The Lord’s Prayer

Last week, we learned from Jesus how not to pray. This week, he’s going to teach us how to pray.

We come to that section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer. It is actually misnamed. This is not the Lord’s Prayer as much as it is the Disciples’ Prayer. The true Lord’s Prayer—the great high priestly prayer that Jesus prayed himself—is found in John 17.

This prayer is a model prayer that Jesus gave his disciples to show them how to pray. Notice that he says in verse 9: ”This, then, is how you should pray…”, not “This, then, is what you should pray…”

It’s ironic that many people believe that by simply reciting the words of this prayer—by saying the “Our Father”—they are really praying. Jesus has just said in v.7 that when we pray we should not mindlessly babble empty words as though we are incanting some magic formula. We will not be heard because of our words, but because of the attitude of our hearts.

Jesus gave us this prayer to serve as a kind of blueprint for our prayers. The areas he deals with in the Lord’s Prayer are the kind of things we should be praying about in our prayers. So let’s look at them and see what they are.

In your bulletin, you will find an insert on which is written the Lord’s Prayer. I’d like you to take it out and look at it. You will see that the prayer can be divided into three sections: the Salutation, a section that deals with God’s Glory, in which there are three petitions; and a section that deals with our Good, in which there are also three petitions.

Now you may be wondering, as you look at your Bible, where the last part of the Lord’s Prayer has disappeared to—the part that says “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen.” That doxology appears in the KJV, but it does not appear in the newer BIble versions. Why not?

The KJV was translated in 1611. Since that time, many early manuscripts of the NT have been discovered. And of those early manuscripts, none prior to about the year 150 AD has this doxology in it.

Evidently some well-meaning scribe included the doxology sometime in the second half of the second century; it was not in the original. In other words, Jesus did not say those words at the end of the Lord’s Prayer. The Doxology is very nice—it makes for a nice ending to the prayer—and it is certainly theologically correct, but it isn’t part of the Scriptures as originally written.

Now let’s look at the various parts of this prayer in order to see how we should pray.

1. Salutation

Jesus says we should address God as “Our Father in heaven”. That was a revolutionary concept in his day. The Jews in Jesus’ day never referred to God as their father.

They had many names for God. One of them was so sacred that they would never even dare to utter it. The Jews revered God, but they never thought Him as their father. That was too intimate. That was too familiar for them.

But Jesus said that God is our Father. In fact, Jesus even called God “Abba” in his prayers. “Abba” is Aramaic for “Daddy”. There is no record anywhere in history of anyone calling God “Daddy” until Jesus did it.

Calling God our Father infers that we are his children, that we belong to his family. But the Bible does not teach the universal fatherhood of God. You can only say that God is your father when you’ve place your trust in Jesus as your Savior. The Bible says “Yet to all who received him, (that is, Jesus) to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”

And Jesus said “Our Father…” In fact, if you look at the pronouns in this prayer, you’ll find that they are all plural. It’s all “us” and “we”, not “my” and “me”.

The reason for that is that Jesus wants us to remember that we are part of a family, we are part of a larger community of faith. We have brothers and sisters in Christ. When we come to God in prayer, we don’t come in isolation. And we should keep that in mind in the way we do our praying.

You cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer and even once say “I”.

You cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer and even once say “my”.

Nor can you pray the Lord’s Prayer and not pray for one another.

And when you ask for daily bread, you must include your brother.

For others are included in each and every plea;

From the beginning to the end of it, it doesn’t once say “Me”.

There is one final thing we need to remember when we address God in our prayers. We need to remember that our Father is in heaven.

We do our praying from an earthly perspective, but we pray to a Father whose perspective is heavenly. He is above us. He has a better vantage point. He knows all things. He sees the end from the beginning.

Our problems can sometimes loom so large that they seem overwhelm us. They are all that we can see. But God sees our lives and our needs from heaven; He sees the whole picture. Never forget that God is in heaven when you pray.

Now let’s move on to the next section of this prayer. The next section contains three petitions for God’s glory. The final section contains three petitions for our needs, or for our good. Why are they in that order?

Because Jesus is teaching us that the first thing we ought to be doing in prayer is seeking God’s glory, not seeking the meeting of our own needs. In fact, as human beings, we can never truly have our own needs met unless God is getting the glory in our lives.

That’s because, as human beings, we have been created to bring glory to God. And if we are not being instruments of God’s glory—if we are not bringing glory to God in the way that we live—then we will never be truly happy or fulfilled, because we won’t be carrying out the function for which we were designed.

That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray first for God’s glory. If our prayers don’t start here, they are starting in the wrong place. But what does praying for God’s glory involve? Three things: His name; His kingdom; and His will.

The first petition is “hallowed be your name”. What does the word “hallow” mean?

When something is hallowed, it means that it is made holy. Holy is the noun, hallowed is the verb.

