Post by M.R. Hagerty on May 29, 2023 22:09:32 GMT -7
Matthew 6:9-11
9 "Pray, then, in this way: `Our Father who is in heaven,”
It is another wonder of His grace toward us that He gave us a model of prayer. When you think about someone coming from Heaven to explain how things are in reality with God, among the expected questions an interview with such a person is the question of how we are to pray to the God who is really there, the God of Reality? So He not only has given some instruction about what to do and what to avoid, but He goes even further and says, “Here’s an example.”
Now this was not to be the one and only legitimate, officialized prayer. Is it a model of what prayer should comprise and the spirit in which it should be prayed.
”Our Father . .”
Note that we are not to begin immediately with our needs. We are to begin with an acknowledgment. That God is not merely a Father, but ours. We are saying two things here: that He is our Father and that He is our Father. We are declaring to Him that we see Him like an earthly father, giving us life, leading us in His experience about the world. Teaching us, guiding us, and protecting us as a father does for his family.
We are also declaring that we claim Him as our own. He is not just “around” so to speak, to be called to when needed. He is our own Father, not merely the Father of all.
”Hallowed be Your name”
We declare here something He already knows perfectly well. But it is important that we restate this when we pray because we are creatures that can easily forget this and become too familiar with God that we lose that sense of awesome respect. He is above all other things Holy.
Hallowed means ‘set apart’ but we have come to associate it with a category of things so set apart as to be fundamentally different from humanity. Holiness for us seems to necessitate bringing in His righteousness and His justice, such that we approach Him with some caution, not brazenly or irreverently.
10 “Your Kingdom come”
We are to acknowledge frequently that God’s chief purpose is that His Kingdom come on earth. It is to say that all that He is and all that He wills should be made manifest here and now on earth as well as in Heaven. It is as though the earth is an incomplete piece of a larger picture waiting to be set into its place that the whole theme can now be enjoyed. The earth is “connected” with God’s plans for His Kingdom and it has always been the desire that they be united. That is why Jesus and the Baptist proclaimed that it was “at hand.” It was being offered so as to complete the picture, the divine concept of unity with God in all things.
It is a genuine mystery (as Paul states) that the earth has remained separate, the incomplete piece throughout the life of man on the earth. But that mystery is wrapped up in the free will of man in the context of love for man. And that means that the ideal must wait while what is real is worked out in Grace.
11 “Give us this day our daily bread”
Now we may come and petition. And by daily bread we mean all the sustenance of life. Man has instead learned to regard the getting of food and provisions for life the work of his own hands. He does not see God delivering food directly to his door, so he concludes that God has abdicated this responsibility simply because we must do the heavy lifting, it seems.
But in terms of heavy lifting, consider how difficult providing for one’s family would be if you had to make the crops actually grow; if you had to move the seasons into place? Now we can say that the seasons occur by our revolution around the sun, but why do plants respond differently because of that distance? That process is quite out of our control in terms of the biological and botanical principles involved. We know all about them, but we can take no credit for their being there in the first place. So who has done the biggest job, God or us?
And even in the ability to get gain and employment such that we can provide for our families, has He not enabled us and gifted us with those capacities and made others to see that our contributions are worth the hiring?
We owe Him everything pertaining to our lives, the tangible and the intangible, and we are to pray to Him as Provider. But we need to observe that this is a daily thing.
The outlook on provisions is day by day, not a six-month plan or a three-year outlook. It is not that He is limited to what can be provided in a day, but that we are not to see Him as the Supermarket in the Sky, “so think big when you ask.” He wants us to think daily about our needs from Him, that He is willing to be there on a daily basis and that He likewise does not treat us as wholesale, big box recipients with whom He only wishes to be bothered once a month.
Matthew 6:12-13
12 “Forgive us our debts . .”
This part of the petition is moral in nature rather than practical. We are to keep our accounts with Him current. This means frequently praying that He forgive us our sins. But note that these are characterized not so much as sins but as things “owed” – debts.
When a man sins, he incurs a debt. What is that debt? It is his life. ”the soul that sins, it shall die” Ezekiel 18:4 We see this in secular images like Blind Justice carrying scales, where crimes are balanced by puinishment. It is reminiscent of the divine institution that sin is a debt that must be offset by a payment. When we sin against our fellow man, we sin against God and therefore owe Him a payment as much as we owe the one injured.
But notice there is a conditional clause ”as we forgive our debtors.” We are to be forgiven while practicing forgiveness to others who are in our debt. This will be made clear by the parable of the man who was forgiven the debt of talents.
And we will see next an expansion on this principle in terms of our actions in relation to God’s.
