Today we come to one of the most familiar sections of scripture in all of the Bible. Chances are, most of you have memorized a version of this passage which we call the Lord’s prayer. You have more than likely recited it on numerous occasions in public gatherings from time to time. And yet, in spite of it’s familiarity, I have a feeling that prayer is one element of our Christian discipleship that is most under appreciated and the least practiced. And I’m afraid that deficiency is not only to our shame but to our own detriment. For prayer is not only one of the greatest resources for the Christian in terms of blessing, but also in terms of spiritual warfare, and evangelistic endeavor.
In Ephesians chapter 6, as Paul tells the church to put on the full armor of God to be able to conduct spiritual warfare, he concludes with this vital injunction: “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.”
Prayer then is critical to our existence, both as a privilege and a duty. The scripture commands us to pray without ceasing. It commands us to continue in prayer. It commands us to pray always. It commands us in everything by prayer and supplication to make our request made known unto God. Prayer is to be a way of life for us. It is to be constant. It is to be relentless. It is to be fervent. It is to be effectual.
Great workings of God in both individuals and churches have always been accompanied by effectual prayer. True revival is always connected to a season of prayer. And great men of God have always been recognized as great men of prayer. Martin Luther was in the habit of starting each day with two hours of prayer, in spite of great stress upon his time. In fact, he said that the busier he became, the more time that was necessary to spend in prayer. John Wesley said that men should spend at least 4 hours a day in prayer.
Jesus himself was the great model of prayer. If anyone did not need to spend much time in prayer you would think it would be Jesus. And yet the gospels are replete with the accounts of Jesus spending all night in prayer. In fact, verse one says it was on just such an occasion when Jesus was praying, that one of his disciples came to Him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.” It must have been a regular occurrence for the disciples to witness Jesus praying off by Himself. It’s important to note that Jesus prayed privately most of the time. There are records of Jesus praying publicly, but most of the time they were simple, short prayers. But when Jesus prayed alone, you will notice that He tended to pray for long periods of time. Jesus said in Matt. 5 that we shouldn’t pray to be seen of men. He said that was hypocritical; that is, don’t pray for the applause of men. But rather, He said, go to your closet and pray in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will answer your prayers in public .
So one of His disciples, it doesn’t say which one, came to Jesus after He had finished praying, and asked Him to teach them to pray. Whoever this disciple is, he demonstrates an important characteristic of a disciple. He shows that he is teachable. Being teachable requires humility. And what a wonderful and desirable quality to have. And yet how lacking it is in the church so often today. But I can tell you from experience that nothing stirs the heart more of a pastor than to have people who are hungry to learn, that are teachable, and humble enough to accept it.
That attitude found favor with Christ as well. He immediately replies by teaching them a model of how to pray. And I think it is apparent that Christ is giving them an example of how to pray; an outline, if you will. I don’t think that Jesus was giving them a prayer to be recited by rote. I think it may be ok on occasion to do that, but that is not the primary reason for the prayer. And that is clear in the gospel of Matthew’s version in chapter 6. It was not the same address, Matthew’s was in Galilee and Luke’s account is in Judea. Luke’s version is a condensed version of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. But it’s virtually the same prayer.
However, it’s important to understand that it’s an outline of a model prayer. In Matthew’s account, Jesus says in the KJV, “in this manner, pray in this way.” So it’s clear that it is an example of prayer, and not necessarily intended to be a prayer that is read or recited, though there may be times when it is fine to do that. But there is no record of Jesus or the Apostles ever reciting this prayer. It was intended to be a concise guideline of the structure for forming prayers. It contains or teaches the principles of prayer.
Notice also that in Luke’s account, Jesus says, “when you pray, say.” I don’t want to strain the text here, but I do think that there is a great advantage to praying aloud. Saying your prayers aloud serves many purposes, but one of the obvious ones is it keeps your thoughts from wandering and provides structure for our prayers. I pray silently quite often. There are times when it would not be appropriate to pray aloud, or might cause someone to become unduly alarmed that I had lost my mind. But there is a great benefit to praying aloud and we need to find that opportunity.
