The Lord’s Prayer

Matthew 6:9-15

Main Idea: Our prayers should be directed to our Father, focused on the concerns of our Father, and filled with the needs our Father can supply.

1. When You Pray, Start with Your Heavenly Father (6:9-11).
   1. Pray for the Lord’s name to be honored (6:9).
   2. Pray for the Lord’s kingdom to come (6:10).
   3. Pray for the Lord’s will to be done (6:10-11).
2. When You Pray, Share Your Concerns with Your Heavenly Father (6:11-15).
   1. Ask for your daily needs to be met (6:11).
   2. Ask for God to forgive you as you forgive others (6:12, 14-15).
   3. Ask for God to deliver you from the evil one (6:13).

Amazingly, the Bible only records one instance of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to do something. This is recorded in Luke 11:1 where “one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.’” What follows is an abbreviated form of what we know as “the Lord’s Prayer.” Its expanded and more well-known version occurs in Matthew 6:9-13 in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

The text in Matthew has been called “the Lord’s Prayer,” “the Model Prayer,” and “the Disciples’ Prayer.” A good case can be made that Jesus’s prayer in John 17, which is also called “the high priestly prayer,” is “the Lord’s Prayer.” I like to call Matthew 6:9-13 “the Disciples’ Model Prayer.” I like this designation because, as Sinclair Ferguson says,

[This prayer] serves two purposes. First, it provides a model prayer, an easily memorized outline that serves as a lesson in how to approach God as Father and how we are to speak with him. Second, it serves as an outline of the whole Christian life by providing certain “fixed points” of concern for the family of God. It underlines life’s priorities and helps us to get them into focus. (Sermon, 120)

We could say that it is a model prayer from the model Teacher.

It is common, and with good reason, to divide the prayer into two sections (9-11,11-13) with each containing three petitions or requests. The first three requests focus on God. Notice the threefold repetition of the word “your” in verses 9-10. The second three requests focus on us and our needs. Notice the threefold use of the words “our” and “us.” Verses 14-15 provide additional commentary on our prayer for forgiveness in verse 12. John Piper’s words about prayer are helpful:

Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief. . . . Prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comfort in the den. (Let the Nations, 65)

It will be helpful to keep this image in mind while studying the disciples’ model prayer. It can help us see the familiar with new eyes.

When You Pray, Start with Your Heavenly Father

Matthew 6:9-11

Jesus warns in Matthew 6:5-8 that when we pray we should neither be like Pharisees who pray for show nor like pagans who pray thinking that their many words will badger God into answering their request. There is a better way. Jesus says, “You should pray like this: Our Father in heaven . . .” How we begin our prayers is important. The privilege to approach the sovereign Lord of the universe in such a manner should not be underestimated. It goes to the heart and core of the Christian faith. The wonderful theologian J. I. Packer says it well:

You sum up the whole of the New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way you sum up the whole of the New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s Holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. (Knowing God, 182)

When we pray, we do not approach another father, the one Jesus calls “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). No! That father, the devil himself, is our sworn enemy in the cosmic battle between heaven and hell. We could accurately say he is the father of hell. When we pray, we flee to the “Father in heaven,” the one who has brought us into his family by adoption through faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus (Gal 4:5-6). We can approach God now as “Our Father.” What a privilege we have, and one we should never take for granted. As we approach the one who is our heavenly Father, Jesus teaches us to begin with three petitions that cause us to focus on him.

Pray for the Lord’s Name to Be Honored (6:9)

I like the way the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) renders verse 9: “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.” The idea is that as we pray, we admire, esteem, honor, revere, treasure, and value God’s name above everything else. John Piper says there is a sense in which the five petitions that follow the first serve the first. I think he has a point. Piper puts it like this:

Nothing is more clear and unshakeable to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name. His kingdom comes for that. His will is done for that. Humans have bread-sustained life for that. Sins are forgiven for that. Temptation is escaped for that. (“Our Deepest Prayer,” emphasis original)

So we begin by saying to God, We value you and your name as holy. We acknowledge and value you as infinitely unique, pure, undefiled, righteous, and transcendent. You are “the supreme and absolute treasure in all the universe and over the universe. All other treasures are as nothing by comparison” (Piper, “Be a Radically God-Centered Pastor”).

