Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] So when I decided to preach on this passage, I forgot that we were having a prayer meeting this morning. But it just so happens that this sermon is on prayer.
[00:00:18] Prayer in a very limited sense, interestingly, because it's very easy for us to get caught up in prayer itself. But there's something even more fundamental than prayer. Prayer is talking with God, right?
[00:00:40] But the thing that is more fundamental than that is who God is.
[00:00:48] Who is this being that we're talking to?
[00:00:54] And so prayer and knowing who God is are very closely related, and it changes how you pray.
[00:01:10] And so the title of the passage is Our Father who is in Heaven.
[00:01:16] Our Father who is in Heaven. You may recognize this as from Christ's instructions to us in Matthew 6, the Sermon on the Mount, where He teaches us to pray.
[00:01:37] But what I want to do is I actually want to back up a little bit into Matthew 5.
[00:01:46] I gave away the plot so that you can listen better as I read this passage.
[00:01:53] And notice how often in this passage Jesus refers to the Father, your Father.
[00:02:07] Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word?
[00:02:16] I'm going to begin in Matthew 5:44.
[00:02:23] But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
[00:02:35] For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
[00:02:41] For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
[00:02:46] Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
[00:02:49] If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?
[00:02:53] Do not even the Gentiles do the same.
[00:02:57] Therefore you are to be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
[00:03:04] Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
[00:03:15] So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men.
[00:03:24] Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full.
[00:03:28] But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret.
[00:03:35] And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
[00:03:41] When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.
[00:03:51] Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full.
[00:03:56] But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.
[00:04:04] And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
[00:04:09] And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do. For they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.
[00:04:17] So do not be like them.
[00:04:19] For your Father knows what you need. Before you ask Him, Pray then in this way.
[00:04:27] Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.
[00:04:33] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:04:36] Please be seated.
[00:04:44] At creation, Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day.
[00:04:57] They knew God.
[00:05:02] If you pay attention to the way that they interact with him, it's clear that they knew him as a father.
[00:05:12] Think about the shame when they're hiding from him.
[00:05:17] Children hiding from their parents when they know they've done something they shouldn't have done.
[00:05:26] Adam and Eve knew God as Father, and at the fall, that relationship was broken.
[00:05:37] They no longer got to walk with him and talk with Him.
[00:05:44] Everything changed from that moment on.
[00:05:52] I want to be careful and make sure you hear. I'm not saying he was no longer a father.
[00:06:03] God, our Heavenly Father, is an eternal Father.
[00:06:08] He is always Father.
[00:06:11] He has always been Father to the Son.
[00:06:15] This is not something that came about when Jesus came to earth.
[00:06:21] God the Father has always been Father. And I also don't want you to hear me saying that he was not a father any longer to his people.
[00:06:32] Many places in the Old Testament actually teach us that he was a father still to his people.
[00:06:43] But it's clear that the relationship was not the same before and after the fall.
[00:06:50] The relationship between the children and the Father was broken.
[00:06:56] Broken in a way that needed to be fixed, needed to be restored.
[00:07:04] And so it's really not until Jesus came that that restoration took place.
[00:07:18] In one sense, you can say that the looking forward that happens all through the Old Testament, this expectation of something that is coming, someone that is coming, is for the Messiah.
[00:07:33] But another way of looking at it is that there would be restoration of the relationship between father and son.
[00:07:48] In fact, Malachi speaks that way.
[00:07:53] There is talk in the Old Testament about the restoration of that broken relationship with the Father, that there will be a closeness, there will be a knowledge of him that doesn't exist until the Messiah comes.
[00:08:14] And so Jesus comes. And here at the beginning of Matthew, he's preaching his first big public sermon that we have recorded for us, the Sermon on the Mount.
[00:08:25] And he refers to God as our Heavenly Father over a dozen times.