For my part, I like to pray aloud when I am running. I tend to run for about 50 minutes five or six times a week. And I’ve found that praying aloud helps me keep my mind occupied on something other than the pain of running, but also, and more importantly, provides me with a framework in which to pray. I have almost an hour there which could be used to listen to music or whatever, but instead I like to use it to strategically pray. It gives me a starting and finishing time. It provides discipline for my prayer life that otherwise I think would be lacking. Daniel is a good example of that. Every day, three times a day, he would go to his window and pray. He was strategic about it. He was disciplined about prayer. He was deliberate. And God heard his prayers and answered him in some amazing ways. We can learn a lot from that type of prayer. Prayer should not be haphazard. We shouldn’t wait until there is a crisis or until we feel like it. Prayer should be a regular, disciplined habit and I think that is something that God blesses.
Now let’s look specifically at the prayer that Jesus presents as a model prayer, or an outline for prayer. Jesus said, “When you pray say “Father.” I wonder if we are so used to hearing prayers addressed to “our Father who art in heaven,” that our familiarity has dulled our appreciation of what a great privilege it is to approach the Holy God of the universe and call Him Father.
Practically every prayer that Jesus prayed that we have record of He addressed God as Father. He was the only begotten of the Father. He had every right to address God as Father. But here Jesus tells us that we should address God as Father as well. What this signifies is our relationship with God. Liberal theology teaches that all men are the children of God, that we are all of the brotherhood of man, and God is everyone’s Father. But this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible says that we are all in our natural state children of wrath, and children of our father the devil. In our natural condition we cannot call God our Father.
Jesus explained this alienation of the natural man to Nicodemus in John 3:5, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
It’s only by the grace of God, the gift of forgiveness for our sins purchased by Jesus on the cross that we can by faith be born again by the Spirit of God. There has to be a supernatural transformation that occurs within us by the Spirit of God. Only then are we made sons of God. As Paul wrote in Rom 8:14, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
So when you pray, say “Father.” And I would suggest you stop right there and consider for a while what that means. Consider the love of the Father that sent Christ to be your substitute, paying the price for your sins. Consider that upon His death the curtain veiling the Holy of Holies was torn into that we might boldly enter into the throne of grace. Consider that we have intimacy with God who knows every thought, every hair on our head, knows the beginning and end of our days, and consider that we have the privilege of no matter where we are, or what time of day or night, calling out “Father!” and knowing God hears us.
I know that we all have had earthly fathers that sometimes cloud our image of what our Father in heaven is like. But I urge you to remember the story of the prodigal son for a picture of our heavenly Father. The Father never stopped thinking of him, never stopped looking for him to return, never stopped loving him, and when one day that boy was still a long ways off, the Father saw him coming, and He hitched up His robe and the He took off running down the road to embrace His son and welcome him home. That’s a picture of our heavenly Father painted by Jesus Himself. And Jesus knew the Father intimately. He told Philip, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” Jesus is the manifestation of the Father, laying down His life for us that we might be adopted into His family.
Jesus said address God as Father, but then He immediately added, “Hallowed be your name.” I think it’s important that this phrase follows right upon the address of God as Father. And the reason is so we do not become flippant or careless in our treatment of God. The first three commandments teach us how we are to treat God, and being adopted into his family should not provide us with an excuse for familiarity to the point of taking Him for granted or presume upon His grace.
Hallowed be your name is an injunction to remember that God is holy. Jesus is not saying, “Father, Your name is holy,” but “Father, may Your name be hallowed.” That is, He is teaching us to ask that God’s name would be regarded as sacred, that it would be treated with reverence, and that it would be seen as holy. I think it is ironic that at a time when a lot of worship music declares that God is holy by endless repetition, yet in practice our worship often seems anything but reverent and does not bring honor and glory to God.
Jesus said we are to hallow or honor the name of God. The third commandment is one which says we are to treat the name of God as holy. We are not to use it in vain. Remember Moses when he wanted to know God’s name? But God would not give him His name. The reason was that the name of God denotes His nature, His character. I think that Moses was trying to limit God with that. He wanted to define God by a particular name and then try to manipulate God on the basis of that characteristic. I think we do the same thing today. We see the name of God substituted with the word “Love”, especially in music today. God is indeed love, but He is so much more than love. God is holy. God is good and righteous. God is just. God is our provider. God is the judge of the world. God is King. God is Sovereign.
