And if you will now please stand and we'll read together our sermon text which comes from Matthew chapter 6 verses 9 through 13. And what I might have you do before then actually is you can turn there and hold that place but let's review the Shorter Catechism question also before our text, Shorter Catechism question and answer 100, which is largely what our sermon will be on this evening. We've been kind of going through a series here in the evening service, the last few weeks, and up until I take my sabbatical. So throughout the rest of this month, we're gonna look at the Lord's Prayer. But our Shorter Catechism helps us in understanding better the Lord's Prayer. And so on page 975, you'll find the Shorter Catechism question and answer 100. which is on the preface of the Lord's Prayer. So, let me ask the question, together let us answer, and then you can turn to your Bible and we'll read Matthew 6, 9 through 13. So, question 100 asks, what doth the preface of the Lord's Prayer teach us? The preface of the Lord's Prayer, which is our father, which art in heaven, teaches 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. Very good. And now Matthew chapter six. Verses nine through 13. which is the text of the Lord's Prayer. This is God's holy word. Please give it your full attention. 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 into temptation but deliver us from evil. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. You may be seated. And let us go to the Lord in prayer. Most holy God, we thank you for your word, which teaches us and instructs us on who you are and what duty you require of us. And as we look particularly of this one duty of prayer, also recognizing it as a means of grace, we pray that you would instruct us, O God, on how to better lift up our prayers to you, how we might draw near to you into the throne of grace through prayer, that we might grow closer to you, that we might have better communion with you, just as we've been learning in our Sunday school class. Lord, we pray all of these things through our Savior, Jesus Christ, and by your Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, question 100 of the Shorter Catechism addresses our address to God. In other words, it focuses on the preface of the Lord's Prayer. In it, we learn that we come before a holy God, but that this holy God is our Father who loves us. It teaches us that we have been made part of a family. that we have not only a father, but an elder brother, Jesus Christ, and many other brothers and sisters in Christ. The preface of the Lord's Prayer only consists of six words, but it contains a vast amount of knowledge for us to possess. And I wanted us to take four things out of this address, or out of the preface to the Lord's Prayer. First, that we are to address Him, that is God, as our God. Second, that we are to address Him as Father. Third, that when we address Him, we need to recognize the creator-creature distinction. And fourth, that we are to address Him covenantally. And so if we begin with just the first word, we learn already that this prayer, though it can and should be prayed individually, is most importantly a prayer that is to be prayed corporately. It begins with the word our. Our father. It doesn't begin my, but the Lord taught us to pray our father. who art in heaven. As we have discussed in the past, this is a model prayer guiding us, Christ's disciples, in how we should pray. However, it is teaching us from the beginning that prayer is something that his disciples should do together, that they should do as a family. And so if we consider the different petitions of this prayer for just a moment, we'll cover them more in coming weeks, Lord helping us. But if we look at the different petitions of this prayer, then we will learn that we should praise God's name together. We should praise his name together. We should pray for his will to be done together. We should pray with one another for each other's needs. Confess our sins with one another and pray for one another's sanctification and do so together or corporately. You see, if we have been adopted into the family of God, then we should pray together as a family. So that's the first point to note this evening. Moving on to the second word of this model prayer, we discover that we should address God as Father. Now, it's important to understand that we are not calling the Trinity or the Godhead Father. Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, is teaching us in this prayer to address His Father, the first person of the Trinity, as our Father. This does not mean that we are not to ever address the Son or the Spirit in our prayers as well. In fact, in John 14, 14, Jesus states specifically, just by way of an example, He states, if you ask me anything in my name, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. And so it is not only the father that we are to pray to, but the other persons of the Trinity as well, just as Jesus here shows even that we ought to pray and address him as well. Each person within the Godhead is the same in substance and equal in power and glory. Therefore, we are to pray to each of them. Each person within the Godhead is worthy to receive and has the power to answer our prayers. Nevertheless, by addressing the Father in prayer, we learn that we have a Heavenly Father that has adopted us into the family of God into his family. And this is only made possible by resting in the work of Christ alone for salvation from your sins, which salvation he accomplished through his life, death and resurrection. He is the eternal son of God. And through faith in him, we are adopted into the family, enabling us to come boldly and with confidence to the Father. This was a benefit that Old Testament believers had, but to a lesser degree. They had mediators, namely priests, through whom they must go through to get to the Father. Think, for example, of the most holy place in the temple. Only the high priest could enter that part of the temple, and he did so representing the people of God. representing the people before God and representing God before the people as he performed the blood sacrifice of an animal that would atone for their sins. However, in the New Testament, we no longer need mediators in this manner because Jesus Christ, the great high priest, the God-man who is the only mediator between God and man has come and shed his blood as our substitute and has now passed through the heavens. He has passed through the temple not made with hands. And now stands at the right hand of the father in the heavenly tabernacle, pleading our case by his shed blood. Hebrews 4 14. And verse 16 tells us, Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Beloved, we are able to draw near to the throne of grace with boldness and confidence. only because our elder brother has made it possible, bearing the curse for our sins on the cross. In fact, Hebrews 2.17 says, therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of his people. And so, beloved, we have access to the Father through the redemptive work of Christ. And now we who have received the spirit of adoption through faith have direct access to God and can cry out to him, Abba, Father, just as Paul tells us in Romans 8.15, the text we read earlier in the service. Now, there are many in our congregation, or at least a few, who have adopted children into their family. And thinking of human adoption really is a great way to understand the relational change that we have with God when He adopts us into the divine family. into the family of God. You see, before a child is adopted, assuming that this child is old enough to speak, the child would address his future parents as Mr. or Mrs., Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so, or perhaps even speaking to them and addressing them by their first name. But once a child is adopted, he would no longer address his mother as Mr. or his mother as Mrs. or his father as Mr. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, you see there's something similar in this. This change in relationship status is reckoned as we address God as father. When we are adopted into the family of God, we are enabled and privileged to call him father. because we are now adopted into the family. But although we have been adopted as children and can call God our father, we must remember that he is infinitely greater than any earthly father. We must not lose sight of our reverence and awe for him as God, who is completely other than everything else. Which is why in our address to him, we continue by saying, who art in heaven, our father, who art in heaven. You see, He is our Father God, but unlike any earthly father, He is our God in heaven. He is God above. Though we have come into a familial relationship with Him, we must remember that there is a creator-creature distinction between Him and us. And this is why the prophet Isaiah asks, To whom then shall we liken God? Or what likeness compare with Him? And, of course, the implied answer to those questions is no one and nothing. We are to liken God to no one and compare Him with nothing. Outside of Scripture, I think there's no better place to recognize this truth truth of the Creator-Creature distinction than in the seventh chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Section 1, or paragraph 1, of chapter 7 begins this way, The distance between God and the creature is so great. Now you see right from the beginning this paragraph teaches us that the that there is an infinite distance between God and man. And this distance is not a spatial distance. For God, who is omnipresent, is in all places at all times. And so the distance that the confession is speaking of then is a metaphor. It focuses on the being of God in relation to the being of man. In His being, He is wholly, w-h-o-l-l-y, wholly other than we are. He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. But on the other hand, we are finite, temporal, and changeable. He is an independent being while we are absolutely dependent and dependent upon Him. And so there is a distance, a separation of being between God and us. He is so completely other than us that we cannot even fully comprehend or understand him. We cannot fully grasp God. And so when we pray, Jesus is telling us in the preface to the Lord's Prayer that we must begin with the incomprehensibility of God. He is God who art in heaven. He is different than us. He is above us and higher than us. Not just that he is located in the highest heavens. That is true enough, but also that God is high above all others and above everything. G.I. Williamson tells a story in his commentary on the confession to the Westminster about a Hollywood actress who claimed that she was converted. Here's what he writes. She then began to speak of God in words such as these. God is like a great big daddy. I could sit right down in his lap and put my arms around his neck and hug him, etc. Thus, we hear God likened to a kindly old grandfather or the man upstairs. This false tendency, he writes, to bring God down to the level of man is utterly unscriptural. For to whom then will ye liken God? Asks the prophet Isaiah. End quote. You see, though God has become our father, we must still maintain the high respect that a creature owes to the creator. However, when we acknowledge and maintain this type of reverence and awe for the God who is in heaven, it can put off the impression that God is very far from us. There is this great distance between us. God must be somewhere so far away. And that is why the preface of the Lord's Prayer balances out this truth by recognizing the new relationship that we have come to experience with God. He is not only our God, he is our Father God. And so we are to maintain that God in his being is wholly other than us, while at the same time recognizing that he relates to us as a father. The seventh chapter of the confession addresses how this can be the case. As that chapter or as that paragraph continues. In fact, let us look further at that section of the confession. It reads, although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their creator. Yet they can never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part. So the distance between the creator and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures, that's us, do owe obedience unto him as their creator. Yeah, we can never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary Condescension on God's part. OK, so what does it mean for God to condescend? Well, in short and put simply, it means to come down. And like the word distance, the word condescend is also used in the confession as a metaphor. Cannot mean that God comes down to occupy a space that he did not occupy before, because again, God is everywhere at all times. God's condescension, his coming down means that he revealed himself to his creatures and showed them the way to dwell with him in beatitude forever. He revealed himself. That's what it means for God to have condescended. It's a revelatory matter. He revealed himself to us. The first covenant whereby God revealed himself to us was in the covenant of works with Adam in the Garden of Eden. And you know the story of how Adam sinned against God. The covenant was broken by Adam. And Adam, not being a private, but a public figure, he represented all of mankind in that covenant. He plunged all of us, all of mankind into sin and misery. However, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal son, became a man. That is, he took on flesh and blood in order to represent us and to redeem us from the sin that was reckoned to us by the first Adam. And he came to redeem us as a brother, as an elder brother, so that the first person of the Trinity could relate to us as a father. Our God is incomprehensible, yet he made himself known to us by a voluntary condescension so that ultimately in his wise plan and at just the right time, we could have a familial relationship with him. And this means, beloved, that the Lord's prayer is also a covenantal prayer. It is prayer to the only living and true God who promises to be our God and to make us his people through faith in the person and work of the eternal son. If I could sum up what we have been saying thus far, it would be that God is our God. He is far away in that he is God in heaven. but who is also very near in that he has condescended to us by way of covenant so that he might adopt us as children through the work of our elder brother Jesus Christ, the eternal son. And by the spirit of Christ, we are able to cry out to him, Abba, Father. And so, beloved, I would encourage you to consider these matters as you address God in prayer. Don't let your time of prayer be something that is a check off on your to do list. Go to God in prayer each day in amazement that you have a God together with others who are in the family as well. And that this God is high above the heavens, that he is infinitely greater than you are, but yet has come down to you in order to bring you and the rest of your family, the rest of the family of God, all of God's children, he has brought into his family, he has adopted into the family. And so praise him as you address him. in prayer. To him be all praise and glory, both now and forevermore. Amen. Let us go to him in prayer. Most gracious God, we thank you for redeeming us in Christ Jesus. Lord, you are indeed the creator and redeemer and sustainer. You are also the one who will consummate all things at the end. Lord, we pray that we might learn the riches of what it is to pray to you as our God and our Father through Jesus Christ and by the Spirit. Lord, you have adopted us as sons and we pray that we might be conformed to your eternal Son. who took on flesh, our Savior Jesus Christ. Teach us to be like Him. In His name we pray, amen.