The Lord’s Prayer (2)
We’re continuing our little series on prayer. I planned to do two talks on the Lord’s Prayer and today we have the second.
Jesus doesn’t just dive straight into the Lord’s Prayer. He first gave some teaching about how we should not pray, and last week, we looked at what Jesus had to say about hypocritical prayer and babbling prayer.
This week, we come to the Christian prayer. We usually call the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray ‘the Lord’s Prayer’, although Jesus wouldn’t have prayed quite like this, as the prayer includes a section for forgiveness, and Jesus didn’t need to ask God for forgiveness. But I’m sure that Jesus would have prayed all the other sections.
Last week we noted that Jesus doesn’t say ‘Pray this.’ He says, ‘Pray then LIKE this.’ This prayer is meant to be a model for how we should pray, not something we say mechanically, praying the same words every time. If we do that, there’s a great danger that we won’t think about what we’re praying – and the Lord’s Prayer will actually become a babbling prayer!
I also mentioned last week that Priscilla [my wife] and I usually use this format when we pray, so we’ve been praying this prayer for a long time. In this talk I will tell you about how we pray through the Lord’s Prayer, but as I said, it’s meant to be a model, and there are certainly other ways to use it.
In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to address God as ‘Our father in heaven!’ But there’s no reason why we can’t address God in some other way.
The psalms are of course the biggest collection of prayers in the Bible, and the psalmists address God in all sorts of ways. For example, they say, ‘O Lord God’, ‘O my God’, ‘O Holy One of Israel’, ‘O my Strength’, O Lord, God of vengeance.’ Nehemiah prayed, ‘O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God…’ In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, ‘Abba, Father’. [2 Sam 7:18; Ps 59:9; Ps 71:22; Ps 94:1-2; Neh 1:5; Mark 14:36.] We shouldn’t think the only way we can address God is ‘Our father in heaven.’ However, this is a good way to address God. It reminds us that God is our father. We have a close and intimate relationship with him. But he is also ‘in heaven.’ He is the awesome creator of the universe.
It's also worth mentioning that Jesus uses ‘us’ and ‘we’ a lot in this prayer. It’s clear that he’s expecting his disciples to pray this prayer collectively and for each other.
I am going to go through the six sections of the Lord’s Prayer in turn. We got to the first one last week, but we really only touched on it. I think it’s slightly difficult to understand, so I’m going to spend a bit more time on it than on the other sections.
1. Hallowed be your name
I said that this is a slightly difficult phrase to understand.
We might struggle with the idea of ‘Hallowed be.’ ‘Hallowed’ sounds a bit like ‘holy’, and it’s a related word. To hallow can mean ‘to make holy.’ We can’t make God any holier than he already is, so it doesn’t mean that. Here, it means to respect God as holy.
So far, so good. But what does ‘holy’ mean?! Many people think ‘holy’ means very good and righteous. But it doesn’t really mean that.
Holy means ‘specially belonging to God’ or ‘set apart’ or ‘different’. A Bible scholar called William Barclay wrote that the fundamental meaning of the word for holy is ‘different.’
So, when we respect God as holy, we respect him as different. He is different from any being in this universe.
Here are a couple of quotes which express this idea of God being different. Robert Mounce and Grant Osborne are both New Testament scholars. Mounce says, ‘To acknowledge God as holy is to declare his complete separateness from all created beings.’ He is giving the same idea – God is completely separate. Osborne says, ‘He is the ‘Wholly Other,’ standing above this world and soon to judge it.’ Once again, it’s the same idea.
God is holy; he’s different. But HOW holy is he? God isn’t just a little bit holy. There are two verses where people address God as ‘holy, holy, holy.’ The fact that they repeat holy three times means that God is absolutely holy.
Let’s come now to the second part of this phrase ‘your name.’ Why doesn’t Jesus simply say ‘you’? In the Old Testament there are quite a few names for God. The principal name is Jehovah. The name ‘Jehovah’ appears in written form in the Old Testament – or at least, the four main consonants do. However devout Jews thought that God’s name was too holy to be said, so they avoided saying it. Instead they often referred to God by saying ‘your name.’ So ‘your name’ became the standard way to refer to God, and here, ‘your name’ means God.
Let’s connect those ideas. Jesus starts the prayer by saying:
‘Hallowed be your name.’
That means:
‘May you, God, be respected as holy.’
And that in turn means:
‘May you, God, be respected as absolutely different, special, set apart.’
That’s the first thing we pray for. We want God to be respected as absolutely different, special, set apart. We might read about the gods the ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped. Or we might see a god depicted in a film. These ‘gods’ are often very like humans. But God, God who created the universe, is utterly different and we need to show him the respect that goes with that.
How can we do that in practice? Let’s recognize that respect is, first and foremost, an attitude. It’s about how we think about God. That attitude is then expressed in our words and actions. Praising God, thanking him, serving him, listening to him and obeying him are all forms of respect. When we pray ‘Hallowed be your name’ we can pray for all those things.
