Our Father Who Is in Heaven

The series is entitled "The Model Prayer: How the Lord's Prayer Helps Us Pray". And like I said, over the next six weeks or so, we'll be systematically unpacking the Lord's Prayer and coming to grips with what Jesus wanted His disciples to pray. Now for some of us, we've come from traditions in the past, Christian traditions that were very familiar with the Lord's Prayer. Traditions that used it perhaps every worship service that we attended together. Some of us were taught the Lord's Prayer at school, and we prayed it every day before we started school, every day at our assemblies.

In parliament, I still think they lead or they start some meetings with the Lord's Prayer. But the danger, of course, in knowing this prayer so well and reciting it so often, especially when it happens without thought or reflection, is that it becomes dead and dry. Some of us, on the other hand, have come from traditions, church traditions that perhaps never used the Lord's Prayer. We know of it. We know of the concept of it, but we never used it, and our traditions actually resisted that idea of using the Lord's Prayer in that sort of way, coming back from or resisting and pushing back against the dead and the dryness of older traditions.

But I hope that this series, in some way, helps us to reclaim and understand the power and the significance of this simple example of prayer. I pray that we may use it more regularly in our devotional lives, in the lives of our family. So fathers, teach your kids this prayer, and yes, even in our church, we may use it more robustly and more fervently. Let's get to it now. We'll turn to Matthew 6, and we're going to read from verse 5.

Matthew 6:5. These are the words of Jesus. "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.

And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this. 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." So far, our reading. The great Christian thinker and preacher and philosopher Jonathan Edwards said something that I think was quite controversial in his day in the seventeen hundreds during the great revivals in America.

He said that the most essential difference between a true Christian and just a religious or moralistic person is that a Christian obeys and loves God out of sheer delight for who He is rather than what He does. In other words, the gospel, once it has regenerated and has saved the sinner, the gospel changes our hearts so much that we do not obey God to get something from Him, but our deepest desire is to give God pleasure because for the first time, we see His incredible beauty and His worth. We see an example of that in our passage this morning, in the context of the Lord's Prayer that Jesus gives us.

It's very easy to forget that Jesus taught us the Lord's Prayer in a wider context. We know, and as I read it, I already felt myself falling into the rhythm of those words. But we forget the context in which Jesus said these things. What's the context here? Well, Jesus holds out two examples of how not to pray, doesn't He?

He identifies one who is called a hypocrite in verse 5. Now most likely, this was a Jewish person. This was perhaps even like a Pharisee or a teacher of the law, a very holy man who prays very publicly in the synagogue, in the church community. Or he goes and he stands on the street corner very, very publicly, and he prays out loud for everyone to hear him, Jesus says. And the second example Jesus uses is of a Gentile, a non-Jew, a pagan, Jesus says, who prays in very repetitious ways.

The NIV translates the word "many words" or "heaping up empty phrases" as "babble", who babbles to God. And Jesus says then, don't pray like them, but when you pray, pray "Our Father in heaven". Now as we begin this series on the Lord's Prayer, I must stress to you that the rest of this series is pretty much useless if we don't understand the opening phrase of this prayer: "Our Father". Christian, you cannot forget. You must not forget the incredible privilege that Jesus Christ is allowing you to experience.

The incredible gift Jesus is offering you when he tells you to address God as "our Father". There is no greater gift. There is no greater privilege than to approach our God as Father. You see, there are only two ways that anyone can approach God. And some of you may argue with me and say it's more of a spectrum.

It's far more grey, but really, there are only two ways to approach God. The first approach is that you can go to God on a business or conditional basis. You have a business relationship with God. And the second is you can approach God on a family basis, an unconditional basis.

Those are the only two options. And Jesus points out in these two examples before he comes to the Lord's Prayer the hypocrite, the Jewish hypocrite, and the Gentile babbler as examples of those who come to God in a business transactional approach. They believe God will hear them either because they show great showmanship in their prayers, prayers that might be very beautiful, prayers that may rouse the emotions, prayers done in the right way, in the right place, at the right time, like a Jew in the synagogue. And Jesus says, this prayer is empty, and it has already received its answer.

The reward has been gained for this man. He's been heard by others, but not by his God. And the second example is similar, but is in fact a little bit more troubling. This is a Gentile who really wants to be heard by God. He doesn't care about the others.

He doesn't care about where he prays on the street corners or in the synagogue. He wants God to listen. And he prays with a lot of emotion, and he prays with a lot of heat, a lot of urgency. The Greek words used here intimate anxiousness, desperation. He wants God to hear him.

And unlike the Jew, they are not praying for other people. They are praying, hoping that their actions will make God answer their prayer. But Jesus holds out both of these examples as opposites of what Jesus now wants to teach in the Lord's Prayer. Because the Lord's Prayer is based on the person transformed by the life-giving nature of the gospel, it is something completely at odds with these other two individuals. It is given this prayer to the person whose relationship to God has forever been changed by the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, His sacrifice on the cross.

