Many people today think that the Christian faith is first and foremost about a set of rules. Do this. Thou shalt not do that.
The Bible contains many rules, but at its heart the Christian faith is not about the rules we obey. It’s not about what we do and don’t do. It’s about a relationship. It’s about a relationship with the God who made you.
It’s not about what you know; it’s not about what you do; it’s about who you know.
Now – it would be possible to overstate that. When you love someone, that comes out in the way you live. The God we know is a righteous and holy God. If you know a God like that it makes a difference to how you live. A big difference.
We’re in the part of Matthew’s gospel that people call the “sermon on the mount”. In the second half of Matthew chapter 5, Jesus took many of the ten commandments and other teachings from the Old Testament. He showed how he did not come to abolish those commands; he came to fulfil them. If you know God, he changes your heart so that you’re a new person. That means you can keep his rules from your heart, from the core of your being, not just ticking a few boxes with your behaviour.
Knowing God changes how you behave, but it’s not about how you behave – it’s about knowing him. The Sermon on the Mount began with Jesus announcing God’s blessing on the poor in spirit. God delights to bless those who have nothing to give him. Whose behaviour is nothing to write home about. Who have done things of which they are deeply ashamed. Knowing God is free.
Matthew chapter 6 then draws out what this relationship with God looks like.
Any relationship involves communication. And so today’s passages tells us how knowing God comes out in the way we pray. Which is good news, because many of us are hesitant to pray. Perhaps we aren’t sure if we have any right to talk to God. Why should he listen to me? Or perhaps we aren’t sure what to pray for, so we like the idea of praying but get stuck with the mental equivalent of a blank sheet of paper. Pray-ers block.
So then, if we know God through Jesus, how do we pray?
Let me draw our three things for us.
Knowing God is our Father
Firstly, we pray knowing God is our Father. Knowing God is our Father.
The Lord’s prayer starts by telling us to address God as “our Father in heaven”. We pray to God as our Father, which is the most wonderful privilege.
You see if God is our Father, that means he’s personal. We’re not addressing some supernatural blob of raw power. He’s not an abstract principle. God is a person.
But if God is our Father that also means he’s a person who loves us. He’s well-disposed towards us. He wants to hear us. He wants us to ask him things. None of our human fathers have ever loved us perfectly. Some have let us down more than others. But God is the perfect father. We can pray to God as our Father – a real person, who is in heaven and who is on our side.
And if we know God through Jesus, he is our Father in heaven, regardless of how badly we’ve failed him. Jesus died to deal with the ways we let God down. And so we come to pray, knowing God is our Father, knowing he wants to hear us.
Which is why he warns us against heaping up empty phrases. This is the view that the more words we put in, the more likely we are to get a favourable answer yes. At bit like arranging a petition to Downing Street. The longer the piece of paper we hand in the more likely we are to get attention.
But that is tragic because it’s missing out on the fact that God wants us to talk to him. Jesus says that he already knows what we need before we open our mouth. We don’t need to find the right way to put things. We don’t need to explain things at great enough length. We just have to ask – and God is longing to hear us ask.
So we pray knowing God is our Father. No need to put on a special voice. No need to go to a special place. No need to use special phrases. No need to start or finish in a particular way. Even the word “Amen” is optional. We say Amen so often it can become a way of signing off, and if we forget it’s like forgetting to post the letter or to press “send” on the e-mail. All Amen means is “I agree”. It’s a way of adding our name to somebody else’s prayer. Yes, God, that’s what I want to say too.
We don’t have to persuade God to listen. We don’t have to twist his arm, or get the magic words right. We don’t have to pronounce his name right so that he looks up from across the room when we talk. We just have to come to him and pray.
Those of us who have children, or who have had children, will know that they sometimes have something that is very important that they want to say to us. So they burst into wherever we are, interrupt whatever we’re doing, and out it comes. Never mind if it’s 5 in the morning. Never mind if we’re on the phone. Sometimes it’s frustrating for us parents. But at other times it’s just a delight.
With God it’s always a delight. He’s never too busy. He’s always thrilled when his children burst in on him because they’ve got something to say.
We pray, knowing God is our Father.
Seeking God’s honour
Second, we pray seeking God’s honour. Seeking God’s honour.
After Jesus tells us which God we pray to, the Lord’s Prayer then has 6 requests. The first 3 are all to do with God’s honour.
We are to pray that God’s name would be honoured. God’s name means who he is – his character, his actions, his reputation. We are to pray that as a result of the way we live, and as a result of the way others live, God would be held in the highest possible regard.
We are to pray that God’s kingdom would come. At one level, it already has. When Jesus arrived on the scene, Matthew chapter 4 verse 17 summarises his message: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus is God’s king, so when Jesus comes so does God’s kingdom. But not everybody recognises this, and so we are to pray that more and more may join those who gladly name Jesus as their king.
