Word of Salvation – Vol. 36 No. 29 – August 1991

 

Praying To Our Father In Heaven

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 46

Reading: Revelation 1:9-20; Matthew 6:9-15

 

Beloved congregation,

When we give our attention to the opening sentence of the Lord’s Prayer, then we should just remind ourselves again why Christians pray.  Here we are speaking to God and Jesus says, ‘…this is how you should pray’ (Matthew 6:9) and the first words to come out of our mouths are to be these: ‘Our Father in heaven.’  We are going to find out today what meaning those words have, but before we do that it’s helpful to know again why we pray in the first place.

Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer in His Sermon on the Mount but before He came to the subject of prayer, He spoke about a number of other things.  He said a Christian believer is one who is poor in spirit, who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, is merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker.  And when a Christian is all of that, then he will be persecuted in the world because the ungodly in the world don’t like such kind of people.

Notwithstanding persecution, the Christian is to be salt and light.  And he is to obey God’s will and the Lord gave examples of the kind of obedience God is pleased with.  These examples were the commandments dealing with murder and adultery.  Tied up with these sins are of course other sins which cause murder and adultery, and they are anger and lust.  The Lord spoke about all of these, and that in turn led Him to say things about marriage and divorce.  And He also spoke about human relationships namely, that it’s important to speak the truth and not to take personal revenge and call it justice, and to love your enemies.  In short, the Lord said that we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.  Then Jesus came to the subject of prayer.

Our confession of faith, the Heidelberg Catechism, has done the same thing as Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount.  Leading up to the section on prayer is the part that deals with the Ten Commandments.

The whole point is that God wants His saved children in Christ to obey His will and so reflect God’s image.  We are to be holy and pure, or as Jesus said, perfect.

Now that’s a difficult goal for anybody, also for Christians.  But Christians have a lot of good things going for them.  They have been given the Holy Spirit who will work in them through the Word of God to enable them to be more and more like Christ.  But in addition to all that we have been given that wonderful privilege of speaking to God in prayer.

We need prayer so much.  In seeking to obey God, in fighting Satan and sin, in trying to be a witness for Christ, yes, in our whole Christian lifestyle we meet with problems, struggles, failures and even despair.  Now prayer is the means by which we pour out our hearts before God.  Prayer is a great blessing to us and God is delighted when His children pray.

Let us turn our attention to the prayer Jesus taught.

In praying to our Father in heaven, we first of all see that it calls for a child-like attitude.  When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He did not straight away say that they could ask for daily bread, not even for forgiveness.  The Lord first said that they should say: ‘Our Father in heaven.’  There is first of all a proper approach to God.  And Jesus wants Christian believers to think of God as their Father and they themselves as His children.

When we want to talk to God, we should not barge straight into His presence and demand all sorts of things.  Prayer is not to be a talk between equals, for we are not on the same level.  We’re not to go up to God and say: ‘Hey God, how about some food today.’  Or, ‘Hello God, you wouldn’t mind forgiving a few sins I’ve done recently, would you?’

No, there has to be a childlike respect.  Nearly all fathers with young children insist that their offspring learn to speak to them with proper respect.  Human fathers feel it’s important that children are taught to know their place.

But alongside that childlike respect, Jesus wants us to have a childlike trust.

I once saw a film about a small boy and in one of the scenes he had to appear before his father.  The father sat behind a huge desk and the son was made to stand to attention in front of the desk whilst the father proceeded to give a stern lecture.  You could see that there was plenty of respect for the father but there was not much evidence of trust.  It was more like fear and trembling.

As children of our heavenly Father we should come to Him respectfully but also with trust.  He is not going to hurt us.  The Father is glad that His children come to Him.  For it means that these children are thinking of Him in their efforts to live holy lives.  They have obviously met up with a few difficulties.  Perhaps there are worries, or persecution, or failure.  And now these Christian believers are approaching God, for they know God as the One who sent Jesus Christ to be the Saviour.  They have learnt from the Bible that God loves them and has called them into His church and wants to provide all their physical and spiritual needs.  They even know that their being drawn near to God and to open their hearts to Him, is because of the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives.  The Spirit makes sure that those who are being saved do not forget God.

So the Christian believer approaches His 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 in prayer, that we have to grovel and cringe.  Then we are back to the boy called on the mat before his father behind the desk scene.

Some feel so strongly about this wrong attitude that they have gone over to the other extreme and suggest that it wouldn’t be wrong to speak of our heavenly Father as ‘Dad’ or even ‘Daddy’.  Now it’s possible, of course, to read all kinds of beautiful meanings into the word ‘Dad’ and say that these could apply to our heavenly Father.

But surely the Bible warns against chumminess and easy familiarity.  We need to be reminded of this, especially in our times when everyone wants to call everyone else by their first name.  Most of us have no big hang-up about this if proper respect for others who are senior and older is maintained.  But we can’t adopt this easy-going attitude over against our heavenly Father.

Moses was 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 faced with that awe-inspiring vision of God’s holiness and majesty, cried out, ‘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, when Peter and John were released from prison and came to God in prayer with their fellow Christians, they said: ‘Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them’.  Their coming to God was marked with respect and yet also a deep trust (Acts 4:24).  And can you remember the description of that majestic vision of the Lord shown to John, as told to us in Revelation 1.  John was so overcome that he fell down as though dead.’ (vs.17).

The Lord placed his hand on John and said, ‘Don’t be afraid …!’ (vs.17).  But you can see that when Jesus teaches us to come to the Father in prayer, then it’s clear from Scripture that we must not approach God as our best mate or our equal.  It’s to be with a child-like attitude of awe and trust.

Yet, for all that, the Lord did say we may call God ‘Our Father’, and so in the second place let us see why that is possible.

