Scripture: Luke 11:1-4 & Matthew 6:9-13
Listen Link: Listen link: www.lcepc.org then look for “sermons” tab.
Since we have been talking about prayer, I have decided to start an eight-week series on the Lord’s Prayer to explore its depths and meaning. Though it’s commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, I like to call it the Christian’s prayer because it is the one that Jesus our Lord taught us to pray. I think it’s called the Lord’s Prayer because he came up with it. But he gave it to us for our use. It is a model of Christian prayer. It is the Christian’s Prayer. Many congregations pray this simple prayer pretty much every Sunday, and most all of us know it by heart even if we don’t use it regularly. But do we really think about what we are praying as we recite the words?
We have this prayer because the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. We ought to start today by wondering why the disciples even asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They were raised in a very religious environment. They had already learned all kinds of prayers. A very common one was the Shema a prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one", found in Deuteronomy 6:4. Observant Jews consider the Shema to be the most important part of the prayer service in Judaism, and its twice-daily recitation as a religious commandment. It is traditional for Jews to say the Shema as their last words, and for parents to teach their children to say it before they go to sleep at night.
Children learned how to pray this prayer very early in life. Every time the Hebrew people attended synagogue or temple worship there were plenty of prayers being prayed. Their book of Psalms contains hundreds of prayers and many of them were memorized as part of the children’s religious education. Most Hebrew children didn’t have access to printed versions of their Holy Scriptures except at the synagogue. Those hand copied scrolls were precious and carefully guarded by the rabbis. In that situation, the word for word recitation was important. They were preserving the Scripture. They had to memorize the Word of God and their prayers.
So, immersed in such a prayerful culture, we may well ask, why did the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray? What did they see in Jesus’ prayer life that was different from all the prayers they had already learned? But it wasn’t really just Jesus. John the Baptist also taught his disciples how to pray as we learn from the disciples’ request, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” The Jewish people, immersed in prayer from childhood, understood that there is more to prayer than simple repetition of learned lines.
And since Jesus honored the request, he placed his authoritative seal on the importance of prayer. Jesus prayed. His disciples wanted to learn how to do likewise and Jesus wanted to teach them. In this we see how important it is to pray and that prayer doesn’t come naturally but must be learned and can be learned. And what we learn is so much more than just memorized lines. In addition, anything that can be learned can be practiced for the sake of improvement and development. Therefore, any disciple of Christ, that is, any serious believer, ought to be keenly interested in learning how to pray and will never be satisfied with an uninstructed and or childish prayer life.
So, in Jesus, and even in John the Baptist for that matter, the disciples must have seen an earnestness of discipline, a seriousness of commitment and a maturity of passion that valued prayer very highly. They must have seen that truly praying must be something deeper and richer than merely reciting the prayers one memorized as a child. Also, Jesus’ disciples must have seen that Jesus’ prayers were often answered. Miracles happened around him. The disciples knew it was God’s power at work, doing what Jesus asked God to do. (Of course, we know Jesus is God, but the disciples didn’t know that this early in his ministry.)
They also witnessed Jesus’ confidence that he was doing the work of God and so they knew he must have heard from God. They surmised that this is the result of prayer. They knew the stories in their own history about how God spoke face to face with people such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and most of the judges and prophets whose stories are in the Old Testament. Every serious believer would want to have that same kind of relationship with God in his or her prayer life. If you have never yet had that kind of prayer life, do not conclude that you cannot! God wants that kind of relationship with you. He would not make it unattainable for you. You just have to believe that God wants that for you and then pursue it. Seek God’s face. He promised, that if we seek Him, we will find Him.
But then why did Jesus give them words to say when he taught the Christian’s prayer? What Jesus gave them is a model prayer or a pattern for how we should pray. It is not to be taken merely as dictation for what we should pray. We know it is not the only prayer worth praying because the Bible is filled with other inspired prayers that look very different from this one. Also, we pray many prayers to God in our own words and do so frequently.
But on Sundays, for some reason, this model prayer is often incorporated into regular worship services, and it is cherished word for word by many, as if the exact wording were set in stone, never to be tampered with. That is why it is most often still recited in the old words of the King James English, saying things like “thy Kingdom come, and thy will be done.” It is a good prayer to memorize. But we must remember that the memorized lines are not the prayer. The lines are a framework for prayer. Prayer is what we do with those lines and how those lines shape our prayers and change our hearts. The thoughts behind the lines are what counts, not the exact wording. In fact, since we are English speakers and do not know Aramaic, we never can pray the words exactly as Jesus spoke them. Long ago, the King James Version of the Christians prayer was the innovation, before that it had been in Latin and only the Catholic priests spoke it. Before that it was in Greek.
