The Lord's Prayer

Matthew 5:9-13

Hi friends!

From the day the words of this prayer were spoken from the lips of our Saviour, this has been a deeply cherished and often recited cry of trust and formation of a believer’s journey with God for over 2,000 years. From the mouth of a three year old child, to the dying breath of a faithful servant of the Lord, from the Aramaic expression, to the many, many languages that this prayer has been spoken, sung or wept, nothing has quite shaped or defined the prayer life of a Jesus follower across the global church family more than these precious words that our Lord taught his first followers. The youngest believer can appreciate it’s simple truths, while the greatest theologians have spent years of study and meditation exploring the profound insights found within it. And how fitting this morning as we continue our journey through the sermon on the mount that we ourselves join these faithful witnesses and explore the impact and power of prayer with a heavenly Father who desires intimate relationship with his children, who loves us more than words could ever describe, and who answers the prayers of his children in ways that we struggle to comprehend.

The Lord’s prayer is a gift to his church in so many ways...for many of us who struggle to pray, or know not what to pray, it provieds us a simple and yet life-shaping series of petitions that turn our eyes upward to our Creator and King, and remind our hearts of our daily need for the One who gives us our very breath. Perhaps for others it has been a part of our walk for so long that its familiarity has dimmed in our minds to the way that this prayer makes Jesus story our own story, and forms us into people who deeply trust and loyally participate in the good work that unites heaven and earth in God’s kingdom. Wherever you are on that scale my hope is we all in different ways grow in our love for this gift that Jesus has given his church, and enrich our prayer life in a way that shapes our own lives and impacts the world for the sake and glory of Christ Jesus.

We could spend weeks walking through the words of the Lord’s prayer but this morning I will try and capture some of its beauty and importance in a way that we can then take that away and perhaps go deeper with fellow brothers and sisters or in your own personal study. But first I’d like to take a brief pause at the top of the mountain and capture the landscape of these teachings of Jesus that surround his prayer. Our scriptures have been compiled and written with intricate beauty and detail, and the Hebrew authors were very intentional in the way they present the message they were inspired by God to write so as to bless and impact believers for generations. Different literary structures are used, whether a form of parellelism and repetition of thought, or perhaps a structure known as a chiasm, where the narrative moves in a series of steps to a climax in the centre, and then steps back out in a series of steps that parralel in some way the first steps that got us to that central theme or point. The sermon on the mount has it’s own structure, which I’d like to show you very breifly to basically make one simple point.

The narrative begins with an intro, an announcement that the Kingdom of Heaven has come and this is where you’ll find it...in the merciful, poor in spirit, the humble, etc. The beatitude teachings. Then we have a major section of teaching focussed on ‘Doing right by others,’ which itself is broken in three sections. Fullfilling Torah (or the law as we most often call it today), right relationships with others, and right relationships in conflict. Then there is the centre section of teaching focussed on ‘Doing right by God,’ how we give, how we pray, how we fast. A final major portion which we have not yet gone through provides wisdom in righteous living with God and neighbor, ending with a call to enter the way of life rather than darkness, that our house might be built on the rock, and though the winds may blow and chaos may sweep across our lives, we will stand because our foundation is found in Jesus, and our home is the kingdom of Heaven! Isn’t that beautiful! It might be just me but I think it gives us a bit of a framework for how all this ties together and shapes different aspects of what it means to be in God’s kingdom. The one thing I wanted to point out this morning though is this...what is found in the centre of Jesus teachings? Prayer. And that itself can teach us something we so easily forget that is so crucial to our walk on the road that leads to life. We can strive to do all these other things and live in the ways that our Lord calls us to, but if the centre-point of our lives is not rooted in prayer, our hearts will not be transformed into Christ’s image in the way he desires to, and all these other things will be burdensome, and in so many ways impossible for the one who tries to do it of their own strength and discipline. How are we to be more righteous than the pharisees and religious elite of Jesus day as he said we must? It is not by the striving of our actions, but the transformation of our hearts! So how do we pray? I’m so glad you asked...let’s have a look at the Lord’s prayer together.

While it has always been known as the Lord’s prayer, and rightfully so, as we apply it to our own prayer life I encourage us to consider it also as the Disciple’s prayer, for that is what it truly is, a prayer that shapes, directs and transforms the heart and posture of each disciple as they seek after the Lord God.

The prayer itself is broken into two halves, the first half containing three requests focussing on God’s purposes in the world, while the second half also has three petitions focussed on our concerns in day to day life.

Our Father in heaven...very few times in the Old Testament had God ever been referred to as Father, and when he was it was in reference to a nation, not to the individual. Yet when Jesus came on the scene he addressed God only as Father, and here incredibly invites his followers to do the same. What is also striking about this is that God’s name was so reverred that a faithful Jew dared not even speak it, and now they were being invited to address him as Abba, a common Aramaic term with which a child would address his own Father. It was a term of reverance, but more than than that it was a term of intimate relationship to the one who protects and raises them in a world of unkowns and insecurities.

