I.　The example of prayer given as a pattern by the Lord increases our seeking of the kingdom of the heavens as the Father's heart's desire and affords us our need of the divine supply of grace to fulfill all the supreme and strict requirements of the kingdom of the heavens for the Father's good pleasure—Matt. 6:9-13:

A.　We need to pray for the Father's name to be sanctified—v. 9:

1.　To be sanctified means to be separated and distinct from all that is common—cf. Eph. 1:4.

2.　For His name to be sanctified we should express Him in our living with a sanctified life, a daily life separated from being common and saturated with His holy nature—1 Pet. 4:15-16; Eph. 5:26; Heb. 12:10; 2 Pet. 1:4; cf. Ezek. 36:21.

B.　We need to pray for the Father's heavenly kingdom to come—Matt. 6:10:

1.　Before his fall, Satan as the archangel was appointed by God to be the ruler of the world (Ezek. 28:13-14); hence, he is called the ruler of this world (John 12:31) and holds all the kingdoms of this world and their glory in his hand (Luke 4:6).

2.　In order for God's kingdom to come in its manifestation, we must live in the reality of His kingdom today, allowing Christ as the life-giving Spirit to rule within us so that we may have righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit—Rom. 14:17.

C.　We need to pray for the Father's divine will to be done on earth—Matt. 6:10:

1.　For the divine will to be done on earth is to bring the heavenly ruling, the kingdom of the heavens, to this earth—cf. Matt. 8:9a; Rom. 5:17.

2.　The will of God is to have Christ as the replacement for all the offerings in the Old Testament so that we may enjoy Him as everything in living and practicing the Body life for the building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God—Heb. 10:5-10; Rom. 12:2; Eph. 1:5, 9-11.

D.　This prayer, as a pattern cares first for God's name, God's kingdom, and God's will, and second, for our need—Matt. 6:11:

1.　These three things—the name, the kingdom, and the will—are the attributes of the one Triune God:

a.　The name is of the Father, because the Father is the source; the kingdom is of the Son, and the will is of the Spirit.

b.　To pray in this way is to pray that the Triune God will be prevailing on the earth as He is prevailing in the heavens.

2.　The Lord as our King does not want His people to worry about tomorrow (v. 34); He wants them to pray only for today's needs, for their daily bread, which indicates a living that is by faith.

3.　The kingdom people should not live on what they have stored; rather, they should live, by faith, on the Father's supply.

E.　In this prayer as a pattern, we need to take care of our failures before God and of our relationship with others, asking the Father to forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors—v. 12.

F.　This prayer as a pattern cares for the kingdom people's deliverance from the evil one and from evil things—v. 13a:

1.　The kingdom people should ask the Father not to bring them into temptation but to deliver them from the evil one, the devil, and from the evil that is out of him—cf. Eph. 5:15-18.

2.　To ask the Lord not to bring us into temptation indicates our knowledge of our weakness—cf. Matt. 26:41; 1 Cor. 10:13.

G.　This prayer as a pattern concludes with the kingdom people's recognizing and praising reverently that the kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to the Father forever—Matt. 6:13b:

1.　The kingdom is of the Son, which is the realm in which God exercises His power; the power is of the Spirit, which carries out God's intention so that the Father can express His glory—cf. 12:28.

2.　This indicates that the prayer which the Lord teaches us to pray begins with the Triune God, in the sequence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and ends also with the Triune God, but in the sequence of the Son, the Spirit, and the Father.

3.　Thus, the prayer taught by the Lord in His supreme teaching begins with God the Father and ends also with God the Father; God the Father is both the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega—cf. Eph. 4:6; 1 Cor. 15:28.

II.　Along with this pattern of prayer, the Lord gives us four negative charges as warnings—Matt. 6:5-8, 14-18:

A.　We should not pray as the hypocrites do, loving to make a show publicly that they may be seen by and receive glory from men according to the lust of their fleshly desire; we should enter into our private room, shutting our door and praying to the Father in the heavens to be seen by Him in secret and be repaid by Him—vv. 5-6.

B.　We should not pray as the Gentiles do, babbling empty words, supposing that in our multiplicity of words we will be heard; we should not be like them, for our Father knows the things that we need before we ask Him—vv. 7-8.

C.　If we forgive men's offenses, our heavenly Father will forgive us also; otherwise, our Father will not forgive our offenses, and our prayer to our heavenly Father will be annulled—vv. 14-15; cf. 18:21-35.

D.　We should not fast like the sullen-faced hypocrites, disfiguring our faces so that our fast may appear to men; instead, we should fast by anointing our head and washing our face that our fast may not appear to men but to our Father who is in secret, who sees in secret, and who will repay us—6:16-18.