Now the example of the Gentile person I say here is troubling. Why is it troubling? Because even for the Christian, this may strike a chord. See, I think the nature and the way that this is communicated to us actually can explain to us and expose our heart that we don't believe in the gospel. It might show us as Christians that we don't understand the concept of grace offered us in Jesus' death and resurrection.

Because, friends, your prayer, your prayer life is a barometer of your theology. Let me say it again. Your prayer life, perhaps the lack thereof, is a measurement, is an indicator of what you truly believe. A religious person like this Jew or this Gentile, and they were religious, will come to God and ask for things, even desperately, anxiously petitioning God without knowing and believing the gospel.

And they may rightly conceive of a God who is very holy, and they may rightly understand that God is very intimidating, who can only be approached with very urgent, desperate petitions if we are good enough, if we do and say the right things, if we pray in the right way at the right time. And so to approach this God then who is holy is a fearsome thing. It is a terrifying thing, and the prayers of these unbelievers, friends, is a drudgery. It is dreadful. You don't know the God who Jesus is revealing to you this morning if you pray in this way.

The prayer of a pagan, a Gentile, as Jesus describes here, sees God not as a father, but as a landlord. Not as a father, but as a landlord. And how do you relate to a landlord? You pay the rent.

You deal with them in transactions. You have a relationship and a blessing from the landlord if you are paid up to date. But this is the problem if you pray this way, and it really will show you what you believe about the gospel. This is the problem. If a pagan doesn't have prayers answered, if a person who doesn't understand and believe the gospel truth prays and they don't have their prayers answered, they are left devastated.

Why? Because I have paid the rent to God, and you have not given me what I have worked for. We get angry when God hasn't responded in the right way. You feel slighted because God should have acted by now and done all that I expect of Him because He has received from me what He has expected of me. And so we get bitter because deep down, we have a business relationship with God.

Alternatively, instead of feeling angry, and perhaps you don't feel angry when God doesn't answer you in the way that you would like, you might instead feel guilty because you might think God hasn't answered me because I have not been paying enough rent. I haven't done enough to please my landlord. I haven't pleased Him so that He would be favourable towards me. And so don't you see, Jesus says, this is the inclinations of the unregenerate heart, the heart that has not been born again.

This is what a nonbeliever's heart will say. This is what their status quo will be in relation to God. But why I say this is troubling is that even Christians can fall into this trap and forget what the gospel actually means for us. See, in this context, we find two things happening, two errors in prayer. The first one is that our prayers can be light without heat.

They can have lots of understanding, right understanding, and have no passion or love or affection. There can be long lists of things we pray for and long lists of Bible verses we quote to God and long lists of things we think we should thank God for, and yet there is no affection. There is no fire. Why? If we lose the focus on the glorious solution of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, then we devolve into a set of grocery list prayers.

When we are done praying, at the end of it, we feel more anxious than we did before. We think, "Oh, God. Please do these things." The presence of God is not sensed because God is really just being used. God is not being worshipped.

Instead, however, Jesus says, we should always remember that the first thing we need is the right perspective when we come to our God, and that is to understand our problems correctly. Therefore, we need to repent over our unbelief and our indifference to God's grace. On the one hand, we must acknowledge that the thing we are asking for is perhaps not for more of our Saviour, for more of His love, for more glory to go to Him. We must repent on that on the one hand, but on the other hand, we have to repent and recalibrate our desire. We should pray that God is our Father, and we should know and believe that He wants good things for us.

And therefore, we can ask and we can approach God in confidence, which is very different. This gospel-centred prayer then is not anxious petitioning, but grateful communing with our heavenly Father. Now it's true that often our desires are sometimes idolatrous to some degree. And when we pray without dealing with that first, that our motivations even here may not be truly God-honouring, we find that our prayers will only ever make us more anxious. Instead, we should always say in effect, "Lord, let me see Your glory as I haven't before.

Let me be so ravished with Your grace that worry and self-pity and anger and indifference melt away." Then when we turn to ask God for that job that we desperately need, or we ask God for that healing for our friend, or we pray for our family members who aren't saved, those issues will come into better perspective. We will then say, "Lord, I ask for this because I think it will glorify You. And so, Lord, help me to get it, and then support me without it if I don't need it." The second thing, the second extreme is that we can pray with a lot of heat, but not very much light.

There's a kind of prayer which is directly opposite to light without heat. This is a prayer with lots of fire, with lots of emotion. It rouses people up. It rouses us up, and it focuses often on boldly claiming and pursuing things even in Jesus' name. And some of us here have been in circles that have probably seen this.

A lot of emotive military or conflict imagery is often used here. Often, the prayers themselves are said either in your head or out loud in a very unnatural dramatic way. Now if prayer is grounded in this understanding, then we also miss out on what Jesus is saying about addressing God as a Father. If prayer is grounded in the understanding that God has become our Father through the gospel, then by the Spirit's help, there will be passion, there will be affection and emotion, even strong and dramatic emotion. But heat without light prayer always begins and ends with a lot of drama and nothing really of substance. This kind of prayer is also not gospel-centred.

