The Lord’s Prayer: Relationship with a true Father.
length: 68:24 - taught on Dec, 7 2022
Class Outline:
December 7, 2022
Prayer is our life-long communication with God the Father. He is our Father in the real sense of that word. Our earthly fathers sired us. After that they may leave us or raise us, abuse us or love us or ignore us, but there is only one father of us.
Just like there was never found a king in Israel who was up to the task of being the head of God’s kingdom of men, not even David, so there has never been found a father who is truly worthy of the title. There are some very good ones, and you are blessed if yours was of that ilk, but none of them could be all that a father should be.
Jesus illustrated this:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”
God has made it so, through the incredible sacrifice of His Son, that no man should lack in perfection everything his heart aches for. King, kingdom, Father, Brother, Spirit, family, lover, friend.
When we look at our Lord’s teaching on prayer, the principles that He gave to us, we realize that they are based on our desires, being requests by us in the form of commandments, and also that they all come from our Father. We are not requesting from anyone for a heart that properly seeks the glorify God, a heart that magnifies and loves His ways, His laws, and His will. We are asking our Father. We are not requesting from anyone for a heart of contentment, graciousness, and discernment and courage. We are asking our Father - our true Father. A son or daughter asking for something from a loving father must surely be a different experience than asking anyone else. Your Father who is in heaven will give what is good to those who ask Him.
'Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 'Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Our Father is to give us a heart that honors His name, His Person, as holy. Our Father is to give us a desire for His kingdom only and His will above all others. Our Father is to grant us the advantage of seeing our earthly lives already in union with heaven.
Our faith is the key, but it is our faith in our understanding of the Trinity. His thoughts must be our thoughts. Eternal life is knowing the Father.
'Give us this day our daily bread.
12 'And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 'And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Our Father must give us contented hearts that do not seek after more than He has graciously given us. Our Father must remove the shame of our sin and pour His love in us that we will be gracious to all others. Our Father must guide us to remain on the narrow road, the new and living way, that we will experience spiritual victory and not be devoured by the devil. It is not from just anyone that we must seek these things for ourselves and for all others (others in prayer will be another topic soon), but from our Father.
Who is my true Father? - in heaven, holy.
The Father is in heaven. This acknowledgment already makes Him sanctified, for only holiness dwells there. He is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who openly claims Him as a Father for us also. He is the eternal, the Almighty, the beginning and the end, the one who so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
How could such a one be my Father? He must remove sin from my life. A holy Father cannot have sinners as sons and daughters. Through the cross of Christ, He made peace with us, reconciling us, propitiating His own justice, sanctifying us, and so justifying us. The cost to Him to accomplish this is infinitely high, but He has done it and there is no undoing it. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Husband and our Brother, sits at the right hand of the Father waiting for the proper time to make heaven and earth one, with one eternal kingdom of men and one will.
As we pray in the framework of the Lord’s prayer, these pivotal truths will not escape our direct concentration.
We go through life walking and talking with our Father.
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. 36 So if the Son makes you free [frees the slave and adopts him as a son], you will be free indeed.”
We are free in this world to live a heavenly life and we are free to seek the Father’s glory in ourselves and to the rest of the world and to seek our Father’s will and way, and portray the life of the Father to the world as we live wise and contented lives that are filled with joy.
If His will is to be done in my life, it cannot be irrespective of my condition. I am a sinner and so something has to be done about my sin if He is to be my Father, be holy in my heart, have His kingdom and His will established there. That is no small requirement. I can know all of this but not desire it and so let sin rule my life. I cannot serve two masters.
the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. 13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Paul’s prayer before he states this monumental truth is that they (we) would “please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work …” (1:10).
Yet, in the first part, the focus in on the Father and the Son and not on ourselves. We need not question our loyalty or our determination. All we need to know is if we do actually desire these words, and in private prayer we can be very open and honest with our Father to answer that question. All of us need more faith, and faith more often, and more diligence, and when we petition God for His name to be holy, we can join our Father in discovering the reason why we sometimes don’t actually want it.
First, can we say “Our Father” with as much meaning in our hearts as the Lord had when He said them. He would have said them in ancient Jewish-Aramaic, but the language doesn’t matter.
So, right at the beginning, the salutation has us way over our heads. When we address Him as our Father we will find that we never really fill those words to their fullness (are we in reality good sons - no condemnation but discovery) and that they rather still extend beyond our actual feelings, and show us that there is more to be striven after. Do we actually tremble before the Almighty, all knowing, all powerful God that has accomplished the means by which we can call Him Father? We begin to see why we are not to just repeat these words. We are to seek their fulfillment in our hearts.
