Halfway through His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seizes the teachable moment to instruct his followers about prayer and how to pray. What follows is what has become one of most recognizable passages of scripture in all of Christendom – The Lord’s Prayer. For this study we use the term “Model Prayer” since Jesus seems to offer it as a “model prayer” in Matthew 6:7-9. There He gives a warning about repetitious prayers and then says, “Pray in this manner.”
The Model Prayer is not only in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount – it is the hub of the sermon. In this prayer Jesus addresses all of the topics He brings out in the sermon itself and, in so doing, provides His followers with the framework of prayer that will enable them to live out the sermon. In one way He was saying that all of the life applications He was encouraging them to follow in His sermon could only be realized through prayer.
This prayer was so significant in the 1st Century Church that we find it in the Didache (c. AD 80-120) – a handbook developed by the early church fathers which gave instruction of how churches were to “do church.” In Chapter 8 of the Didache, church members were told to recite the Lord’s Prayer 3 times each day. Unfortunately, The Lord’s Prayer has become one of those meaningless repetitions Jesus warned us about in Matthew 6:7 which is often said in something of perfunctory way. However, if we were to adopt the practice of the 1st Century church and pray this prayer carefully, reflecting on what we are praying, then 3 times a day we would remember:
Who God is.
What He wants.
Who meets our needs.
How we are to relate to Him.
How we are to relate to others.
Who the enemy is.
Who our Defender is.
& Who should receive Glory in our daily living.
For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever,
AMEN!
Transcript
We’re talking about the modern prayer, right?
As we begin our time together,
could we say this prayer together?
Father, as we turn to the Bible,
what we know not teach us,
what we have not give us,
what we are not make us,
the sun’s safe.
The prayer itself begins in verse 7,
Matthew 6, verse 7.
So it starts with kind of a preamble.
It kind of piggybacks off of what Jesus said right before this.
You remember Jesus said,
when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites,
you know, who like to do it in public,
in a big way, big showing, flashy way.
When you pray, do it in secret,
and your father who sees you in secret will hear your prayers.
Right?
Now, right on the heels of that,
he goes into this portion that we know as the model prayer,
the Lord’s Prayer.
He goes into that,
and then he comes back after that and talks about fasting.
But there’s a little preamble to the actual Lord’s Prayer,
and it’s in Matthew 7,
through actually the first part of verse 9,
and it says,
And when you are praying do not use thoughtless repetition as a Gentiles do,
for they think that they would be heard because of their many words,
so do not be like them.
For your father knows what you need before you ask him,
Pray them in this way, and then he goes ahead and starts into the Lord’s Prayer.
So the preamble is real simple, real simple.
He comes up with, I mean, he brings out the hypocrites again, right?
He says, “Don’t be like those massacres.
Don’t be like those people who are play acting.
Don’t do that.”
They figure that they get paid by the line.
You know, a lot of actors like to get paid by the line,
if they have a lot of lines, right?
Otherwise,
so they want to get paid by the line,
and they think that by saying a lot of stuff,
their prayers will be heard,
and more than that,
people will recognize them as someone who knows how to pray.
And they’re happy about that when somebody knows that they know how to pray.
This phrase right here,
Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Hold on to that.
For the rest of your life,
you go to the Lord in prayer, right?
But, you know, last week,
one of the things that I said was,
our main reason in praying
is to be in proper relationship with God.
It’s not to get what you want.
It’s not to get what you want.
It’s to be in communion with God.
That’s what prayer is really all about.
And this is one of the reasons why that’s what it’s all about.
God already knows what you need.
You don’t have to go ahead and say,
Listen, I really need.
Yeah, I know, I know.
Let’s talk about you and me.
I’ve used this wheel only in a different,
for a different purpose before.
I modified it and put some extra spokes on it
and changed it up to illustrate something.
This prayer falls right in the middle of the sermon on the mount.
Okay?
I like to think of it in these terms.
You have the sermon on the mount,
the whole wheel,
the whole enchilada.
Okay?
The whole thing you have there
in the model prayer,
Jesus addresses everything that is in the sermon on the mount
so that you can pray about it.
You understand what I’m saying?
Everything that comes in the Lord’s Prayer
is tied to something out here in the sermon on the mount.
