1 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN Sermon preached by Pastor C. John Steer Autumn Ridge Church February 17-18, 2018 No. 1: The Jesus Prayer Scripture: Matthew 6:9-15 The word of God as we find it in Matthew chapter 6, beginning to read at verse 9. Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount, This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today 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 the evil one. (Matthew 6:9-13) Today we start a new series on the Lord s Prayer. There are two reasons why we are doing this. First, we are in the season of Lent. Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter. Christians use this as a time for personal reflection. It is an opportunity to practice the spiritual disciples that draw us closer to Christ. So what could be better than developing our prayer life? The second reason we are looking at the Lord s Prayer is because we want to focus more on prayer this year as a congregation. We desire to have more boldness in talking to our Heavenly Father. I think most of us are dissatisfied with our prayer life. We feel we could do better. If we are honest, we often struggle to pray. The disciples also felt this. One day they came to Jesus and asked Lord, teach us to pray. (Luke 11:1) In response, Jesus gave them the Lord s Prayer. For 2000 years Christians have said it and sung it. Somewhere in the world the Lord s Prayer is always being offered to God. Today as we look at the opening line Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name I want us to see four profound principles. First, THE LORD S PRAYER IS A MODEL PRAYER. Jesus explained, This, then, is how you should pray. (Matthew 6:9) In other words, this is the kind of prayer you should pray. John Calvin observed, Examine your prayers by this prayer. It is helpful to compare our private prayers with the Lord s Prayer and see if they are anything like it.
2 For the Lord s Prayer was given to be used in private. Jesus said, When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father." (Matthew 6:6) The first thing we notice is that the Lord s Prayer begins by putting God in the center of the picture. The opening two words are Our Father. So much about contemporary life puts us at the center. With the result that we are all becoming narcissistic. This may explain the growing amount of stress in our society, for me first was never God s intention for us. So the Lord s Prayer is a corrective. It puts God in his rightful place, right at the center. A second observation that jumps out is that the prayer is short. We can say it in 30 seconds. But that half a minute can change our life. Jesus is making the point it is the quality rather than the quantity of our prayers that matters. It is a pagan idea that if we heap up prayers we will get more in return. Jesus warns, When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." (Matthew 6:7) It is interesting that all the prayers of the Bible are short. The longest is Jesus High Priestly Prayer in John 17, and even that only takes three minutes. So if you are not praying and you would like to start, begin with the Lord s Prayer. That was Martin Luther s advice to his barber. The man was called Peter and he took advantage of the opportunity of having the great reformer in his barber s chair by asking Luther how to pray. Luther replied, Peter, say the Lord s Prayer. That s what I do every morning. So the goal of this series is not to turn you into a monk who intercedes for hours on end but into a person who can talk naturally to God for five minutes a day. Surveys reveal that about 5% of Christians are intercessors. That means that prayer is their spiritual gift. They love to pray for hours on end. The church of Jesus Christ needs those dear people as we need the other gifts. But this means that about 95% of us are Lord s Prayer people like Jesus own disciples were. Second, THE LORD S PRAYER IS A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER. It covers everything. The Lord s Prayer takes the whole of life to the whole of God. This prayer addresses almost every need we will ever have. There was a pastor in Germany called Helmut Thielicke. He served a congregation in Stuttgart towards the end of the Second World War. Bombs were raining down on his city, which was eventually flattened.
3 Helmut had to minister to his congregation during this appalling time. They had to leave their own church when it was bombed. They moved into a chapel which was also destroyed. They finished up meeting in a room in the rectory. Pastor Thielicke wondered what to say to his discouraged congregation who had figured out that they were losing the war. Almost all of them had family members who had been killed. They were beginning to understand the evils the Nazis had done. The pastor desperately needed something that would speak to their dire situation. So Helmut preached a series on the Lord s Prayer. I read his sermons last week. They are as fresh as the day they were delivered. Seventy years ago they provided hope in a hopeless situation. The Lord s Prayer can do the same for us because it is so comprehensive. This is why the Lord s Prayer is the greatest prayer of the church. Many of the Church Fathers like Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine wrote expositions on it. Even Dante devoted to a chapter to it in his Divine Comedy. So saying the Lord s Prayer, memorizing it, and meditating on it is time very well spent. Third, THE LORD S PRAYER IS AN ENCOURAGING PRAYER. It is encouraging because the one to whom we pray is Our Father in heaven. Think of that. Prayer allows us to communicate with the creator of the universe. The one who called this world into being and who made us in his image. In prayer we approach the throne room of this immutable, transcendent, sovereign God. Yet this all powerful, all knowing, almighty being is also Our Father. Father that single word sums up what the Christian faith is all about. It answers the philosopher s question Is the universe friendly? For when we say Father we are affirming that at the heart of the universe there is not only an ultimate power but there is an ultimate love. It is amazing that we can call God our Father. That s why this is called the family prayer. For it can only be used by children of the Father. Unless we are a child of God we have no right to use this prayer for not everyone enjoys that relationship. It was the poet Ruskin who noted The world is an orphanage full of people without a father. Until we know Jesus as our Savior we are orphans living in this world without a dad. But when we come to know God as our Father all sorts of blessings become ours. Our Father makes sense of this life and he gives security in the next. For death for the Christian is simply entering into our Father s house. This word Father is a very intimate expression. It is more dad than the formal term father. Jesus would have said Abba and we can too. What an extraordinary privilege that we can say Our Abba, Our dearest Father.
