The Lord's Prayer - Intro

Introduction

This morning, as we return to Matthew’s Gospel, I would ask you to open up your copy of God’s word once again to the 6th chapter as we now come to the portion of the Sermon on the Mount commonly known as the Lord’s Prayer. Over the last two weeks, we have worked through verses 5 through 8, where Christ first corrected two distortions of prayer. He warned against praying for the approval of men, and He warned against meaningless repetition that treats prayer as though God must somehow be persuaded by the abundance of our words.

Now, beginning in verse 9, the direction of the teaching shifts. Christ has shown us how not to pray, and He now begins to show us how we should pray. He says, “Pray, then, in this way.” As we move into these words, one of the questions we will need to consider is whether Christ is giving us only a model or pattern for prayer, or whether He is also giving His people a prayer that may rightly be prayed. That question becomes especially important when we bring in the parallel passage from Luke 11:2–4, which we will return to throughout the next several weeks as we work through the prayer itself.

This morning, our purpose will be to begin with an overview of the prayer as a whole and then move into the opening words of verse 9. We will consider the address, “Our Father who is in heaven,” and then the first petition, “Hallowed be Your name.” As we do, we will begin to see not only the structure Christ gives to prayer, but the priorities that are meant to shape the prayers of His people. With all of this in mind and your Bibles open to Matthew 6 I would ask that you....

Text

Please stand in reverence for the reading of God’s holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete and certain Word:

Matthew 6:5–15 LSB

“And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for 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 into your inner room, and when you have shut your 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 also have forgiven our debtors. ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. 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.

Our most Holy Father, we thank You for Your Word, we are grateful for the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ that does not leave us without direction or instruction. As we come under the teaching of Your Word here today we ask that Your Holy Spirit would guide, convict and apply these words as a soothing balm to our lives, teaching us the manner in which we should come into Your presence. This access 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.

Overview - The Lord’s Prayer

Before we begin working through the individual words and petitions of this prayer, it will be helpful for us to step back and consider what Christ has actually given us. We commonly call this the Lord’s Prayer, not because this is a prayer that Christ Himself needed to pray in every respect, but because it is the prayer He gave to His disciples. 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. The prayer gathers together the great concerns that ought to occupy the prayers of God’s people and places those concerns in their proper order.

That brings us to the question we raised in the introduction: Is this simply a model for prayer, or is it also a prayer that Christians should actually pray? The answer, from scripture, is yes. Both the gospels of Matthew and Luke contain the Lord’s prayer. As we study them we see that Matthew’s emphasis is on the manner, seen as we look at the context; Luke’s focus is on the words. Considering both we have good reason to see this as both a pattern that shapes all of our prayers and a prayer that may itself rightly be prayed.

This is not a new or individual conclusion. Thomas Manton approached the question with essentially the same balance. He argued that believers are not absolutely 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 tell His disciples what subjects belonged in prayer; He also placed words into their mouths. Spurgeon likewise regarded the prayer primarily as a model by which our prayers are to be fashioned, while still affirming that it may be prayed sincerely and profitably. His concern was not the use of the words themselves, but the danger of supposing that merely repeating them constitutes true prayer.

While there are differences in which aspect receives greater emphasis, the broader agreement remains that Christ has given His people a pattern that governs the substance, priorities, and spirit of our prayers. Calvin and the Westminster divines emphasize it as a rule for shaping prayer rather than as a fixed form to which believers are bound. Luther, on the other hand, encouraged Christians to use it as a guide for developing their own prayers. Sproul and MacArthur both regularly presented it as a model or a pattern that establishes the priorities of Christian prayer. As you can see, while there has been some variation in how strongly different teachers have stressed its use as a form, there is absolute agreement that the Lord’s Prayer is intended to shape the way Christians pray.

But there is an important caution here, and the placement of this prayer in Matthew 6 will not allow us to miss it. We have just heard Christ warn us against praying in order to be seen by men, and then against meaningless repetition in which the worshiper begins to trust in the abundance of his words. Therefore, merely saying the Lord’s Prayer cannot make our praying righteous just because Christ gave us these words.

