Our Father
Notes
Transcript
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
John Bunyan writes that
Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to his Word, for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God.'
John Bunyan, Praying in the Spirit.
Relationship shapes our speech
Relationship shapes our speech
The way we speak to people depends on the relationship we have to them
First meeting - Besties for life
Judge - defendant
Boss - employee
How people view the god they worship and relate to shapes how they pray… religions:
Muslim, ritual prayers 5 times a day to a distant judge.
Buddhists meditate silently upon or toward their own inner being.
Witchdoctors cry out and dance to summon spirits… demonic ones.
Roman Catholic nuns pray quietly the ‘Hail Mary’ while handling their rosary beads.
How does your relationship to God shape how you pray?
Who is God in relation to you?
God
God
Lord almighty, warrior, creator, holy, righteous, sovereign, judge
He can feel so distant, so other worldly that it is hard to relate - we’re filled with fear, or apathy; we feel remote, cut off, rejected
Jesus provides the means for us to relate to God as Father… IS the means...
Father
Father
Father - creator
Deuteronomy 32:6 “6 Is this the way you repay the Lord, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?”
Acts 17:28 “28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
Father - king
Psalm 24:10 “10 Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty— he is the King of glory.”
Psalm 2:7 “7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have become your father.”
Malachi 1:6 “6 “A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. “It is you priests who show contempt for my name. “But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’”
Father - redeemer
Isaiah 63:16 “16 But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.”
Exodus 4:22 “22 Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son,”
Jeremiah 31:20 “20 Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,” declares the Lord.”
1 John 3:1 “1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Adoption… not automatic, not merited, not inherited from our ancestors… it is gifted! Adoption to Sonship is God’s gift to us.
Only in Jesus! Spirit uniting us to him! We are in Christ and Christ is in us… therefore we cry “abba, Father”.
Not daddy, not Father (formal), but Dad. Respect and familiarity.
Our Father
Our Father
Matthew 6:9 “9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,”
“The Father’s election of a new nation determined that this paternal relationship was, first of all, a corporate feature of salvation-history. Here is the conceptual precedent behind the frequent collective address “Our Father.” Far from making him remote or impersonal, specifying God as “our Father who is in heaven” highlights the preciousness of this filial relationship above all others.” Crumb, knocking on heaven’s door…
“The word ‘our’ signifies that the right to call God "Father" is not mine alone. It is a corporate privilege belonging to the entire body of Christ. When I pray, I do not come before God as an isolated individual, but as a member of a family, a community of saints.” RC Sproul, Does prayer change things.
None of us can pray, “our Father” without acknowledging the very unique relationship of Father and Son.
Every time Jesus prays, he prays to his Father, except on the cross where he prays Mark 15:34 “34 And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).”
25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. 27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
“Here Jesus coordinates the vital aspects of fatherhood, sonship, revelation, and prayer in a fashion that sets them apart as key to illuminating the significance of Jesus’ invitation for others to call God Father.” Crumb, Knocking on heaven’s door
“The Father reveals the Son; the Son reveals the Father. To experience God’s fatherhood means that the Son has prayed for our eyes to be opened. To reach for God as Father means that he has responded by opening our hearts to the Son. To apprehend God as Father is to be embraced by and adopted into the heavenly family of the Father and the Son.” Crumb, Knocking on heaven’s door
Our Father in Heaven
Our Father in Heaven
Any intimacy we can gain from the privilege of praying to our Father, does not negate the fact He still in the glorious Lord almighty, warrior, creator, holy, righteous, sovereign, judge… in eternity.
When we pray to our Father in heaven, we pray to our sovereign who holds all things in his hands, who sits on an heavenly throne.
In Jesus, we are privileged not just to peak behind the curtain…
Like David…
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
But to walk right into the Father’s presence.
A new privilege, through Jesus and in the power of the Spirit...
19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body,
This should be our motivation to pray… the privilege to relate, communicate, rely, depend… upon our Father in heaven.
Intimacy with our Father
Intimacy with our Father
1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. 2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. 6 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. 7 Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. 8 I cling to you; your right hand upholds me.