Hear now the word of God from Matthew chapter 6 verses 9 through 13. Pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. This ends our reading of the Word of God. Let's ask His blessing now in the Word of Prayer. Lord, we do come, we pray this morning asking that You would help us to learn how to pray. Lord, help us to learn how to pray better and to do so in a way that conforms to your scriptures, your teaching. We pray Lord especially that you would help us this morning to understand what it means that when we come to you we come to our Father in heaven. We pray this in the name of our Lord. Amen. After a few weeks as we've been working our way through what I've called Jesus's own primer on prayer, we now arrive at the nucleus of his teaching, that portion of God's Word around which the rest of this has revolved, contained in the model prayer, which is known to us most familiarly as the Lord's Prayer. And so as we come to the Lord's Prayer, we are coming, I think, to one of the loftiest passages in all of the Bible. That is at least the way that it has been treated down through church history. Consider a couple of these quotes which reflect the way in which great saints and theologians have fought about the Lord's Prayer up until our time. Think of the church father, Tertullian, who described the Lord's Prayer as what he called a breviary and compendium of the gospel. In other words, the whole gospel is really contained here in these words. It's all really kind of summed up in brief in the Lord's Prayer. Last week we saw how the Westminster Divines in the Shorter Catechism described the Lord's Prayer as the special rule of direction for us when we go to the Lord and pray. Thomas Watson and another Puritan spoke of the Lord's Prayer like this. He said, as Solomon's song for its excellence is called the Song of Songs, so may this be well called the Prayer of Prayers. The Prayer of Prayers. Martin Lloyd-Jones, a little closer to home, little more recently in history, wrote that it, here in the Lord's Prayer, this is a perfect synopsis of our Lord's instruction on how to pray and what to pray for. And we can certainly add many other quotes, many other evaluations to these because the Lord's Prayer has been a frequent object of contemplation and writing down through the ages. And therefore we will this morning proceed under the assumption that the great luminaries of church history have been right. That they have been right in thinking that the Lord's Prayer is an absolutely foundational text with which we must be acquainted if we are to live as faithful Christians. We must know this portion of God's Word and we must understand We'll add one more quote to drive this home. John Calvin wrote that for that purpose he has laid down this rule, speaking of the prayer, by which we must frame our prayers if we desire to have them accounted lawful and approved by God. You want to pray in a way that pleases God, Calvin is saying, start here. Learn how to frame your prayers by the prayer which the Lord has given to you. So working under this assumption then, we will make our way through the Lord's prayer slowly. We're going to linger over these words for the next several weeks seeking to truly understand what they're saying and also to understand the implications of each and every line. And it's my hope, very modest hope, but it's my hope nonetheless that as we do so, we will all grow together, no matter where you're at in your prayer life, no matter how strong you feel you are in this regard, that we will all, wherever we're at now, we will come away having grown, progressed in this practice together. Now this morning, more specifically, we examine what has frequently been called the preface of the Lord's Prayer, which reads, Our Father in Heaven, as we pray it from the King James, our Father who art in heaven. That will be the subject which we look at this morning. And it's called the preface to the Lord's Prayer because it's not itself a petition. It precedes all of the petition, focusing our attention first upon the recipient of our prayer. It readies us to come into God's presence and make the requests which are upon our heart. We might say that it's the gateway through which we enter God's royal courts. It's the gateway through which we approach the throne. The Puritan theologian William Gouge spoke of it in this way, in a sense. He wrote that a due consideration of his person to whom we pray is a special means to prepare us unto prayer. They who duly wait the majesty of a king above other men will, with better respect, approach his presence. In other words, we say our Father in heaven so that we might know who it is that we're approaching and so that we might pray in an appropriate manner. It is the preface which leads us into our request. And so in order that we might know how to approach God in prayer, we're gonna take up this preface this morning, placing emphasis on each portion of it in turn. So first we come to the text, our Father in heaven. And in the first place, we want to pause over that little word, our, our. It's our Father. And we can make three observations about that word and its inclusion in the preface to the Lord's Prayer. First of all, when we read Jesus teaching us to pray, saying, Our Father in Heaven, we want to observe that the hour in the preface to the Lord's Prayer designates disciples. It designates disciples who have been added to Christ's Church. Remember the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Way back in Matthew 5, verse 1, this whole section began with these words. I'm going to be reading a lot of scripture this morning. Don't try to keep up with me. Just listen really well. You can write down the reference if you want to. Matthew 5, verse 1. