Study inMatthew’s

Gospel

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Sermon On The Mount

The Lord’s Prayer [1]

Chap 6v5-15

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IntroductionSome government documents are marked, 'For the President’s eyes only'. They often contain sensitive information which is not intended for public viewing. In the opening verses of Chap. 6 Jesus has pointed out that when we perform spiritual duties, we are to do so, for ‘God's eyes only’ and not for man's applause or approval.

When we give, pray, or fast we must not have one eye on how others are rating our performance but have both eyes upon God. Jesus wants to recover spiritual duties from the abuse into which they had fallen. He wants his disciples’ lives to be marked by spiritual reality and not by spiritual hypocrisy and so the umbrella under which every spiritual duty is to be performed reads, 'not before men but before God.'

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IntroductionIndeed, it is clear from these verses that the way in which we think about God will influence our spiritual activity. Jesus’ teaching is built upon the intimacy of the Father-son relationship. And so when Jesus exposes the religious hypocrisy and pagan practice of his day he is indicating that it flows both from an ignorance of God and a lack of a meaningful relationship with him.

The contrast is made between, those who know they belong to the kingdom of God and know that the Great King is none other than their Father in heaven, and those who do not.

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IntroductionThere is of course a great difference between saying, ‘We know that God is our Father’ and living as those who experience the power of that truth. The more we experience its’ power then the more our lives will be increasingly marked by love, grace, joy, stability and mercy. And in particular we know what it is to really pray.

We will be delivered from hiding from God what we are really like - this was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees - and we will be delivered from allowing our anxiety to sow distrust in our hearts - the pattern of the pagans.

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IntroductionThis is not to suggest that prayer is easy. Christians often draw back from God, not only because he is the awesome Lord of the universe, but because we are conscious of both our sin and his consummate holiness. Human fathers know that their children, aware of the wrong they have done and realising that they deserve to be punished, want to hide themselves from parental scrutiny. And so their anxiety level is heightened. So too, as the Christian approaches his heavenly Father he can find himself engaged in a strange conflict for the pain and shame of wrongdoing pulls him in one direction while memories of forgiveness and the relief it brings pulls him in another.

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IntroductionAnd so fellowship with God in prayer includes sorrow over our sin and joy in the renewed discovery of his forgiveness and grace. The struggle of prayer for the child of God is the struggle to bring a heart subdued to God.

This involves coming out of the dark basement of our lives where we have been attempting to hide the truth about ourselves. We determine to honestly face what we really are before God which is exposed by the light of his presence.

In this condition we are ready to use what is in fact the framework for prayer which Jesus here provides.

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IntroductionWhat we call The Lord’s Prayer serves as a helpful outline, a framework for both approaching God and speaking with him. But this prayer can also be viewed as an outline of the whole of our Christian lives for it underlines life's priorities and helps us to get them into focus. Five different themes are identified.

1. The worship of the Father 2. The kingdom of the Father 3. The provision of the Father 4. The grace of the Father 5. The protection of the Father

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The Worship Of The FatherJesus begins by bringing together two ideas which are uniquely true only of God's children; their family intimacy and their royal access. Believers dare to call God, ‘Our Father.’ He cares for us in a very special way. He has not only given us life as our Creator but new life as our Saviour.

The Puritan, Thomas Watson has written a book on the Lord's Prayer in which he says, 'the little word 'Father' has overcome God'. Just as the heart of a parent melts when a child comes and says, 'Daddy I need your help', so God's heart goes out to those he has brought into his family, when they come in their need to him.

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The Worship Of The FatherThe words 'Our Father' also serve to underline the fact that the family relationship we enjoy with God is also a relationship that we share with others. Spiritual privileges are shared with all the people of God.

Have you watched children at play, when suddenly one of them becomes aware of the approach of a parent. He points and says something like this, 'That's my daddy, he's not your daddy‘. The child is betraying a jealous possessiveness which says, 'Don't expect my daddy to love and care for you in the way in that he does for me!'

In contrast, the Fatherhood of God is something that we share in fellowship with every others believer.

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The Worship Of The FatherThe position of the Father as being ‘in heaven’ is not given to provide us with a geographical address to which we send our prayers but rather to stress the Creator-creature distinction. We are reminded of the greatness of God in his heavenly glory. He is altogether different from what we are and we must approach him with a sense of awe and wonder that is appropriate to his glory.

This opening phrase is therefore designed to set the whole tone for our Christian living and praying. The word 'Father' speaks of intimacy, the word 'our' speaks of fellowship, and the phrase ‘in heaven’ of the adoration due to our God.

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The Worship Of The FatherThe first petition asks that God' s name might be ‘hallowed’. Of course God’s name cannot be made more holy than it already is but we are reminded of the help we need to recognise just how holy and altogether different from us he really is. We need God's help to stand in awe before him.