We are certainly not still praying this prayer exactly the way Jesus taught it, simply because it has been translated into English. Ands just as it was a good idea for the Reformers to translate the Prayer from Greek to the language of the people such as German or Italian and yes, King James English, so it remains a good idea for us to learn the prayer in language that is meaningful to us.
As we go along in this series, what we should really learn is that God never required that the prayer he taught us was to be a word for word recitation of His original dictation. It is best seen as a pattern, or as an outline into which we can fit all our other prayers. It is as if each line is a heading, and all our adoration, confession, thanksgiving and petitions are connected to one point or another in this model prayer that Jesus upheld as a typical example of the way he wants his disciples to pray.
If we accept that, then we should also get comfortable with the idea that the Christian’s prayer, modeled after the way Jesus taught us doesn’t have to be repeated word for word in order to be a proper prayer. We should see the Christian’s prayer as a model possessing an infinite flexibility, as long as the parameters of the model are fulfilled.
So, let’s begin to look at the words in this famous prayer and see for ourselves the best way for us moderns to pray according to this pattern. Today we are only going to get as far as “Our Father who lives in Heaven.” As we begin prayer according to the pattern Jesus taught us, the very first thing we see is the word “our.” That is a plural pronoun. This speaks of community and since we are addressing “our” Father it speaks of family. The Lord Jesus chose his words carefully. He wants us to be ever mindful that our prayers are never for ourselves alone.
Whatever happens in my life has an impact on the community in which I live and serve. Whatever happens in your life has an impact on the community in which you live and serve. We are all connected. What happens to any one of us has an impact on the whole body of Christ. As Scripture says in 1 Cor. 12:26, “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part gets the glory, all the parts celebrate with it.” Therefore, whenever I pray, I should be embracing my fellows Christians as having some concern about how my life and witness bring honor and glory to the Lord and to his body. We will see the plural pronouns throughout the Christian’s prayer keeping us mindful of our fellowship. This element promotes unity in our fellowship. We are not divided, with me praying to my God and you praying to yours. We are both praying to “our father.” We are brothers and sisters of one family and our father will respond to our individual prayers with His eye on what is good for the whole too. We really ought to be mindful of that.
Though I may pray in private, all my prayers should keep me connected to the body so that I am never praying for just myself but am always praying for us. Even when a particular petition or thanksgiving may concern myself specifically, I can be mindful that how God answers me or deals with me will be with His concern for the whole body to be healthy and strong. We pray to “our” Father.
Next, we need to pay attention to the fact that this God with whom we speak, sees himself as our Father! This all powerful creator of the universe, who formed us out of the dust of the earth and keeps us alive from moment to moment with the gracious breath of His life giving spirit, loves us, with the love of a father, the very best fatherly love we could ever imagine.
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. For them, the gods were not to be trusted. But they had to be acknowledged. Prayers and sacrifices were offered as manipulation of power. The humans were fearfully protecting themselves from harm or seeking blessings from superior beings who may or may not care about the earthlings.
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 did not know Him as He wanted to be known, through a "personal relationship" that is like a family, with the child loved by the Father. It also hints at our dependence upon God who takes care of us. He is Father. We are his dependent children.
As a loving Father, God desires a personal relationship with His children and, like our earthly fathers God enjoys it best when His children get along well with each other. When Jesus began with the words, "Our Father," He extended an offer of both a vertical relationship to our heavenly God who really loves us like the very best kind of Father, and a horizontal relationship through a community of people.
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 was teaching His disciples that his followers become family. We are not only children with individual relationships. We have a relationship with our heavenly Father. But we also have siblings!
In John 17:20-21, Jesus prayed that we would be a close-knit family. He said “I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.” Do you consider yourself to be in Him or one with him? Good. Now, how deeply do you also sense your being one with you brothers and sisters in Christ?