Well, why would it not be possible?  In answer to that question people come up with all sorts of reasons.  The one will say that he is not a very good Christian.  Another will say that many more things will need to change in his life.  Yet another will think that God is so holy that he won’t listen to a deeply fallen sinner.  And who knows what other reasons there may be for people to think that it’s not possible to see God as Father.

The implication is, of course, that if God can be seen as your own heavenly Father, then you must be His child and that’s the difficulty.

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?  Yes, I can’t be a child of God if my life doesn’t improve.

In a way that is true, of course.  The Bible says that no one who continues to sin has either seen God or knows God (1John 3:6).  Therefore, if anyone does not fight the sin in him, does not care about his sinful state and goes on sinning recklessly then, sure enough, such a one cannot and may not call God his Father, for he is not His child.  The Lord’s Prayer, beginning with ‘Our Father’ is a family prayer.  Only those in the family of God can pray this prayer.

But what if you hate your sins, what if you try to fight against your sinful human nature, notwithstanding the repeated failures?  What if you long to be pure and whole?  Yes, what if you dearly love to be able to walk in God’s ways, to have God rule over you instead of sin, and Christ’s Spirit live in your heart instead of evil and Satan?

How often are people struggling with their sins and not really calling upon God to help them, yes, battling on alone without saying, ‘God, save me?’

But surely, you have heard of the parable of the lost son!  Did not the father in the parable wait with open arms?  And the parable of the tax collector and the self-righteous Pharisee!  Did not Jesus say that the tax collector who cried for mercy went home justified and not the other man?

We’ve been hearing about God’s will in the previous Lord’s Days, and the Lord spoke about the characteristics of the Christian and the whole area of human relationships, so He knows of our weaknesses.  He knows all about sinners who make a mess of things.  But it’s time that sinners who repent and say sorry to God also start believing 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 in the power of 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, and 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.  They are received into His eternal family of believers.  They will never perish, no one will snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

So the right to enter into God’s holy presence by prayer belongs to those whom the Father has drawn to Himself through His Word and Spirit.  And it is not our prerogative to question God as to why He works His saving grace in some and not in others.  In fact, we may not even look to others and make a judgement on them being children of God or not.  We may not like what we see outwardly, but only God can judge the heart.

The children of the Father, therefore, must not see themselves as an elite group.  They did not make God their Father; He made them His children.  And to 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 increase in numbers.

There should be no resentment to newcomers.  We know that only those whom the Father has chosen will come to Jesus, but we also know that the Lord will never, never drive away anyone who comes to Him.  And we’re not now talking about the disciplinary and supervisory task Christ has given to the church with regard to its members and the oversight over the sacraments.  They are matters about which the Bible also teaches.  We’re now talking about the wonderful privilege of prayer which is open to all who seek the Lord and all who seek the Lord and who may call God their Father, together with other children of God’s family.  No one may stand in the way when a lost son or a lost daughter returns home to our waiting heavenly Father.

In the final place we want to raise the hopes and expectations of all God’s children with regard to their needs for body and soul.  We’re now speaking about the need to believe in the Father’s heavenly power.  For we are praying to our Father in heaven.  And heaven is where God has His throne and from there He rules over heaven and earth, over all things visible and invisible.

As you know, in the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to ask for some wide-ranging things including daily bread.  When we come to that petition then we will see that the whole economy is involved in that request.  Many worries stem from the whole cycle of sowing, reaping, selling, buying, with which come working and profit-making.  And we are taught to ask for forgiveness and for not being led into temptation, and from deliverance from evil.  There are so many things tied up with all of that.

And then I haven’t even mentioned the things of God which are to be prayed for even before we pray for the things needed by us.  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?

Indeed, we live in a world where there is war, hate, greed; there is ungodliness and widespread evil.  We are facing powers of darkness that come to expression in abortion, the killing of the frail and elderly; destructive powers that ruin families and marriages.  These powers are at work in society but also in our own hearts and in the church.  It’s no wonder that God’s children are sometimes near despair when it comes to their physical and spiritual needs.  Will God come to our deliverance?  Is there a God at all?  How come I can’t go on anymore?  Will God’s work really triumph?  Will the reign of God ever subdue all evil?

Yes, God’s children are in the world – struggling, hoping, believing, rejoicing, despairing, fighting, giving up, overcome going under, winning, failing.  It’s a picture familiar to us.  And has it not always been that way?  Doesn’t the Bible reveal such times?  Yes, every Bible book was written against such a background.

But Christians, see your Father in heaven.  All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ.  God is fighting the battle against the forces of darkness and evil.  He is fulfilling His plan of salvation.  He will persevere and have victory, for in the cross of Christ He has broken the power of sin and Satan.  What we see as terribly difficult battles are but mopping-up operations.  Yes, indeed, Satan goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  But the lion of the tribe of Judah has fought and won.

Yes, the picture can be bleak and dark, but believe, believe.  We have a Father in heaven who is our mighty conqueror.

He is Lord!  He is Lord!  He is risen from the dead and He is Lord!

Remember John on the island of Patmos where the Lord came to Him and showed him that awe-inspiring vision of the majesty and glory of Christ?  And how John fell at His feet as though dead, so overcome was he by the sheer power and brilliance of it all?  What John was afraid of we’re not altogether certain.  Maybe that the holy and pure God was coming to purge His church on earth from all sin and unbelief.

In any case, when we too are afraid and no longer have the faith that sees the Father on His throne in heaven, ruling over all things, then we too must be reminded,

‘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.1:17,18).

Yes, let us see Him, the all-conquering, all-powerful Christ.  It is He who taught us to pray, ‘Our Father in heaven.’

Let us therefore not doubt but believe.  For He has made us His children, and none of His children have ever fallen away.  None have been lost, and none ever will be.

AMEN