[00:08:32] That's really New Jesus is preaching to the people and he's using terminology not that they're not familiar with. We all know what a Father is. But your Father who is in heaven, your Heavenly Father, your Father who sees what is done in secret. Your Father who is in secret.
[00:08:56] This is a new way of speaking that's not common.
[00:09:02] And he's making it common.
[00:09:07] He's making a paradigm change for us to enter into. And it's easy for us to miss it because we're used to the New Testament.
[00:09:17] But I want you to think about the people hearing that and hearing the intimacy that he's speaking of. The Father's relationship with them, not with himself with them.
[00:09:30] The closeness, the togetherness, the concern and care that he has.
[00:09:40] And he builds to this prayer. Not to say that he stops speaking of God as Father and of that closeness after the Lord's Prayer. No, it continues. In fact, he re. Emphasizes it many times.
[00:09:58] Think of the birds of the air. Think of the flowers.
[00:10:04] Your Heavenly Father. Your Heavenly Father knows what you need. Your Heavenly Father clothes you. Your Heavenly Father feeds you. Your Heavenly Father cares for you.
[00:10:15] The tenderness is spread throughout the whole sermon, but it really builds to this where he gives this instruction, pray like this.
[00:10:32] Our Father who is in heaven, he's not just talking at this point. When you reach this, he's not just talking about the way the Father views you.
[00:10:42] He's not just describing the tenderness of the Father. He's describing how you must relate to Him.
[00:10:51] So having seen his picture painted, having received instructions about how you are and are not to act how you are, to prioritize him and his concern for you, as opposed to the world's concerns for you, right?
[00:11:08] Who cares what the person on the street thinks about you? Your Heavenly Father who sees what is done in secret. He's the one that you want to.
[00:11:18] To receive the reward from, to receive the praise from.
[00:11:24] So we have this paradigm shift of our relationship to him, not just of his relationship to us. Now, of course, to try to separate a relationship is always bi directional, right?
[00:11:41] But I want you to see that it's bi directional, that the paradigm shift has happened.
[00:11:48] You really can't hear about the mercy and love and concern of the Father for you without that changing your relationship to him, your attitude towards Him.
[00:12:07] I was speaking with a Hindu man recently, and he happened to be there when we prayed for Brother.
[00:12:18] And he stepped closer and bowed his head and listened as we prayed.
[00:12:30] And afterwards we got to talking to him a little bit about that because, well, what.
[00:12:40] What do you Think.
[00:12:44] And he said, I believe in all gods.
[00:12:50] And so, you know, we, we pray like this and, but, but when I go by a church, I, I do this or, or I think you do this, right?
[00:13:06] So, you know, it's just another God.
[00:13:14] What he doesn't have is a Father in heaven.
[00:13:25] When I speak with Muslims, they believe in God. They pray to God. They don't believe in the gods like this Hindu man, but they do not have God as their Father.
[00:13:42] They do not believe that that is the relationship that exists. And the reason they don't is because they do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. And therefore they do not have God as their Father.
[00:13:57] And therefore they are not saved. They do not not have God as their Father.
[00:14:07] You might think that's kind of a strange way to say it because normally we speak of people not having Christ, not having the Savior, not having the Messiah.
[00:14:18] And that's true, they have rejected the Messiah.
[00:14:24] But isn't it fundamental to the work of Jesus Christ to restore the relationship between God the Father and his earthly children?
[00:14:38] Isn't that what is missing? Just as fundamentally, those who do not have Christ do not have a Father in heaven.
[00:14:55] This does not make God non existent.
[00:14:59] It makes their relationship to him non existent.
[00:15:12] What is God to you?
[00:15:20] One of the ironies of the Lord's Prayer is that we're given this instruction about how not to pray just before it. We're not to pray with meaningless repetition, as if we will be heard for our many words.
[00:15:37] And yet this very prayer is often used as meaningless repetition.
[00:15:46] Say five Our Fathers, as if saying the Lord's Prayer five times will somehow accomplish something more than praying it once.