So, we pray to Our Father. We pray to our Father. We pray to “Our Father which art in heaven.” But that’s the King James English. For modern prayer warriors we may as well say what it means, “Our Father, who lives in Heaven.” It means a lot to remember that our father rules from Heaven. Heaven is above all and outside of time. Therefore, God has the vantage point above the tapestry of our lives. He sits at the loom, weaving us into his plans. Our life is but a thread. Anyone who works with thread knows that sometimes it twists itself into tangles and knots. It may be beyond our comprehension how this happens, and against our will, but we will finish the work only if we are patient to untwist and untangle things until the work may resume. In the same way only better, God our heavenly Father is patient with us when we get outside his will. We may twist and turn against him and get our self all tangled in webs of deceit. But He will patiently remain at the loom and graciously and gently untangle everything so that the great work may go on. We have to understand that as we pray.
This statement, "in heaven," leaves no doubt as to who Jesus is addressing. There are many earthly fathers, so, Jesus adds God's address, "in heaven," to eliminate any confusion. God is out of this world. He is not like us. He is above us. In appealing to Him, we are appealing to a Being beyond us. Psalm 73:25-26 says, "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The Psalmist helps us to see an important difference between us and God. Our hearts, our flesh will fail. As dependable as we think we may be, there is a limit to our abilities, our strength and our understanding. When God is our portion, our food, our strength and our shield, he cannot fail us because He is not made of the same, weak stuff that we are. While it is true that we are made in His image, we are only an imitation. He is the real deal, and He lives in the real world, which is heaven.
Does that surprise you? You probably thought that you were in the real world now. In truth, we are living in a less than real world. The best is yet to come. Paul says it this way. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12) Paul also assures us that, "our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (Rom. 8:18) It's as though we experience life under water with all of its visual distortions. My, how much more clearly we see when we come to the surface and that distortion is removed! Heaven is more clear and real than that.
After all, wouldn't it just make sense that God, coming from a more real place than we now know, would Himself be the most real of all? Jesus is teaching us to talk with the most real and Holy God even though we are only shadows of what we were intended to be because of our sin. Others may fail you, but He will not. He is not as you and I. He is not capricious as the mythical Greek and Roman gods were reported to be. He is the One True God, your Father, who is "in heaven." To think that Jesus gave up His life in that real world to walk among the shadows with us. Yet, His Father is still there and Jesus is teaching us to talk with and appeal to Him.
So, as we Christians pray, may the Holy Spirit help us keep in mind that when we pray together, to our father God who lives in Heaven, then we have begun to pray as Jesus taught us to pray. We have begun to pray well. We can have confidence that the almighty God, who is our Heavenly Father, will hear and answer.
Listen Link: Listen link: www.lcepc.org then look for “sermons” tab.
Since we have been talking about prayer, I have decided to start an eight-week series on the Lord’s Prayer to explore its depths and meaning. Though it’s commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, I like to call it the Christian’s prayer because it is the one that Jesus our Lord taught us to pray. I think it’s called the Lord’s Prayer because he came up with it. But he gave it to us for our use. It is a model of Christian prayer. It is the Christian’s Prayer. Many congregations pray this simple prayer pretty much every Sunday, and most all of us know it by heart even if we don’t use it regularly. But do we really think about what we are praying as we recite the words?
We have this prayer because the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. We ought to start today by wondering why the disciples even asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They were raised in a very religious environment. They had already learned all kinds of prayers. A very common one was the Shema a prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one", found in Deuteronomy 6:4. Observant Jews consider the Shema to be the most important part of the prayer service in Judaism, and its twice-daily recitation as a religious commandment. It is traditional for Jews to say the Shema as their last words, and for parents to teach their children to say it before they go to sleep at night.
Children learned how to pray this prayer very early in life. Every time the Hebrew people attended synagogue or temple worship there were plenty of prayers being prayed. Their book of Psalms contains hundreds of prayers and many of them were memorized as part of the children’s religious education. Most Hebrew children didn’t have access to printed versions of their Holy Scriptures except at the synagogue. Those hand copied scrolls were precious and carefully guarded by the rabbis. In that situation, the word for word recitation was important. They were preserving the Scripture. They had to memorize the Word of God and their prayers.
So, immersed in such a prayerful culture, we may well ask, why did the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray? What did they see in Jesus’ prayer life that was different from all the prayers they had already learned? But it wasn’t really just Jesus. John the Baptist also taught his disciples how to pray as we learn from the disciples’ request, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” The Jewish people, immersed in prayer from childhood, understood that there is more to prayer than simple repetition of learned lines.
And since Jesus honored the request, he placed his authoritative seal on the importance of prayer. Jesus prayed. His disciples wanted to learn how to do likewise and Jesus wanted to teach them. In this we see how important it is to pray and that prayer doesn’t come naturally but must be learned and can be learned. And what we learn is so much more than just memorized lines. In addition, anything that can be learned can be practiced for the sake of improvement and development. Therefore, any disciple of Christ, that is, any serious believer, ought to be keenly interested in learning how to pray and will never be satisfied with an uninstructed and or childish prayer life.
