Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Amen, this is God's word.
I wanna start this morning by telling a story
of a man named George Mueller.
Anyone familiar with the name George Mueller?
Yeah, a couple of them.
George Mueller was a man, a gospel man,
an evangelist in the 19th century.
And he's known for running orphanages,
developing, creating orphanages all around,
caring for thousands of children over his lifetime.
In fact, 10,024 orphans, to be precise.
Beyond that, though, he was also known as a man in England
who was accused of raising the status of the poor
above their natural position.
That he so had an influence on the poor
in the area that he ministered
that the different classes of people were upset
because he was raising them up out of poverty
with his ministry.
He established over 117 schools that enrolled
and taught and educated 120,000 students.
And get this, after his wife died, his first wife died,
he was 71 years old.
And at 71 years old, he began to go travel as a missionary.
At 71 years old, he began to go travel as a missionary
and went on to travel 200,000 miles from 71 until his death.
At his funeral, over 10,000 people gathered
to pay respects to him, including over 1,500 of the orphans
that he helped to raise.
One of the remarkable things about his time
in the orphanages and supplying for the needs
of these young children is that he never asked
for financial support.
Typically, in a situation like that,
you got a nonprofit, you got an organization,
you need to consistently raise support.
He refused to on principle.
He said that he would not raise support,
not raise financial support.
In fact, he had a motto that was more or less,
ask God, not man.
Ask God, not man.
And so one morning at the orphanage,
they go to the kitchen and there's no food.
No food for the orphans.
And so Mueller, George Mueller goes and gathers
all the children for their usual morning prayers.
And as a part of their morning prayers,
they give thanks to God for the meal
that hasn't yet materialized.
They give thanks to God for the meal
they haven't yet partaken.
And just as they finish praying,
there's a knock on the door.
And a local baker has a load of bread
and he said he felt led to bring bread
to the orphanage that morning.
And as soon as they bring the bread in
and they get it all set and they're giving glory to God,
there's another knock on the door.
And it turns out that a milkman had been passing
by the orphanage and his cart broke down right out front.
And instead of allowing the milk in his cart to go bad,
while he waited for repairs,
he decided he was going to donate the milk
to the orphanage that was right there.
And so they ate with glad hearts,
giving thanks to God for what he had given.
God knew their need and he provided exactly
what they needed just in time.
And that story highlights something
of what Jesus wants us to understand
in Matthew chapter six, verse nine,
that prayer is not about trying to convince
some distant God to listen.
Prayer is not about the endless repetitions
of the pagan's prayer.
It's not about reciting the right words
or earning his favor.
Prayer begins with this profound truth.
God is our Father.
We are in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount
as we're studying here in Matthew chapter six.
The greatest sermon that was ever preached.
In fact, Jesus and his teaching on prayer
that we're focusing on is actually at the center
of the Sermon on the Mount.
In other words, it's the focal point of the whole sermon.
Chapter five moves us toward it
and chapter seven moves us out from it.
And in the middle is the Lord's Prayer.
And what does that mean?
Well, it means it's important.
The sermon began with Jesus teaching us
the characteristics of a kingdom of God citizen.
What does it mean to be a kingdom of God citizen?
Well, back in Matthew chapter five, verse three,
he said, a kingdom citizen is like this.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
And blessed are those who are persecuted
because of the righteousness,
for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
And so that's the basis, the beginning point,
that leads us to the focal point, which is the prayer.
And it's out of those characteristics of the kingdom
that God produces in the kingdom citizens,
those who have put their hope and faith in Christ,
that this prayer begins to flow,
that we can model or we can adopt the model
or pattern of the prayer.
And so Jesus now teaches his disciples
the kind of prayers that kingdom people pray.
And last week we did talk about how prayer
is not a performance, but it's a pattern.
This prayer is an opportunity for us to enter in
and to understand all that Jesus was getting at
as he laid it out.
And so it begins with the words, our Father in heaven.
To start praying like a kingdom citizen,
you've got to know something about your relationship
with God in this new world order.
He doesn't begin with our sovereign Lord,
though God is most certainly our sovereign Lord.
And he doesn't begin with our higher power
or the man upstairs or some simple generic term like God.