Pray for the Lord’s Kingdom to Come (6:10)

The petition “Your kingdom come” naturally flows from the first and has a strong missionary impulse. It invites us to cultivate a balanced and healthy eschatology on the personal and cosmic level. I want God’s kingdom to come today. I want his rule and reign in my life right now. I also pray and long for the day when his glorious name is honored as holy among all the nations and throughout the universe. I want victory today as I battle the one Paul calls “the god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4). Even more, I long for the day when all the forces of evil and wickedness are banished to the regions of hell forever and we enjoy the blessed and eternal promise of Revelation 21:4: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more.”

The kingdom of God is locked in a cosmic conflict with the transient and fleeting kingdoms of this world. This world is at war, and one of our greatest weapons in this warfare is prayer. And a battle prayer that we should daily radio to our Father in heaven is, “Your kingdom come.” We tell our Father, I want your kingdom, not mine. I want your name to be honored, not mine. I want every sphere of life to begin looking as it will look in the new creation. In my family, work, recreation, and education, I want your kingdom to be present. In the battle for the souls of men and women, I ask you, my Father, to deploy your troops among the nations. Equip your soldiers to wield “the sword of the Spirit—which is the word of God” (Eph 6:17) as we advance your kingdom. Empower us as your spiritual Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and Army Rangers to invade enemy territory and, by the power of your gospel, see prisoners of war set free and brought into your kingdom. Help us claim your promise that a day is coming when “a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, [will be] standing before your throne and before the Lamb” (Rev 7:9). Help us, Father, to long for and to daily pray for that day when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15).

Pray for the Lord’s Will to Be Done (6:10-11)

The third petition, “Your will be done,” is closely connected to the second. We pray for our Father’s universal rule and reign to come personally and cosmically in his kingdom, which naturally leads to praying for his will to be done. I want his will to be done in my life. I want his will to be done worldwide and among the nations. J. I. Packer says, “Here more clearly than anywhere the purpose of prayer becomes plain: not to make God do my will, but to bring my will into line with his” (Praying, 57). The eighteenth-century Puritan Richard Alleine beautifully and powerfully adds,

I am no longer my own, but Thine. Put me to what Thou wilt, rank me with whom Thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to Praying, 61)^[3]

It is often said that Jesus is the best commentary on his teachings. That is certainly true when it comes to praying for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. All we have to do is visit the garden of Gethsemane and watch our Lord, in his greatest hour of agony, pour out his soul to his Father in heaven. Matthew records this critical redemptive moment in chapter 26. As he contemplates bearing the wrath of God on the cross for the sins of the world, knowing it will involve a real and authentic separation from the Father, Jesus prays in verse 39, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Again in verse 42 we hear our Savior say, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And finally in verse 44 Matthew simply records, “He went away again and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.”

Jesus’s prayers provide for us an incredibly important spiritual lesson: The will of God is not always easy, and it is not always safe. But as Paul teaches us in Romans 12:2, it is always “good, pleasing, and perfect.” To pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is a dangerous prayer. It means the exaltation of the sovereign will of God and the death of your sovereign will. It means that you willingly submit your life to be molded and shaped by another. It means, as Paul Tripp says,

You will experience the messiness, discomfort, and difficulty of God’s refining grace. It means surrendering the center of your universe to the One who alone deserves to be there. It means loving God above all else and your neighbor as yourself. It means experiencing the freedom that can only be found when God breaks your bondage to you! It means finally living for the one glory that is truly glorious, the glory of God.

You see, the prayer that Christ taught us to pray is the antidote to sin. Since sin starts with the heart, it is only when my heart desires God’s will more than it desires my will, that I’ll live within the moral, gospel boundaries that God has set for me. And it is only God’s grace that can produce this kind of heart.

