Our Father - Matthew 6:9

Welcome to God's Word for Youth, a ministry of Sharon Arby Church in Southeast Iowa. We want to thank you for listening today and we pray that you'll be blessed by both hearing God's Word as well as having it applied to your life and your heart. Well, as we come to the last month of the summer, I had asked all of you to give me suggestions for questions that you had.

And so, as I was working through those different questions that you had, a lot of them were surrounded by the question of, how do I have a good prayer life? How do I cultivate a healthy relationship with God? How do I grow in my love for the Lord? And there were a whole bunch of other questions that we had, and we're going to deal with a lot of those really, really good questions in the afternoon time throughout the rest of the month. But one of the things that I think is important is how we answer all those questions seem to tie into one area, and that's prayer.

And so last week we started with Matthew chapter 6 verses 5 through 8 on prayers of hypocrisy. And now over the next four weeks we're going to be looking at the Lord's Prayer. For what the Lord's Prayer is, how do we use it in our life, and how it transforms the way we interact with God and He cares for us. So please turn over in your Bibles to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, verse 9. Matthew chapter 6, verse 9. Hear now the reading of God's holy and perfect word. In this manner, therefore, pray.

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 forgive our debtors and do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one for yours is a kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive your trespasses. Thus ends this reading of God's Word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Well, this morning we're going to be zoning in, looking in. We're going to take this part by part of the Lord's Prayer over the next few weeks. And we start that with the preface to the Lord's Prayer. Chapter 6, verse 9. Our Father who is in heaven.

Now, the reality of the American experience is that we have some dirty, messed up, broken families. The reality is that if I asked a whole bunch of you, do you have at least one person or one couple in your family that you know has dealt with divorce? Statistics are that most of you would say, yeah, someone in my family has dealt with divorce. If I asked you, do you know anybody in your friend group or in your family that you know those parents, they're not good parents. Or those kids, they are rotten kids. Don't look at my kids, think about your family. Kids, you're not rotten. You need Jesus, but you're not rotten. But this is the reality of who we are as sinful people. This is the reality of who we are and the reality that we're brought into when Jesus teaches us how to pray.

And the preface to the Lord's Prayer, our Father who is in heaven, gives us a perfect model of what a parent, what a family, and what love is supposed to look like. And so your call this morning is to pray these words. Our Father who is in heaven, pray to our Father. And the first step on that journey looks like you need to come to Him as Father. You need to come to Him as a Father. See, God calls Himself Father.

This is how God identifies His relationship to you. And He expects us to address Him that way. Again, we make, Jesus just says things and expects us that we're going to obey. This is the same way when He told the disciples, when you pray, what does that assume? That you're going to be praying. There is an assumption that when Jesus tells us, pray like this, and then he says, our Father in heaven, that you are going to actually address God as your Father.

And this is really a wonderful thing because God isn't somehow an adversary to you if you're a Christian. God is not somehow an enemy to you if you're a Christian. God is not somehow malignant and angry with you if you are a Christian. God is not wanting to send you to hell if you are a Christian. He looks upon you with love as a father.

But we just started out saying, but some of us have messed up families. There are bad fathers in this world. There are entire segments of the American society who don't like the fact that the Lord's Prayer starts with, our father, because to them there's a disconnect. They haven't had a loving father. They haven't had a father who cared for them, a father who nourished them, a father who looked out for their well-being.

And so they'll try to say, well, we should just change this from our Father to our God. Take away the masculinity of it, but that's not the point. See, they missed the mark. It's not about what your earthly Father was like. It's about who your heavenly Father is. It's about your heavenly Father who does love perfectly. your earthly father, every one of you fell short of what he was supposed to be. Some of you had really good fathers, but they're not as good as the father.

See, in Psalm 27, the psalmist says, even if my mother and my father forsake me, you'll never forsake me, God. God is never going to forsake you. Your Father is never going to forsake you. And then in 2 Timothy 2, by the way, I'm going to be using a lot of verses here. Feel free to flip if you want, but you better be flipping fast. So 2 Timothy 2, verse 13, this is what the Lord says. If we are faithless, He remains faithful.

Your father is never going to desert you, he is never going to disappoint you because he is faithful. The last part of that verse says, he cannot deny himself. God can't fail you, God can't be unfaithful to you because God himself in his very being is faithfulness. We get our concept of faithfulness from our perfect father. And your father in heaven is, again, not like your father on earth.

His plans are only to prosper you and not to harm you. How good is that? Think about that. Think about how wonderful this first part of the Lord's Prayer is. You get to pray to our Father, the one who says, I know the plans I have for you. They're not to harm you. They're not to forsake you. But they're for your good, all of them. That's a good father.

