The Lord’s Prayer: Honoring Our Father

He gave the Lord's Prayer in response to the disciples asking to be taught how to pray, and so when Jesus said, when you pray, pray like this. The Lord's Prayer was a, for instance, it was a model to follow, and in that regard we need to look at the constituent elements of the Lord's Prayer to see what is being communicated by Jesus in the Lord's Prayer as an instruction, as a model for His people. We all want to grow in our prayer lives, don't we? With all the distractions of our day, the busyness of our lives, and our continual battle with the flesh, we sense and experience our need for growth in this area. Thankfully, the Lord Jesus left us with instructions regarding prayer when the disciples asked Him to teach them. This is the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Even though Jesus left us with what we call the Lord's Prayer, instead of using it to help shape and inform our prayer lives, many Christians merely repeat it word for word as a static prayer, and in so doing miss how the Lord's Prayer can help each of us as we spend time in prayer.

Before we hear from R.C. Sproul on the role of supplication in prayer and the beginning of his walkthrough of the Lord's Prayer, if you'd like to own Dr. Sproul's complete series on prayer, you can request it with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, but remember that this offer ends at midnight. Well, here's Dr. Sproul to continue our study on prayer. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians gives an admonition that I find exceedingly difficult to obey, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. In chapter 4 of Philippians verse 6 we read these words, be anxious for nothing, be anxious for nothing. Now the word anxious is one of the most misused words in the English language, often confused with the word eager. Sometimes people say, oh, I'm anxious for Christmas to get here, and I want to say to them, well, what are you worried about?

And what they mean is they're excited about Christmas, they're eager for it to come, but the word anxious is the word that comes from the idea of anxiety, which involves concern and worry and nervousness and so on. And so the Apostle Paul is saying, don't be worried about anything, don't be anxious, don't be fearful about anything. Now that's a very difficult admonition to obey because there are many things in this world that frighten us and that worry us. And Jesus Himself said, be anxious for nothing, take no thought for tomorrow, what you should put on, what you should eat and drink and so on. And He also called us to put our anxieties aside that we may trust and rest in the provision of God for our safety and for our lives. And Paul here says, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Now notice here that the contrast to anxiety is the peace of God.

Elsewhere we are told that perfect love casts out fear. And so if we're fearful, if we are anxious, what is the antidote? The first thing we should do is get on our knees because there's no greater cure for fear and anxiety in the Christian life than rigorous prayer. Prayer drives us to our knees, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, anxiety drives us to our knees many, many, many times, but it's a good place to go.

And what Paul is saying, if you are anxious, don't be anxious, but if you are anxious, what do you do? Let your requests be known to God. Come to Him with your supplications, this part. Bring your requests, bring your supplications to God, but what?

With thanksgiving. And I think that's important that the apostle here invites us to bring all of our requests, everything that's bothering us, everything that we're concerned about, to set before the Lord in prayer, but to do it in a posture of thanksgiving. And that's why I want to include thanksgiving in every prayer that we pray to the Lord.

Now there are two other reasons, besides this apostolic mandate to include thanksgiving in our prayers, and those other two reasons are these. First of all, when the apostle Paul writes to the Romans in the very first chapter and talks about the universal judgment of God, His wrath that is poured out from heaven against all men because of this universal situation of unrighteousness and ungodliness. And when he explains the reason for God's anger, he sees two main things that every human being is guilty of, and those two things are a refusal to honor God as God or to be grateful. So the two most fundamental and foundational sins of the human heart are the sin of refusing to honor God as God in worship, and second, a spirit of ingratitude.

And that natural, corrupt spirit of ingratitude is not instantly cured by conversion. We continue to take the blessings of God, the grace of God, and the goodness of God for granted. And so every time we pray, every time we enter into His presence, we need to be thinking about expressing our thanks for the blessings that we have received. Now, when Paul tells us to come with thanksgiving to God, he is not preaching this corrupt doctrine of name it and claim it that you hear throughout the religious world today, where people are exhorted to thank God for the answer to their prayer before they receive it. You go to a healing service and people tell you, you have to believe that you're healed in order to be healed.

You have to claim it in advance. If you're blind and you ask God to heal you, you claim your healing. Now, that's an insidious thing because people are then instructed to believe something that is simply not true. If they have not yet been healed of their blindness and they can't see, we're telling them to say, I believe I can see, I believe I can see.

That's magic. That's not faith. And that does not honor God. Any time we come before God, we acknowledge that God has the right to say no to our prayers. Now, there are certain things that He has guaranteed He will answer in a positive way. He guarantees, for example, that if we confess our sins in a legitimate, just, and genuine manner, that He will forgive our sins. And so where God has guaranteed that He will do something in that manner, then of course it's perfectly appropriate to thank Him for that forgiveness.

