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The Lord's Prayer - - - Part Three |
| Matthew
6:5-15 |
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| A
Four-Part Teaching By Pastor Paul Sundell, IMF Coordinator of Missions Field Services |
In part one I talked in general terms of the significance of what we call “the Lord’s Prayer.” To be more accurate, it is the prayer the Lord taught us to pray. I suggested that more than being a model for us to quote verbatim, it serves as a skeleton for us to add “flesh” to. It covers all the basics as they relate to our daily lives. It shows both how to pray and what to pray for. That it is an intended pattern for us is clear from the words which introduce it. “Pray, then in this way…” When I said that this prayer was all-inclusive, I simply meant that there are all the principles which we are to take and employ and expand on them.
In part two, we looked at the first two awesome words, “Our Father.” What could make prayer more personal than to pray in these terms of a personal relationship? Not yours, not mine, but ours together! It puts prayer on the basis of a family relationship. Thanks to a new birth, we can say, “Our Father. It’s the realization of our relationship to an awesome God. It gives us a sense of intimacy, nearness, a bond. It comes from a witness deep within that cries out. “ABBA, FATHER!” Jesus is telling us that the One who is His Father wants to be known that way to us. It’s the way He wants to be known by us and the way He views us---in immanence, transcendence, condescension and majesty. He IS “Our Father who is in heaven!”
Now we come to three great statements related to our Father. Prayer begins with the awesome sense of His greatness, who He is and what He is. It is of no little significance that prayer begins with our concern for God’s glory as it relates to His name, rule, and will. His concerns take priority! Can we remember that? If He is in reality “Our Father in heaven,” the personal God of love and power fully revealed in Jesus Christ, Creator of all, who cares about the creatures He has made and that children he has redeemed, then and then only does it become possible to give His concerns priority and to become preoccupied with His name, His kingdom, and His will---His name, His reign, His rule.
“Hallowed be thy name.” What does that mean? The word “hallowed” means to sanctify, or to revere, or to make and keep holy…” Hallowed be thy name.” And what does the “name” stand for? If we take our lead from what we have learned in the Old Testament, we observe one thing for which the Jews were commendable, i.e. their sense of the greatness and the majesty and the holiness of God. The “name” stands for the person who bears it, for his character and activity. So, God’s “name” is God Himself as he is in Himself and has revealed Himself. You know that His name was considered so sacred that the Jews refused to actually speak that name. They felt that the very name, the very letters, as it were, were so holy and sacred, and they were so small and unworthy, that they dare not mention it.
Would to God that something of that deep sense of reverence for the very name of God would again grip hold of us! He IS holy! It is an expression of a burning and deep desire for the honor and glory of God.
“Thy kingdom come.” His reign. There is a logical order to these petitions. They follow one another by a kind of inevitable, divine necessity. First, God’s name is to be hallowed among men. But the reality is not so. That is because there is another kingdom in contention, the kingdom of darkness. And there we are reminded of the human dilemma. It is a kingdom that is opposed to everything HIS kingdom stands for.
The kingdom of God really means the reign of God; it means the law and the rule of God. In one sense that kingdom has already come---it came when Jesus was here. He said in effect, the kingdom of God is here now. “If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.”
But the kingdom of God is also here at this moment in the hearts and lives of all who believe in Him (Luke 17:21). He is NOW ruling in the hearts of His people. We sing a chorus which says, “Reign in me, reign in Your power…”
But the day is yet to come when His kingdom shall have been established here upon earth. “Jesus shall reign where the sun does his successive journeys run.” When we pray this way, we are praying for Daniel’s vision to be fulfilled that “great stone hewn out of the mountain without human hands” which shall come and crush every earthly power and grind them to dust and shall then fill all the earth! My only question here is…CAN IT BE VERY FAR AWAY??? Do we long for it?
“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” It hardly needs any explanation. The result of the coming of the kingdom of God among men will be that the will of God will be done among men. Think about this. What is characteristic of heaven is that everyone and everything is waiting upon God and anxious to glorify and magnify His name. The supreme desire of all in heaven is to do the will of God, and thereby to praise and worship Him. That should be the desire of every true Christian, says our Lord here, that all on earth should be the same. This petition will never be fulfilled and granted until the kingdom of God shall indeed be established here on earth among men. We look forward to that day when there will be “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Then, heaven and earth will become one, the world will be changed, evil will be burned out of it, and the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea!
These
are the petitions with which we must always start. To summarize: our innermost
and greatest desire should be the desire for God’s honor and glory.
That should be our supreme passion before all else, followed by the desire
for His royal rule and the fulfilling of His “good, acceptable and
perfect will.” This is how Jesus taught us to pray.
†
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