That's one that you can come and ask good things from. So if you find your heart in the place where you think, I don't understand that because I didn't have a good father or I know too many bad fathers, you need to turn your heart away from the mucky dirtiness of the world and look to the pure father who's in heaven. He's the one who we look to and he's the one who we pray to. He's the one who gives us good gifts. This is what Jesus tells the people.

If you who are wicked know how to give good gifts, how much more so your father in heaven. He's a good father. Even bad fathers know how to give good gifts at Christmas and at your birthday. How much better your father in heaven who gives you everlasting life and an inheritance that will never fade away.

Pray to your father who is in heaven. When we pray to Him, when we come to Him in prayer, we can expect certain things. One of them I said to you this morning, 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the Lord's heart for you. That is your Father's inclination towards you, is grace and peace. You could come to Him as a father, even if you are one of those who have strayed far away from Him. Even if you are one of those who have gone on your own walk. Even if you are one of those who has been sinning and has been hard towards the Lord.

The Lord gives us a parable in Luke chapter 15, verses 11 through 32 of the prodigal son. Of the son who does walk away from his father. But yet when he comes to his senses, his father's looking for him, ready for him, waiting for him. And when he sees him, the father runs to the son and embraces him and fully brings him back into the family. Have you been running away from your father? Even this week, have you just been absent-minded of your father's love towards you? Run to Him. Come to Him as your Father.

Second Point

But more than just that, there's a reality that the Holy Spirit is the one who enables us to cry out to God as a Father. That's your second point, cry out to your Father. See, we are children of God by grace. This is what we find in the book of Galatians chapter four. Galatians 4, verse 6, this is what the Lord says, And because you are sons, God has sent forth His Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father. You can't make yourself love God. Okay, here's the reality. If you're not a Christian, you cannot make yourself desire to call God Father.

This is something that adopted sons, by the power of the Holy Spirit, does. This is what princes and princesses of the kingdom, by adoption, get to do. We get to cry out, Abba Father. In Romans chapter 8, the Lord says similarly, Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 15, For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba, Father."

You have natural parents, every one of you. Every single one of you have a mom and a dad. You might not like your mom or your dad. Some of you might not know your mom or your dad, or you might not know them well. You might not have grown up in the same house as them.

But what we find out here is that we have a true Father. And that He has adopted us as full heirs of the Kingdom. You are not some type of stepchild in the Kingdom of God. You are a full, adopted son and daughter by the Holy Spirit, and your heart cries out to your Father, Abba, Father. And again, in John chapter 1, the Gospel of John chapter 1, we find similarly, John 1 verse 12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name. Have you received Jesus Christ? Do you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that he has been raised from the dead? Then you are a son and a daughter of God, your royalty. You're a son and a daughter of the King.

And when we look to our Father in heaven, we look up to our Father. Have you ever had a child look up at you? Have you ever had a child who has hurt themselves and they come to you and they're bleeding? Children come to you if they're bleeding, if it's just a little drop of blood. but they'll still come up to you and they'll jerk on your pant leg and they'll look up with you with their big watery eyes and they'll say, Daddy, can I have a Band-Aid, please? That's the type of disposition the Lord wants us to have when we come to Him.

Are we coming to Him with reverence but knowing that He hears us and loves us as a father loves their child? Your father does love you. Your father does want to hear from you. Your father does care about what you need and what is good for you. Cry out to our father. But that's the next point is we need to cry out to our father. Cry out to our father.

We live in a very individualistic society. We live in a society where people are off and do their own things and they're even in their own bubbles. They drive to work, and they're in their own cars. They go to work, and they sit in their own cubicles. You go out in your tractor, and you sit in your own cab, and you don't talk to anyone. It's you.

And our society is built around this concept, this idea, not of our community, but of our rights. My rights. But here, what does Jesus say? Our Father. Jesus is talking to all the disciples and He's saying, Jesus Himself is including Himself here. He is our Father. He is our Father. We are all equally children of God. This is why Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 11, don't call anyone here on earth Father, for your Father is one. And He's in heaven. Cry out to our Father, realize that He's ours together. You are part of a family. When you became a Christian, you were baptized into the family of God, into the covenant people of God.

Look around you. Seriously, look around you. Take a moment, look around you. Do you see the people in the different pews? They might not even be of the same ethnicity you are. Don't have the same last name as you. But they're your brother. And they're your sister. Not third cousins, twice removed. You have the same father. We're family.

That's what the idea of fellowship, right? We have lots of Christianese names. I was just talking to someone yesterday about this, right? We have lots of Christian words. One of those is fellowship. But normally when I ask people, what does fellowship mean? I get the blank stare. Fellowship is living our lives deeply rooted together, loving one another because we are part of a family. This is why we eat together. This is why we come to the Lord's table together. This is why we pray for one another. This is why we need each other.

