways of the world. Why? Because the story of the cross produces unique values that transform our focus, conflicts, purpose, allegiance — everything! Lent is a season to reflect on these unique values. And prayer and fasting, two traditional practices of Lent, can be great tools to help us refocus on our spiritual dependence on God. Recorded on Mar 16, 2025, on Matthew 6:5-18 by Pastor David Parks.
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This message is part of our Lenten sermon series, Values of the Cross. Christians are called to follow Jesus, but the way of Jesus is often completely upside down and backward compared to the ways of this world. Why is the way of Jesus so different? Join us during Lent for our sermon series, Values of the Cross, as we consider some of the unique values of the cross-shaped way of Jesus and how they transform every part of life. The cross changes everything!
Sermon Transcript
If you’ve been with us, you’ll know that last week, we finished a long series on Exodus in the Bible. And I just want to say thank you for your endurance. As always, if you missed any of those sermons, you can always go back and watch or listen online. But today, we get to start a six-week series for Lent called Values of the Cross from the gospel according to Matthew. And here’s the big idea for this series: Christians are called to follow Jesus, but the way of Jesus is often completely upside down and backward compared to the ways of this world. You might wonder, “Why is the way of Jesus so different?” Well, in our series, Values of the Cross, we’ll see that the unique story of the cross and the empty tomb produces unique values that lead to a totally unique way of life. So, as we learn to follow Jesus and his uniquely cross-shaped way, it can transform every part of life, including our focus, conflicts, purpose, expectations, allegiance, and our record. The cross changes everything! Today, we’ll consider how some of the classic practices of Lent, that of fasting and prayer, can help us change our focus. Sometimes, it feels like I’m a little pebble in a rushing river. The force of our culture in this broken world and its values/desires constantly rushes past and presses against me while I try to follow Jesus. Sometimes, even mature believers can get swept up in or pushed off course by the ways of the world. We can lose our focus. We can forget our complete and utter dependence on God. But Lent is a time to refocus, and prayer/fasting can be a way to remember our true spiritual dependence on God, to remember our values/way. If you have your Bible/app, please open it to Mt 6:5.
Matthew 6:5–8 (NIV), “5 “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. 6 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. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”This passage is found in the middle of Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount, where he lays out a vision for the kingdom of heaven and what life looks like for anyone who would follow after him. Matthew chapter 6 is all about traditional religious works such as almsgiving (giving to the poor), prayer, and fasting. We didn’t read it, but v. 1 is really the thesis statement for this section of teaching. There, Jesus said, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” Be careful. Ok, so this is a warning for us. About what? It’s a warning not to do good works, religious works even, to be seen by others. If you do these things to be known as a good person, to virtue-signal, then you shouldn’t expect any additional reward from God because they were never for God; they were for yourself. Don’t pray on the street corners to be seen by others. Now, Jesus isn’t saying we should never pray publicly. And he isn’t saying never to spend long hours, at times, in prayer, which would presumably use many words. Jesus prayed both publicly and often at great length. Rather, this is just another example of doing religious works for self-serving, self-glorifying reasons — praying to be seen by others or to be impressive to others. It’s far better to pray a secret prayer with a few simple words than to pray publicly or impressively when God isn’t even involved. Before we go any further, let’s ask a big question: What is prayer? According to the Bible, prayer is simply talking with God. God is personal and relational, and communication is vital to having a relationship with God. But more than that, prayer is an opportunity to spend precious time in communion with God and experience God’s presence. Prayer opens your awareness that God is with you, is near, and is involved in your life. To pray is to talk with God, which includes both speaking and listening, and to be with God. Jesus prayed (publicly, I might add) before the miracle of feeding the five thousand in Mt 14. But he often went off by himself to a solitary place to pray. Prayer was not a performance to Jesus, but a regular practice of spending time with his heavenly Father. After feeding the five thousand, Jesus went up on a mountainside by himself to pray, and he prayed for hours. In Lk 6, before choosing the twelve apostles, Jesus spent all night praying about that decision. The night before his crucifixion, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed and prayed, asking his closest friends to stay up with him because he was so overwhelmed by the hell he was about to endure. As a preacher, it’s interesting to me that in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, the disciples never asked Jesus to teach them how to preach. But they did ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Do you want to be able to pray like Jesus? Do you want to have that kind of vibrant, ongoing communion with and awareness of the presence of God in your life?
