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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Matthew 6:9
Well this morning we begin the Lord's Prayer and we'll be here for several weeks to come. We finally come in Matthew 6 to perhaps the most familiar part of the entire Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps some would argue the most significant part of the Sermon on the Mount.
Some would argue that this is the very center of the Lord's teaching. Of course in Matthew 6 here beginning in verse 9 the Lord gives us a way to pray. Now there's some debate over whether this way to pray is the actual form itself, that when the disciples of Jesus pray they need to pray exactly these words.
And then there's those who would say no this is a model. Pray in this way, in this fashion, pray in a similar way. I'd be inclined toward the latter view. Of course it's very appropriate at times to pray the Lord's Prayer as it's given here in Matthew 6.
But it's given in a different form in Luke 11. So we have a variation within Scripture itself and we shouldn't think we're forced to choose between one or the other proper form. Rather we can see these are examples for us.
It shows us the very nature of prayer, the content of prayer, and gives us some direction of how we ought to pray. We look at other prayers contained in Jesus' own ministry, prayers prayed by the apostles as we read the book of Acts, or we pray about Paul or Peter describing the content of their prayers for churches.
And we realize that prayer is not reduced to the Lord's Prayer, but rather all prayer is built upon the Lord's Prayer. I think that's a better way to view it. Now of course the Lord's Prayer was significant as soon as it left the mouth of Jesus.
It seems to be significant for His disciples. That's why they ask in Luke 11, can you please teach us to pray? It's been a while. We need a dust-up, a round two on exactly how we ought to pray. And very early on in the church, after the time of the apostles, we find the Lord's Prayer playing a significant role in the gathered worship of the ancient churches.
And so we have what we would call a liturgical use of the Lord's Prayer. We have it recorded, for example, in the book Didache, which is a very early work that shows something of the teachings and the worship manner of the apostolic church.
And ever since then, all the church fathers interact with the Lord's Prayer. In weeks to come you'll hear thoughts from Tertullian and Origen and Augustine and some of the favorites, some of the giants of the past.
It's important for us to understand that though this has antiquity, though this has the gravity of a major theological revelation, there's also a sort of childlike simplicity to it. And I think that's a point that we'll bear out especially this morning.
It's something about the teaching of Jesus that He can say things with the most profound weight and yet also in the simplest, clearest fashion. Something that a child could grasp and a theologian could spend decades studying.
That's the teaching of Jesus. No one teaches like this. We see here, beginning in verse 9, the childlike clarity of the Lord's Prayer is because of how the prayer begins. We have childlike disciples praying to their heavenly Father.
And really, that will occupy our whole focus this morning. We're not even going to get past the first four words of verse 9. You have to remember the context as well. Jesus has been warning about hypocrisy, about these long prayers, these vain repetitions, and He's trying to overturn that and show His followers what it means to be a true-hearted disciple.
The very thing we're looking at on Sunday evenings. And this led now from almsgiving to a focus on prayer. Don't babble on like the heathens, He says. Don't be like them. Pray like this, Our Father in Heaven.
Those four words are going to occupy our time this morning. And I'm just going to walk through them word by word. And then we'll draw out some application toward the end. First, let's just begin with the word Father.
And I hope some threads that we've laid down over the past several weeks will begin to connect a little bit. Father. Jesus begins His prayer where all prayer must begin. All prayer must address God. All prayer must address God.
Here there is no praying to Mary. Here there is no praying to saints. Here there is only prayer to God. Proper prayer to God. And yet this prayer to God is given in the most intimate terms. Father, Jesus says.
We take this for granted because it's so familiar. If you grew up in a Christian home, you heard prayers being addressed to Father. Our Father. Our Heavenly Father. My Father. But this is somewhat revelatory in that Jesus is instructing His disciples to pray to their Father.
He's using very familial terms. Most likely behind this would be Abba in the Semitic. We take this for granted, but Scriptures reveal that God indeed is our Father. This is something that's not entirely new.
I don't think we should exaggerate the claim. We have God revealing Himself in paternal terms in the Old Testament. You read Malachi 1. If I am a father, where is my honor? It's one of the rebukes He gives to His people.
So God reveals Himself as a father, but you don't get a lot of Old Testament prayers that begin with this sort of intimate relation. You get the sense that they're praying to the Lord Most High, but to take it down to almost familial language.
My Father. Our Father. This is something that Jesus largely introduces. So again, the concept of the fatherhood of God is not new. But the instruction for His disciples to relate to God in this way is something that largely comes from the revelation of Jesus Himself.
And when we take a step back, we realize this is one of the major aspects of Jesus' ministry, the revelation of the Heavenly Father. We should think that, in fact, this is the greatest achievement of the Son to reveal the Eternal Father.
