Please turn in your copy of God’s
word to Luke chapter 11. Luke 11 verses one to 13 is our
passage for the next several weeks as we consider and study
the Lord’s prayer together. Today we’ll look particularly
in verse two. At least in Luke’s gospel, it’s
just one word, father. Next week we’ll look at hallowed
be thy name. Most of you know the Lord’s prayer.
as is printed in our bulletin, which is primarily from the King
James version of Matthew chapter six. And so the phrase in there
would be our father who art in heaven or our father in heaven. And so that’s the subject of
our message for today. Let’s give our attention to God’s
word. We remember that God has given us the holy scriptures
to encourage us in our faith, to comfort us against the temptations
and the attacks of Satan. And he’s given us his word to
bear witness to who God is and what he is doing in this world
and what he will yet do that he has made promise to bring
to completion. So we give our attention to his
word now. Luke chapter 11, beginning at verse one. Now Jesus was praying
in a certain place. And when he finished, one of
his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught
his disciples. And he said to them, when you
pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who
is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. Jesus said
to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight
and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves for a friend
of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before
him and he will answer from within. Do not bother me. The door is
now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get
up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not
get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet
because of his impudence, he will rise and he will give him
whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will
be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock
and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And the one who seeks, finds.
And the one who knocks, it will be opened. What father among
you, if his son asked for a fish, will instead of a fish give him
a serpent? Or if he asked for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will
the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask
him? Pray with me. Our Heavenly Father,
we thank you that you give us everything good that we need.
Our earthly fathers seek to provide for us and to stretch and to
give us what we need. But they can only give us so
much. You can give us everything. We pray, Lord, that in addition
to our daily bread, in addition to food and shelter and clothing,
give us one more thing today that we need. Give us bread from
heaven to feed our souls. so that we can live the Christian
life more faithfully as a powerful witness to your goodness. We
make our prayer in Jesus’ great name. Amen. Those of you who
are fathers, you know that you would give your family anything
and everything you could possibly give them. But you’re limited. You can only work so many hours. Your pay and income is only limited
to a certain bit. Your efforts can only go so far. But with our heavenly father,
he can give us all things. He owns the cattle on a thousand
hills. He owns every resource under the stars and under the
heavens and whatever we need, though our earthly fathers wish
they could provide it. Our Heavenly Father can give
us graciously all things. In our passage today, when Jesus
is asked by his disciples, Lord, teach us to pray, he begins the
prayer as he always begins his own prayers. Father in heaven. We’ve seen Jesus pray over and
over at key points in his ministry. We’ve seen him prayed over and
over to the Father for provision for working out of his kingdom. And today, when we study this
prayer, we are simply seeing into the prayer life of Jesus.
And so we pray together as Jesus taught his disciples and as Jesus
himself prayed to the heavenly father, our father, which art
in heaven, or simply in Luke’s gospel, father. Jesus, our mediator,
through his blood sacrifice, has gained access for us to or
with the Heavenly Father. One of the things we remember
is true about our salvation is we are adopted into God’s family.