So to hallow the name of God means we are to honor all that is true of God, all that has been revealed of God. All His attributes. There is a sense in which we should take our shoes off as Moses did when we come to the throne of God Almighty. He is our Father, yes, but He is also the Most High God. And there is to be a reverence for that name, and a desire to bring that reverence to His name in the world, that they may know the true God. That we may worship Him, in Spirit and in truth.
Then Jesus added; “Your kingdom come.” In Matthew’s version there is the additional phrase, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But that is just an extrapolation to the first phrase, “Your kingdom come.” In the Kingdom of Heaven, there is no will but God’s will. There is no sin. There is no rebellion. All of the heavenly hosts worship Him in subjection to the sovereign will of God. There is no problem with the will of God in heaven. The problem is the will of man on earth in rebellion against the will of God.
So what is meant by the kingdom of God? Jesus answered that question in response to Pilate in John 18, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” Yet Jesus confirmed that He was a king. Obviously then, the kingdom of heaven is the spiritual reign of Christ in the hearts and minds of His people. The kingdom of God is nothing less than the church of Jesus Christ. The church being made up of people who are citizens of the kingdom, individually and corporately the temple of the Holy Spirit, who have been purchased by the blood of Jesus unto the adoption as sons of God. The church is the visible manifestation of the invisible kingdom of God.
John Calvin said it is the task of the church to make the invisible kingdom visible. We do that by living in such a way that we bear witness to the reality of the kingship of Christ in our jobs, our families, our schools, and even our checkbooks, because God in Christ is King over every one of these spheres of life. The only way the kingdom of God is going to be manifest to this world before Christ comes is if we manifest it by the way we live as citizens of heaven and subjects of the King.
We are told to pray for the kingdom to come. And we need to understand that the kingdom comes in three dimensions. There is the present dimension, the progressive discovery, and the permanent display of the kingdom. The present dimension of the kingdom is gained only one way and that is by conversion. We said earlier we call God our Father because we are born again. That is conversion. So we are praying for conversion in the world, we are praying for new birth. I can only imagine what kind of revival would take place if we really got serious about praying for the lost. Start by praying for our families, our friends, our co workers. We say we love God and yet we don’t pray for the salvation of the lost that we know? That’s incompatible with loving God or loving your neighbor. Remember, on the day of Pentecost they were praying in the upper room, and at the end of the day 3000 people are saved. Praying for the kingdom to come means praying specifically for the lost to be saved.
The progressive discovery of the kingdom refers to the act of submission to the King on a daily basis. We pray to be conformed to the image of Christ, because the King reigns in our lives. Listen, we can’t change the world unless first our world is changed. We need to ask ourselves the question; Am I a reflection of the King? Am I working for the kingdom, to bring it to pass in my world?
The permanent display of the kingdom we are to pray for will be the consummation when the King comes back to rule and reign not only spiritually, but physically over His kingdom. When He will come in power and glory and vanquish forever all sin and rebellion. When every knee will bow. When He will make everything new. This is the future dimension of the kingdom. The invisible will become visible. This future dimension is when we as citizens of the kingdom and sons of God will receive our inheritance. This is when we sit on thrones with Christ and rule with Him. What an unbelievable inheritance. 1 Cor. 2:9, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.”
So we are to pray for the coming kingdom of God. And if we are praying for that kingdom to come, then our will must take second place. Our kingdom and empire building must be subjected to the priority of His kingdom coming. We cannot pray for that kingdom to come and then work to build our earthly kingdom, can we?
So as we consider the principles of prayer that our Lord laid down for us in this example of prayer, we see that the first three principles have to do with God and His glory. We worship God in prayer and affirm His kingdom. And then the second three principles have to do with our needs. We need to make sure we get that order right. This is a consistent principle throughout all of the recorded prayers in the Bible. His will is foremost. Our needs are secondary. I’m not going to spend a great deal of time on these secondary needs. They are more or less self explanatory. But it is helpful to see that each of these are connected to a promise in the Bible. We don’t name and claim in a willy nilly fashion according to our whims or desires, but pray according to the promises God has made to supply all our needs. And in this very concise statement, we see Jesus providing for all three areas of our being, our physical needs, our soul’s needs, and our spirit’s need. God is concerned about much more than merely a wish list of our physical desires, and so should we be.
