Pray Like This: Our Father... - Pastor David Houck | 8.9.26

Our familiarity with the Lord's Prayer can sometimes cause us to miss the powerful truths it reveals. In this message, Pastor David shows how Jesus' opening line reveals two crucial aspects of God's nature. 

Transcript

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We began looking at this passage last week. This is in Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount. And he began addressing the topic of prayer. Prayer is something that is familiar with most, if not all, of us. And we looked at a sp uh statistic last week that said nearly half of all Americans pray daily. So it's a pretty significant aspect of our lives whether or not you call yourself a Christian. But many of us are dissatisfied with our prayer life. Many of us feel like we're missing something, or we might have questions about what it means to truly pray, or how we're able to pray more, or how we're able to feel a greater connection with God. Or you might have asked, why haven't my prayers been answered? So many of us, if not all of us, have questions about prayer. And the bad aspect comes because it is so popular, it is so common that there are many false teachings out there about what prayer is. And there are many misunderstandings about prayer. And so it's interesting to note that last week in this passage, Jesus first shared two ways not to pray. He condemned hypocritical prayers and he condemned hollow prayers. And so he began by saying, don't do this, because this is what they saw from the religious leaders. They saw fake hollow prayers. And he said, No, no, no, don't do that. I'm gonna show you a new way. And so now, beginning in verse 9, Jesus said, 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. Many of you know that. Many of you know that by heart, the Lord's prayer. Maybe depending on your religious background, this is something you are expected to repeat often. And as we talked about last week, the danger that comes with that is that it in itself can become hollow and ritualistic, that it's just a tradition, that we say it because we know the words, we say it because maybe we were told to say it, but our heart doesn't align with what we're actually saying. In fact, if you've memorized it, you can say it while thinking about something else entirely. Now, there is nothing wrong with saying the Lord's Prayer if you're actually focused on what you're saying, if you're actually praying those words. I mean, it is a perfect prayer since it came from Jesus Himself. But more than giving us a tradition to be mimicked, Jesus gave us a model for prayer. That's what the Lord's prayer is. It is a model. He begins by saying, pray then like this. Not pray this, pray then like this. This is what your prayer should look like. And in connection time last week, we addressed a question that, you know, some translations, some people will say, um, forgive our debts, others will say our transgressions. And the reason being is because this prayer is found twice in Scripture. Once in Matthew, and then once in Luke. And they are two different instances. One, it was Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount talking to a crowd of people. The other one, which probably happened first, was the disciples saw Jesus praying and they kind of nudged one of them and to go up to Jesus and say, Hey, could you teach us how to pray? And so we find this prayer twice. But Jesus, the language Jesus uses, is different. Why? Because it's not something that he intended to be repeated verbatim. It is a model for prayer. Different people have broken it down in different ways. This is what uh I was able to come up with. The formula for this prayer. It begins with the person. The person that we are praying to. Then praise, praising God, then the purpose of prayer, then petition, asking God for what we need, and then finally protection, asking for God's protection. And this morning we're going to focus on the first aspect, the person. Because in this prayer, Jesus told us who to pray to. Now, some of us might just take this for granted. I mean, while we're praying to God, right? I mean, we're we're praying to God, but we miss how specific Jesus was. Jesus taught us to pray to our heavenly father. Our heavenly father. Father was actually the primary title that Jesus used for God. Now, as we know, and as we'll discuss further in a little bit, Jesus is the only one who can truly and legitimately call God that, as he is God's one and only Son. He is literally the Son of God. But here, Jesus doesn't just call God his Father, he addresses him as our Father. He's communicating that prayer is relational. It's not some general call to a distant deity. It's an intimate conversation with a loving God, a specific God, the God of the Bible, not a nameless God or an unidentified God, or to just a spirit or to the universe, but a prayer to Yahweh, the God of Jesus, the God of the Bible. God doesn't answer other people's mail. People think you can just toss up a prayer to any name and it'll get to the right place. I mean, you know, pray to Allah, pray to Muhammad, pray to Buddha, pray to Thor, Zeus, whatever it is. I mean, God will get it. I mean, whatever God is there, he'll get it. No. Sure, I mean, of course, God hears those prayers, but he doesn't accept those prayers. He accepts prayers, he receives prayers that are directed towards him. There is only one true God, he's not some sort of amalgamation of all the religions. And that's what universalism is. It's, well, can't we just embrace all these religions? We see the coexist bumper sticker. But God is exclusive, He doesn't operate that way. And to be clear, I'm not gonna