He says Father, and that tells us something
about how we are to come and to whom we are coming.
If you're taking notes, before we get to our Father,
there is that one word, our.
If you're taking notes, go ahead and write down
that this prayer is a family prayer.
It's a family prayer.
When Jesus begins a prayer with the word our,
he's doing something really intentional there.
He's putting us, he's pulling us away from this mindset
that prayer is somehow a solitary activity
meant to focus only on our individual needs.
Notice he doesn't say my Father, but he says our Father.
And this reminds us that when we come to God,
we're not coming to him alone.
We're coming to him as part of a family.
We live in a world that often over emphasizes
individuality, don't we?
We're taught to look out for ourselves
and to focus on our personal concerns,
but Jesus shifts that.
He moves the I and me to our and we and us.
No personal pronouns in this prayer.
Our relationship is very personal with him,
but it's not private.
He teaches us that prayer is something that we do
as a member of a community.
As believers, we belong to this family of people
and we pray to our Father.
We acknowledge that we're not isolated.
We're unified with other believers,
with brothers and sisters around the world,
and across time, with a shared Father.
Think about it this way.
Jesus could have easily made this prayer
about personal connection.
Your personal line, your red phone direct to God.
He could have easily done that,
but he's calling us to come to him
but he's calling us into something much bigger.
Prayer is not just about my needs or my wants.
It's about being connected to the body of Christ,
through Christ our head, to our Lord.
Remember, Christ is the Son,
and it's our connection to Christ
that gives us audience with God the Father.
And so that brings us into not only Christ,
but into a family with one another,
and we begin with our, we come to God together,
and we're reminded that our faith journey
is not just some individual walk,
but it's a shared one.
We often approach life thinking,
I've got to handle things on my own,
but Jesus challenges us,
and he challenges the idea right from the start.
He reminds us that God's design for his people is community,
and we pray with one another,
and we pray for one another.
And oftentimes we are God's answer
to the very prayers we pray.
When we say our Father, we are acknowledging
that our prayers involve more than just ourselves.
They involve the needs, the hopes,
and the struggles of the family of God.
And this humbles us, and it begins to strip away
the kinds of prayers that we know God didn't design us for,
the kinds of me-focused, self-centered prayers.
And we begin to think of something bigger.
We're a part of something that God has brought us into.
So it means that when we pray,
we don't just think about ourselves, we lift up others,
we remind ourselves that we're a part of this thing,
and that prayer is not some private transaction
between you and God.
It's a family conversation you're invited into.
Number two, if you're taking notes,
write down it's a relationship, not a transaction.
A relationship, not a transaction.
When Jesus calls God Father, he's inviting us into
this radically different kind of relationship.
In our human relationships,
we often think of things as transactional.
We can often fall into this in any of our relationships,
no matter how close, be it a husband and wife or a family,
that the basis on which we come,
or the basis on which we are approved,
is the transactions we engage in.
Do I bring enough?
Do I get enough?
If I perform well, I'm accepted.
If I don't, I'm rejected.
This kind of thinking is truly everywhere.
It's in the workplace, it's in our society,
it's in our homes even.
But Jesus is leading us to come to God the Father
in a different way.
We're not dealing with a business transaction here
when we come to God.
We're dealing with a relationship.
So think about the mindset that we oftentimes
will bring to prayer.
And that's, I've been doing well spiritually,
so my prayers are gonna be heard.
I've been feeling really good about my relationship
with God, my personal, private relationship with God.
I've been checking all the boxes,
I've been doing all the right things.
I think my prayers are now gonna be pretty effective.
That's transactional.
And the opposite side is true also, right?
I haven't been doing very well.
I missed three of my prayer times this time,
I didn't do any devotions.
I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna hit a brick wall here.
He doesn't wanna hear from me.
Why would he wanna hear from me?
A little while back we talked about the Daisy theology,
right?
He loves me, he loves me not.
And we oftentimes approach God that way,
thinking that that's how we're accepted.
Good days, woohoo, we're excited, bad days.
We're disappointed, we feel rejected,
we don't even approach.
That's not what we're being invited into.
