The Lord's Prayer - Invocation
Dr. James Smith
Matthew 6:9-13
28 September 2003
This morning we begin a new teaching and sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. Unfortunately, many evangelical Christians have been led to believe that the memorization and repetition of this prayer is somehow dead ritual.
And while that may be so for some people, particularly in liturgical churches, I am convinced that God does not call His children to simply react against those who may be spiritually dead and throw the “baby out with the bath water.”
After all, in the preface to the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said in Matthew 6:5 that we are not to “pray like the hypocrites.”
And in Luke 11, we find that Jesus offered this “prayer of all prayers” in response to one of the best requests that his disciples ever made . . . they humbly requested, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
In Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus offered this model prayer to His followers both then and now how to supplicate the Father and to pray for the edification of the church throughout time.
In fact, so serious was the early church about the Lord’s Prayer that it insisted that all new converts learn it by heart and pray it at least 3 times a day. In addition, it was used as a teaching tool for both old and new believers alike.
Many of the fathers of the early church discerned a clear structure consisting of 6 petitions within the Matthean version of the Lord’s Prayer that they loved to expound upon.
Let’s consider the prayer structurally:
- Invocation – “Our Father in Heaven”
- 3 Petitions for God’s Glory
- God’s Holiness
- God’s Kingdom
- God’s Will
- 3 Petitions of Human Need
- Bread
- Forgiveness
- Temptation
- Later Doxology – “For Yours is the Kingdom, Power & Glory, forever, Amen.”
Now this morning as we begin our consideration of the Lord’s prayer, we want to spend some time thinking about this all important invocation that begins this “prayer of all prayers.”
Jesus said, “Our Father who art in Heaven.” Now of course, Jesus did not use Elizabethan English as so many of us have learned the prayer in.
Jesus spoke in the everyday language of the people, “Our Father in Heaven” or “Our heavenly father.”
Now I have been intrigued to find over the years, how many people, both Christian and non-Christian, who completely “shut down” when they hear the “F” word.
And I’m not talking about the curse word, I’m taking about the “Father” word. So many people in today’s society have had awful experiences with their earthly fathers.
Some have been abused or mistreated. Some have felt their earthly father’s to be cold and emotionally distant. Some rarely ever saw their father growing up, while others never even knew whom their father’s was.
More recently, as both my sons are in public school now, Deb and I have seen first hand, the disaster and wreckage that a home with an abusive, distant or non-existent father can cause.
I used to believe that when children entered into kindergarten, they all basically started out the same. Oh, sure some of the kids may be a little bit sharper then the next, but they are all on “the same page.”
How wrong I was. Now Deb and I have the ability to walk into any elementary school classroom and in less then 5 minutes, figure out what are the main problems with those children who are constantly causing trouble.
And so often, it stems directly from either having an abusive father or not having a father in the home at all. If there ever was a day when our society needed strong Christian families to both model a loving home and to “stand in the gap,” today is that day.
So it’s not so difficult to see why so many people have “hang ups” or misunderstandings about our “Father in Heaven.”
But is has been one of my greatest pleasures in the ministry to see people from broken homes, find their “Father in heaven” and begin to experience a close and nurturing relationship with Him that they never had with their earthly father.
While our New Testament was written in Greek, we know that when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them in Aramaic, a language that is very closely related to Hebrew.
Many Bible scholars believe that when Jesus said, “Our Father in Heaven” in his native Aramaic tongue, he used the word, “Abba.” And this word is preserved for us in 3 places in the Greek New Testament. (Mk. 14:36, Ro. 8:15, Gal. 4:6).
Jewish children in Jesus’ day commonly called their mothers and fathers, “imma” and “abba” . . . mommy & daddy, mama & papa.
No Jew in Jesus’ day would have dreamed of calling Almighty God, “Daddy” and yet Jesus in the opening line of this prayer tells us that the closeness and intimacy that He enjoyed with His Father can be ours as well.
What a radical vision of God! That Jesus encourages his followers to join with Him in calling the Lord, “Daddy or Papa.”
Writers throughout the New Testament celebrate this fact in all sorts of ways.
1 John 3:1 says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God!”
And for those who would doubt the love of our heavenly Father, Jesus pointedly asks us in Matthew 7:10,
“Which of you, if your child asks for bread, would give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, would give him a snake? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him?”
Some of us have been fortunate to have had good and loving fathers, others here have had abusive ones, while others may have never had a father at all.
But Jesus reminds us in the invocation of His prayer of the great news that the Heavenly Father is our true father. And just as children throughout the ages have been fond of bringing stray animals home, so Jesus loves to bring strays into His daddy’s presence.
And it is the good pleasure of His Father to adopt us as His children and allow us to truly say, “Our Father who art Heaven.”
After all, John 1:12 tells us, “Yet to all that received Him, to those who believed upon His name, He gave the right to become the children of God. Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
When you think of the Heavenly Father God, what kinds of things come to you mind? If we were all really honest, I think we would have to admit that our experiences with our earthly father have significantly impacted our understanding of our heavenly father.
Some of you may not feel particularly close to the heavenly father, while others here may not know Him at all. But as Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father in John 14:8, Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
So, if you haven’t seen the Father or if you have had problems experiencing your heavenly Father, Jesus says it is because you aren’t looking at me.
For some here this morning, now more then ever, you need to do what the old hymn writer encourages and exhorts us to do. “Cast your eyes upon Jesus, look full into His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
For it is only through Jesus, that we will ever be able to cry out from the bottom of our hearts, “Our Father who art in Heaven.”
Let’s Pray
