Sermons from the Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Our Father, Who is in Heaven

Matthew 6:5-13

by Dave Wilkinson

November 1,1998

When we moved to Moorpark twelve years ago a great wave of excitement swept over our relatives and friends. They had someone to visit who was close to Disneyland. I almost didn't have the heart to tell them that it's impossible to get from Moorpark to Anaheim.

Now if you had come to visit us in Oroville, we would have shown you the lake and the fish hatchery. We showed many, many people the Lake and the fish hatchery. And, I suppose, if you were to visit my cousin Ahmad in Cairo, he would say: "Well, company's coming. I guess we'll have to show 'em the pyramids." In Geneva my Aunt Heidi would drag herself out one more time to look at the Alps. In Buffalo, my nephew Horace would probably loan you his car to go see Niagara Falls. But he wouldn't be bothered to go himself.

Have you ever noticed how familiarity breeds contempt — how it is possible to yawn at a wonder of the world like the Oroville Fish Hatchery simply because it's close by?

How quickly this can become our attitude with the Lord's Prayer. We said it a few minutes ago as we do every Sunday. For some of us, it's like Niagara Falls to my couch potato nephew Horace. But come. Take a fresh look. Pretend you've never read, heard, or recited the prayer before.

And as you look, recognize first that this prayer is prayed to someone.

Every so often I meet a person who speaks politely about religion. He allows that it has a positive effect on some people. He'll even grant that prayer can be positive -- that it's a positive force that helps you coordinate your thoughts. It gives you a good chance to talk through a problem or find that penetrating insight into an issue that concerns you. Religion can increase your contentment level. Prayer can give you personal insight. The fact that he feels that there is no one listening is incidental.

Jesus destroyed that concept. He said, "Pray like this: 'Our Father who is in heaven.'" The most important word in the Lord’s Prayer is also the shortest. It is that little word "is". "Our Father who is." God is. Not God was, God will be. Not God could be or should be but is. He is the God of the present tense. Jesus says that when we pray, we are engaged in much more than self-encouragement. We are exposing ourselves to some very special facts about ourselves and about God.

One fact about God is that he is in heaven. Our word, heaven, by the way, comes from an old Anglo Saxon word "heave-on" which means to be lifted up or uplifted.

The prophet Isaiah caught this lifting up in his vision recorded in Isaiah 6. I read it for our Old Testament reading. Isaiah's vision breathes the majesty of the one who is "perfect in power, in love and purity." "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."

At Mt. Sinai, God revealed himself to Moses by the name Yahweh -- "I am that I am." But soon the sacred name was no longer spoken for fear of offense. After a while, no one even knew for sure how it was pronounced since the vowels were not written down. God was God at a distance.

But God will not remain at a distance. The one we address in our prayer is not only the "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise" of the medieval hymn. He is the one who shows himself to us and calls us into fellowship with Himself. Jesus, God made flesh, tells us that we are to address God by a very special title -- the title "Abba".

Have you ever listened to children who are learning to talk? One of the first sounds they can make is "a-ba-ba-ba ba." Jesus says that we should use this childish sound in our prayers. We pray to our "Abba" -- our daddy. Not our "pater" or our "father sir." That's "abinu" in Hebrew. Uh huh. "Abba." "Daddy".

Of all of His names, Father is God’s favorite. We know he loves this name more than any other because it’s the one he used most. While on earth, Jesus called God "Father" over two hundred recorded times. God loves to be called Father. After all, didn’t Jesus teach us to begin our prayer with the phrase, "Our Abba?"

Do you see what Jesus is telling us? When we pray we are not praying to God at a distance. We are not praying to one from whom unwilling gifts must be extracted. We are praying to a father who delights to supply our needs who calls us into intimate fellowship with himself. Abba, became the characteristic Christian address to God. As Paul writes in Romans 8:15, "when we cry 'Abba', father, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirits that we are children of god."

Now I recognize that the concept of God as father has an explosive potential depending on how you feel about fathers. Many people have known only harsh, hard fathers. Their human fathers may have been selfish, self-centered people who cared little for their well being. I know that some of you had fathers who made an earthly hell out of your homes. Others had a father who was weak-willed -- who could command no respect from his children. He may have neglected duties to home and family. Or he may have fluctuated in his moods and temper, lenient one day and tough and terrifying the next. How could anyone so unpredictable be trusted?

Don’t confuse your Heavenly Father with some of the fathers you’ve seen on earth. Your Father in Heaven isn’t prone to headaches and temper tantrums. He doesn’t hold you one day and hit you the next. The man who fathered you may play such games but your Heavenly Father won’t. Our Heavenly Father is good. He is the God who loves and gives and saves. When we pray the Lord's Prayer we should picture God as our father with all the love and care that name expresses at its very best.

The Lord's Prayer begins with a personal pronoun. Prayer is not a formalistic expression. Now you can make it that. You can recite your prayers with a cold formality. But then, you can also read Dr. Suess or the Lord of the Rings in a monotone. You can do it. But it doesn't fit. It's not the way we should pray. Because God yearns to have a personal relationship with us. He expresses himself in the scriptures with a high degree of intimacy. He wants conversation.

But this open and unclouded approach to the Father is not always easy for us. We are haunted by our own misgivings. We come rather gingerly because of our guilt. We wonder if we really will be understood because we are not sure we even understand ourselves.

But God knows our makeup. He understands why we are the way we are. He appreciates our particular problems.

Psalm 103 says of God:

"The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving-kindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgression from us. Just as a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion toward those who fear him."

Why?

"For He himself knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust."

The Psalmist says that the Lord knows what we are made of. And because He knows, he has a much more forgiving attitude than we have to ourselves or each other.

God is our Father. And because God is our Father through Jesus Christ, that makes us blood relation with one another through the cross. You are not an only child. The prayer Jesus teaches is filled with plural pronouns -- "our, us, we." Just as we are joined to God, we are also joined to our brothers and sisters in faith.

For the God we pray to is the Father who is "ours." Jesus taught this prayer to His disciples. It's not a prayer for the world. It's for those to whom God is a Father through their faith is Jesus Christ. The early church allowed only baptized persons to repeat the Lord's Prayer -- so seriously did they take their understanding of what it means to know God as father. They knew that only those who have been saved -- who have been born again through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who have had their sins forgiven -- are truly children of God. Only they can rightly call God their father in the actual sense of the word. The Bible tells us in John 1 reference to Christ: "As many as received him, to them he gave power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name; who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

As God's own children, redeemed by the blood of his Son who came to share our death and overcame it, we are bound for life -- joined in a forever family with our brothers and sisters in faith -- and with our Father who is in Heaven. That is why we now come to the table.