The Sermon on the Mount: The Lord's Prayer pt. 1: Our Father in Heaven

Introduction

Read Matthew 6:5-14

Matthew 6:5–14 (ESV)

“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. 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.

“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. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:

“Our Father 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 also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,

Again, this teaching falls in line with what Jesus has said about giving and fasting.

Matthew 6:1 (ESV)

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

We must be careful not to simply pray as a show for others to receive their praise for how righteous we are.

Again, Jesus is going to show us how to pray with the right heart that will help us to avoid praying for the wrong reasons. It is not meant to be prayed word for word, but as a model to guide our prayers. It gives us principles with which to pray to God.

So we are going to spend the next six weeks or so looking at what and how we should pray.

Who are we Talking To?

First, we see Jesus again looking at the Pharisees who misunderstood and misused prayer.

They wanted to be seen by others

They used big, lofty, and pretentious words thinking that those words would be heard better than the simple words of a child

Ultimately, it came down to a misunderstanding of who we are talking to.

The Pharisees did their praying more for the benefit of others rather than for God. Their audience became those who were looking on instead of God.

Instead of praying for the praise of others, prayer is meant for God alone.

This does not mean that prayer cannot ever be public. We have discussed this before with fasting and giving. But prayer is not to be a show for others, but for God alone.

But how are we to come to God? How should we relate to God in prayer?

This is where we see the first part of this prayer: “Our Father in heaven…”

The Father

First, if we are to approach God in prayer, Jesus shows us we are to come to Him as Father.

This would have been revolutionary to the Jews in Jesus’ time. Of course, they did think of God as Father, but more so in the Creator Father sort of way. Because God is Creator of us all, He is Father in that sense. But no one would have seen God as a personal Father to us.

But here, Jesus is saying, if we are truly to relate to God, we must relate to Him as Father.

The problem is that we have been alienated from God because of our sin. So there must be something done for us to be able to relate to God as Father.

We Have a God Who Offers Forgiveness

Before we can relate to God as Father, we must first be reconciled to Him.

Because of our sin, we have been made enemies of God. None of us actually start with God as Father.

Colossians 1:21–22 (ESV)

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

Romans 5:10 (ESV)

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Romans 8:14–16 (ESV)

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

Here we see what Jesus accomplished through the cross. His death on the cross and His resurrection accomplished our reconciliation so that we can relate to God, not as enemies, but as children who have been adopted into His family.

So as Jesus is telling us to come to God as Father, He is actually inviting us to first be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

In fact, until we come to God through Christ, we really cannot truly pray to God in the way we ought.

If you are not a believer this morning, Jesus first wants to invite you to receive Him as Savior so that you can be reconciled to God as Father.

We Have a God Who Perfectly Loves Us

Next, what Jesus is showing us is that God is a Father who perfectly loves us.

We can come to God knowing that He loves us. Again, we know He loves us because of what He has demonstrated His love through Christ.

So when we pray, we are not simply saying some magic words to get God to do our bidding. Prayer is an invitation from a loving God to approach Him and talk with Him.

We come trusting that God loves us and hears us because He is our perfectly loving Father.

We have a God who loves us and cares for us and knows our needs even before we ask.

He knows us and even wants us to come to Him to talk with Him and to present our requests to Him.

And because of His love towards us, we can perfectly trust Him.

We can trust Him to always do what is good and right for us. This does not mean that He will give us everything we want or ask for, but He will always do what is good for us.

We have enjoyed taking our kids to the swimming pool these past couple summers. Our two youngest children, as they are still getting more comfortable with the pool know they can stay close to both Shari and I, because they know we love them and will make sure they stay safe. They trust that we are constantly looking out for their good and if they are ever scared, they know who the cling to.

In the same way, God wants us to come to Him as Father, trusting in His love, care, and protection, knowing that He will always do what is best for His children.

Again, this would be revolutionary to His disciples who had not quite considered this aspect of God before. God is closer to us than we can possibly imagine.

The Father Who Is In Heaven

Jesus first wants us to understand that God is close to us, He loves us and wants us to approach Him in a spirit of a child to a father.

However, Jesus also wants us to also understand that while God is Father, he is also holy and righteous.

We typically go to one of two extremes in our understanding of God.

Our culture today only wants to focus on the closeness of God and flippantly treat Him as a teddy bear or as a Santa Claus type figure who is here to simply make me feel good about myself.

However, the Jews in Jesus’ day were not wrong to also see God as sovereign and holy. We might think of the puritans in the early centuries of our nation and their focus on the holiness and wrath of God.

Jesus wants us to see that acknowledging both aspects of God’s character is actually a good and healthy thing.

So we see God as Father, who is close to us and loves us.

But we must also see God as our Father who is in Heaven. He is the King who sits upon the throne and deserves our worship and holy fear and reverence towards Him.

I remember as I was growing up, there were certain shows, especially during the 80s and 90s I was not allowed to watch mainly because of the disrespect the children in the program showed to their parents, especially their father. It was both in how they talked with their father, including how they would call their father by his actual name. There was an overfamiliarity with the father which led to a disrespect.

There is a temptation for us to so focus on the closeness and sentimentality of our relationship with the Father that we forget that there is also a transcendence to the nature of God and that while He is a friend, He is not on the same level as us.

OUR Father Who is in Heaven

God is a father to all those who come to Him by faith in Christ. He loves us and cares for us.

But He is also our Father in heaven signifying that God is still to be seen as holy and righteous and deserving of our worship and reverent fear and awe.

Last Jesus tells us to come to God as “Our” Father.

Why does He use the word “our” instead of “my”? If I am praying in private, shouldn’t I say “my Father”?

Jesus is helping us to see that our prayers, while they should be personal and private, are not individual prayers.

In our highly individualized western culture, we try to make everything about the person. But Jesus is telling us that if we are to come to God, we must understand that we are coming to Him in community with other brothers and sisters in Christ, even as I am sitting in my private prayer closet.

My prayers, therefore, should never be solely about myself.

Yes there are things I will be praying for myself,

but I must always keep the community of faith in mind as I am praying, knowing that I have brothers and sisters praying for me and I am being invited to pray for them as well.

Jesus is inviting us to seek to love our brothers and sisters in Christ as we seek to love God in our prayers.

Conclusion

Prayer is essential to the life of a believer and it is too important to simply use as a way to build up our own pride.

Prayer is an invitation into a relationship with God, to see and know how much He loves us, a call for us to grow in our love for Him, and an invitation to love and to be loved by our brothers and sisters in Christ.