This is indeed one of the reasons that Jesus came, that the Father would be known, that enmity between the Father and His people would finally be resolved, that not just that sin would be dealt with, but that communion would be restored between the Father and His adopted children.
So this is a major achievement in terms of Christ's own mission. And of course, Scripture itself reveals the true knowledge of God, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's who God is. One God, indivisible, three persons, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
And His name is Father. And His name is Son. And His name is Holy Spirit. God names Himself. Very significant as we begin Genesis that Adam is tasked to name everything. He names Eve, names all of the animals that God has made.
The significance of the authority to name. Who names God? God names God. God reveals Himself. Notice that God does not name Himself by anything that He has made. He is Father, not in relation to creation, but in relation to the Son who is eternally begotten.
The Son is known not by any relation of creation, but simply He's the Son, eternally begotten of the Father. And the Spirit, the breath, the wind, the Ruach, is simply that which spirates from the Father and the Son.
So God's name is self-referential. It has nothing to do with creation. He was the Father before there was creation. He has always been the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. That's who God is. To know and pray to God as Father is something, first and foremost, that must be revealed to us.
This is not something that an aboriginal tribe would simply understand by perceiving the world that God has made. It's one thing to relate to a higher power, to some invisible deity, to have the common sense that every ancient tribe and tongue had to realize something came from somewhere.
There's some God, some higher power, some majestic power that created us, whether God or gods, all peoples of antiquity held to that. You never find an atheist tribe that archaeologists are studying for a reason.
They had a lot more common sense in times past. But, of course, to know God and to pray to God as Father is something that must be revealed. And the Son reveals the Father. Therefore, to pray to God as Father is not some inalienable right.
It's actually a spiritual privilege. It only belongs to those who have been adopted as children of God. Only they may meaningfully and legitimately pray to God as their Father. It is a privilege, then, not a right, but a privilege to those who have been adopted by the Spirit of God.
And Jesus is speaking to His disciples when He says, pray like this, disciples,.
Our Father in Heaven.
Jesus is the one who teaches us how to address God. Jesus is the one who ultimately reveals God as Father. And in His work as the Christ also sends forth the Spirit who brings us through the Son to the Father.
And so the Spirit adopts us into the family, makes us heirs along with the Son, the only begotten Son, so that all that God has promised and willed may be accomplished in our lives. And you have to realize that the primary task of the Father's purpose in redemption is to send the Son to speak the Word.
That is, to speak the Son. That He would take on flesh and dwell among us to fulfill all that the Father has purposed in redemption. And the primary role of the Son, having been spoken by the Father, is then to reveal and glorify the Father.
And the Father and the Son send the Spirit by whom we are enabled to know the Son and know the Father, and through the Son to glorify the Father. That is the cascade of Trinitarian redemption. Hebrews 1, at various times, in various ways, God spoke to the prophets, but in these last days He's spoken to us by His Son.
And so God is known by His Son. And the Son is the one who sends the Spirit. You could put it this way. The Spirit reveals the Son who reveals the Father. The Father sends the Son. The Son sends the Spirit.
The Spirit reveals the Son. The Son reveals the Father. You see, at every intersection of redemption, we find redemption is Trinitarian. Not every person can call God Father. Is there some generic sense in which all of mankind is the offspring of God?
Yes, of course. Acts 17 makes that very clear. Generally speaking, there is a fatherhood to God, a sort of relation to God as our Creator, but Jesus is speaking to His disciples in far more intimate terms.
Even though an unconverted person, an unbelieving person, truly is God's creation, they would have no comfort, no liberty, no right, no gall to approach God as their heavenly Father. He is not their heavenly Father.
Sin has still fully separated them from God as a Father. He is not a loving Father, devoted to their eternal good, having given them precious promises in the Son by the Spirit. He's rather their divine judge.
He's the one who holds out eternal wrath to them. He is to them a consuming fire more than He is a heavenly Father. There is no approach to the Father except through the Son. So we have to make it very clear.
At the first level, what Jesus is revealing, not just in the Lord's Prayer, but beyond the contours of it throughout the whole Gospel, is the inseparability of the Father and the Son. We cannot understand the Lord's Prayer if we fail to grasp this.
Again, if we're just looking at Matthew 6 -9, you'll miss it out, but as it bears out in the Gospel, some of the things I'll have to share this morning, we see the inseparability of the Father and the Son.
John 5. Very important passage for this. John 5, beginning in verse 37. Jesus says, and the context for this, Jesus has just done work, and the Jews are rejecting what they've seen. They've seen the work, but in their hardened hearts they do not believe.
And so they reject the works that are being done by the Son that bear testimony that He is the one they've been waiting for. And so Jesus, knowing their hearts, calls them out. John 5, beginning in verse 37.
He says, the works which the Father has given Me to finish, the very works that I'm doing, bear witness of Me. Bear witness that the Father has sent Me. And the Father Himself who sent Me has testified of Me.