That transactional mentality is like more or less saying,
I've paid my rent, I should be hurt.
How many of you guys have ever rented a place before?
You ever rented a place?
Yeah.
I'm paying my rent and this broke down,
I'm gonna call the landlord.
Why aren't they fixing my stuff?
Why aren't they taking care of their end of the thing?
I've got rights here, right?
I paid my rent.
And then the flip side is, shoot,
I missed a couple of months of rent.
I can't call the landlord.
I can't talk to him, I'm trying to avoid him,
I'm trying to stay away from him.
If he comes around, I hide, I close the blinds,
I hide out in the dark.
I don't wanna be seen.
I don't wanna be seen. Back and forth, back and forth.
I paid the rent, I deserve to be hurt.
I haven't paid the rent, I don't deserve to be hurt.
But Jesus flips this thinking
and he tells us that when we come to God,
it's not as a renter trying to meet our obligations,
but it says children to a loving father.
And that's different.
This shift is crucial because a father loves his child
because of who they are, not what they do.
Who they are, the status of who they are in relation to him,
not all that they can do.
And we know this, especially when our kids are young,
because they can't do a whole lot.
And then when they get a little older
and they're teenage years, they act like they can't do a lot,
even though they're totally capable.
And we still love them.
And then eventually they wake up
and they start doing a little bit more.
Hopefully, that's the hope.
But a father loves his children because of who they are,
not because of what they do.
And a good father will listen and provide
and care for his children regardless
of whether they've been perfect or they've messed up.
However they come, he wants to hear from them,
he wants to have a relationship.
He's not waiting for us to perform well enough
to deserve his attention.
We already have it because we're his children.
There was an illustration of an emperor in the Roman Empire.
He was on his great parade entering in to town
and it was all about the emperor.
I mean, pomp and circumstance, parade,
lines of crowds along the side, all about the emperor.
And out of the crowd breaks away a young child,
a young little girl, and she begins to run
toward the chariot that is carrying the emperor.
And before she gets halfway there,
a centurion, a Roman legion officer steps between us
and says, you cannot come here.
You cannot get near the emperor.
And this young little girl looks up at the emperor,
looks up at the legion, the soldier, the officer,
and said, he may be your emperor, but he's my father.
And upon seeing this, the emperor invites the young girl
into the chariot to sit with him, to be enthroned with him,
to receive all that is being brought to him
and to be a partner to it, a witness to it,
in the seat next to it, playing at his feet.
That reminded me of a picture I remember seeing growing up
of John F. Kennedy at the president's desk doing work
and out of the bottom of the president's desk
there's a little cabinet that opens up
and one of his kids is peeking through
out of the bottom of it.
He gets access to the Oval Office, to the inner courts,
to be with dad, and dad does what dad's gonna do
because dad's awesome, but the kid has access.
But just because we have access,
and because God is our father and we're invited in
to have that relationship, and we're invited in
to have that relationship, and we're not renters
trying to earn favors.
It's not a meritocracy where we have to merit his love
or merit a promotion in the kingdom.
We're children, as soon as we believe we're brought
into a family, that doesn't necessarily mean
just because we have access though and his attention
that we get everything we ask for, right?
A good father doesn't always give his children
exactly what they ask for.
A good father gives them exactly what they need
to flourish and thrive.
Tim Keller put it this way, God will only give you
what you would have asked for if you knew everything
he knows.
He's that good of a father that he wants to hear
our prayers, he wants us to approach him,
and yet at the same time, he knows more than us.
He's good and powerful and able to do anything,
and yet what he does is he filters our prayers
and gives us what is best for us, what is good.
That's the kind of father he is, he always acts out
of his love and his wisdom.
He doesn't have a bad day where he wants his kids
to stop irritating him, so he pacifies them
with bad things for them, right?
Here, eat this ice cream, play with this iPad,
get lost for nine hours, go play in the street.
No, instead, he is an all loving, all wise,
all powerful father who wants to give us what we need
and knows enough to target that and give it exactly
at the right time.
Jesus wants us to see God as the ideal father.
He's perfect in his love and wisdom and his care,
and every father, every human father, no matter who they are,
has fallen short of the ideal, every single one of them.
