The Lord's Prayer - Intro

As we now come to the portion of the Sermon on the Mount that is commonly known as the Lord's Prayer. Now over the last two weeks, we have worked through verses five through eight of chapter six, where Christ has dealt with two different distortions regarding prayer.

He began by warning us around praying for the approval of men, and then last week we saw this warning against meaningless repetition that treats prayer as though somehow we need to persuade God through the abundance of our words that we need to garner his attention because we jump up and down and wave our hands enough.

Beginning in verse nine, the direction of Christ's teaching shifts. We move from this demonstration of how not to pray to a full demonstration of how to pray. He opens the passage as we'll see shortly with the words, pray then in this way.

And so as we move into those words, one of the questions that we will need to consider is whether Christ is giving us words that are simply a model or a pattern for our prayer, or if he is in fact giving his people a prayer that should and rightly can be prayed.

As we bring in the other occurrence of the Lord's Prayer found in Luke's Gospel, the 11th chapter verses two through four, you'll see that this question becomes even more important as we work through that alongside this passage over the next several weeks.

However, this morning, we are going to begin with an overview of the Lord's Prayer itself. Then we are going to deal specifically with the address and then the first petition that we find there. As we do these things, we should begin to see not only that there is structure that Christ gives us to pray by, but there are priorities within this prayer that are meant to shape our prayers, the prayers of his people.

And so with all of this in mind and having already opened your Bibles to Matthew chapter six, I invite you to please stand with me in reverence for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete, and certain word.

Our reading once again begins in the fifth verse continuing through the 15th. Matthew chapter six, verse five and following reads in this way. And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites where they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.

Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go to your inner room and when you have shut the door, pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way, our father who is 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 have also forgiven our debtors.

Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Amen. For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions. Let us pray. Our most holy father, we praise you for your word. We are grateful that this teaching does not leave us without direction or without instruction, that as we come under that teaching here today, that your spirit would guide us, would convict us, would apply these words as a soothing balm to our lives, that they would teach us the manner in which we should enter into your presence, that access, access that is made possible only through the work of Christ on Calvary's cross.

Father, may we submit to these truths in all humility. We ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. You may be seated. Before we actually begin working through the prayer itself, the words and the petitions within this prayer, it will do us much good to take a moment, a step back and consider what God has given us as a whole, what this teaching that Christ delivers in this sermon actually does for his people.

The Lord’s Prayer as Both Model and Prayer

Now we call this, and we have called this the Lord's Prayer for pretty much ever, not because this is a prayer that Christ necessarily prayed or needed to pray or wanted to pray or was praying in every time that he prayed, but because this is the prayer that he gave to us.

A .W. Pink makes that distinction and describes these words as a comprehensive direction from Christ concerning both the manner in which his people are to pray and the matters for which they should pray.

This prayer gathers together the great concerns that ought to concern God's people. These are the things that ought to occupy our prayers. And these concerns are placed for us in this passage in their proper order.

And so one of the questions that inevitably gets raised and has been dealt with many times throughout history is this simply a model prayer or is this a prayer that is to be prayed or is it both? And the answer to that question from scripture is yes.

Both Matthew and Luke are the only two gospels, those are the only two gospels that record the Lord's Prayer in this manner. Both of them contain this and as we study the difference between the two, it becomes very striking.

Matthew, as we have been studying and will continue to study, is dealing more with the context or as we look at the context, he's dealing with the manner in which we pray. If you go back up and you think about what we talked about in verses five through eight, this dealt with the manner in which we pray, not so much the words that we pray, but the way in which we pray.

The truth of the heart behind the prayer. Luke, on the other hand, deals with the words of the prayer. And so as we look at both of these and we see both of these are approached in different manners that are entirely possible.

There's nothing contradictory here. This is simply Matthew fulfilling the purpose of Matthew's gospel, Luke fulfilling the purpose of Luke's gospel. And as we look at the two of them together, it becomes very clear that we have good reason to see that this is a pattern that should shape all of our prayers, but it is also a prayer that we may rightly pray.