You've not heard His voice at any time. You have not seen His form. You do not have His Word abiding in you because whom He sent, Him, you do not believe. Do you see what Jesus is saying about the nature of God's revelation?
God's revelation is, first and foremost, the Son Himself. The true Word. The firstborn of all creation. And so the Father reveals the Son. The Son reveals the Word of God, as it were. The revelation of God.
The works of God. And all of Jesus' teaching, largely composed of who the Father is and what the Father is doing in response to sin and why Jesus has come, all of that Word is abiding in the disciples' hearts.
In their understanding, in their minds. And He's saying to those unbelievers, the Word is not abiding in you. That's why you reject Me. You reject Me because you reject the Word that I'm revealing. The Word that I'm proclaiming.
Now, to the Jews that were hearing this, they would think,.
Well, we know the Father.
We've got the Father. We're just rejecting you and this whole idea that you are His Son. We don't believe you're the Messiah. We certainly deny that you are the Son of God. But we believe the Father. And what Jesus is doing in His ministry is saying, no, you cannot know the Father if you don't know the Son.
1 John 2 bears this out, likely invoking the same language. Whoever denies the Son, this is 1 John 2, 23 and 24, whoever denies the Son doesn't have the Father either. It's a package deal. Father, Son, and Spirit, all or nothing.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. Therefore, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. Do you see how John is calling back to John 5?
Let that Word abide in you that made you believe in the Son and therefore revealed the Father. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will abide in the Son and in the Father. Do you see the inseparability of the Father and the Son?
To have the Word abiding means we're abiding in the Son and the Father. We can't have one without the other. Christ is the eternal Son of God who came from the Father. He speaks of God from firsthand knowledge.
Think of this.
In a way that we are capable of grasping, in that condescending speech, Jesus is revealing what He knows experientially of His Father. Something we have not experienced, something we cannot comprehend, the Son has come to disclose out of His own experience, out of His own relationship.
We tack that on to the high priestly prayer in John 17. His whole desire, the framework for His whole ministry. That what I know of you, that what I have with you, they would have also. That who you are to me, you would be to them.
This is the whole purpose of redemption.
Do you see?
Through Him, that is through the Son, we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Ephesians 2 .18. Again, do you see the Trinitarian framework? Salvation is described as knowing the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
That is what salvation is. From no other could we learn that God is our Father. From no other could we learn that we've been adopted by His grace. From no other could we receive the Spirit whom He sends that bears us to God.
The Spirit descends and, as 1 Peter says, we love Him whom we have not seen. The Spirit descends and we cry, Abba, Father. This is what it means to have salvation. To know God the Father, to know the one that He has sent.
This is salvation. This is eternal life, Jesus says. The problem is, what leads up to this, is we're born in enmity. We're born alienated from God being our Heavenly Father. Because of sin, because of our fall into sin, we are averse to the life of God.
Without hope in a fallen world, in this distance from God that is innate to our flesh, we are in an orphaned state. You are born as an orphan into this world. It's because of the hardness of your own heart, because of the sin nature that's transmitted through Adam.
We are born as orphans. And that's not something that God has done to us. That is something that we have done to God. We ran away from Him who loved us. And so we are self-fulfilling orphans. It's what we have done in Adam, primordially.
We ran from him. You're not thinking of this image rightly if you're thinking of some poor, helpless orphan. You know, if only God would love me. You need to think of the prodigal son. I wish my father was dead.
I'm running away from his house. I'm going to spend and ruin everything that he's built and blessed me with. I live as if he didn't exist. If you were to meet the prodigal son at some saloon, halfway into his expedition, you would meet a young man who lived as if his father was dead.
You would have met someone that was effectively an orphan. And that's how we come into this world. That's how we live our lives. As though we had no father in heaven. As though we were fatherless. In our flesh, in our quest for sin, wishing him for dead and living as if he were.
In our heart of hearts, we want to be fatherless. Until the Spirit comes. And our lungs are filled with spiritual breath. And by that Spirit we cry, The Father I didn't know I was running from until he embraced me and brought me near.
The Father I didn't know I hated until he first loved me.
Abba, Father.
What did we say at the beginning of the service in the lines that we rehearsed?
He is a father to the fatherless.
That's who he is in his holy habitation. He is a father to the fatherless. The Father, Jesus reveals. The Father who is searching, seeking to save that whom is lost. The Father who sends the Son to accomplish His loving purpose of redemption.
The Father who, He tells the woman at the well, is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and truth. The Father seeking. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life. No man comes to the Father but through Me.
It's one of the reasons He came. He says, I am the way to the Father. I am the truth about the Father. I am the life of the Father. It's all about the relation of the Father through the Son, by the Spirit.
