Chapter 11, we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 4, but really just going to be focusing on the first two verses. And we're going to spend a few weeks in the Lord's Prayer here. Luke 11, verses 1 through 4, hear now the word of God. Now, it came to pass, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. So he said to them, when you pray, say, 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 by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who's indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Thus far the reading of God's word. Let us pray. Father in heaven, even as we read how you've taught us to pray, we pray that it would just inform our hearts and minds that when we speak to you, we would know to whom we speak. And that, Father, it would bring reverence into our minds and hearts and comfort at the same time. So we do pray that you would attend our minds and our hearts and our souls as we examine your word this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. I had a friend years ago who felt like she had a stunted prayer life until she finally discovered how to engage in intercessory prayer. And I kind of pursued that a little bit. And by intercessory prayer, she didn't She didn't have the normal definition of that, which is just really praying for others. Her newly accelerated prayer life was happening because she had somehow plugged into the spirit in such a way as to grant her a more robust experience during prayer, almost as she called it, an inebriation. She'd get drunk in prayer. I have to say, I've never had that experience myself. We do see a lot about prayer, even as Jacob talked. There are certain religions, even under the broad banner of Christianity, where prayers become these things that you just say in order to atone for sin and do penance. And then you have book. In the old day, they had books about books that had prayers in them, which I use. There was one called The Valley of Vision I use quite often myself. And today we have books on how to pray. And the prayer of Jabez came out a number of years ago that people felt that if they prayed this prayer over and over that their land would increase and so forth. But I have never had such an inebriation in my prayer life. I have to say it is, for me, been more of a wrestling. That is to say, I've always found prayer difficult. I found it almost strenuous. When we have our prayer time as a congregation and I come to that, I find it kind of a hard thing to engage in. It's an interesting phenomenon, prayer. We can pray silently, but sometimes we open our mouths and we begin to talk to God and other people can hear us. I occasionally have, I haven't done this in a long time, I would listen to my own sermons from time to time to see if I'm doing something distracting. Am I speaking in such a way as to help people lose focus? And one of the things I noticed when I would listen to my own prayers was, is that really the way I should talk to God? Like I'm listening to my own prayer thinking, Do you have any idea who you're talking to? Where is the fear? Where is the humility? I would be very critical of myself, and I think probably of other people, when I hear prayers offered in such a way as to have very little recognition of who's listening, who you're actually talking to. I think Paul's confession that we do not know how to pray as we should, really resonates with me. Now we're currently in what many consider to be the richest instruction regarding prayer found in all of Scripture, often referred to as the Lord's Prayer. Now the impetus for this instruction by Jesus is a response to a request made by one of his disciples. Verse one, now it came to pass, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. Of all the people who ever lived, it would seem that Jesus, the God-man, would need to pray less than anyone. Sometimes you'll hear online these give and takes. If Jesus was God, why would he pray? These types of discussions, which I think are really valuable discussions if answered correctly. I mean, Jesus was the perfect, sinless person. But he prayed all the time. He prayed at his baptism. He prayed all night before he chose his apostles. He prayed for Peter's faith, right? I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, not my will, but thy will be done. He prayed on the cross. He prayed when he was alone. He prayed when others were around. He prayed for us in John 17. He prayed for those who had come to faith as a result of the gospel ministry. And he still prays for us. He still intercedes for us as our high priest in heaven. So Jesus's prayer life had a considerable effect upon his followers. They're looking at him, and they're going, OK, you need to teach us how to do this. They seem to begin to grasp what a critical element prayer was in the ministry and the just general practice of Jesus. They literally are following him around. That's what the word disciple means. It would be a person who literally would walk behind you and follow you, as opposed to an apostle, which many of these became, who's somebody who's sent forward. So they're following him, they're listening to him, and they're watching him. And what are they seeing? Of course, they see miracles and they listen to instruction. But what they're seeing in terms of his personal behavior, is prayer. They had seen the followers of John the Baptist pray, we read earlier in Luke 5.33, fast often and offer prayers. They're like, the followers of John have been taught how to pray. Can you teach us how to pray? It is an interesting, almost glaring omission that they had already spent so much time with him. And they're going, John seems to be doing a better job. Well, just so you know, kind of the way he responded