Word of Salvation – Vol.48 No.48 – December 2003

 

Praying to Our Father in Heaven

Sermon by Rev M P Geluk

on Lord’s Day 46 (Q/A 120-121 Heid.Cat.)

 

Scripture Reading: Revelation 1:9-20

Suggested Hymns: BoW 439; 103b:1,3; 337; 454:1

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There are many reasons why Christians pray. In the previous Lord’s Day the Heidelberg Catechism says that prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. If it were left up to us then praying would consist more of asking than giving thanks. So we need to be reminded frequently of God’s grace and goodness and when we see these again then we are moved once more to thank God. We may, of course, also ask things from God. But His grace and the Holy Spirit should be high on our list. We can live without many things, but we can’t live without God’s grace and Spirit.

But it’s also our struggle to obey God perfectly that brings us on our knees before God. The Lord says that He is holy and perfect, and because we are His creatures, we should also be holy and perfect. We know the way to perfection and holiness. It’s by obeying God’s commandments. But the difficult part is giving God the kind of obedience that He wants. Our sinful nature gets in the way and the devil is very happy to tempt us to disobey. It’s that struggle, then, that drives us to God, seeking His grace and Spirit to help stay with God and glorify Him with our lives.

As we now do what the disciples did and look to Jesus to teach us to pray, then we begin with the opening sentence of the Lord’s prayer, “Our Father in heaven.”

It calls for a childlike attitude

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, then He did not begin by telling them to ask for daily bread first. The Lord did not even put forgiveness of sins up front. All those important things come later. The first words that are to come from our mouth when we begin praying are these: “Our Father in heaven.”

So there is first of all a proper approach to God. And Jesus wants Christian believers to think of God as their Father and themselves as His children. We are talking here of course about a special relationship that only exists between God the Father and those He has saved in His Son. Unbelievers have no right to call God their Father, for He isn’t anyone’s Father until they have become His children in Christ.

But even when we are His children, then there is still this matter of a proper approach to God. It would be improper for us to barge into God’s presence waving a list of things that we want. Prayer is not a talk between equals. God and we are not on the same level. He is not our mate. The church is not some Christian union that can demand from God their rights. No, there has to be a childlike approach and respect. Humility is called for. Nearly all human fathers insist that their offspring learn to speak to them with some respect. Human fathers feel it’s important that their children know who is the father and who is the child.

But alongside that childlike respect, Jesus wants us also to have a childlike trust. I once saw a film about a small boy and in one scene he had to appear before his father because he was under suspicion of having done a wrong thing. The father was sitting behind a huge desk and his son was made to stand to attention in front of the desk whilst the father gave him a stern lecture. There was plenty of respect in the child for the father but sadly there was no evidence of much trust. There was a lot of fear and trembling.

As children of our heavenly Father whom He has saved in Christ, we should come to Him respectfully, but also with full trust in our heart towards Him. He is not going to hurt us. God our Father is glad that His children come to Him. It means that we are thinking of God in our efforts to live holy lives as we seek to honour God by our obedience. Maybe we have not been as obedient as we should have. Maybe we are struggling with habitual sins. Maybe we are painfully aware of our failures. There may even be worries of another kind. Perhaps we are facing persecution.

It can be any one of many things that weigh on our minds as we begin to pray. We are speaking to God and we know Him as the One who has given us Jesus the Saviour. We have learnt from the Bible that God loves us and has called us into His church, and that He has promised to provide and take care of us, just like a loving father wants to do that.

We also know that we are coming to our heavenly Father because He has put His Spirit in our hearts. We are drawn to God. The Spirit’s work is to have us persevere in the faith.

So the Christian believer approaches the heavenly Father in prayer, and when it is a coming in awe and trust, then it is a coming in humility. It’s possible to confuse humility with servility and abasement. That is to say, we must not feel when we approach God our Father that we have to cringe and grovel. Then we are back to the boy called on the mat before his father behind the desk scene.

But some have over-reacted to this idea of not having to act like a slave that it has made them go to the other extreme. They are thinking there is nothing wrong with calling God, ‘Daddy’ or ‘Dad’. Now it’s possible to read a beautiful meaning into the word ‘Daddy’ and believe this could apply to our heavenly Father. But surely the way the Bible speaks of God warns us against chumminess and easy familiarity.

Moses had to take off his sandals and not come any closer to God who had appeared to him in the burning bush (Ex 3:5). Isaiah, when he was faced with that awesome vision of God’s holiness and majesty, cried out in deep concern, “Woe is me! …I am a man of unclean lips …and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Is 6:1-5).

And in the New Testament we read about Peter and John, when God wonderfully released them from prison and together with their fellow believers came to God in prayer, saying, “Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them” (Acts 4:24). Their coming to God was marked with respect and trust.