That is redemption. That is salvation. And Jesus begins His prayer, Our Father. And secondly note, Our Father in Heaven. So we go from Father to now a larger phrase, Father in Heaven. Why is this part of the prayer?
Why is this part of the preface? The Father is said to be in Heaven because in Heaven it's where He manifests His majesty, His glory, in a peculiar way. His glory suffuses the earth. All of the heavens declare the glory of God.
But in the heaven, in the third heaven, where God's royal throne is, there among the blessed and glorious spirits, there is a glory and a majesty that is on display in an utterly unique and isolated way.
And so the Lord says, Heaven is My throne. The earth is My footstool. There's something about the glory of Heaven that Jesus says we ought to begin to form our prayers with this recognition of God. He's not on earth like we are.
His royal throne is in the heavens. The earth is just His footstool. When you pray, pray like this. Father in Heaven. Father who sits enthroned above the flood. Father who in unapproachable light dwells.
Father who oversees all that He has made, feeding sparrows and lilies of the field, giving even the wicked rain in due course. Father who dwells in Heaven, Jesus said. You recall the words of Solomon when he dedicates the temple.
Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heavens indeed, the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this house that I've built. Solomon understands that it's a condescension for you to dwell even in this majestic temple.
In fact, Heaven itself can't contain you. You are an infinite God. And yet His glory is made manifest in a peculiar way in the temple on earth, which is a copy, a form of the heavenly throne room above.
God is infinite, God is omnipresent, but in this particular way He makes His glory manifest. Why does He do this and why does Jesus tell us to pray in this way? Well, the very first and perhaps most obvious point is that we would have a reverence for God.
What does Ecclesiastes 5 -2 say?
Listen, God is in Heaven, you're on earth. Let your words be few.
This is a short prayer.
We don't barge down the door because our needs and our anxieties and our petitions are so big that we go, okay, God, here's all my things, and all of a sudden that's the biggest thing in the room. Jesus says, get some perspective, get some proportion when you pray.
Here's these things that feel like mountains to me,.
But what is that to you?
You're in Heaven.
These things that feel crushing, that feel like they're an ocean without depth, this is overwhelming to me. I'm at the end of my wits, but what is that to you who dwells in Heaven, who dwells in perfect glory?
Get some perspective when we pray, Jesus is saying. We're to be humbled like Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar went on a sort of new diet trend of grass only, ultimate extreme vegan was Nebuchadnezzar when he was being humbled.
But at the end of that, we read in Daniel 4, and this is Nebuchadnezzar's own words in the proclamation he sent forth. At the end of that time of being completely humbled, laid bare before the God of Heaven, he says, at the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward Heaven.
Something about eating grass makes you look up eventually. Raised my eyes toward Heaven, and my sanity was restored. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of Heaven, because everything he does is right, all his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.
Nebuchadnezzar thought he was the biggest man on the face of the Earth. He thought himself divine as a ruler. And when God brought him low, he realized there is a true King in Heaven. He got some needed perspective that humbled him and helped him to adore and magnify the true God.
Jesus says, when you pray, pray our Father in Heaven. Psalm 115 .3, our God is in the Heavens. He does whatever he pleases. Things that overturn us, that cause us turmoil, God has not only seen and heard and acknowledged, God has brought it to pass.
You start to pray like Eli. It's the Lord, let him do what seems good to him. Why? He's enthroned in Heaven.
Another application is that we address our Father in Heaven because we're often so bound to the needs and viscivities of the Earth that we become very fickle. We have an earthly frame to our prayers, and Jesus says, you need to have a heavenly frame to your prayers, a divine frame.
You think of the pilgrims ascending to the Holy City in Psalm 121. I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
You see what they're doing?
It's a weary journey. We don't know if we're going to make it or what threats lie along the way, but we're going, and we need help, and we're looking for help along the high hills, and we're going beyond the high hills to the high heavens.
Where does our help come from? The one who made even the hills and even the high heavens, the one who's enthroned above it all. And so Jesus teaches his disciples to pray in this way. Paul warns the church in Philippians 3.
He says, don't think the enemies are just on the outside. Some in the church are enemies of the cross of Christ. How will you know an enemy of the cross of Christ?
Well, he says, it's very easy.
Their stomach is their God. Their mind is on the things of the earth. Not us, he says. Our citizenship is in Heaven. We know how to pray to our Father in Heaven. Whereas we'll see next week, in the last part of verse 9, we're about hallowing His name, not making a name for ourselves.
And so Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, Father in Heaven. Third, this little corporate word, our.
Our fellowship is with the Father, John says. Our Father in Heaven. This is our language. This is us language. This is corporate language. Jesus is teaching his disciples how to pray to the Father together.
This does not mean that it's inappropriate to pray my Father on occasion, but it means there's something fundamental about being brought to the Father by the Son and the Spirit, being adopted into the family of God, that you can never truly pray in total isolation from your brothers and sisters.
