Have you turned in the back of the Psalter hymnal this morning to page 59, 59, and once you've found that, I'd have you open your Bibles to the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 5. The Gospel according to Matthew chapter 5 is on page 936 in most of the Pew Bibles. We continue our consideration of the Catechism's exposition of the Lord's Prayer today on Lord's Day 46. We will start by reading and responding to the questions and answers together. before we approach God's Word this morning. Question and answer 120 asks, Why did Christ command us to call God our Father? At the very beginning of our prayer, Christ wants to kindle in us what is basic to our prayer, the childlike awe and trust that God through Christ has become our Father. Our fathers do not refuse us the things of this life. God, our Father, will even less refuse to give us what we ask in faith. Why the words, who art in heaven? These words teach us not to think of God's heavenly majesty as something earthly and to expect everything for body and soul from His almighty power. We take up our reading of the scriptures this morning in Matthew chapter 5, and I will be reading selected verses to give us the tenor of Jesus' sermon on the mount leading up to a teaching on prayer, beginning in chapter 5, verse 1, and I'll tell you as we go. Hear now the word of God. Now when he saw the crowds, he, that is Jesus, went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. Down to verse 14. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. And then after his exposition of the law, you have heard it said, but I tell you this. He concludes in chapter 5, verse 48. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them. And dropping down to verse 5, where the Lord considers prayer. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need. before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Here ends the reading of God's Word this morning. Well, we return today to Jesus' perfect prescription that we considered last time together, the goal of which is for His disciples to be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect. It comes at the heart of this Sermon on the Mount that Jesus delivered at the beginning of His ministry. and as we hear him, we must understand that the Jews had come to mistake the kingdom of God as a kingdom of earth to be established in the promised land. And in this sermon and throughout his ministry, Jesus made it clear that the kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven, the realm of God's throne. And this heavenly kingdom has come near now in Jesus Christ, and it has come to be established in the hearts of his citizens, of its citizens, as they eagerly await the day when Jesus Christ will come again to establish the kingdom of God in all its glory, to fill the cosmos, the new heavens and the new earth. And so in this sermon, Jesus is giving instruction for citizens of the kingdom of heaven in the meantime, in the time between his comings. And in it, Jesus sets forth a perfect picture of life in the kingdom of heaven. The life that He came to live. The life for which He came to die. And to be resurrected. And to be ascended in the flesh so that He could pour out His Holy Spirit on the citizens of this kingdom. That they might pursue and more and more live this life. Now. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul would later explain in Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 11, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. Eager to do what is good, here and now. That's the life that Jesus lived, and that's the life he wants for his people, and that cost him his life to procure. And as we hear that expression, to be eager to do good, we live in an age where there are a lot of people that are eager to do good. But they believe that they are good enough as persons or that they can become good enough as persons to somehow merit or earn the right to become a citizen of heaven. If you're here today and you pursue good and your purpose is to somehow have the gate open that you may enter in to the kingdom of heaven, You are to be warned by this sermon. The Sermon on the Mount condemns you, for you do not have a heart that loves God or your neighbor enough. You don't have a lifestyle that is righteous enough to meet the demands that are laid out for us here. Jesus Christ is the only one who does. He's the only one who has. Therefore, if you are trusting in yourself even a little bit, repent of that sin and believe the good news that Jesus Christ has already accomplished everything that it takes for you to become a citizen of heaven. If you'll trust in Him to save you, if you will repent and believe, you will join all who have repented and believe, all who will ever repent and believe and be forever counted a citizen of this kingdom. And then you will hear this sermon this morning the sermon in general and Jesus' prescription in particular as it's intended to be heard by those who are already made perfect forever through faith in Jesus Christ it's for believers and he issues it for the purpose of directing our lives in the way of righteousness toward the goal of perfection in our being that is already ours in status because we believe in Jesus Christ and if you recall from last time we identified how this prescription highlights the prominent place that prayer is to have in this kingdom life and in our text this morning chapter 6 verse 9 when jesus says this then is how you should pray he's not just giving us helpful advice he's commanding us to pray knowing that he had come to provide all that we need to obey him in this command and the first thing he provides is a pattern that we might follow a way that we might pray therefore he says pray in this manner and so today as we begin our consideration of his pattern for our prayer the Lord's prayer we do so by focusing our attention on our approach to God in prayer. With the words, Our Father who art in heaven, Jesus directs us to approach God with childlike reverence and confidence as well as with humble expectation. You see, before teaching us what to pray for, Jesus would have us mindful of who it is we're speaking to. As we approach God in prayer, Jesus teaches us to pause and to consider and to thereby frame our attitude and our words to the one with whom we are speaking. So the question is asked, how is it that we can approach God with this