The Lord’s Prayer in Context Notes for November 21st 2011

THE LORD’S PRAYER IN CONTEXT

NOTES FOR NOVEMBER 21ST 2011

ISOM. NEW LIFE RESTORATION CHURCH P.J.

THE SETTING, BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF THE PRAYER

1. We must remember first that this prayer that has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer” was part of a long discourse Jesus gave early on in His ministry, this extends through chapters five, six and seven of the Gospel of Matthew.  This sermon is all about the Kingdom of Heaven and of God.
2. Jesus sat down on a mountain, there were crowds around him but it was His disciples who were near to Him to whom He spoke these words, the crowds over heard (Matthew 5:1). He outlined His kingdom to disciples; He was their Rabbi, their teacher.
3. There had been many rabbis, itinerant teachers giving their version of the kingdom, visionaries who gathered followers (disciples) around them to whom they delivered their notion of a political, social, religious kingdom that usually involved deliverance from the tyranny of the Roman Empire to whom the nation of the Jews was enslaved, sometimes these rabbis taught violent revolution.
4. Frequently these teachers used the Hebrew Scriptures to back up their claims; always they were seeking a return to the greatness of the national status Israel had enjoyed as a great kingdom under King David and Solomon his son.
5. The whole political atmosphere was full of ferment, political change, tyrant powers, authorities, kingdom ideas were everywhere, dominions and a new realm of deliverance was long overdue.
6. Moses had gone up a mountain and received God’s laws for the people who were to be His kingdom (Exodus 24:12).  This means that Jesus, sitting on a mountain was significant!  Moses was once called King in Jeshurun (Deuteronomy 33:4&5). Now the true King has come and is giving the manifesto of His Father’s kingdom.  Sixteen times in the sermon Jesus refers to His Father and the family of sons.

 

SOME OF THE DISTINCTIVES OF THE KINGDOM JESUS ANNOUNCED

1. Moses announced that if people kept the laws of God’s Kingdom their days would be as the days of heaven on earth (Deuteronomy 11:21).  Victory over enemies would be theirs if they walked with God and honored (Hallowed!) His Name.
2. Jesus begins His announcement not with power language and the notion of strength and a muscular kingdom with use of physical sword to destroy enemies.  Instead He begins with the word “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and says that the kingdom belongs to them (Matthew 5:3).  This was opposite to the teaching that had been given by so many other rabbis of those times.  Nowadays the church can err in construing the kingdom as a great ‘power’ kingdom, conceiving of it as a very physical thing.
3. The Jews longed for a mighty “outward” kingdom, a return to the days of David and Solomon but Jesus’s sermon is steeped in the idea of something more hidden and secret but that would be impacting the society where it was set like salt and illuminating like light (Matthew 5:13-16). First, His kingdom would be secret. When we pray, do not get it wrong like so many did in Jesus’ day.  They looked for a muscular Messiah, one who would take the sword, do miracles to throw off the dominion of Rome and make them once again into a mighty world power.  Remember the Crusades when the ‘Christian soldiers” took the sword and slew the Muslims to take Jerusalem.  They got it wrong!
4. The way Jesus spoke was surprising to His listeners but it also struck a chord to those who were the faithful remnant who loved God and were looking for His Messiah.  They knew that David’s Kingdom had failed, Solomon had failed, that the earthly, strong, Jewish Empire had collapsed and they had come under judgment from God.  The church must avoid the ‘power’ complex, the idea of invulnerability, pride; this was in the old kingdom of Israel and ended in defeat.  Take note of Jesus warning of judgment in His kingdom upon those who get into the ‘dominion’ mode in a wrong way (Matthew 7:21-23).

 

FIRST THAT WHICH IS SECRET

 

1. A prayerful life is to be preferred to having a prayer life.  To be prayerful, looking to the Father all the while in the secret attitudes of the heart. Not the outward but the inward.  Here is where the kingdom has its basis.
2. Don’t babble and do not be a show-off.  Remember this is the way of those crying up the false kingdoms, the noisy petitions and pleadings of the political realms, pseudo kingdoms of men and devils thrive on such prayers and repetitious slogans (Matthew 6:5&6).  Do not turn the gift of tongues into a kind of ‘tool’ to drum up the power of God.  A common failing in some charismatic churches and their teaching.  Let tongues ‘bubble up’ and be the overflow of a glad and prayerful heart.

 

KINGDOM PRAYER BEGINS WITH GOD THE FATHER

1. OUR Father, not MY Father!  Western individualism makes it all very selfish.  Instead of the social joy of being in the family where there is One Father, even God, we can make God our Father into our private “father Christmas.”  Beware!  My personal state, my piety becomes the predominant thing and the connection and life with the family of God is subjugated to my own selfish desires and personal petitions to God.
2.  Our FATHER, Jesus emphasizes intimacy here.  Free access to God the Father belongs to His sons.  Every son shares the Father’s nature and bears His Name and has right to His riches and His palace.  Privilege, wealth, family intimacy together.  It is impossible to be before OUR FATHER and simply think of ‘I” “I” “I” all while.  This is a social kingdom of Father and His sons.  This is not democracy where we are equal with our Father, we are subject to Him but He is always, first, our Father yet each subject in His kingdom has equal entrance.