Even if you are in the closet, in the secret place, your brothers and sisters are there in your prayers. There's something about prayer that, even in the most isolated location you could possibly find, mystically speaking, you are praying through Christ, by the Spirit, to the Father.
You're praying with the body of Christ. There's always a corporate dimension, even to the most private prayer. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray,.
Our Father.
It reinforces everything we'll have to say about what it means to be a disciple. There's no such thing as a lone ranger disciple. They just don't exist. If they try to exist, they don't become disciples for long.
Behold, John says, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us. He doesn't say me. Behold what manner of love the Father has poured out, has bestowed on us, corporately. Not that I, but that we should be called children of God.
Therefore, the world does not know us because it didn't know him. John is laying out all of this imagery of having fellowship with the Father means having fellowship one with another. There's an our dimension to praying to our Father.
As Christians, we have the same relationship with God as Jesus himself. We're comprised of his body. And this love of Jesus that we've received, the same, if you could put it this way, the same love that the Father has for the Son is the same love that he has for the believer in Christ.
And this love is a corporate love. In a very real way, as Paul does, you can say who loved me gave himself for me. There's nothing wrong with that or inappropriate about that. But if you think somehow you're God's daisy and you're a foot above everyone else in God's pasture, you're just thinking of redemption in the wrong way.
He's adopted us into the family of God, into the household of God, as brothers and sisters in the beloved. And so there's a corporate dimension. Ephesians 5 .18, it looks like we receive the Spirit who reveals the Son, who reveals the Father.
Now we draw near to our Father. Now we are His sons and daughters. And we're filled with the Holy Spirit. And this results, Ephesians 5 .18, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, spiritual songs, singing, making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Beautiful Trinitarian language there. You have the Spirit, the Father, and the Son. That is the blessed aim of a church to look like Ephesians 5 .18 -20. That's the blessed aim of a church. We have the Spirit of adoption filling us, and it's filling us in such a way that we don't just speak, we sing to each other.
There's an effervescence, there's a joy that is glowing. And all that's abounding from the church are not grievances and irritations, but look it, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ.
There's something about the corporate dimension of His love that has saturated this church. The overflow of all of that abounds in joy and thanksgiving and corporate love, do you see? William Ames, the great Puritan, really the OG Puritan, one of the original English Puritans, William Ames, and he said of the Lord's prayer here, in our prayers our confidence toward God must be joined with our charity toward brethren.
Prayer belongs to the communion of saints. And charity toward others is required of us so that our prayers may be accepted. There's a tendency to allow grievances, irritations, disruptions, bitterness to coil your prayers into my Father, not their Father.
My Father. I have some exclusive claim. Somehow all my sins are flattered. My Father, not their Father. But notice what Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray.
All of a sudden I have to consider my standing in relationship to God with my brothers and sisters. What right do I have to pray that they do not? What access do I have that they do not? What have I received that they have not?
And so there's no place to harbor grudges against the brethren when we pray our Father in a meaningful way, when we emphasize the our and we know our place in a household of God. We can be the church that speaks in songs to one another.
Blessed be the tie that binds. In other words, the spirit of adoption, which is one of the ways we speak of the Spirit of God, the spirit of adoption can never be privatized. Never truly can you simply pray my Father.
If you're a disciple, inevitably you will pray our Father because of your recognition of who else is in this household of God along with you and what that means for you as a disciple. It means you need the spirit of adoption that draws you not just into communion with the Father, but also into communion with your brothers and sisters.
Not just into affection for your heavenly Father, but also into affection for those around you that also believe and worship in Spirit and truth. Octavius Winslow, I've been reading him a lot this week.
He's so good. He says, if we had a clear sense of our adoption, and a deeper conviction of the debt that we owe, the things that separate us from the family of God, the slights, the wounds, the misunderstandings that bring suspicion and coldness and alienation, they would be buried and lost like rugged rocks beneath a flowing tide of love.
Love to the Father would prompt us to throw the mantle of love over all the household. If our love to the Father is genuine, our love to the children of the Father will be genuine. Love to the one must be the measure of love to the other.
Then let the saints pray, oh, for more love. This is Winslow. If I'm asked, what's the first great need of the church? I unhesitatingly reply, love. Okay, what's the second? Love. Okay, but what's the third?
Love. I don't marvel that our Lord added a new commandment to His disciples, that you love one another even as I have loved you. Love would veil infirmities. Love would seal the law of kindness upon our lips.
Love would rebuke slander, reprove falsehood, suppress every thought, feeling, word that would dishonor the Father through the child or wound the Savior through the disciple or grieve the Master through the servant.
So says Octavius Winslow. And you see the point. If my mouth is uttering, Our Father, it should constrain how my mouth speaks about brothers and sisters and how my mind and how my heart regards them and how I understand their relationship to the Father that I love and adore so that His hope for them is my hope for them and my hope for myself becomes my prayer for them.
