Chapter 5 starts at 1:13:20.
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
Matthew 6:9,10
We now come to the consideration of the plane upon which prayer is operative, the subjects concerning which we have authority to pray. This plane is revealed in the pattern prayer as it occurs in the Manifesto of the King.
Some few preliminary words are necessary. I find there are some who object to the use of this prayer by Christian people. I have for a long time been endeavouring quite honestly to understand the position of such, and I think the objections which they raise may be briefly stated. First, there are those who do not use this prayer because they say its petition for forgiveness is not the Christian petition. They affirm that we have no need now to ask for the forgiveness of our debts on the basis of having forgiven our debtors. My answer to such is that they certainly do not understand the real meaning of this prayer, or else they do not understand themselves. Their objection, however, will best be dealt with when we come to the more particular consideration of that petition in the second part of the prayer. Others do not use the prayer because they declare they have no sins to confess or ask forgiveness for. Again, I can only say all such either do not understand the meaning of the words “debts” and “debtors,” or else they are woefully self-deceived. Perhaps the most serious and intelligent objection is that of those who say that this prayer was part of the Messianic Manifesto, that it had to do with Christ’s teaching regarding the Kingdom, and that therefore it is the prayer of the Kingdom and not the prayer of the Church. I carefully distinguished between the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven, and the Church of Jesus Christ, but I do not propose to discuss these distinctions now. I recognize that the Church is, according to New Testament teaching, a separate entity having as its final purpose a vocation in the ages to come in the heavenly places. While that is perfectly true and should never be forgotten, indeed must not be forgotten, it is also true that for the present hour all the principles of the Kingdom are committed to the Church to be realized within the Church and through the Church manifested to the world. Consequently everything that Jesus said in His Manifesto concerning the Kingdom does apply to the Church. As a matter of fact that Manifesto of the King does not apply at all to the outside world. For the present day its only application is to the Church. That is another point which I do not propose now to elaborate. It is sufficient for the present purpose to say that to attempt to bring about the conditions described in the great Manifesto of the King among the vast unregenerate masses of the people is inevitably to be doomed to disappointment. The things which Jesus said to His disciples, I maintain, are only applicable to those who are in His Kingdom and subject to His rule. That Manifesto was the enunciation of the ethic of the Kingdom which no man can accept or obey while he is still in rebellion against the King Himself. That is a broad and hurried statement; but if it be accepted it will be seen that in the Church which for this age, according to the purpose of Jesus, embodies the principles of the Kingdom and manifests them in the world this prayer has its rightful place. The supreme answer to objections to its use will be found in an understanding of the prayer itself. In proportion as we really comprehend its intention, its spaciousness, its magnificence we shall be compelled to use it. There can be no escape from the use of it for such as are submitted to the reign and Lordship of Jesus Christ and are in sympathy with Him in His desires for the world.
Yet another word by way of introduction. It has been affirmed and correctly so, that this is not a new prayer. Its every petition is to be found in the Talmudio writings. We are not familiar with these writings, and so the different petitions of the prayer are known to us only through the Christian use of them. There can be little doubt, however, that the men who heard the Master when He first gave them the prayer were familiar with all its petitions. In all probability they had used them constantly in their worship from childhood up. Now, while that is true, it is also true that the prayer was absolutely new as it came from the lips of Jesus. He gathered together the things with which they were most familiar and placed them in such perfect relation to each other as to reveal as never before the whole plane of prayer. To pray that prayer intelligently is to have nothing else to pray for. It may be broken up, each petition may be taken separately and expressed in other ways, but in itself it is inclusive and exhaustive. The Jewish Rabbis taught the people what were known as “index prayers.” These consisted of a collection of brief sentences, each one of which suggested a subject of prayer. One of their habits of praying was to take such an index prayer, recite one petition at a time, and elaborate it in the presence of God by carrying out its thought; and endeavouring to express its full intent. In that sense the Lord’s prayer also is an “index prayer.” There can be no desire of the human heart which is inspired of the Holy Spirit, no petition presented to the throne of the Father but that it is included in this prayer. The King wove together all the essential petitions which lay scattered over the field of human praying into one perfect whole which covers the ground and reveals to men for evermore the plane upon which they may pray. Thus it is a pattern prayer.