But if I'm asking God for a job in a certain place, or if I'm asking God for this particular problem to pass from my life, I don't thank Him in advance for saying yes because His answer may be no. Just as our Lord wrestled with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane and asked that the cup be passed from Him, and the Father said to the Son, no. And that was alright with the Son.

He rejoiced. He still had a grateful heart for everything else that God had given Him. And it's certainly good to be grateful even when God says no. But we can't manipulate God with magic.

That's the point I'm trying to make. The other reason why we should remember the importance of thanksgiving is because of Jesus' teaching of the story of the ten lepers. The New Testament records of ten lepers who were healed, and only one went back to Jesus to thank Him for the healing. And as I've said many times, I don't know how many times I've heard sermons on that text where the ministers say that Jesus healed ten lepers and only one of them was grateful.

That's impossible. Ladies and gentlemen, nobody in the ancient world could have leprosy, be healed of it, and not be thankful. I don't care how hard your heart is, if you're cured of leprosy, you're going to be grateful. It's not a question of whether those lepers were grateful. They were all grateful, but only one went out of his way to demonstrate his gratitude to Christ. The other were so excited that they were healed, they made a beeline home to go to their families, their wives. But one man went out of his way to say, before I go home, before I enjoy the company of my family, I've got to go to the man who healed me and say thank you, to show his gratitude. Now, if ten out of ten were grateful, but nine out of ten did nothing to manifest their gratitude, and for such an extraordinary thing as being healed of leprosy, how much more are we inclined to receive all kinds of benefits from the hand of God every day that may be not as dramatic as being cured of leprosy, that we never take the time to say thank you. And so what the Apostle Paul says, every time you come with your prayer requests, come with a spirit of thanksgiving.

And I think there's a psychological reason why that's important as well, and that is this, that sometimes, beloved, God does say no to our prayers. And it's like the minister who preaches on Sunday morning, and at the end of the service he goes to the back of the church to shake hands with the congregation. And a hundred people walk out, shake his hands, say, thank you for the sermon this morning, pastor. I appreciate it. It's helpful. I find it edifying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they go on, and the one person comes to them at the door and says, I was really offended by your sermon this morning.

I didn't like this, this, this, this, and this. And then the pastor goes home for dinner. What does he think about it?

The hundred people who said thank you or the one person who jumped on it. If he's human, what he walks out with is the spirit of criticism that he's heard. That's what stays in his craw. Now, the same thing applies to us in terms of our prayers. If we ask God for ten things and He gives us nine of them and says no to one of them, we walk away saying, what's the sense in prayer?

We all of a sudden have a crisis in faith because God said no. That's why it's important when we do pray to remember the yeses, to remember the things that He has responded to. And that's an important part of the prayer. And also now when we move to supplication, Paul says, in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Now, there's a lot here in this simple text. Supplication and requests are basically synonymous where we are pleading for something with our requests. That's what a supplication is. And that supplication may be a request for ourselves or it may be for other people. That's why sometimes this fourth element of prayer is called intercession instead of supplication.

But supplication is the broader concept because it's making requests either for ourselves or for other people. But this is where we get to the last place in prayer where we are praying for things, for people, where we're making our requests of God. And the thing that encourages us at this point is that when we make our requests, we do it through Christ, being cognizant that He is our intercessor.

He is our great high priest, and He is carrying our prayers to the Father. There's a sense in which prayer is a Trinitarian exercise. We address God ultimately in prayer, the Father, but we come to the Father through our high priest, through the Son who has been appointed as our high priest forever, who ministers in the heavenly sanctuary, who is our intercessor. But we also understand that in the work of redemption, the Holy Ghost has been sent by both the Father and the Son to help apply the work of redemption to our lives. And that application of redemption is not simply restricted to regeneration and sanctification and the other things that the Holy Spirit does for us, but also the Holy Spirit is very important to our prayer lives because the Holy Spirit assists us in praying as we ought. So at this immediate level where I'm praying, I'm depending upon the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity, to help me pray properly, to help me pray in a godly way, to help me pray not in a selfish way or in a sinful way, but in a proper way. And then so the Spirit helps me at that point, and then my prayer is handed off, as it were, to the Son who then carries the prayer to the Father.

So the whole enterprise is Trinitarian. And so the Spirit helps us make supplication and be intercessors, and that's then given to the Son and so on. Now, as I said earlier, when we're trying to learn how to pray, we are in a school that was founded by the disciples themselves. I mentioned that the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him, Lord, teach us how to pray. And when Jesus gave that lesson to the disciples, He gave to them and therefore through them to the church the model prayer, which is not the A-C-T-S acrostic, although it in many ways mirrors that, but rather the model prayer that we call the Lord's Prayer.