Thomas Manton also approached this question with essentially the same balance. This is not a new conclusion. This is not my individual conclusion. Thomas Manton argued that believers are absolutely not bound to these exact words every time they pray, but he also maintained that the prayer may be humbly used because Christ did more than just tell his subjects what, tell his people what subjects belonged in their prayer.

He gave us words that he put into our mouth. Spurgeon likewise regarded the prayer primarily as a model by which our prayers should be fashioned, but he also affirmed that it may be prayed sincerely and profitably.

The concern not being the words of themselves or the use of the words themselves, but the danger of thinking that merely using those words affords something special to a prayer. And so there are differences with which aspect receives greater emphasis, whether it be that it's a model to be used or whether it's a prayer to be prayed.

I've been in churches where this prayer is prayed every Sunday. I've been in churches where you're taught simply that it is a model prayer, the way that you should pray, and you can use it to develop your prayers.

Calvin and the Westminster Divines, as you study them, they emphasize it as a rule for shaping the prayer rather than as a fixed form. Luther encouraged Christians to use it as a guide to develop our own prayers.

Sproul and MacArthur both regularly represented or presented it as a model or a pattern that established the priorities of the Christian prayer. And so as you see, while there has been variation on how strongly they may stress one side or the other, there is absolute agreement that this is intended to shape and mold the way in which we pray.

This passage of Scripture is extremely important. But as much important as this passage of Scripture is, we also have to take much care because if you'll notice, immediately preceding the instructions on this prayer, Christ gives us the instructions on how not to pray.

And so the way it's structured in Scripture prevents us from walking into it with this idea that we can simply pray this prayer and then it will be wonderful. We cannot think that praying the Lord's prayer, just repeating the Lord's prayer, simply makes us righteous because Christ gave us these words.

The sincerity of our heart, the trust that we place in the Father, all of these are necessary to truly understand. And as you'll see as we develop this, it's developed within the prayer itself, not just the Scripture context around it.

So if we say that this prayer may be rightly prayed, we're not saying it's a formula for gaining the attention of or manipulating or obligating God in some way. There are those who will teach this. There are those who teach that the opening passage of this is simply a means to an end for you to gain blessings.

The truth is the Father already knows what we need before we ask Him. How do we know this? We go back up to verse eight because this is Scripture after all and context is King. It says in verse eight, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

There's no need of us to pray this prayer and then a purpose to gain His attention. He already knows what we need is a prayer that has to be prayed with the same faith, the same understanding, the same obedience, the same trust, the same sincerity that has to go with every prayer offered before God.

And at the same time, calling it a model doesn't reduce this to a collection of suggestions. One of the other dangers tends to be, well, this is a model prayer. So as long as we have the our Father at the beginning and the amen at the end, everything in the middle is subject to our own interpretation that's not what this is.

There's a very specific ordering here. The prayer begins with God. The prayer begins with His concerns before it ever moves to ours, before it ever even addresses us. We deal with His name, His kingdom, His will.

They're placed before our daily provision, our forgiveness, our relationship, our protection. But if you'll notice, even when the prayer does turn to our needs, it's not me as an individual, it is us in a corporate sense.

It is our Father, our bread, our debts, our deliverance. Christ is not just giving us words to say, just to say them. He's showing us how the desires of our hearts should be prioritized and ordered. And so that instruction begins before He even gives a single petition, before He ever says anything, He deals and teaches us first to whom we are praying.

“Our Father”: Adoption and Access Through Christ

Our Father, who is in heaven. You know, those words are very familiar to us. We're very comfortable beginning prayers, our Father, Almighty Father, Almighty God, Heavenly Father. The list, we could go on and on, right?

And in fact, these words become so familiar to us that it becomes easy to skate past them without fully giving them the thought that they deserve. I can remember as a kid growing up, getting ready to play football, baseball, before we ever got onto the field, the last thing the coach would do after we got through warming up, the field was empty, waiting on us to take the field.

We all had to huddle up, put our hands in the middle, and we had to pray the Lord's Prayer. And it didn't mean a thing, not to a bunch of five, six, seven, eight, 12 year olds, because I did it all through playing ball.