We are given all the rights and privileges of the sons and daughters
of God. And one of the great privileges
that we have is access to God the Father. We have intimacy
with God the Father. who disposes of all the resources
of heaven into our lives. I was thinking on this passage
a little bit and thinking about what it would be like to be the
child of a king over vast lands. If you were a child born to a
king over a great kingdom, he would be busy, your father. He
would be busy in his kingly duties. And no doubt he would have servants
who did much of the work that he might ordinarily do were he
not a king. Everything would be taken care
of so that he might rule. In fact, everything, including
parenting and raising little ones. We know from stories in
the Bible, we know from stories in literature that we’ve read
through our school days, that many rulers over lands had stewards
over everything, even stewards over their children. And so their
children were often raised by others. But I was thinking about
what it would be like to be raised by a king who broke the rules. Maybe kings ordinarily sat in
a throne room. Maybe kings ordinarily sat in
their great hall and they ruled over the world while their children
remained away from them. But I’m thinking of a particular
king who says to his stewards, yes, you keep everyone out, but
my children. They have always have access
to the throne. They always have access to me,
no matter how busy our docket, no matter how busy we are ruling
our vast and wide kingdom. My children, no matter the time,
no matter the business on the table, they have access to me
because I am not their king, but I am their father.” Friends,
that’s what we have in God, our heavenly father. Yes, he is eternally
busy ruling the world and everything in it. Yes, he is ordering the
affairs of all men. He is orchestrating all things
that will come to pass by his eternal decree. But through Jesus,
we have access to the father. And so we can draw near to God
as a child does to a father. Many of you know what it’s like
to crawl into the lap of your earthly father. to be held and
hugged and read to, to be prayed with and for. And you know of
the great encouragement that that brings. And that is exactly
the image that we ought to have come to our minds when we pray
the prayer of our Father. Now, I have this sneaking suspicion
that sometimes as we make our way through the church service,
We do things in a perfunctory way. We do them because we do
them. We do them because we’ve done
them. We know when to stand. We know when to sit. We know
what to sing. We know what to say. That’s the reason we kind
of shake things up from time to time. It’s why we sing different
doxologies. It’s why we may pause and say
something before the confession of sin or before the creed. We’re
reminding ourselves about what we are doing. And I would imagine
when it comes time for the Lord prayer, there’s two things on
your mind. Good, the preacher’s done praying. I know, I know. Had a lady in my first church
who met me at the back door and she said, preacher, that was
a sweet pastoral prayer you made, but I got a casserole at home
in the oven. And she wasn’t kidding. And I
said, well, next week I’ll just leave your family out of the
pastoral prayer, if that’s okay. We’ll get done a little sooner.
She got the joke, but I think we come to the pastoral prayer
sometimes with, or the Lord’s prayer with something second
in mind, nothing. We just pray it. It’s what we
do. It’s time to say the Lord’s prayer.
We’ve said it all our lives, most of our lives, some of our
lives. And so we just pray the Lord’s prayer. But this approach
teaches us to come to God, to approach him as a child approaches
the father with a melted heart, with maybe the idea that we sit
in our papa’s lap and we put our hands on his face, we receive
and give kisses and hugs, there’s tenderness. And so the question
we might ask ourselves is what kind of father do we have when
we go and pray, God, Our father in heaven. What kind of father? Well, a couple of reminders,
a couple of reminders as we make a few points about God, our father,
things that you know, but things that are good to be reminded
of. The first is this. What kind
of father do we have? Well, he’s the creator of this
universe. One of the things we must remember
is this world that we live in is fallen, it is broken. And
so even as we look at the stars in the sky, or we see the full
moon at night, or we see the changing colors of the leaves
in autumn, we see the new growth in the spring, we see a winter
snow, we see the summer’s heat, but the beauty of the ocean,
or whatever we experience in God’s creation, though it is
bent and broken by the fall, and as Paul says in Romans 8,
all creation is groaning under the strain of the curse of sin
and eagerly awaits our adoption because it eagerly awaits becoming
a new heaven and a new earth. We must remember that God, as
our father, is the creator of this universe. And if he will
make a place like this, for us to live in. What a great God
and Father we do have. He gives us a beautiful place.
He provides us with every need. Think back to the garden of Eden
before sin. He made the garden a beautiful
habitat for humanity, if you will. Everything they needed
was there. Everything they could have desired
was there. God came to Adam and Eve. He
fellowshiped with them in that garden day by day. Friends, that’s
what we’ll have in the new heavens and the new earth. We’ll return
to the garden. We’ll return to paradise with
God in the center and our fellowship with him as our primary way of
life. But what kind of father do we
have? Well, he’s the creator of this universe that we so richly
enjoy. What kind of father do we have?
Well, he’s also the sustainer of this world in which we live. Every moment of every day, every
molecule is governed by almighty God. When you pray our father,
you are praying not only to the one who created the world and
everything in it by the word of his power, but he is the one
who upholds it day by day, moment by moment. by that same powerful
word with his great hand. So when we come to our father,
the creator, we also come to our father, the sustainer. And
there is not a thing going on in your life and there is not
a thing going on in this great big world that he is not in control
over. He is the creator of the world.
He’s the sustainer of the world. This is our father. There’s a
third thing we ought to be reminded of as we consider what kind of
father do we have when we pray our father. He’s the creator,
he’s the sustainer, but he’s also the lover of the world.
of sinners. Our heavenly father loves us
with a love everlasting. In fact, the word of God teaches
us he loved us before the foundation of the world. He loved us in
eternity past and he did not love us because we were lovable.
