Our Father In Heaven - Matthew 6:5-15 • Geoff Bradford

We're gonna read today from Matthew chapter six. We'll start at verse five and go through 13. This is gonna sound really familiar. We just prayed these words.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. 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 to temptation, but deliver us from evil. — Matthew 6:5-13

This is the word of the Lord.

Today, we're starting a six week series in the Lord's Prayer, and this is so, so timely for us in this moment. Now, if you don't understand why, I got a joke to help you understand why.

So here's how the joke goes. Two men die on the same day at the same time, and both go up to heaven, appear before Peter standing at the pearly gates with the book right in front of him. Now, bear with me, this is bad theology, but it's just a joke, so hang in. So anyway, Peter says to the first one, Who are you? Let me see if I can find your name. And man says, Well, my name is Carlos Smith, and I drive a taxicab in New York City. And I've driven a taxicab in New York City for thirty years. And Peter looks and he looks down the list and says, Oh, here you are. Come on in. Here's your silk robe. It's embroidered in gold thread, and here is a gold staff to go with it. Welcome. And the cab driver walks through the gates into heaven.

The second man, after listening to that, he steps forward and Peter says, Who are you? Tell me your name and let me see if I can find you on the list. And this man says, I'm the right Reverend Jim O'Brien, and I pastored the same church for over fifty years. Well Peter looks down the list and he says, Okay, here you are. Yeah, I find your name. Let me see what I got for you here. And he turns and he says, Well here you go, here is your burlap robe and your wooden staff.

And the man hesitates. He says, Wait, what is going on here? You know, that guy was a taxicab driver. My robe is made out of burlap and I got a wooden staff. That guy got a silk robe with gold thread and a golden staff. What gives? I don't know if I feel good about this.

And Peter responds, Well, you know, up here in heaven, we go by results. You preached for thirty years and bored everybody to death with your sermons. This guy drove a cab like crazy all over New York City, and everybody who sat in his cab prayed their hearts out.

I got to help you guys out. You're not here this morning, so let me do that. Alright, there we go. Thanks for bearing with my joke.

The Context of Prayer

So anyway, as we start this series about the Lord's Prayer, I want to think with you about the context, because Jesus helps us understand some surprising things here about prayer. First is this: this prayer is in many ways unnatural. It's unnatural. I hope that's encouraging to you to hear that this morning. Nobody is good at prayer. I mean, why do you think Jesus had to teach his disciples how to pray? This is not natural to us. He said, therefore, you should pray like this. He didn't say you don't need to be taught how to pray. Just talk to God. This is great news because if you struggle with praying like I struggle with praying, like every Christian I know struggles with praying, this is encouraging. We have to be taught how to pray. It's not automatic to us.

You know, someone has said it takes maybe twenty seconds to pray the whole Lord's Prayer, but it takes a lifetime to learn the Lord's Prayer. I think that's really true. I think we have so much to gain as we jump in to this study, this six week study on the Lord's Prayer.

Prayer in Our Present Moment

Now, there has probably not been a better time in my lifetime and in your lifetime to learn to pray. If there's anything about this coronavirus season we're in, it's that it has shown us our powerlessness. It's shown us our helplessness. I know that I've talked to many people who, like me, are discouraged right now because we thought we'd be coming out of this. And instead, it seems like coronavirus is getting worse and worse. The virus has put us in touch with our powerlessness, our helplessness. It's a hard place for us. We who love to be productive and effective and we love to make plans and we love to work our plans.

But this powerlessness, here's a question. Is there anything good that can come from it? Yes. Yes.

We can learn to be people of prayer. And like the people in the back of the taxi cab in my story, we can learn to pray. I found that there is a real weakness in majority white churches when it comes to prayer. Many majority white churches tend to view prayer as a last resort, not our first instinct.

For most non-white churches, they have two big events in their church: Sunday morning and Wednesday night prayer meeting. That's not accidental. In our country, minority churches have had to pray. It's been essential to them and their ministry, to their survival. Those churches have never been a place of cultural dominance in their cities. They've never been a place of power. And so their prayer meetings have been considered essential for their ministry.