Another significance to consider is that the prayer begins not with my Father, but our Father. In God’s family there is no place for individualism that says, I do not need anyone else, and they don’t need me. Our Father calls us not only to look upward to him in the heavens but outward to minister in love to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are encouraged to approach the Lord with confidance...friends, God delights to hear our prayers, and delights just as much to answer them. We can be confident as we come before our heavenly Father.

We are reminded that we can pray with simplicity. God doesn’t ask for eloquent rhetoric from his children, or a particular formula before he will respond, no...just simple, honest, heart-felt conversation. We honour him with our simplicity and trust. And we are called to pray with love. Abba, dearest Father are words that should overflow with love for our Lord in heaven.

‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.’ What does it mean to hallow God’s name? The original word means ‘to set apart as holy,’ or ‘to treat as holy.’ A helpful translation might be, “Our Father who is in heaven, may your name be treated as holy.”

One of the most significant things about being human is that we are made in the image of God. And what does, or what should an image reflect? The likeness of the one to which the image represents! Well, we know that right from the first imagers that God created we have failed pretty dismally at reflecting the true character of our God. And when humans fail to live in a way that brings life to others around us, and we choose our own path of wisdom rather than that of our Creator’s, we not only condemn ourselves to a way that leads to death, but we violate and tarnish the name of our holy God. When God chose Abraham and his descendants to be his chosen people, his holy nation, his desire again was that they would be a light to the nations, would display to all who were willing that their God, Yahweh, was the true God over the nations, and invite others to come into the covenant family of Israel as his followers, reflecting his goodness in the way they took care of the broken, the weak, the orphan and widow.

Yet just like all humanity, Israel messed up their calling and ultimately were swept away by surrounding nations into exile, bringing dishonour once again to God’s name. If God’s name was to be restored he would need to raise up a new representative who would restore God’s rule of Israel and the world so that everyone would see the holiness and goodness of God. And here as Jesus announces the arrival of God’s kingdom, he claims to be that represenative that the prophets foretold would come, such that he could pray and instruct us to pray...may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Hebrew structure of the prayer draws us to see both ‘your kingdom come’ and ‘your will be done’ as expansions on the earlier statement of ‘may your name be treated as holy.’ The way we will see God’s name regarded as holy is indeed when his kingdom comes to earth, and his will is done throughout the world, just as it is in the heavens.

So what does it mean then, what does it look like for God’s kingdom to come and his will be done? In one way it is the hope and cry of all believers looking forward to Jesus return to usher in the new heavens and earth, to raise all in him to an eternal glory, with all pain, death and disease swept away in the wake of the new creation, as the final chapters of Revelation describe for us. That is the ‘not yet’ part of the kingdom. But Jesus says that his kingdom has in a sense already come...and how is that witnessed and testified of in the present? When we love God and neighbour, when we treat others with God’s generousity and justice, when we lift up the broken, the weak, the oppressed, when we are Beatitude people...we are entering God’s kingdom, we are participating in joining God’s will for heaven and earth together, bringing glimpses of surprising hope with the miracles Jesus is doing in and through us, as each act of love, each gesture of mercy...each human that declares loyalty to Jesus and enters into his kingdom, is more territory of the enemy claimed back for the glory of our God.

This prayer is for that reunion, and we are invited to participate in it!

The prayer then shifts to three requests of provision for everyday needs in our lives that sustain us through the very real challenges and uncertainties of the moment by moment journey we face.

Give us today our daily bread. This is as basic a request as it can get isn’t it...God provide for me the food I need for today. It is an honest and raw request for God to meet our daily physical needs. This is an invitation to come to God with requests that others may consider small or insignificant. Our heavenly Father doesn’t demand that we approach him only when we elevate ourselves above the everyday things of life, when we only bring the big things in our lives to him...no, one of the most incredible realities of our God lies in his descending to meet us where we are at, and we bring him great honour when we come to him with even our little things. Jesus utilizes the well known story of the wilderness wanderings of his people when Moses led them from captivity in Egypt. In Exodus 16:4-5 we read:

Exodus 16:4–5 LEB

And Yahweh said to Moses, “Look, I am going to rain down for you bread from the heavens, and the people will go out and gather enough for the day on its day; in that way I will test them: Will they go according to my law or not? And then on the sixth day, they will prepare what they bring, and it will be twice over what they will gather every other day.”

