The Lord’s Prayer for His People

What do you think is the verse in the Bible that is memorized more often than any other? The first verse that comes to mind for many people is John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.

But I suspect that there is another verse that is more frequently memorized than that, and it’s Matthew 6:9. Do you know what it says? You’ve probably memorized it, too, but you just didn’t memorize the location. Matthew 6:9 is the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer.

Throughout the history of the church, the Lord’s Prayer has been a prominent part of Christian life. In some churches, it is repeated as part of every worship service. It has formed the backbone of countless prayers, and the outline for numerous books on “how to pray.”

And with good reason: In this prayer, Jesus tells his followers to look to God for taking care of the needs we all have in major areas of life.

But I also think that the prayer tells us what Jesus thinks that we as his disciples should be wanting. What is it that we are supposed to want? If we are supposed to bring all our requests to God, as Paul says, and if Jesus is presenting this prayer as a model of how we should pray, then it kindof implies that these are the things that we need to care about.

It starts, as you probably know:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…

God’s names have meaning: Father…, Creator…, Provider…, Almighty…, Compassionate…, and so on. We begin our prayer, our interaction with God, by praising him for who he is and what he does. The prayer says that God’s name is “hallowed” – that’s an old English word meaning to “make holy.” And “holy” means “set apart for a special purpose.” His name is holy, or sacred, set apart for a special purpose.

We treasure God’s name because he is someone extraordinarily special to us. We do not want to misuse his name – just like we don’t want people misusing our name. Whenever anything bad happens, I don’t want people saying, “Oh, Mike,” as if it’s my fault, or as if bad stuff always reminds them of me. In the same way, I wish that people wouldn’t blurt out God’s name every time something bad happens. I just don’t want people to be talking trash about my Savior and my Dad.

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus expects us to be concerned about God’s reputation, that we want his name to be holy and special, and that we want to praise him and give him glory. That’s something that Jesus expects us to be concerned about. So the first part of our prayer, and the first duty of all believers, is to praise and worship God.

Now, verse 10:

¹⁰Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…

As individuals and as a church, we would like for God to intervene and rule, so that his will is done here on earth. We want things to be done right, human relationships to be done the way that God intended. But in this prayer petition, we are not just asking for a future reality—we want God’s will to be done on earth right now. If we really want it to be done, we want it now, as well as in the future.

God’s kingdom is working whenever God’s will is done, whenever anyone repents. Both Jesus and Paul said that people are already entering God’s kingdom. It is here now. Kindof hidden, but still here. God’s kingdom comes whenever people preach the good news, whenever people act with mercy and justice, whenever God’s people help heal the sick, feed the hungry, and work against evils in society.

We rejoice that goodness will fill the earth when Christ returns, but we also want God’s will to be done now, as much as possible. What God wants (that’s his will) is good, and we want it, too. So, in prayer, we ask God to bring good things about. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us that this is what we want to happen. And because this is what we want, it is natural that we do whatever is within our limited power to bring this about, and to ask God to work toward the same result. When it is within our power to do something good, we should do it.

To jump ahead a little bit, when we ask God to supply our daily food, it does not mean that we sit back and do nothing about it. No, he expects that if we want food, then we are supposed to do as much as we can, while still recognizing that the result really depends on what God supplies. And it’s the same with God’s will – when we really want this, we don’t just sit back and wait – we do what we can. It may not be much, but it’s better than nothing.

We are convinced that what God describes as sin—behaviors such as perjury, theft, adultery, and murder—are forbidden in the Bible because they hurt other people. They are acts of selfishness, not love. And we not only want to avoid doing those hurtful things ourselves, we also desire that society around us suffers less and less from these social problems. We therefore support organized efforts to reduce social ills.

That’s government stuff, and we have some beliefs about what the government ought to do. We support laws against stealing and murder, for example. Now admittedly, those laws cannot change anybody’s heart or convert anybody, but since we want God’s will to be done here on earth, we support laws that are against such sins as stealing and murder. If we really want God’s will to be done here on earth, then we will support laws that encourage people to do what is right, and laws that discourage people from doing stuff that’s wrong and hurtful.

As another example, we support laws that try to reduce the ways in which people of one ethnic group might mistreat those of another. Again, those laws won’t change anybody’s heart, at least not right away, but they will reduce some evil actions, and we therefore support such laws. And we can support laws that try to reduce the ways in which labor and management might mistreat each other, or the ways that professionals take advantage of clients, or corporations take advantage of the poor.

We pray for God’s will to be done in the way that people treat each other in all areas of life, and although civil laws can address only the external actions, it is better to do that, than nothing at all. We know that our efforts will not achieve anywhere near all that we would like, but some progress is better than none. The Lord’s Prayer says that we care about what happens here on earth, and we desire that more good might be done.