Matthew 6:9-15 (NIV), “9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ [Some manuscripts add, “for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”] 14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Let’s consider each line of this model prayer, often called The Lord’s Prayer (disciples’ prayer?).
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name: When you pray, start by recognizing your relationship with God. By faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, his Father becomes our Father. God is not a divine spark, or a force, or even first an Almighty King (although he is that, as well). He is first: our Father. God is our protector and provider. He knows your name because you are his child, and he loves you. He doesn’t mind being interrupted by you. He doesn’t see you as an inconvenience but as a joy. Now, maybe your biological father wasn’t a good father. Maybe you were an inconvenience to him, or you were abandoned by him. But this is not how your Father in heaven sees you or will treat you. The whole record of Scripture shows time and again that our Father in heaven is good and faithful. So who are you talking to in prayer? Our Father in heaven. Second, when you pray, remember that you are praying to our Father. When Christians pray, we pray as a son or daughter in a great family, the family of God, that is, the church. No matter what your ethnicity/income/gender/age, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, united in our relationship with God our Father. The Lord’s Prayer isn’t a lonely prayer; it’s the prayer of the community of the saints. Whenever you feel alone, you should pray like this, remembering your relationship with God and with the whole family of God. You are never alone. Why? For God is our Father. But third, God is not a human being, he is not stuck in this broken world or bound by space and time, he does not face all the real and perceived threats that we face here and now. He is above all, he is over all, he is transcendent and sovereign. This is what we must remember when we pray to our Father in heaven. We are not talking with a person with our own limitations or capacities. God is not our peer or therapist. He is the creator of the heavens and the earth. For this reason, fourth, his name should be seen as holy. “Hallowed be your name.” This is a prayer that changes our focus. This is a reminder that God is God, and we are not. A name in ancient times represented more than just what people called you. It represented all of your being, all of who you are and what you have done. For God’s name to be hallowed, which means holy or set apart, it means he has the primary place in our hearts/minds. When I start praying, I often need to be reminded of this perspective.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven: What does it look like for God’s kingdom to come here on earth as it is in heaven? It looks like God’s will being done. It looks like men and women who wholeheartedly love God and love people. It looks like men and women who joyfully submit to the commands of Christ both privately and publicly as salt and light in the world. It looks like men and women who learn to follow the way of Jesus in every area of their lives, experiencing more freedom/love/joy/peace as they do so. For disciples of Jesus, this is what we long to see happen here on earth. But we must also renew our commitment to do this on a daily basis. Every day, I need to make the kingdom of God my first priority in prayer. Every day, I must die to myself and my agenda, pick up my cross, and follow him. As we saw in the Exodus series, this is our journey to freedom. This is our journey through the wilderness of this broken world as we make our way to the promised land and the full experience of the kingdom of God in the new heavens and the new earth. But for now, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Give us today our daily bread: Jesus already taught that our Father knows what you need before you ask him. So many people wonder, “Why then should we pray?” And yet, Jesus also teaches that we are to pray and ask for God to provide for our physical needs, such as the need for daily bread, for food/shelter/job/friends/family, and so on. If God were an impersonal force, this wouldn’t make any sense. But if God is our heavenly Father, who desires a loving relationship with us, then this makes a lot of sense. I’m a father, and I know what my kids need. But what kind of relationship would I have with them if I met all their needs and never talked with them? Or what kind of people would they be if they never realized I was providing for them? I guarantee they wouldn’t be as thankful for what they were given. I’d guess they wouldn’t be very generous, either, since they never understood the generosity they had received in life. If that’s true for a far-from-perfect dad like myself, how much more true