Our Father... Series

This sermon/study is a conglomeration of my notes for my church family and a HEAVY dose of help from W.Phillip Keller and his book "A Layman Looks at the Lord's Prayer" I thank Mr. Keller for his inspiring words and depth of understanding of this matter, God has used him mightily to touch so many for the Kingdom.

Sermon Brief

Date Written: February 4, 2014

Date Preached: February 5, 2014

Where Preached: OPBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Series Title: A Study on the Lord’s Prayer

Sermon Title: Our Father… (Sermon 2)

Sermon Text: Matthew 6:9-13 [HCSB]

Essence of the Text: Jesus wanted His disciples to know how to pray…

Essence of the Sermon: Jesus wants believers today to know how to pray…

Objective of the Sermon: Prayer is vital for the believer, but prayer is not so much in the words as it is in the attitude behind those words. This model prayer lays forth a template that guides the believer in the direction of their prayer and the attitude of their heart.

Introduction:

How do we pray? This was a question we asked each other last week and we began to look at the Lord’s Prayer or what I call the Model Prayer found in Matthew 6… Jesus offered this to his disciples during his most famous sermon… The Sermon on the Mount… that covers Matt 5-7…

We learned last week that this was not a prayer that Jesus gave us to memorize the words… although memorizing Scripture is never a bad thing! The words are NOT the important thing here… it is the model or structure of the prayer that is important! We are called to model all our prayer after this template that Jesus gave to His disciples…

Last week we looked at how prayer was NOT for God to inform him of what we needed BUT rather it was for us… to help us draw closer to Him! It is for our communion with Him and the relationship we must have with God.

Tonight I want to look at the 1st verse… specifically the 1st part of that verse where Jesus says to call out to the Father in heaven… call out to the creator of all things… even Jesus acknowledged God’s preeminent position within the galaxy. Jesus tells us to CALL out to the Father!

Let’s look at v9

9Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

When we think about this… Jesus wanted us to feel ‘at home’ when we came to God in prayer and here he does this by using “Father”… What an intimate and personal family like approach to prayer.

What a reassuring manner in which to speak to God… to the Creator of all things! This is really a startling concept to MANY people… At the time Jesus laid this out… this was a FOREIGN concept to the avg Jewish home…

But what we find here is that this is a unique and new concept God is making available to all the work… Prior to Jesus, God was held up as someone who was remote and alone…

Prior to Jesus, God was regarded as someone REMOTE, and literally unapproachable as only one time a year… one man could enter into what was known as the Holy of Holies into the presence of God. Before Jesus came it was believed that God was simply NOT accessible to the common man!

But here in this prayer Jesus speaks about an intimate relationship between the one praying and the object of that prayer… GOD! He uses the term “Our Father”

All throughout the OT God was referred to by pseudo-names and in hushed whispers for all feared that they may upset or profane His name, but when it was mentioned it was YAHWEH… and NEVER was He referred to as the Heavenly Father!

BUT in the NT, especially during the life of Jesus and thru the witness of the Gospels we find God revealed in a much different manner. In fact in the Gospels, God is mentioned as ‘Father’ over 70 times…

When one sees God as ‘Father’ is certainly places him or her into a vastly different relationship… a radically different relationship… an exciting and new perspective on our God… this is because when we see God as ‘Father’ our perspective of Him changes.

He moves out of the role of cosmic judge and comes knocking at our hearts to reveal his intimate and eternal love for us… In fact the entire concept of God as “Father” is immersed in the wonder of His incredible love for us!

Think about it for just a moment… the One who IS from everlasting to everlasting… the One who has been from eternity past and will always be to eternity future… the One who thru His mere words, spoke the universe into existence… THIS One… loves YOU! This ONE desires to be your Heaven “Father”… this ONE desires that kind of intimate and close relationship with you!