And so I like to think of it as the hub,
the hub of the sermon on the mount,
and all of the sermon on the mount reaches out
and touches that through prayer.
The different verses, if you look at them,
if you want to follow along,
start with nine, ten, ten B.
I broke up some of the verses
and you can see why when you look at them.
11, 12, and then 13, I broke up into two parts.
And you’ll understand that if you look at it.
It makes sense.
Our Father in Heaven,
that’s one.
Howled be your name, right?
That’s actually two different concepts.
Okay?
We’re going to look at this in more detail later.
Your kingdom come is a concept,
and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven is a separate concept.
Your will be done in general,
then what your kingdom is all about means to come here on earth.
So we’re going to look at this,
and we’re going to break it down,
and we’re going to go by each one of these,
and we’re going to see what it has to say.
You ready?
This is where you need to have your bottles open.
You need to have it ready to go,
because I’m going to ask you to actually look at the verses.
Bernard, you cannot sit idly by.
You must participate.
Yes.
Okay, here we go.
The first one is Matthew 6.9.
Our Father.
Look at chapter 5 verse 9.
Look at chapter 5 verse 16.
Look at chapter 6, verse 1.
Verse 4.
Verse 6.
Verse 8.
Do you see how our Father is addressed in all of these different —
do you understand?
See how it’s all pulling together?
And then verse 18.
How about — it’s our Father in heaven.
Look at 5, 12.
Look at 5, 16.
Look at 5, 45.
6, 1.
And then go to chapter 7, verse 21.
Do you see how all of those time with heaven keep going?
How old is your name?
5, 16.
Holy is your name.
5, 48.
And 6, 9.
Now if you look at all of those verses, all of them, all of them tie in with these portions of the Lord’s prayer.
We’re not done.
Keep going.
6, 10.
Your kingdom come.
Your kingdom come.
5, 3.
By now you should understand what I’m talking about.
If I just say 5, 3, that’s good enough, right?
You know where to go.
5, 3, 5, 10.
5, 19, and 20.
6, 33.
We’re talking about his kingdom, right?
And this is — the Lord’s prayer, the summit on the Mount, it’s all about kingdom living.
How about your will be done?
God’s will.
5, 18.
5, 48.
6, 4.
6, 6, 6, 18.
Then back in chapter 7, chapter 7, 11, and 12.
Your will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven, chapter 5, verses 13, and 14.
Verse 18.
Chapter 6, verses 19, and 20.
Chapter 5, verses 48, and 69.
Chapter 7, verses 24, through 27.
Now I know I’m feeling — I’m putting a lot of thoughts in your mind because you’re reading this stuff.
And there’s no way you can physically and mentally take it all in and retain it.
I understand that.
That’s why I send you these notes.
In case you ever want to go back and look at it.
Okay?
But I want you to get the — I want you to get the idea.
Matthew 6, 11.
Give us this day our daily bread. We’re talking about God’s provision, God’s provision.
All the way through the beatitudes, that’s God’s provision, right?
I mean, that’s just — that’s a given.
Verses 4, 6, and 18 of chapter 6.
It’s talking about the rewards, right?
That’s His provision.
Chapter 6, 25, 234.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, all kinds of provision in there.
Look at chapter 6, start with verse 25 and just start reading.
And you’ll realize it covers food, clothing, necessities of life, your future, everything.
Everything.
7, 7 through 11.
Whatever it is you need.
Okay?
Forgive us our deaths as we also have forgiven our debt tours.
Let’s talk to that mercy back in the beatitudes, 5, 7.
Reconciliation, 5, 21 through 26.
Remember that passage about reconciliation.
How you need to be reconciled to your brother.
Leave it on all, right?
Loving your enemies, 5, 43 through 48.
Forgiveness, now we’re going to talk about this passage later, okay?
And then judging others.
Yeah, it talks about judging others and it’s talking about as we forgive our debt tours.
It’s kind of hard to stand in judgment over somebody you’re forgiven.
You understand?
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
Avoiding temptation, chapter 5 verses 27 through 30.
Remember when we went over that, 6, 22 through 23.
Also in chapter 6, verse 34.
In chapter 7 verses 1 through 5.
And the evil one.
