When we pray, we need to remember that the One we are addressing is both the sovereign, majestic, all-powerful Creator, and the loving, intimate, approachable Father.
[powerpress]
Our Father Who Is In Heaven
Luke 11:1-2a
This morning we are going to examine the most well-known prayer in all of the Bible. We commonly call it “The Lord’s Prayer”, but that is a misnomer. This is the one prayer that Jesus Christ could never pray, because He could never ask the Father to forgive His sons, as He had none. A better name for this prayer might be “The Lord’s Model Prayer”, for in this prayer Jesus is giving a pattern that we might follow in our own communion with God.
What was the occasion for Jesus giving this prayer to His disciples? Verse 1 says, “It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.” It was Jesus’ example of prayer that stirred within their breasts a desire to pray as He did. Interestingly, no where do we read of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to preach, or to heal, or to cast out demons, or to work miracles. I think the disciples understood intuitively that the ability Jesus had to do these wonderful works stemmed from his life of prayer. Take away Jesus’ prayer life, and you take away His powerful preaching and miracles. So, wanting to follow in the example of their Master, they asked Him to teach them to pray.
In our last study in Luke, which was six weeks ago, we saw that the one necessary thing in life is to sit at the feet of Jesus and have communion with Him. This communion with Christ consists not only of hearing His word, but speaking to Him in prayer. So, in order to instruct His disciples in how they should commune with Him, Jesus launched into this teaching on prayer that we have in Luke 11:1-13.
We find some differences between this prayer here and the one recorded in Luke 11. This prayer in Luke is shorter than the one in Matthew. In this version of the prayer, the Lord leaves out “who is in heaven”, and “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, and the final doxology, “for Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” Also, in Matthew Jesus says, “Pray then in this way.” Here in Luke, Jesus says, “When you pray, say.” I do not believe the Lord gave this prayer to His church as something they are to repeat by rote, word for word. Now, I’m not saying that there is anything positively evil in doing so. As long as we are thinking about what we are praying about, and our hearts are engaged in it, there is nothing wrong with repeating this prayer word for word. But, of course, the problem is that when we pray this prayer ritualistically every week, we tend to do it without thinking and without feeling. At least, I know that was the case in my life, growing up repeating the prayer every Sunday, and repeating it many times every time I went to holy confession. However, I don’t believe it was ever Jesus’ purpose to give us a prayer that we were to repeat by rote. It appears that Jesus gave this same instruction about prayer on more than one occasion. Therefore, it is no surprise that there are a few variations in Luke than in Matthew. In Matthew it appears that Jesus’ teaching on prayer was all part of the Sermon on the Mount, whereas in Luke, it appears that His teaching on prayer was not part of the Sermon on the Mount. However, the interesting thing is that there are differences in the two prayers. If Jesus had intended that we pray this prayer by rote, surely He would have repeated this prayer both times, exactly the same, word for word. The fact that there are differences in the two prayers tells me that He intended this prayer to serve as a model for our own prayer lives. In Matthew, Jesus teaches us that we are not to use meaningless repetition in prayer. Yet, ironically, the very prayer He gave His disciples right after saying that, has become the substance of the most meaningless repetitious prayers ever! Also, we never find this prayer repeated in the epistles as something all the churches should be repeating. Therefore, I believe we should learn some basic principles from this prayer of Jesus, that will help us to pray ourselves.
The prayer in Matthew consists of 68 words. The prayer here in Luke consists of only 37 words! Truly, this prayer is a masterpiece! The entire prayer can be prayed in 20 seconds, yet in it we find a specimen of the infinite mind of God. Jesus, the Son of God alone, could compress every conceivable element of true prayer into such a brief and simple form. Notice also the simplicity of this prayer. We tend to make prayer a complicated thing. Jesus teaches us that prayer is as simple as talking to our Father.
