Our Father
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
April 19, 2020
As we begin this morning’s message, I want to start with some updates, almost a miniature “State of the Union.”
First off, all of our staff are still employed and working hard. I talked with a few pastors last week. Their lives and ministries have been crazy, which made me feel a little better, like I’m not necessarily doing pastoral ministry wrong. For every three calls I make, I want to make ten. This makes me happy that David McHale, our new connections pastor, will arrive in mid-May and begin work in June. That’s still happening. He’s continuing to finish well at his ministry in New Hampshire, and even attends our pastor-elder meetings because they are video conference calls.
As far as giving and tithes and offerings, thank you for sending them either online or by check. Giving for the last two weeks has been strong, so our church is doing well. We did pause on some of the improvements we were doing to the church, like the basement renovation. Though there has been some work taking place, I had hoped to have that done by June, but that won’t happen. We hope to resume when construction companies are working again.
My home has also been crazy. I love not having to leave in the evenings for work or practice for my kids’ sports, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been hard. My children are doing well, but now there are six of them home all of the time, with four in school and needing computers or tablets to do homework, which is hard. My first-grader has Zoom video calls with her teacher and class, which is cool but overwhelming. We’ve been saying there have been more tears than normal. So if you’re in a similar place, you have a sympathetic and understanding pastor.
As for the members and attendees of our church, our leadership has been watching closely to see how everyone is doing with respect to health. There was a younger woman who attends college who had COVID, and it was hard, but she’s recovering. To my knowledge, I don’t know of anyone else confirmed to have it, though I just heard of two healthcare workers who might. While our church has few affected physically, we do have many affected financially. If that’s you, you are not alone.
On happier notes, I’ll mention weddings and babies. Since all this began I officiated two beautiful weddings, which were also tinged with sadness because they were tiny in their attendance with no venders and only the family and even reduced bridal parties. Still, they were beautiful weddings that honored Christ.
And since all this began, three families welcomed three babies. And we have several more coming, including a due date tomorrow. Obviously, it’s a scary time to be at a hospital, but the Lord has been gracious in the way he’s protected these families.
Speaking of hospitals, we’ve been reaching out to our 25–30 healthcare workers. A team of people from our church even compiled care packages and sent them.
So, let’s talk about sermons now. We spent all of Lent teaching through various psalms of lament, which are the sad songs in the Bible. We mentioned there is something like fifty of these psalms of lament, so I thought, why not keep going and preach one sad song a week for the next year! We’re not going to do that. That would be a looong year.
Many months ago I had planned to lead us through two short series, one on the church and one on Sabbath. The one on the church was three sermons, with on baptism, membership, and the Lord’s Supper. Each of those requires us to be present in person, so those plans are shelved until later. We had also thought a series on rest and Sabbath would be meaningful to preach just before the summer. As we talked about it with our pastor-elders, one said, “I’ve never been so rested in all my life!” That’s not how I feel, but I do know many feel that way, so we’ll save that one as well.
That was a long introduction to say that will spend six weeks teaching through the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer divides nicely into six shorter phrases or sentences.
Scripture Reading
So with all that said, please follow along with me as I read Matthew 6:1–13, and then I’ll pray that God would be our teacher as we study this passage together.
Matthew 6:1–13
1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
2 “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Introduction
We’ll be looking at the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matthew 6, but when Luke recounts the prayer, he tells us the disciples came to Jesus asking that he teach them to pray. Think about that.
Why would you ask someone—anyone—to teach you something? You’d ask someone to teach you something because the person has experience and expertise in an area. You ask people to teach what they excel at. Jesus excels at many things. He walked on water, turned water to wine, raised the dead, and cast out demons. I’m sure the disciples wanted to learn these things too. But here they ask Jesus to teach on prayer because the disciples saw something about Jesus’s relationship with his Father that they wanted to have too. So they asked. And Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer to be a blessing.
Prayer is a funny thing, though. Prayer is such a blessing, of course, but also for many people prayer comes with difficulty. I once heard a pastor say to a group of pastors that if most of our prayers are “public prayers” rather than “private prayers,” then your pastoral ministry is in trouble. Public prayer, he said, should be the overflow of a life of private prayer with the Father. That statement haunts me.
While most of us are not pastors or in full-time ministry, many of you struggle to pray the way you know you ought. If most of your prayers are what might be called “mealtime prayers,” something is off—breakfast prayers, lunch prayers, and dinner prayers spoken with haste before you get on with the things you want to do. That’s a problem.
