This sermon/study is a conglomeration of my notes for my church family and a HEAVY dose of help from W.Phillip Keller and his book "A Layman Looks at the Lord's Prayer" I thank Mr. Keller for his inspiring words and depth of understanding of this matter, God has used him mightily to touch so many for the Kingdom.
Sermon Brief
Date Written: February 4, 2014
Date Preached: February 5, 2014
Where Preached: OPBC (AM)
Sermon Details:
Series Title: A Study on the Lord’s Prayer
Sermon Title: Our Father… (Sermon 2)
Sermon Text: Matthew 6:9-13 [HCSB]
Essence of the Text: Jesus wanted His disciples to know how to pray…
Essence of the Sermon: Jesus wants believers today to know how to pray…
Objective of the Sermon: Prayer is vital for the believer, but prayer is not so much in the words as it is in the attitude behind those words. This model prayer lays forth a template that guides the believer in the direction of their prayer and the attitude of their heart.
Introduction:
How do we pray? This was a question we asked each other last week and we began to look at the Lord’s Prayer or what I call the Model Prayer found in Matthew 6… Jesus offered this to his disciples during his most famous sermon… The Sermon on the Mount… that covers Matt 5-7…
We learned last week that this was not a prayer that Jesus gave us to memorize the words… although memorizing Scripture is never a bad thing! The words are NOT the important thing here… it is the model or structure of the prayer that is important! We are called to model all our prayer after this template that Jesus gave to His disciples…
Last week we looked at how prayer was NOT for God to inform him of what we needed BUT rather it was for us… to help us draw closer to Him! It is for our communion with Him and the relationship we must have with God.
Tonight I want to look at the 1st verse… specifically the 1st part of that verse where Jesus says to call out to the Father in heaven… call out to the creator of all things… even Jesus acknowledged God’s preeminent position within the galaxy. Jesus tells us to CALL out to the Father!
Let’s look at v9
9Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
When we think about this… Jesus wanted us to feel ‘at home’ when we came to God in prayer and here he does this by using “Father”… What an intimate and personal family like approach to prayer.
What a reassuring manner in which to speak to God… to the Creator of all things! This is really a startling concept to MANY people… At the time Jesus laid this out… this was a FOREIGN concept to the avg Jewish home…
But what we find here is that this is a unique and new concept God is making available to all the work… Prior to Jesus, God was held up as someone who was remote and alone…
Prior to Jesus, God was regarded as someone REMOTE, and literally unapproachable as only one time a year… one man could enter into what was known as the Holy of Holies into the presence of God. Before Jesus came it was believed that God was simply NOT accessible to the common man!
But here in this prayer Jesus speaks about an intimate relationship between the one praying and the object of that prayer… GOD! He uses the term “Our Father”
All throughout the OT God was referred to by pseudo-names and in hushed whispers for all feared that they may upset or profane His name, but when it was mentioned it was YAHWEH… and NEVER was He referred to as the Heavenly Father!
BUT in the NT, especially during the life of Jesus and thru the witness of the Gospels we find God revealed in a much different manner. In fact in the Gospels, God is mentioned as ‘Father’ over 70 times…
When one sees God as ‘Father’ is certainly places him or her into a vastly different relationship… a radically different relationship… an exciting and new perspective on our God… this is because when we see God as ‘Father’ our perspective of Him changes.
He moves out of the role of cosmic judge and comes knocking at our hearts to reveal his intimate and eternal love for us… In fact the entire concept of God as “Father” is immersed in the wonder of His incredible love for us!
Think about it for just a moment… the One who IS from everlasting to everlasting… the One who has been from eternity past and will always be to eternity future… the One who thru His mere words, spoke the universe into existence… THIS One… loves YOU! This ONE desires to be your Heaven “Father”… this ONE desires that kind of intimate and close relationship with you!
BUT there are many in this life who have lived with an abusive and very UN-loving father or father figure and for THEM – seeing God as Father is difficult!
For them the thought of “Father” conjures up feelings of pain and abuse… this is because their human father or the father figure they had as a child was selfish and self-centered! He was focused on himself and cared little for what they needed or what He was supposed to be providing for them…
He may have been abusive thru a physical nature OR he may have taken another path to abuse such as verbal or emotional abuse… but regardless of what path he took… this ‘earthly father’ abused his children!
For these people their father was weak willed and in his actions denied them of what they should have had… and that was his love, support and protection – INSTEAD – they rec’d nothing more than his hatred, abuse and hard heart.
Many ‘fathers’ simply do NOT realize the role that they play in the lives of their children… in ALL facets of their lives… physically, emotionally and spiritually!
Long before these children are out and being formed by education and trying to make in it in this world… they are formed by those closest to them and if those closest to them engenders feelings of NOT being wanted or NOT being loved… then they are scarred and torn with emotions that CAN last a lifetime!
Because of the failure of many ‘fathers’ in our society today … this term ‘father’ that Jesus uses here is NOT as wondrous as it should be. It should bring about feelings of warm, exciting and happy memories, but instead it can brings about feelings of dread, fear and trembling!