We are to pray that God’s will would be done. Even those of us who acknowledge that Jesus is our king do not always live as he would want, so we are to pray that God’s priorities would be worked out in the here and now.
Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. All 3 say that what matters most is what honours God, what advances his purposes, what will see things done his way.
Sometimes people remind us that we should not be selfish in our praying, and we should pray for other before we pray for ourselves. There is something in that, but what Jesus says here goes far beyond that. You may be praying for yourself. You may be praying for others. But the priority in your prayers is to pray for what will most advance God, his purposes and his wishes.
Like a number of others here, I’ve enjoyed watching the third series of Downton Abbey. For those of you who missed it, it’s a period drama or a soap opera, depending on your point of view. It features the lives of the people who live in a grand country house in Yorkshire during the early 1920s. You see the interactions of the gentry, upstairs, and the servants, below stairs. But the key ethic is preserving the honour of the house. Maybe there is a wrong you could take to the police, but not if it might bring the house into disrepute. Maybe you can’t play cricket, but you play anyway if the house is playing.
It’s more subtle than just saying that you should think of others. The servants, the lords, the ladies, can be selfish if they wish. They can be kind if they wish. But the future, the honour, the prospects, the wishes of the house must be furthered.
You can pray for yourself. You can pray for others. But the prospects, the honour, the reputation, the wishes, of God your Father is what you must be seeking. Indeed, this applies to the whole of life. If God is our Father, we live for him.
So suppose you are praying for members of your family. What do you pray for?
If you’re praying for your children, you might pray that they get into a good secondary school, but it’s more important that they love Jesus all their lives. Perhaps you pray that they have good friends, but it’s more important that they have the courage to say they know Jesus in front of whatever friends they have.
If you’re praying for yourself, perhaps you pray that you’d get the promotion that’s coming up at work. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s more important that your colleagues come to know Jesus, and that you conduct yourself at work in the way that Jesus would want you to. That may be best served by that promotion, or it may be best served by staying as you are – or even going down a peg.
So we pray seeking God’s honour.
Depending on God
Third, we pray, depending on God. Depending on God.
So, calling God our Father means making him the one we honour. But is also means recognising that the loves us and wants to look after us, and because he’s our Father in heaven he’s able to give us all we need. And this also comes out in the way we pray, as the last 3 requests of the Lord’s Prayer shows.
What’s slightly surprising is what we ask for. It’s not quite what we’d expect.
The first of these three sounds obvious. Give us this day our daily bread. Bread here stands for everything we need, our daily necessities. The challenge comes in that we just ask for what we need for today, and possibly for tomorrow. This challenges us in two ways. On the one hand, the fact that we are to pray for what we need may seem obvious, but many of us just take things for granted. We get food from the shop, heating from the gas main, life just comes along.
But Jesus says we should ask God. He’s not saying we don’t need to go to work and take responsibility. But he is saying that we are to depend on God for all that we need, which is a strong challenge to the self-sufficient way that most of us live.
The other challenge here is that we just pray for what we need for today. One day at a time. I won’t say more on that now, because the rest of Matthew chapter 6 will develop this further.
But if the first prayer for our needs is slightly surprising, the other two are even more so.
If you asked me what we most need from God, what we should most be hoping he’d do for us, I’d never have come up with what Jesus says next.
Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
We all let God down in the way we live. We do so every day. And so we need God to forgive us for what we do wrong.
We are all weak, and prone to let God down tomorrow. And so we need God to keep us from situations where we won’t be able to remain true to him, and to give us his strength to be faithful.
Forgiveness for the past. Faithfulness for the future.
Simple really, but striking that this is what we most need from God as our Father. When we pray, do we come to him and say “I got cross with so and so yesterday. Please forgive me”? Do we say: Tomorrow is Monday and I’m going to find it very hard not to pass on that bit of gossip I heard at the weekend – please help me to hold my tongue”?
We pray, depending on God.
Conclusion
Being able to speak to the God who made the universe, and to call him your Father. Because he is. Not just because you’d like to think that he might be.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Knowing that he can’t wait to hear your voice? Knowing you could live for him and have him as your number one. Not living just for yourself. Not just living for the applause of others. Able to live secure in the knowledge that the God of all knows exactly what you need and wants to look after you fully – taking care of the past, giving you what you need for today, and helping you to live for him tomorrow.
The good news is that because Jesus died and rose again, this really is available for everyone who trusts him. And if you are here today as someone who knows Jesus, then this is the relationship that you have with God.
Which means we don’t need to be hesitant about praying.
If you are sometimes hesitant because you aren’t sure if you have any right to speak to God, then don’t be. He’s our Father in heaven. He’s longing to hear your voice.
And if you’re sometimes hesitant because you aren’t sure what to ask for, then don’t be. You can ask for whatever will most advance his purposes and further his reputation. And if you don’t know whether that points to praying for this or that outcome, God knows. And you can ask him for whatever you need – forgiveness for yesterday, whatever you might need for today, and God’s help and strength for tomorrow.