to that was this idea that we're not going to worry at this time too much about offering prayers and fasting because the bridegroom is with you. I mean, you think about it. I mean, if Jesus were here in the flesh, the God-man, every time I asked him anything, it would be a prayer, right? I mean, we pray to Jesus. Jesus is one who answers our prayers, but the bridegroom, we're told, would soon be taken away. And then he says, they're gonna fast in those days. When Jesus is taken away, The praying and the fasting will become front and center. It'll become a bigger deal because now their Savior has been ascended. And he'll say, and it's better for you that I have ascended because I'm going to send to you my spirit. And what we see after this is great disciplines of prayer on behalf of the followers of Christ, things we're going to become Tough for them. I don't know. I don't know. In all my years in the ministry, which this church is 35 and some, and then if you add it all together, it's probably closer to 45 years. If anybody has ever asked me the question that Jesus was asked, and that is, can you teach me to pray? I don't know if I've heard that one time. And to be honest with you, I don't know, if somebody asked me that, exactly what I would say. I mean, we just went over it in the catechism, right? What prayer is, is the offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies. But I might say something like, well, clasp your hands, bow your head, close your eyes. Or I might say something like, prayer are your words or your thoughts directed to God. And I don't think that would be altogether a wrong instruction. I think all that works, all that fits. But what I find interesting this interaction, when they're asking Jesus to teach them to pray, is that he does not so much tell them how to pray, he tells them what to pray. So, you know, I've not really done this research myself, but I've been told that in terms of people's interaction with God in the Bible, whether they're praying or worshiping, there are 11 different postures. Standing, sitting, on your knee, on your back, you know, on your face. I mean, there's all sorts of, and it's not as if Jesus is going, well, let me tell you how to sit. Let me tell you to close your eyes or open your eyes, or how to clasp your hands or not clasp your hands, or maybe this is better than this. I don't know. He says to say something. He said to them, when you pray, say. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's verse two, but we're only gonna look at the very beginning of verse two. He answers by saying, when you pray, say. That sounds like he's going, say this verbatim. Say these words. Now, just so you know, we see the Lord's Prayer here in Luke. It's also in Matthew. And in Matthew, it's a little different. He actually says, pray like this, or in this manner, pray. So as you might expect, this has created some debate as to whether or not we should pray this prayer verbatim, or whether it just should be a model for prayer in general. This is not a new debate. Over 300 years ago, the authors of the Westminster Catechism gave their answer, and I tend to agree with it. The question was, how is the Lord's Prayer to be used? The answer, the Lord's Prayer is not only for direction as a pattern according to which we are to make other prayers, but may also be used as a prayer. so that it be done in understanding, faith, reverence, and other graces necessary to the right performance of the duty of prayer. Should the Lord's Prayer be a model for prayer, or should it be done verbatim? I think the answer is both. Either way, though, because it is so easy for things to become rote, repetitious, You can really, sometimes there are things that I know that I don't even know. And sadly, it's things like old rock songs out of the 60s and 70s. And all of a sudden, I'm like, I know every word. I don't have to even think about it. How sad, right? But I just want to empty my hard drive and get a whole new thing in there. But we need to, as time goes on, not allow it to become that. It needs to be done thoughtfully with understanding, faith, and reverence. God's not going to just hear us because of our many words. Even if the many words are accurate, if we're not actually devoted to it, if we're not invested in the words that are saying, they are just words. It is not to be done as a mere rote quasi-spiritual exercise. This prayer that Jesus offers, includes really seven things. There's an invocation, our Father in heaven. That's what we're going to talk about this morning. That's followed by six petitions. The first three relate to God. The next three relate to man. All right. So we are to pray that his name be hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will be done. And then we pray for our daily bread, we pray for our forgiveness, and we pray for our deliverance from the evil one. So you've got six petitions. This morning, we're going to restrict ourselves to the invocation, our Father in heaven. R.C. Sproul once explained that for him, one of the most powerful verses in the Bible is found in Exodus. When Moses asked God his name and God said, I am who I am, Exodus 3.14. When I first read that, you know, when I first read the Bible all the way through as a new Christian, I could not help thinking, and I don't want to sound irreverent here, but when I was a kid, there was a cartoon I used to watch called Popeye the Sailor Man. I don't know if he's still around. But he used to say, I am what I am, and that's all that I am. And I'm thinking, is Popeye a theologian? So I didn't get it. And Sproul's going, look, there is more contained in that phrase than you realize. I mean, he gets into the whole thing as God is establishing his own being and