must that be for our heavenly Father? God knows what we need far better than we do. But he wants a relationship with us and wants us to grow and mature. Is there something you think you need in life? Pray about it. Bring your request to the Lord. You might find the wisdom and mercy of God in not fulfilling a request because later, when you are more mature, you might see that though you thought you needed something at the time, whatever it was, it really would’ve been harmful for you. Or you might find that God does provide what you ask for, and then you’ll feel blessed/thankful, not entitled. In my experience, some of my most desperate prayers have been for things I needed or my family needed or the church needed. And sometimes, God delayed answering those prayers so I would learn to trust him to provide. Because it was far more valuable for me to learn to trust him than to have my problems immediately solved. Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors: Jesus isn’t talking about financial debt. He’s talking about the spiritual debt that sin creates between people and also between people and God. As we’ll see next week, Jesus often used the concept of debt to illustrate the forgiveness of sins. Jesus ends his teaching on prayer here by saying, “For 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.” Commentator Leon Morris writes, “It is not that the act of forgiving merits an eternal reward, but rather it is evidence that the grace of God is at work in the forgiving person and that that same grace will bring him forgiveness in due course.” (Matthew, PNTC, p.149). In other words, our commitment to be people who forgive others is rooted in the perfect and complete forgiveness we have first received in Christ. However, if you’ve ever had to forgive someone who really hurt you, you know that forgiveness is costly. This is why it must be part of our daily prayers. Part of our prayers ought to be an opportunity for confession. Sometimes, we may not be fully aware of our sins, so providing time, in the loving presence of God, for the Holy Spirit to bring things to mind that might be offensive to God is very helpful. But then, in the freedom of the forgiveness that we are promised in Christ, we are to commit ourselves to forgiving those who have sinned against us, as well. This is not easy, but this is good. Over time, daily, forgiving prayer can be a healing balm for the wounds that others have given us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one: There is some question as to whether we’re to pray for deliverance from evil in general or from the evil one, meaning the devil, but either way works. Evil, in general, can be found both out there in the world and in here (within me in the disordered desires of the flesh). May God deliver us from both. But also, we’re taught that spiritual forces of evil influence the world. Modern people might think this is silly, but then there are all sorts of silly things modern people think are very serious. In any case, we need deliverance. The forces of evil, within and without, are not things we’re expected to deal with by our power/strength/will alone. So, how are we to pray? According to Jesus, we pray by daily remembering who God is, refocusing our hearts/priorities on him and his kingdom, praying for our needs, praying for forgiveness, and praying for guidance and deliverance from evil. But one thing that God’s people have often combined with prayer is fasting. To give up something (food, typically, although there isn’t a rule about what you can or can’t fast from) temporarily in order to loosen our addiction to worldly desires and strengthen our spiritual dependence on God.
Matthew 6:16–18 (NIV), “16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” So again, you can fast for attention just as you can pray or give to the poor for attention.
There is a famous picture of Astronaut Bruce McCandless when he did the first untethered spacewalk on February 7, 1984. Bruce was testing the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), which allowed him to fly out into space from the relative safety of the space shuttle without any lifeline. After just a few missions, NASA decided not to keep using the MMU, and the unit Bruce used is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum. Now, we’ve been talking about our spiritual dependence on God, but the truth is, as human creatures, we are entirely/holistically dependent on our creator God. He’s the one who made us, and he’s the one who sustains us by a word of his power. I think this picture is a great illustration of that dependence. If the MMU had malfunctioned, pretty much in any way, Bruce would’ve been lost. He would’ve been dead. There was no plan B. He was completely dependent on it. And while we may feel pretty strong on our own, we might feel pretty safe with our feet planted on the ground; we are just as dependent on God.