[00:16:01] How sad.
[00:16:03] And isn't it revealing of the lack of true meaning in the prayer and true relationship with the Father?
[00:16:20] Now I want to pause for a second and talk about repetition. Because one of the things that we run into is that we often ask for the same thing. Many, many times.
[00:16:34] In fact, we're encouraged. Actually, we're more than encouraged. We are exhorted, we are commanded to keep asking God, keep asking God for what we need.
[00:16:51] Remember the story of the widow and the unrighteous judge? And she just keeps coming and asking him for what she needs. Justice.
[00:17:01] Until finally he says, I don't care about justice, but fine, you can have what you're asking for.
[00:17:14] That's actually an exhortation to us to keep coming to the Lord with our requests.
[00:17:23] But.
[00:17:27] I want you to think about and acknowledge the difference between asking for the same thing in a Heartfelt prayer, a conversation that you're having with God versus a rote repetition.
[00:17:51] You know what I mean by rote repetition?
[00:17:54] It's the kind of thing that happens when you see somebody and you say, hey, how's it going, man? Hey. Pretty good.
[00:18:03] How's your weekend? Good.
[00:18:04] How's your weekend? Good.
[00:18:08] Hey, how's it going, man? Oh, I already said that.
[00:18:14] You're not actually engaging in any kind of relational work right there. You're just repeating things. And if you walk up to somebody and you intentionally say the same thing to them five times in a row, they're going to think there's something wrong with me or there's something wrong with them.
[00:18:37] Right.
[00:18:43] So you can see the difference.
[00:18:46] Just like you can see the difference between parents saying, please empty the dishwasher.
[00:18:53] Please empty the dishwasher.
[00:18:57] Please empty the dishwasher right now.
[00:19:00] Right. Yes, that's repetition, but it is not meaningless repetition.
[00:19:12] But there are things that we can say to our children that are meaningless repetition, Or not actually thinking about them or simply letting words dribble out.
[00:19:35] So Jesus instructs us not to pray with meaningless repetition. And he talks about the heathens and the Gentiles and the difference between praying when you have a father who is in heaven versus when there are gods, as the Hindus believe.
[00:20:01] Yeah, when there are gods, you better keep repeating yourself because you never know when they're actually going to be around and who might hear you or who might not at any given time at any given place.
[00:20:16] But when there is a father who you are in relationship with, he hears your prayer and you cry out, my Father.
[00:20:33] Our Father in heaven.
[00:20:40] What is God to you?
[00:20:44] To the Muslim, God is wrath and judgment, justice.
[00:20:53] Many of the character traits of God are believed by the Muslim.
[00:21:01] But mercy and love, forgiveness and fatherhood, these are the things that are not known.
[00:21:14] So when I say, who is God to you? And you say, well, I hear you, Pastor, saying that he is to be my father. But you don't understand what my father was like.
[00:21:26] He wasn't a great example in this way. He isn't a great example in that way. I don't have a good relationship with my father.
[00:21:37] I call him Frank.
[00:21:39] I call him George. I call him the old man.
[00:21:43] I call him anything but Father.
[00:21:53] I don't call him.
[00:21:59] Or I can't call him or he doesn't listen to me.
[00:22:13] Okay?
[00:22:15] Many, many relationships with fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, have been broken into serious ways by sin.
[00:22:30] Our relationship with our heavenly father was broken by sin no longer did we get to walk with him in the cool of the day?
[00:22:49] And it wasn't his fault. It was our fault.
[00:22:59] Christ restores that relationship so that we can have that closeness, so that we can have that tenderness, so that we can have forgiveness, so that we have his love poured out on us.
[00:23:18] What does it mean to have God as your Father?
[00:23:25] For him, not just to be God.
[00:23:31] Years ago, my father pointed out that prayers can be very revealing.
[00:23:46] In the first words.
[00:23:51] How do you address God?