5, 10 through 12.
37
And then 7. 15 through 20.
And verse 23.
Now, we went through that in a hurry, didn’t we?
Whether you want to or not.
We’re going to go through it again.
Okay.
You tell me, what does this mean to you?
Our Father, do is in heaven.
How it is your name?
You’re recognizing God’s holy authority over my life and over everything.
Over everything.
How it is your name?
Holy is your name.
Sacred is your name.
Above all others is your name.
Right?
Wow.
Your kingdom come.
What does it mean for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven?
You will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
What does that mean?
I want to remind you of something that…
I don’t know why it’s been on my mind a lot more over the past few months, maybe years, but definitely months.
You realize that his kingdom came on earth when he created the earth.
You remember that?
You remember that his kingdom was the garden.
In Revelation, when we have a new heaven and a new earth, that heaven is referred to as garden paradise.
He intended it to that be that way all along.
It’s not going to be what it was until that time come.
However, in the meantime, we can bring heaven into our world.
You carry the very spirit of Christ with you wherever you go.
You are taking Jesus Christ into the world wherever you go.
The kingdom of Christ should be so alive in you that others are very aware of the kingdom of God, when you’re in the room.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Your kingdom come.
You will be done in my life.
Just as it is in heaven.
Okay, how about give us this day our David Brick?
What does that mean?
For vision.
For vision?
Give us exactly what we need and nothing more so that our sustenance will surely go to you.
Yeah, sometimes he does give us more of that, doesn’t he?
But really, give us what we need.
We may want what we need, but we may not need what we want.
You understand?
Okay.
Give us what we need, what we need.
And he says he’s going to provide it.
We’re going to see that more as we go on.
What does this say to you?
Forgive us our deaths as we also have forgiven our deaders.
As we forgive our dead towards.
There’s a pattern there that we have to follow.
Forgive us Lord.
But if you ain’t willing to forgive somebody else.
You’ve got no right to say forgive me.
Oh, you understand?
Okay, here we go.
It’s not intimidation, but delivers from the evil one.
What does that say?
Yeah.
Yeah, there’s a lot of times where if God’s not leading us from temptation, we’re going to walk right into it.
We stupid sometimes.
But really what it’s saying is, is lead us in such a way that we don’t fall into temptation.
Let’s go on.
Because I need to spend a little bit of time on this.
How many of you have the words for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever?
I’m in.
How many of you have that in your Bible?
Is it written down there?
Yeah.
Some of you nodding.
Some of you going nope.
Nope.
You see what I’m talking about?
It’s at the end of verse 6, that 13.
How many of you have it in brackets?
You have it in brackets?
How many of you have it in the talus, the talus eyes?
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Here’s the thing, guys.
I need to, I need to just inform you.
I’m not trying to persuade you of anything.
I’m just informing you.
That phrase does not appear in the oldest manuscripts that we have of Matthew.
None of them.
That phrase does not appear.
The first time it appears in any kind of printed form or anything else is in something called the dedicate.
We aren’t sure exactly when the dedicate came out.
Maybe late 1st century, 2nd century, sometime around in there.
The dedicate was developed by the early church father.
It is a series of statements.
I think it’s like 25, 30 chapters, something like that.
And some of them are relatively short.
As you’re going to see, I’m going to show you one.
The dedicate was like a how to do church manual.
Okay.
It wasn’t anything.
It wasn’t anything.
I mean, it has scripture in it.
But it wasn’t anything that was designed to be on a par with scripture.
You understand?
They didn’t write it for that purpose.
They just wrote it to say, this is what we believe about some things.
This is the way we do some things.
This is the way we handle certain things.
Okay.
And yes, at times it draws on, it draws on scriptures like it does in this particular case.
If you look at 1 Chronicles 29-11, go ahead and look at that.
It’s not on the page that I gave you, but you can look it up in your Bible.
It’s actually in the Bible.
First Chronicles is.
It’s not on the paper that I passed out.
But it is in the Bible.
First Chronicles.
It’s in the Old Testament.
First Chronicles.
First Chronicles 29-11.
Okay.
Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor
for everything in heaven and for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom.
You’re exalted as head over all.
Now, that is a, a, a, a, a, a doxology, if you will, that’s added on to one of David’s
pronouncements.