But I've noticed that in majority white churches, we get around to prayer eventually. And this is especially true, sadly, in reformed churches. I'm afraid that sometimes reformed churches, where we have this big view of the sovereignty of God, for some reason that means that people are less motivated to pray, which is really weird if you think about it. If you think God is all powerful over all creation, wouldn't you be motivated to pray more? There's probably never been a more opportune moment for us to go to Jesus and take him up on his offer: Lord, teach us how to pray.

The Right Way and Wrong Way to Pray

Now, did you notice that Jesus says some surprising things here about prayer in the instructions before we get to the word's prayer? He doesn't say all prayers are acceptable, that all prayers are just the same. I know that this is not going to be very PC, not a very nice thing to say, but there are some prayers that are just wrong. There is a wrong way to pray and a right way to pray.

That sounds weird, probably to us as modern people, because in our culture we have bought into a view that prayer is therapeutic, and maybe only therapeutic. The logic goes that prayer is a way of us articulating our feelings, our anxieties, and our fears, and just the act of doing that is a type of therapy. Now, there is something therapeutic about doing that, but it's not just therapy. Notice what Jesus says: there is a right way to pray and a wrong way to pray, and it matters. It matters.

Jesus critiques two kinds of prayers here. First, he critiques showy prayers—praying to show off in front of others.

When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners... that they may be seen by others. — Matthew 6:5-6

Jesus says prayer is not for impressing other people. It's for communion with God. It's for God.

The second thing he critiques is prayers that are too long, to which many of you might say, Amen, especially if you grew up in the church. But remember, he never says anything about long sermons. Those are okay. I'm just kidding.

When you pray, don't heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him. — Matthew 6:7-8

Why would Jesus criticize these people? They are praying, thinking their prayers are effectual because of much speaking, of saying lots of words. They think if they pray a certain amount of time, or by using certain phrases, or by getting themselves worked up into a spiritual state, God will hear them.

Almost every religion teaches some version of this. If you repeat enough Hail Marys, if you say verses from the Koran, if you chant from the Bhagavad Gita, if you yell loud enough at God saying, "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord," God will hear you. And Jesus says here instead, the use of many words is akin to babbling. The word "many" in Greek implies anxious—like anxious babbling, trying to get God's attention.

In fact, we could actually misuse the Lord's Prayer that way. I've known people who have used the Lord's Prayer, people who don't really know God, but use these words as if they're magic words, as if parroting these words somehow has magical properties. But God doesn't want parrots, he wants prayers.

By contrast, Jesus gives us an entirely different foundation for prayer. It's not based in saying the right words. It's not based in saying enough words. It's not based in what other people think of your prayers. It's simply this: real effectual prayer is founded on the fatherhood of God. It's founded on the fatherhood of God.

Jesus teaches his disciples to address God this way: Our Father in heaven. And that's what we're going to look at really for the rest of this morning. See, your prayer life is proportional to your picture of God. Let me say that again. Your prayer life is proportional to your picture of God.

See this passage is about so much more than just about how to pray the right way. It's teaching us what God the Father is like. Jesus uses this instruction on prayer to teach us something about the character of God, what God is like. And that's not really surprising because it's always been part of the mission of Jesus to teach us what God's character is like.

If you look in your New Testament, you'll read passages like Colossians 1:15, which say this:

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. — Colossians 1:15

Hebrews 1:3 says:

Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. — Hebrews 1:3

There's a funny conversation that Jesus has with one of his disciples named Philip. Jesus says those famous words:

I'm the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you really know me, you know my father as well. — John 14:6-7

And like Philip is in the back of the room, he raises his hand like, "Jesus, just show us the father and that will be enough for us." And Jesus says:

Don't you know? I've been with you all this time. Anybody who has seen me has seen the father. How can you say show us the father? Don't you believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? — John 14:9-10

See, one of the purposes of God—hang with this. The purposes of God was to send us God so that we might understand who God is. God the Father sent his Son that we might know his character revealed. Not just how to pray, but what to think about the God to whom we pray. This is what Jesus is doing.

And prayer begins by embracing the fatherhood of God. This is where Jesus starts his model prayer for us: "Our Father in heaven."