And there are consequences. When we don’t know the affection of God the Father in a way that’s real and vibrant, we’ll scramble to find affirmation in a thousand other ways. That’s what we see in this passage.
1. The Background: Fleeting Rewards from Men
In the background of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus describes people hungry for affection. And because they don’t know the lasting love of the Heavenly Father, they seek to get the fleeting reward of the applause of men. They give, Jesus says, to be seen by men. They pray, Jesus says, to be seen by men. And in each case, Jesus says they have “received their reward.” They gave, and people clapped. They prayed, and people were impressed. They built an impressive sandcastle, but high tide washes it all way.
Jesus calls them hypocrites. Hypocrite first referred to those in the Greek theater who played different roles. These churchgoers play the role of the righteous, but their souls are sour milk.
Jesus also mentions what he calls the way of the Gentiles. Some translations translate this as pagans. It’s the idea that to get to God you have to get his attention by repetition. Jesus isn’t against all repetition in prayer; he told a parable in Luke 18 where the point is that we keep praying and never give up. And Jesus repeatedly prayed in the garden before his death.
So what is he condemning? Jesus is condemning what took place in an Old Testament story with the prophets of a false God called Baal (1 Kings 18). In that story, to get their god’s attention, the worshippers shouted and danced and even began to cut themselves and bleed. False, pagan religions were cruel and bloody. They still are.[1] Maybe you know the exhaustion of striving to get the Heavenly Father’s attention.
Every year around Father’s Day my social media feed will have several people sharing a scene from the 90s television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Will Smith lives with his Uncle Phil because his own father, in the show, abandoned his son. Until Will’s dad came back for an episode, that is, until his father bailed again. That scene goes like this:
Philip Banks : I’m sorry. You know, if there was something that I…
William ‘Will’ Smith : You know what, you ain’t got to do nothing, Uncle Phil. Ain’t like I’m still five years old, you know. Ain’t like I’ma be sitting up every night asking my mom, “When’s Daddy coming home?”, you know. Who needs him? Hey, he wasn’t there to teach me how to shoot my first basket, but I learned, didn’t I? And I got pretty [&%@] good at it too, didn’t I, Uncle Phil?
Philip Banks : Yeah, you did.
William ‘Will’ Smith : Got through my first date without him, right? I learned how to drive, I learned how to shave, I learned how to fight without him. I had *fourteen* great birthdays without him. He never even sent me a [&%@] card! . . . .
No, you know what, Uncle Phil? I’ma get through college without him, I’ma get a great job without him, I’ma marry me a beautiful [woman], and I’ma have me a whole bunch of kids. I’ll be a better father than he ever was, and I sure . . don’t need him for that, ’cause ain’t a [&%@] thing he could ever teach me about how to love my kids!
Then there is long pause. Will starts to cry. And then he says, “How come he don’t want me, man?” Uncle Phil grabs Will and hugs him while Will sobs again, “How come he don’t want me, man?”
It’s a powerful scene. Some think it’s one of Will Smith’s best. Beneath the hard exterior in Will’s life the longing for affirmation from his father throbbed.
2. The Foreground: Lasting Reward from the Heavenly Father
I don’t know whether you have the love of your earthly father or not. And I don’t know what consequences are in your life, for good or for ill, because of your relationship with your father. But I know the love of the Heavenly Father is for you . . . if you want it. We all need it.
We’ll have six weeks to spend on this passage, so this week I just wanted to introduce the passage to you. The opening phrase is “our Father in heaven.” The love of the Heavenly Father is not a sandcastle that high tide washes away. Through thick and thin, better and worse, through richer and poorer, sickness and health, virus and unemployment, life and death, the love of the Father for his children holds. It was purchased in the covenant of blood on the cross and ratified in the Son’s resurrection. That’s what you need to know as we start our series.
Conclusion
This last week at lunch, I had a video conference call with anyone who wanted to jump on. A few did. I’ll be there every Wednesday until this summer. On the call I asked about people’s association with the Lord’s Prayer from growing up and different church backgrounds. It was similar to the reaction some have about the painted windows in our church building. Some see the windows and hear the Lord’s Prayer and hate them because they remind them of dead religion, a way to make deals with God, to earn his favor that’s exhausting. It’s ugly and bloody and doesn’t work. For others, the ornate windows and the Lord’s Prayer reminds them of life with God that is warm and loving and real and leads to joyful obedience.
I don’t know where you fall on that spectrum. But I hope as we study this prayer more, God will draw you to himself in deeper ways.
[1] An allusion to a quote in Counterfeit God by Timothy Keller.
