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92. "Our Father"


Matthew 6:9, Luke 11:2, 1 John 3:1-3
Key Verse: "Our Father"

When His parents, Mary and Joseph, found twelve year old Jesus in the Temple, after three days of searching, Jesus responded to Mary's rebuke by saying, "Why were you searching for me?  Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"  (Luke 2:49) Now, Jesus is using inclusive language to address His Father.  He does not teach His disciples to open their prayer with, "Jesus' Father," or "Father God," or, "My Father," but rather, Jesus teaches His disciples to use an intimate, but corporate term, "Our Father."  Jesus is beginning to teach His disciples that they too can be a part of the family.  We are not only children with individual relationships.  We have a relationship with our heavenly Father, but we also have siblings.

In the religious, idolatrous cultures of Jesus' day, such as that of the Greeks and Romans, the gods were capricious, powerful characters, thought to be endowed with human characteristics.  Mortals saw themselves as subjects of these beings who seemed to be in constant need of appeasement.

Even many religious Jews misunderstood the character of the one true God.  Many of the 603 laws that had come about since the time of the exile were the result of the Jews, under their own strength of will, trying to prevent God from becoming angry with them again. They saw God more from a pagan point of view. They did not know Him as He wanted to be known, through "relationship."

When Jesus begins this prayer with the words, "Our Father," He is extending the offer of both a horizontal relationship through a community of people, and a vertical relationship to our heavenly Father.

As a loving Father, God desires a personal relationship with His children and, like our earthly fathers God enjoys it best when we are having a good relationship with each other.
He is the Father that we can relate to.  He is protector and guide.  When we are His true children, He will discipline.  (Hebrews 12:5-12)  He is a Father whose love will not fail.  What a blessing to know that we belong to Him.  "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!"  (1 John 1:1)

Hymn:  "Children of the Heavenly Father"
& "Children of God" by Casting Crowns 

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