Now we know that God is holy. It is part of his very nature. He is separate from us, above us, greater than us. He is the only uncreated being in the universe. He is the Creator of all that exists.

So that means that even though God is our Father, we cannot talk to him as though he were just some ordinary person. We cannot be familiar or casual in our relationship with Him. We must reverence Him and worship him because He is holy.

And when we pray “Hallowed be your name” we’re not praying that God would become holy; He already is. We’re praying that he would be treated as holy by others and by ourselves. We’re praying that people would recognize God for who He really is.

The second petition is “your kingdom come”. Back in the nineteenth century, the British Empire was at its height. England had colonies from Australia and the Far East through India and Asia and Africa and South America and the Caribbean and the South Pacific. The boast of England was that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”.

During those days of colonial grandeur, England would send out governors and administrators to organize those far-flung colonies. Their job was to bring those lands under the rule of the British Crown—to make sure that justice was administered and British laws were observed.

Those colonial administrators were agents of the United Kingdom and their responsibility was to see that the kingdom extended to those lands.

Now in a similar way, if we are disciples of Jesus Christ, we are agents of the kingdom of God. Our priority—our responsibility—is to do all in our power to see that God’s kingdom extends to the world in which we live.

We should want God’s sovereignty to become a reality where we live. Like ripples on a pond, his rule begins in our lives and spreads outward.

When you pray “Your kingdom come”, you’re saying “God, I want you to be the king of my life. I want you to rule in my family, in my home. I want you to be the ruler of my relationships, my business, my time, my money. And furthermore, I want your kingdom to spread to my neighbors, to my community, to the place where I work or go to school. I want your kingship to be recognized there.”

One of the components of the mission statement of our church is that Christ’s kingdom will extend throughout the Lehigh Valley and around the world. That is what we are committed to and what we’re praying for when we pray “your kingdom come”.

The third petition is “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Let’s go back to the British Empire for a moment. It was possible, in the midst of the nineteenth century, for you to walk into a British government office in New Delhi, India in the middle of the afternoon and think that you were in an office in downtown London.

At 3:30 p.m. sharp, everyone stopped what they were doing to have tea, which they drank out of fine china cups. Queen Victoria’s picture was on the wall, and out the window you could see some men playing cricket on a nearby lawn. The Union Jack flew from the flagpole beside the building, and for all intents and purposes, you were in England, even though England was 7,000 miles away.

The will of Queen Victoria was being done in India as it was in England.

When we pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, we’re praying that God’s way of doing things would become the practice here on earth. Someone has said “The purpose of prayer is not to get our will done in heaven, but to get God’s will done on earth.”

Jesus once said “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me.” For him, the will of God was like meat and drink. In Gethsemane, when Jesus, because of his humanity, recoiled from the thought of going to the cross, he prayed “Not my will but yours be done.”

When you pray, do you pray that God’s will be done? Do you pray that God’s will become the most important priority in your life? Do you pray that God’s will override your own will, even though it may cost you? Do you pray that your own wants and desires and dreams and plans be subordinate to the will of God in your life? So often we use prayer to express our own will about the way things should be instead of seeking God’s will.

Now we move to the third section of this model prayer. If we’re going to pray healthy prayers, we’re going to focus first on God, and only then on ourselves. It’s only when we focus first on God that we will begin to understand our own needs in their proper perspective.

Now you’ll notice that the first petition in this section has to do with our physical needs; the last two have to do with our spiritual needs.

Something interesting that is not entirely clear in the NIV translation, but is in the KJV, is that each petition is connected to the next by the word “and”. It’s “Give us this day our daily bread AND forgive us our debts AND lead us not into temptation.

It seems that Jesus is saying that our physical needs and our spiritual needs are linked together. They are both important. Jesus said “Man does not live by bread alone”. We’re not just physical beings, we’re spiritual beings as well.

So we should not just be praying about our physical needs, but about our spiritual needs too—in fact, twice as much as we pray about our physical needs, if this prayer is any indication!

The first petition in this section is “Give us today our daily bread.” When the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, God gave them manna from heaven to feed them. And he gave it to them only one day at a time.

He commanded them to gather it each day, and not to save any of it for the next day, except when the next day was the Sabbath. Some of the people disregarded this instruction. They gathered more than they needed for that day. They tried to hoard the manna. They tried to find their security in a full pantry instead of in the Lord’s daily provision. The next day they found that the manna they had saved had rotted and was no good.

The Lord was teaching his people a lesson—the lesson of daily dependence on God for their needs. And it’s a lesson we need to learn today. It’s so easy to become independent of God. We think that we can supply our own needs from day to day, and God is there just for emergencies.

We find it easier to trust in our paychecks, our bank accounts, our retirement programs, our pension plans, our insurance policies than we do in our Heavenly Father. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have those things, but I’m saying that you’d better not put your trust in them.

In Jesus day, a workman was paid daily. This idea comes out in some of the parables that Jesus told. If you were a workman, you depended on each day’s pay to buy each day’s bread. You didn’t have a nest egg to fall back on. It was hand to mouth, one day at a time.

