Before You Call God Father, Part 1 | How to Pray Well

Luke 11:2

Luke chapter 11 verse 1, “Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.’ And he said to them, ‘When you pray, say, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”’”

So Jesus begins this teaching on prayer with a most basic, fundamental instruction. It is simple, it is concise, but make no mistake, it is also immensely deep. We are not going to be in a hurry to rush through this instruction on prayer. We’re going to take a slow roll and consider all that is necessary for us to get the impact of this text. He starts with this foundational teaching on prayer, he starts saying, “When you pray.”

When you pray and grammatically, the word, when, there introduces what’s called a temporal clause, so it puts the emphasis the occasion of our praying. So it’s, whenever you pray, on whatever occasion you pray, and then the verb, say, is a command, a present tense command. So the kind of action is continuous; it’s habitual. Whenever you pray, this is to be a repeated action, say this. Be saying this. So regularly, repeatedly, habitually, be saying these words whenever you are praying.

Notice that the very first word in the prayer, which Jesus commands us to say, whenever we’re praying, is a word of intimate filial address. Jesus commands us to call God, father. Jesus commands us to call God, father. Now, I cannot read your minds, but I can read your body language, and I can see that that last sentence did not shock you or disturb you. It didn’t shock your sensibilities. You’re not calling for my resignation or anything more violent than that, and I know that because I just said, Jesus commands us to call God, father, and I did not hear from you an audible gasp. That sentence didn’t take the air out of the room.

Many of us, we think very little of what it means to call God, father; what that means, what the significance of that really is. Those of us who grew up in Christian homes, probably most of us, who grew up in a nominally Christian culture, the Lord’s Prayer is something that we have been taught from childhood, which is a good thing. But we grow up thinking that it’s no big thing to address God as father. So when we hear a sentence like, Jesus commands us to call God, father, we’re not shocked. We don’t think anything of it. We’re not offended.

That’s not how Jesus’ first century audience heard that sentence. Jesus’ first disciples, the Apostles, the earliest Christians as well as the spiritual children of that first generation of believers, there was no sentimentality, I can guarantee you, no sentimentality about the Lord’s Prayer. Instead, there was a debt of gratitude. There was a sober-minded humility, a sense of awe and wonder. Jewish recipients of Christ’s words, here, had all be instructed since childhood in the law of Moses.

Every Sabbath at the synagogue, they heard readings from the Law. They heard expositions from the Law and the Prophets. They heard sermons every single week. Listen, they never heard Moses, ever, or any of the prophets call God, father, in a personal, intimate way like this. None of the godly kings like David or Solomon, none of the great and holy men of Israel’s history, like Job, Daniel, Enoch, any of the rest, none of them addressed God in such familiar terms. No one addressed God so personally, calling God father in prayer; to them that would seem irreverent.

Now they had known about the fatherhood of God, but that was God’s fatherhood over Israel as a nation. Just as a father is the progenitor of the family that comes from his loins, and thus he feels an innate sense of duty to provide for them, he feels a pride in protecting them because they are his progeny; so also the God of Israel was the progenitor, the provider, the protector of the nation of Israel. You dare not touch the apple of his eye: Israel.

Of more than 500, actually nearly 600, uses of the word father in the Old Testament, most of them refer to fatherhood in a human sense; So-and-so was the father of so-and-so, and he lived so many years, and he died, and then he was the father of so-and-so, and he lived so many years, and then he died, and on and on it goes, right? Lots of uses of father like that, only a handful of the 500-600 uses refer to God as father or allude to him acting in a fatherly way, so like caring for orphans and widows as a father might, replacing the father that they’d lost, discipling his children, like a father does, showing compassion for those who fear him.

In fact, I may have missed some references, but I found just 15 instances, 15 of 500-600 where God is father, and they refer to God as father of the nation, or use father, as a metaphor to picture, illustrate how God acts like a father. In fact, God’s fatherly care becomes a basis for indicting the nation of Israel, who abandoned God’s fatherly love and care. Malachi 1:6 says, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master, so if then I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my fear?”

When God is addressed in prayer, the petitioner in the Old Testament does not address him as father, but usually addresses him by the divine name; calls him what he is: God. Listen to Isaiah addressing God as LORD, capital L O R D, which we understand means Yahweh. If it’s capital L and small, ord, that’s Adonai, generally, which means lord, master. Here Isaiah addresses God as Yahweh, and he asks God to show mercy to the nation. He appeals to God’s sense of fatherly compassion and mercy for Israel.

In Isaiah 63:15-16, it says, “Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me. For you are our father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.”  And later on in that same prayer, spanning into chapter 64 verses 8 and 9, Isaiah returns to that same theme of fatherhood in his appeal for mercy. He says, “But now, O Lord,” O Yahweh, “you are our father; we are the clay, you are the potter, we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Yahweh, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.”

