Sermon Idea: In Christ, we have a heavenly Father to whom we pray, who is both good and great.
Introduction: The Lord’s Prayer has been foundational to Christian discipleship since Jesus instructed his disciples how to pray. Historically, it has been grouped with the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments as foundational building blocks of Christian discipleship. At baptism, or in preparation for baptism, believers were taught what to believe (the Apostles’ Creed), how to live (the Ten Commandments), and how to pray (the Lord’s Prayer).
You can find brief explanations of all three in the most influential catechisms and full expositions of each commandment and each petition of the Lord’s Prayer in some of the best works of theology.
I share this for no other reason than to encourage you that spending extensive time on such a short section of Scripture is not only warranted, but has proved essential to the saints throughout Christian history. We must know how to pray as the people of God, and there is no better place to begin than with Jesus’ teaching in what is known as the Lord’s Prayer.
Most of you are no doubt familiar with it, but you may or may not share the appreciation for it that many Christians who’ve gone before us do.
They would refer to the Lord’s Prayer as a summary of the whole gospel and a collection of heavenly doctrine.
This prayer models ours by showing us what to prioritize, what to request, and whom to address in prayer. As Frederick Bruner writes, “The Lord’s prayer stretches from the Father at the beginning to the devil at the end, from heaven to hell, and in between in six brief petitions (about) everything important in life.”– Frederick Bruner
The context is Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, first beginning with Jesus teaching about proper motivation for prayer in Matthew 6:5-6. Jesus then instructs the disciples not to pray like the Gentiles who heap up empty phrases.
7 “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. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: (Mt 6:7–9)
Here, Jesus isn’t prohibiting long prayer or repeatedly praying for similar things. We might think of the worshippers of Baal in 1 Kings 18 or the people in Ephesus who shout out to Artemis in Acts 19. That’s the kind of prayer he rebukes—a rambling of empty phrases.
We are to pray in faith, believing our Father not only hears us but knows what we need before we ask. The mention of the Father brings us to our focus this morning: who we address in our prayers.
What I want us to see this morning can be summarized as follows:
In Christ, we have a heavenly Father to whom we pray, who is both good and great.
Our prayer lives may struggle because we lack information—where to begin and how to pray—but they may also struggle because our thoughts about God are too small, too deficient, and we miss how good and great God truly is.
So let’s think about Jesus teaching us to pray to the Father in heaven, who is both good and great.
I.) Pray to our heavenly Father
Jesus teaches us to pray “Our Father in heaven…”
We can speak of God as Father in three ways.
1.) We can speak of God as Father because of the divine life of God, the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We read in the Bible about God’s only-begotten Son, so we can speak of God as Father, as Jesus does, in relation to the Son and the Holy Spirit (Psalm 2:7; Matthew 3:17; John 3:16).
2.) We can also speak of God as Father because God is the creator and preserver of all creation. In a sense, God is the Father of all strictly because God has created every single person in the image of God. For example, the prophet Malachi asks, 10 Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? (Mal 2:10)
The Bible teaches us, though, that every person has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). Every person has become estranged from God, who created us, and has become an enemy of God because of sin (Ephesians 2:3)
“When it is used as such, however, the name Father cannot give any comfort, but it still instills terror due to man having fallen away from Him and God having become a wrathful avenger in consequence of sin.” – Wilhelmus A. Brakel
3.) God is Father because of his great grace to adopt sinners as his children who have placed their faith in Christ and who are united with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. This is the personal use of the word Father to refer to God. Jesus calls God Father because he is a Son by nature. Every Christian believer calls God Father by grace because of our adoption. This is how Jesus is using “Our Father” here in verse 9.
In Ephesians, we learn that God planned our adoption before the foundation of the world.
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (Eph 1:4–5)
This adoption is finalized as we place our faith in Jesus Christ, the true Son of God.
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn 1:12–13)
…for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Ga 3:26)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (1 Jn 3:1)
This matters for our understanding of the Lord’s Prayer. When Jesus says, “Our Father…” he is using it in the personal sense. We relate to God the same way Jesus does! He calls God Father because he is by nature the true Son of God. We call God Father with him because, by God’s grace, we have been adopted and made true sons and daughters of God!
In other words, we are to pray as sons and daughters of God—not as peasants before a judge, but as children before a Father.
We approach God as Jesus does, and we address God as Jesus does.
15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father! (Ro 8:15)
This means, friends, we can come to the Creator of the universe, the almighty and sovereign God, as a needy child approaches their mom or dad. We can come freely, boldly, knowing our God hears us and will respond to the needs of his people.
It means we approach God in prayer with full confidence in his love for us and his delight in us. Beloved, your adoption by God’s grace means he looks at you the same way he looked at Jesus at his baptism: “This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter with whom I am well pleased.”