 

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME

 

1. HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME. Reverenced, adored, honored.  Nothing            casual here.  Not ‘daddy’.  Abba means much more than that.  Our Father is transcendent; He is in ‘the heavens.’  Everywhere, The Jews knew that there were three heavens and God was in them all including the first one, the one we can see and in which our planet revolves.
2.  Firstly intimacy with our Father and secondly, He is at all times transcendent and wholly ‘other’ than we are.

1.  Our King is our Father but there is hierarchy in His kingdom.  Subordination is a better word that submission.  Subordination has the idea of order, good order, of appropriate arrangement, where each has their place and rejoice in their place in the kingdom.  Submission so often carries the idea of superiority and inferiority.  We are to live ‘under’ our Father and the authorities He has set in the heavens and the earth too.  Do not get carried away with too much stress on egalitarianism, that every one is ‘equal’.  God’s kingdom is not a democracy where everyone has HIS OR HER say.  We are subjects in His kingdom and are to be happy sons walking in order under Him and His authorities.
2.  Prayer does not begin with our needs, it begins with Him and we must not be casual with Him.  We are to reverence His Name.  If we do not hallow His Name as the Holy One He will hallow it Himself, by judgments of a serious nature.  In His earthly kingdom of Israel, even when His king Moses was up the mountain His people did not hallow His Name, they made a calf of gold and called it Yahweh.  He hallowed His Name that they had thus profaned and made common by sending a plague upon them.  Often the people of His Kingdom treated Him cheaply.  They added other gods as though God Himself was simply one of their pantheons of gods and He sent judgments upon them.  Solomon was a tragic example of this and the kingdom split (1 Kings 11:1-43).  Let the churches beware of treating God cheaply and loving other things as Solomon loved other wives (often in order to make pacts with other kingdoms).  The Kingdom of God does not mix with other kingdoms.
3.  God warned that the kingdom He had granted Israel would go into captivity if they did not keep His ways.  This happened, seventy years of exile in Babylon.  The kingdom fell, captivity came because they did not keep His Sabbaths, they did not give rest to the land every seven years, they did not release one another from their debts in the jubilee year and they brought marred animals as His sacrifices (Malachi 1:6-10).  We must make sure that we keep the jubilee of releasing each other in forgiveness (isn’t this in the prayer Matthew 6:12)?
4.  God also honored His Name by forgiveness and bringing them back from captivity, giving them a new heart (Ezekiel 36:16-38).  He did not do it for their sakes, but for His own Names sake.

 

YOUR KINGDOM COME

 

1. Your kingdom.  What does that mean.  What is the ‘realm’ in which God lives like?  What are its characteristics?  The people of Israel had temporarily lived days of heaven upon earth.  There was a short period where they had possessed the land promised them but their kingdom was but a shadow.
2.  God’s realm is those states of life in which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwell in eternal bliss.  Paul defines this somewhat by saying “the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).
3.  In the earthly ‘realm’ (kingdom) of the Roman Empire all was filled with suspicion, fear, corruption, pride, poverty, and secrecy to name but a few aspects.  The ‘kingdom’ of communism is similar, even the ‘kingdom’ realm of democracy is marked by pride and backbiting.  The kingdom of God is ‘shalom’ which means ‘total well being’ because all is right (eous).  This spills over in ceaseless joy.  Perfect peace, not uneasy truce between persons.  The Three Persons dwell together in total openness and the joy of each other.  We are to pray for this Kingdom to come.  There is no violence and sword in this kingdom; it is a kingdom not of this world (John18: 36&37).  A kingdom of truth.  Churches are to be microcosms where the clear characteristics of the Kingdom of God are to be seen in the fact that God is present and His people dwell together in forgiveness and jubilee because they are abiding in right relationships, not simmering resentments, not violent but peaceable with each other and towards all and brimming over with joy.
4.  At the heart of the Kingdom John saw the throne and the One Who sat upon it with the Father.  When He looked He saw what seemed to be “a little lamb, as it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6).  This is the ruler of the Kingdom to Whom all power is given and all wisdom and knowledge too.  This lamb had seven horns (complete authority over all the earth) and seven eyes (complete knowledge, wisdom and discernment of all things).   The realm of God, His kingdom is demonstrated in this vision.  The sacrificial life laid down, the poor in spirit have the kingdom, they rule in life through Christ Jesus (Romans 5:17).  This is the kingdom in which we have been called to dwell, the life we are empowered to live in the midst of the kingdoms of this world and it is for the coming of this kingdom we are to continuingly pray.