I remember hearing this idea of fellowship from an old lady that was at a church we were members of. And I remember asking her about this different event or that different event that were going on in the summer. And this dear saint, she told me, Brian, I just really want to be with the people at Eastvale. I love this family here. And I realized it wasn't about events. It wasn't about things that were going on in the community. It was about loving each other deeply and watching each other be deeply rooted in Jesus Christ and grow in fruitfulness. So let me ask you, are you praying for each other? Are you praying with each other?

I'm going to challenge you. There are two things on the back table back there. This is a takeaway. You can literally put this into practice tonight. There are two sheets of paper in the back. One is a prayer calendar. We're a little late on this. It's the fourth. That's okay. So you can catch up on the bairds. But there's one or two families you can pray for every single day of the month. Individuals you can take to the Lord. And you can pray for your family. There's another sheet of paper back there, and it's your weekly prayer chart. These are just tools, by the way. These are tools I use in my prayer life, and all I can tell you is what I find helpful.

For praying with and for each other, like the Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us to do with this question, there's a spot here for family. There's a spot here for Christian friends, for non-Christian friends, for disciples, for ministries, for spiritual leaders, for secular leaders, and for missionaries. And you can find this as a place where you can write down who those important people are in your life, those brothers and sisters, or people you want to see brothers and sisters, and you can pray for them. But not just praying by yourself, I would encourage you to pray with others.

Remember, the disciples have come to Jesus in the Luke account of this, Luke chapter 11, and they say, teach us how to pray. And Jesus says, when you all pray, pray this way. We must pray with each other also. When somebody tells you that they're going through a hard time, or they have a medical thing that's important this week, or they're struggling with a certain thing, please, I beg you, don't say, oh, I'll pray for you about that, and then walk away and forget their problem. Stop right then and pray with them. The people of God are to be a praying people. I have yet to find someone when I ask, can I pray with you for that?

Where they say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Pray with them. Show them that love. Show them that care. Next, look up to our Father in heaven. Look up to our Father in heaven. I find it amazing and wonderful. That our Father isn't somehow just localized here.

That somehow God isn't just here. When Solomon built the temple in 1 Kings 8, and he's praying at the dedication of the temple, he says that God cannot be contained by the heavens of the heavens. Nonetheless, this temple which I've made with my hands. God doesn't dwell in a little temple and reside in one place. Nor is it that he resides in heaven and he's like shut in like that's his house and he can't get out of heaven.

No, Psalm 102 tells us, verse 25, that it is the Lord who created the heavens and the earth. It is God who created the heavens. It's God who is greater than the heavens, but He does, we look up to Him. We pray to our Father who is in heaven, and the beautiful thing is even though, as Psalm 103 says, even though the heavens and the earth should pass away, our God will never pass away.

Our Father is in heaven, but it's not like somehow that's His home and He's not greater than heaven. Sometimes I feel that way when I talk to Christians and they talk to me about what the afterlife is going to look like and what comes after death. And they say, oh, I'm going to go to heaven. Well, that's great. That's wonderful.

But what is heaven? Why is it good to be in heaven? Why is it good that in the intermediate state, before Jesus comes and returns, that we dwell in heaven? Newsflash to you, we're not going to stay in heaven forever. He's going to create a new heavens and a new earth and we're going to live on the new earth. Not in heaven forever. But in that intermediate state, when we are in heaven, why is it good to be in heaven?

It's not because it's a mansion and you can play football. It's because our God is there. It's because we get to go into the throne room of our Father, and we get to bask in His glory forever. It's because we get to dwell in the radiant beauty of our Lord and Savior forever. God's throne is in heaven, but the beautiful thing is, and we saw this in Psalm 8, What is man so frail and weak that you should be mindful of him?

See, it's not like the God of the Scriptures. The God of the Bible is not like Allah. The false God of Islam, Allah, is utterly transcendent. He has nothing to do with humans. He can't hear humans. He doesn't deal with them because he's totally other. But that's not what the Scriptures tell us, either in the New Testament or the Old Testament. What we find in the Scriptures is that, yes, God is not just contained by anything, but He is also intimately with us. He is imminently present. He is omni, always, everywhere present.

That's why you can go into your secret room and you can pray to your Father who is in secret and He hears you. because God condescends to no. This morning I was convicted. I was working on the fine-tuning of this sermon, and Deborah was walking in from the outside, so there's a door from the parsonage office to go from the driveway inside, and sometimes the kids use that as a hallway, which is a no-no in the house, but they do it. But this morning, Deborah comes to walk in, and I shut the door on her. I realize I'm sitting here preparing a sermon, making sure that I have this ready, and my daughter wants to come in to talk with me. And I shut the office door on her instead of hearing her. Deborah, I'm sorry.