Now, oftentimes the extent of our prayer is simply a repetition or recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Jesus didn't say, when you pray, pray this prayer. But He gave the Lord's Prayer in response to the disciples asking to be taught how to pray. And so when Jesus said, when you pray, pray like this. The Lord's Prayer was a for instance it was a model to follow, and in that regard we need to look at the constituent elements of the Lord's Prayer to see what is being communicated by Jesus in the Lord's Prayer as an instruction, as a pedagogical model for His people. The Lord's Prayer begins with the address of the prayer, our Father who art in heaven.

So when you pray, pray like this. The first thing Jesus did was to again remind us with whom we are speaking. And as I've said on other occasions, this statement right here is one of the most radical teachings of Jesus in the New Testament when He says, in the New Testament, when He says, when you pray, say, our Father.

For this reason, that in the Old Testament, in all the rabbinic literature from Old Testament times, up until the 10th century in Italy there is not a single example of a Jewish person addressing God in prayer directly as Father, except in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, who in the biblical record of the prayer life of Jesus in every single prayer that He prays that's recorded in the New Testament, except one, He addresses God directly as Father. Now you understand the response that elicited from His contemporaries who were hostile towards Him. They were ready to kill Him because He had dared to call God Father.

That was a radical innovation. And He called God Father because He was the monogenes, the only begotten Son of the Father. And when the disciples said, teach us how to pray, Jesus said, okay, when you pray, pray like this, our Father. He's saying, because of Me, you have been adopted into the family of God. And you, just like I call God Father, can now call God Father. You can say that He is our Father by virtue of adoption. And so this is an inscription of wonder to the redemptive power of God as soon as we call Him Father. We call Him the One who dwells in the heaven.

He is the Most High God. You see that in this form of address, God is being honored. In a sense, the beginning of the Lord's prayer reflects the A of the acrostics, Acts, A-C-T-S, because it involves adoration.

It's brief, but it is adoration. And the first petition of the Lord's prayer is what? Hallowed be Thy name. Now that's often misunderstood because many people think that that's part of the address. It's like saying, our Father who art in heaven, You are holy.

No. We're not simply saying hallowed is Your name, which would be a statement of adoration, but it's rather a supplication. It's a petition. The first petition that Jesus says to pray for is that the name of God be treated with reverence, that it be regarded as holy. So that's what you need to pray for, first of all. Now, one of the things I want to say by way of extension to this is that so rarely in our prayers, in our requests, in our supplications, do we pray for the honor of God. Do we pray for the success of the mission of the church? We pray for our personal needs, the needs of our friends, but we rarely pray for the advance of the kingdom. And yet Jesus is saying, when you pray, I want you first of all to pray that My Father's name will be regarded as holy by everybody. And then you pray, Thy kingdom come, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Again, the priority for prayer, according to Jesus in the Lord's Prayer, is for the success of the kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated here on earth.

And I believe that there's a linear progression involved here. Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let me just say this right now as I speak. The name of God is always regarded as holy in heaven. No one in heaven ever blasphemes the name of God.

His name is never profaned in heaven. His kingdom already exists in fullness of glory, honor, and power in heaven. Jesus Christ is already crowned the Lord of lords and the King of the kings, and every person in heaven, every angel in heaven, and every just person made perfect in heaven, bows before the King. And there isn't any sin in heaven. Every person who is in heaven has been glorified, and so everyone in heaven does willingly the will of God. So people in heaven don't have to look at God in heaven and say, please God that your name would be made holy, and please that your kingdom would come, and please that your will would be done here, because it already is. But Jesus said, I want you to pray these things that they may take place on earth as they already do in heaven. Because where we live today, the name of God is not regarded as holy.

The kingdom is ignored, and the will of the Father is not obeyed. And what we should be praying for again is the triumph of the kingdom of God. That should be at the center of our prayer if we follow the model of the Lord's Prayer.

That was R.C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries, on this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. As Dr. Sproul would pray for the triumph of God's kingdom, as you heard today, he would often pray that people would be awakened to the true character of God. And to help Christians pray to that end, Ligonier Ministries produced an awakening prayer guide with weekly prayers to guide you. And you can download a free copy when you visit PrayForAwakening.com. If you'd like to lead your family or small group through this study on prayer from R.C. Sproul, you can request the complete series both on DVD and digitally when you click the link in the podcast show notes or when you visit renewingyourmind.org with a donation of any amount. You'll also receive access to the study guide that includes scripture readings, lesson outlines, study questions, and more. So request access today when you visit renewingyourmind.org. But don't delay, as this offer ends at midnight. Be sure to join us next time as R.C. Sproul continues his study of the Lord's Prayer here on Renewing Your Mind.