4 Paul tells us Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. (Galatians 4:6) But in case we should get too familiar, we are reminded that our Father is in heaven. This tells us God is different from our earthly father. That is good because some of us had terrible fathers. We had poor relationships with our earthly fathers. But God is not like them. He is holier than an earthly father. He is more loving than an earthly father. He is more powerful than an earthly father. He is more hurt when we do wrong. Now what does it mean to say that our Father is in heaven? The New Testament speaks of three heavens. The first heaven refers to the earth s atmosphere. This describes the envelope of air that surrounds our planet and sustains life. The second heaven is used to describe outer space. It refers to the sun, moon and stars. The third heaven is the realm of God. Paul was taken up to this third heaven. Sometimes it is described as a heavenly country, a New Jerusalem, a home prepared especially for God s children. The truth is that God is in all these heavens. For God is everywhere present. Notice that little word our. Our Father. Our is the pronoun of partnership. There is a danger we can be selfish in our prayers so Jesus gives a wonderful corrective. He says Pray like this. Give us. Forgive us. Lead us. Deliver us. The point is that it is important to include others in our prayers. For example, if our need is health then we can pray Give us health, not just Give me health. We are to pray for others who are sick as well. If God is our Father then the people around us are our brothers and sisters. That s why prejudice and racism and class distinction stand condemned in these two words which open the Lord s Prayer. For if we pray Our Father and hate or despise our fellow human beings then the prayer is a mockery and we make ourselves liars. Here s a fourth powerful principle. THE LORD S PRAYER IS A CHALLENGING PRAYER. It is not so much a prayer it s more a way of life. If we can really pray it and mean it our days will be different. We will become God-loving, Christ-obeying, Spirit-filled people. The big challenge of the prayer is conveyed in the first petition hallowed be your name. That word hallowed means to set apart, to treat as holy, to reverence. So this opening petition of the Lord s Prayer is a request that God s name will be honored in our life, our church, and our world. Now God has many names so which name is meant here? The most precious one of all: Father.
5 There are two very practical ways that we can hallow God s name. The first is by proclaiming it. We hallow God s name by living a life that displays that God is our Father. Martin Luther wrote a catechism for children. In it he asked this question: How is God s name hallowed among us? Answer: When both our life and doctrine are truly Christian. So we reverence God s name when our life brings honor to God and attracts others to him. One of the Church Fathers called Cyril of Jerusalem points out that God s name will always be holy no matter what we say or do. So Cyril reasoned that this petition cannot possibly mean that God s name should become holy from not being holy. Rather, says Cyril, we are to pray that God s name becomes holy in us. It does that when we are made holy and do things worthy of holiness. It is so important we do this. Nietzsche, who was a German pagan philosopher, challenged Christians, Show me that you are redeemed and then I will believe in your redeemer. We demonstrate we are redeemed when we hallow God s name. A second way we hallow God s name is by protecting it. The Fourth Commandment tells us You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." (Exodus 20:7) So we hallow God s name by using it with great care and respect, just as we would for anyone we love and admire. I would never use Gretchen s name as a curse word. She is my wife and I love her. You would never use the name of a dear friend as an expression of frustration if you hit your thumb with a hammer. The reason we don t blaspheme by saying God or Christ is because our Father and his Son are very precious to us. The problem with swearing is that it is destructive. Every swear word takes something beautiful and sacred and smashes it. The two most sacred relationships a man can have are his relationship to God and his relationship with his wife and almost every swear word comes from one of those two relationships. By using a word as a curse we make it useless for its true meaning. But, we say, the words just slip out. I don t mean anything by them. Let me give you some help. We will be able to hallow God s name when we remember that we can never speak outside his presence. Have you ever had the experience of talking about someone only to discover they are standing right behind you and they heard every word? It is enormously embarrassing, especially if what you were saying was unkind. You would never have said that if you knew they were standing there.
6 People would not say Oh my God as an expression of surprise if they realized that God was behind them. And he always is for we cannot get away from his presence. David discovered this. He wrote, If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. (Psalm 139:8-10) The truth of the matter is that it is not possible to talk about God in his absence. When we remember that then we will hallow his name. There was only one person who could take the name of God and apply it to himself. Jesus said I Am. That s Yahweh. I am the bread of life. I am the Good Shepherd. Before Abraham was I am. The religious leaders of the day cried Blasphemy! They said this man must die because he doesn t hallow the name of God. According to their law that deserved death. So they brought Jesus to trial and they asked him Are you the Son of the Living God? Jesus replied I Am. The high priest tore his robes and said We have heard it out of his own mouth. Blasphemy! He deserves to die. So they put him to death and they did it in the name of God. The tragedy is that they did not realize that the name of God is in Jesus. If you want to know what the name of God is then look at Jesus. For he reveals what God s name really means. But they took that name and stripped that name and whipped that name and nailed him to a cross. But even as he hung there Jesus continued to hallow the name of God. For he did not curse as the thieves did on each side. Rather he demonstrated one of the most wonderful names of God, for on Calvary we see most clearly that God is love. Jesus was determined whatever the cost to hallow the Father s name. Let us remember it is Jesus Christ who teaches us this Lord s Prayer. He can take us to our Father in heaven. Let us rejoice that Jesus prays along with us. So when our prayers are weak or stupid he lifts up our tired words in his hands. And on his lips they become true prayers. When we stop praying altogether, because we are overwhelmed with despair, Jesus never ceases to intercede for us. He can understand even the sigh of the dying and clothe it with beauty. Luther said that a Christian is a person who runs out of a dark house into the sunshine. This prayer exposes us to the sunshine of God s love.
So let us say the Lord s Prayer often and affirm Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. 7