So when we say that this is a prayer that may rightly be prayed, we are not saying that the Lord’s Prayer is a formula for gaining the attention of, manipulating, or obligating God to act according to our desires. The Father already knows what we need before we ask Him. It is a prayer that must be prayed with the same faith, understanding, dependence, and sincerity that should characterize every prayer offered to God.

At the same time, when we call it a model, we should not reduce it to a loose collection of suggestions. There is deliberate order here. The prayer begins with God and His concerns before it moves to ours. His name, His kingdom, and His will are placed before our daily provision, forgiveness, and protection. Even when the prayer turns toward our needs, the language remains corporate: our Father, our bread, our debts, our deliverance. Christ is teaching us not merely which words to say, but how the desires of a praying heart ought to be ordered.

And Christ begins that instruction before He gives us a single petition. He first teaches us to whom we are praying: “Our Father who is in heaven.”

The Address

Those words are so familiar that we can move past them almost without thought. When I was growing up and playing sports, these words were prayed by the teams before nearly every game. The truth is that these words contain an extraordinary amount of theology. They tell us something about who God is, who we are in relation to Him, and the access granted to us through Christ.

These words, however, are not for all people. God is absolutely the creator of all, but not all have access to address Him as Father. In the beginning, when Adam and Eve were first created, there was no barrier between them and their Creator. They lived before God without shame and enjoyed truly open fellowship with Him. The fall changed all of that and Genesis 3 tells us that after they sinned, “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Then they hid themselves from the presence of God because now in His presence they were ashamed and afraid.

That movement in the garden—from fellowship to hiding—is one of the clearest pictures Scripture gives us of what sin does to our relationship with God. The problem was not that God had somehow become unwilling to be gracious. The problem was that man had become guilty. Sin had brought alienation, shame, condemnation, and separation. Adam and Eve were driven from the garden, and access to the tree of life was guarded. From that point forward, Scripture continually reminds us that sinful man cannot simply stroll into the presence of a holy God on his own terms.

Yet God’s purpose to dwell with His people did not disappear and we see that clearly in the Exodus. God redeemed Israel from Egypt and brought them to Himself. He commanded the construction of the tabernacle, a remarkable declaration of grace. One that declared that the holy God intended to dwell in the midst of His people. Even then, the very structure of the tabernacle testified that something was terribly wrong. There were boundaries, curtains, priests, and sacrifices. There was a Most Holy Place into which the ordinary Israelite could not enter, and even the high priest entered only according to God’s command and with blood. This teaches us two truths at the same time: God desired to dwell among His people, and yet we as sinful people could not and cannot approach His holiness carelessly or directly. The instructions surrounding the tabernacle were not arbitrary, instead they testified to the seriousness of sin and to our need for a mediator. Someone to stand between sinful man and the most holy God. All of that makes the opening words of this prayer astonishing.

Christ does not teach His disciples to begin, “Distant God,” or even merely, “Almighty Creator.” He says, “Our Father.”

This is why these words are not for all people. The fullness of what Christ teaches in this prayer belongs particularly to those who have been brought into a saving relationship with 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: God is Father to His people through Christ and our adoption in Him. Therefore, we cannot separate the words ‘Our Father’ from the work of the Son.

We do not gain this relationship by simply using these words. We are not God’s children because we have learned the address Him properly. We call Him Father because, through Christ, we have been reconciled and adopted into His family.

Paul writes in Galatians 4:4–6 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, 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!”” The order matters. The Son is sent. Redemption is accomplished. Adoption is granted. Then the adopted child cries, “Father.”

So when Christ teaches us to pray “Our Father,” He is not merely giving us a warmer title for God. He is teaching us to pray from within a relationship that had to be purchased for us. Hebrews reminds us that Christ has entered the truly holy place and because of this we can now draw near. The separation introduced in Eden has been dealt with. The guilt that could only be answered by blood, has been answered and the barrier pictured by the veil has been overcome. Christ has accomplished what the sacrifices and priests could only anticipate and we come to the Father because the Son has brought us near.