[00:23:56] Do you say God, please hear me? Do you say Lord, I need?
[00:24:10] Do you say Heavenly Father?
[00:24:17] See, what you call somebody reveals a lot about your relationship with them, doesn't it?
[00:24:23] Reveals tenderness or lack thereof.
[00:24:28] It reveals respect or lack thereof.
[00:24:38] When Jesus says pray to God like this, Our Father who is in heaven, Jesus is saying he loves you.
[00:24:52] This is what it means to have God as your father. It means you have a loving God.
[00:25:01] Yes, it's God.
[00:25:08] You have a loving God. You are in relationship with him in a particular way, but love is fundamental.
[00:25:18] So the relationship between father and child, love.
[00:25:26] It means you are adopted as his own children.
[00:25:37] No longer are we in the domain of darkness and sin, but we are in the kingdom of light, which is our Heavenly Father's kingdom because we have been transferred out of darkness and into light. We have been adopted out of the family of Satan and into the family of God.
[00:25:59] What an adoption?
[00:26:07] This is why adoption is uniquely Christian.
[00:26:15] There is no adoption from one family to another in Muslim nations. It does not exist.
[00:26:28] Because they don't have God as their heavenly Father. They don't understand the concept.
[00:26:36] It's crazy that we don't understand the concept.
[00:26:43] What a beautiful gift we've been given. We have been adopted into God's family.
[00:26:57] What does it mean to have God as your father? It means you talk to him as your Father, not just as the all powerful, all knowing Creator. You have a relationship with him.
[00:27:11] And this is why we pray. Our Father.
[00:27:21] How many times have you been told, even you children, probably.
[00:27:29] Oh please, not Mr. So and so.
[00:27:35] Just call me by my name.
[00:27:39] There's much to be said for the respect that comes with Mr. Mrs. Miss.
[00:27:46] The titles of respect.
[00:27:54] Why do people want us to call them by their names?
[00:28:04] Because they want there to be more intimacy. They want there to be more closeness.
[00:28:10] You might say, well, sometimes it's because they want to do away with distinctions. They want to do away with respect. Okay, fine.
[00:28:20] But let's not get confused and think that somehow this means that we need to refer to God as God. The all knowing, all powerful, omnipotent and ever wise and eternal.
[00:28:39] All those things are true.
[00:28:42] But do we, by calling Him Father, undo any of that?
[00:28:47] No, we get it all.
[00:28:54] As our Father in relationship, we gain all of that. As for us, for our benefit.
[00:29:08] In fact, we see this in the passage that I read.
[00:29:15] It talks about the unjust and the just.
[00:29:20] The sun rises on the evil and the good.
[00:29:25] But when we're instructed to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, it says, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. What does that mean? Be like him.
[00:29:40] Be like him because he loves his enemies and those who are not his enemies simply by giving them reign.
[00:29:50] So we're being like our heavenly Father.
[00:29:55] That's part of what it means to have God as your Father. You get to be like him, you gain all of that about him for yourself. His concern for us as his children is actually different. This passage is not saying, oh yeah, you're in the same situation as everybody else. No, the righteous and the unrighteous are distinguished.
[00:30:21] And the concern that he shows for his children is shown over and over again.
[00:30:31] So when we pray our Father, it's intimate, it's relational, but it's not without respect.
[00:30:42] In fact, it is full of respect to say Father instead of to say God, Lord, our Father is the one true God. He is omnipotent, omniscient, those mean all powerful and all knowing.
[00:31:15] He is all loving.
[00:31:17] He is love.
[00:31:21] What a father we have.
[00:31:25] Can you call Him Father?
[00:31:28] You can and you must.
[00:31:31] You say, well, I don't feel like it.
[00:31:34] And I say, Why not?
[00:31:41] That's crazy.
[00:31:44] Look at who he is. Look at who he is to you. Look at what he's done for you.
