Our Father in Heaven
Notes
Transcript
Invite everyone to stand and read Matthew 6:9-13- Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Last week, saw how this prayer fit into the immediate context of Jesus’ teaching on prayer and the general context of the sermon on the mount, that highlights the authority of Jesus.
Beginning the content of Jesus’ prayer in the sermon on the mount.
Read Matthew 6:9- Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Pray.
Focus- Our Father in heaven.
Elephant in the room- some shudder at the idea of God as Father.
Reverse the way we relate God to fathers.
God is the ideal.
All of our mistakes are meant to guide us into the perfection of God as a Father.
We begin with an address.
Do we regularly consider that when we pray, we are speaking to someone who is listening?
Doing a word problem and setting the equation correctly.
One thing we learn: We must begin with the correct mindset.
Martyn Lloyd Jones- “The great teachers of the spiritual life throughout the centuries…have been agreed about this, that the first step in prayer has always been what they call ‘Recollection’. There is a sense in which every man when he begins to pray to God should put his hand upon his mouth.”
Consider the example of Job.
Throughout Job’s narrative, he calls out to God and runs the risk of accusing God.
Much of Job’s prayer was petition, requests.
God answers Job in ch. 38-39 by reminding Job who God is.
Job 40:3-5- Then Job answered the LORD and said: “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.”
Job was calling out God, but when God answered, Job recognized that he ought to have begun with silence.
Job had lost sense of who it was that He was talking to.
Don’t we find this to be true in our own prayer lives. We speak to God as though we can command Him, or as though He isn’t listening in the first place.
Then we come face to face with who God is in the Psalms, or Isaiah, or Genesis.
Thus we, like Job, ought to begin every prayer with our hand over our mouths.
How we view God when we approach Him in prayer will greatly shape the health of our prayer life.
Consider boredom in prayer.
J.I. Packer- “The vitality of prayer lies largely in the vision of God that prompts it. Drab thoughts of God make prayer dull.”
When we pause before prayer, when we address God rightly, how are we to see the sole audience of our prayers?
What shall we consider about God when approaching Him in prayer?
1. God is to be seen in prayer as our Father.
1. God is to be seen in prayer as our Father.
We are meant to see God in a relational or familial role.
What does this mean for how we relate to God in prayer?
God as Father is the perfect Provider.
Matthew 7:9-11- Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Notice what is being asked- bread and fish- those which give sustenance. Those things that are truly needed.
Lloyd Jones- He is much more anxious to bless you than you are to be blessed.
Do not take it to mean ask whatever you want and God will give it. God will give good things, those things that are for our good.
So we ask for what we think is good, trusting that God knows better.
And we see this made clear in our own lives as parents- we do not give to our children everything they ask, and yet we are still their good providers.
The best possible providers are the ones who are most discerning.
Before we begin to worry that we, as God’s children, will get a short end of a deal, may we consider the words of Jesus.
Luke 12:32-34- “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Matthew 5:3- “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
You can be poor in Spirit. You can sell your possessions, you can give to the needy. Why fixate on the things of this earth when you will inherit the very Kingdom of God?
We ought to be the most giving of people on the planet. Rid yourself of everything and you are still in possession of God’s Kingdom.
God as Father is the perfect Protector.
John 10:27-29- My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Notice the image being used. That of a Father. What strength does God have? The strength of a Father.
Protection in, not protection from.
Psalm 18 as an example.
God as Father is the perfect Example.
Matthew 5:48- You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Luke 6:36- “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
1 Peter 1:15-16- ...but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
We see the character of God, written in His Word and revealed in His Son, and that is our aim. Clearly this will shape the way that we pray.
We ought to consider the person of God as Father when we begin to petition.
Kids asking me for something.
2. God is to be seen in prayer as in heaven.
2. God is to be seen in prayer as in heaven.
Another reality of which we are to be constantly aware when we pray.
J.I. Packer- “When the Creator is said to be ‘in heaven,’ the thought is that He exists on a different plane from us, rather than in a different place.”
Isaiah 57:15- “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Prayer in the heavenly realm.
We are meant to pray with a mindfulness of heaven.
Does not mean that we ignore the earthly situations surrounding us, but instead that we see them in light of their spiritual reality.
The temptation is to be earthly minded in our prayers, to see everything from a purely earthly perspective and thus to neglect God’s purposes.
We are to pray for the things of this earth through a heavenly lens.
Matthew 6:33- “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Prayer to the heavenly God.
When we pray to our Father in heaven, we are reminded of the strength, the wisdom, and the goodness of God.
Thomas Watson- “He is far above all worldly princes, as heaven is above earth.”
We pray for protection, for provision and for the ability to follow God as the example because we trust in His power, wisdom and goodness.
Great commission rests on God’s authority being given to Christ.
In the same way, the value and strength of our prayers rely largely on our vision of God. Is God benevolent toward His children? Is He able to do all that He promises?
If we trust in a biblical vision of God, then our prayers will be faith-filled and faith-fueled.
3. Consider what is happening when we pray.
3. Consider what is happening when we pray.
Approaching the throne of grace.
Hebrews 4:16- Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
This text from Hebrews reminds us that God beckons us into His presence, because He is a Father.
His desire is to be asked for those good things that are needed.
Hebrews 12:28-29- Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
This text reminds us that God is in heaven, that He is unlike us, that we approach with humility.
King James- godly fear.
Consider the idea of a covered face.
John Calvin- “Whenever we engage in prayer, there are two things to be considered, both that we may have access to God, and that we may rely on Him with full and unshaken confidence: his fatherly love toward us, and his boundless power.”
Two realities being held simultaneously and shaping our prayer- Our Father in heaven. Every prayer we give must have these two sides of the same coin held in balance.
May our week of prayer be guided in this way, we approach the powerful King of the universe who also happens to love us as a Father loves His children.
Martyn Lloyd Jones- “Remember that you are approaching the almighty, eternal, ever-blessed holy God. But remember also that that God, in Christ, has become your Father, who not only knows all about you in the sense that He is omniscient, He knows all about you also in the sense that a father knows all about his child. He knows what is good for the child. Put these two things together.”