childlike reverence and confidence? How can we approach God this way? Jesus begins, and we are to begin by acknowledging God as our Father. In this address, Jesus presupposes that his disciples have God as their father. When speaking to his disciples about the kingdom of heaven, he repeatedly spoke to them about your father. That's how we read in verse 548, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. So in what sense is God their father? And for that matter, what sense is God your father as a Christian? Many have said that because God created man in his own image, he's the father of all men. This is the mantra of liberalism. It's what drives what's known as the social gospel. The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We've heard it. This view is widespread and has been for quite some time. In fact, the Apostle Paul was aware of it when he preached in Athens, as we heard not so long ago from Pastor Voss. He made reference to one of their poets as having said, we are his offspring, and used that in his argument with the Athenians. So even though Paul used this for the sake of argument, it's not the emphasis of Scripture. And it's certainly not what Jesus had in mind here in instructing us to pray our Father. The emphasis in Scripture is on the fatherhood of God as Redeemer. In delivering Israel from bondage in Egypt, the Lord created a people for himself and he called them his son. In Exodus chapter 4, Moses was commanded to say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says, Israel is my firstborn son. The Lord redeemed Israel, made a people, and called them his child. And he did so because of his promise to their father, Abraham. And because the Jews claimed Abraham as their father, they also claimed his God as their father. Therefore, when Jesus told his disciples about your father, and he told them to pray our father, it would make perfect sense for them to think that as Jews, this is their prerogative. That they were calling on God their father, the God of Abraham. Which indeed is true, but that's not the point here. And we know from the record in the Gospels that the disciples often didn't get the point. We didn't find out the meaning until later. But throughout their history, the Jews, especially by the time of Jesus, the Jews had confused their genealogy, the DNA of Abraham, with what was to be their heritage, the faith of Abraham. Jesus eventually exposed this confusion in John chapter 8, Beginning in verse 37, Jesus responded to the lack of faith in the Jews. And he says, I know you are Abraham's descendants. We might say, I know you have his gene pool. Yet you are ready to kill me. You do what you have heard from your father. Abraham is our father, they answered. Well, if you were Abraham's children, Jesus says, then you would do the things Abraham did. You are doing the things your own father does. The only father we have is God himself, they protested. Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me. You belong to your father, the devil. And you want to carry out your father's desire. Jesus makes it clear here it's not enough to call God our father. He must actually be our father. if we're to approach Him in prayer. And in our text this morning, Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray to the one whom He referred to as My Father. Matthew doesn't record this until after or towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 7, verse 21. Jesus said, Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Now to speak so personally to the Father, God the Father, calling him my Father. For anyone else except Jesus Christ or those who believe in him is a blasphemy. And the Jews, not understanding who he was, were right to call it such. When the Pharisees confronted Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, in John chapter 5, Jesus replied, My Father is always at his work unto this very day, and I too am working. And John adds, for this reason, the Jews tried all the harder to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Now we know that Jesus has the right to call God my Father, as one who is equal to his Father. Jesus is God the Son, incarnate. And he certainly has the right to speak as one person of the Trinity to another person of the Trinity, God the Father. And he's been doing so from eternity past. He'll continue to do so forever. It is his being. But is this the way that Jesus was speaking to the Father as his divine Son? Well, yes, and more. As the incarnate Son of God. He has become the Son of Man. Fully human as well as fully divine. And the man, Jesus, has a unique relationship with God the Father that makes it entirely appropriate for Him to refer to Him and to pray to Him as my Father. Unique. Indeed, Jesus prayed fervently and regularly to his Father, early in the morning, all night long, and most passionately in the Garden of Gethsemane. And even now, at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, Jesus Christ, the God-man, is who intercedes for his people. My Father. In teaching the disciples to pray, and teaching us to pray, our Father, Jesus calls us to confess that through faith in Him, we have come to share with Him this unique relationship with God the Father. We do not become divine through faith in Christ, but we do inherit the promise that we will be joined to His perfect humanity. That we in Christ, this mysterious union that is ours through faith, we can say, with Him, our Father. That's the point. A point that was not clear to the disciples that day when they first heard this instruction. In fact, throughout their time with Him, they were constantly struggling to understand how it was that God is their Father. Jesus revealed the truth more clearly after his resurrection. You remember the story of Mary Magdalene finding him outside the tomb and taking hold of him. And Jesus said, do not cling to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them I'm returning to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God. There's no mistake that those who have trusted in Jesus Christ are joined to Him to call upon God as our Father. And it took the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the promised Holy Spirit that Jesus secured, poured out at Pentecost, which we'll celebrate next Sunday. It took that to inspire the apostles to understand the what and the how of this reality. The Apostle John introduces his