The Lord's Prayer petition 1

Introduction

The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father Introduction: “Your Father in Secret”

The Lord’s Prayer, often called the Pater Noster (Latin for “Our Father”), is a kind of template, a “Here, try it this way” sort of prayer. It’s a model for approaching God with childlike confidence that He will hear. Depending on who you ask, it is composed of six or seven petitions, the first three focused on God’s holy character and rule and the latter three or four concerned with invoking God’s help in some way.2 In what follows, we will inch our way through each petition, drawing on the writings of the church fathers, the Protestant Reformers, and more recent Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant theologians and preachers to draw out the significance of Jesus’ words for Christian prayer today.

The Lord’s Prayer

Matthew 6:5–15 ESV

5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Errors in prayer

Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 The Point—Praying for God’s Sake

Public prayer is not sinful, but the essence of prayer is private conversation with God, and a quiet, secluded place is best for that. Because hypocrites pray with an eye on their reputation, they miss the essence of prayer.

That’s the error of the Pharisees

Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 The Point—Praying for God’s Sake

Pagan prayer fails in a different way. Atheists do not pray at all, and agnostics may do nothing more than toss up a petition “in case someone up there is listening,” but many pagans do pray.

Error of modern day Athiests and Agnostics, Petitioning the universe

Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 The Point—Praying for God’s Sake

In Jesus’ day, they prayed mechanically, heaping up empty words. Their problem was not repetition per se; after all, Jesus blesses those who pray persistently (Luke 18:1–7). Their problem was their mindless repetition—a tongue that wagged while the mind slept.

The Problem of the Pagans. This can be done if you pray the same prayer by wrought everyday. Some spring off the Lord’s Prayer but don’t think to deeply about it, maybe you do that at meals or before bed.

The answer to this Problem

Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 The Point—Praying for God’s Sake

Genuine prayer is sincere, not hypocritical. It is thoughtful, not mechanical

You are welcome to pray out loud before men, Jesus did, but you must not be looking to score points with men, but instead build true reliance on the Father.

Traits of True prayer we can gather from this text

True Prayer Is Private

True Prayer Is Simple

1 Kings 18:24–29 ESV

24 And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.” 25 Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” 26 And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. 27 And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” 28 And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. 29 And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.

Persistent prayer is certainly good, but God does not answer prayer because our persistence impresses him. He answers prayer because he loves us.

True prayer seeks to commune with God, not to extract benefits from him.

True prayer rests in God’s generosity, not in our efforts to earn rewards.

True prayer waits on God’s wisdom, rather than assuming that we can accurately assess our needs.

True prayer trusts God and finds its confidence in him.

The problem in prayer is not that God is too busy for us, but that we feel too busy for him. God does not remove himself from us; we remove ourselves from him. We do not need to master techniques that guarantee effective prayer. We should reject the idea that our prayers must be “good enough” to merit God’s attention. Our words will never be good enough to merit God’s attention! But God is kind and compassionate enough to listen.

True Prayer Is Confident

English Standard Version Chapter 18

36 And at the time of cthe offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, dGod of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that eyou are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that fI have done all these things at your word. 37 Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” 38 gThen the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. 39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, h“The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.” 40 And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.” And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to ithe brook Kishon and jslaughtered them there.

Our God is a good Father

Matthew 6:7–10 ESV

7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

God Our Father

The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father Invocation: Our Father in Heaven

When we turn to the New Testament, we immediately notice: gone is the reserve of the Old Testament when it comes to calling God “Father.” If you were to tally how many times Jesus uses that name for God, the total would reach approximately 65 by the time you finished the Gospel of Luke and over 170 by the time you reached the end of the Gospel of John. Clearly, something new and surprising is afoot.

Jesus Personally is the fulfillment of everyone of the petitions for us

The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father (Introduction: “Your Father in Secret”)

Above all, I want to show that the Lord’s Prayer is first and foremost about Jesus Himself. Each petition is not only His instruction to His followers about how they are to pray. More fundamentally, each petition is a window into Jesus’ own life of prayer—His reliance on and manifestation of the One He called Father. As Dale Allison has put it, “Jesus embodies his speech; he lives as he speaks and speaks as he lives.”3

The Lord’s Prayer is a portrait of Jesus Christ—the One who addresses God as Father,

who sanctifies God’s name,

who announces and bears God’s healing reign,

who submits to God’s will,

who gives His flesh as daily bread for the life of the world,

who provides for the forgiveness of sins through His death on the cross and thus inducts His followers into a lifestyle of forgiveness,

and who ultimately delivers believers from the power of death and the devil.

Jesus embodies and enacts the prayer He taught His followers to pray.4 Jesus is “the invisible background of every one of [the Lord’s Prayer’s] petitions”—all of them are arrows that point toward Him, though He isn’t mentioned by name in any of them.5

God’s Name is to be Hallowed

Matthew 6:9–13 KJV 1900

9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

I used the KJV because I have it near memorized in this version.

Verse Matt. 6:9

Matthew 6:9 (ESV)

9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Is Jesus telling us that God’s name is to be seen as Holy and glorious. A Request that God’s named be Hallowed means that

Definition

The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father Petition I: Hallowed Be Your Name

The word “hallow” means to “honor” or “make uncommon”—to “make something special,” as we might say in contemporary English. According to Simone Weil, when we ask God to “hallow” His name, “we are asking for something that exists eternally, with full and complete reality, so that we can neither increase nor diminish it, even by an infinitesimal fraction.”23 God’s name is already uncommon, regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not.

Extra Thoughts

The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible The Sermon on the Mount (5:1–7:29)

A request that God would cause people to honor Him as holy.

This encouragement is so that we pray that God’s name is known to all. He will reveal his name to people as he did to Moses in the burning bush, and as He did at the announcement of the birth of His son, and at his son’s baptism. So Christian is is our call to make the name of God known. Proclaim Christ!