spend too much time on this. Jesus never taught that we should pray to saints or to deceased loved ones or to Mary. In fact, no one in Scripture taught that we are to do so. Because that is a man-made tradition. And maybe, depending on your background, you've been taught that you're supposed to do that. And if you've been taught to do that, then I don't blame you that that is your understanding, but I must tell you as your pastor that that is nothing short of heresy. That is blasphemy. That comes from Satan himself. To start to elevate other people, human beings, and thinking that you can communicate with them or say a special prayer to Mary. You know, I've heard people say, well, you should pray to Mary because Mary is Jesus' mom, and come on, Jesus can't say no to his mom, right? It's not scriptural. Nowhere in Scripture. We are to pray only to God. Now, I am sure a question then arises in your mind, and a question that many of us have faced. Well, are we to pray only to the Father? Well, we may also pray to the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Lord's prayer focuses on the Father. And so some people ask, is it still appropriate to pray to Jesus? Can we pray to the Holy Spirit? But as we know, as we've talked about several weeks ago, and so we we don't have the time to go into it too much. You can always find this message online. The Trinity, the concept of the Trinity is just communicating that there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One being in essence, in three different personalities, but all equal. Are we all confused? Amen. All right. That is the truth of God, whether or not we can comprehend it fully. But our Christian life is about worshiping all three, worshiping the one God and worshiping the three persons of the God. That's why Jesus in the Great Commission in Matthew chapter 28, verse 19, said, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We do so, we worship, we live our life to glorify all three. I mean, if we are to worship and praise God, which includes Father, Son, and Spirit, then it then follows reason that we may also pray to Father, Son, and Spirit. And there are a couple of instances in the Bible where people pray to Jesus. We find one in Acts chapter 7, verse 59. Stephen is being stoned to death because he just preached one of the greatest sermons you can find in the Bible. But Acts chapter 7 says, And as they were stoning Stephen, he cried out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. He prayed directly to Christ. And so there are times where it might be more appropriate to pray to one than to the others. Because you can say, Heavenly Father, thank you for sending me your Son. The Father sent the Son. You wouldn't say, Jesus, thank you for sending me your son, because Jesus didn't do that. Or you could say, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. You don't say, Father, thank you for dying on the cross. Or you don't say, Spirit, thank you for dying on the cross. That's not true. It was Jesus, the Son, who died on the cross. Or you might be able to pray, Spirit, give me help in this moment. Or Spirit, thank you for dwelling within me and for sanctifying me. Now, because there are one God, they're all gonna hear it. But it might be more appropriate to pray to one in certain occasions and others in other times. But they all hear our prayers. I mean, Jesus Himself said, I and the Father are one. So when we're praying to one, we're praying to all because we're praying to the one God. And it's interesting that just as salvation is a work of all three, prayer also is only possible through the work of all three. You might have heard it said, and it is a basic core truth that we pray to God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. All three are active, or all three are involved in our prayer, and all three are appropriate to pray to. First of all, that he is paternal. He said, pray then like this, our Father. So the first thing we need to just be clear about is that Jesus uses masculine language to describe God. Now, God is spirit, God does not have a gender. Jesus came in flesh, Jesus has a gender. God does not have a gender. However, he chose to reveal himself to humanity through masculine language. And this offends some people today. That in a culturally sensitive society, uh, there are some churches and denominations who will try to use inclusive languages. They might pray, Mother God. They say God is a woman. They say God is genderless, or you know, we can refer to God as any way, and they brainstorm. There's one denomination that encouraged everyone to come up with new ways to refer to God, as if how God revealed himself in his word isn't enough. God chose to reveal himself with masculine language, so that's what we do. And it's really important to know that the moment you start to pick and choose what you want in the Bible, it's a slippery slope. But beyond using masculine language for himself, God continually reveals himself to us as a father. The first instance I could find in the Bible, and I would encourage you to tell me if I'm wrong, if you find something else, but the first instance I could find is in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 6. Moses is speaking to the people of Israel, and he says, Is not he your father who created you, who made you, and established you? Jesus is the father. And specifically, Moses is referring to the fact that Jesus is ultimately the father of the Jewish people, the father of his chosen race, Israel. That was a people that he called out to be separate. He called out for a purpose. What was that purpose? It was to lead to Jesus. But in other places in the Old Testament, we