Who's Your Daddy?
God… Who’s Your Daddy?
Matthew 6:5 – 13
October 19th, 2008
Today we begin a part series simply titled God… An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. What we will basically be doing in the next six weeks is to closely look at the famous prayer of Jesus. This prayer is one most of us could recite by memory and it is commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer”. I’m excited for this series because in my studies I have found there is so much to this prayer and I think we will gain some new insights in particular about prayer and in the nature of God.
Prayer is not a new subject for me to talk about, nor is it one you have never heard a sermon about. Since I began as pastor here at the Congregational Church I have spoken a number of times about it and I think I have stressed the importance of prayer in the believer’s life, but certainly not to the point of exhaustion. In these next few weeks I am hopeful that not only will we gain a better understanding on how to pray but also that through this prayer we be introduced to the very nature of God and many of his attributes. So in all this will be a series will serve a two-fold purpose. First it will be a study on prayer and second it will be a study on the character and attributes of God.
The gist of my sermons will use the foundational passage in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6:5 – 13. Before we get into this passage I would like to look at what Jesus spoke of prior to this. He was speaking about giving and your motivations. He warns his listeners about making a spectacle of themselves when they tended to the needs of an individual or group. He warns about giving and helping in order to make one look good or make one look holy, righteous or to be noticed by people. He simply states this is a wrong motivation to give. Instead we are to do it in secret, humbly, in ways that will bring glory to God rather than yourself.
He then uses the same argument with prayer. He begins in verse 5 by saying, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.” This verse is loaded with thoughts I want to bring to your attention…
1) When you pray – Notice Jesus does not say, “If you pray”. God expects to be in communication with his people and prayer is the instrument that he has ordained for humanity to communicate with Him. It is a discipline that the Christian must make a priority in his life, because communicating with God is important and God has designed it for His glory and our benefit.
2) Don’t be like the hypocrites – When you pray, you must be genuine and not just doing vain ritual or doing it to seem pious. For the hypocrites would pray to be seen and heard by the people with little regard to who they were praying to. Their prayers were probably much the same as those people today who like to pray just to be heard or to get things off of their chest, or to say something to someone because they are too afraid to talk to someone about something face to face. I.E. someone may pray, “Oh Lord, you know about the sin so and so is committing and I know they are going to burn in hell for this, and I know you are telling me to tell so and so she is wrong and I am right. So Lord, please convict her of her wrongdoings and assure her that I am right…” You get what I am saying.
a) In Jesus’ time men would be in the synagogues and pray so that people would see them and think highly of them. I don’t think Jesus is condemning public prayer here. He is merely condemning our personal motivations to impress those around us.
b) The prayer of the hypocrite would also be the kind of prayers that had a lot of words and were lengthy but they had no substance to them. They are empty phrases with faux intellectualism. “Jesus is prohibiting mindless, mechanical repetition.”[1]
c) I find it ironic that Jesus speaks about mindless repetition and then goes on to give the model for prayer and humanity has gone and turned this prayer into exactly what Jesus was saying not to do…mindless repetition. Churches across the world recite The Lord’s Prayer week after week and they do it without any thought and even some without any regard to what they are praying and to whom they are praying. This is one reason why I do not recite the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday morning. I believe this the congregational prayer of The Lord’s Prayer to be much more than a part of the service where we all recite a verse from the Bible and pose it as a prayer. The reciting of The Lord’s Prayer has unfortunately become a mere nostalgic requirement to many churches. If you ask anyone who enjoys reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Church the reason most will give you for doing it is because they have done it their whole life… I digress.
d) Jesus tells us WHEN we do pray we are to go to our closets and shut the door and pray in secret. Does he mean this literally or figuratively? Yes. I believe Jesus is referring to the state of our heart. When we go we go to have some “face time” with God. We are to open our hearts, pour out our emotions and genuinely spend time in fellowship with Him. We spend our time speaking to him (interceding, supplication, worship etc.) and we need to allow time for Him to speak to us (meditating – either on his word or on His attributes.)
Then Jesus introduces us to a model of prayer. Notice He says, “Pray then like this…” He does not say, “Pray this prayer”. He is essentially tell us when you pray use this as an example, a model or a “template” if you will on how you should pray. This prayer contains seven components one of them being an invocation and the other six being petitions. The Lord’s Prayer could be broken down like this
1) Our Father in Heaven – invocation
2) Hallowed be Your name – You are Holy
3) Your Kingdom come and will be done – You have dominion over all so you do what you have to do according to your will.