This is what it means to pray, Our Father. Throughout Scripture, we're exhorted, don't speak evil of one another, brothers. Whoever speaks evil of his brother and judges him speaks evil of the law and judges the law.
So love his brothers. Be merciful, courteous, never rendering evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but rather bless. Walk in love as Christ also loves. Let all bitterness, all wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.
Paul says let brotherly love continue. How is it going to continue? Where does it even begin? Jesus is telling us it all begins, it all flows from a right relationship and a right understanding of the Father.
If God is our Father, we are to imitate Him as sons and daughters. Be followers of God as dear children, Paul says. Be merciful, Luke 6. Be merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful. When you understand the Father, when you pray Our Father in the right way, you can't help but see the impact horizontally.
Someone who has known the Father in the deepest ways is someone who loves the brethren in the deepest ways. Someone who has known the Father in the most profound sense is someone who sacrificially and patiently loves the brethren in the longest stretches.
This is what it means to pray Our Father. So this is the beginning of the Lord's Prayer. And we call it the Lord's Prayer, but really it becomes the disciples' prayer. This is how Jesus teaches His disciples to pray.
Our Father in Heaven. Our Father in Heaven. As we draw some application now here toward the end, if God is our Father and we pray to Him in this way, what does it mean about our approach to God? What does it mean about our relationship to God?
It means at the very least, we should have a childlike confidence, but also a childlike reverence. A childlike confidence and a childlike reverence. A child's reverence is not something that makes them alienated, but it is something that causes them to be still.
And a child's confidence is not something that allows them to be irreverent and out of control, but it is something that makes them comfortable, if not happy. This is what it means to approach God as our Father.
It means we have a comprehension, a participation, a reception of the Father's love. And so we ask these questions. Have I known God as my Heavenly Father? Has my reverence robbed my confidence as a son or as a daughter?
Or has my confidence somehow dishonored the Father who dwells in Heaven? Do I enjoy the fact that I have access to the Heavenly Father? Do I partake of the access that I have? Seeing it so precious and so many will never have it.
Do I know the Father's love for me? Do I recount it in a way that I return my love to Him? Does this embolden me to approach Him as my Father? Do I understand that God is my Father because this was the whole grand end of salvation, that I would know Him and glorify Him and enjoy Him forever?
To know Him as Father, Son, and Spirit. To know Him by the Son and the Spirit. Do I understand that the chief end of my life is to glorify and enjoy my Heavenly Father through the Son by the Spirit? Again, Jesus presents eternal life as knowing the Father and the One whom He sent.
Jesus says that's eternal life. So we have to answer these questions meaningfully. As one said, Jesus entered into our flesh not just to reveal the mind of God, the plan, the will of God, but to reveal the love of God.
Not to expound so much the majesty and purpose of His will, but to disclose the depth of His love. That's why Jesus entered into the flesh. When we look upon the Lord Jesus, we see a perfect revelation of the Father.
We see, as Colossians 1 says, the express image of His invisible deity. All the Godhead dwelling upon Him bodily. Jesus told His disciples, I'm in my Father, my Father in me. From now on, you know Him, you've seen Him.
Whoever has me has the Father. So knowing the Son means knowing the Father. How does this practically impact your walk of faith? How does this practically impact your prayer life? Well, let me ask a very simple question since the first point was the inseparability of the Father and the Son.
Is Jesus somehow near to you and the Father very distant? Is Jesus somehow very near to you? Approachable, with boldness, with confidence. Jesus is very near, but the Father, very distant. Jesus I can converse with.
Jesus I know. Jesus I'm comfortable with, but the Father, the infinite, eternal Father, He's the one that's far off. He's the one that's distant. He's the one that I hope everything works out at the end.
I sort of cling to Jesus, but the Father I can't know. You start breaking down everything that Jesus has revealed in the Gospels. Is Jesus near and the Father distant? It could never be. Jesus says, listen, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
If you know me, you know the Father.
If you believe me, you believe the Father. If you have me, you also have the Father. And so it cannot be that Jesus is near and the Father is distant. It cannot be that both Jesus and the Father are distant.
It must be, if the Spirit has adopted us, that Jesus is so near, even as He brings us near the Father. The presence of Christ wrought in our lives by the Spirit of God, giving us access to the Father.
Through Him, through Christ, we have access to the Father by one Spirit. That is just a jaw-dropping verse. We have access to the One who dwells in unapproachable majesty. We have access. And so you can never yield to this false idea that it's humility to doubt your adoption, your sonship.
I hope I'm a son. I hope I'm a daughter. I'm just so humble in my walk. No. I'm so fretful, so fearful. No. This is not the spirit of adoption that casts out that servile fear.
It's to boldly know,.