Turning to examination I shall ask you first of all to notice its structure. I am so increasingly convinced of the value of eye-gate that I want you. to look at the prayer in this form -
- Our Father which art in the heavens,Thy name be hallowed,Thy Kingdom come,Thy will be doneas in heaven so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread.And Forgive us our debts as we also haveforgiven our debtors. And Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
You will notice first that the doxology with which the prayer closes is omitted. I suppose most of us felt some kind of a pang when, taking up the Revised Version, we found it absent. Yet there can be no question as to the accuracy of the omission. Even so conservative and scholarly an expositor as Hengstenberg says concerning this doxology that there is no doubt that it ought to be omitted. He goes on to say that so perfect an ending to the prayer had better be retained and made perpetual use of. I have great sympathy with the sentiment of that view, but it cannot be permitted in any strict dealing with the Scripture. Personally I should never think of using the prayer without the doxology, but I should ever remember that the doxology was the answer of man to the inspired prayer rather than a part thereof. Now let us notice the structure of the prayer as I have attempted to set it out. The whole is introduced by an invocation -
- Our Father which art in the heavens.
This invocation prepares the way not for the first three petitions only, but for the whole prayer. It is a reverent form of address, and by the use of it we are brought into the presence of the revealed Father.
Beyond the invocation the prayer falls into two parts. The first consists of three petitions with I a qualifying phrase; the second consists of three petitions.
Let us look at the first three petitions, and the relation to them of the qualifying phrase.
- Thy name be hallowed,Thy Kingdom come,Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth.
It is not “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The final phrase refers to all the petitions, and not merely to the last. The first half of the prayer is therefore one in which we ask that God’s name may be hallowed, that His Kingdom may come, that His will may be done on this earth as in heaven. The three petitions form one whole petition. They mark stages in development. The first stage is the hallowing of the Name. That is followed necessarily by the crowning of the King and the coming of the Kingdom. When the King is crowned and the Kingdom established it is demonstrated amongst men by the doing of the will of the King by those who have hallowed His Name, and in whom the Kingdom is established. Thus the first half of the prayer has to do wholly with the purposes of God for the world. In some senses all my need is included in this first half. It is not expressed there. The only thing expressed is the passion for the gaining of God’s victory.
In the second half we have again three petitions -
- Give ns this day our daily bread.And Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And Bring us not into temptation, butdeliver us from evil.
Notice the position of the “and” in this setting, how it links the second petition with the first, and the third with the second. Notice also carefully that the phrase “Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” is not two petitions but one. We are constantly hearing of the seven petitions of the Lord’s prayer. There are only six, and to make two petitions of the sixth is to create difficulties which cannot be explained. Taken as one it is a perfect petition, expressive at once of the soul’s caution and the soul’s courage.
These last three petitions have to do wholly with human and temporal needs as the three first have to do with the Divine and eternal interests. We shall not pray these last three petitions when we get to heaven. I think the saints there are still praying the first three. I think, moreover, that they will continue to pray them until the work is perfected, and that is not yet. Before turning to fuller consideration of the first half of this wonderful prayer, it is important to notice that in its very structure there is teaching. Jesus said, “Seek ye first His Kingdom, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” That was His order for life. It is also His order for prayer. Prayer only fulfils the Master’s ideal when it begins with the interests of God and follows with the needs of man. I am afraid that order rebukes very much of our praying. Are we not all more or less in danger of praying first for all our own needs, and then in a closing sentence or two for the coming of the Kingdom of God? Christ in the form of this prayer teaches us that our first business in prayer is to seek with God for His victory in the world; that the deepest purpose of prayer is not that we may obtain what we need, but that God should gain that which glorifies His name. Passion for the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the world is the deepest note in prayer.