In keeping with the Lord’s prayer, we pray that God will help us set better examples in our own families and communities, but we also realize that our example should includes a willingness to take action on behalf of others. That may be helping individual victims; it may also mean trying to help change society as a whole.

¹¹Give us this day our daily bread…

Verse 11 says that we look to God to supply our physical needs. The Lord’s prayer reminds us that we are dependent creatures who exist only by the grace of God. It reminds us that God has made us physical, and although we rejoice in spiritual blessings, we should not neglect the physical world around us. God uses the physical world to give us our bread, our water and our air. God put humans on earth to dress and keep the garden, not to tear it up and pollute it. A truly spiritual person has physical needs and physical responsibilities. We do our part, but we ask God to make our work effective.

We also remember that we have brothers and sisters in the faith who need food and other basic needs, and when God gives us more than we need for ourselves, he gives us the responsibility to help others. If ten people ask God for bread, and he gives one person ten loaves of bread, what’s supposed to happen? The person who has too much is supposed to share with those who don’t have enough.

When the crowds were hungry, Jesus told the disciples, You give them something to eat. Well, it turns out that they didn’t have enough, but Jesus gave them five loaves and two fishes, and when they had that much, then they were supposed to be willing to give to others.

When we pray for food, we do not pray, “give me” – we pray for God to give us the basic necessities that we all need. We pray that we will all have enough – that is something that we should want – and because we want it, we remain open to the possibility that God may use us as disciples who distribute basic necessities to other people.

Verse 12: Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…

Just as we have a physical need for food, we have a spiritual need for forgiveness. Thankfully, the Bible assures us that this forgiveness is not only possible, it has already been given, even though we are not always willing to receive it. Spiritually, we had a debt we could not pay, and on the cross, Jesus has paid it for us. It has already been paid, so from God’s perspective, it is no longer a debt. It has been removed from the books before we were even born. This is astonishingly good news.

But the prayer reminds us that God wants us to treat others with the same kind of mercy he has shown toward us. Do we do this perfectly? Well, no. We fall short – we need forgiveness for this, too. But Christ has already paid our debt, atoned for our sin, and forgiven us.

So why does Jesus warn us that God’s forgiveness is somehow dependent on our ability to forgive others? If our salvation depended on our ability to do this right, then we would all be in deep trouble. Thankfully, Christ has paid for this sin as well, and he forgives even this weakness.

Life is often what we make it, and God lets us live pretty much the way we want to. Some people choose to live in a world of vengeance and hatred; Jesus invites us to live in a world in which mercy is freely given. Mercy is the kingdom we long for, the will of God that we want done on earth, and the daily needs that we want God to help us with.

If we are not willing to give mercy to others, then even if we are with God, we will not enjoy life. Eternal life won’t be much fun if we are in the eternal presence of somebody we cannot forgive. In other words, we cannot enjoy the full benefits of forgiveness unless and until we forgive those who sin against us. As long as some grudge is eating at us, we are not fully freed. We are trapped and tortured not so much by what someone else did to us, but by how we have responded. We cannot be truly free until we learn to forgive, and that is true now as well as in eternity.

We desire a world in which mercy is the dominant way of life—and when we give mercy, we have already begun to experience the blessings of God’s kingdom.

Last, Jesus tells us to pray:

¹³And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

This last request is an acknowledgement that we are weak, and we are susceptible to temptations that are too powerful for us.

Now, the best way to resist temptation is to stay well away from it, so we ask God to help us stay out of danger zones, because we know that on our own, we are no match for the clever deceptions of our spiritual adversary.

So we ask God to help us avoid the problems that can mess us up. But of course, this does not resolve us of all responsibility—we still have choices to make about which parties we go to, and what we drink, and what kind of business deals we choose to make. One person’s weakness is different than another’s, but we each have weaknesses that we struggle with.

There are many pitfalls, and we are not immune. Our prayer throughout is that we must depend on God to help us avoid the temptations that will come. The mission is not ours, but his, and he will supply the needs.

So as we look at the Lord’s Prayer, we can see that this is what Christ expects us to be concerned about.

The prayer begins with praise for God. Jesus expects that we will want to respect God’s name, and praise him. 

Second, we ask for God’s will to be done. We want to know what God’s will is, and we want to do it, and we want others to do it.

Third, we remember that we all have physical needs, and we want everyone’s basic needs to be supplied. And because this is something that we want, we work together with others to help make it happen.

The fourth petition is a request for forgiveness. We need mercy, and so Jesus says that we should also be merciful to others. If we refuse to forgive others, it shows that we don’t understand the mercy that God has given to us.

And last, we rely on God to keep us from straying away from the right path. We ask him to guide and protect, provide for our needs, and to forgive our shortcomings.

And to that, we can all say, Amen.