Let us suffice it to say that OUR mental picture of our ‘father’ is our first mental picture of God! If our dads are loving, generous and gentle, then we see God in that same light! BUT if they have traveled the other path of hatred, abuse and selfishness, then we have a totally different view of God as ‘father’!
But what we need to understand here is that when Jesus was telling the disciples HOW to pray and He began the prayer with this phrase “Our Father”… he was NOT somehow channeling his feelings of Joseph the carpenter to shape his view of God! Jesus was expressing His own personal identity with God the father as he had known Him throughout eternity!
Jesus KNEW the true nature and essence of God’s character! He comprehended the beauty, wonder and integrity of His personality. Jesus wanted His disciples and ALL the world to know the caliber of the “Father”
For us to see Him like Jesus saw Him… if we are to know the strength of His character as Jesus knew it… then we are going to have to approach the Father as Christ approached the Father!
For one thing, the Father was front and center in every thought Christ had, He dominated Jesus’ thinking! He was influenced in all things by the Father and He was every in His mind and on His lips…
Have you ever heard the phrase, “…what you ARE speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you are saying…” It is an expression that our character should be so strong in our lives that when we may speak out of turn or say the wrong things people will not judge us based on one thing we say but they will judge us on WHO we are…
Well that is true only to a point… now while it is true that our actions should correspond with our words… but the fact of the matter is… our words are a direct expression of WHO we are! In fact Jesus even said that out of the heart… the mouth speaks! So in fact our character shapes what we say!
With that in mind, we need to pay close attention to what Jesus says about the Father, and also observe how he lives before the Father… We see Jesus challenging those who saw him and saw how he lived…
In John 14 He said “…he who has seen ME has seen the Father…” so we can know that Jesus lived as an OPEN revelation of the Father to this world… He was truly Emmanuel… God with us!
However, Jesus had a perfect connection and union with the Father and therefore had NO problems seeing Him as Father…loving, kind, and compassionate! BUT WE may have a more difficult path to this vision of God!
You see Jesus was completely in tune with the Father. Jesus was in absolute agreement with the Father. Jesus was unified in His thoughts and understanding with the Father! Theirs was and is a relationship of true delight and understanding! US…on the other hand… our relationship with the Father is NOT!
We are haunted by our past, by our sin, by our doubts and by our guilt! We don’t even trust that God truly understands our situation, mainly because we don’t understand ourselves… because of this our confidence in the Father suffers and we cannot give ourselves over to Him like we should.
Because of this we often live a life where we may feel like we will never truly be accepted by God… and this is because we cannot see Him for who He truly is!
Unless we can grasp what kind of person God is, we will NEVER be able to develop a confidence in Him and what He can do for us and thru us… and YET this is His desire more than anything else… that we KNOW Him in His love and affection for us!
The most impressive characteristic about the Father is his love… but the depth of his self-less-ness in love toward us is something we cannot grasp! For the most part we only understand love as a tool to garner something WE desire…
We often see God as this stern, cosmic judge who is just waiting for us to slip up and even when we have His forgiveness… we are waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Him to say “I told you so” when we slip up again!
We are focused on how sinful we are and how our sin outweighs our obedience and our good… Our focus is on our sinful hearts and NOT on the loving grace of the God who has forgiven us!
God is NOT some distant deity who is stand-offish from His creation! He is NOT a Creator who sits in stern judgment and condemnation of His creation… RATHER He is a God who is intimately involved with His creation! He is a God who instead of sitting in stern judgment… reached down to offer redemption… instead of passing sentence has decided to offer pardon!
This thought should reassure your heart! This thought should ease your mind. This thought should free your spirit to serve Him as He has called you to serve! How good is it to know that our “Father” in heaven truly understand who we are, what we have done, and yet STILL loves and seeks to redeem us!
And the wonderful fact about God is that He is NOT like us… it is easy for us to have these feelings toward someone who is acting right and doing what we want… such as an obedient child, but let that child step out of line and WOW we can lose it in a heartbeat!
God however, is NOT so fickle… he is NOT changeable OR susceptible to mood swings or temper tantrums! In Hebrews we learn that He is the same… yesterday, today and forever! What a wonderful promise from God to us… I have come to redeem and save you and I will NOT change in that thinking or approach!
Our Father are but 2 very short words and yet they have such deep and infinite meaning! These 2 words set the tone for the model prayer and they embrace the beauty found in a unified and healthy family! These 2 words convey to our hearts and minds the strength of God’s love FOR us and the depth of His commitment TO us!
There is SO much more I could say about these 2 words and how it influences this prayer and our lives here in this world, but we can rest assured in knowing that because of “Our Father” we can KNOW that the God of the universe cares… loves… and seeks to redeem His creation and that redemption is ETERNAL! What a joy, what a blessing, what a hope!
No other religion in all the world conveys such a happy and contented concept of prayer and connection between God and humanity. There is NO other philosophy that touches the heart of the human need as this one… and this is so much more than a philosophy… this is a true relationship that when experienced will change your life/heart for all eternity!
PRAY!