It was just something we did before we played. Why? So that we would be protected while we played. Or maybe that we would even win. Truth of the matter is, is that we get to the point where these words, we miss the fact that these things contain an extraordinary amount of theology.

Theology, that understanding of who God is. The truth of what we know and believe about God. These words, our Father who is in heaven, they tell us something about who God is. They tell us something about who we are in relation to God.

They even tell us that there is access that is granted, but it is only through Christ. But here comes the rub, that many people have a hard time dealing with. These words are not for everyone. That's one of the hardest truths in all of Scripture.

These words are not for everyone. God is absolutely the creator of all, but not all have the right to access Him or address Him as Father. In the beginning, and I do mean the beginning, when Adam and Eve were created, there was no barrier between them and their creator.

They lived before God. They lived in full relationship with God. They lived in true, open fellowship with God. And then the fall. And we read in Genesis chapter three, that after they both ate of the fruit, it says the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked.

And then when God came, they hid. They had to remove themselves from His presence because in His presence, they were ashamed and afraid. That movement in the garden from fellowship to hiding is one of the most clear pictures that Scripture gives us of the condition of sin and what it does in our relationship with God.

That it literally puts us in a position of separation. And see, the problem isn't that God changed. God did not all of a sudden become unwilling to be gracious. The problem is, is that we became guilty.

That all of humanity is now guilty before God. There is alienation. There is shame. There is condemnation that exists between man and God. Adam and Eve were driven from the garden. Access to the tree was prohibited.

And from that point forward, Scripture continually reminds us that sinful man cannot just leisurely enter into the presence of Almighty God. We move forward in Scripture. We see that God's purpose to dwell with His people didn't end.

Hasn't been very long ago that we concluded a journey through the book of Exodus. And if you'll recall, God's whole purpose in bringing His people out of Egypt, saving them was to bring them to Himself and ultimately to dwell in their midst.

Even commanded the construction of the tabernacle. What a remarkable declaration of grace. That He would construct a thing within the middle of His people, a dwelling place within the middle of His people so that He could dwell amongst these sinners.

These people who had turned their back on Him. But even in the structure of the tabernacle, as we study through the actual way that it was constructed, we see that there is still a problem. We see that there is a major issue, that there are boundaries, there were curtains, there are priests, there are sacrifices.

There are layer upon layer to protect sinful man from a holy God. In the midst of it was the holy place that only one person could enter and it could only happen one time a year. It could only be done according to the very specific commands of God and because of the blood that was applied.

God desired to dwell with His people yet our sin prevents us to approach His holiness. We cannot enter. The instructions surrounding the tabernacle, we saw they weren't arbitrary. They testify to the seriousness of this sin and our need for a mediator, someone to stand in the gap between us and God.

All of that makes these words much more astonishing. You see, Christ didn't open it, the prayer, by saying distant God who we cannot approach. He didn't open it by saying almighty creator, although these were very, almighty creator is absolutely a very appropriate address.

Christ uses very specific words when He says our Father. But you see, this is why these words aren't for all people. Not all people have the right to address God as our Father because the fullness of what Christ teaches is that this prayer belongs particularly to those of us who have been brought into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

And through Christ, we have been ushered into the presence of God. Pink notes that the deepest meaning of our Father belongs to the believing Christian because there is a relationship here greater than creation alone.

You see, anyone can call God creator because He created all, but not everyone can call Him Father. God is Father to His people through Christ and our adoption in Him. That is why we can call Him Father.

That is why we cannot separate this truth of our Father from the work of Christ the Son. But we also need to take care that we do not misunderstand that we can gain this relationship simply by repeating these words.

We can't come to this passage of scripture and go, oh, okay, well, I can just pray our Father and I don't need to do anything else and it's good. We're not God's children because we address Him properly.

We are His children and we call Him Father because through Christ, we have been reconciled. Through Christ, we have been adopted. Through Christ, we have been brought into the family. Coming up in a few weeks, we're gonna spend a good bit of time in a passage of scripture from the book of Galatians.