13 “Lead us not into temptation . . ”
Some have questioned why this is necessary if God does not tempt us to sin? Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; James 1:13
This is among the most difficult verses to explain in the NT because every attempt to explain away its contradictions seems to present more. If we say it means that we pray not to be subject to the kinds of things Job suffered by the permission of God, how can this be avoided by this prayer if He wills it? If we say that this is a prayer about our own propensities – may we not lead ourselves into places and circumstances – we are prone to ask why it doesn’t say this?
We might offer that in the course of our being led by God we may have to be exposed to things that would tempt us and we are asking that He not lead us thusly. But if He is leading us, He knows what He is doing, and whatever may tempt us is not His doing anyway.
So its understanding seems to defy all our feeble attempts. We are left with these truths: in some sense we can’t explain why He wants us to pray not to be led, and that is to be balanced with another truth – that He tempts no one.
“But deliver us from evil”
A note will tell most Bible readers that this is better understood as the evil “one.” The reason for this is the presence of the definite article- ‘the’ - which expresses the idea of something specific and in the knowledge of the hearer.
But this is not a prayer for deliverance from a particular evil that all know about, which would be the meaning: “deliver us from the evil.” So we are obliged to shift the point of reference to the only other specific evil known, which is Satan.
As to deliverance, we need to have confidence that we will be surely delivered by One who has power over all circumstances and events.
There was once told a story of a woman who was set upon by thugs who meant to do her physical harm as well as rob her. She cried out, “Lord help! Your property is in danger!”. The men left in what she described as mortal fear, as having seen something too horrible to contemplate.
We cannot pray this as a magic word to avoid all suffering and persecution in life. We are promised a dose of persecution, and Jesus led the example of suffering at the hands of evil. But we can be thankful that those moments are occasional. And as such there will be many more moments when our prayer for protection is in perfect accord with His will for us.
We will surely not survive our call to be a martyr, but this does not preclude all prayers for protection until then.
Matthew 6:13
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
This doxology is not represented in the NASB or the NIV. The reason is that it is not considered part of the original text. It is lacking in all the most ancient manuscripts; it is not present in the Old Latin or the Vulgate. It has also gone unmentioned by the earliest Latin fathers.
This shows the value of textual criticism and its service to Christian faith. It is no doubt a doxology of good intentions, and its sentiments are biblically supported elsewhere in concept at least. But the business of textual criticism is to be clear on what was written in the originals, not what someone added in a moment of religious fervency.
So while we might not let go of it easily, we are first called to be honest with respect to the Bible because it is the objective reference for our faith.
9 "Pray, then, in this way: `Our Father who is in heaven,”
It is another wonder of His grace toward us that He gave us a model of prayer. When you think about someone coming from Heaven to explain how things are in reality with God, among the expected questions an interview with such a person is the question of how we are to pray to the God who is really there, the God of Reality? So He not only has given some instruction about what to do and what to avoid, but He goes even further and says, “Here’s an example.”
Now this was not to be the one and only legitimate, officialized prayer. Is it a model of what prayer should comprise and the spirit in which it should be prayed.
”Our Father . .”
Note that we are not to begin immediately with our needs. We are to begin with an acknowledgment. That God is not merely a Father, but ours. We are saying two things here: that He is our Father and that He is our Father. We are declaring to Him that we see Him like an earthly father, giving us life, leading us in His experience about the world. Teaching us, guiding us, and protecting us as a father does for his family.
We are also declaring that we claim Him as our own. He is not just “around” so to speak, to be called to when needed. He is our own Father, not merely the Father of all.
”Hallowed be Your name”
We declare here something He already knows perfectly well. But it is important that we restate this when we pray because we are creatures that can easily forget this and become too familiar with God that we lose that sense of awesome respect. He is above all other things Holy.
Hallowed means ‘set apart’ but we have come to associate it with a category of things so set apart as to be fundamentally different from humanity. Holiness for us seems to necessitate bringing in His righteousness and His justice, such that we approach Him with some caution, not brazenly or irreverently.
10 “Your Kingdom come”
We are to acknowledge frequently that God’s chief purpose is that His Kingdom come on earth. It is to say that all that He is and all that He wills should be made manifest here and now on earth as well as in Heaven. It is as though the earth is an incomplete piece of a larger picture waiting to be set into its place that the whole theme can now be enjoyed. The earth is “connected” with God’s plans for His Kingdom and it has always been the desire that they be united. That is why Jesus and the Baptist proclaimed that it was “at hand.” It was being offered so as to complete the picture, the divine concept of unity with God in all things.
It is a genuine mystery (as Paul states) that the earth has remained separate, the incomplete piece throughout the life of man on the earth. But that mystery is wrapped up in the free will of man in the context of love for man. And that means that the ideal must wait while what is real is worked out in Grace.