And remember also that majestic vision that John saw of God and written down for us in the first chapter of the book Revelation. John was so overcome that he fell down as though dead (vs 17). He was afraid, but in the vision the Lord placed His hand on John’s shoulder in a fatherly gesture and told him, “Don’t be afraid.”

It’s not our practice to prostrate ourselves before God when we pray to Him, but in the Old Testament we read many times that people, in the worship of God, bowed before Him with their face to the ground. We read that the wise men bowed before the child Jesus, for it had been revealed to them that He was the Son of God (Mt 2:11). As you know, it has become the practice of some to raise their hands when praying or singing. I couldn’t find a biblical reference where hands were raised during singing but hands were sometimes raised when praying (Ps 28:2; 141:2). And Paul wrote to Timothy, “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing” (1 Tim 2:8).

But far more frequent in the Bible are the references to kneeling before God. Kneeling and bowing were often done together. Kneeling means you humble and lower yourself before God. He is the Lord, man is but a creature. The psalmist says, “Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker” (95:6). When Daniel prayed three times a day to God, then he did so on his knees (Dan 6:10). Jesus prayed on His knees in the garden of Gethsemane where He humbly asked His Father to spare Him the cup of suffering (Lk 22:41).

One wonders, therefore, why kneeling before God in prayer is hardly done anymore. Children learnt something when they saw their parents kneel before God in prayer. The same parents, whom they had to obey and respect, humbled themselves before the Father as children of God.

In the first place, then, we are saying that praying to God our Father calls for a childlike attitude.

2. Why it is possible for us to call God “Our Father”?

Well, why wouldn’t it be possible? In answer to that question people come up with all sorts of reasons. Some might say that you’re not a very good Christian. A person might say of himself that quite a few things would first have to change in his life. Yet another might think that God is so holy that He will never want to listen to a deeply fallen sinner such as I am.

Yes, who knows all the reasons in people’s minds when they hesitate to see God as their Father. The implication, of course, is that if God can be seen as your heavenly Father, then you must be His child. And that’s probably where the real difficulty lies. For how can I be a child of God if I still swear, if I still drink too much, if I still lust, if I still argue and fight, if I still explode in fits of anger? Yes, how can I pray to God and see Him as my heavenly Father when my life does not show improvement?

In one way that is true, of course. The Bible says that no one who continues to sin has either seen God or knows God (1 Jn 3:6). There may well be some who belong to a church, attend the services, and assume that they are Christians and God is their Father, but do not really bother much to fight sin in their life. They do not really care all that much about their sinful lifestyles. And they go on excusing their God-dishonouring behaviour. And if there is no repentance, no wanting to break with sin, no praying “God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, then indeed, you may not call God your Father for you are not His child. The Lord’s prayer, beginning with “Our Father in heaven” is a family prayer. Only those belonging to the family of God can pray this prayer.

But what if you hate your sins? What if you try to fight the wrong things in your life? What if you struggle against your sinful human nature, notwithstanding your failures to break free from your sins? What if your conscience screams at you when you have once more sinned despicably in God’s eyes? What if you long to be pure and holy? What if you dearly love to be able to walk in God’s ways, to have God rule over you instead of your sins, and have Christ’s Spirit be much stronger in you instead of you giving in all the time to evil and Satan? Surely, all that means that God has not left you, that He still loves you, and that He still calls you to come and follow Him. And if God has not abandoned you, then you can still go down on your knees and pray, “Our Father in heaven,” please save me!

When you struggle like that, then it’s time to call to mind Jesus’ parable about the lost son. He returned home and said out loud what he had already said earlier on in his heart, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

How did the father receive him? Was it not with open arms? And when the son also said, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son”, then the father called him a son and rejoiced that he had found him again (Lk 15:21,24).

Remember also the parable of the tax collector and the pharisee. Did not Jesus say that the tax collector who cried for mercy went home justified rather than that self-righteous pharisee? It wasn’t the tax collector’s cry for mercy that justified him. God justified him on the basis of Christ paying for his sin. But that justification was there for the tax collector only after he had humbled himself before God and confessed his sin.

God knows our weaknesses. He knows all about our feeble efforts to live as children of God. He sees us when we sit there with our bowed head in our hands, conscious of having made a mess of things again. But that’s also the time to say sorry to God and to those whom we have wronged, and to start believing again in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ.

Look to the cross! There our Saviour died in order to open heaven for us. The cross is the reason why we may say to God, “Our Father.” Yes, believe what Jesus achieved through His death on the cross.

There are so many people who struggle on as orphans. They have no one to look after them, no one to love them. They are fatherless, alone in the world. If they would only listen to the heavenly Father calling out to them – come to me and see the cross of the Saviour. Rest assured that I will never, never turn anyone away.