And in Galatians chapter four, verses four through six, we read, but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God sent forth the spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. But you see, the order, again, is the key. We didn't just start calling Him Father. The Son was sent, redemption was accomplished, adoption was granted, and then we, as the adopted children, cry out, Abba.

So when Christ teaches us to pray our Father, this is not a warm, fuzzy title for God. He is teaching us to pray within a relationship that had to be purchased for us. Hebrews reminds us that Christ has entered the holy place once for all, and because of that, we can now draw near.

The separation that was introduced in Eden has been dealt with, the guilt that could only be answered by blood has been answered, the barrier pictured by the veil has been overcome. Christ has accomplished what those sacrifices and the priest could only anticipate.

And as we come to the Father, because the Son brings us near. With a right understanding of why we can approach gives us a right understanding of the intimacy. You see, calling God Father again is not a license to approach Him casually.

This doesn't give us the right to just do whatever we want. Immediately, Christ follows up the words, our Father, with who is in heaven. There's a balance that's maintained between these two expressions.

One, He is our Father. That encourages confidence, it reminds us of His love, it does all of these things. At the same time, we're reminded that He is in heaven, which gives us a reminder of His greatness and His majesty and His holiness and His otherliness.

And that balance is important because while we are coming to our Father, we are not coming to our equal. We are coming to our Father, but God is not our equal. He is our Father in heaven. He is near to us, yet He remains holy.

He remains sovereign, He remains exalted. His fatherhood, again, grants us confidence, but His heavenly majesty reminds us that we come and must come before Him in reverence. If we are to come before Him with just this emphasis on His majesty, and we fail to consider that He is our Father, we begin to forget the fatherly grace and our prayers can become marked by fear and distance.

To the Jews of this day, this prayer was scandalous because they would have never called God Father. Never would they have approached Him in such a manner. Why? Because they didn't understand the grace, they didn't understand the love that He has.

But on the same side, if we focus on Father and we forget the reverence, we forget the majesty, we forget the holiness, then we can become very familiar, overly familiar, we can forget our place, we can approach the living God with very little thought.

And Christ teaches us to come, but to come with reverent confidence, to come before Him. And one last thing regarding the address. You'll notice He teaches us not to pray my Father, He says our Father.

He's not saying our Father because He's just teaching to a multitude. He's saying our Father because even in our private prayers, even when we're alone in a closet praying, we are still part of a larger family.

We do not belong to God in isolation from the rest of God's people. If you work through this prayer, you'll notice that it is our bread, our debts, our debtors feed us, deliver us from the first word of this prayer.

Every Christian prayer should be shaped with the reality that we have been brought into a family. The Father to whom you pray, the Father to whom I pray is the same Father to whom every other believer prays.

The First Petition: Hallowed Be Your Name

And so as Christ has taught us to whom we come, He now turns to what should occupy our hearts. He gives us this petition. Now the interesting thing that you need to understand is that this is a petition.

A petition is a request. And so this is not just a statement, this is a request and that needs to be forefront in your mind because that frames the way you understand what is being said here. This petition didn't begin with our needs or our troubles or our challenges or our forgiveness or our protection or send me a million dollars.

What it begins with is a proper place. It begins with the first thing upon our lips should concern God Himself. And the statement is, Hallowed be your name. Before we ask God for anything, provision, for forgiveness, for protection, we first honor God as God.

The word that we have translated here is hallowed is a form of the Greek verb. Commonly, normally we use that Greek verb to is translated sanctify or set apart as holy. Now the key here is understanding that that's not what you're at.

You're not asking God to be more holy or to stay holy or anything like that. God is perfectly holy. He is eternally holy. God never changes. The prayer then is something else. What is happening is you are asking God that He would cause His name to be regarded, to be treated, to be acknowledged, to be honored as holy.

In other words, as other theologians have correctly defined it, to hallow God's name is to desire that it be reverenced, adored, glorified and held in the highest honor. As we study scripture, the name of God represents who He is as He has revealed Himself to us.