And so whatever kind of father you may have had,
whether he was present or absent,
whether he was loving or distant,
Jesus is saying to you that God is the ultimate ideal father.
In fact, he's the basis by which you're evaluating
all earthly fathers.
When you say that father failed to be a good father,
what are you measuring it against?
God, the ideal father who knows what is good for us.
God is our father and we are always heard by him.
You don't need to earn his attention.
You are already accepted if you are in Christ Jesus.
You don't need to negotiate or bargain with him
to listen to you.
He is a father who listens because he loves you
and delights in you.
And so it frees us to pray, our father in heaven.
The final point, if you're taking notes,
God's character shapes our prayers.
When we began the Lord's Prayer with our father in heaven,
we're reminded that who God is shapes how we pray.
Jesus is teaching us that prayer isn't just about
bringing a list of needs before God,
but it starts with understanding who God is,
our personal loving and powerful father.
And this understanding should deeply affect
both the content of our prayers
and the posture of our hearts when we pray.
First, it shapes the content of our prayers
when we remember that God is our father in heaven.
We begin to focus on his concerns over ours.
Jesus shows us that the first priority in prayer
is to seek God's kingdom and his will.
Why?
Because God as our loving father knows what's best.
And when we start to recognize who God is,
as our loving father who knows what's best,
then our perspective changes
and we're no longer consumed by our own desires
and the kind of prayers that we're used to praying
for our needs, but instead we begin to seek
to align our hearts with his because he knows better.
His kingdom, his will, his glory.
And Jesus reminds us that God's concern
should take priority over ours
because he is all knowing and wise.
And a good father knows what's best for his children
even when they don't understand.
So when we say our father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy,
we are essentially saying,
father, your concerns are more important than mine.
Father, your concerns are more important than mine.
Help me to see things the way you see them.
And so what are God's concerns?
What does he make much of?
Well, I'm actually gonna leave that as a cliffhanger.
I'm gonna, Nick, our servant leader
will be preaching next week.
I'll be out of town in Guatemala.
And Nick is gonna dive deep into that second phrase,
your name be honored as holy.
What is God most concerned with?
We're gonna find out next week.
Same bat channel, same bat time.
Or you can go to the other service if you want.
Same sermon.
When we understand that God's character shapes our prayers,
it also shapes our posture of our heart.
We recognize God for who he is and we come to him
and we begin to trust with humility.
We bring our needs and our desires.
He doesn't want us to withhold those.
There's nothing about your needs or desires
that he wants you to leave out of your prayers.
But he wants you to properly place them
in the right hierarchy.
His name, his concern first.
His wisdom over my wisdom.
His provision over my provision.
Sometimes the very things that we want,
we want them in a certain way, a certain form.
It reminds me of the comedian.
I don't know why this just popped in my head,
but there's a comedian who talks about taking his kid
into the store and finding a toy
and she plays with it the whole time.
And by the end of it, he's like,
okay, I guess I'll get that toy for her.
But he's like, but I want a new one.
She played with it the whole time.
We're in the store, so he goes over and gets the new one
and she's like, I don't want that one.
And now I don't want that one, this one.
And he's like, I'm not gonna buy the one you already used,
I'm gonna buy the brand new one.
And she's, no, I want this one.
This is the one I want.
And sometimes we ask for things, we have wants,
we have needs, and we want it exactly the way we want it.
And this prayer challenges us to let his wisdom rule supreme.
Let his wisdom usurp our wisdom and our understanding.
Let us live out truly what we, hopefully we believe
that God is all-knowing and all-powerful,
all-wise and all-loving.
And out of that character, why wouldn't we want him to choose?
Why wouldn't we want him to make the final choice?
He wants to hear from his children,
he wants to know their needs,
but why wouldn't we want him to make the final choice?
Why wouldn't we want him to make the final choice?
When this changes prayer, if God were this impersonal force,
this distant, unknowable being,
and we really couldn't dialogue with him,
we couldn't know him, he didn't reveal himself
through scripture, we would all begin to meld our concerns
with God's concerns and they'd be indistinguishable.
We wouldn't know what God's concerns are versus ours.