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. So in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, There are crowds, there are people gathered around Jesus as He is teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, but particularly His audience as He speaks is those disciples who came to Him, who drew in close. This is a prayer for those who have drawn near to Christ with the aim of following Him. And what we learn from the Bible as a whole is that disciples do not follow Christ as if each one were on their own religious quest. The Christian faith is not an individualized faith which you figure out on your own. The many followers of Christ to whom he speaks in this sermon, they form a collective, they form a body, they form a church. And how does the church interact together? Well, 1 Corinthians 12, verses 18 to 20 says this, but as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. So we come into the church as individuals who are following the Lord Jesus Christ. We're different people. We have different needs. We have different talents, different gifts. We bring different things to the table. We need different things from the table, but the Lord adds us all to this one body. And disciples who have been added to that body, the church, pray together, recognizing our interconnectedness. We are all bound together in that one body and if a body loses a foot, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. Galatians chapter 6 verse 2 teaches us to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. That's what we're doing when we say our Father who art in heaven. We are bearing one another's burdens, recognizing that we are bound together and that the support of one is the support of the whole. This is why I think the Shorter Catechism states that the preface to the Lord's Prayer teaches us that we should pray with and for others, with and for others. So when we pray Our Father in heaven, we observe first of all that the Our in the preface to the Lord's Prayer designates disciples who've been added to the church. Second observation of this little word is that the Our in the preface to the Lord's Prayer designates adopted children of God. To say our father is to say that we are his sons, his daughters. Now there's a sense in which all humans can be construed as children of God by virtue of our common creator. But that is not the predominant way in which the New Testament speaks of God's children. In Acts chapter 17, remember Paul's there on Mars Hill, he's in Athens, he's reasoning with the Athenians, and as he does so, he draws on the pagan literature which they so prized, and he proclaims to them from their own texts that we are all God's offspring, because he's quoting a text which is essentially arguing that we're all Zeus's offspring, but he says, well, there's a sense in which that's right, but it's not Zeus that we are offspring of, it's the one creator God who is the unknown God who you can't name. But when Paul says that, when he says we're all God's offspring, in that context, he's really conceding that we have a single source of existence by virtue of being created. And he immediately follows that up with what? Not with, well, we're all children of God and so we can all get along and our differences don't really matter. No, he says we're all God's offspring, so repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So if it can be said in a sense, in a certain generic, creational sense, that all people are the offspring of God, that does not imply that all people have the sort of access to God that children have with their father. And this is why, if you're familiar with some of the liberal teaching of the liberal churches in the early 20th century, if you've read Machen's Christian Liberalism, he specifically addresses this. There was a doctrine which was in vogue at the time which would go by the title, the universal fatherhood of God. They stood on the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. We're all God's children, we're all in this together. regardless of what we believe. But that clearly, I think, goes well beyond Paul's basic concession that we all have been created by the same God. And so that idea of the universal fatherhood of God as it was held in those churches is to be rejected. Because when we consider how the Bible typically speaks of fatherhood and sonship, between God and humans. We see that the New Testament tells us that we become children of God by virtue of our adoption. As we are adopted as those united to Christ. As Paul explains himself in Ephesians chapter one verse five, in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. So our identity as sons, the privileged heir in the ancient world, that identity comes through the work of Jesus Christ, who is himself the only begotten son of God. When we are united to Him, having been born again, we become the sort of people who can say, our Father. Not just Jesus' Father, but our Father through Jesus. So the our, In the preface here, again, it's designated adopted children of God. And making adopted children of God, that was one of the major aims of Jesus' mission on earth. The Bible tells us that. John chapter 1, verses 11 to 13, there in the amazing prologue of John's gospel, we're told this, that Jesus, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him, but to all who did receive Him. who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. So Jesus came to make us children through believing in him. And this new status which is given to us as we believe on Jesus, it is a status, it is identity, it is a reality which deeply affects our prayer life. as the Lord's Prayer indicates. It's what enables us to come and say, Our Father. All adopted children are granted this access and they're granted the same Holy Spirit who is the one who teaches us to call God our Father. Paul teaches this in similar language in two different places. Romans 8.15, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but You have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. Likewise, Galatians 4.6, And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So it's the Spirit who teaches us to pray as adopted sons through Jesus Christ. And all of this biblical data reinforces the conclusion that we say our Father, not by virtue of having a common Creator, but by virtue of having a common Redeemer, who adopts us, who makes us part of the family. When we say our, we say it as the family of God. So the hour designates disciples, it designates adopted children, and yet at the same time I want to make