Now let us take the first part of the prayer and look at it a little more closely. We find that the word “heaven” occurs both in the invocation and in the qualifying phrase. Its recurrence arrests our attention, and at once we are conscious of a light and glory irradiating these first petitions. We pause therefore to inquire what this word is and what it suggests. We shall find that it is used in the New Testament with reference to three distinct spheres, or places, or regions, which-ever word may define most accurately the indefinable spaces beyond our earth. It is used first of the atmosphere. “Behold the birds of the heaven.” It is also used of the stellar spaces stretching far beyond the atmosphere. “I will show wonders in the heavens.” It is used of still another region, of the dwelling place of other beings, of the place where the glory of the infinite God is supremely manifest. “I knew a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven.” We cannot place these ideas in relation to space because we know so little concerning it. There is a sense in which the third heaven enwraps and permeates the second and the first. All I want now to make clear is that the word “heaven” is used with a three-fold significance, and while poets and dreamers speak of a “seventh heaven,” the Bible speaks only of a third. The word “heaven” therefore stands for the atmosphere, the stellar spaces, and finally the dwelling place of saints and angels.
Yet another note upon this word. It is written sometimes in the singular and sometimes in the plural and our translations do not show the difference uniformly. When in the singular it refers to one or other of these heavens; when in the plural it may refer to two or even three. The context or evident sense of the passage must decide which of three. “The day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise.” The reference here is evidently to the atmospheric and the stellar spaces, the two first heavens. Stephen when dying exclaimed, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.” He saw beyond the atmosphere, and beyond the stellar spaces into that place where God’s glory is supremely manifest and the spirits of just men are.
In the invocation the word “heaven” is plural. In the qualifying phrase at the close of the first three petitions it is singular. “Our Father which art in the heavens.” Which of them? All of them. Thus there is found at the portal of the prayer the doctrine of the transcendence and immanence of God. Your thought cannot carry you so far away as to escape Him; and yet where you are at this moment, “Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” Let us try to realize this by the simplest of simple diagrams.
Taking that dot as centre I sweep a segment of a circle round it to represent the atmosphere which extends for forty miles outward from the earth. That is the first heaven of the New Testament. Beyond that I sweep a larger segment representing the vast stellar spaces. That is the second heaven. Beyond that again is the third heaven. In the first circle I write the word “sparrows”; in the next “stars,” and in the next “saints and seraphim.” We are here on this little earth, and having seen the revelation of the Father and yielded to the mediation of the Son, and answered the inspiration of the Spirit we are prepared for prayer. Jesus now says to us, “After this manner therefore pray ye; Our Father which art in the heavens.” That is to say that the God who hears prayer is in all the heavens. That great and gracious fact is proven by other words of the Divine oracles. He is in the first heaven, the atmosphere; “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.” Let us most earnestly guard against spoiling the thought in that quotation by adding to it a single word. It is constantly rendered, “not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father’s knowledge Jesus did not say that. It would have been a beautiful thing to say, but what He said was finer far, “not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.” He not only watches from afar the sparrow’s fall, but He holds it dying. The frailest bird dying of summer heat or winter cold is not alone. It dies in the company of God. And what of the stars of the second heaven? “By the greatness of His might, and for that He is strong in power, not one is lacking.” “Upholding all things by the word of His power.” And what of the saints and seraphim? They veil their faces in the presence of His glory, and do His will in the consciousness of His nearness.
Thus as I begin to pray according to the pattern which the Lord gives me, I find at the portal of my prayer a doctrine of God which assures me that nothing is beyond His reach, and nothing is too small for His presence and attention. Oh, the infinite comfort of it! Mother, praying for your boy at the other side of the world, think of it! Your Father is with him there. He is as near to him as He is to you. Jesus did not say. Our Father who is away off in some distant heaven far removed from us; but rather, Our Father who art in all the heavens; close at hand so that the least whisper reaches Him, far away so that nothing can escape Him.