God Is the Greatest Father

Here's my big idea for today: Simply this—God is the greatest father anybody could ever have.

I know that many people have a hard time with this because they've had such a strained relationship with their earthly fathers. Let me give you a couple instances here. Maybe you've had a dad who was quick to anger or inattentive or absent altogether. And here's my plea for you this morning: Don't think of your heavenly Father like your earthly one. He's different. He's eternally different.

Maybe your earthly dad looked at you as a nuisance, but your heavenly Father—He delights over you with singing. He rejoices over you. Not a hair falls from your head without Him knowing it and knowing all about you.

Maybe your earthly father was self-absorbed. Your heavenly Father, by contrast, He is so into you that He gave up the most important thing to Him. He sent His own Son, what was dearest to Him, to be sacrificed so that you could be part of His family.

Your earthly father may even have abused you. And I know that those wounds are so deep and that betrayal is so great that it's not easily healed even in this lifetime. But a part of the road to healing in that is understanding a heavenly Father who cherishes you beyond your understanding of that word. Who loves you beyond your understanding of even that word, who prizes you. Far from using His power to intimidate you or harm you, He is always using His power to draw you closer to Himself.

This is foundational for us to understand how to pray. If you don't get this, you don't get the rest of it.

My friend Steve Smallman, an older pastor, wrote a guide for teaching children about how to pray the Lord's Prayer. And it uses your hand. He describes each of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer as your fingers, but the "Our Father" part as your palm. Your fingers can't move independently of the palm. The palm is the basis from which everything wiggles. And if you don't have a foundation of God as your Father, you will never be able to trust God to pray, "Lord, give me my daily bread." You'll never be able to say, "Lord, protect me and rescue me." You'll never be able to say, "Your will be done." This is absolutely foundational—you must get the palm. Everything wiggles off the palm.

Jesus doesn't tell us you have a friend in heaven, you have a king in heaven, you have an adviser in heaven, you have a lord in heaven, you have a consultant in heaven. Jesus says you have a Father in heaven.

Do you know who Andre Agassi is? Andre Agassi is maybe one of the best people to ever play the game of tennis. He retired in 2006 and left behind one of the best tennis records of all time, including winning eight Grand Slam titles. Just an incredible tennis player.

Throughout his career, he was more than just a great player. He was a showman. He put on a show. He even went through a slump and climbed back up to the top and became the sort of elder statesman of the sport. But in 2009, Agassi wrote a memoir called Open, in which he revealed his very strange relationship with the sport of tennis.

Now listen to this. This is fascinating. Remember, this is the guy who has won eight Grand Slam titles. And he says this: "I hated tennis with a dark and secret passion." I mean, astounding words. Why? Because Agassi's relationship with tennis was defined by and dominated by and ruined by his relationship with his dad.

In an interview with Steve Paulson, Agassi said this: "Tennis was something I did not choose for myself. My father kind of pushed it on me. I felt fear to not do it, not in any sort of abuse, but in the form of just having the pressure of the world on my shoulders. He used to introduce me as a kid as the future number one player in the world."

What unfolds in his book is just this heartbreaking story. Agassi's father pushing him, driving him to be number one. His dad even built this tennis ball machine that would shoot tennis balls at Andre Agassi on the court at 110 miles per hour just to make him as good as he could be. At age eight or nine, his dad was betting on his tennis matches. Think about the pressure that was putting on him. He sent Andre to a tennis camp, a tennis school that he described later as a prison camp. And Andre went through all of this, always wanting so much to make his dad proud, to earn his dad's love, his favor, to get his approval.

He admits in the interview, he says this: "I never had ownership of tennis. I was scared later on, and then I played because I didn't know what else I was going to do." I mean, what a broken relationship. All that incredible talent, all that success, all that hard work. But for what? To get his dad's approval? To get his dad's affirmation? To earn his love?

One of my big concerns for the church is that I think many people in the American church likewise are under a similar kind of warped relationship with God the Father, just like Andre Agassi with his dad. We may be working hard. We're doing lots of Christian things. We're sweating. We're doing good works. We're serving, we're worshiping. We're even a leader, maybe even a pastor. But all along, we're working to earn the love of God. We're trying to get God to like us.