Our Heavenly Father will never shut that door. Your Heavenly Father joys to hear you. He bends down and stoops down to hear your prayers because He loves you and He cares for you. God is in heaven, yes, but He looks down on us and He hears us. Our last point is pray only to that God.

Pray only to your Father. Jesus doesn't give us another option here. The Scriptures don't give us a plethora of gods who we can pray to. Jesus gives us one person, one God to direct our prayers to, and that's our Father in Heaven. But there's a reality.

God says, there is no other God beside me, but you can't know that God You cannot pray to that God without knowing the Son. Without knowing Jesus Christ, you cannot pray to the Father. We are children of grace because Jesus Christ has poured out His blood and has washed us from our sins and sent out His Spirit that we might cry out to Him. It's as if Jesus is our older brother.

We are adopted children. And we don't meet the father first. Our older brother, Jesus Christ, takes us by the hand, and he leads us in this preface and says, come, let's go meet your dad. I want to show you how beautiful he is, and if you've seen me, you've seen your father. You must know the son to be able to pray these prayers to the father.

Some people might say, you might legitimately be concerned about this, and might say, hold on, you're telling me that if someone doesn't know Jesus, they're not really praying? Well, yeah. It's exactly what the Scriptures tell us. It's exactly what the Scriptures tell us. This is why Paul, when he's at Mars Hill, he goes and he says, I see that you're very religious people.

You even have a statue, an idol, to the unknown God. Let me tell you about this unknown God who created the heavens and the earth. And he goes on and he tells them the glories of Jesus Christ. If their prayers were heard by God, why did Paul have to tell them about this unknown God who he truly was? Why not just leave them alone?

No, we must pray because of the Son God says all of the gods, all the gods of the people are mere idols. But the Lord, He made the heavens. It's the Lord alone, our Father, who we pray to. Period. There are going to be people, there are traditions that will tell you you can pray to someone else or through someone else and the Father will hear you. No. Scripture gives us one person all throughout, cover to cover, who the saints pray to, and that's the Father alone.

We can make prayers through the Son and through the Holy Spirit, but the address is to the Father. But you might ask, how do I know? This is all still good and true, but how do I know that God's actually going to hear me? How will you know that God will hear you when you pray?

Turn over in your Bibles with me to John chapter 16. John chapter 16, verses 26 and 27. In that day, you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. Do you believe that Jesus Christ came from the Father and the Father loves you and hears you? It is only Christ who makes intercession for us.

Hebrews chapter 7. Hebrews chapter 7 talks about Jesus' high priesthood. And in Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25, the Lord says this, Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

Did you hear that? Jesus lives now and forever to make intercession for you. Jesus' purpose as a high priest now, as a lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world, is to stand before the presence of his Father, that your prayers might be lifted up by the Holy Spirit, given to Christ, and Christ makes them perfect and gives them to your Father. How are your prayers heard? Through the intercession of his Son. When we pray, it is deeply Trinitarian. This is why we pray in Jesus' name. For whatever you ask in my name, it will be done for you. Do you pray in Jesus' name that your Father might hear you?

Brothers and sisters, this week, I challenge you this week, we're on our Facebook page, there's going to start a four week posting bonanza on things you can pray for. I'm gonna challenge you this week, pray every single day. Do not let a day go by when you are not talking with your Father in heaven. I'm challenging you this week, if you have been apathetic to prayer, if it's just something that's an add-on in your life, you do it at meals and maybe once a week, you know, you do it on Sundays, you close your eyes for the long prayer, I'm gonna challenge you to take prayer as your own.

This is a means of grace by which the Holy Spirit will mold and change your heart to love your Father more. This is a way that the Lord will change the community in our church and outside of our church. Every revival that has happened in American history started with one thing. Prayer.

Will you pray this week? You're going to have a whole bunch of challenges. The message ain't going to change in the next four weeks. The challenge isn't going to change. Pray. Relish in your father's love. Go into his courtroom every day and sit down with your father and speak with him. Tell him the concerns of your heart. Give him your adoration. Give him your praise.

Closing Prayer

And as we go through the next few weeks, we'll see more and more how deep and how rich our prayer life gets to be. So let's pray now. Lord, we thank you so much for this gift of prayer. We thank you that you have revealed yourself to us as our Father. Lord, please let us be children who love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you for listening to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon Arpey Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. We pray that you would be blessed as you grow in your love for God, your love for His Word, as well as your love for His people. Until next week, God bless you.