And so if you do a study of the names of God throughout the scripture, you'll see they're all descriptive terms that describe attributes or characteristics of Almighty God. When He proclaimed Himself to Moses in Exodus 34, He wasn't pronouncing a mere title.

He was declaring a character, His character. His mercy, His grace, His patience, His covenant love, His faithfulness, His justice, His holiness. These are the things that He was proclaiming in the name that He gave Him.

And so when you and I are praying, hallowed be your name, then we are praying that God would be known and honored for who He truly is and that this would help us understand the breadth of this petition.

See, this is where it starts to get a little challenging because we can pray those words, hallowed be thy name, without ever considering what they really touch. The truth is, as you pray this, you're praying that God would be rightly known, rightly worshiped, rightly honored throughout the world, throughout our church, throughout our homes and in our very own lives.

We are asking that what is true of God in Himself would be recognized and revered among His creatures. Now, the placement again matters deeply. Christ could have began with our petitions and we would certainly understand if He began with the request, let's give us this day our daily bread.

After all, if we think back on most of our prayers, we may say, our Father, but then usually pretty quickly after that, we jump into the needs for me, right? And we may not frame it that way. We may have our list of people that we're praying for and we pray for them first because we feel holier when we do that.

Never once do we think to pray regarding the ways in which we approach God Himself. Christ deliberately places God's name before everything. He places His glory before everything. He teaches you and I that our first concern is not what do I need God to do for me or someone else, but is God being honored as He ought to be?

Am I honoring God as I should? And when we think about that, here's the interesting thing that happens. It takes us back to the larger movement that we have seen in the Sermon on the Mount. You see, we often forget that the Lord's prayer is delivered as part of the Sermon on the Mount, which means it ties back to what God, Christ has been teaching us this whole time.

You remember back in Matthew's Gospel, the fifth chapter, the 20th verse, Christ told His hearers that unless our righteousness surpassed that of the scribes and Pharisees, we could not see the kingdom of God.

You remember a little bit later on, as He moved forward from that point, teaching us this righteousness that His kingdom had to have and how it dealt with the heart and our anger, our lust, our truthfulness, our response to wrong, our love for our enemies, our giving, now our praying, that in verse 48, the very end of chapter five, what we identify as chapter five, we are given by Christ the standard.

Therefore, you are to be perfect as God is perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. And so we had a standard set for us. You recall that conversation. And the Father has remained the measure. The Father is still the standard.

His character defines the righteousness that is required of His people. And so as we get here, we arrive at the first petition of the prayer and the first petition, the first thing that the people of God are called to ask for that we are taught by Christ is that the Father's name would be hallowed, that God, who is the standard of perfection and kingdom, righteousness, is the one whose name is to be held holy above everything else.

See, here's what this does. This prevents you and I from disconnecting our prayer life with the life we live, because you and I cannot sincerely pray, hallowed be thy name, and then live as though we have no care whether His name is actually hallowed or not.

This prayer places yourself beneath this prayer. This request, this prayer, this petition asks that His name would be hallowed in us, in our thoughts, in our words, in our worship, in our priorities, in our relationships, in everything that you do, right up to and including your obedience.

Thomas Manton made this observation. In this petition, the glory of God is both desired and promised on our part, for every prayer is both an expression of a desire and also an implicit vow or solemn obligation that we take upon ourselves to prosecute what we ask.

That means that when you say, when you ask, hallowed be thy name, that you are obligating yourself to actually do what you have just asked. You are obligating yourself to hold God's name as hallowed. Prayer is a preaching to ourself in God's hearing.

We speak to God to warn ourselves, not for His information, but for our edification. If you've never read much, Thomas Manton and I would encourage you to read. The fact that this is a petition reminds us that this is something we cannot do in our own strength.

You recall, I told you at the very start of that particular set, this was a petition. A petition was a request, something that we were praying that God would make happen, and when we do this, we also understand that we can't do it of our own strength, our own accord.

