Navigating with the Lord’s Prayer (Session 4)

Navigating with the Lord’s Prayer (Session 4)

Jim Dalrymple | Ozark Christian College

Praying The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-15)

Our

● Notice the corporate, rather than individualistic, aspect of this prayer!

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Father in heaven

● I need a bigger and better view of God, so I can have a better view of my world.

● Jesus opened this familial relationship up to all people (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6).

● This would not have been offensive or new in the Jewish mindset. However, this would have been a corrective to the pagan worldview of prayer.

● Q: How does this view of God shape how we pray?

Hallowed be your name

● Remember many Jews would not even pronounce the name of God lest they defile it or take it in vain (Ex 20:7).

● This aligns our prayer to the heightening of God’s name, not our own—a corrective to the hypocrites who were praying to be praised by others.

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Your kingdom come

● The Messianic Kingdom is the primary theme in this inaugural address we call the Sermon on the Mount; it is also the theme of the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20)—both taking place on mountains in Matthew’s gospel.

● This is corrective from seeking our own kingdoms on earth.

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

● This prayer of Jesus is echoed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Lk 22:42). Notice, that Jesus aligns himself to the will of the Father—even if it led to the cross.

● Rev 21-22 depicts a collision of “heaven” and “earth” not a separation of the two. This is what scholars call inaugurated eschatology (now-but-not-yet).

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Give us this day our daily bread

● Echoes of manna in the desert (Ex 16; Num 21:5)

● Notice the corporate “us” nature of this prayer!

● Can literally mean bread

● Overtones of a greater bread (cf. Jn 6; Lk 14:15)

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

● Q: How does the order of this line in the prayer shape how we pray?

Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors

● Reconciliation is BOTH our experience and expression in the Kingdom.

● Parallel texts:

− Judge not... (Mt 7:2)

− Parable of the unforgiving servant (Mt 18:21-35)

● Interesting historical fact: One of the first things the rebels did in 66 A.D. when they took control of Jerusalem was to burn the public archives where debt records were kept (Josephus, War, 2.427).

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Lead us not into temptation

● Notice again the corporate aspect of this prayer.

● This was the example Jesus gave in the wilderness (Mt 4:1-11).

● This was the warning Jesus gave the disciples in the garden the night he was betrayed; and they abandoned/denied him (Mt 26:41).

● Parallel texts:

− 1 Corinthians 10:13 — No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

− James 1:13–15 — Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Deliver us from evil (or the “evil one”)

● 1 Peter 5:8 — Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (cf. 2 Tim 4:18; Mt 13:19, 38; Jn 17:15).

● Q: How does this shape how we pray?

Textual variant— “...For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” This phrase appears to have been added later into the manuscript families. It may have loosely been based upon David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:10–13 (Jesus is pictured as David’s son in Matthew’s gospel, so this is perhaps fitting):