But because God is personal, because his character
is a personal God who can be known
and has revealed himself through scripture,
and is fully revealed in the person of Christ Jesus
and the work of Christ Jesus to redeem and to rescue
and to have a future, then we have something to hold onto,
we have something to trust.
We can know the God, because we can know him,
we have something we can trust,
we know something about his character,
so we have something we can hold onto.
John Stott, pastor and scholar once said,
it's always wise before we pray
to spend time deliberately recalling who he is.
What an exercise, just that one exercise.
If we took time, I wanna pray, Lord,
but I wanna remember first who you are.
And if I remember who you are,
that might shape my prayer a little bit differently, right?
I wanna know who you are.
We take the time to remember who he is,
it changes how we pray.
We trust him more, we submit our desires to him
more willingly, and we align our hearts
with his kingdom and his will.
Finally, it's important to recognize
that prayer isn't for the complacent
or the self-satisfied.
This is hard to hear, but the Sermon on the Mount
was framed first with the Beatitudes.
Blessed are the pure and hard, blessed are those who mourn,
blessed are the poor in spirit.
Theirs is the kingdom, theirs is the prayers of the kingdom.
The Lord's prayer isn't for the complacent
or the self-satisfied.
Jesus gives us the prayer for those who are dead
but those who are desperate for God,
those who want God above everything else,
those who recognize that this world is broken
and that only God can set it right.
The prayer is for the humble and the broken and the lowly,
but not for those who have found their joy
in the things of this world.
If you have found your ultimate joy
in the things of this world,
this prayer will be nothing but a recitation.
This prayer isn't for you,
the prayer is for the poor in spirit,
the one who mourns over his sinful condition,
the one who trusts in God and hungers in thirst
for righteousness.
It reminds me of George Mueller in that prayer
because he wanted to go to God first
and he wanted to trust God first.
He hungered for righteousness, he hungered for God first,
and he found his satisfaction there.
And then all the things that God could provide
on this earth, that's all bonus.
When we call out to our Father in heaven,
we are acknowledging that we need him
and that true joy and life can only be found
in his eternal kingdom.
And that's one of the parts of this prayer
that is kind of always in the background
as you look at the whole of the Sermon on the Mount
and the whole of Jesus' ministry in the Book of Matthew
that he has come to reveal the kingdom
or to bring the kingdom to bear on this world.
In the background is the reality
that the end of the age was initiated,
commenced with Christ's coming
and will ultimately consummate it with his return.
And so his disciples understood,
oh, we're entering into a whole new world right now.
We're not praying like we used to.
We're praying in a new way with a new connection with God,
with a better understanding,
a corporate understanding of God's kingdom
and what God is doing here.
And what he's ultimately pointing to in the background
is that only with the coming of Christ,
the second return of Christ,
will the fullness of the kingdom come.
And so when we pray things like,
your will be done, your kingdom come,
we're asking for the end of this world as we know it.
We're asking for this age to come to a close
and the consummation of God's kingdom
to be fully revealed when we pray this prayer.
And so you can see how if your attachments,
if the strings of your life are all entangled with the world,
you're not gonna wanna pray that prayer.
If you're fully satisfied here
and your joy is fully satisfied here
in the things of this world,
this prayer might be hostile to your way of life
because it's calling you to call out to God
and ask for his kingdom to fully come.
And this prayer holds over the kingdom citizens
in the meantime, in the in-between.
It keeps us coming back to who God is,
what he is concerned with,
and how we might live while we wait
for his revealing at the end of all time.
They invite the worship team to come up and as they do,
I'll wrap up here with my conclusion.
The simple opening to the Lord's Prayer,
our Father in heaven,
carries truth that transforms the way that we approach God.
We come to God as part of a family.
When we say ours, we're acknowledging that we are not alone.
We are not alone.
We come to God as his children.
He's not a distant deity or some business partner
demanding performance.
He is our loving Father who listens to us
because we are his.
We don't need to perform to be heard.
We are already heard because we are his children.
We recognize who God is.
It changes the shape of our prayers.
When we first go to him and we understand his concern
above all other concerns,
his kingdom above all other kingdoms,
it begins to shape and reshape our prayers
into ones that align with his will and his kingdom.