So, in Jesus, and even in John the Baptist for that matter, the disciples must have seen an earnestness of discipline, a seriousness of commitment and a maturity of passion that valued prayer very highly. They must have seen that truly praying must be something deeper and richer than merely reciting the prayers one memorized as a child. Also, Jesus’ disciples must have seen that Jesus’ prayers were often answered. Miracles happened around him. The disciples knew it was God’s power at work, doing what Jesus asked God to do. (Of course, we know Jesus is God, but the disciples didn’t know that this early in his ministry.)
They also witnessed Jesus’ confidence that he was doing the work of God and so they knew he must have heard from God. They surmised that this is the result of prayer. They knew the stories in their own history about how God spoke face to face with people such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and most of the judges and prophets whose stories are in the Old Testament. Every serious believer would want to have that same kind of relationship with God in his or her prayer life. If you have never yet had that kind of prayer life, do not conclude that you cannot! God wants that kind of relationship with you. He would not make it unattainable for you. You just have to believe that God wants that for you and then pursue it. Seek God’s face. He promised, that if we seek Him, we will find Him.
But then why did Jesus give them words to say when he taught the Christian’s prayer? What Jesus gave them is a model prayer or a pattern for how we should pray. It is not to be taken merely as dictation for what we should pray. We know it is not the only prayer worth praying because the Bible is filled with other inspired prayers that look very different from this one. Also, we pray many prayers to God in our own words and do so frequently.
But on Sundays, for some reason, this model prayer is often incorporated into regular worship services, and it is cherished word for word by many, as if the exact wording were set in stone, never to be tampered with. That is why it is most often still recited in the old words of the King James English, saying things like “thy Kingdom come, and thy will be done.” It is a good prayer to memorize. But we must remember that the memorized lines are not the prayer. The lines are a framework for prayer. Prayer is what we do with those lines and how those lines shape our prayers and change our hearts. The thoughts behind the lines are what counts, not the exact wording. In fact, since we are English speakers and do not know Aramaic, we never can pray the words exactly as Jesus spoke them. Long ago, the King James Version of the Christians prayer was the innovation, before that it had been in Latin and only the Catholic priests spoke it. Before that it was in Greek.
We are certainly not still praying this prayer exactly the way Jesus taught it, simply because it has been translated into English. Ands just as it was a good idea for the Reformers to translate the Prayer from Greek to the language of the people such as German or Italian and yes, King James English, so it remains a good idea for us to learn the prayer in language that is meaningful to us.
As we go along in this series, what we should really learn is that God never required that the prayer he taught us was to be a word for word recitation of His original dictation. It is best seen as a pattern, or as an outline into which we can fit all our other prayers. It is as if each line is a heading, and all our adoration, confession, thanksgiving and petitions are connected to one point or another in this model prayer that Jesus upheld as a typical example of the way he wants his disciples to pray.
If we accept that, then we should also get comfortable with the idea that the Christian’s prayer, modeled after the way Jesus taught us doesn’t have to be repeated word for word in order to be a proper prayer. We should see the Christian’s prayer as a model possessing an infinite flexibility, as long as the parameters of the model are fulfilled.
So, let’s begin to look at the words in this famous prayer and see for ourselves the best way for us moderns to pray according to this pattern. Today we are only going to get as far as “Our Father who lives in Heaven.” As we begin prayer according to the pattern Jesus taught us, the very first thing we see is the word “our.” That is a plural pronoun. This speaks of community and since we are addressing “our” Father it speaks of family. The Lord Jesus chose his words carefully. He wants us to be ever mindful that our prayers are never for ourselves alone.
Whatever happens in my life has an impact on the community in which I live and serve. Whatever happens in your life has an impact on the community in which you live and serve. We are all connected. What happens to any one of us has an impact on the whole body of Christ. As Scripture says in 1 Cor. 12:26, “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part gets the glory, all the parts celebrate with it.” Therefore, whenever I pray, I should be embracing my fellows Christians as having some concern about how my life and witness bring honor and glory to the Lord and to his body. We will see the plural pronouns throughout the Christian’s prayer keeping us mindful of our fellowship. This element promotes unity in our fellowship. We are not divided, with me praying to my God and you praying to yours. We are both praying to “our father.” We are brothers and sisters of one family and our father will respond to our individual prayers with His eye on what is good for the whole too. We really ought to be mindful of that.