4) Give us our daily bread – We trust that you will meet our needs.
5) Forgive our debts – Forgiveness sought and given.
6) Deliver us from evil – Protect us from the evil of this world and make us pure and holy.
Since this has been an unusually long introduction I am going to spend the reaming time looking at the first component of this prayer. However, just because it is short does not mean it will lack the application and meat for you to take home with you today.
“Our Father in Heaven.” These four words contain a lot of information. But if I can put it in plain language these four words are introductions or a proclamation or summons to whom we are addressing our prayers. We are praying to OUR FATHER in HEAVEN. It does not say to pray to the saints, the virgin Mary, an angel, Mother earth etc. Who are we addressing? Our Father… Not just any ole Father though, we are praying to The Father in Heaven. Some people have difficulty with addressing God as Father and they have various reasons. Some may not like the fact that they had an earthly father and he brings nothing but painful thoughts, memories and anxieties to mind. Their memory of their father brings such pain and anguish that they refuse to believe that God as a Father could imply something good. Others don’t like the fact that Father implies that God is a male and this can open a whole can of worms, some more liberal denominations have gone so far as to refer to God as the Father/Mother. Some even go so far as to not even liking the idea of referring to God in human terms. However we know the original Greek word for Father in this passage is translated as Pater (Pay – Ayr) means the originator and transmitter of anything. 2a1 the authors of a family or society of persons animated by the same spirit as himself. 2a2 one who has infused his own spirit into others, who actuates and governs their minds. 2b one who stands in a father’s place and looks after another in a paternal way.[2] However we view our earthly father’s it is good for us to know that we have a father in heaven who stands in the place of our earthly fathers and looks after us as a true earthly father should look after his own children. What does this mean to the believer? As Christians we have been exalted to a specially close and intimate relationship with God, and we no longer dread him as a stern judge of sinners, but revere him as (our) reconciled and loving Father. [3]
God is our Father, but He is unique in the sense that his abode is not here on earth. However we cannot forget the fact that God is always present here on earth (Omnipresent) this is not his home. His place is in heaven. The word translated Heaven in this verse is ouranas (oo-ran-os) which means the region above the sidereal heavens, the seat of order of things eternal and consummately perfect where God dwells and other heavenly beings.[4] Heaven, this is a subject all of its own. I will not be spending time today trying to answer the questions of what, where and why’s of heaven, there is a wonderful book by Randall Alcon entitled Heaven which I would recommend and has many biblical insights of heaven.
So as I conclude today’s message and as we look at God the Father I want to stress the importance of knowing and understanding that we have a God in Heaven who loves us with a pure, holy and fatherly love. He will watch over, protect, and love us in a way that only a parent could love his child. I personally experienced this kind of love and connection with the birth of all three of my children, especially my first. When my first child was born the emotion and connection I felt with my daughter was/is unspeakable. I cannot explain the type of love that I experienced as a new father. I experienced a love that I didn’t know I could posses and it was a pure love, a protective love and a determining love. Imagine this is the kind of love our God has for us. That’s the best way to describe God’s love for us as a Father. However we cannot completely fathom or define this love because we love with a human love and He loves with a perfect, pure and holy love that we cannot understand or comprehend. But I also need to say that as a Father he not only loves us, but also has the responsibility to discipline us, protect us, and to guide us as children as well. Because this is what we are… His children. John 1:12 says what I am saying best, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in His name, he gave the RIGHT to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.” Since we have a God in Heaven who loves us and gave his son Jesus Christ for us and have believed in Him, we now have the right to be called His children and we have the right to also call Him our Father who is a holy, loving, merciful and all encompassing God. More on this topic next week.
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[1] ESV Study Bible. Wheaton : Crossway Books, 2008 p. 1831 (study notes)
[2]Strong, James: The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible : Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order. electronic ed. Ontario : Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996, S. G3962
[3]Strong, James: The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible : Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order. electronic ed. Ontario : Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996, S. G3962
[4]Strong, James: The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible : Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order. electronic ed. Ontario : Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996, S. G3772