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Good morning, Saints; greetings from Crean Lutheran High School in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ! It is great to be gathered around God’s Word this morning!
We are continuing to celebrate God’s many special and unique gifts given to our students, faculty, staff, leadership, families, and entire Saints community as we celebrate His grace given in the many blessings bestowed upon us, including the recent Blue Ribbon High Achieving School, Distinction which was awarded to Crean Lutheran High School this past week. As we celebrate and bask in His glory, on campus we continue our series on prayer during chapel, specifically The Lord’s Prayer.
This year's Campus Ministry team comprises Pastor Unke, Vicar (pastor in training) Ryan Fink, our theology department, and praise and worship leaders; they have dedicated a teaching chapel series to the understanding of The Lord’s Prayer more deeply. The series looks deeper into the seven petitions, the sound doctrines, and the admonitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Today’s devotion will cover the beginning and the first three petitions of the prayer. Next week, we will conclude with the remaining four petitions of the prayer, along with a summary. Thank you for entertaining a two-part series on the matter.
The petitions in this chapel series have been divided so that different speakers will break apart the prayer into individual petitions to teach to our students, many who know it well and some who do not. Our beloved principal, Dr. Moyer, shared the beginning portion of the prayer and the first petition. I was blessed to share the second and third petitions, and Vicar Fink taught on the fourth petition this past Thursday.
German priest, theologian, author, hymn-writer, professor, Augustinian friar, and great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther wrote extensively on The Lord’s Prayer. In fact, he produced a commentary on it, Martin Luther's Explanation of the Lord's Prayer. It is an excellent read and helpful in preparing us to think more deeply about this prayer Jesus taught us. I was amazed that a writing this thoughtful, detailed, and extensive could be written on such a short but important prayer.
In today’s Bible passage, Jesus shares with us how to pray; that prayer is a special communication with our Father, saying, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:5-6. He also reinforces the truth that words matter, “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Then, he instructs us to “Pray then like this...”
The Address:
Our Father in heaven.
Our Father. These words serve as the address to the prayer and remind us to Whom we are praying. They show us that He is to be honored and how He is to be addressed. Martin Luther puts it this way, “This is how every person should approach Him, that He may be gracious and inclined to hear. Of all the names of God, therefore, there is no one, the using of which renders us more acceptable unto Him, than that of Father; and it is a most lovely, sweet, and deeply comprehensive name, and full of mental affection.” He is “our” Father. Jesus did not say that we should pray to “my” Father. We should pray for all mankind rather than only ourselves. If we identify our God as Father, we then can identify ourselves as sons and daughters of our Father. When we pray, our Father hears us as a father listens closely to his children.
In heaven. This qualification establishes that our Father, whom we just identified, is in authority and away in heaven. This causes us to reflect on our sinful nature as well as our exiled state; we are on earth as we travel about, and He is in heaven. As children of our heavenly Father, we are sinners and need to pray to our Father in heaven to obtain His grace and goodness in our lives. We can only go to our Father in prayer. No man has gone to heaven except the Son of Man, Jesus, who came down from heaven (John 3:13). This also causes a reflection of hope, the hope that someday, through the Son, we will join our Father in heaven.
Petition one:
Hallowed be your name. This first petition sets the tone by invoking the holy name of God, which is holy in itself. Martin Luther believed, “O great and inconceivably deep petition when it proceeds from the true affection of the heart! It is short indeed as to the words, but there is no one of the other petitions equal in greatness to this, wherein we pray, ‘Hallowed be thy name!’” This petition causes us to reflect on the greatness and holiness of God and the nothingness of man. The third commandment is clear, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Who was the first to slander God? Satan, in the garden of Eden, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” As sons and daughters of our Father, we are fully sanctified when His name is on us; we must recognize while praying in His hallowed name that we are sinners who fall short of honoring His name. Yet, we have hope, knowing that He is listening to our prayers and knowing that we are sanctified through His name on us.
Martin Luther points out that throughout this and the rest of the petitions, it requires two things - ‘it humbles and it lifts up.” When we pray and humbly confess with our own mouths, we recognize we are sinners in exile here on earth and away from our Father, which humbles us. It also lifts us up and instructs us on how to lead a faithful life in humility.
Petition two:
Thy kingdom come. This petition has us think deeply about the kingdom of God and what is not the kingdom of God - the world. God our Father is robbed of His kingdom in this world because of our sin. The sin-filled world is the kingdom of Satan, “we know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” 1 John 5:19. Jesus said, “I won’t talk with you much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming, He has no power over me.” John 14:30. This world is not God’s kingdom, and we are not of this world. John 15:19.
Jesus gives us a glimpse of God’s kingdom in Luke 17:20-21, “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” The kingdom of God is here, now. Luther writes this about it, “The kingdom of God is a state of perfectness, humility, purity, godliness, humble-mindedness, and of all of the exercise of all virtues and grace: a state wherein God possesses in us what is properly his own, and wherein he alone lives and reigns in us - through Jesus Christ.”
In a sense, there is a threefold kingdom of God: in Jesus, His kingdom has come; in Christ living in us and sharing the Gospel daily, His kingdom is coming; and in the return of Christ, the kingdom will come in all of its fullness!
Petition three:
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. When praying this petition, we again are humbled as we realize that on earth we are condemned. We continuously fall short, disobey God, and contradict His will. We are also uplifted, as Luther says, “Let us flee into the grace of God; we trust Him, love Him, and believe in His mercy that He will save us.”
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2 lets us know that God’s will is perfect. We are able to be transformed and understand His will by following His commandments. His will is known to us through Scripture. God’s secret will (His decree) cannot be known or done by us. His ways/thoughts are higher than ours according to Isaiah 55:8-9. Only in Christ do we see a perfect example when He prayed to His heavenly Father in the garden, ‘that the cup may pass from him,’ yet he added, ‘nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.’ Luke 22:42. Jesus teaches us to pray in this petition to break our sinful heart, defeat our will, and let us give it back over to our Father.
In conclusion, we are blessed to journey through a series of teaching chapels in which we can together seek to understand the prayer Jesus taught His disciples and us to pray together. Have you ever tried to commit to a creed or prayer you didn’t fully understand? It is difficult to completely buy in and say it from the heart. It is our hope and prayer that through a deeper understanding, this special prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, will help us continue to deepen our understanding and our faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ! Amen!
That’s all for this week, Saints, the rest of the petitions of The Lord’s Prayer next week. In the meantime, stay blessed!
We Pray.
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