For many of us, we have been in that place, or perhaps are right now in that place of genuine need for God to provide the most basic of our needs day to day. While this fosters in us a daily dependence upon God, it can also be the most vulnerable of places to find ourselves in. When all earthly securities, all self-provision is found to be inadequate, or indeed stripped away from us due to circumstances out of our control, we learn really quickly just how fragile our lives are and how little confidence we can place in the material. No other line in the prayer so sharply challenges the direction of focus in the world today. So is it wrong to plan ahead for those times of little, or try to bring some form of stability practically in our homes? Absolutely not. Like much of Jesus teachings, he is calling us to wisdom, to reflection on what this looks in our lives no matter how rich or poor we find ourselves. In light of other wisdom teachings such as found in Proverbs we are urged to not be lazy, to be active in working and providing for our needs practically as God gives us the capacity to do so. But the deeper wisdom that Jesus calls us to is that whether we are rich or poor, whether we are in a time of plenty, or a time of great need, God wants us to desperately depend on Him daily. This is once again a call to a changed heart, changed desires, that trusts on God’s provision when there seems little hope, and to be compelled to bless and give sacrificially to others in need in a way displays God’s kingdom at work in the everyday reality of our lives.

‘Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’

If daily bread pointed us to our most basic physical needs, forgiveness points to our most basic of moral needs. The reality of being human in a broken world is that we will both hurt others, and be hurt by others. And forgiveness is central to what Jesus came to do, and calls his followers to participate in. Jesus saw that our desire for revenge or retribution only breeds more pain and suffering. We look all around us in our families, in communities, and between nations and we witness the truth of this don’e we! For people of God’s kingdom, forgiveness requires radical trust in God, and a constant surrendering our pain and desire for justice over to him, chosing through His strength to release our right to get even, and even more pray for their well-being.

We could spend so much time on this subject, walking through the complexities and practical realities of what this looks like in the face of abuse, repeated broken trust, and other deeply painful situations in our lives...pastorally I encourage anyone struggling with how to walk through those complexities to talk to someone you do trust, talk to pastor Darryl, myself, the prayer team who are here to serve, someone who can journey with you in whatever way we can...but understand this call to forgive is not only God’s way of life, it is God’s way to life.

NT Wright summarizes it beautifully in this way:

“In our incomplete world God’s gentle offer and demand to forgive press upon us as fearful things, almost threatening. But God’s offer and demand is neither of those things. God in his gentle love longs to set us free from the prison we have stumbled into - the loveless prison where we refuse both the offer and the demand of forgiveness. We are like a frightened bird before him, shrinking away lest this demand crush us completely. But when we eventually yield - when he corners us and takes us in his hand - we find to our astonishment that he is infinitely gentle and that his only aim is to release us from our prison, to set us free to be the people he made us to be. But when we fly out into the sunshine, how can we not then offer the same gift of freedom, of forgiveness, to those around us?”

This is the surprising, and hopeful reality of those in God’s kingdom.

The final words of the prayer… ‘lead us not into temptation (or the test) but deliver us from the evil one.

What does it mean that God might test us? Throughout the Bible narrative God appoints humans as his imagers in the world, to represent him, and honour him in the way they love and bring blessing to others. This of course presents all of us with a test...will we partner with God to fulfill his purposes on earth and be salt and light to others that they might be drawn to declare loyalty to the true King? Or will we choose our own path of wisdom, or be lead by the evil one down the path of temptation that ultimately leads to a trap, or worse our own demise? We can be taken into that test for various reasons...whether to sharpen us, to refine us more into the likeness of Christ, maybe it is to be a beacon of light to others that they might see our conduct in the midst of a great challenge of life and be drawn to God because of that. Maybe it is God’s mercy in our lives in leading us back from a path of destruction, a path of wondering, and he uses those moments of testing to get our attention back on him once again. Those wilderness wanderings in our lives take many forms, but the beautiful thing in all these situations is not only that our God tests us for our own good, our own maturing in him, he also walks through that wilderness with us, opening up the way through the test. So trust in him. For Jesus to show us that we can pray that we don’t get led into the test is also a genuine invitation to be vulnerable and honest with God. Their is nothing more human than wanting to avoid the difficult road, even if we know it is for our good, is there.

This was Jesus own prayer...think in the garden before he was led to the cross...Father, if there is another way, please take this cup from me...not my will, but your will be done. And because of Jesus faithfulness to endure the greatest of tests for the sake of you, for the sake of me, for the sake of the whole world...the kingdom of heaven has come, God’s will is being done, in and through his children who hear his voice, who depend on him, who come to him in prayer desperately seeking strength to be faithful witnesses for his kingdom, who obey his voice and endure through the testing...And Jesus name is breaking the chains of darkness in people’s lives across the world, and in our communities, indeed in our very own lives. Do you want to be a part of this establishing God’s rule in the world? I pray so...brothers and sisters it is time to buckle up our boot straps, pray like we have never prayed before...and participate in God’s transforming work in the world...there is no greater purpose for our lives!

Life is full of choices, some little, some significant. But as we pray and seek God’s wisdom in our day to day, we will continue to be changed moment by moment, choice by choice to the path that leads to life, the path of new creation, the path of the kingdom of Heaven that has invaded earth in the person of Jesus, the true image of God...and because of his resurrection from death on the cross the way has been opened up for us to participate in and experience the first fruits of what is still to come.