The
Lord’s Prayer
Larry Thorson
Matthew
6:5-15
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.
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.'
14 For if you
forgive others 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.
Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International
Bible Society
It’s
a Friday night in September, 1988. The stores are closed. The streets are quiet. Everyone in
Praying the Lord’s Prayer before a football game is a big southern
U.S. Bible belt thing. My son led it
when he played football in
In my last church I officiated at weddings primarily to
non-church members at least once a month or more. It was sort of an outreach we did in the
community, a chance to sit down with unchurched people and talk to them about
the faith in preparation for their wedding.
These
couples were usually from totally unchurched backgrounds and only darkened the
doors of a church for a friend’s wedding or a funeral. But I would always ask each couple if they
wanted the Lord’s Prayer prayed in their wedding. Nearly every couple wanted it.
Every
Sunday without fail since I’ve been here and I suspect every Sunday for the
past 99 years the Lord’s Prayer has been prayed here in the worship
service. If you attend here for any
length of time you quickly learn its words.
But every Sunday we always print it in the bulletin because we hope that
many will come who won’t know it.
While the Lord’s Prayer is the best known Christian prayer, if
you attend a Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Catholic or even a Baptist service
you will notice that when you get to the part that says “forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors they all say “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
our trespassers.” That’s even how they
pray at the
It mostly has to do
with an Englishman by the name of Thomas Cranmer in the middle of the 16th
century. As a Roman Catholic from
England Cranmer rewrote and modernized many of the popular prayers of the day
including the Lord’s Prayer and included them in something called the Book of
Common Prayer. It was adopted by the
Roman Catholic Church.
But Cranmer really worked
for King Henry of
The Book of Common Prayer
became very popular as the Church of England spread to the Colonies as the
Episcopal Church. Eventually Methodism
broke off from the Episcopal Church and really popularized trespasses as it
spread like fire planting churches across the plains and mountains of
Meanwhile
back in
The other reason why we
still say debts is that the original prayer model that Jesus taught as recorded
in Matthew is best translated from his Aramaic language as debts. Why not just
say “sins” instead of debts or trespasses and everyone would be happy?
It all has to do with
verses 14 & 15 where Jesus said “For if you forgive others 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”.
When someone sins against
you they are in debt to you. For example
if your grown grandson took some money out of your wallet without your approval
or telling you that grandson would be in debt to you for that money. You wouldn’t be in debt to him would
you?
If you say “I have never
stolen even a dime in my entire life even when I was poor” you’re failing to
remember how many paychecks you received that you withheld all of it from God
even though God asked for 10%.
When my parents bought
their first house together in 1952 they were in debt $13,000 for it but by 1960
they had paid their debt off. When they
bought a car they bought the cheapest possible car but they paid cash for
it. They came out of the Great Depression
and did everything they could to stay out of debt. It was hard for them to
understand why others wouldn’t work as hard to stay out of debt.
Some of you when you were
growing up were raised in a deep spiritual depression. You wondered deep into sin and your body may
be paying the price for that sin today.
But you know that by the grace of God Jesus pulled you up out of that
depression and paid your debt. It’s not
something you easily forget.
Some of you like myself
were raised in a good, Christian home where you were raised with at least
Christian values taught and lived. For
us it’s hard to realize how deep in debt we are to God. It’s hard to relate to a Major Leaque
baseball player at the pinnacle of his career partying so hard that he drove
drunk into a tow truck and was killed last week in
“Forgive us our debts” is
a strong way of reminding us that we are not self sufficient. It’s a strong way of reminding us that no
matter how good we become it will never pay our debt in our lifetime. That’s why he used the word “debts” instead
of “sins” or “trespasses” when he taught this prayer.
So is it wrong to use the
word “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer?
Absolutely not but it just doesn’t convey the weight of our sin that
debt does. Remember Thomas Cranmer who
replaced “debts” with “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer worked for the richest
man in
In two weeks we will look
at why we pray the Lord’s Prayer every week without fail and why some Bible
believing churches won’t touch it. Stay
tuned.