So how will this change your prayers?
How will this change your prayers?
The next time you begin with our Father,
remember that you're speaking to the one who loves you.
Remember that that love was fully revealed
in Christ Jesus when he called you.
And if you are in Christ,
when he called you unto redemption,
restoration with the Father,
when he gave you the Holy Spirit
so that it might cry out within you.
When you have no words and you have no way to express it,
no understanding of who God is,
and you feel blinded or in a fog,
that it will cry out, Abba!
It will cry out, Abba!
Which means Father, Daddy, Abba!
The Spirit within cries.
He cares for you.
He knows you better than you know yourself.
And he knows what you need before you ask him.
He's wise enough to give you,
bring about the ultimate flourishing as his child.
And he's wise enough to keep from you
the things that will hurt you.
That's good.
Let him decide.
I don't know about you,
I oftentimes, the way my brain is wired,
I get decision fatigue.
Anyone else get decision fatigue?
You're like, I don't care where we eat.
I don't care at all.
Of course, you always do care when they actually say somewhere,
but I do care, I don't wanna go there.
Life is a lot of decisions,
and God's wisdom can guide us.
I'm not saying this is some sort of, you know,
I don't know, that stick trick they used to do
to find oil or water, right?
This isn't something like that.
This is the wisdom of God revealed in his word.
The wisdom of God as it shapes us
through the receiving of his word,
as we've heard today, as we've studied our Father in heaven,
as we looked at that,
that shaped us to understand who he is,
and that shaped, hopefully shaped your prayers
a little bit more.
Which means that when decisions do come or times come
where there are things that you have to decide,
you will decide, hopefully,
with greater levels of God's wisdom as he has given it,
apportioned it to lead you.
To lead you through this life.
There are lots of decisions to make,
and not all of them are plain spelled out in the Bible.
And so we need his wisdom to lead and guide us
on all the in-between issues, on all the in-between things.
When you pray our Father in heaven,
you're praying to the one who provides and protects
and guides like the perfect Father that he is.
That doesn't mean that it will always be easy.
I'm gonna leave you with another George Mueller story.
Before he went on his lengthy missions trip at 71,
just blows my mind, anyone who's like,
oh, my time's done, really?
71 was the beginning of, I mean, went all over the place,
Singapore, Europe, Asia.
But one of the things that changed in his life
right before that was the passing of his first wife.
And when she passed or she got ill, she had a fever,
the kind of fever that takes you out in the 1800s.
I don't know which one, but.
He wrote in one of his writings,
the last portion of scripture which I read
to my precious wife was this.
The Lord God is a sun and a shield.
The Lord will give grace and glory.
No good thing will be withheld
from them that walk uprightly.
Psalm 84, 11.
And this is George Mueller writing.
I said to myself with regard to the latter part,
no good thing will be withheld from them
that walk uprightly.
I am in myself a poor worthless sinner,
but I have been saved by the blood of Christ
and I do not live in sin.
I walk uprightly before God.
Therefore, if it is really good for me,
my darling wife will be raised up again, sick as she is.
God will restore her again.
But if she is not restored again,
then it would not be a good thing for me.
And so my heart was at rest.
I was satisfied with God.
And all this springs, as I have often said before,
from taking God at his word, believing what he says.
His wife died February 6, 1870,
and Mueller at that time was 64 years old
and he never wavered in his faith.
He even preached at her funeral, Psalm 119, 68,
thou art good and doest good.
You are good and you do good.
He recounted how he preached to her,
preached himself as she was dying.
At his funeral, he said,
this is how he preached to himself.
If God pleases to take my dearest wife,
it will be good, like himself.
What I have to do as his child
is to be satisfied with what my father does,
that I may glorify him.
What a reshaping.
What a reshaping, reshaping of the mind,
reshaping of the heart.
Jesus is inviting us to this kind of praying.
Father, we thank you God,
for the grace of your word,
the wisdom of your word to instruct our hearts.
May the seed of your word fall on good soil in our hearts
and yield a harvest of righteousness in our lives.
You are a father in heaven.
Your name be honored as holy back in Jesus' name.
Amen.