I am a son, I am a daughter, because I know the Father. Because I believed the Son. It's not humility to doubt your adoption. In fact, it's quite dangerous to do that. It's quite dangerous to think your adoption is something that's contingent upon your performance.
The Scriptures say you are adopted in the Beloved. In other words, there's no place here for merit. No place here for earning. No place here for performance. You are adopted in the Beloved One. And it's the most profound humility you could ever encounter.
False humility says, I don't know that I'm a son or a daughter. That's false humility. Real humility is, I am a son and a daughter. That's real humility. Oh, how it pains me that I'm not more faithful.
Oh, how it grieves me that I'm not more like my Father who loves me.
Oh, how I'm more humble.
Because He loves me so purely and faithfully, even as I fail and falter. There's a confidence, a holy confidence, a humble confidence, that belongs to those who know God as their Father. Another insight from Winslow.
He says,.
Some complain of smallness, lifelessness, reluctance in devotion. You cannot trace the glow of love. You find no strength for desire. You have no sweetness in communion. Your approaches to the throne of grace are not what others speak of.
May not the cause be found in this? You have little fatherly affection and little fatherly confidence that marks your approach to the throne of grace? When Jesus is near and the Father is distant, something has gone horrifically wrong.
The whole point of the Son coming is to reveal the Father and bring to the Father all that the Son has purchased by His own blood. All, Jesus says in John 6,.
All that the Father gives to me.
Will come to me. And on that day by no means will I cast out.
All that the Father gives.
Will come to me. And those who come to me I will faithfully bring to the Father. When we think the Father is distant, Jesus is near, Jesus is comfortable, but God and His infinitude is somehow over us, somehow threatening to us.
No wonder we have no confidence to approach the throne. No wonder we have no childlike reverence, no happiness, no joy. No wonder in the church of God we can't speak to each other in hymns and songs and spiritual songs.
We end up walking around like porcupines and hedgehogs because everything is so anxious, so fraught. We can't frame our minds in a heavenly direction because it seems too threatening, too out of reach to us, too abstract.
This is why Jesus tells His disciples, when you pray, pray, Our Father in Heaven. Cultivate this, Jesus is saying. In the same way you'll see me walking in your midst having a constant report about my Father in Heaven, what He's like, what He's doing, what He's purposed to do, how I trust Him, how I love Him, how I praise Him, how I can't wait to bolt from the seashore just to spend some time with Him.
And Jesus says to His disciples,.
Cultivate this.
He's your Father.
Develop this in your hearts. Focus on this in your prayers. Renew your mind to the divine adoption that bears you up as a son or as a daughter. Meditate on the love of the Father made manifest in my own life, in my own death, in my own resurrection.
How does the Father become near to us.
Through the Son?
You have to bring it to the cross, don't you? Paul says that is the love of the Father displayed for us. So let me, again, go a little bit further.
If the Father is distant.
But the Son is near, something's gone horrifically wrong, and it's this. You've fundamentally misunderstood the revelation of the Father through the Son. Paul teaches in Romans 8, and it's replete throughout the New Testament, that the fullest expression of the Father's love is in the sending and giving up of His Son.
To die for our sins.
It's the Gospel.
It's the Father.
Who appoints a people to salvation and does not spare His Son to purchase it. And it's the Son who in perfect trust and love for His Father at the cost of His own life and blood goes to the very agonies of Gethsemane and on to the ingratitude and depraved evil of Golgotha to purchase, according to the Father's will, all that He has redeemed.
And it's the Spirit who patiently like a dove dwells in our faltering, sputtering, fleshly walks.
Faithfully.
Purging, prompting, prodding, convicting, illuminating, guiding us into all truth.
The Gospel is the salvation of the triune God.
And Paul says,.
That love of God, that fountainhead of love is supremely revealed in the cross of the Savior. Listen to this.
This is Octavius.
I was reading this book, No Condemnation in Christ Jesus. I found it a few weeks ago and just started reading it. It's his exposition of Romans 8. And it's just marvelous. And he's reflecting on this.
He's reflecting on the Father's love known through the work of the Son. Listen to this. The love of the Father is seen in giving us Christ. In choosing us in Christ. In blessing us in Christ with all spiritual blessings.
Indeed, the love of the Father.
Is the fountain of all covenant and redemptive mercy to the church. It's the river whose streams make glad.
The city of God.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. To this love of the Father we trace every blessing which flows to us through the channel of the cross. It's the love of God exhibited, manifested, seen fully in Christ.
Christ being, this is the key, Christ being not the originator.
But the gift of His love.
Christ is not doing anything.
That the Father is not seeking to do.
Christ is not willing anything.
That the Father is not willing.
Christ not being the originator of the Father's love.