This model prayer consists of three parts. First, we have the One we are addressing in prayer – “Our Father who is in heaven.” Second, we are given three requests that concern God – “God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will. Third, we are given three requests that concern us – “our bread, our forgiveness, and our temptations.” This morning, we are going to focus only on the first one. Who are we addressing in prayer?
You will see that as you move through this prayer, the relationship changes 7 times!
1. “Our Father, who is in heaven” – there we have child addressing his Father
2. “hallowed by Your name” – there we have a worshipper before his God
3. “Your kingdom come” – there we have a citizen addressing his King
4. “Your will be done” – there we see a servant speaking to his Master
5. “Give us each day our daily bread” – there we have a beggar supplicating his Benefactor
6. “and forgive us our sins” – there we have a sinner beseeching his Savior
7. “and lead us not into temptation” – there we see a pilgrim seeking wisdom from his Guide
From this prayer, I see that we are to relate with God in two different ways: as the intimately familiar One, and as the infinitely exalted One.
1. The Intimately Familiar One
Our: Jesus does not say, “My Father”, but “our Father.” In doing so, He is teaching all of His disciples that they are not to think of themselves as single, isolated supplicants, but as part of a great brotherhood. This is an exhortation we Americans especially need. America was built on rugged individualism and independence, and sadly those traits continue in the church to this day. We think that we don’t need anyone, and can get along just fine on our own. This spirit often carries over into our prayer lives, in that we view it as an individual, private thing. However, this word “our” dispenses with that notion. It teaches us that we are to pray for and with others. In other words, we should view corporate prayer as normative. Of course, we are to pray alone to God as well, but prayer with other brothers and sisters ought to be happening regularly and considered as a normal part of the Christian life. It appears that this is how the first disciples understood Jesus. When Jesus ascended to heaven, the 120 disciples gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem, and spent the next ten days in prayer! Later on the day of Pentecost, when 3,000 people gave their lives to Christ the Scripture says that they “were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” In that context, it is speaking about the corporate prayers of God’s people together. Later on in Acts chapter 4 when the apostles were released from prison, they immediately joined the church in prayer, with the result that the building they were praying in was shaken. And so it goes through the book of Acts. The early Christians believed and practiced corporate prayer. And brothers and sisters, so should we! We need to be convinced of the importance of corporate prayer. A couple of years ago we saw this need in our church and began to set apart one day a month for fasting and prayer as a church. I exhort all of you to come and join in our next day of fasting and prayer which will be in a few weeks.
Father: When we read of God being addressed as “Father”, it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. However, I assure you that when the disciples first heard Jesus address God as “Father” it would have shocked and amazed them! I could only find six instances in the OT where God was addressed as Father. Usually they addressed God as “Sovereign Lord” or “King of the universe” or “Most High God.” However, Jesus always addressed God as “Father”, except when dying on the cross He said, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus referred to God as Father 176 times! Jesus has told us to address God in the very same way that He did! In other words, believers have the very same access to God as Jesus does! Wow! As members of Jesus’ body, we are bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh. Even now, we sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ. The author of the Hebrews exhorts us to come boldly to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in time of need (Heb.4:16). What an exalted privilege!
Notice that we are to pray to God the Father, not to angels or men. We are never instructed to pray to Michael the archangel or Gabriel, or to the virgin Mary, or to Joseph or St. Christopher or to anyone else. There is one mediator between God and men, and He is the man Christ Jesus (1Tim.2:5)!