Okay.
These things show up all the way through the Old Testament.
I, I just gave you this as a sample.
So, when they were working on the dedicate, they came up with a concept of how to say the Lord’s prayer.
That was one of the chapters.
I said there were 25 or 30.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 8 in the dedicate says what you have right there in front of you.
Okay.
And your fastings let them be, let them not be with the hypocrites.
For they fast on the second and fifth days of the week.
But do ye fast on the fourth and on the preparation.
That means the preparation before the satan on Friday.
Neither pray ye as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel, even so pray ye.
And then it gives the text.
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done as in heaven.
So also upon the earth give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our deaths as we forgive our debt towards.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The divine is the power and the glory forever.
You notice anything?
You want to say it again.
For thine is the power and the glory forever.
Pull stop.
What?
What?
Yeah.
The dedicate didn’t have to kingdom in there.
Okay.
And then it concludes by saying Christ a day.
That’s right.
By the way, this was translated in like 1803 or something like that.
That’s why it’s the language that it is.
But guys, guys, guys.
Do you understand?
This is what they said you were to do with the Lord’s prayer.
And also how to handle fasting.
Do you see how it comes from scripture?
In other words, they were referring back to scripture with the whole thing with this whole chapter.
Is there talking about how you’re supposed to be fasting, right?
We talked about that last week comes out of the same same chapter in Matthew.
Does that mean that for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever that it should not be used in scripture?
That you should not say it.
Well, you should not say it if you’re in a Catholic church because you’ll be the only one saying it.
Okay.
I’ll just slow that out there.
Believe me.
I was one who blurted out.
I’m sorry.
No, there’s certain churches where you won’t.
They won’t say it.
They won’t say that phrase because it’s not a part of their scripture.
You understand?
But I want you to be aware of that.
I think that’s a valid thing to say.
I think it’s valid in light of what went on.
I think it was wise for them to add it in the dedicate.
Okay.
Okay.
I’ve got two minutes.
And two slides.
Can you say with me?
The post script to the model prayer for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
I said it earlier.
I’m going to say it again.
If you aren’t willing to forgive someone else, no matter what it is, even if you’re right and they’re wrong.
If you aren’t willing to forgive them, believe me.
God has forgiven you over and over again when you were wrong and he was right.
If you think you don’t have to forgive someone because you’re right and they’re wrong, then you think you’re better than God.
Had I said enough?
Do I need to be more forceful with that?
We have to be forgiving people.
God demands it.
And if you read that the way I read that, it’s a pretty iron plan deal.
There’s no wiggle room in this.
Don’t go to God saying, “Please forgive me, God.”
Because the first thing God’s going to say is, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
Talk to me about all so and so.
Where you stand with them.
The early church was instructed to pray the model prayer three times a day.
Now, I know the model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, has become almost tripped at times when it shows up.
And people treated as such, you know, as a perfunctory prayer, not as something that’s heartfelt.
But I submit something to you.
If we were to adopt that same practice three times a day.
Then, during those three times each day, we would remember who God is, how long is your name?
What He wants is will to be done.
Who meets our needs?
He alone meets our needs.
How we are to relate to Him in repentance.
How we are to relate to others in forgiveness.
Who the enemy is?
It ain’t people. We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood.
I mean, Satan is the enemy.
And who our defender is.
And not like that, you would remember who should receive glory in our daily living.
As we close, can we say this prayer together?
Our Father, who art in heaven, how will be the enemy?
Your people can come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily prayer.
Forgive us our trespasses.
As we forgive those trespassing incidents.
We just not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For our time is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
This Bible study was presented to the Agape Life Bible Study Class of the First Baptist Church in Brenham, Texas, on Sunday, October 25, 2026. It is part of a series in a Bible study curriculum called Connect 360, published by the GC2 Press of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The overall title of the current set of lessons, which covers Chapters 5-7 in the Book of Matthew, is Kingdom Power: The Sermon on the Mount. You can find print and digital versions of this series online at https://gc2press.org/kingdom-power-matthew-5-7-digital-study-guide/ . Handouts with class presentation content can be requested at: fromthebackporchintexas@gmail.com . Handouts are also available at: fromthebackporch.org .
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