Just as the anxious petitioning of often legalistic head knowledge prayers that fail to base itself on God's great grace, so the bold claiming emotive hot prayers is based on works because it fails to base itself also on God's grace. There's a sense that if I pray hard enough, loud enough, passionately enough, God will hear me. God must then act on my behalf. And many people that pray this way feel that they must suppress any psychological doubt that they might have.

They must pray with absolute 100% faith that what they are asking for or claiming from God must happen. Otherwise, it won't. Often in these cases, again, problems are treated abstractly. People may say, "Lord, I ask You to come against the strongholds of worry in my life", or "Lord, I claim the victory over bitterness today." Instead of realising that it is faith in the gospel that ultimately heals our worry and our bitterness.

Ironically, this is the same thing that the anxious petitioner does. There is no understanding of how to immerse our needs in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Until the perspective of our need is combined with joyful yet profound repentance in this way: "Lord, I am experiencing such fear right now, but I believe that You are the stronghold of my life. So, Lord, magnify Yourself in my sight. Let Your love and Your glory ravish me until my fear subsides.

Lord, You said You will never forsake me, and it is my sheer unbelief that brings me to deny it. Forgive me and heal me." So ironically, these two really stem from the same root. They come from works righteousness, a conviction that we can earn God's favour. We can be heard by God, and we have a loss of orientation with respect to just what it means for us to be justified and adopted by God.

And so this leads us to the last point. Jesus begins by teaching the Lord's Prayer by saying that we have access to a good and powerful Father. In the opening paragraph of the Gospel of John, that wonderful passage that talks about how Jesus is the Word that became flesh, the Word that was with God and who is God, the apostle John writes about the new reality for those who have gladly received and accepted the news about Jesus. He explains in verse 12 of chapter 1. He says, "But to all who have received this Word, Jesus Christ, to all who have received Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God."

You see, this is the crux of the gospel. This is the crux of the gospel. This is the mission of Christ, not to simply reveal God, not to simply give wise teaching on prayer, not even to simply be an abstract sacrifice for the badness of humanity. The work of Christ is to make us children of God. To make God a Father to us.

The sacrifice of sin was needed to give us the adoption we so desperately needed. In Galatians 4:6-7, we get that explanation for us where Paul tells us that when we believe in the gospel, we not only become God's children legally and that He has adopted us as sons and daughters and heirs, but we additionally receive the Holy Spirit in order to fully experience our sonship. The Spirit, therefore, leads us to call out passionately to God as our tender and loving Father. Verse 7 says, "The Spirit calls out, 'Abba, Father.'" And then in the very next verse, in verse 8, Paul sums it up that this is truly knowing God.

And so one of the most basic things that the work of Christ did is to change prayer from mere petition to fellowship and oneness with God. The doctrine of adoption is the greatest thing that you will ever experience if you believe in Christ. The doctrine of adoption is the only reason we can pray "Our Father". And unlike the business or the conditional relationship our human hearts are inclined to go to, the reality for the Christian is that you can go to God who is now family. And because He is family, His relationship to you is unconditional.

He hears and He responds to prayer out of sheer familiarity, out of sheer warm acceptance of who you are. And so now it would be pretty empty for us to simply have or understand God as simply an earthly father. As much as a father's love and earthly father's love can go towards healing our human hearts, an earthly father is a precious thing, but Jesus adds this second phrase: "our Father who is in heaven". If God was simply a father, then we could go to our human dad and ask for the same thing. God wouldn't be able to give us what we need.

Jesus says there is a heavenly Father that we go to, and this Father is no ordinary father. He is higher and greater than anything on earth. He sits on a throne in heaven. This Father is a King. And because He's a King, friend, He has power, power to change my life, power to change my situations, power to influence and change me.

This Father is a King. And so when we pray, "Our Father who art in heaven", we acknowledge that God is both good towards us because He is allied with us, but also He is capable and powerful to change us, to do something about our needs. And so as Christians, our prayers should never be anxious. Our prayers should never be frustrated. If we understand these truths correctly, we will go to God with great confidence and peace that our prayers will be heard.

And as we approach God, we will marvel. As we experience the splendour of the majesty of God who sits in heaven, the King of all that exists. But our hearts will be glad because He is the King who rescued us from our terrifying future and eternity in hell. Friends, the basis of any of our prayers is grounded in the fatherhood of God. That is why Jesus says we have to pray "our Father".

And so we go to Him confidently and we go to Him often. Friend, go to Him with all your needs. Go to Him with all your grateful heart and thanks, with all your emotion. Who dares to see the King? Who dares to go to Him at 03:00 in the morning when they are needy?

We know those moments. Who dares to go to Him when they are troubled and even when their hearts are anxious? Would a servant do that? Would a soldier in His service go to the King? Would a tenant of the King do that?

No. But a son and a daughter, He will never refuse even at 03:00 in the morning. This is why we may approach our God as our Father. Let's pray. "Our Father, who art 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 sins as we forgive those who've sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the power, the kingdom, and the glory forever and ever. Amen."