The Lord's Prayer: Our Father (Matthew 6.9)
This sermon was preached on June 23rd, 2024.
“If you ain't first, you’re last.” It’s the motto of the character Ricky Bobby in the movie Talladega Nights. Ricky is the most successful driver in racing and has lived his life by this motto, something his absentee father said to him when he was ten years old. And the motto seems to work—it led him to wins and everything he wanted. Except for what he was really trying to achieve—his father's love. He eventually hits a wall and everything falls apart. After all, he's no longer first then what is he?
Later in the movie he reunites with his dad, who is training Ricky for a comeback to racing. They eventually have an argument, and Ricky tells his dad: “Don’t you get it? All those races I won. It was all for you! I did it just like you told me: If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
His dad says: “Ricky, I was high when I said that. That makes no sense at all. You can be second, third, fourth. You could be fifth!” Ricky is floored. He had lived his entire life based on something that could never deliver, that would only leave him broken.
Talladega Nights is a funny movie. But I think this describes something at work within many of us. We operate with a "if you ain’t first, your last” ideal in our minds when it comes to religion. That God is like a father that has a conditional relationship with us. If we can be first, then maybe we can convince him to love us. But if we aren't first? Then we might as well give up, and so we disengage. I might as well not bother, I’ve already messed up.
Those may sound like opposites, but they’re really two sides of the same coin—thinking God’s love for us is dependent on what we do. And they’re both non-sense that is only worth rejecting, which is what God is leading us to do this morning.
God is leading us this morning to realize this and to reject both of those things. To step into what it really means for us to live as his delighted-in children. We’ll do that by looking at the first thing Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father in heaven…”
Our Father…
In Scripture, we find a number of titles that God can rightly be called. King. Lord. Warrior. Shield. Strong Tower. Rock. They’re all true and point to deep and significant things about who God is. Yet when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, of all of the names and titles he could give us to call upon God as, he leads us to call him Father.
This is no small thing. It means at least a few things worth mentioning, but before I get into that, let me say this: If calling God your “father” is difficult, I understand. Many people have physical scars and emotional scars from lousy fathers. Hear me clearly—it shouldn’t be that way. If your father abused you or left you, that is wrong, it should not have happened, and God weeps with you. It’s not your fault. Scripture reveals God as a father to the fatherless who brings the lonely into families (Psalm 68), and calling upon God as Father is an invitation to know a father who will never leave, and has our best interests in mind.
So what’s the significance of Jesus teaching us to call upon God as Our Father?
Jesus intends for us to call upon God exactly how He does. Jesus called upon God as Father and spoke about him as His Father in a way that was utterly unique, because He is the eternal Son of God. God sent from God. Not created like everything else, but begotten of the Father’s essence. So when Jesus called upon God as “Father,” he was speaking to something unique to Him.
Yet then he remarkably teaches his disciples to pray exactly like him. Meaning that Jesus sweeps us into the eternal relationship of the God who is love. Of course, this doesn't make us little gods. There will always be a uniqueness to Jesus being the only begotten Son of God. But the fact that Jesus teaches us to call God Father points to the fact that he has worked to make us adopted sons and daughters of God. That the one and only who could rightly call upon God has Father has entered into our history and joined himself to us—identifying with us so we can be identified with him. So that we can lift our voices and call on God as Father and know that we are just as heard in prayer as Jesus was.
Jesus came into this world to remove every obstacle to bring God’s lost children home. It was no easy thing for Jesus to teach us to pray “our Father.” He knew if he was teaching us to pray something that was true, it was going to cost him much. It would mean rejection, mockery, and crucifixion—experiencing the curse and misery that sin has created in our world. The punishment that sin deserves. But he faced all this as our elder brother, and we come to him by faith in his victory for us.Jesus intends for us to know ourselves, first and foremost, as children of God. To put it another way, Jesus teaches us that our first words in prayer, like the first words of a baby, should be “Dada.” To know ourselves as God’s children, with everything that means. It's the first word that sets the tone for all the other words. The word that all other words we say in prayer and outside of prayer have to submit to and account for.
When children first learn to speak and begin speaking about themselves, have you ever noticed that they don’t say “I am going to do this” or “I want that.” They say “Tim want toy” or “Tim go play.” Babies learn to speak in the third person—meaning they are learning to speak by seeing themselves as their caretaker sees them.
That’s what the Christian life is designed to be—us learning to speak of ourselves the way our Father speaks of us. To define ourselves the way God defines us. And because Jesus teaches us to pray to God as our Father, we have permission to know ourselves as his children and, now because of Jesus, never not his children.
So we pray…Our Father as those who have been swept into the eternal love of God, knowing ourselves as delighted-in children of God by faith in Jesus. That leads us to my second point—
Our Father
Not just ‘my Father.’ That would be true enough. But this new identity that is ours by faith in Jesus is one that brings us into a family, and are words that are only meant to make sense as we say them alongside one another.
What a gift it is to be brought together with others who have been transformed and are being transformed by the love of God in Jesus! I tell people all the time—I have so much joy in my life because of you all. It makes my heart sing to know that you are my brothers and sisters in Jesus. To know that the place that God has put me is with you.
Part of the joy of it is to know that even when we pray in solitude or in private, we do not pray alone. For the same Holy Spirit that is in work in you to call upon God as Abba Father is at work in me to call upon God in the same way. That we always pray together, even when it seems we pray alone.
It’s so easy to feel alone in our world, even when we are as connected to each other as any human beings in history. Through the internet, through phones and social media, we have access to one another in ways that other generations couldn’t dream about. But what is one of the most reported things in our society? Loneliness. A feeling that in this world where we are connected to one another we are actually alone, truly unknown to others.
But the truth is that we are never alone. If everyone in our world abandoned us, God would still be present with us. You are never alone. He is with you in those feelings of loneliness. He is beside you in your times of grief, binding your brokenness and healing the wounds of your heart. He is beside you in your time weeping, weeping with you until the day when he makes all things new. He is beside you in your times angry.
And one of the ways that I think God is with us, and this comes with a calling to us as his children, is through one another. And I am meant to know that in all those times of loneliness I am not alone when you embody it to me and I embody it to you.
It means that we all have a claim on one another. We are intended to walk through the hills and valleys of life together. To never suffer alone. Your griefs are mine, too. Your victories are mine, too. Our lives are intimately tied to one another.
A time of trouble in our lives should not be an occasion for gossip, but something we see as an emergency that demands our presence and words and resources. The earliest Christians lived this out in practical and real ways. To the point that the book of Acts says that “there were no poor among them.” To the point that Christians who had material wealth in this world were selling their things because of the need of their sisters and brothers—and they saw the need of their brothers and sisters are more important than their own financial wealth. They cashed in their resources to make sure no one was alone in their troubles.
I think this is the kind of community—the kind of family—that is meant to be created and formed when we call upon God as our Father. Think of what would go on inside of you if you found out your sibling or your parent or your child was in need. You’d drop everything to come to their aid, right? You’d sit up with them deep into the night. You’d do for them when they could no do for themselves.
The church is meant to be a spiritual family where this kind of commitment to one another is just as strong. And this is meant to be one of the greatest testimonies to one another and to the world outside that the gospel of Jesus is true. Through the beauty of the relationships that exists between God’s children. As Jesus himself said—people will know we are his followers because of our love for one another. Not just loving one another in words—and words are incredibly important! But love made actionable and real.
So friends…or better yet, so brothers and sisters, let’s take Jesus’ guidance to heart, and pray to our Father, allowing these words to be the foundation of how we think about him, about ourselves, and about each other. Let’s pray that our Father will grow us in this. That we will walk in all that our Father has for us.