A right understanding of why we can approach ensures proper understand of this intimacy. Calling God Father is not a license to approach Him casually, note that Christ immediately adds, “who is in heaven.” There is a maintained in these two expressions: “Our Father” encourages confidence and love, while “who is in heaven” reminds us of God’s greatness and majesty. That balance is important because while we are coming to our Father, we are not approaching an equal. He is our Father who is in heaven. He is near to His children, yet He remains the holy, sovereign, exalted God. His fatherhood gives us confidence; His heavenly majesty gives us reverence.

An emphasis on His majesty while forgetting His fatherly grace can force our prayers can become marked by fear and distance. We begin to approach as though we are still standing outside the veil, uncertain whether we will be received. But if we emphasize His fatherhood while forgetting His holiness and majesty, we can become careless and overly familiar, approaching the living God with little thought for who He is. Christ teaches us to come with reverent confidence.

And notice that He teaches us to say “our” Father. Even in private prayer, Christ reminds us that we do not belong to God in isolation from His people. The prayer that follows continues in the plural: our bread, our debts, our debtors, lead us, deliver us. From the very first word, Christian prayer is shaped by the reality that we have been brought into a family. The Father to whom I pray is also the Father of every believer who has been united to Christ.

Having taught us to whom we come, Christ now teaches us what should first occupy the heart of the child who comes before the Father:

“Hallowed be Your name.”

The First Petition

Notice that Christ does not begin with our daily needs, our troubles, our forgiveness, or even our protection from temptation. All of those things will have their proper place in the prayer, but they do not come first. The first request Christ places upon the lips of His disciples concerns God Himself: “Hallowed be Your name.” That ordering is intentional. Before we ask God to provide for us, forgive us, or protect us, Christ teaches us to desire that God be honored as God.

The word translated “hallowed” is a form of the Greek verb commonly translated sanctify or set apart as holy. This is not a place where we are asking God to become more holy than He already is. God is perfectly and eternally holy. This is a prayer that God would cause His name to be regarded, treated, acknowledged, and 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.

In Scripture, the name of God represents who He is as He has revealed Himself to us. When God proclaimed His name before Moses in Exodus 34, He did not merely pronounce a title. He declared His character—His mercy, grace, patience, covenant love, faithfulness, justice, and holiness. So when we pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” we are praying that God would be known and honored for who He truly is which helps us understand the breadth of this petition. We are praying that God would be rightly known, rightly worshiped, and that His character would be honored in the world, in His church, in our homes, and in our own lives. We are asking that what is true of God in Himself would be recognized and revered among His creatures.

And once again, the placement of this petition matters. Christ could have begun with “Give us this day our daily bread,” and we would certainly understand that request. We are needy creatures. We depend upon God for every breath and every provision. But Christ deliberately places God’s name before our bread. He places God’s glory before our comfort. He teaches us that the first concern of prayer is not, What do I need God to do for me? but, Is God being honored as He ought to be?

Which takes us back into the larger movement of the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:20, Christ told His hearers that unless their righteousness surpassed that of the scribes and Pharisees, they would not enter the kingdom of heaven. From that point forward, Jesus has continually shown us that the righteousness of His kingdom cannot be reduced to outward religious performance. He presses into the heart—our anger, our lust, our truthfulness, our response to wrong, our love for enemies, our giving, and now our praying.

Then in Matthew 5:48, Christ gives us the standard: “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The Father Himself remains the measure. His character defines the righteousness required of His people. Now we arrive at the first petition of the prayer, and what does Christ teach us to ask? That the Father’s name would be hallowed.

God, whose perfection is the standard of kingdom righteousness, is the One whose name is to be held holy above everything else. This prevents us from trying to disconnect our prayers from the life that we live. We cannot sincerely pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” while remaining unconcerned with whether His name is honored in our conduct.

When we pray that God’s name would be hallowed, we are placing ourselves beneath the request. We are asking that His name would be hallowed in us—in our thinking, our words, our worship, our priorities, our relationships, and even our 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. Prayer is a preaching to ourselves in God’s hearing; we speak to God to warn ourselves - not for His information, but for our edification.

The fact that this is a petition reminds us that we cannot accomplish this by our own strength. We are asking God to do something that we cannot produce independently of His grace. We are asking Him to make Himself known, to magnify His glory, and to work within His people so that we increasingly recognize Him, love Him, worship Him, and live in a manner worthy of His name.

