The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father is in heaven.

Class Outline:

Thursday December 8, 2022

 

[Summary of Marcus Dods on the Lord’s Prayer] When the utmost skill and strength of the child have failed, he runs to his father, never doubting that with him is more skill and sufficient strength. We must not lower the Father to our level. We must seek His level, the words and lovely ways of heaven itself. If we cannot see a solution, we must never think that God sees none either. He sees as we cannot and nothing will be impossible with Him. Pray to “Our Father in heaven” and know that He sees clearly the solutions to all problems, the small and the great.

 

It is amusing to think that when our human skill is fruitlessly spent, there is no more that God can do; that, when everything goes wrong with us, there is no help for us in God. Too often we pray to a God whom we do not set in the heavens, to whom we do not in fact ascribe as much wisdom and power as we do to men, whose help we do not as fully trust in as we should. We should not be found despairing. If we are, I guarantee that we have not prayed to our Father in heaven. Prayer is a perfect remedy when our strength is on the way to exhaustion.

 

This invocation sets before us a God of heavenly holiness as well as of heavenly power. It is of His nature to help us in grace and mercy. It is His nature to bless to the utmost. He is also free from all suspicion. He knows our frame, that we are but dust. He appreciates the feeblest beginnings good in us, cherishes and fosters into life what man would count dead and lost, knows nothing of grudging, or the malice , of the faultfinders; but watches how He may encourage us in the slightest efforts towards righteousness, watches how He may insinuate His help, and in proportion to His own freedom from all taint or shadow of evil, deals delicately with the sinner in all His way, until our eyes begin to open to the perfect rectitude, simplicity, and loveliness of His character; and we see that in Him there is help for us in all good, and deliverance from evil. And when we see something of the holiness of God, we shall be careful to restrain such desires as are inconsistent with His purposes, but shall very boldly expect that He will straighten that which is crooked.

 

“Our Father who is in heaven.”

 

MAT 6:9-13

"Pray, then, in this way:

'Our Father who is in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

10 'Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

11 'Give us this day our daily bread.

12 'And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13 'And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

 

We understand God as in heaven and that our prayers reach Him.

 

He is holy and all powerful. We also acknowledge that earth is not enough for us. We don’t hate the earth. It is God’s creation, but we see anything good on earth as a gift from heaven. Nothing is intrinsically good. Our God is good, and what He gives us is good.

 

JOH 3:25-30

Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him." 27 John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. 28 "You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, 'I am not the Christ,' but, 'I have been sent ahead of Him.' 29 "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. 30 "He must increase, but I must decrease.

 

The Jews and John’s disciples were discussing purification laws, washings and such in the Mosaic Law, no doubt in light of John’s baptism. They notice that Jesus’ disciples are also baptizing and many are going to them who are no longer coming to John. We can’t say for sure that they are trying to make John anxious, but it doesn’t matter. John knows and lives by faith under a very important truth.

 

JAM 1:17

Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.

 

Earth produces nothing intrinsically good. Only heaven sends good to us.

 

Even food and water depend upon the heavens and the sun. Nothing produced here is of what we would call divine good.

 

We look to heaven as the only source of power and goodness. When we pray, we go directly there, every time. Our voice is heard in the halls of God’s palace.

 

One of the helps that heaven gives us is the ability to focus on one place, though we don’t know what it looks like or where it is. We have one Father in one place. None of us can focus on omnipresence. Such a characteristic has not point but includes all points. But God has given us a place to turn our mind’s eye towards and know that Father is there. A place of holiness, goodness, and power.

 

We also know that Jesus sits at the Father’s right hand as our Mediator and intercedes for us.

 

There was a moment when your voice was first heard in heaven, in the halls of the kingdom of God, when as a new child of God you said, “Our Father who is in heaven.”

 

From the darkness of earth in its confusion, its perplexity, and its suffering, we pray to Him who sits above, seeing to the end, and ordering all things; from the trouble and weakness of earth we cry up to the “blessed and only Sovereign, God over all, blessed forever.”

 

Christ descended into the midst of the conflict of heaven and earth and He overcame the world and sin and death. He opened up for us an indestructible channel of grace by which we can speak to heaven any time from anywhere.

 

The conflict of heaven and earth is injected with the message of peace through reconciliation.

 

Sometimes we read of great conflict in heaven, but this could not be where God considers His domain or kingdom. Somewhere, between God’s heaven and earth, we get the intimation that there is a buffer world where God has allowed spirits to be in opposition to Him.

 

1CO 8:5-6

For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

 

The terminology used is that these “issues” that have been caused by fallen creatures, angels and men, were always meant to be resolved by the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

 

EPH 1:9-10

He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fulness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth.

 

EPH 6:10-12

Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

 

We see the same reality in reference to their ruler who exercises great power over earth from the air - over the old creation.

 

EPH 2:1-3

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

 

We clearly see here, as well as in many OT passages, that heaven and earth are at odds with one another. Demonic powers are present in heaven to usurp power for themselves. In the spheres of earthly order humans undergo the basic shaking of the transcendental horizon. They hope for peace and reconciliation through a return to unity in some form. The popular progressive idea of late is that all humanity is going to be made equal in all ability, economic, social, and political ways; and this is the stated way to the promise of peace.

 

JER 6:14

“And they have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,

Saying, 'Peace, peace,'

But there is no peace.”

 

MAT 10:34

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

 

Yet He does bring peace to the individual who pleases God:

 

LUK 2:14

"Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

 

The way that He did this was to make a new creation. Who would have thought of this? He made sons and daughters, born-again, not of flesh but of Spirit by the forgiveness of all sin, cleansed, imputed with His own righteousness and life, He Himself, though sinless would transform His own body of the old creation into the new and become the ruler of the new creation, thus making peace of all things, in heaven and on earth.

 

He is the firstborn from the dead, COL 1:18.

 

Read again:

EPH 2:1-3

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

 

There is a marvelous and significant “but” after this. The contrast is amazing and wonderful.

 

EPH 2:4-7

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

 

Christ, the preeminent one, above all things, creator of all things, and firstborn of the old and the new, is the only one who could ever have accomplished it.