gospel with this truth. In John chapter 1, beginning in verse 11, he says of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, the incarnate Word of God, He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or of a husband's will, but born of God. And the Apostle Paul assures the saints in Galatians chapter 3, beginning in verse 26, you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed. You are heirs according to the promise. And he goes on in chapter 4, verse 6 to say, because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. Daddy, Father. It is only by the Spirit that we can make that address. And it's only in that way that Jesus is speaking that when we pray, we're to pray to our Father. To approach and address Him as our Father is a privilege that is reserved for those who trust in Christ Jesus alone for their salvation. It's exclusive. Apart from faith in Christ, no Jew who calls on God approaches Him in prayer. There is no longer any such thing, there never was any such thing as Judeo-Christian prayer. Apart from faith in Christ, to say the Lord's Prayer perfectly, repetitiously, is to speak in vain. The way is narrow to the Father, Jesus says, and it runs through Jesus Christ alone. Apart from faith in Christ, no one has access to God as Father. No matter how religious, no matter how spiritual. The Catechism asks this question in number 120. Why did Christ command us to call God our Father? And we answer at the very beginning of our prayer, Christ wants to kindle in us what is basic to our prayer. The foundation of our prayer. That God through Christ has become our Father. So if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. And believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. You have faith in Christ. You belong to Christ. You are a citizen of heaven. You are a child of God. And the Holy Spirit has renewed your heart so that you can join your voice with the voice of Christ himself and all who have believed on him to say, Our Father. And when we stand on this solid ground, we can begin to learn and begin to practice the childlike reverence and confidence that our catechism speaks of. When we stand on this ground and recognize the relationship that we are in, With God, our Father, in Christ Jesus. We respond through faith in a childlike way. Childlike in that our attitude is like that of a child toward an earthly father, but it's different. Now whether we've been blessed by godly fathers who carry out their God-given role with the wise and judicious exercise of their God-given authority, or we have been tried by ungodly fathers who neglect their role and abuse their authority, our picture of our Father in Christ is distorted. Apart from our Father in Christ revealing himself to us, all that we have to inform us is our experience with our earthly fathers that we magnify and we amplify to somehow get a picture of God. And no matter how godly our fathers, the goodness and the wisdom and the love that we attribute to God in their image will always fall short of the truth. And no matter how severe our fathers' failings, the evil and foolishness and neglect we are tempted to attribute to God in their image will always be a lie. So it's like, it's childlike, but it's different. Therefore, in order to know our Father in heaven truly, we must step outside of our experience into what he has revealed in the scriptures about himself. There we behold many things, among them his wise and judicious exercise of authority over and his goodness toward his children. It pervades the scriptures. but there's so much to discover about the perfect fatherhood of God but the more you discover the more you will reverence him as your father and the more you will be eager and willing to pursue this kingdom life that he sets before us in the Sermon on the Mount out of gratitude to him for what he's done for us in Christ but above all that you can know in here. You must know that our Heavenly Father loves us. In 1 John 3, verse 1, John exclaims how great the love of the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. Does that not amaze you? Does it not move you in your spirit at all? How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we are called children of God, and that is what we are. He explains this love in chapter 4, verse 10. It says, this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. That's the love that our Father has for us. And because of our Father's unbounded love for us, we can be confident when we pray that He will hear us, that He will answer us, that He will give us good things. Jesus makes this promise by way of analogy in Matthew chapter 7, verses 9 to 11. Which of you, if his son asked for bread, we'll give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him? This promise is alluded to in answer 120. It's childlike, our response, but God is so much greater. And when we pray to our Father in Jesus Christ, according to the pattern that Jesus gives us, this promise is true from John chapter 16, verse 21. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Indeed, when we pray to our Father according to the pattern that Jesus gave us, we will ask for everything we need, spiritually and physically, and He will give it. The confidence we can have in prayer when we call upon our Father in Christ. When we pray in Jesus' name. So when we approach God, our Father, we approach Him with reverence and with confidence. But there is more, Jesus says, when we approach our God in prayer, we are to also identify the fact that it is He who is in heaven. It is our Father who art in heaven. Jesus teaches us to approach our Father with humble expectations. And I thought about why is it that we need to be reminded that our Father is in heaven. It seems so obvious from all that Jesus has said. Why do we need to know that our Father is in heaven? Well, I think we need only to look at our practice in prayer to recognize the truth that this is the point at which we often stumble. On the one hand, we often put off or neglect prayer altogether because we are feeling rather self-sufficient and rather self-confident today. We've deceived ourselves into thinking that we have no need of Him, at least not right now. And even if we are not aware of our pride, to put off or neglect prayer is to put God to the test, expecting Him to give us all that we need without ever having to ask. But on the other hand, we can be so