Our intimacy with God should not destroy our reverence for him. There is an over-familiarity which debases God's name rather than hallows it, and this is expressed not simply in the selection of words we use but in the manner in which we use them. God is not ‘the man upstairs’.

We do not use God’s name loosely, those who do so demonstrate how little they know him.

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The Kingdom Of The FatherSecondly, if we are concerned for God's glory we will pray, ‘Thy kingdom come’. The kingdom of God is quite simply God's rule. The kingdom of God is something that has already arrived but is not yet all that God intends it to be. It is like the bud on a plant in spring, its presence points forward to a day the flower will be revealed in all its beauty. And so we pray that the kingdom, which has been established, will grow increasingly throughout the earth until, 'the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign for ever and ever’.

This petition has a number of practical implications for the believer as he prays for Christ’s kingly rule to be thoroughly established.

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The Kingdom Of The Father1. As we pray for God's rule to be extended in our own lives we ought to become aware of the impact this should have in our battle against sin.

As we take our stand with God and seek the aid of his Spirit, we will begin to engage in the process of putting to death every sinful desire and sinful motion in our lives. We should do so because we have come to see sin as a defiant rejection of God’s rule and as an expression of rebellion within his kingdom.

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The Kingdom Of The Father2. Secondly, we are praying for hearts that will be submissive to God's will in every circumstance of life thus echoing Jesus' Gethsemane prayer, 'Your will be done'.

For Jesus, seeking God's kingdom meant taking up his cross, dying for others and yielding his life in obedience to the Father. Unlike the rulers of this world, God establishes his kingdom, not by force or by legislation but through suffering, self-denial and service.

And when we pray 'Your kingdom come', we are embracing the cross we are saying to God, ‘We realise the personal cost to us of the establishment of your kingdom but we are prepared for that. We are ready to serve.’

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The Kingdom Of The Father3. Thirdly, we are praying for the spread of the gospel. The kingdom of God is not only something that God establishes inwardly, as our hearts become increasingly submissive to his rule and as we put to death the remnants of the sinful rebel nature; it is something that we ask to be established outwardly and geographically.

It gives expression to the heart longing of God for the day with the earth will be ‘full of the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea’ Hab.2v14.

This petition is a missionary petition and this in turn has a number of practical implications.

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The Kingdom Of The FatherThe first and very significant thing to note is the place of this petition in the prayer. The spread of the gospel comes before our own needs - the petition for our personal needs - our daily bread!

We may say we are committed to evangelism and outreach but have we adopted the priority of Jesus? Does the cause of God's kingdom truly come before our own needs. Or, are we happy to support mission as long as we can fit it in around the fulfilment of our personal agenda? Jesus turns that thinking on its head - we need to fit our personal needs around the priority of mission.

That is a challenging thought!

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The Kingdom Of The FatherSecondly, this petition should cause us to examine the way in which we pray for God's work overseas. Look at Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in Jn. 17. Having prayed for his missionary disciples he says; 'My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message’ v20. Jesus prayed not only for his missionary disciples but for those who would believe through them.

Does our missionary praying concentrate on the missionary workers to the neglect of those who have come to faith through their ministry? It is important to pray for those whom our missionary friends have introduced to Jesus, that they may be grounded in their faith.

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The Kingdom Of The FatherFourthly, to pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done’ is not to recite words in a blind fatalistic fashion thinking, ‘whatever will be will be'. This petition implies that we will seek to discover God's will and do it. God’s will is revealed in scripture and we need wisdom to apply its teaching in different life situations.

This commitment to God’s will governed Jesus’ life in the most demanding situations. When he prayed in Gethsemane, 'Your will be done' he knew exactly from scripture what that would mean!

Do we follow that pattern and seek to become so familiar with God’s Word that we know the will of God and do it? It is a contradiction of the Christian life to pray 'your will be done' and keep our Bibles closed.

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The Kingdom Of The FatherFinally, to pray for the kingdom implicitly involves praying for Christ's return. For the coming of the kingdom cannot be separated from the coming of the King. We are asking God to usher in the new age of glory.

The Christian view of history views God, not only in charge of it but also bringing it to a glorious conclusion. The Christian will not despair for the future for he knows the coming King will usher in a new age.

This fact should influences our manner of life on earth. Praying for the coming King is of course inextricably united to a desire to live holy and godly lives cf. 2 Pet. 3v10-14.

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ConclusionHopefully, we have begun to see something of the manner by which Jesus sought to recover the reality of the spiritual duty of prayer. Surely to pray as Jesus taught us, to follow the framework he provides and its implications, is to engage in one of the most demanding spiritual exercises of our lives.

For it is as we see and truly grasp where we stand in relation to God that he excites within our hearts a willing, glad and costly submission to his will.