In his book, “Fifty-Seven Words that Change the World: a Journey Through the Lord’s Prayer” Darrell Johnson begins, saying, “Jesus is brilliant. Yes, Jesus is good, and kind, and merciful, and strong. But the more I get to know Jesus, the more I am impressed by our Lord’s sheer brilliance. Nowhere is his brilliance more manifest than in the gift of the prayer he taught his disciples to pray, the prayer that has come to be known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’ A mere fifty-seven words in the original Greek of Matthew’s gospel, it manages to gather up all of life and brings it before God.”
As Helmut Thielicke writes, “[The Lord’s prayer covers] the world of everyday trifles and universal history, the world with its hours of joy and bottomless anguish, the world of citizens and soldiers, the world of monotonous routine and sudden terrible catastrophe, the world of carefree children and … of problems that can shatter grown men.”
… And yet, as Pastor Drew Hunter notes, “among believers it is often underappreciated and misunderstood.” So often the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that just rattles out of our mouths without much thought, a collection of words that we’ve memorized.
Starting this Sunday we begin a six-week series on the Lord’s Prayer where we will study it, but more than that, hopefully over these next six weeks we will allow this prayer to shape us and call us to a more intentional life of prayer and deeper dependence upon God. To do so we will use the Lord’s Prayer as presented to us in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 6:9-13) and the Heidelberg Catechism (Q&A 116-129) and other passages of Scripture.
In each of the next six weeks we will look, one by one, at the six petitions of the prayer. The first three use the pronoun “you” referring to God:
1. Hallowed be your name.
2. Your kingdom come.
3. Your will be done.
The last three petitions use the pronoun “us” or “we” referring to us as God’s people:
4. Give us today our daily bread.
5. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
6. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.
And, as Darrell Johnson and others suggest, the phrase at the center of the prayer, “on earth as it is in heaven” can be applied not only to God’s will being done, but to all three of the ‘God’ petitions in the prayer.
Hallowed be your name … on earth as it is in heaven.
Your kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven.
Your will be done … on earth as it is in heaven.
Darrell Johnson also suggests that “on earth as it is in heaven” can be applied to the last three petitions as well as a prayer for God to do in us and through us as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread … on earth as it is in heaven.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors … on earth as it is in heaven.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one … on earth as it is in heaven.
So… that is where we are going. This Sunday our focus will be the first petition, “Hallowed be Your name … on earth as it is in heaven.” Our Scripture reading will be Psalm 113. We will also look at Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 122.
Yet, even before we arrive at the first petition we pray, “Our Father, in heaven.” And these words are important. They are not simply an introduction – a means to get to the meat of the prayer. Darrell Johnson writes that the Lord’s Prayer works because “Our Father in heaven.” This prayer (and any prayer) works because the One to whom we pray works.
Therefore, to prepare for Sunday I invite you to think about the phrase “Our Father, in heaven” that we say to begin the Lord’s prayer and the gracious gift it is that Jesus taught us to pray in that way. To do so I invite you to read John chapters 14-17 and Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 116-121 (John chapters 14-17 especially explain why we can refer to God as Father).
For we pray, “Our Father, in heaven,” …
To pray to God “in heaven” is not to pray to some distant being “way out there” but rather to first century Jews the image of “in heaven” would bring to mind the image of God on His throne. They also understood heaven as not simply being “out there” but above, beneath, and all around – a different and connected dimension of life. So to pray to God in heaven is to pray to the God who is on the throne, the God who is close at hand.
And we know this God – this powerful, mighty, Creator, enthroned God – as our Father. He is not someone we have a distant relationship with but, through Jesus Christ, He is our Father too. We don’t pray to an abstract God … we pray to our Heavenly Father and we know Him through Jesus, His Son. Jesus tells us that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father, and so Jesus reveals to us that our Heavenly Father is just as kind and loving and gentle and forgiving and approachable as Jesus. By teaching us to pray to “our Father” … “Jesus brings us into his experience of the Father” (Johnson). We are brought into that close and loving relationship with the Father.
Therefore to pray, “Our Father, in heaven” speaks to how we graciously know God through Jesus and it reminds us of who our God is: He is on the throne, He is near to us, He is Sovereign.
What a powerful way to begin a powerful prayer.