And this how we should be praying to God—looking to Him for our physical needs, one day at a time.

The second petition is “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The word for debt there is an Aramaic word which also meant “sin”. Our sins are like a debt we owe God.

The story is told of a young Russian officer who served in the Czar’s army. This young man had been made a paymaster in one of the regiments. But he was a compulsive gambler. Pretty soon, he had gambled away, not only all of his own money, but the money he had been entrusted with for the regimental payroll, also.

The day came for the inspection of his accounts. The Auditor General was on his way. The young man knew that he was in a lot of trouble. As he looked at his books, and what he owed the government, he was overwhelmed at where his gambling habit had gotten him. He was ruined, and in a few hours, he would be disgraced as well.

Finally, in misery, he decided that he would take his own life. He pulled out his revolver, placed it on the table before him, and wrote out a summary of his misdeeds. At the bottom of the ledger, where he had totalled up his illegal expenditures, he wrote “A great debt. Who can pay?” He decided that at the stroke of midnight, he would shoot himself.

As the evening wore on, the young soldier became drowsy and eventually fell asleep. That very night, Czar Nicholas visited his barracks. Seeing a light on in the young man’s room, the Czar stopped and looked in.

Finding the soldier asleep in the chair, and noticing the pistol on the table, the Czar looked at the ledger and immediately understood what had happened. He was about to waken the soldier and place him under arrest when his eye caught the message at the bottom of the sheet.

Suddenly, with a surge of compassion, the Czar leaned over and wrote one word beside that note and quietly left the room. The young man awoke later that night, and seeing that it was well past midnight, reached for his revolver to shoot himself.

But his eye fell on the ledger and he saw something that had not been there before. There, beside his note “A great debt. Who can pay?” was the one word the Czar had written: “Nicholas”.

The soldier was dumfounded. It was unmistakably the Czar’s signature. He said to himself “The Czar must have come here while I was asleep. He’s seen the ledger. He knows everything. Yet still he is willing to forgive me.”

The young man rested on the word of the Czar and the next morning, a messenger arrived from the Kremlin with exactly the amount needed to pay the debt. Only the Czar could pay. And the Czar did pay.

In the same way, only Christ was able to pay the debt of our sin. He paid a debt he did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay. And it is on that basis—the basis of Christ’s having paid the debt for us—that God forgives us our sins.

Jesus ties the forgiveness of our sins to our being willing to forgive others for theirs. He elaborates on this in v. 14-15. It is not that we somehow earn God’s forgiveness by forgiving other people, but that we put ourselves in a position to experience God’s forgiveness when we forgive others.

Someone has said that if you don’t forgive others when they sin against you, you’re breaking down the bridge over which you have to cross yourself.

Jesus told a parable about this in Matt.18. There was a servant who owed his master a debt of about 20 million dollars. The master knew he couldn’t possibly pay this debt so he simply forgave him.

But then that servant went out to another servant who owed him just 20 dollars, and he grabbed the guy by the neck and demanded payment. When the poor fellow couldn’t pay right away, he had him thrown into debtor’s prison. When the master found out about it, he threw that first servant into debtor’s prison. He withdrew his forgiveness.

There can be no forgiveness for one who cannot forgive. When we become preoccupied with the sins of others, it just proves that we have forgotten our own. When we fail to forgive others, we’re literally putting ourselves beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness.

Finally, the last petition. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Now that seems strange, doesn’t it? Why would we have to ask God not to lead us into temptation? Is God going to lead us into temptation unless we ask him not to?

This is actually a figure of speech called litotes. Litotes is when you understate something in order to emphasize your point.

For example, if you were to go to a Phillies game and the Phillies starting pitcher got shelled for 8 runs in the first inning, you might read hear the sports announcer on the 11 o’clock news say “Well, it was not his best outing.” It certainly wasn’t - it was probably his worst! But he used litotes to make that point.; an ironic use of understatement.

This is what is happening here in verse 13. Jesus is using litotes. When he says “And lead us—(comma)—not into temptation…” he really means “Lead us far from it, lead us away from evil into righteousness.” Lead us into situations where, instead of being tempted, we’ll be protected from the evil one.”

We are creatures of inherent spiritual weakness. We struggle with our pride, our self-will, our fleshly appetites. These are things which will lead us into spiritual danger unless God delivers us and leads us in the other direction. So we’ve got to be praying about our spiritual needs as well as our physical needs.

This then is a pattern for our prayers:

We pray, as children, to our Father who is in heaven. Our prayers should be built on a desire to see his name be hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will be done. Then and only then will we be prepared to pray about our own needs. And as we do so, we must remember to pray for our spiritual needs as well as our physical needs.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher, once said “Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when, upon his knees, he comes face to face with God.” If so, then we’d better learn to do it right. And what better model to follow than the one our Lord has given us here?