The first principle Jesus gives is found in vs. 3, “Give us each day our daily bread.” Christ’s first petition is to the physical need. And it is noteworthy that He designates our need as a daily thing, each day a daily need for bread, for sustenance. I find a parallel in the manna which came down out of heaven for the Israelites in the wilderness. There was enough for every day, but it would not last for the next with the exception of the day before the Sabbath. And in that we see the wonderful provision of God on a daily basis, and yet the limitation against excess that keeps us from being self sufficient. Self sufficiency is the greatest means of pride. So God wants to keep us in a place where we can only trust Him for today’s needs. It is a prayer for necessities and nothing more. We are not told to pray for an abundance, or luxuries, nor are we promised such things. But as Phil. 4:19 says, “my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
The second principle Jesus gave is found in vs. 4, “‘And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” Please understand that Christ is not talking here about justification from sins. That happens once and for all at the moment of being born again. We are converted from being unrighteous to righteous by the blood of Jesus Christ. All our sins are forgiven, both past and future. We are justified, as if we have never sinned and by the righteousness of Jesus we are made sons of God. But He is talking about the soiling that comes from sin as we walk through this world, until the time of the consummation comes when sin is finally done away with. Until then, we still need forgiveness of our daily sins and failures as Christians, which though they cannot condemn us any longer to spiritual death, yet they can hurt us spiritually by causing us to lose fellowship with God and cause others to stumble. We are told to lay aside every weight and sin which so easily besets us, and we do that by confession and repentance.
But the principle being taught here is that we forgive even as we have been forgiven. And there is a need to be forgiven, for we fail often. It is against our new nature, it is something that we no longer want to do, that we aren’t happy about, but in confessing our sins we find restoration. That principle of being forgiven and so forgiving others as we have been forgiven is to be the motivation for loving our enemies, for being kind to those who mistreat us, to praying for those that despitefully use us. Even as Christ has forgiven us.
The last principle found in this prayer is found in vs. 4, “And lead us not into temptation.” This principle is a petition to God to deliver us from evil, to not let us be tempted above what we are able to endure. Knowing that God does not tempt man to do evil, but that God does test men to produce refinement and sanctification. Jesus told His disciples, “watch and pray that you will not enter into temptation.” We need to pray that God will keep us from the evil one. That He will lead us in the way of righteousness. That God will give us wisdom so that we might escape the snare and trap of the devil. It is a prayer for spiritual strength to resist temptation.
I pray this constantly for my family, for my children. I believe that today we see an almost unprecedented attack on anyone that professes the name of Christ. It comes in so many devious forms that often we do not realize that we are being attacked by evil forces. We need to pray for wisdom and eyes to see and God to guard us. This petition is nothing less than once again recognizing that our entire existence is dependent upon the grace of God to provide all our needs, physical, mental and spiritual. And that we have no resources on our own. We have no power in ourselves, but our power comes from God and our willingness to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit who works within us.
So in conclusion, I urge that you begin a sustained, strategic campaign of prayer. That you set aside a time daily to go privately to the Lord God Almighty and call out “Father!” That you hallow His name. Worship in reverence His attributes, His nature, His deity. Call upon Him to help you to bring about His kingdom’s purpose in your life. May Christ reign in your heart, and His will worked out in your life, in your job, in your home, in all you do, putting His kingdom first. And then I urge you to lay out your petitions before God, but not for merely physical things. But realizing that you are totally dependent upon God’s grace for every facet and fiber of your being, and that He is sufficient for every need of our body, soul and spirit. And I assure you that if you begin to pray like that, you will see God begin to conform you to the image of His Son.
I saw a suggestion on facebook the other day where you begin a savings plan and how over a year’s time you end up with a sizeable amount of money if you just faithfully follow their plan of putting a little money aside on a regular basis. And I could not help but think that we are so concerned with financial investments, and yet so little concerned with spiritual investments. I urge you as we begin this new year to resolve to put aside each day a time of spiritual investment, coming before God in prayer. The rewards of time spent in prayer have an eternal benefit that will never fade away. “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.” Amen.
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