Something else we need to learn from the word “Father” is that this prayer is only for true Christians. Really, only true followers of Jesus Christ can call God their father. We read in 1 John 3:1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” Here John informs us that there is a vast difference between the world and the children of God. I hear people say all the time, “well, aren’t we all God’s children?” To that I say, “No, we aren’t!” Paul says, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3:26). In John 1:12 we read, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” In order for you or me to be a child of God, we must have faith in Christ Jesus and receive Christ. In other words, there must be a living union between the person and Jesus Christ. Without that, you are a child of the devil and a child of wrath. We become children of God through regeneration and adoption. When we come to trust Jesus, God adopts us into His family. When the Spirit moves upon our soul to quicken us to new life, we are born into His kingdom. You or I will never be able to pray this prayer with heart and feeling, until we are made new creatures in Jesus Christ. God must be our father through faith in Christ Jesus. You see, God accepts us into His family because of our relationship to Jesus Christ. When my son, Jonathan, got married we accepted his wife, Sarah, into our family, and treat her like any other member of our family. We would do for Sarah anything that we would do for Jonathan. How did this woman come into such a favored position in our eyes? It was through marriage to our son. How do we come into such a favored position in God’s eyes? How do we come to be treated just as His own Son? It’s through marriage to Jesus Christ. If you are vitally united to Christ, God is your Father, and accepts you into His family to be treated with all the rights and privileges of His sons or daughters.
2. The Infinitely Exalted One
Who is in heaven: Luke doesn’t include the following phrase, but Matthew does. Jesus says, “Our Father, who is in heaven.” As our Father, we expect love and intimacy in our relationship to Him. However, God is not only our Father. He is also in heaven. So, what do the words “who is in heaven” express? They speak of God’s sovereignty, majesty, and unlimited power. Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases (Ps.115:3). “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen.1:1). In Daniel 4:34-35 we read, “For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?”
Who is this Father who is in heaven? Isaiah’s answer is found in Is. 40:21-26, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble. “To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.”
When we refer to God as our Father who is in heaven, we mean that He is the One whom Jesus referred to in Luke 10:21 – the Lord of heaven and earth. Our Father is the King, the ruler, the Lord, the Master of heaven and earth. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him (Col. 1:16). In fact, the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. He is the eternal One. He is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see! He possesses all power, and all knowledge. He is the I Am, the eternally self-existent One. He is everywhere present at the same time. He is all holy, just, righteous, unchangeable and wise.
Application
And so, the very first thing we must learn about prayer is the One whom we are addressing. Jesus teaches us two very important truths about God: He is our Father, and He is in heaven. We must believe and respond to Him as both our loving Father, and our Holy God, because He is both. Listen to God’s own description of Himself in Is. 57:15, “For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” In this passage God describes Himself as both the Exalted One, and the Approachable One at the same time. God is transcendent. He is altogether other. He is the supreme sovereign of the universe. He transcends time and space. He can’t be confined anywhere. But at the same time He is approachable by a certain kind of person – a contrite and lowly person. In other words this Supreme Being is willing for you to approach Him, as long as you come contritely and humbly into His presence. The word contrite refers to someone who comes into the presence of God with a sense of guilt and shame, and remorse for sin. God is both the Intimately Familiar One, and the Infinitely Exalted One! We make a grave mistake when we emphasize one aspect of God over the other.
The Danger of Overemphasizing God as the Infinitely Exalted One. I don’t believe this is often our danger today. However, in past centuries, this was a very real danger. For example, whenever Martin Luther read, “for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith”, he thought that meant that the gospel revealed God’s righteousness in damning sinners. Luther had no sense of God being his father. To him, God was a distant, dreaded, powerful, wrathful Deity. Thus, Luther sought to appease this Deity through fastings and prayers and inflicting sufferings on his body. However, with all that, Luther was still as far and distant from God as ever. There are some churches today that overemphasize God’s transcendence. Usually worship and dress in these churches is very formal. Often there is a stiffness and coldness in the air. Because people feel distant from God in these churches, they are often distant from each other. There is a lack of openness and intimate sharing with each other. Fellowship is formal and superficial. Members of the church say what they think others want to hear, rather than telling each other the truth. I know this is an over generalization, but I think you get the picture.