In fact, I think that the church is filled with lots of people—Agassi types—who are in the game, but hate the game. In the church, but really don't like the Father. Because we have such a strained relationship with him.

And here's how you know. What's your prayer life like? Is it vital or nonexistent? Is it your last resort? Is it your greatest asset? Do love spending time with your heavenly Father? Do love him? See, your prayer life is proportional to your picture of God.

So CTK, who's your daddy? Who's your daddy?

Our Father in Heaven

Here's what Jesus shows us about what our heavenly daddy is like. Our relationship with him is defined like these three things, and I'm gonna use the phrase "our Father in heaven" to describe all of them.

First, it's intimate. It's our Father in heaven. Every time you speak to God and call him Father, you're saying something about an adoptive relationship with God. That God has adopted you into his family.

Adoption is such a picture of gospel grace. This past week, a good friend, a fellow pastor that I served on a church with years ago went home to be with the Lord after a long battle with cancer. We were working together at the same church back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and his wife, Judy, was a second grade teacher at a public school in the Philadelphia school system. There were two boys in her class that were orphaned that year. The father was sentenced to multiple lifetime sentences in prison and their mother died. And Mike and Judy adopted these boys. The boys became Hollenbachs. They still are today. Their adoption was so real and powerful to me back then—a picture of gospel grace, of how God brings people into his family. And it was powerful again to me this week as I read the testimony of one of those boys at their dad's passing of what kind of father he was to them.

Here's why adoption can be such a great picture for us of gospel grace. Because there's nothing on the part of the child, the adopted one, that calls for or requires or earns any kind of adoption. It's entirely an act of the parents. A child is chosen, a price is paid. There's a legal transaction that has to take place. The child takes on the family name. The child is brought into the family and given all the rights and privileges of being a child of that family.

So with Christ, adoption isn't any result of any effort of the orphan. It's an act of the Father.

You have been chosen before the beginning of the world by God. He's paid an enormous price for you—the death of his son. He's given you the family name of Christian. He's brought you into his family with all the rights and privileges, and you have access to all of it. You are forever his child. That will never change.

But I find it's so hard for us to always have that mindset. It's so hard for us to get over an orphan mentality. It's so hard for us to live out of a new adoptive status. That's why so many of us have what Tim Keller calls a landlord relationship with the father. My wife and I are homeowners now, but we had landlords for many years. Who loves the landlord? Right? Nobody. Nobody loves their landlord. When do you think about your landlord? Your landlord relationship is based on you paying the rent and them taking care of the apartment, doing what they're supposed to do. It's a transactional relationship. If you don't pay your rent, you get evicted. Nobody loves the landlord.

But it is the habit of so many Christians to treat God the father like a landlord. Like he's always about to evict me. Like I'm behind on my payments. Like I better get it right this time. By contrast, a father-child relationship is maybe a thousand percent different. My children don't have to do anything for me to love them, for them to be a part of my family, for me to care for them. I love them and care for them just because they're my kids. And that's it.

See, how much we understand this determines how much we pray. Your prayer life is proportional to your picture of God. J. I. Packer puts it this way: If you want to know how much someone understands Christianity, see how much they make thought of God as their father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls their worship and prayers and their whole outlook on life, then no matter what else they know, they do not understand Christianity very well at all.

Christian, you pray to a loving father. You don't have to do anything to get his attention. His ear is ever bent toward you. He longs to hear you. You don't have to persuade him to care for you. There's nothing you have to do to get him predisposed to listen to you. It's an intimate relationship. It's also an exclusive relationship. It's not just our father in heaven—it's our father in heaven. It's exclusive.

Jesus is not the first person in the Bible to use the word father to describe God. You see this in Isaiah 63. But Jesus is the first to put a pronoun in front of it. In the book of Matthew, 43 times he refers to God as father, and 38 out of those 43, he puts a pronoun in front of it. My father, our father, your father. He's underscoring the fact that God's relationship is exclusive. Jesus is showing us that God's relationship with people is not everybody's father.

