Is God Our Father?

Welcome to the Timeless Truth podcast, a resource of The Village Chapel in Nashville, TN. In season 5, Pastor Jim will lead us through a study of The Lord's Prayer.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Timeless Truth with Pastor Jim Thomas, a resource of the Village Chapel in Nashville, Tennessee. This season, we're taking a closer look at the prayer Jesus taught us, what we call the Lord's Prayer. Like last season, you'll notice our format has changed slightly with two devotional studies per week released every Tuesday and Friday. This podcast is available on all major platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and others. We'd love your help in supporting our mission, so please take a moment to share this episode with a friend or family member. We pray these studies will help us think more biblically in every category of life so that we might be formed into the likeness of Jesus. Now, here's Pastor Jim.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So we're walking through the traditional version of what is perhaps the most well known prayer in the history of the world. It's called the Lord's Prayer. It's found in the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. Let's begin by praying that prayer together. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Now listen, I promise I'm not gonna stop at every single word as we talk about the Lord's Prayer together, but it's worth taking a closer look at those two opening words. Notice the first word, our O-U-R. You may or may not have noticed this, but the entire prayer that we call the Lord's Prayer, that Jesus taught us to pray, is stated completely in the plural. It's our Father, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. It's all in the plural. What does that tell us? How can that impact our view of God, our view of ourselves, and even our view of others as we approach God through the Lord's prayer? Well, think about all the relational connections this prayer implies are true for those who pray it. There are over 41 kings buried in the Basilica de Saint-Denis, located just north of Paris, France. It was the first Gothic-style cathedral built back in AD 1122. It was named after Saint Denis, who, all the way back in AD 250, that's the third century, was the first Christian missionary sent from the Christian church in Rome to the city of Paris during the Roman era, which was then called Lutes. Well, Kim and I have had the real delight and pleasure to visit Paris a few times. It's overflowing with fashion, food, art, music, and old cathedrals. And each day we were there on each trip. We made it a point to stop at one art gallery to enrich and inspire ourselves by the great works of art on display there. But we also stopped every single day at one of the cathedrals like Saint Denis, Saint-Chapelle, and Notre Dame, of course, you've heard of that. In every one of those old cathedrals, we would find a quiet place where we could kneel down together and say the Lord's Prayer. Our simple attempt to feel connected with the hundreds of thousands of Christians, millions of Christians down through the ages, who, in spite of any corruption in their civil government or church leadership, knelt in those ancient houses of worship to pray this very same prayer. Our Father. You see, no matter where you are listening or watching from today, this podcast, imagine a gathering of mixed and varied little band of praying pilgrims and an eclectic group of people from all age groups, from diverse backgrounds, from all over the world, and yet still finding ourselves following the same Jesus of space-time history and worshiping the same God that Christians have worshiped for centuries, and still saying the same prayer that Christians have been saying for those centuries. The Lord's prayer begins with our because when we pray as Christians, we are united as one in Christ. And that means once we come to faith in Jesus, we are never alone for the rest of eternity. We are never alone because we belong to Jesus. And that means we also belong to everyone else who belongs to Jesus. And we use that word our that Jesus taught us to use because it means something. And in a world that struggles with epidemic levels of loneliness, that is truly significant. But take note also of the second word in the Lord's Prayer. We say our Father. And this reminds us of who our prayers are directed to. For Christians, prayer is not merely sending out our thoughts or our best wishes. That's just way too ambiguous. And uh it actually becomes meaningless at that point. No, when we pray our Father in prayer, we are approaching a someone, the someone. Jesus says, when you pray, begin your prayer addressing God not as our force, not as our fate, not the ground of all being, not the first cause, not the unmoved mover. No, we are praying to our Father. And this means no matter what kind of biological father we may have had or may have now or may not have had, our Heavenly Father is everything our biological Father was supposed to be. You see, the God of the Bible, our Heavenly Father, is a good, good Father. He's a Father who knows us completely and loves us perfectly. He knows our fears, he knows our shortcomings, he knows our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses, he knows our failures, he knows all about our guilt and shame, and he loves us to call him our father. Because he loves to call us his children, you, me, sons and daughters of the King of Kings, the creator of everything. That's the Father we're praying to. And addressing God as our Father also reminds us of who we are. When we place our faith in Jesus, we actually become God's children. We are reminding ourselves of that over and over again. We are adopted by God, we become his sons and daughters. I love the way J.I. Packer used to say it. He would say, What is a Christian? Well, the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father. Yeah. That really is a beautiful thing. And when we say things like the, you know, the Apostles' Creed, we say, I believe in God the Father Almighty. Look how close those two really widely different kinds of terms are. Our Father and Almighty. I mean, you know, Almighty is big, transcendent, all-powerful Father is close, nearby, inman. Packer's right. A Christian is one who has God as their father, and that's the way, that's the way Jesus taught us to pray. Matter of fact, in Matthew chapter six, if you want to pull out a copy of that yourself, I think you'll find in just chapter six alone, Jesus teaches his disciples to think of God as father. I think it's twelve times. He refers to God as father in chapter six of Matthew's gospel. Another uh theologian of our own time, N. T. Wright, says, when Jesus gave his followers the Lord's prayer, he was sharing his own prayer life with them, inviting them to step into his ongoing relationship with the father. I think Wright is right about that as well. I think he's onto it. Um to call God Father enhances everything you do in prayer, said Tim Keller. If you don't know that God is your father, it flattens and reduces and thins out every prayer. And I think Packer and I think uh N.T. Wright and Tim Keller are all correct about this. Christianity is not merely a religion or a philosophy, it's a relationship with the infinite yet personal supernatural God, the God who is there, and the God who invites you to call him Father. This makes it clear that Jesus taught how the Almighty Creator God can be approached, can be communicated with. That is, he's personal. You can't commune with or communicate back and forth with just a force, an impersonal battery that the universe runs on. You can communicate with, commune with, dialogue, with reason with the as God even invites us to in the ancient scriptures of the Old Testament. This is the God who is loving and cares for those who are his children. Knowing God as Father is an amazing blessing. It means that we can not only know about God, but that we can actually know God. He's the one who designed and created us, he protects us, he provides for us. Um, he teaches us, he guides us through life, he supplies our every need, he seeks our highest good, he eagerly awaits for us to turn to him, and yes, even to return to him when we have strayed, when we have fallen and gone our own way. Our Father in heaven loves you. He loves me, he desires us to know him and to love him and to run to him as often as we will. There's a reformed um uh pastor up in in Canada. He's uh he's also an author. His name, uh I hope I say it right, is Brian Najapfor, and he's written a book called Taking Hold of God. And this this was one of my favorite uh parts of this book. He says, prayer is addressed to God the Father in the name of Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit. You see how Trinitarian his view of prayer is, and and he's right there. He says, he went on to say, the triune God commands us to pray, helps us to pray, and hears and answers our prayers. Now may our Heavenly Father bless you and keep you today. May the Lord fill your prayer life with an increasing awareness of your adoption into his kingdom family as his son or daughter. And along with that, may you realize all the wonders of the nearness of God as your father. I look forward to walking through the rest of the Lord's prayer with you together on future episodes of Timeless Truth.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Thanks for listening to today's study. Take a moment to leave a review and share this episode with friends and family. You can stay connected by signing up for our newsletter or follow us on social media. At the Village Chapel, we believe God's word is unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, and transforming in its power. For more resources or to support our ministry, visit our website, the Villagechapel.com.