Coming to the phrase with which these petitions end we find that the word “heaven” is singular. Now, while I do not mean to suggest that God’s will is not done in the atmosphere or in the stellar spaces, I think it is evident that Christ’s use of the singular at this point indicates the fact that His special reference was to that heaven where God’s glorious presence is supremely manifest, and where the one abiding law is the law of His will. Thus when we pray this prayer we are asking that as His name is hallowed by the saints and seraphim, as His Kingdom is established among them, and as His will is the one and only law of all their activity, so on this earth His name may be hallowed, His Kingdom come, and His will be done. It is a prayer that the order of heaven may be established on earth. When Jesus uttered these words and gave them to His disciples as a pattern of prayer, He of course knew perfectly that order of the third heaven. Indeed His vision and perfect knowledge of that heavenly order were the inspiration of His desire as He stood among the sin and sorrow of this world. As we interpret the prayer through the One who gave it to us, it becomes an inspiration making us desire to know the order of the third heaven. Can we know anything of that order other than speculatively? If there is one thing concerning which no man ever ought to speculate, it is heaven. We have suffered terribly in our ideas of heaven from grotesque imagination concerning it. I remember as boy that heaven was to me a place where the saints sat on thrones forever and ever wearing white robes and having harps in their hands. It was suggestive of deadly monotony and far from attractive. Such is not the meaning of heaven. Jesus did not want us to pray that an order of that kind should be set up on earth. He was Himself a revelation to man of the heavenly order. Of the four evangelists John is the one who interprets to us most perfectly Christ as the Word of God out of heaven. The word “heaven” in John’s Gospel is never plural, and it always has reference to the third heaven. The key words of John’s writings are love, light, life. “God is love,” “God is light,” “God is life.” These are three of the simplest words, and yet in all human speech there are none sublimer. These words perfectly portray the order obtaining in the heaven of God. Grant me these three words with all they suggest, and I care nothing about robes and harps and thrones. There may be all these things and will be, only do not let us forget that all that we know of earth’s beauties and splendours are not worthy to be compared with the grace and glory yet to be revealed.
In the third heaven love is the satisfactory impulse of everything. Light is the perfect intelligence in which all the inhabitants act. Life is the sufficient power by which they walk in light answering love. Love is impulse. Light is intelligence. Life is energy. The contrast between the order of the third heaven and that obtaining on earth to-day is at once manifest. No one is prepared to affirm that love is the final reason of all the activity of the world to-day. Christ says. Pray that it may become so. Men do not walk in perfect light even when it flashes upon their pathway, for, as in the days of Christ so still, men love darkness rather than light, for their works are evil. Christ says, “Pray that men may come to love light, and walk in it.” And yet men have not life sufficient to do the highest and the best even when they know it. Toiler for God, in your specific service you know what it is to be weary. Do you know what weariness is? It is the touch of death. Press your toil a little further, a little too far, and all the weary wheels stand still, and your eye sees no light, and your heart can no longer love. That is the condition of man in the world to-day. In God’s third heaven everything is different. Love is the reason of devotion and worship. Love is the inspiration of giving and receiving. Love is the impulse of revelation and explanation. Every movement of the wing of the cherubim and every note of the song of the seraphim are alike love-impulsed. In heaven when love impulses light falls upon the pathway, and mistakes are never made through ignorance. There as in answer to love the inhabitants serve in perfect light; they are never weary for theirs is endless life. Jesus said, Pray that all this may be so also on this earth. Think what it would mean, what it will mean for the world when that prayer is answered, when “love” is the only reason, and “light” is perfect intelligence, and “life” is sufficient power for all accomplishment.