“Thy Kingdom come,” words of surrender, words of protection, and words of grace that can only be prayed by those who’ve been delivered by the Redeemer from the kingdom that always leads to destruction and death, the kingdom of self. (Whiter Than Snow, 62)

When You Pray, Share Your Concerns with Your Heavenly Father

Matthew 6:11-15

Our Lord’s model prayer now shifts its focus. It moves from our heavenly Father to us and our needs. I am grateful that our Lord addresses a fallacy that sometimes appears in the church. Some people argue that we should never pray “I,” “me,” or “we” prayers because that means we are man centered rather than God centered. It is true that many of our prayers focus more on ourselves than God. However, our perfect heavenly Father delights when we come into his presence to pour out our hearts and share our needs. Jesus tells us to ask for our daily needs, to ask for daily forgiveness of our sins, and to ask for our Father to daily deliver and rescue us from the evil one, Satan himself. It is right and good to pray for these things. If prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie equipping us for spiritual warfare, it is a wise strategy to ask our Commander in Chief, who is also our Father, for the essential equipment and reinforcements necessary for victory. Warren Wiersbe is right: “Satan wants to convince us that prayer is a waste of time, but the Word of God and our own Christian experience assure us that prayer is a key to God’s treasury of grace” (On Earth, 140–41).

Ask for Your Daily Needs to Be Met (6:11)

In Matthew 6:11 Jesus tells his disciples to pray for “daily bread.” The request for daily food recalls God’s provision of manna for the Hebrew children during the exodus (Exod 16). God instructed the Israelites to gather only what they needed for that day and no more. When the next day came, he would again provide for the needs of that day.

People in first-world countries who pray this part often do so without thinking. Because we have an abundance of food—in fact, we have much more than we will ever need—we take daily needs for granted. However, the rest of the world prays “Give us today our daily bread” with a sense of urgency and desperation. Much of the world lives day to day. Their need for the necessary food to live is real every day. Their prayer is a prayer of complete sincerity. It is also a prayer of genuine humility. It is a cry of the heart that says, “Lord, you must supply what I need just to live, or I will die. I am totally dependent on you and you alone.” J. I. Packer again is helpful at this point:

Petitions looking to God as the sole and Omni competent source of supply of all human needs, down to the most mundane, are expressing truth, and as the denying of our own self-sufficiency humbles us, so the acknowledging of our dependence honors God. (Praying, 172)

We must not let the availability of food trick us into thinking we are self-sufficient and do not need God to provide our daily needs. The story of Job reminds us that everything we have is dependent on God’s giving it to us. Don Carson is also right that asking God to “give us today our daily bread: should not be ‘empty rhetoric.’ Disciples of Jesus are ‘to learn to trust their heavenly Father to meet their physical needs’” (Sermon, 67). As James 1:17 reminds us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

This prayer also reminds us that our eternal needs, like our daily needs, are met by the one who himself is called “the bread of life” (John 6:35). In Christ we have a meal to fill our true and greater hunger. In John 6:53-58 he says that his body and blood are our bread and drink because, like food, his death and resurrection satisfy our great need to be rescued from death. Unlike those who ate manna in the wilderness, we only need to eat once, and the one who eats it will live forever (John 6:59). Everyone who comes to Christ for their eternal need will be satisfied.

Ask for God to Forgive You as You Forgive Others (6:12, 14-15)

The second petition where we share our concerns is our prayer for forgiveness. Verses 14-15 provide a helpful commentary on this request. Now some may find this petition confusing. Is it not the case that all of our sins (past, present, and future) have been forgiven? Is not Romans 8:1, that “there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” true for everyone who has repented of sin and placed their trust in Jesus alone for salvation? How do we square this verse with what we read in verses 12 and 14-15? The answer is this: when we were converted and justified, we stood before God as Judge; here, in the disciples’ model prayer, we stand before God as Father. J. I. Packer once again is helpful at this point when he says,

The Lord’s Prayer is the family prayer, in which God’s adopted children address their Father, and though their daily failures do not overthrow their justification, things will not be right between them and their Father till they have said, “Sorry” and asked him to overlook the ways they have let him down. (Praying, 79)

Paul Tripp adds,

When I live this lifestyle I find joy in telling Jesus, day after day, that I need what he did in his life, death and resurrection. This lifestyle is about growing to acknowledge that in some way, every day, I give evidence to the fact that the cross was necessary. And this lifestyle of forgiveness makes my daily attitude one of heartfelt gratitude and joy. (Quest for More, 159)

So as we ask for daily bread, we also ask for daily forgiveness for our sins, which is what the word “debt” means. We were faced with an insurmountable debt because of our rebellion against the infinite God, but that entire debt has been wiped out because of the gracious work of Christ. In justification the Lord Jesus washed (past tense) all our sins away. Now, in sanctification, he washes (present tense) daily our sins away.