All those who come to the Father in Jesus’ Name become the adopted children of God. You are received into His eternal family of believers. You will never perish and no one will snatch you out of the Father’s hand.

So the right to enter God’s holy presence through prayer belongs to those whom the Father has drawn to Himself through His Word and Spirit. And it’s not our prerogative to question God as to why He works His saving grace in some and not in others. It’s not our business to know why God saves this one today and that other one at another time. In fact, we may not even look at others in order to make a judgment if they are suitable to become children of God. We may like some and not others, based on what we see outwardly. But let’s leave the judging of the heart to God. Only He knows everything. And God alone will decide who He wants in His family. The most unlikely characters have become children of God. Think of the apostle Paul. Think of yourself.

Those who are already the children of our heavenly Father must not see themselves, therefore, as an elite group. We did not make God our Father; He made us His children. And those who do not know of the power of the cross, we should point them to Christ again and again. The children of the Father should always be most glad and willing to see God’s family have more adopted children added to it. Let’s not stand in the way when a lost son or a lost daughter wants to return home to our heavenly Father.

So far we have seen, then, that praying to our heavenly Father calls for a childlike attitude, and why it is possible for us to call God “Our Father”…

3. The needs of the Father’s children

Here we may raise each other’s hopes and expectations as God’s children with regard to our needs for body and soul. We’re now speaking about the need to believe in the Father’s heavenly power. We must keep this in front of us, we are praying to our Father who is in heaven. Heaven is where God has His throne and from where He rules the earth, over all powers, visible and invisible.

In the Lord’s prayer we are taught to pray for some wide-ranging things that affect us. For daily bread, and when we come to that petition then we’ll see that the whole economy is included in that request. We are also taught to ask for forgiveness of all our sins, how to cope with temptation, and be delivered from evil. There are many things tied up with all these things.

Then there are also the things of God that we must pray for. They even take priority over things that affect us. We’ll be thinking of the holiness of God’s Name, the coming of His kingdom and the doing of His will. How many obstacles do not stand in the way of all those things that relate directly to God and the honour of His Name! Indeed, we live in world where there is war, hate, greed, ungodliness and widespread evil. The children of the Father are facing earthly powers of darkness that come to expression in the killing of the unborn, in getting rid of the frail elderly, in destroying families and marriages. Evil powers that originate from the devil and work their way into human hearts and minds, seeking to destroy both society and the church.

It’s no wonder that God’s children on earth sometimes border on despair when it comes to their spiritual and physical needs. Will God deliver me? Is God able? Is there a God? Oh God, I sometimes don’t just doubt, I have moments of sheer unbelief.

Yes, God’s children in the world – struggling then accomplishing, doubting then believing, despairing then hoping, giving up then fighting again, going under then overcoming, blind then seeing, failing then victory. And has it not always been that way? Does not the Bible reveal such times and such people. The oppression in Egypt, then the exodus. Moses, the believer who lost it a few times, then again a tower of strength at other times. Israel stuck in the ways of sin, then reborn through repentance and restored faith. Elijah, “Lord I am the only one left”, then God’s response, “no Elijah, there are seven thousands besides you who have not bowed to Baal.” Thomas, “I can’t believe unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands”, then when he saw Christ, “my Lord and my God!” And Jesus Himself, in deep anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, “Lord, let this cup pass me by”, then on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Therefore, Christian, see your Father in heaven. All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ. It is God who is fighting the battle against the forces of darkness and evil. He is fulfilling His plan of salvation. He will persevere and have the victory. In the cross of Christ He has already broken the power of sin and Satan. What we see as terribly difficult battles are but mopping-up operations. Yes, Satan goes around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. But the Lion of the tribe of Judah has fought and won. With the psalmist we may say, “For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even to the end” (Ps 48:14). So believe, believe! We have a Father in heaven, our mighty Conqueror. He is Lord and King.

On the island of Patmos the Lord showed Himself in a vision to John the apostle. That vision is recorded for our benefit. So we, too, see Christ – majestic and glorious. John fell down at His feet, as though dead. He was just so overcome by the sheer power and brilliance of Christ. What John was afraid of we’re not altogether certain. Maybe that God, holy and pure, was coming to purge His church from all sin and unbelief. In any case, when you are afraid and no longer have the faith that sees the Father on the throne in heaven, ruling over all things, then you, too, must be reminded as John was. Christ said to him and to us all, “Fear not, I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One, I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev 1:17).

Yes, see Him, the all-conquering, all-powerful Christ. It is He who taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven.” Our Father has made us His children, and none of His children have fallen away. None have been lost, and none ever will be.

Amen.