Another thing to understand is that these words are new. When Christ said them, the disciples all must have been a bit uncomfortable to hear that they were to pray “Our Father.” Jesus was the first Man, first Jew to ever address and speak of Yavah in such a familiar and endearing word. God called Himself the Father of Israel, and He only did so on eight occasions in the entire OT, but never did He call Himself this of an individual, and never is it used in the form of an address. One exception is PSA 89:26 in reference to David, but the Psalm is prophetic of David and also of Christ and likely vs. 26 refers more so to Christ than to David, calling Him the first-born king in vs. 27.
“Our Father” stated by a common Jew to Yavah Elohim was courting blasphemy, but it would soon be known that Christians of the church would all address the Father, each one of them individually and to do so just as our Lord did.
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"
Something new had come. The church, Jew and Gentile, were going to be one new man in Christ and under the New Covenant in His blood.
Under the New Covent the law was written on the hearts of sons.
JOH 1:9 There was the true light … coming into the world
1JO 2:8 the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.
The promise has been fulfilled. And for the nation of Israel, it will be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ.
For all who call Him Father, there is an obligation of the family way, the family honor and nobility which the Son showed and taught. “Our Father” spoken in the quiet of the infinite universe from our hearts directly to the stillness of God’s throne room, has enormous implications that we should never neglect.
And I said, 'You shall call Me, My Father,
And not turn away from following Me.'
This prophecy, and the few others like it where God promises Israel they will call Him Father were enshrouded in dimness, which the birth and crucifixion of Immanuel (God among us) scatters away.
The Son came to earth calling God His Father and then He placed us in union with Himself, entered us into His kingdom, went to heaven to prepare a place for us, and told us to be sure to call God Father just as He did.
Father and son, or Father and daughter, also enforces upon our hearts an indissoluble bond. There is a recognition, distinct and necessary, of the Son of God and His work, and through Him we aspire to an intimacy which the Creator doesn’t have with any mere creature. He is our Creator, but He is now something much more. In the reality of having God as our Father we have, over and above, the assurance that our connection with Him is one of love and of lasting relationship; that we shall not be suffered to go adrift, but shall be brought up into His likeness, and shall live with Him; and that the ground on which this relationship is established is one of unutterable dignity, the Son of God having become our Brother, our nature being now worn by the same person as wears the nature of God.
Hence, the prayer, our prayer, has to always begin with “Our Father,” and with all of what that means. Every time we utter it, we should pause and consider it so that our prayers will never become profane, vague, or heathenish.
We must know the Father.
“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
There is room for the fancy that since He is our Father that we can manipulate Him as some children do their own fathers. The Father is not mocked.
"You shall be holy, for I am holy." 17 And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each man's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth; 18 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, 19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
It is not on account of what we receive from God that we are to think of Him with filial gratitude, and count Him a Father; but because He is in very truth our Father, we shall receive all things at His hand.
The relationship is to be first in our minds, deeper also in our affections; and, this being so, hope will be easy and humility natural. No matter what comes of this relationship, it will not change. We are His sons and daughters and He is our Father. Whatever comes from the Father, the relationship is satisfying to our hearts.
Our very natures are bound to God through the person of Christ. No other relationship in life is like it. Other relationships may help us understand it; but while it is only considered under earthly figures, we are in danger of forgetting that underneath there lies the substantial reality of our sonship to God.
It is the sort of Fatherhood that a man finds and ceases to be homeless and a wanderer, a fugitive, a vagabond upon the face of the earth - ceases to be a mere withered leaf borne helpless on the wind, whose origin none cares to trace, and whose destiny none turns to see. The son who prays “Our Father” has found his place in the universe, a place designed just for him, he has found a hold and a hope; and however in himself unstable, weak, and incapable, he rests enduringly in the unchangeable Father. He has been outside, thinking the world a strange, cold, barren, friendless, and unsatisfying place; he has wondered about, not seeing through the thick cloud, and still less dreaming that One was seeing and caring for him; and now he finds he has a Father - One to love, One to serve, One to glorify, One to worship.
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me.
22 "I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud,
And your sins like a heavy mist.
Return to Me, for I have redeemed you."
PSA 142:1 Maskil of David, when he was in the cave.
A Prayer.
When my spirit was overwhelmed within me,
Thou didst know my path.
In the way where I walk
They have hidden a trap for me.
4 Look to the right and see;
For there is no one who regards me;
There is no escape for me;
No one cares for my soul.
5 I cried out to Thee, O Lord;
I said, "Thou art my refuge,
My portion in the land of the living.
Every day we are to begin on this path. “Our Father”. Speak to Him before you speak to anyone else. Use the words that your Lord gave you and know them, search for their depth throughout every day for your entire journey on this earth.
Father must not be seen as figurative. We might say, “He has treated me like a Father and have given to me as a Father.” No. This doesn’t go far enough. It brings us no closer to Him. This only misleads us. Christ is the door of the sheepfold and I have walked through that door by faith. Only thieves and robbers try to find another entrance. The Shepherd of my soul has made His Father my Father. He is my Father.
Jesus said to her, "Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren, and say to them, 'I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.'"
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