11 “Give us this day our daily bread”
Now we may come and petition. And by daily bread we mean all the sustenance of life. Man has instead learned to regard the getting of food and provisions for life the work of his own hands. He does not see God delivering food directly to his door, so he concludes that God has abdicated this responsibility simply because we must do the heavy lifting, it seems.
But in terms of heavy lifting, consider how difficult providing for one’s family would be if you had to make the crops actually grow; if you had to move the seasons into place? Now we can say that the seasons occur by our revolution around the sun, but why do plants respond differently because of that distance? That process is quite out of our control in terms of the biological and botanical principles involved. We know all about them, but we can take no credit for their being there in the first place. So who has done the biggest job, God or us?
And even in the ability to get gain and employment such that we can provide for our families, has He not enabled us and gifted us with those capacities and made others to see that our contributions are worth the hiring?
We owe Him everything pertaining to our lives, the tangible and the intangible, and we are to pray to Him as Provider. But we need to observe that this is a daily thing.
The outlook on provisions is day by day, not a six-month plan or a three-year outlook. It is not that He is limited to what can be provided in a day, but that we are not to see Him as the Supermarket in the Sky, “so think big when you ask.” He wants us to think daily about our needs from Him, that He is willing to be there on a daily basis and that He likewise does not treat us as wholesale, big box recipients with whom He only wishes to be bothered once a month.
Matthew 6:12-13
12 “Forgive us our debts . .”
This part of the petition is moral in nature rather than practical. We are to keep our accounts with Him current. This means frequently praying that He forgive us our sins. But note that these are characterized not so much as sins but as things “owed” – debts.
When a man sins, he incurs a debt. What is that debt? It is his life. ”the soul that sins, it shall die” Ezekiel 18:4 We see this in secular images like Blind Justice carrying scales, where crimes are balanced by puinishment. It is reminiscent of the divine institution that sin is a debt that must be offset by a payment. When we sin against our fellow man, we sin against God and therefore owe Him a payment as much as we owe the one injured.
But notice there is a conditional clause ”as we forgive our debtors.” We are to be forgiven while practicing forgiveness to others who are in our debt. This will be made clear by the parable of the man who was forgiven the debt of talents.
And we will see next an expansion on this principle in terms of our actions in relation to God’s.
13 “Lead us not into temptation . . ”
Some have questioned why this is necessary if God does not tempt us to sin? Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; James 1:13
This is among the most difficult verses to explain in the NT because every attempt to explain away its contradictions seems to present more. If we say it means that we pray not to be subject to the kinds of things Job suffered by the permission of God, how can this be avoided by this prayer if He wills it? If we say that this is a prayer about our own propensities – may we not lead ourselves into places and circumstances – we are prone to ask why it doesn’t say this?
We might offer that in the course of our being led by God we may have to be exposed to things that would tempt us and we are asking that He not lead us thusly. But if He is leading us, He knows what He is doing, and whatever may tempt us is not His doing anyway.
So its understanding seems to defy all our feeble attempts. We are left with these truths: in some sense we can’t explain why He wants us to pray not to be led, and that is to be balanced with another truth – that He tempts no one.
“But deliver us from evil”
A note will tell most Bible readers that this is better understood as the evil “one.” The reason for this is the presence of the definite article- ‘the’ - which expresses the idea of something specific and in the knowledge of the hearer.
But this is not a prayer for deliverance from a particular evil that all know about, which would be the meaning: “deliver us from the evil.” So we are obliged to shift the point of reference to the only other specific evil known, which is Satan.
As to deliverance, we need to have confidence that we will be surely delivered by One who has power over all circumstances and events.
There was once told a story of a woman who was set upon by thugs who meant to do her physical harm as well as rob her. She cried out, “Lord help! Your property is in danger!”. The men left in what she described as mortal fear, as having seen something too horrible to contemplate.
We cannot pray this as a magic word to avoid all suffering and persecution in life. We are promised a dose of persecution, and Jesus led the example of suffering at the hands of evil. But we can be thankful that those moments are occasional. And as such there will be many more moments when our prayer for protection is in perfect accord with His will for us.
We will surely not survive our call to be a martyr, but this does not preclude all prayers for protection until then.
Matthew 6:13
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
This doxology is not represented in the NASB or the NIV. The reason is that it is not considered part of the original text. It is lacking in all the most ancient manuscripts; it is not present in the Old Latin or the Vulgate. It has also gone unmentioned by the earliest Latin fathers.
This shows the value of textual criticism and its service to Christian faith. It is no doubt a doxology of good intentions, and its sentiments are biblically supported elsewhere in concept at least. But the business of textual criticism is to be clear on what was written in the originals, not what someone added in a moment of religious fervency.
So while we might not let go of it easily, we are first called to be honest with respect to the Bible because it is the objective reference for our faith.