see that uh God is compared to a father figure. Psalm 103, verse 13 says, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. So we see several instances of this. But the concept of God being our Father was never truly understood until Jesus revealed God as such. And this was one of the core purposes of Jesus. It was to come to humanity, to come to God's creation, to reveal to us what God is like, to show us in the flesh, this is what God is like, and this is what he requires of you, and this is how he loves you. And Jesus is the only one who is able to do that because he was God himself. And he repeatedly told us that the best way to think of God is to view him as a father, a perfect father, the one true father. Perhaps one of his most famous teachings to this point is found in a parable that many of you will recognize. Basically, Jesus says, uh, he starts the story off by saying, There's a man who has two sons. One of his sons tells him that he wishes to have his inheritance now. That, we kind of skim over that. Basically, what that son was telling his dad, I want you to die, but I don't want to wait that long. It was one of an incredible insult. Yet, the father answers his son's request. He sells things and he gives the inheritance to his son. And as you probably know, he then wastes it all on reckless living. And then he realized at the lowest of the low that even his father's servants were better off than him. So picking up in Luke chapter 15, verse 18, that man says, I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to the father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf and killeth, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate. Maybe you had or have a father like that. Maybe your father is or was nothing like that at all. But regardless of who your biological father might have been or is, your heavenly father is perfect. Your heavenly father loves his children unconditionally. When you're off. Trying to live life your own way. Trying to live life by your own rules. Wanting nothing to do with God. And he runs to you and embraces you and kisses you and calls you home and celebrates your return. Our Heavenly Father is a father of love and compassion for his children. He's also a generous father. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, beginning verse 9, or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone. Or if he asks for a 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 God is a generous God. I mean, he created this entire world for us to enjoy. Someday He's gonna create a new perfect universe for us all to enjoy for eternity. He is a generous God. So many of us haven't been blessed by God fully because we haven't even asked. But one of the greatest gifts that God gives his children is the gift of the Holy Spirit. God himself dwelling within us, guiding us in how we should live our lives, speaking to us through the power of God's word, the power of Scripture, giving us gifts that we can use to serve in God's kingdom, and convicting us when we do wrong. A lot of people, a lot of modern evangelicals talk about wanting to feel the Holy Spirit. I want to feel the Spirit. I want to feel the Spirit's presence. Like it's all sunshine and rainbows. It's tingly little happy feelings. But oftentimes, when you feel the Holy Spirit, it's because he's grieved. And it's because he's convicting you. And because the lights are down low and there's some fog and they're playing powerful music and you're standing next to a bunch of people, you're all singing the same song, people say, Wow, I really feel the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must be in the room. Well, first of all, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit is in the room, whether or not you feel it. Secondly, you could get that same feeling at a Taylor Swift concert, if you're a fan of her, that you can get in the Christian concert. Well, be careful what you ask for when you say, I want to feel the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit will tell you when you are doing wrong. And speaking of which, God is also a father of discipline. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 7 says, It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? This concept of God disciplining his children is found all throughout children. We don't like that idea. And that is never pleasant in the moment. But if you are a Christian, then as we'll talk about you are a true child of God. And being a loving father, God will only allow you to go so far. If you want to live recklessly, if you enter a period where you want to live away from God, you know, I'm kind of tired of that. I just want to go my own way. If you're a genuine Christian, if you're a genuine believer, at some point he's gonna say, enough is enough. Do you know how he does that? He lets your sin catch up to you. He removes his hand of blessing. He says, Fine, you want nothing to do with me? Be my guest. Until we're like the prodigal son, until we are eating slop with the pigs, filthy, rock bottom. And then God's waiting there for us to return. Don't play with God's discipline. You don't have to get to that point. You need to intervene in your own life before you leave it to God. Because when it's God's turn to discipline, it is never pleasant. But it is always for our good. Secondly, Jesus revealed that not only is God powerful or paternal, but he is also powerful. Because God, Jesus says, Our Father in heaven. This is a title of power and of authority. Isaiah 66, verse 1 says, Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. First Chronicles chapter 29, verse 11 says, Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in