bold and confident in our Father that our approach to Him is not so much childlike as it is childish. We pray without pausing to address Him. We charge into the throne room of heaven to grab a favor and then off we go. Or we pray like spoiled children without reference to the pattern Christ gave us to follow, prescribing to our Father what it is exactly He should be doing for us. You see, we can be too comfortable with God as our Father. And we need to be reminded that we are still on earth, and He is in heaven. And so what does it mean that our Father is in heaven? Our finite minds are conditioned to think that heaven is a place up there or out there. It's some place. And that God lives there. Calvin rightly corrects us saying that from this we are not to infer that our Father is enclosed or confined within the circumference of heaven as a place. As by some kind of boundary. In fact, King Solomon affirmed the boundlessness of our God when he prayed, saying the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. Calvin goes on, and here I paraphrase, but as our limited minds are unable to conceive of his indescribable glory, it is designated to us by heaven. In effect, this expression communicates to us his infinite majesty, his incomprehensible essence, his boundless power, his eternal duration. When we read the word heaven, people of God, we must not think spatially. We must think qualitatively that it is beyond our ability to comprehend and measure. Isaiah's glimpse of God's glory is found in chapter 6 of his prophecy and in his vision. He saw the Lord seated on the throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. And at the sound of the seraph singing, holy, holy, holy, the doorposts and the thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, he cried. I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. When approaching our Father in prayer, Jesus reminds us to confess that this is the God we're approaching. Yes, we can be confident of His love for us, confident that we are not undone, that we are not ruined, because Christ has covered our uncleanness by His blood. We don't have to cry, woe is me. But at the same time, we're reminded that our Father in Heaven has not been bound or tamed or diminished in any way because He has loved us in Jesus Christ our Lord. He remains God Almighty. And it's Him to whom we come in prayer. And therefore we confess in answer 121 that these words, which art in Heaven, teach us not to think of God's heavenly majesty as something earthly. Something we can comprehend. Something we can somehow control. Something that we can possibly ignore. Indeed, the perfection in all his attributes remains. And when it comes to prayer, we can easily call this to mind if we remember just a few of his attributes. The more we know him as Father, the more we'll know him as God. And the easier it will be to remember who we are and where we are and who we're speaking to. But at least these three, his omniscience, he knows everything. Jesus says he knows what you need before you ask him. The psalmist says he knows what you're going to say before it's on your lips. He knows. He's omnipresent. He's present everywhere. He not only sees what you do in secret, He is with you in secret, and therefore you can go to Him in prayer anytime and anywhere. And we remember His omnipotence, that He is able to do all things, more than we can ever ask or imagine. Paul sums up the humble expectation we have when we approach our Father who is in heaven in prayer. He says in 2 Corinthians 9, verse 8, God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. You will abound in the kingdom life. You'll abound as citizens of heaven. And this too is echoed in answer 121 where we confess that we are to expect everything, everything for body and soul from his almighty power. Not only is he totally capable, by that we're reminded that we're totally dependent. As children of his Father, Jesus calls us to live as the citizens of heaven that we are until the kingdom of heaven comes and all this glory and the return of Jesus Christ in the flesh, our bodies remain mortal so that we falter and fail. And our spirits continue to be challenged by the world, our own flesh and the devil, so that we grow weary and burdened. And even though we have been freed from the power of sin through faith in Christ, we still battle against sin within and with those around us. We are and we will remain needy people. Therefore, Jesus points us to our Father who is in heaven, who we have the privilege to approach through faith in Jesus Christ so that when we pray after the pattern Jesus gives us, we will do so with childlike reverence and confidence and with humble expectation that our prayers will be heard and that our prayers will be answered for Jesus' sake. Let us pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, Lord, sometimes I think we should just stay here on the threshold for a while. and ponder who it is we are about to speak to. Our Father, we thank you that we can call you by this personal name and identify this personal relationship that we have as those who have faith in Jesus Christ, your only begotten Son, and that we can be counted among your adopted children and heirs of an inheritance that will never perish, spoil, or fate. Our Father, we thank you for the love that you have poured out upon us in Jesus Christ, our Lord, that you've lavished it on us. How marvelous it is that we can be called sons of God and to know that that is in fact who we are. And Father, as confident as we are in that truth, we pray that we would ever be mindful that you are God and we are not. That you are the high and lifted one exalted over all things perfect in all your attributes and that apart from our faith in Christ we could not stand in your presence. And remembering that by virtue of the fact that we can does not diminish who you are. and we thank you, our Father, who is in heaven, that in whatever we ask that is according to your will, as revealed to us by Jesus Christ in the Lord's Prayer, that when we ask, we know that you, as our Father, are favorably disposed to us, that you will give us that which we need for body and soul. And as Almighty God, you are able to give us all that we ask, body and soul. Thank you, Father, that we may approach you this way and that you will hear our prayer and answer for Jesus' sake. For it is his name that we pray. Amen.