Though I may pray in private, all my prayers should keep me connected to the body so that I am never praying for just myself but am always praying for us. Even when a particular petition or thanksgiving may concern myself specifically, I can be mindful that how God answers me or deals with me will be with His concern for the whole body to be healthy and strong. We pray to “our” Father.
Next, we need to pay attention to the fact that this God with whom we speak, sees himself as our Father! This all powerful creator of the universe, who formed us out of the dust of the earth and keeps us alive from moment to moment with the gracious breath of His life giving spirit, loves us, with the love of a father, the very best fatherly love we could ever imagine.
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. For them, the gods were not to be trusted. But they had to be acknowledged. Prayers and sacrifices were offered as manipulation of power. The humans were fearfully protecting themselves from harm or seeking blessings from superior beings who may or may not care about the earthlings.
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 did not know Him as He wanted to be known, through a "personal relationship" that is like a family, with the child loved by the Father. It also hints at our dependence upon God who takes care of us. He is Father. We are his dependent children.
As a loving Father, God desires a personal relationship with His children and, like our earthly fathers God enjoys it best when His children get along well with each other. When Jesus began with the words, "Our Father," He extended an offer of both a vertical relationship to our heavenly God who really loves us like the very best kind of Father, and a horizontal relationship through a community of people.
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 was teaching His disciples that his followers become family. We are not only children with individual relationships. We have a relationship with our heavenly Father. But we also have siblings!
In John 17:20-21, Jesus prayed that we would be a close-knit family. He said “I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.” Do you consider yourself to be in Him or one with him? Good. Now, how deeply do you also sense your being one with you brothers and sisters in Christ?
So, we pray to Our Father. We pray to our Father. We pray to “Our Father which art in heaven.” But that’s the King James English. For modern prayer warriors we may as well say what it means, “Our Father, who lives in Heaven.” It means a lot to remember that our father rules from Heaven. Heaven is above all and outside of time. Therefore, God has the vantage point above the tapestry of our lives. He sits at the loom, weaving us into his plans. Our life is but a thread. Anyone who works with thread knows that sometimes it twists itself into tangles and knots. It may be beyond our comprehension how this happens, and against our will, but we will finish the work only if we are patient to untwist and untangle things until the work may resume. In the same way only better, God our heavenly Father is patient with us when we get outside his will. We may twist and turn against him and get our self all tangled in webs of deceit. But He will patiently remain at the loom and graciously and gently untangle everything so that the great work may go on. We have to understand that as we pray.
This statement, "in heaven," leaves no doubt as to who Jesus is addressing. There are many earthly fathers, so, Jesus adds God's address, "in heaven," to eliminate any confusion. God is out of this world. He is not like us. He is above us. In appealing to Him, we are appealing to a Being beyond us. Psalm 73:25-26 says, "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The Psalmist helps us to see an important difference between us and God. Our hearts, our flesh will fail. As dependable as we think we may be, there is a limit to our abilities, our strength and our understanding. When God is our portion, our food, our strength and our shield, he cannot fail us because He is not made of the same, weak stuff that we are. While it is true that we are made in His image, we are only an imitation. He is the real deal, and He lives in the real world, which is heaven.
Does that surprise you? You probably thought that you were in the real world now. In truth, we are living in a less than real world. The best is yet to come. Paul says it this way. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12) Paul also assures us that, "our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (Rom. 8:18) It's as though we experience life under water with all of its visual distortions. My, how much more clearly we see when we come to the surface and that distortion is removed! Heaven is more clear and real than that.
After all, wouldn't it just make sense that God, coming from a more real place than we now know, would Himself be the most real of all? Jesus is teaching us to talk with the most real and Holy God even though we are only shadows of what we were intended to be because of our sin. Others may fail you, but He will not. He is not as you and I. He is not capricious as the mythical Greek and Roman gods were reported to be. He is the One True God, your Father, who is "in heaven." To think that Jesus gave up His life in that real world to walk among the shadows with us. Yet, His Father is still there and Jesus is teaching us to talk with and appeal to Him.
So, as we Christians pray, may the Holy Spirit help us keep in mind that when we pray together, to our father God who lives in Heaven, then we have begun to pray as Jesus taught us to pray. We have begun to pray well. We can have confidence that the almighty God, who is our Heavenly Father, will hear and answer.
Comments
Post a Comment