stuff. I mean, everything goes from that. And I think the same can be said, at least for me, of this invocation. Prior to any petitions, Jesus tells us how we are to address God. It may sound simple. We got four words, six in the Greek, but it should be eye-opening. And by that, I mean informative in terms of our thoughts and actions. And it should be awe-inspiring, and by that, I mean marvelous in terms of our humility and worship. I have to say, we've probably said those phrase, our Father in heaven, some of us thousands of times. And it just now, it's just something you say before you get into your prayer. I think the very first eyeopening word, our, is itself kind of counterculture. We live in a very individualistic society. It's all about me. It is so commonplace in our current society, our current Christian culture, to reject or at least resist the notion of thinking of ourselves as part of a community. I remember years ago, back in the 60s and 70s, the phrase personal relationship with Jesus was very prominent. And I believe in it. I agree with it. But I remember a man asked me one time, what other type of relationship could you have with Jesus other than personal? And by personal, it meant one-on-one. Well, there is another relationship we have with Jesus. It's a corporate relationship that we have with Christ. Now that's not to say that we lose our individuality. We don't in heaven become a drop into a bucket and we are no longer who we are. We are individuals. You're an individual. You have your own thoughts. You have your own ideas. You have your own possessions. You have your own identity. There certainly is, and I would argue primarily, a personal and individual aspect of our relationship with God through Christ. But this individualism is not to be pursued at the expense of our identity as the body of Christ, the temple, the branches that come from the vine. I mean, this idea that so often in the Bible, Christians are described as part of an entity, a corporate entity. Individualism, let's just be careful here. Because again, I'm not speaking against it, but individualism can be, it's not always, but it can be very self-centered. It can and often does have self as its highest priority. I mean, we can all examine ourselves this very minute and kind of just ask yourself, where you sit here in church, are you here for you? Is it all about you right now? Is it about whatever experience that you have that is going to somehow accelerate your Christianity? I'm not against that, but is that what you're thinking? We are told unambiguously that we are to esteem others above ourselves. Is our thinking, even as we come to worship, focused on how we might make melody in our heart and sing praises to one another. Like your presence here can be such an encouragement to others. To be sure, Jesus spent a great deal of time by himself. One might say he was the greatest individual who ever lived. And you know what? There are times when we need to be alone with God. I don't want to jettison that. I mean, I have my own times and my own place. And for me, it's the beach, because I've lived here my whole life. And when you're at the beach and you look east, it's really different. But when you're at the beach and you look west, it's the same now as when I was three years old. And there's something about that that I find comforting for other people. It might be the mountains. For other people, I don't get this, it's the desert. You know, whatever, right? So I'm not against that. I think there's times when we need to have that alone time, as Jesus did. Yet even Jesus viewed himself as part of a community. His baptism marked out that he had become part of a community. In Mark 15, 28, we are told that he's numbered with the transgressors. The author of Hebrews writes this of Jesus, for both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them, that is us, brethren, saying, I will declare your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly. I will sing praise to you. So you see, in a certain sense, Jesus is a brother. And as a brother, as we just read in the midst of the assembly, he is a member of the church. This defined relationship, Jesus has a defined relationship with his body, the church. We often call this defined relationship church membership. Now, different churches have different ways they do that. When I became a member of the first church I became a member of, they had a 15-week long membership class that met on Saturday mornings. I was 17 years old, and the next oldest person in the class was 12. That was rough. You know, we have four weeks, except if I do it, then we do three. Mike Amira, our ruling elder, is like, we need to get that down to one week. You know, so we have different views on how much you gotta do, but there needs to be a defined relationship. The elders are accountable to God for specific people, and specific people are accountable to God for the way they respond to specific elders. This might be cutting edge for you, but it's basic biblical Christianity. If you're a Christian, you're needed in Christ's church. You have a role, you have a responsibility. God has given you gifts to edify the body which should be pursued by you and enjoyed by you. To obey, in order to obey the instruction given in this invocation, we need to be in an environment where the first person plural is possible. There needs to be the sense where you're in an environment where the word our makes sense. And when you're alone, it is my, it is not our. Jesus then instructs us to view God as a father. And that's not a gender neutral word. Pater means father. I think it's so common in our prayers that we give very little thought, right? Father, dear father, and we'll just say that. Although