To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or husband's will, but born of God. — John 1

You see, nobody just has a right to call God the father. That's given to you. It's a privilege given to you, and it's exclusive. In Matthew 11, Jesus sort of takes a sharpie and circles this even more. He underlines this exclusivity:

All things have been given to me by my father. No one knows the son except the father. No one knows the father except the son and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him. — Matthew 11

There is an exclusivity to a parent-child relationship that nobody else has. The title dad is so special to me as a father. I won't—I don't want my children to call me Jeff. Everybody else in the world can call me Jeff, but there are only six people on the planet who can call me dad. That underscores an exclusive relationship that comes with rights and privileges.

Here's what this looks like: I don't love your kids like I love my kids. I don't discipline your kids like I'm going to discipline my kids. I don't cherish your kids like I cherish my kids. I'm not going to spend money on your kids like I'm going to spend money on my kids. Why? Because there are benefits from this exclusive relationship. There are benefits. Not everybody gets to call God father in the same way. This is given to us. It's a gift. It's a gift to those who believe.

The Power of "Father in Heaven"

This relationship is intimate, it's exclusive, and it's powerful. We've talked about our father in heaven—our father in heaven—and finally, our father in heaven. I want to underscore that last part, the powerful nature of calling on God who's the father in heaven.

Now I think that phrase is so easy to go past as if Jesus is just making sure we know which father we're praying to. Okay, not your earthly one, the one in heaven. But I think there's more going on there.

And I think it's more than just telling us where God is. Oh, by the way, he's up in heaven. I think that there's something in Jesus telling us this—"our Father in heaven"—that he's telling us about the power of God. Heaven is God's control room for the universe. It's his home. It's the place where his throne is.

In Isaiah six, Isaiah the prophet is brought up to the throne room of God in heaven and sees just the bottom part of the throne and the hem of his robe and hears the angels singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" from the throne room of God. This is the place from which God is ruling and reigning. The resurrected Jesus is up in that place now at the right hand of the Father in heaven. This is where God is ruling and reigning. He's in charge of all things. Our confessional documents say that whatsoever comes to pass happens by his doing. This is a big God. This is a statement of absolute power, of control, of wisdom, of might.

When we call on that God and say "our Father in heaven," we're reminding ourselves that God has his hand on the wheel. He is firmly in control. His finger is on all the buttons on the control panel. It's on the rudder of the ship of the universe. There is nothing that happens outside of God's control. He's a Father in heaven. He's good and he's in charge.

An Invitation to Know God as Father

Question for you: Do you know God as your Father? If not, you can know that today. I want to invite you to trust in Jesus for salvation. I want to invite you to hear these words again.

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. — John 1:12

This is available to you. If you don't have a vital relationship with God the Father, you can today. Jesus invites you to receive eternal life from him and to be able to call on God your Father. It would be such a great joy to hear of God at work in you this morning, giving yourself to him.

There is no father like God. You can't have a greater father than the God of the universe. There is no love like his love. It can be yours. Pray to him now. Ask him to make you his child. Join the family.

A Reminder for Christians

And for you who are Christians, can I remind you of this? Remember my mention of my friend Mike—Mike and Judy who adopted those boys? Mike died earlier this week after a years-long battle with cancer. He's probably the greatest Jesus nut I ever knew. In the last post that Mike wrote on the Caring Bridge site, he affirmed again the fatherhood of God. This is the source of his strength and his hope and his joy, even in the face of terminal cancer. This is what he wrote—his last statement.

God does love us. He loves me. He promises to never leave or forsake us, to never leave or forsake me. He is faithful to us, to me, promising to usher us into eternity through death where there will be no more sin, sickness, weeping or death. For by his wounds, we are healed. By his wounds, I am healed.

Would you join me in prayer?

Father God, we thank you and cherish that we can call you Father, that you reveal so much of your character to us in just that little word. Lord, take away our unbelief and our fear. We pray that the realization of the fullness of what it means to call you Father would dawn upon our hearts this morning. Fill us with hope and joy and expectation. Take away the sadness and fear this morning.

Lord, we pray that we would revel in all that it means to embrace you as the God who is over all things—with a relationship with you that is intimate and exclusive and powerful. In the name of Father God we pray. In the name of Jesus, his Son, we pray. Amen.