We don’t often hear people praying like that, do we, today? Such depth in understanding who God is in his essence, in his acts, references to God’s attributes, like omniscience and omnipotence, justice, wrath, mercy, sovereignty. All those themes are quite foreign to the prayers prayed by so many, sadly, so many professing Christians today. And sadly, in many allegedly evangelical pulpits, contemporary seeker-sensitive church leaders, they seem to display and express no sensitivity whatsoever to the holiness of God, whose name they confess with their lips, but their hearts seem to be very far from him.

Confessing personal sin, acknowledging our own iniquity, acknowledging the appropriateness of divine justice, of holy wrath, such strange talk makes modern church-goers feel uncomfortable. Prerogatives of divine sovereignty, well that’s quite foreign in this democracy of ours. So instinctively, we today tend to turn down the volume on a language like that.

There has been a trajectory for centuries now which has only accelerated in these modern times to treat such themes as Isaiah prayed about quite naturally in his prayer, to treat those, kind of, themes as off-limits, as that which ought not to be spoken of in public. Even among many who profess to be Christians, they seem squeamish, they seem ashamed really, to talk to people about matters of sin and righteousness, to proclaim divine justice, holy wrath and all the while thinking nothing of the fact that they continually call God father. The massive shift in our time is to make God far too familiar, to de-fang him, to de-throne him, to domesticate him.

C. S. Lewis identified this shift, this modern shift, in his well-known allegory, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He had Mr. Beaver, the character, Mr. Beaver, you may remember from reading the story, telling young Susan about Aslan. He said, “‘Aslan is a lion, the lion, the great lion.’ ‘Oh,’ said Susan. ‘I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’ ‘Safe’? said Mr. Beaver. ‘Who said anything about safe? Course, he ain’t safe, but he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.’” Hmm. How far we’ve drifted.

Listen, God is always good. He is never safe. He is not safe for the irreverent. He is not safe for those who trifle with him, who, if I could put it this way, who take his name in vain, treating it meaninglessly. Listen and beware; tread very carefully, here, because what God said in the Ten Commandments remains in force to this day, Exodus 20:7, 20 verse 7, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

Many who profess Christ today have become accustomed and quite comfortable to this very sin, taking God’s name in vain. Now, they may have very clean language, and they don’t link the word God along with a string of profanity, but when someone claims God is his God, and when he calls this God, father, but does not live in obedience to that holy father, that verbal profession means nothing, that is to say, he is taking God’s name in vain, as a meaningless word, just a noun.

That is what it means to take God’s name in vain, most fundamentally, not just to say OMG! That’s a very superficial treatment of that sin. Peter reminds all of us, 1 Peter 1:17, that “if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,” listen to this, “conduct yourselves in fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you are ransomed with the precious blood of Christ.” Beloved, we must, as a people, return to a fear of the Lord by understanding more about this God that we call father, understanding this father with whom we have to do.

So listen, before we address God as father, which Jesus does, in fact, command us to do; folks, we need to recover a sense of awe about God. We need to get a sense of the gravity of the divine essence. We need to feel the weight of his presence, as it were, all of it contained in the name of God. Now for Jesus’ Jewish audience, who heard those words for the first time, this encouragement for them to address God as father and to address him as father in a personal, individual way, that’s actually struck their ears, though it was not true, it struck their ears as somewhat irreverent. It’s not that they were correct about that, but it was one of the benefits of their Old Testament theological framework, which helped them to see the meaning and the significance of Jesus’ teaching them to address God as father, and it’s in a way that’s really foreign to us.

We, on the other hand, have become far too casual. The holy name of God, as Wells said, falls far too inconsequentially upon the church. And so, if we can begin to comprehend the sense of fear of the Lord, a sense of the reverence of God, we will then and really only then, start to appreciate what it means when Jesus most graciously, lovingly commands us, when you pray, be saying this repeatedly, continually, habitually, be saying father. Father.

Which is why we’re going to begin looking at Jesus’ teaching on prayer with the first petition: “Hallowed be your name.” And then we’ll back into what it means to address him as father. So as we get into the first petition and, even before, calling God father, in order to apprehend and appreciate the significance of that, we need to understand three points of vital theological significance. We need to understand, first of all, the significance of a name. What is the significance of that word name? A symbol that’s placed upon somebody. A name, what is the significance of that. Number two: We need to understand the significance of God’s name, in particular, what the meaning is. Third: What it means to hallow God’s name. And then we can understand the significance of addressing God in Christ as father.