We cannot do it by ourself. We are asking God to make Himself known to us. We are asking Him to magnify His glory within us. We are asking Him to work within His people so that we recognize Him better, so that we love Him deeper, so that we worship Him more fully, so that we live in a manner worthy of His name.

Hopefully you recall the warning that we saw the very first verse of this chapter. To beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Again, the problem there was that the glory was directed at the wrong person.

Notice that the petition of this prayer ensures that that recognition is placed and ordered where it should be. Not my name, not my reputation, not whether others think that I pray well or that I even particularly appear highly devoted.

Hallowed be your name. That radical reordering strikes at our hearts because it confronts and asks the question of us. And you know, it's dangerous when we ask ourself questions because typically we have two ways of responding.

We're either very, very truthful with ourself or we lie like rogues. Most of the time, unfortunately, we lie heavily to ourself. This is a situation where we must be truthful. We must evaluate properly and we must ask, is the glory of God genuinely the governing desire of both your prayer and your life?

Is that really what governs your action? Is your day spent seeking primarily to advance your own name, your own comfort, your own desires, your own reputation, or are you seeking His glory? Is there a contradiction between the prayer on your lips and the life that you live?

No, this doesn't mean that we achieve some perfect consistency. This is not a call to expect you to always get it exactly right because none of us will ever get it exactly right. What it does mean is that Christ is teaching us that our chief desire ought to be, and at the same time, what our chief desire is and then asking the Father to perform that within us.

God’s Glory, Our Sin, and Christ’s Perfect Obedience

Matthew 5 .48, set before us the perfection of the Father. Praying, hallowed be your name, reveals how far short we fall. Which one of us can literally say that the glory of God has always been the highest concern of our heart?

Which one of us can say that since this morning when we got up that the glory of God was the highest concern of our heart at all times? I love the way Paul Washer puts it. If you perfectly love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, every second of your entire life, the answer to the question is no.

Praise be to God for Christ. Because when we realize that we cannot accomplish this, we understand that we can't turn this prayer into a ladder that gets us somewhere. We understand that we can't turn this prayer into a ladder that gets us somewhere.

We understand that the only way that we can come to the Father is because Christ brings us near. If that's the only way we can address Him as Father, then it's certainly the only way that we can pray, hallowed be your name.

We don't perfectly hallow the Father's name. We don't perfectly hold His name as holy. If we did, and if we could, we could earn our way. Christ would have never needed to come and die. But we can't. We cannot earn that right.

We come as children because of Christ. And as children, we ask our Father to increasingly make His name holy in our hearts, which takes us to an understanding of the Christ-centeredness in this petition.

You see, the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who perfectly hallowed the name. His whole life was lived for the express purpose of the Father's glory. John chapter 17, verse four, as Christ approaches the cross in His final moments and hours leading up to His death, as He enters the Garden of Gethsemane, as we have His great prayer that we read in John chapter 17, we read these words.

Jesus says in verse four, I glorified you on the earth, having finished the work which you have given me to do. He sought the glory of the Father alone. He sought the will of the Father alone. His devotion was undivided.

His obedience was perfect. And where this first petition exposes the divided desires of our hearts, it directs us towards the sufficiency of Christ. Praying hallowed be your name as those united to the one who perfectly honored the Father's name, we ask the Father through His Spirit to conform us to the Son so that we, what was perfectly true of Christ becomes increasingly evident in us.

God's glory becomes the governing concern beneath every other request that follows. God's glory becomes the linchpin of all we see here. Not because the Father is unconcerned with our needs. We've already established He knows our needs before we ever begin this prayer, before we ever think about beginning this prayer.

It is because the child who knows the Father increasingly learns to desire what the Son perfectly desired, that above all else, the Father is glorified. And so the question becomes, is that truly the desire of my heart?

And as we examine ourselves, we see how imperfectly this desire exists within us. We should again be driven to the feet of the Master. We are again driven to Christ. We come to the Father through the righteousness of Christ.

Having been brought to the Father, brought near through the Son, we ask the Father to continue the work in us so that His name is increasingly glorified. This first petition exposes what ought to stand at the center of the Christian life.