Recall the warning of the first verse in this chapter: ‘Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.’ The problem was glory directed toward the wrong person. The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer turns that completely around. Not my name. Not my reputation. Not whether others think I pray well or appear particularly devoted. ‘Hallowed be Your name.’

That is a radical reordering of the heart that strikes directly at our motives. It asks whether the glory of God is genuinely the governing desire of our entire lives, not merely during prayer. If I pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” and then live the remainder of the day seeking primarily to advance my own name, my own comfort, my own reputation, or my own desires, there is a contradiction between the prayer on my lips and the direction of my life.

This does not mean that the Christian achieves perfect consistency. We do not. But it does mean that Christ is teaching us what our chief desire ought to be and, at the same time, teaching us to ask the Father to form that desire within us. If Matthew 5:48 sets before us the perfection of the Father, then “Hallowed be Your name” reveals again how far short we fall of that standard. Which one of us can honestly say that the glory of God has always been the highest concern of our heart? We cannot

And that realization is important because we must not turn the Lord’s Prayer into another ladder by which we attempt to climb into God’s favor. We have already seen in the address that we come to God as Father only because Christ has brought us near. The same truth remains necessary as we enter the petitions. We do not perfectly hallow the Father’s name and thereby earn the right to become His children. We come as children through Christ, and as children we ask our Father to increasingly make His name holy in our hearts and lives.

There is also a deeply Christ-centered dimension to this petition. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who perfectly hallowed the Father’s name. His entire life was ordered toward the Father’s glory. In John 17:4, as He approached the cross, Jesus says “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, His devotion was undivided and His obedience was perfect. This first petition exposes the divided desires of our hearts and directs us again toward the sufficiency of Christ.

We pray “Hallowed be Your name” as those who are united to the One who perfectly honored the Father’s name. We ask the Father, through His Spirit, to conform us to His Son so that what was perfectly true of Christ becomes increasingly evident in us. Everything that follows must ultimately serve this end. We will pray for His kingdom to come and His will to be done because His name is worthy of honor. We will ask for daily bread so that we may live before Him. We will seek forgiveness because our sin dishonors Him. We will ask for protection from temptation because we desire to live in a way that reflects His holiness.

God’s glory becomes the governing concern beneath every other request. Not because the Father is unconcerned with our needs. Verse 8 has already assured us that He knows them before we ask. Rather, because the child who knows the Father learns increasingly to desire what the Son perfectly desired: that above everything else, the Father would be glorified.

And when we see the standard Christ has set before us—the surpassing righteousness of Matthew 5:20 and the perfection of the Father in Matthew 5:48—we cannot leave this petition congratulating ourselves because we now understand what hallowed means. The question becomes much more personal: Is this truly the desire of my heart?

When we see how imperfectly that desire exists within us, we are driven again to Christ. We come to the Father through His righteousness, not ours. And having been brought near through the Son, we ask our Father to continue His work within us so that His name is increasingly honored in the lives He has redeemed. The first petition therefore does not merely tell us what words belong at the beginning of prayer; it exposes what ought to stand at the center of the Christian life.

From this one verse we are left with a simple but searching truth: Christian prayer begins with God because the Christian life itself is meant to be lived for God. Through Christ we have been brought near enough to say “Our Father,” and having brought us near, Christ teaches us that the first desire of the child before the Father is not my name, my kingdom, my will, or even first my needs, but “Hallowed be Your name.

Closing Prayer

Our Father who is in heaven, we thank You that through the work of Christ we have been brought near and may come before You as Your children. We confess that our hearts are often divided and that Your glory is not always our highest concern. Forgive us for the ways we seek our own name, our own comfort, and our own desires above Yours.

By Your Spirit, conform us more fully to Christ, whose devotion to You was perfect and whose obedience was complete. Teach us to come with reverence and confidence, resting not in our own righteousness but in His. Cause Your name to be hallowed in our thoughts, our words, our worship, our homes, and our lives. May all that we ask and all that we do be ordered toward Your glory. Continue Your gracious work in us so that the lives You have redeemed increasingly reflect the holiness of the Father we are privileged to call our own.

We ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.