[00:31:54] Now, today, I've already touched on this a little bit. But there are many who refuse to call God Father because they are angry at fatherhood.
[00:32:09] But to say they're angry at fatherhood is to say they are angry at God the Father.
[00:32:16] So they may refer to God as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, but not Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[00:32:32] Feminism is at the root of this.
[00:32:36] Those who intentionally pray in such a way as to never call God Father.
[00:32:45] But what have you lost when you have lost God as your Father?
[00:32:54] You see, you can't view God the way that he has revealed Himself in this passage.
[00:33:02] All of that concern and care that he has for you is tied directly to the fact that he is your Father in Heaven.
[00:33:11] Your Father in heaven who sees what is done in secret. Your Father in heaven who will reward you. Your Father in heaven who dresses and feeds and provides for you.
[00:33:26] Your Father in heaven who loves you.
[00:33:33] We cannot lose him as Father without losing all that he is.
[00:33:44] We cannot lose him as Father without losing Jesus Christ as our brother, The Son.
[00:33:55] The Son of who?
[00:33:57] The Son of God. The Father, Our Father. When we get to say Our Father who is in heaven, guess what?
[00:34:06] It's not just talking about us in this room. It's not just talking about all Christians down through time. Our. Our.
[00:34:14] Who's the one who said this? Who said we're supposed to pray this way?
[00:34:19] The Son did.
[00:34:22] The Son who cries out, father, Jesus Christ is who we are including in our prayers. When we say Our Father, what an amazing thing.
[00:34:37] You know that when we ask for anything in his name, he has promised to hear and to answer our prayers.
[00:34:46] By referring to God as Our Father, we are including Jesus in the prayer itself.
[00:34:54] From the very beginning, Our Father, not just my family, not just my church, my Savior is part of this prayer.
[00:35:13] What a joy it is that we have a father, regardless of all the sins of all the fathers down through history.
[00:35:25] And how sad it is how many people pray God, Lord, and never have the impulse to cry out, abba, Papa, I need you help, Daddy.
[00:35:53] This is what it means to have a father. You get to cry out like that.
[00:36:02] And yes, that's humbling. It's humiliating because it shows how insignificant, small, weak, helpless we really are.
[00:36:13] But does it really change anything to say God instead of Father?
[00:36:23] We're just as insignificant and weak and helpless, aren't we?
[00:36:31] And so you may say, yeah, what difference does it make? Pastor, why are you emphasizing this? What does it really matter? And I say the difference is in the relationship.
[00:36:49] When you're in a courtroom, you don't get to call the judge by name, let alone by relationship.
[00:37:05] There was a very sweet thing when I was at the Supreme Court last year. Or is that this year? Anyway, when they bring new lawyers before the court, they have to be approved and sworn in, and somebody has to vouch for them. Somebody who is already a lawyer that's allowed to argue before the Supreme Court has to vouch for the new lawyer.
[00:37:29] There were probably 20 lawyers that were being sworn in.
[00:37:35] I don't know that that's the right term. I can't remember. But one of them was a woman who was vouched for by her father.
[00:37:45] And so there was this very, very formulaic, I so and so certified such and such testify that so and so such and such did this and that. And it is worthy to be a lawyer that can argue before the Supreme Court.
[00:38:02] And then you come to this one where this guy says, I'm so and so. I've done such and such.
[00:38:12] And I put forward my daughter.
[00:38:18] It was shocking.
[00:38:23] It cut through all of the formality, and it laid bare the hearts of men and women in that room.
[00:38:32] In one word, my daughter.
[00:38:37] Okay, Two words.
[00:38:43] What a gift we've been given that we can call him father.
[00:38:49] And if you can't, you need to ask yourself why.
[00:38:58] Because it's not that he won't let you.
[00:39:06] It's in you.
[00:39:08] It's something in you.
[00:39:13] And what are you missing out on?
[00:39:17] What are you risking by refusing to call him father?