In the second half of verse 11, Jesus adds a crucial qualifier we must not miss. We ask God to forgive us of our sins in the same way we forgive those who have sinned against us. We are not to be like the ungrateful servant in Matthew 18:21-35, who refused to forgive a fellow servant of a minor debt after he was forgiven an unpayable debt by the great king. Jesus makes the principle clear in verses 14-15 where he says, “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.” John Stott helps us see what our Lord is saying when he writes, all that debt (which was huge) . . . ; should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? (Message, 149–50; emphasis original)

Thomas Watson nails the application when he says, “We are not bound to trust an enemy; but we are bound to forgive him” (Body, 734). For the disciple of Jesus, Ephesians 4:32 (“forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ”) must always be in our hearts and on our lips.

Ask for God to Deliver You from the Evil One (6:13)

The final petition of the Lord’s Prayer is crucial for our success in spiritual warfare. It is twofold and set in the form of a negative-positive request. First, “do not bring us into temptation.” Second, “deliver us from the evil one,” a reference to the devil.

The first phrase raises a theological question. Why would we need to ask the one who “doesn’t tempt anyone” (Jas 1:13) to “not bring us into temptation”? Charles Quarles writes, “Request[s] for protection from temptation were standard fare in ancient Jewish prayers” (Sermon, 213). They would not have seen anything odd about this request at all. Further, the plea to our heavenly Father is not, “Do not tempt us,” but “Do not bring us into temptation.” Drawing on the second part of verse 13, the idea is to “simply ask God not to lead Jesus’ disciples into situations which the evil one would seize as an opportunity for temptation” (ibid., 217). In this light the request is a wartime cry for protection and guidance. Jesus could resist Satan by himself in the wilderness (Matt 4:1-11). We cannot. We need the Father’s guidance, the Savior’s work, and the Spirit’s strength to gain victory over the evil one. We need God for our spiritual survival. Quarles again puts it perfectly:

Sermon, 221)

Satan’s wartime goal is to discourage us, defile us, devour us, and defeat us. Without the Lord’s guiding us through the minefield of his demonic devices, we are certain to be defeated. The prayer for deliverance from temptation and the evil one is preventative medicine. This is a petition to be prayed at the beginning of every day. It is a prayer you should also pray throughout the day. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:13 and pray it throughout the day:

No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide a way out so that you may be able to bear it.

Conclusion

Andrew Murray (1828–1917) was a pastor and advocate for missions. He wrote more than 240 books. Yet, for all his achievements, he was best known as a man of prayer. One of his best-known works is With Christ in the School of Prayer. There he provides a powerful word, in the form of a prayer, that serves as an appropriate conclusion to this study of the disciples’ model prayer. He writes,

Lord Jesus! Enroll my name among those who confess that they don’t know how to pray as they should, and who especially ask you for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord, teach me to be patient in your school, so that you will have time to train me. I am ignorant of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer. Lead me to forget my thoughts of what I think I know, and make me kneel before you in true teachableness and poverty of spirit. Fill me, Lord, with confidence that with you for my Teacher, I will learn to pray. . . . Blessed Lord! I know that you won’t put that student to shame who trusts you. And, with your grace, that student won’t shame you, either. Amen. (With Christ, 15)

Reflect and Discuss

1. How would prayer change negatively if you were not able to call God Father?
2. Why does Jesus instruct you to pray for God’s name to “be honored as holy” and “his kingdom come” before making requests for daily bread and forgiveness of sins?
3. Should Christians wait for God to make all things new or work now to shape the world to what it will be one day?
4. When God’s kingdom does come, how will all of life (politics, art, education, science, economics, etc.) be different? Why should your prayers be concerned with aligning these areas now to how God will change them in the future?
5. How does praying “your kingdom come” spur you toward action in social justice?
6. How does Jesus’s resurrection demonstrate that you can pray confidently for God’s will to be done in your life?
7. Do people in first-world countries need to pray for their daily needs less than people in third-world countries?
8. How can having easier access to food, water, and shelter hurt your dependence on God?
9. Why is your forgiveness from God dependent on you forgiving others?
10. Are you regularly aware of Satan’s work against you to tempt you? How does knowing that temptation comes not only from your sin inside but from Satan outside help you pray and fight against sin?