So, what is the danger of only emphasizing the transcendence of God? The danger is that we miss another aspect of God which is equally precious – the loving intimacy of God. If God is truly our Father, then we know that He loves us and accepts us, and will receive us at any time. If when George Bush was the President, I went barging into the White House, walked up to President Bush and said, “Hey George, what’s going on?” I would be escorted out rather quickly by some armed guards. Why? Because I have no right to approach the President uninvited. However, if George Bush’s son walked into the oval office, he could say, “Hey Dad, what’s going on?” and the President would drop everything to sit down and chat with his son. You see, unless we know God as Father, we really can’t approach Him with any certainty that He will receive us. If we overemphasize the transcendence of God, we lose intimacy with God. God becomes a distant, dread sovereign whom I feel I cannot have any intimate relationship with. We need to be able to address God as Papa, and feel comfortable approaching Him at any time for any reason. We need to know that we can come to God and pour out our heart to Him always.
The Danger Of Overemphasizing God as the Intimately Familiar One. However, my suspicion is that overemphasizing the transcendence of God is not our major problem. Not in 21st century Christianity in America. No, our problem, is that we have so emphasized God as my Dad, my Big Buddy in the Sky, that we have lost any true fear of God. Folks, nobody is afraid of God any more! Go out on the street and ask people, “Do you fear God?” and see what they say. “Fear God? Are you crazy? Why would I fear God? God’s like a kind, gentle, old grandpa! Our Christian culture shuns the fear of God and embraces the love of God. That has bred a kind of ultra-casual, laid back approach to God and worship, bordering on irreverence. I think sometimes we approach worship in the same way we would attend a San Francisco Giants game. When you go to a ball game, almost anything goes. You can talk to one another and joke around while the ball game is being played. You can get up and buy a soda or use the rest room, or much on a hot dog, clip your nails, or take a nap if you want, and no one will mind. Everything is casual to the max. But my friends, worship of the living God is not to be like that! When we gather in this place each Sunday, we are to put away those things which would distract ourselves and others from the worship of God. As far as possible, we ought not be getting up and down, walking around, using the restroom, getting up and getting coffee or hot chocolate, or talking to our neighbor. All of that shows irreverence for the living God who is among us.
This also shows up in how we deal with sin. If we view God only as our Buddy or Daddy, then we tend to take our sin lightly. Why should we be serious about sin, if God is a loving Father? Why should we fear God? He’s our Buddy! My friends, God is your Father, that’s true. But He is also a consuming fire! If you forget that, you will also lose any sense of His majesty and holiness when you approach Him. Has this become true of us here at The Bridge? I like the fact that we can dress casually when we come to worship. However, never let that fool you into thinking you can be casual when you worship! Never let a sense of intimacy with God cause you to fail to take sin seriously. If you have this idea, “Oh God will understand. He will love and accept me in spite of this sin that I’m indulging in. That’s what He’s there for, right?” you are horribly mistaken. The Scripture says, “if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live” (Rom. 8:13). Did you hear that? The kinds of people that have eternal life, are those that fight to put to death the sinful deeds of the body. That’s how they can be known!
My dear friends, when you come here to worship, come here to WORSHIP! Put away those things that distract yourself and others. Humble yourself before God. Fear Him. Listen intently as the Word is preached, because truly HE is speaking.
We need to remember that this is the God to whom we come in prayer. We have spent an entire sermon on this, because if we don’t understand this, the rest of the Lord’s Model Prayer is meaningless. If we don’t get this right, we might as well as flush our prayer lives down the toilet. This is the place to begin in prayer. God is a loving Father. God is a holy Sovereign. He is your intimate Father and your Awful God. Bow before Him!
And friend, if you have come this morning, but you haven’t submitted your life to Him and you are not trusting Jesus Christ to save you, you can’t even begin to approach God in prayer. Proverbs 15:8 says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.” If you want to be able to approach the Lord of heaven and earth you must change from being a wicked man to a righteous man. You’ve got to experience a change of nature. Your heart and soul must be renewed. Without this, your prayers are an abomination to God. He hates them. If you’re not born again, God does not hear your prayers. I call upon you today, in Jesus’ name, to humble yourself on account of your sin, confess your guilt and transgression to Him, and cry out, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” That is the starting place of all true prayer!
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