So look at Luke 11:2, “When you pray, say ‘Father, hallowed be your name.’” And the first question to ask, here, is what is in a name? Ancient parents named children to signify something, or in the hopes of some quality of character signified by that name would then shape that child’s life, that he would live up to the name. Some names signified some quality or strength of more beauty or something like that in the natural world. Terra means a wild goat. It’s not talking of goatishness, but strength of a goat. Tamar, palm tree. Tabitha, a gazelle, beautiful, delicate, strength, though some names commemorated a significant event, which could be a really bad thing, like in the case of Ichabod. Ichabod, named when the glory of God departed from Israel, literally Ichabod means no glory. Imagine growing up with that little name, hard for that kid growing up. Either he got really shy and withdrew, or he got really tough, right, with a name like Ichabod. God told Isaiah to name his son Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. That’s a mouthful, long on a name tag at Best Buy, right? It means swift to the spoil, speedy to the plunder. Now that’s pretty cool, but it commemorated the Assyrian invasion, not so cool.

A name signified something about the character of a person, attempted to capture the essence of a person, was something to commemorate something. So when parents named their children at birth they did so with a view to the future, to express hope about how their child would turn out. Sometimes God named the child before the child was born to point to the child’s use in his plan, so when bringing Christ into the world, we all understand this, what does it say? “You shall call his name” what? “Jesus.” Why? Because the Hebrew verb, Yasha, Yeshua, means save, deliver. “He will save his people from their sins.” That’s why you call him Jesus. Every time we utter the name of Jesus, we’re acknowledging his saving qualities. He’s, our salvation. Sometimes God changed a name. A child was born, was named and then God changes the name, to align that child in his character, his future more fully, with his purposes. So he changes Abram’s name, Abram means, exalted father, he changed it to Abraham, meaning, exalted father of many. Jacob means, grasping at the heel, with connotations of being a deceptive person, which is how Jacob had been. God said, though, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob,” but what, “Israel for you have striven with God and men and have prevailed.” That came to characterize his life.

The very first one to name something, who was that? God, right? It goes all the way back in history to God calling the light day and the darkness calling it night. He called the expanse above, heaven, and he called the dry land, earth, he called the gathered waters, he called seas. And so God also then named, man, calling him man, which became the name that the first man was known by, and it’s the proper name, Adam.

And then God handed over the privilege of naming things to the man, gave it to Adam, Genesis 2:19, “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man would call every living creature, that was its name.” From what we can discern, since Adam also gave a name to the wife that God brought him, as Merrill Unger says, “From the impression the animals made upon Adam, he assigns names to them.”

Remember, Adam, this is pre-Fall, he has no sin, he is the pinnacle of God’s creation. He’s intelligent, he’s creative. There’s nothing hindering or hampering his creativity, the strength of his reasoning, and his observations. So when he named something, it captured the essence of that thing. He named all the animals God brought to him, naming them according to what they are, capturing their essence, signifying the essence in the name by which he designated that creature.

We get a glimpse of insight into the naming process when God brought to Adam the woman. After naming animals all day and not seeing anything that corresponded to himself, nothing among all the animal kingdom, birds in the heaven, fish in the sea, nothing that corresponded to him, created in the image of God. Nothing equal to him. So when Adam saw this newly created Eve, he said, Ahhh! The Hebrew says that. It gives that sense in the translation. This now! “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She shall be called woman.” That is, an ‘iššâ, “because she was taken out of a man,” ‘îš.

The name that Adam gave this creature, one like him, created in the image of God, commemorated how God brought her into being, how God fashioned his own rib, the first surgery performed in Scripture, right there, Genesis chapter 2, fashioned that rib into a partner. I believe it was Augustine who said, “He didn’t pull the bone from the foot so that Adam would step on her, or from the head, that Eve would rule over him, but from the rib, signifying the partnership, signifying the closeness, the intimacy.” As we might say in different parlance, bringing her in underneath the armor.

Husbands, that’s what we do with our wives, right? Bring that tender wife that God has given us under the armor, close to us. This one is an ‘iššâ, so that last, ahhh, sounds like a breath, like the verb, hayah, because it’s to indicate that life from him, life from the ‘îš is an ‘iššâ, a woman. For she was taken out of an ‘îš, out of a man. This is a brief survey about the significance of a name, the significance of naming. Someone’s name commemorates something important, captures the essence, signifies the character. What is the essence of the thing? Let’s put that in the name.

So that leads us to the second question: What is in God’s name? What it is in God’s name What is in the name of God? When we turn to God and to his name, we’re asking the importance of what signifies his essence. What captures or signifies the character of God? It is, as many pious Jews said, the name. The name: it is a name that all the Old Testament saints rejoiced in, an exemplified by David in Psalm 8:1, “O Yahweh, our Adonai,” “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” So when David speaks of the name of God, he is talking about God’s essence. He’s talking about the nature of God’s being as God. How do we know that? Because the very first word is the name of God, Yahweh. “O LORD our Lord” is literally “O Yahweh, our Adonai.” Adonai meaning Lord, master, sovereign, ruler. Yahweh is the name of God, the proper name of God.