Can that prayer be answered? Will it be answered? The first reply to such a question is that Jesus never taught men to utter vain prayers. The fact that He gave us this prayer is enough to make us offer it in the midst of the world’s sin and sorrow and sighing, knowing that because He taught us so to pray the answer is bound to come. And yet there is another and profounder argument for the reasonableness of this prayer, and that is Christ Himself. Once in the history of the world that for which the prayer asks has been perfectly realized. Once the world saw, though it did not understand it, the heavenly order. It was manifest when He, who taught us to pray, tabernacled amongst men. Studying the life of Jesus as we have it in the fourfold Gospel, it is perfectly evident that wherever and whenever we find Him the one reason of His being, or doing, or saying anything is love. He was perfectly and wholly impulsed by love. This is true not only of His words and acts most evidently tender, but also of the severe things He said and did. Some of these were terrible indeed, scorching and startling men. On one occasion He looked into the faces of the rulers of His people and said, “Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites”; and it is impossible to read these words without being conscious that there was a note of terror in the voice of Jesus when He cried “Woe.” Was that love? Yes, let Him finish His sentence, “for ye devour widows' houses.” Love for the oppressed creates anger with the oppressor for evermore. Is there any phrase more startling than “the wrath of the Lamb”? I think that if we had desired to describe wrath figuratively we should have written, the wrath of the “lion,” but therein we should have failed. It is the wrath of the Lamb which is terrible, the wrath of One whose very heart and nature are love and gentleness. Wrath kindled by love is the fiercest flame that burns.
It is also true that in all the life of Jesus there was manifest the light of a perfectly informed intelligence. He never hesitated. He was never perplexed. He never took counsel even with His own disciples. He consulted neither Conventions, Conferences, nor Committees. Ah, some one acquainted with the New Testament challenges that statement, and suggests that at least upon one occasion He called His disciples into Consultation. There was a day on which He asked one of them what was to be done to feed the multitude: but continue the story and you will read “This He said to prove him: for He Himself knew what He would do.” Thus on the only occasion when it is ever suggested that He took counsel with His disciples the evangelist is careful to tell us that it was not that He might get advice, but in order that He might teach them something. He ever passed straight onward, and that perpetually on an illuminated pathway. Answering love He saw His way before Him and without hesitation walked in it.
But, it will be said it was not true of Him that He had endless life - He died. Let me say first in answer to such an objection, that the life of Jesus was always sufficient for the doing of the will of God, and even though He knew in sympathy with us the heavy weariness which follows toil, He was never weary while God-appointed service waited for Him. And yet again, He had the power of endless life as witness His own strange words, “I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from My Father.” Death in the case of every other man is a fact from which He cannot escape. Death in the case of Jesus was an act in the mystery of which He was yet the supreme Lord and Master. He died and rose again in fulfilment of these wonderful words. Once in human history the heavenly order has been seen in a Man who answered love and walked in light, and had such life as enabled Him to die and to live again, and so doing to fling up a highway out of death for all such as trust and follow Him.
But what did the world do with this Revealer? The story is that of the world’s final tragedy. Hatred murdered love. Darkness put out light. Death conquered life.
The Cross was man’s answer to this prayer. But again, the Cross was God’s answer to this prayer. Put both things together, or let us hear them put together by Peter in the first message delivered after Pentecost. “Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay.” Man’s attitude towards the revelation of the heavenly order - “ye by the hand of law-less men did crucify and slay,” God’s activity in the midst of the mystery of death - “delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” Over against the lawlessness of man’s murder the deliberate counsel of God is operative, and thus the very Cross which marks man’s refusal of the Kingdom becomes the means by which that Kingdom is yet to be set up.
When thus we observe the Man who taught us this prayer and come to understand that He embodied in His own life the principles He bids us seek, and when we know that by His Cross He made it possible for every man to come after Him, to answer “love,” and to walk in “light” in the power of “life,” then we pray the first part of this prayer as never before, realizing that in the name and merit and might of Him who taught us so to pray its final answer must come.
Thus the pattern prayer teaches us first that we must take the whole world into our praying, and that we must see clearly that the line of its redemption is that of return to conformity to the will of God, made possible by the life and death and resurrection of Him who taught us to pray -
- Our Father which art in the heavens,Thy name be hallowed,Thy Kingdom come,Thy will be done,as in heaven so on earth.
- Give us this day our daily bread.And Forgive us our debts, as we alsohave forgiven our debtors. And Lead us not into temptation,but deliver us from evil.