The Lord's Prayer - Ep 1

2026.06.15 Lord's Prayer Monday

Welcome to the Lord's Prayer podcast by Bridgeway Christian Church. The Lord's Prayer has been recited by Christians around the globe for centuries. But more than a beloved tradition, this prayer invites us to live the way of Jesus, to be shaped by his priorities, to partner with his Spirit in bringing the Kingdom of God to bear on our world.

Every Monday during our summer devotional series, we will read the Lord's Prayer, and then members of our pastoral team will offer some devotional thoughts based on the text. I'm Pastor Heather, and today I'm joined by Pastor Anthony and Pastor Brian, and after I read the prayer, we'll discuss the opening line, Our Father in Heaven. Let's pray.

Matthew 6, 9 through 13. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Well, hey guys.

Hello. Hi. How are you doing? I'm good.

We have our first question for our first line of the Lord's Prayer. Are we ready? Let's do it. All right.

Well, before we discuss the text of the Lord's Prayer, where can we find this prayer in the Bible, and why might its location matter? The Lord's Prayer appears in two places. There's a condensed version in the Gospel of Luke. This is chapter 11, verses 2 through 4. And in Luke, Jesus is at Mary and Martha's house when one of the disciples asks Jesus to teach them how to pray, and so he offers a short version as a model of prayer.

But the fuller version appears in the Gospel of Matthew 6, 9 through 13, which is what we just read. And this happens to fall right in the middle of Jesus' longest and arguably most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. Now I think to grasp the significance that Matthew places on the Lord's Prayer, it's essential to understand the literary genius of Matthew's good news biography of Jesus.

So Matthew portrays Jesus in different yet complementary ways. One portrait is Jesus as the ultimate prophet like Moses anticipated in Deuteronomy 18. And just as the five books of the Torah find their fountainhead in Moses, the body of Matthew's Gospel progresses in five main sections, and each of these concludes with a major block of teaching by Jesus.

And so the Lord's Prayer appears in the first block, the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5 through 7. Now check this out. The Sermon on the Mount has three primary blocks of text. We have the Beatitudes as kingdom of God identity, then teachings on living in right relationship with God and fellow humans, and then the invitation to choose either to live according to God's kingdom priorities or someone else's.

Now the center block on right relationships is further divided into three parts, righteousness exemplified in the Hebrew Scriptures, righteousness lived out in spiritual practices, and righteousness lived out in the community. The center block on righteousness lived out in spiritual practices is further divided into three parts, righteousness lived out by generosity, by prayer, and then by fasting. And the Lord's Prayer occupies the center of the many block on prayer.

And so when Jewish, ancient Jewish speakers wanted to emphasize a key theme or idea, they centered that theme or idea in a literary sandwich of sorts. The technical term is chiasm. And Matthew has a sandwich inside of a sandwich inside of a sandwich with the best ingredient right in the middle.

This means that the Lord's Prayer occupies the center of the center of the center of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. And that's emphasis to the nth degree. And this short, simple prayer encapsulates the entire sermon.

Allegiant citizens of God's kingdom living in a right relationship with God and others committed to God's priorities above everything else. So when we appreciate where the Lord's Prayer appears in the Gospel of Matthew, its literary context, we can better appreciate the weight that Matthew places on its message and how that message is best understood in light of Jesus as the new and better Moses. And these kind of truths about the context of the prayer, I think, are just so critical, right? Everything from understanding that connection between Jesus and Moses that Matthew is trying to help us see.

Obviously, Matthew is writing for a Jewish audience, so he's drawing on Old Testament scriptures to a significant degree. And then in addition to that, kind of the way that ancient Jewish writing and speaking is different than what we might find in the West, where maybe everything builds to a crescendo at the end. Or maybe we've all seen movies or read books where there's a plot twist and the big thing happens when you get to the finish.

Whereas in the ancient world, like you said, Pastor Anthony, the big ideas were right in the middle. So the placement of this prayer is not a coincidence. It is Jesus.

It is Matthew highlighting for us just how crucial this is to the message of the Sermon on the Mount. Yes, but more than that, the message that Jesus was proclaiming through his time on earth. And then the prayer itself, as we're going to see in weeks to come, is not simply about, well, what do we believe and what do we think? But who are we called to become? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it's so good. And now that we have this sense of place and its significance, let's really get into kind of the Lord's prayer, focusing on that first line, our Father in heaven. What do you think comes to mind for us today when we think of the word father? I mean, it's a loaded term.

Yeah. Right. And I don't know that anyone doesn't have at least a little bit of baggage around the term father.

I think many of us are blessed to have really positive examples of earthly fathers, but that's not the case for for others of us. And it can be really tricky to kind of separate God as father from whatever examples of fathers we've seen. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think if you had a good example of a father, I think for me, a lot of the traditional images come to mind, you know, kind of provider, protector, doer. You know, my dad was a big doer.

Since my mom has disabilities, my dad often took many of the physical responsibilities of the house, carrying things, fixing things, moving things. He would run to the store whenever my mom needed anything, which was often multiple times a day. And so that's, you know, that's really influenced kind of the way that I see God as father, because those are my images.

Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, I think of those life experiences where there was no father in the room, you know, and so for some people there's a kind of like that's a whole mystery. What does it even mean to relate to someone in that kind of parental, that father-child relationship? And so sometimes it's hard to relate to God as father, not simply because we had a complicated relationship with an earthly father, but we just never had that to begin with.

And so how do I even relate to God in that way? Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. Now, you look at kind of the meaning of the phrase, what might Jesus have meant by the expression, our father? What did he expect his original audience to think by addressing God in that way? Yeah, that's a really important question. And the principle of first use helps us answer it.

And since Jesus' audience is primarily Jewish, meaning they were soaked in their heritage of Hebrew scriptures, he could introduce a key idea and count on them to remember the first time that idea appears in the Hebrew scriptures. And that's basically the principle of first use in action. So when Jesus begins his prayer with our father, he could count on his audience to recall the first time God is presented as father in the Hebrew Bible.

And the first time is in Exodus 4, 22 through 23. And here, before Moses returns to Egypt to confront Pharaoh about releasing the Hebrew slaves, God tells Moses what to say to Pharaoh. And the passage says, then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son.

And I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. And so we see here that God's God self-identifies his people as his child. In other words, God is not a reluctant father.

In this passage, he takes the initiative in defining their father-son relationship in the midst of Israel's bondage. And so God shows up to deliver Israel from the house of slavery and he capably follows through, breaking Pharaoh's will and outmatching the gods of Egypt. So when Jesus' audience hears this, our father, their minds recall the testimony of God as the father who delivers and sets free and it signals hope.

It teaches the people to habituate themselves in hopeful, trusting prayer because they don't pray to an estranged or fickle deity, but to the sovereign God who fights for his children. Yeah. And just before this in Exodus, right, kind of looking back at that first use, we're really reminded that the Israelites were suffering.

And that in scripture, it says, you know, that God heard their groaning. He remembered his covenant with Abraham. He looked at them and was concerned for them.

And this idea that God cares is the, it's the foundation of our prayer life. It's central for me when I pray. God as father means believing that he hears me.

He cares about me. He sees my pain and he wants to do something about it. You know, he doesn't just want me to remain in slavery or bondage.

He's that loving father that wants to lead me somewhere good. That's really, really important. And that he's not distant.

Yeah. Like you said, it's not, he's not reluctant. He's not unwilling.

And I do think that a lot of times with father figures, there can be a little bit of distance or even aloofness. I've certainly talked to plenty of people who their relationship with their earthly fathers is that way. But here Jesus is referring back to how God calls Israel his firstborn son, which is obviously a term of kind of intense relational intimacy.

And that is a reminder to us that that is the level of connection that God desires with us, that again, he's not distant. He's not aloof. He's not authoritarian in the sense that it is taking away from intimacy.

I mean, yes, he is our authority, but not in the sense that he doesn't want to be close with us relationally. Oftentimes authority figures kind of by nature are a little more aloof. So that idea I think is so critical to how we approach not only this prayer, but prayer in general, that God is not someone we are bothering.

God is not distant and out there and unwilling, but actually he longs to hear from us and longs to be close to us. Yeah. And it's so meaningful that Jesus says to start with our father.

So then on that note, our last question, how can we cultivate Jesus's vision of God as father today so that this term father isn't just an empty label that we apply to God or a way of relating to God that we avoid because of our complicated relationship with an earthly father? Well, I think that, I mean, we need to be aware of kind of what those assumptions are that we're making about father and kind of what all that context is that we're, we're bringing into this, into any time that we pray our father. I mean, after my dad passed away, I just had this deep sense of being alone in the world as an only child. It kind of, it surprised me because he had been such a steady present person in my life that I just deeply felt his absence and, and looking back, I think that this loss even affected the way that I related to God for a season.

Um, and so being aware of that overlap between our experience with our fathers and honestly with, with older men and authority figures in general, just being, being aware of those things and how that might impact our view of God is important. Um, kind of losing my dad and then realizing how that, you know, kind of how that shifted, how I felt. And then seeing that impact on my own relationship with God really reminded me how easily we can project our experiences kind of both good and bad on God instead of letting scripture define who he is.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. Yeah. And, and to your last point, Pastor Heather, um, letting scripture define, I think one, uh, really profound way to allow scripture to impact our, our vision of God as father is read the new Testament to read the gospels and, and read it with an eye and ear for Jesus's relationship with the father.

What is his relationship? How does he relate to him? And take note of that and let that soak in and let that be your model, your pattern, your, your, uh, rhythm of relating to God as father. Yeah, man, that's really, really good that we don't have to even rely on just this one phrase, but actually we can explore and see the way that Jesus related to God as father and use that as a model for us. Yeah.

Love it. I love it. Well, thanks for joining us for this conversation.

We'll have a few more resources in the show notes. If you want to go deeper in your study of the Lord's prayer, if you're listening to this on a Monday, the 15th or Tuesday, the 16th, we would love for you to join us on Tuesday night, June 16th for our Lord's prayer movie night, six 30 at Bridgeway, and then be sure to listen on Thursday for more prayer as we dive deeper into this beautiful Lord's prayer together, we'll see you then. Bye bye.