occasionally we'll find somebody speaking of cutting edge, who views themselves as cutting edge because they'll use the feminine pronoun. They'll be like, oh yeah, I believe in God. What do you think she thinks? Oh my goodness, that is so clever. I've never heard that other than the last 8,000 times somebody thought they were making it up. Now let me just say here, even though God is spirit, and not endowed with the body parts that determine sex, and he made men and women in his image, we are to view God, the Father, as a father. Now, in order to appreciate the full effect of this, we have to develop a biblical view of fatherhood. What is my idea? of what a father is. Where do I get those ideas? If I search the scriptures, and I look at father, and just do a whole study on father, what I begin to learn is that the father is the one who loves, and nurtures, and provides, and protects. He is the one taking responsibility for the household. This should not be offensive to people. But I do think it should be a challenge to fathers. And those of you who intend to be fathers, I know I, as a father, am called to provide a model for my children. And by the way, anybody who's watching me father my own children of fatherly godliness, that's what I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to look at what the Bible tells me to be. It's my desire that this would produce in my own children a higher view of our Heavenly Father. as Jesus is gonna say later in this chapter, if I, being evil, know how to give good gifts to my children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give? I mean, it's this idea that, you know, if my kids look at me and go, my dad's a great dad, but I guess what the Bible says, my Heavenly Father just crushes them in terms of fatherhood. Now, some of us, some of you, maybe don't have a good model in terms of father, right? You're like, oh yeah, it's a struggle for me because my dad was a deadbeat dad or whatever. But J.I. Packer makes an interesting point in that Knowing God book that I brought up a couple weeks ago. If you know that you had a poor father, that means you have some idea of what a good father is. So it hasn't been lost on you and you need to pursue that. You've still got to know what a good father is. Jesus teaches us to approach God as a father. And I don't want us to lose or have a lack of appreciation of the intimacy of these words. What loving familiarity we enjoy with God Almighty God is not to be viewed as some cold, impersonal force. He is to be viewed as a daddy, Abba Father. Jeremiah 3, 4, will you not from this time cry to me, my father, you are my guide from my youth. The intimacy, you might call imminence, this closeness, this here-ness, is perhaps best experienced with little ones. When my children were small, they would literally run into my arms. I'd walk in the house. Now my dog Jack's the only one who does that. But they would run into my arms. And they would run into my arms for many different occasions. They'd run if they were happy and excited, sad, afraid, if they were in need, if they were hurt. They'd run into my arms for so many reasons. And I have to say, I love that there were people in this world who felt so comfortable doing that. And I remember a few years ago, my younger daughter, who's small, and I'm like, Sophia, I really miss carrying you guys. And she was just like, you could carry me, Dad. And so I kind of picked her up and held her. And I'm like, I don't know if it had the same effect. But I'm not to get all sad about this, but you recognize when you have kids, there will be a time when you will pick them up for the last time. But there's something so beautiful and precious and special about that. But even when we grow older. You say we, say you grow older and we become estranged from God. I just recently interacted with a guy who was in my youth group 40 years ago. And, you know, I don't, I don't know if he's here. I invited him. He's like, haven't been going to church, it's been 40 years. And, you know, maybe I think I got to get right back with God. If you'll have me, you know, it was a very sweet exchange. But even if we do become older and estranged from God, embroiled in sin, we should never think of God as the type of Father who, if we run to Him, is hesitant to receive us. Later in Luke, Jesus will teach of what type of reception we should expect from our Heavenly Father when we turn back to Him. in the account of the wayward prodigal son. And later, we'll get into that. It's a few weeks out still, a few months probably. We read the son's returning, and he arose, and he came to his father. So he's showing up. He's not even there yet. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. I am so glad you're back. So wherever we are, this idea of fatherhood should be something that we see as God just embracing us, such as the intimacy of the first portion of the invocation. But the second portion of the invocation is quite different. Really, in four short words, Jesus moves us from imminence Unite closeness, the here-ness, to transcendence, the incomprehensible. He moves our hearts to think of the God who is here and then the God who is there. When Jesus pronounces the invocation, Father in heaven, that statement is almost an oxymoron. You guys know what that is, right? An oxymoron. It's like a phrase that has two different words that seem just the opposite, you know, like jumbo shrimp or something like that. It's this idea that you're saying right next to each other two things that seem to be a completely opposite. You're speaking about the imminence of a father and now the transcendence of somebody who's in heaven. If a father gives us the image of closeness and intimacy, heaven should give us the notion of distance and authority. Heaven, by the way, in its strictest sense, is not merely the place where the father lives. I mean, we might think of it that way. Since heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, we read in 2 Chronicles 2.6, heaven's not big enough for God, so it's not as if God's up there kind of looking the way we imagine, right? I'm gonna look over the wall and see what you guys are doing. God is omnipresent. That means all of God is everywhere all the time. We rather should think of heaven as a place from which he reigns. Heaven is my throne, we read in Acts 7, 49, and the earth is my footstool. In light of this transcendence, the God who is out there, Solomon gives us his own instruction on prayer in Ecclesiastes 5, verse 2. Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God, For God is in heaven and you on the earth. Therefore, let your words be few. You get this strong feeling of him going, know your place. If you got invited to the White House and there's the president, or you're invited to Buckingham Palace and there's the king, you're not going, hey, let me talk to you about the Dodger game. You know, it's kind of like shake your hand, bow, do whatever it is you're going to do, and then move on. It's kind of what Solomon said. Know who you're speaking with. Now, let me just say, as Christians, I do believe that our faith should address our psychological, emotional, cultural, spiritual, political, and as we will see later in this very prayer, our physical needs. I think it addresses all of that. I think these things are legitimate quests for Christianity, and I think these things, these needs, these issues, I think the Christian faith addresses better than all the alternatives. Whatever it is you are, whatever it is you're doing, whatever your needs are, whatever your feelings are, the Christian faith will address it better than anything else. But in our pursuit of these types of things, which I think should be pursued, don't get me wrong, we might be tempted to omit this transcendent and, quite frankly, sometimes austere aspect of God's character. That's a little problem I have with the, quote, contemporary service. What bothers me is when we begin to approach God as if he's a contemporary. We've got to be careful. Jesus said, I no longer call you slaves, but friends. When I was a youth pastor, we had a song, Jesus is a friend, he's a friend next to you. You know, I don't know how heretical the song was, you know, but, you know, there was the sense we wanted people to kind of feel very comfortable with the idea of Christianity and religion and what have you. But we begin to think of God in contemporary ways and we begin to omit, we leave behind the transcendence. Though we just dug into this wonderfully approachable Father, there are times in Scripture where God will remind us of how unapproachable He is. Nadab and Abihu approached God with strange fire that He had not commanded them to do, and they were consumed. King Uzziah improperly entered the temple and was struck with leprosy unto death. To go into the Holy of Holies without having gone through everything God told the high priest to do before they went into that Holy of Holies in that temple in the Old Testament resulted in death. It's almost as if God's going, you know, I need to remind you to not be too casual. In these four words, I would say our minds, our hearts, our souls, they ricochet between the imminence and the transcendence. So you're kind of going, well, wait a minute, which is it? I think that ricocheting is a healthy disposition. My favorite, probably my favorite verse in that great hymn, Amazing Grace, over the years, it's changed over the years. But what I really love is, it was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. But what you don't see in any of that is this contemporary casual God that you just kind of stroll up to and disregard of who he is. My thoughts when I was writing this were brought to that very heartbreaking scene where Charlie Kirk's little daughter is brought into the studio. I don't know how many of you saw that. She's like three or something. And she goes in and there are people and lights and cameras. You can see that she's hesitant. Her dad is a big deal. And she kind of runs in there, and she's like, doesn't know whether to stop or go. And somehow, he gestures her, and she is made aware that it is OK for her to yell out his name and sit on his lap. I think we have to have more of that in our approach to God, that we fearfully walk there, and then he goes, I think that's a posture we should remember and this is it. Our God is a consuming fire and God is immutable. The new covenant God is not the nicer improved God. Our God is a consuming fire is written in the New Testament. But somehow we can approach the consuming fire and not be consumed. You know why? Because our high priest, our true high priest, Christ, did enter into the true holy of holies with his own blood as an anchor for our souls. And when we, as it were, are covered by his blood through faith in him, our father bids us to boldly approach the throne of grace and sit on his lap. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we do pray that as we mature in our faith, we would not have a more and more casual disposition about who you are and what needed to be accomplished. for us to have peace with you, but just the opposite, that, Father, you would increase the knowledge of our own sin, that we'd have an increased understanding of the penalty for that sin, and that we would have a very elevated understanding of the righteousness of Christ who died that we might live. And we pray, Father, that in all of this, your name would be lifted up. Through Christ we pray. Amen.