Matthew 6:13
Today we are going to finish our look at the Lord’s Prayer in the midst of our study of the Sermon on the Mount. Four months ago we began to study the Lord’s Prayer with a few specific thoughts: Prayer is worship; it must be and is initiated by God and it must be done for God. Our aim in prayer is God’s glory, our purpose in prayer is communion with God and the outcome of worshipful prayer is that Jesus is made known. The Lord’s Prayer is to be our foundation for all prayer for two incredibly important reasons: first of all it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. II Timothy 3:16 says “All Scripture is inspired by God . . .” This means that this prayer is not only a point in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount it is a divinely inspired utterance that was meant to stand for eternity as the model of how men should pray. The second reason that the Lord’s Prayer is the foundation for all prayer is that it is how Jesus taught us to pray. He prefaces the prayer by saying “In this manner, therefore, pray”. Jesus is not giving us an example or an option; He is revealing the form of prayer that is both pleasing and powerful. It is as if He is saying, “if you want your prayers to be worshipful and effective, if you want them to be heard by God and part of His kingdom work, then follow this example.” The Lord’s Prayer is living and active, it is the skeleton that holds the body of prayer upright and together and when we pray it and pray from it we are not only reciting Scripture we are obeying Jesus’ teaching and I believe, by being obedient to Jesus we are pleasing the Father and ultimately worship is bringing pleasure to God. The Lord’s Prayer is largely about relationship, it is how children approach their father, confident of His love, dependent upon His provision and surrendered to His will. The prayer begins with the address “Our Father”, it sets the stage for everything else that will be said, I am a child, you are my Father, I come to you, I rely on you, I trust you, I desire you. The first week of this study I said “nothing about the Lord’s Prayer makes sense if we don’t understand the relationship of the one praying to the One hearing. I continue to believe that to be true and I believe that the entire prayer has been built upon understanding and trusting that relationship. I am not begging a deity or pleading with a judge, I am praying to my Father: I acknowledge Him, I am desiring for Him to be known as a Father in all the earth, for His glory to never be hidden, I am offering myself as one that will reveal His glory. I ask for His kingdom to come in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and for His will to be done through the Word of God. I entrust myself to Him as my daily provider for everything essential and request forgiveness for every sin against Him that is found in my heart, my mind, on my lips and in my actions. At the same time I request forgiveness I offer it, there is this beautiful relationship between those forgiven and those in need of forgiveness. Jesus said it this way in the beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” Jesus does not teach us to merely pray in the Lord’s Prayer, He teaches that offering requests to the Father should also drive us to actions that represent the Father; I need forgiveness and so while asking for it I offer it, I freely give for what I know has been and will be freely given to me. The final requests of the Lord’s Prayer are for God’s leadership to lead us out of and over temptation and for our surrender to Him to deliver us from the grips of the evil one and the iniquity hidden in our hearts. That brings us to today’s topic which is the doxology or the closing of the prayer and Jesus leads us back to where we started. We began by addressing our Father and we close by announcing His greatness and reminding ourselves that He is in control and that everything is in His hands. “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”