one more observation, which is that the hour in the preface to the Lord's Prayer, it does not smother our individual access to God. Perhaps when you hear all of this language that we're praying as the church, we're praying as the family, we pray our Father, maybe you feel that in all of this emphasis on the corporate our-ness, if we can put it that way, of this prayer, that you as a singular Christian, who's often not gathered with the body of Christ, that you as a singular Christian, you're getting drowned out, that you're getting forgotten. But the health of the body, remember, the health and the good of the body is not at odds with the health and the good of the individual members. The two things go together. Again, the Puritan William Gouge makes, I think, a helpful remark here, because he himself imagined that someone might make this sort of objection, that if we only can pray our Father, then what's that to me? I've become just sort of a nameless, faceless part of the crowd. And he writes this. Though I believe God to be a common Father of many, which the plural number implies, yet that does not hinder me from reckoning myself in that number, and so to make the application to myself. And he says, this much is fitly expressed in this speech of Christ, and here he's quoting John 20, verse 17, where Jesus says, I ascend to my Father and to our Father. Gouge writes, here Jesus acknowledges God to be a common Father of others, in these words, your father, and yet makes a particular application thereof in these words, my father. So when you say our father, you are saying implicitly my father. I'm a part of that hour. I'm a member of that church. Jesus sees me when I pray to his father. Am I? So I just want to make clear that just because your father has many children does not mean that your father will lose track of you. You are a part of the hour if you have been adopted through Christ and have been filled with the Spirit who teaches us to pray in this way. Well, now we move on from that first word to the second. When we pray, in the preface we say, our Father in heaven. It's our Father that we come to. And so we want to make three observations about that word, Father, as it is employed in this teaching by Jesus Christ. First of all, as we pray to our Father, we pray to one who readily receives us for Jesus' sake. We pray to one who readily receives us for Jesus' sake. Because we are adopted into the family of God, we can be certain that we will be readily received when we go to our father in prayer. But we don't go, when we go in prayer, to a judge who is hardened against us. We don't go to one who is prepared to shut us out. But we go instead to a father who loves us deeply. A good human father, a good one at least, will not turn away the child who goes to him in need. That would be, that's the fruit of selfishness or neglect or cruelty. And if that's the case, if it's the case that a good father won't turn away a child in need, then how much more, how much more is it the case that the heavenly father will welcome one who is ushered into his presence by Jesus, his beloved son? Again, I think this is, I think I've quoted similar verses for the last several weeks, but I think this is the logic which lies behind that off-repeated maxim in the Gospel of John, that whatever we ask in the name of Jesus will be granted to us. It's because he's the one who leads us. He's the one who takes us to the Father. Consider what Jesus says to his disciples in John 16, 26 and 27. Jesus says to them, in that day you will ask in my name, And it says, I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God. So it's not just that Jesus goes and He asks on our behalf, but it's that because we have loved Jesus, because we have been saved by Jesus, He leads us so that we might ask the Father who loves us for His sake. So in saying, our father, we are enabled to approach the throne confidently, knowing that we are led there by one who is priest and also son. Hebrews 4, 15 and 16, well-known passage, worth reading. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin, Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. So again, as we pray to our Father, we come to one who readily receives us for Jesus' sake. He welcomes us into his presence. We can go confidently. But a second observation which we make of that word Father is that as we pray to our Father, we pray to one who is capable of providing and protecting. We pray to one who is capable of providing and protecting. Though a good human father, we've already made this observation, a good human father is willing to meet the needs of his children. But sometimes it is the case that a human father, though willing to meet his child's needs, is unable to meet those needs. Poverty, powerlessness, these sorts of things can thwart the best of intentions. in the life of a human parent who wants to help their children but simply can't. But when we pray to our Father, in this context, we are reminded that the Father to whom we pray, He does not struggle with poverty or powerlessness. When we come to this Father, we come to the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, Psalm 50 verse 10. When we come to this God, we come to the God whose, quote, divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, 2 Peter 1.3. And so our Father can provide and He can protect even when our earthly parents cannot provide and protect in the way that they would like to. And therefore, when we confidently approach the Father who receives us for Jesus' sake, we do so with the knowledge that He lacks nothing which we need. And He's willing to provide it for us if It will genuinely benefit us. Jesus is going to go on later in the Sermon on the Mount. He's going to say this in chapter 7 verses 7 through 11. He teaches them there, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find. knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." Note this, he says, or which one of you? If his son asks him for bread, we'll give him a stone. Or if he asks for fish, we'll give him a serpent. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him? Our Father has it to give, and He's willing to give it if it will, in fact, be a benefit to us. We come to a Father who is capable, not just of receiving us, but of providing and protecting us as we so desire. But that leads us to the third observation which we want to make of this word, Father, which is that as we pray to our Father, we pray to one who always has our best interests in mind, whether he rewards or chastens. He has our best interest in mind whether he rewards us or chastens us. And it may seem odd to say that God is capable of providing and protecting while we live in a world that is so full of lack and danger and pain and trial. Even as Christians, we face all of those sorts of things. However, this is a reminder to us that if we don't receive the things that we've asked for from God, then we've got to realize that those things will not, currently at least, serve our best interest. God is wisdom itself and He's made that determination. If we do not receive today the things we ask for from the Lord, it is because He knows it will not serve us best. When God chooses not to give us something which we think we need right now, it's not because He's trying to shut us out. It's not because He couldn't give it. Instead, it's because he has determined that it would be better for us to go without it. And this may chafe our natural instincts, but the Bible teaches us that even the chastening, even the difficult days which God allows in our life, the chastening in the life of the Christian is a sign of his fatherly love and care. He provides what we need when we need it, even if we don't want it. Hebrews 12, verses nine and 10. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness." So if God doesn't give, it's because it's for the best. And if God gives us difficulties, it's for the best. What he gives to us, he gives to us for our good. That's difficult. That's what the Bible teaches. So again, three observations on that word father. As we pray to our father, we pray to one who readily receives us for Jesus' sake, we pray to one who is capable of providing and protecting, and we pray to one who has our best interests in mind, whether he rewards us or chastens us. But with those three observations, we move to the last portion of this preface, which is that we pray as Jesus taught us, our Father in heaven, in heaven. And now we want to make three final observations on those two words, in heaven. The first observation would be this. By directing our prayer to the Father in heaven, we are assured that we pray to a Father who transcends the sinfulness of our earthly fathers. By praying to our Father in heaven, we know that we're not praying to our sinful, earthly fathers. And we've already noted that fathers sometimes come up short. They're unable to provide all that their kids need. They're sometimes unable to provide the protection which their children need when danger comes. Yet, I think this to be the case. Most children, or at least a lot of them, once they have grown up and matured, They will come to judge those sorts of shortcomings with a judgment of charity. Recognizing their parents, you know, they did the best they could with the resources that they had. At least you hope that people can get to that point where they say, you know, they tried. Whatever failings they had, it wasn't malicious. You know, they had faults, but they did their best. But some, I want to recognize this this morning, some struggle with the idea of God being a father altogether because their dads didn't just come up short. You know, maybe their dads were deeply sinful. Their dads were abusive. Their dads were violent. Their dads made their children pitiful and miserable and ruined their life. That happens. And so, for such a person, to speak of God as father may be to raise a very negative image of God in their minds, because for them, to be a father is not to be a source of care and love, but it's to be a source of malice and violence and misery. If you've had that sort of experience, first of all, I'd say I agree with you. That's a tragedy. That's a fruit of sin. That's not something that anyone should have to face and experience. But I would also try to encourage you with the truth that when you come to approach God in prayer, you're not coming to any old father. You are coming to our father in heaven. He's not an earthly father. He's our father in heaven who struggles with none of the sins of your father. He struggles with none of the sins of your father. He is good and He is perfect and He will do right by you. And so you can lean into His care even if you've never been able to lean into the care of a father before. Even if you've had to put distance between yourself and your earthly father. This is not your earthly father, this is your heavenly father you can always trust in. He's always good. He always has your best in mind. And the fact that we pray to our Father in Heaven reminds us and assures us of that. The second observation I want to make of this final phrase is that by directing our prayers to our Father in heaven, we are assured, reminded, that we pray to a Lord and King who is worthy of the greatest fear and reverence. This is sort of like the other side of the coin. Yes, we come to a heavenly Father, and so we can come with confidence, knowing that Our Father in heaven, he far transcends our earthly fathers in both wisdom, love, righteousness. Yet, the fact that we come to a Father in heaven ought to sober us up a little bit. As those who come before a king, we can come confidently because Jesus leads us. We can come confidently, but we don't come casually. You know, there's a difference between coming in confidence and knowing that you're loved, and feeling free as you come, and coming casually, thinking lightly of the one that you approach. And so we're reminded of just what sort of magnanimous figure we approach when we come to our Father in heaven, the one who's seated on a throne, the one who is high and lifted up, the one who is surrounded by cherubim and angels crying out, holy, holy, holy. But as we think of these two aspects going together, I think that we can begin to see that confidence and reverence, coming confidently, coming reverently, those two things actually, they're not at odds with one another, they go hand in hand. They go hand in hand. We can be comforted by God's fatherly kindness while also possessing an appropriate and holy fear of Him. We can be confident in His kindness and fear Him as the Bible commands us to do so. And in fact, I think we have an example of this in the Bible. Because this seems to have been the state of the church shortly after Paul's conversion in the book of Acts. Because shortly after Paul's conversion, we get one of those sort of synopses which we get sometimes in the book of Acts, which tells us about the state of the church at a particular time in history. And we receive this summary in Acts 9.31, and here's what we read. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And notice this, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. They had fear, they had comfort, their confidence and their reverence went hand in hand and it was in that state as they approached God as a father and as a king, that they began to grow and as the church began to multiply. And so again, by directing our prayer to our Father in heaven, we're assured that we pray to a Lord and King who is worthy of our greatest fear, reverence, and respect. Finally this morning, by directing our prayer to our Father in heaven, we are assured that we pray to one who transcends the earth, and its temporal trials. He transcends the earth and its temporal trials. Think about it this way. When we are facing challenges in life, we don't typically go for help to those who are totally ignorant of our specific challenges. We don't go to the ignorant and look for help. To give one example, if the alternator on your car goes out, You don't want help from someone who can't tell an alternator from an alternator, okay? That's not the sort of person you want helping you at that particular time. However, at the same time, we don't typically go to those who know our challenges and our struggles well and yet still don't know how to overcome them. This is the model which the world will often take. As long as I can get by somebody who's struggling in the same way as me, then that will somehow help me. We will have solidarity with one another. But if your alternator in your car goes out, you may find some consolation in the knowledge that your neighbor's alternator has gone out too. Sometimes when bad things happen to us, then they happen to somebody else. We feel a little bit better about ourselves. I don't think that's a good thing, but we do. I do. But if your neighbor's alternator goes out and yours is out, if the best the two of you can do is stand there with the alternators in your hands and shrug your shoulders, then them knowing your struggle, your challenge, that really wasn't much help. Where am I going with this? Somewhere. The point here is that when we go to our Father in heaven, we go to one who is intimately aware of our challenges. He is not ignorant. He looks down upon the earth and he sees all things. And yet, he does not face the challenges himself. He is not struggling in the same way that we struggle. In other words, he doesn't get stuck in the mud with us. Psalm 33, 13 to 15, the psalmist just rhymes God in this way. The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man. From where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. So God sees. He sees us all. But what good is that to us? Well, the psalmist goes on to say in verses 18 and 19 of that psalm, Psalm 33, he explains how the Lord's searching gaze benefits the saints. And he says it in this way. He says, behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him. on those who hope in His steadfast love. And why? That He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. So as our Father is in heaven, He's a God who is, He's not weighed down, He's not overcome by the trials which we face. He can offer us more than a pitiful, head-scratching solidarity. But we are assured that He looks down upon us from heaven so that He might deliver those who belong to Him upon the earth from such trials. He plucks us out of the mud. He draws us out of the miry clay. And when He does so, He doesn't get dirty. When we pray to our Father in heaven, we're assured that we pray to a Father who transcends the sinfulness of our earthly fathers. We pray to a Lord and King who is worthy of our greatest fear and reverence. He's enthroned in heaven. And we are assured that we pray to one who transcends the earth and its temporal trials. He sees us, but he does not suffer in the way that we do. And so in summary, When Jesus tells us to pray, our Father in heaven, he is telling us to pray as disciples who have been adopted by God, knowing that we will be received and provided for in the way which is best for us, as we confidently yet reverently petition the Holy One who transcends all earthly fathers. That's what you should understand when you say our Father who art And if you've turned from your sin unto Christ with faith for your salvation, then you can pray in this way. You can pray in this way confidently, knowing that the one who died and was raised has made you part of the family. You are part of the family of God. You have been given access to the Father. You're led there by Jesus. The Spirit teaches you to say, Abba, Father. Pray in this way. And again, as we frequently do, always do, come back to the gospel, the call of this text in a gospel sense is that for those who have not turned from their sin to Christ, they can do so. They can place their faith in the one who teaches us to pray, knowing that He laid down His life and raised it back up again so that sinners, alienated from the Father by their sin, might learn to come boldly to the throne of grace, so long as they have the Son to lead them. And so this text, as we recognize who it is that we pray to, ought to lead us finally to give thanks to God. That through Jesus, the Spirit teaches us to pray, Abba Father. Only the God, the triune God, who does that, can make our prayers effective and fruitful. And that's our hope that He will do so. And in that hope, we go now to the Lord in word of prayer.