No, he knew we would be unlovable, yet he chose us in Christ. to be redeemed and to be loved. Remember his grace and his mercy
with Adam and Eve in the garden. They chose Satan over God. They chose sin over obedience.
And when they sinned and fell short of God’s glory, they were
naked and they knew they were ashamed. They took fig leaves
and sewed them and they tried to cover their nakedness and
God came looking for them. They were hiding and he came
looking for them as he came every day to fellowship with them.
When he found them, when they fessed up, he didn’t say, well,
that’s enough of that. I’m done with y’all. That’s how
we do it, isn’t it? We just, we’re, we’re done with
people. That’s how we do it. But God is a lover of sinners. Not only did he come looking
for Adam and Eve, he said, these fig leaves won’t do. And he slaughtered
an animal. He made a sacrifice. He covered them with the skins
of animals who gave their lives for Adam and Eve. And he covered
their sin and their shame. We have a heavenly father, yes,
who is creator. Yes, he is sustainer, but he
is also a lover, a God of grace and mercy and compassion, a God
who shed the blood of his own son on the cross because he loved
you. There’s a fourth thing that we
think of when we pray to our heavenly father. And that’s this,
yes, creator, yes, sustainer, yes, lover, but he is also the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes we only think of God
as our father, but in our creeds, we speak of Jesus being the eternally
begotten son of God. Jesus is our big brother. We
are adopted into his family. But God at first is the father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. They had a relationship that
stretches into eternity past. They had a fellowship, a rich
relationship, father and son together. And this father loved
us who were not his children so much that he sent his only
son into this world. He lost fellowship with him.
He put our sins on him. He put his complete wrath on
him for our sins. He gave him up. He did not spare
him in order that we might be brought into his family as well. He is the father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. There’s a fifth thing I want
us to see about our father. Not only is he creator and sustainer
and lover, he’s also the father of our Lord Jesus, but he’s the
father of Romans chapter eight. What do I mean by that? Well,
there’s a statement in Romans chapter eight that we all know
and love, we probably forget. It’s a good time to remind you
of it. And it says this, how will he, Speaking of our heavenly
father, how will he not also with Jesus graciously give us
all things? At what point in Romans 8 does
Jesus speak these words? Does God speak these words to
us? It’s after he says he did not spare his own son. And it’s
in the context of you interceding, you praying to God with the Spirit’s
help when our sighs and groans are too deep for words, and the
Spirit who cries out in us, Abba, Father, we cry out with the Spirit
of Sonship, with the help of the Spirit. He also helps us
to pray for that which we need. And we are to remember when we
are on our knees in prayer for our greatest struggles, He who
did not spare His own Son for us, But he gave him up. How will he not also with him
graciously give us all things? Some of us have prayer needs,
prayer concerns, and we are in agony. We want God to bless us.
We want God to answer. We want his help. We want his
generosity. We need to remember what kind
of father we have. He made the world. He sustains
the world. He loves sinners. He’s the father
of our Lord Jesus, but he’s also the father of Romans 8, who did
not spare his own son for us and for our salvation. And so
how much more will he be gracious to us when we pray for little
bitty things? There is no greater need than
salvation. He’s done that. So will he not be gracious in
the lesser and the little things? What kind of father do we have?
We have a wonderful father. Yes, I know we live in a world
with deadbeat dads. I know we live in a world where
some of our earthly fathers maybe are on the scale of worthless
to far worse than that. I know that, but we must remember
it is not so with our heavenly father. And we remember Jesus’
words, our heavenly father knows before we ask. We also remember
the words of Jesus. We are to let our request be
made known to God, our father. Pray with me. God, our Father,
we thank you that by your word and spirit, you feed us and you
nurture us, you teach us and you guide us. You do not leave
us as orphans in this world, but as those who have been adopted
into your family through Jesus. We have Abraham as our father.
We have Jesus as our big brother. We have the Holy Spirit as our
teacher, our guide, and our comforter. But Lord, we confess so often
we live as paupers. We live as if we’re broke, as
if we’re poor, as if we’re spiritually impoverished. but remind us this
day that what we have as children of the living God and a heavenly
father, we are rich children of the richest king of the universe.
And he graciously gives us salvation and all other things. What a
blessing to be your children. Help us and hear us as we pray
in Jesus name, amen.
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