heaven and all that is in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. So often we take for granted who we're praying to. We forget what a miracle it is that we can even approach him in prayer. God said to Moses, You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. That is the power of God. Just seeing him would strike you dead in that moment. In the Old Testament, one of the ways that God had his people worship him was that there is a special place, a holy place, the holy of holies, that God would reveal his presence behind a veil. And there are so many rules and regulations, we can't even begin to get uh into them all of how only specific certain individuals, certain priests could enter that place in order to commune with God. We find an example in Leviticus chapter 16, verse 2. And the Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron your brother, not to come at any time into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. Disobeying God's rules about entering into his presence in the Old Testament could strike a man dead. This is the God that we address when we pray. The Almighty God. The God who sits on the throne in heaven, the God who is completely sovereign over all things, the creator, the judge, the God who spoke the universe into existence, who could wipe us all off the face of the earth with just the sound of his voice. In no way do we, wretched sinners, deserve an audience with God. So what happened? Did God just change? Did he change from the Old Testament to the new? Did he change his mind? No. God sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to die on a cross and pay the penalty for our sins so that our relationship with the Father may be restored. Only those who have accepted Christ can truly call God their Father. Only those who have received Jesus as Lord and Savior can rightfully pray, My Father in heaven. We're all created by God, so we're all God's children. But it's not that simple. The religious leaders in Jesus' day use that argument. I mean, because they're not only created by God, they were Jews. They're of the people of Israel. And so they told Jesus, like, no, we only have one Father. Our Father is God. And Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but He sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. If you do not love Jesus, God's only Son, then you are not a child of God. And if you're not a child of God, you are a child of the devil. You are enslaved to his will and his desire. But I love God. But do you love his son? I'm a dad now. If someone were to disrespect or mistreat my child, that person is not right with me. Sure, those of you who are parents feel the same way. You can't hurt or abuse or mistreat my child and then expect that you and I can have a right relationship. God is no different. If you love me, you love my son. If you love my son, you love me. That's how you become a child of God. You can be adopted into the family. But there's only one way that that can happen. John 14, verse 6, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. No one can speak to the Father except through me. Well, I can just pray to God. Not if you're not coming to him through Jesus. John wrote, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Do you know that you can rightfully call God your father? If not, and all you have to do is receive his son. Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Give your life completely over to him, and then you are adopted into God's family. For the rest of us, when we pray in Jesus' name, when we close our prayer with, in Jesus' name, amen. Don't rush that. Don't treat that as some sort of meaningless tradition or just, well, I'm done praying, so this is what I say. Those are the most important words in your prayer. Because it is only by the blood and resurrection of Jesus that we can even pray at all. The only way we can approach the Father in his throne on heaven, the only way we're able to have an audience with him, the only way we're able to rightfully call him our Father and have an intimate relationship with him is because of what Jesus, his son, did for us. So we pray in Jesus' name.

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Because that's the only way to pray. God is more than just some nameless deity in the sky.

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He is a powerful God. He is a terrifying God.

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He is an awesome God. And he wants to be your father. And he invites you to speak to him as a father. Don't take that for granted. Let's pray. Heavenly Father.

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What an honor it is. What an undeserved blessing it is to be able to call you that. You can't even look upon evil. Only because you loved us so much and you sent your son to die for us, can we approach you? Can we call you Father? Can we have a relationship with you? That is no small thing, God. And I pray that you would keep that on our hearts and our souls and in our minds. That we would not see prayer as some burden, but as a beautiful invitation to talk to you as our Father in heaven.

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So we thank you, Lord.

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If there's anyone here today who doesn't know you as their father, who hasn't received your son and hasn't been adopted into your family, then I pray the Holy Spirit would stir their hearts so that they're able to pray today.

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Father who's in heaven, I receive you and I receive your son. In Jesus' name. That's the only way we can pray, God. In Jesus' name. Amen.