Who should be doing this? By whom is God’s name to be hallowed? It doesn’t say. This part of the Lord's Prayer is in the passive. We want God’s name to be hallowed all over the world. But that’s rather a lot to pray for. When Priscilla and I pray this section of the Lord’s Prayer – and most of the other sections – we usually focus on a smaller group. We’re first and foremost responsible for what we do, so we should certainly pray that WE (Priscilla and I) will keep God’s name holy. But we also pray for our families, the church and the local community, that these larger groups we are part of will keep God’s name holy.
Just one further point before we move on. We pray for God’s name to be hallowed. We want that. But it’s also important for our sake that we have an attitude of reverence towards God when we pray. Hebrews 5:7 tells us, ‘In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.’ Jesus was heard because of his reverence. No doubt we also want to be heard!
2. Your kingdom come
George VI was crowned king of the United Kingdom and of quite a lot of other countries on 12th May 1937. He was the last person to be crowned king in England.
Jesus Christ was not crowned king. The day he was born, he was king. This picture depicts Jesus before Pilate [slide]. Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not of this world…” Jesus IS king. But we don’t see him wearing a crown, apart from a crown of thorns. Jesus has a kingdom, but he hasn’t yet taken up rule. But one day, we will see him wearing a golden crown. He will destroy every rule and authority and power and deliver the kingdom to God the Father.
So, we pray that people will accept Jesus as Lord and king, that those who have already done so will do so more and more, and that the day will come when Jesus returns and takes up his rule.
3. Your will be done
Priscilla and I usually pray for other people and situations in this section. Most of us know what God’s will is, in general terms.
God wants people to be saved. He wants us to be holy. He knows what is best in regard to big life decisions such as marriage or a job. He wants peace, health, healing, justice and prosperity. We pray for prosperity for our local area – Boscombe and Pokesdown. There are lots of conflicts in the world, and issues of justice, and friends who are not well, and friends who don’t know Jesus, to pray for…
4. Daily bread
We usually pray for ourselves in this section. It is usually very easy to think of things we want God to help us with! Let’s not only pray for material needs in this section. For example, we can also pray for qualities of character, such as wisdom, gentleness and courage. We can pray for faith to press on when the way ahead isn’t clear, for solutions to problems, or for guidance.
5. Forgive us our debts
Priscilla and I often start by praying the second section of this prayer, that God would help US to be forgiving of OTHER PEOPLE as we should be.
There are four areas in regard to US forgiving OTHER PEOPLE which I particularly pray into.
We pray that God would help us to:
• Overlook offences, if possible. I think that about 90% of the times where we need to forgive come in this category, and a high proportion of those happen at home.
• Be willing to forgive if there is genuine repentance. This applies to cases where we can’t simply overlook the offence. And the bar for that is high. Peter denied Jesus three times, and Jesus wasn’t willing to simply let it go. I can’t think of a single instance in my life where someone committed a sin against me which I couldn’t overlook, and then clearly asked for forgiveness. But I want to be ready for that possibility.
• Not judge where it is NOT our business to judge. A lot of us do this a lot. It’s a form of not forgiving.
• Combine justice and mercy where it IS our business to judge. As parents, teachers and so on, we are in situations where we do need to judge. Being just, but also being merciful, is an aspect of being forgiving.
So, we pray into these things. Then we say sorry for things we know we’ve got wrong, in thought word and deed, in commission and omission.
Before we leave this fifth section of the Lord’s Prayer, I’m going to jump forward to Jesus’ closing warning. Jesus says, ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.’ That’s a great promise! Jesus continues, ‘but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ That’s a chilling warning. You are free to not forgive. The only problem is that then God doesn’t forgive you.
So, we reach the last section of this prayer.
6. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Pray this section seriously! You may be getting a bit tired by now, and want to rush through this last section. After Priscilla and I moved to Azerbaijan we started to pray this section very seriously! There were lots of areas in which we were very conscious we needed God’s protection – and God protected us wonderfully well!
We typically pray in regard to temptation in our thoughts, words and deeds. We include temptation in the areas of commission and omission. There can be omission in our thoughts as well as in our words and deeds – for example, a lack of concern or sensitivity for people around you. Areas we might pray for under ‘thoughts’ include pride, depression, distraction and sexual temptation. Under ‘words’, we often include spoken and written words (e.g. emails, texts). Under ‘deeds’, an area I’m particularly praying over at the moment is failure to think properly about what I should be doing. It’s easy to do the urgent rather than the important; the good rather than the best.
We also pray that God will deliver us from evil. We pray for safety on the roads, for health (that God will keep us from major life-threatening or debilitating illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and dementia, depression and coronavirus), from injury, especially as we exercise, from malicious people, and from ‘every wile and attack of the evil one.’ Satan is sneaky!
I hope this has given you a picture of what ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ is all about, and how Priscilla and I use it in our prayers. And I hope it’s given you some ideas of how you could use the prayer as a model in your prayers. What’s left now is to do it!
Let me conclude with something Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote. [Lloyd-Jones was a famous preacher in the UK about 50 years ago.] Here, he quotes part of Ephesians 3:20 in the King James Version:
‘God is able to do for us “exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think.” Let us believe that and then go to Him in simple confidence.’
Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 21 June 2020