Not the cause of His love but the exponent of it. In other words, the elaboration of it. All that Jesus did for His church was the unfolding and expression of the Father's love. Everything that is for you in Christ is a result of the Father's love for you in Christ.
When we glory in the cross we're not just glorying in our Savior we're glorying in the love of our Father. To glory in the cross we realize our sin, our helplessness, our need for Christ was answered by the will of the Father that Christ accomplished.
So the cross reveals the glory and the love and the wisdom and the mercy and the holiness and the righteousness and the justice of God the Father. And that's why Jesus spent His whole ministry revealing and reporting and testifying and enjoying and worshiping His Father.
Fear not, little flock.
It is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Spirit, Jesus says.
Everything is of Him. It's the Father's pleasure to send His Son. It's the Father's pleasure to send His Spirit. Even when we come to Philippians 2.
That great Christ hymn.
That resounds in the death of Christ that every knee should bow of those in heaven, of those on the earth of those under the earth every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. What's the next part?
To the glory of God the Father.
Even the Christ hymn must bend its own knees in glorifying the Father. That is what Jesus was doing on the cross. All of Christ's passion was to glorify the Father. We'll get there next week with hallowing His name.
Jesus then conducts us into the Father's bosom in this new and living way. He lets us the very center of the Father's heart and teaches us to pray, Our Father. Should you not have childlike awe? Should you not have childlike confidence?
Charles Wesley in his great hymn he left his Father's throne above. I didn't notice in this hymn until this week. Pay attention. There's bookends that are beautiful. Where we begin and where we end. Everything we've been seeing here.
So here's the first bookend.
He left His Father's throne above. So free, so infinite His grace. Emptied Himself of all but love. Bled for Adam's helpless race. Tis mercy all immense and free for oh my God it found out me. Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night.
Thine eye, not my eye. I was just in bondage to sin and death. God's eye diffused a quickening ray. I awoke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed Thee.
No condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in Him is mine. Adopted in the beloved. Alive in Him, my living head Clothed in righteousness divine. What's the result of being clothed in the Son's righteousness?
Bold I approach the eternal throne.
What throne is that? It's the Father's throne above. The throne He left to save us.
The throne that was out of reach. The throne that was a terror to the sinner. He left, He died, our death. He faced our condemnation.
He bore the wrath of the Father.
He clothed us in His own righteousness.
What's the result? Bold I approach the Father's throne.
Bold my prayers ascend to the heavenly place where my Father dwells.
We boldly approach the Father's throne. Any other approach, any other spirit, any other temper, any other attitude in prayer shows that somehow we're ignorant of God as our heavenly Father. Perhaps worse, we're dishonoring God for what He's done for us in Christ.
What shame, what grieving we would bring to the Father to treat Jesus as near and the Father as distant. Or Jesus as loving and as a Father as some sort of abrupt judge. The true prayer of a disciple begins, Abba, Father, our Father, my Father, glorious Father, loving Father, patient Father.
Any other view than this springs from a wrong view. Any other view than this is a defective view, likely a legalistic view, likely a servile fear that could never understand God as a Father. Of course we pray with reverence.
We also pray with confidence. Our Father is the language of the spirit of adoption in prayer. It's not the petition of some distant suppliant. It's the communion of a beloved child. Paul says, you've not received the spirit of bondage to fear, you've received the spirit of adoption whereby you cry, Abba, Father.
This is what the spirit of adoption looks like when it's praying.
Our Father in heaven. Amen?
Let's pray. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank You. Our Father, we thank You for Your mercy, for Your wisdom, for Your love. Thank You, Lord, that You have no desire to hear vain repetitions and babblings, hollow statements or sentiments.
You desire to hear us as we truly are. Children that don't understand ourselves or this world or Your ways in this world. Children who desperately need Your provision, Your care, Your protection, Your guidance.
Who need to cling to Your promises and the hope that You've set before us. Who can only approach You through the covering that Christ has provided and the spirit of adoption that You have sent. Thank You, Father, that even as we falter and find discouragement in our own walks, You are ever delighting to hear Your children pray.
Ever inviting us to pray to You as our Father. Ever vigilant to hear even groans and sighs that cannot be uttered. So faithful, so patient, so merciful are You. Help us, Lord, to take these things to heart and be truly taught at a deep level what Jesus is teaching us here about prayer.
To relate to You as Father and all that that means for our guilty fears and the bondage that once consumed us that Satan so easily whips as a terror into our walks to cause us to stumble. But also, Lord, the corporate dimensions of belonging to You as children.
That we would understand what we are owning when we say, Our Father, and take it to heart. That we would not grieve or frustrate You who's shown undeserved love to more than just us. Teach us to pray, Lord.
Teach us to love and walk with You rightly. Draw us close to the Father. May our nearness to Christ be such that the Father, who is infinite and enthroned above all, is ever nearer. These things we pray in Your Son's name.
Amen.