Our prayer lives will deepen the more we believe, rejoice, and reflect on the great grace we have received in adoption. We are children of God in Christ, and so we pray with Jesus, “Our Father in Heaven…”
This is all actually related to why we are taught to pray to the Father.
This brings us to a question often asked. Why does Jesus teach us to pray to the Father? Can we also pray to Jesus and the Holy Spirit?
The answer to this second question is, yes… but.
It is not theologically problematic to pray to Jesus or the Spirit becasue they are God. In the New Testament, there are some rare cases of people directing prayers to Jesus, although none to the Spirit. So, yes, we could.
But the predominant pattern of prayer throughout the New Testament is to pray to the Father, in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Spirit. Why is this the predominant pattern, and why should we pay careful attention to it for our prayer life?
Praying in this way reinforces the Trinitarian nature of our salvation. It rehearses how we are right with God, and it allows meditation on the very nature of God’s triune life. What do I mean by that?
Think with me about how we are saved. The Holy Spirit convicts us and draws us to Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and man, who is our access to the Father.
The Spirit always points to and magnifies the Son, and when the Son is lifted up, it is to the glory of God the Father.
Listen to how Ephesians 2:18 describes our salvation.
18 For through him (Christ) we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Eph 2:18)
So when we allow Scripture to form and shape our prayer life, rather than praying generally to God, we pray to the Father through the Son and in the Spirit, aligning our prayer life with the reality of our spiritual lives.
Fred Sanders says it this way, “…your Christian existence is a life that has been brought to the throne of the Father by the work of the Son in the power of the Spirit. Your prayers are verbal actions that follow the same path: to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. Consciously Trinitarian prayer is an invitation to align our words with the more all-encompassing reality of your life as God has constituted it.”
It is no small thing to call God Father. It is an amazing privilege granted to us by grace. We don’t deserve it. This pattern trains us to remember that we come to God only through Christ—the one mediator between God and man. We don’t come in our own strength, name, or ability; we come through him.
II.) Pray to our heavenly Father, believing he is good
As we listen to Jesus teach us to pray to the Father, we need to pray believing that our heavenly Father is good. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about the Father’s goodness. We can say a lot about this, but I want to highlight three clear, obvious verses that speak to God’s goodness.
Jesus encourages us to pray because “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:8)
How many of you know well what your children need materially, physically, and emotionally? How many of you withhold needs? None of you do, and you are but frail, finite sinners. How much better is the perfect God in knowing our needs?
Pray believing that God is good. Pray believing that God is love. Pray believing that he is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
Our Father’s goodness is also taught to us in his care for creation. As Jesus is teaching us not to be anxious, he appeals to God’s goodness in dressing the lilies of the field and feeding the birds of the air.
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? (Matthew 6:30)
Our Father is good; we need not hesitate to pray to him. He knows our needs, hears us, and will care for us more than the grass of the field.
The third example of the Father’s goodness is in chapter seven, and it’s worth quoting in full.
9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 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! (Mt 7:9–11)
Our Father is good. And because he is good, we should keep something in mind. Good fathers and mothers say no to their children out of love and for their good.
If we, who are finite sinners, will say no to our children, who will say no to our children? How can we believe that a “no” from a sovereign and perfect God can’t also be good?
Beloved, a good heavenly Father answers every prayer. Only good yeses, good nos, and good not-yets exist. Brakel is so good once again: “It is fatherly love when He gives, and it is fatherly love when He withholds.”
To pray, “Our Father” rightly evokes feelings of warmth, intimacy, love, and joy. That is the right and good. We should approach God as a child approaching a loving Father.
Just as we are to believe our Father is good, we need to believe that he is great.
III.) Pray to our heavenly Father, believing he is great
We are to pray to “Our Father in heaven.”
God is not limited to a place, but because we are weak and finite, God condescends to us, so we think of his dwelling place and throne as being in the heavens.
The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. (Ps 11:4)
God in the heavens reveals God’s true attributes.
He is omnipotent—all-powerful. Our God has no limits, and nothing compares to his greatness.
He is omniscient—all-knowing. God knows all things actual and possible. He learns nothing and forgets nothing. The God we pray to knows better than we do.
He is omnipresent—all-present. We cannot escape God’s presence, and how comforting that is for prayer. There is no place we could go where he could not hear us, find us, and minister to us.
How might this form and shape our prayer life? If God as Father helps us approach as a child, God’s greatness reminds us to come with reverence. Our Father is still God. We still come with reverence, with righteous fear of the Lord.
I really love how the Baptist Catechism captures both the Idea of approaching as a child and with reverence. We will let it have the final word.
The Baptist Catechism, Question #107
Question: What doth the preface of the Lord’s prayer teach us?
Answer: The preface of the Lord’s prayer, which is Our Father which art in heaven,¹ teacheth us to draw near to God with all holy reverence and confidence, as children to a father, able and ready to help us; and that we should pray with and for others.
Nathaniel R. Martin 