Psalm 78:1-39; Deut. 8:11-20; James 1:16-27; Luke 11:1-13
How are the people to remember the Lord? By keeping His commandments, rules and statutes, by obedience they will show they are in covenant with Him and that they recognize Him as Lord. The covenant between God and Israel was predicated on their keeping the law and when they failed in any respect to acknowledge the failure, make the sacrifice and return to the way of the Lord. We have no need of sacrifice, Jesus’ death on the cross was a once for all sacrifice, but the other aspects of the covenant relationship remain, obedience, confession and repentance. Moses here is worried about the people when they come into and possess the land that they will forget the lessons they learned regarding trust and failure in the wilderness. He has led this people for forty years and is well aware of who they are and what is likely. It generally doesn’t take very long for us to begin attributing our success or prosperity to ourselves or to some other force in the universe that we suppose is responsible. We remember the Lord well by keeping His commands and remembering all He has done for us and teaching our children to do the same.
The disciples want Jesus to teach them how to pray and Jesus provides them with what we know as the Lord’s prayer but is more properly the disciples prayer. It begins with the recognition of the greatness of God’s Name and then asks for His kingdom to come, the recognition that we do not currently enjoy the fullness of God’s blessing in the earth. We are asking for more which should remind us that we should not be satisfied with the way things are. It is in keeping with Jesus’ admonition to seek first the kingdom of God and here in the prayer that is the first petition. The transition to earthly things is made with asking for our daily bread, a beggar’s petition and rightly so since all things come from the father, we are like those in the wilderness receiving manna each day and grateful for it because no source of sustenance exists unless He provides. We next acknowledge our failure to keep covenant by asking for forgiveness and immediately are reminded that as we need forgiveness, so do others and we are called to be forgiving. The parables Jesus tells are an encouragement to pray asking God for all that we need and are based on His fatherly goodness of which we are assured. We know all we need to know about the Father’s love for us in the cross of Jesus.
James reminds us that every good and perfect gift comes down from God, just as Jesus has promised. What is our response to this reality, thankfulness and obedience. We are not saved by works but by grace and we cannot earn our salvation or our blessings in this life yet are we not more likely to be on a path where blessing is possible if we are obedient? We may have to adjust our definition of blessing to make it line up with God’s definition but being doers of the word and not hearers only will change us to desire what God desires and to make us ready to see Him at work in all things. Christians are intended to learn the word not for the sake of knowledge but for the sake of conforming our lives to God’s will, seeing His kingdom established in us and His will being done through us.
Come, thou incarnate Word,
gird on thy mighty sword,
our prayer attend!
Come, and thy people bless,
and give thy word success,
Spirit of holiness,
on us descend!
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