What It Means to Call God Father, Part 1 | How to Pray Well

Luke 11:2

We are in a study of the Lord’s Prayer, Luke 11:2-4, we’re going to begin this morning just by reading that text, just that portion, starting in Luke 11:1, “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 also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”’”

That’s the short version. You know, if you’ve read Matthew 6, ao obviously he taught on a number of different occasions. Matthew 6 is one and Luke 11 is another. And this is more accurately called, not the Lord’s Prayer, but the Disciples’ Prayer because it’s the pattern, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, all of us to pray. The prayer is a pattern; it’s a basic form. It’s a framework that provides us with a simple structure, some trustworthy boundaries to keep us hemmed in and give shape to our praying.

In its simplicity and in its brevity, this form of prayer encourages our praying. We actually thrive and grow within the structure. It gives us confidence to get going in prayer and as we grow and mature in prayer, we’re going to fill in that form that Jesus has provided with what we learn from Scripture. Our prayers to God will mature in theological depth, in biblical understanding, and in Christian maturity.

It’s kind of like a gardener, or if you’ve ever planted a tree in your yard, you might provide a stake for a newly planted sapling, and you provide stability for its growth, to allow that sapling to take deep root and stand against a wind. Jesus has done the same thing here. He’s provided a stake for our praying. He has enabled our habits of prayer to take deep root as well against the winds of distraction that may blow through our lives, and so that we can grow up healthy and strong.

And the first and most important stake that he provides in verse 2 is to begin with God, talking to God about God, setting our hearts at the very outset on God’s interests above our own. “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” And that really makes perfect sense because if he is our father, and he is, by faith in Christ, praying for his interests is to pray in our best interests as well, right? The second stake, then, that stabilizes our praying is one of humble dependence upon God in order that we find in him everything pertaining to life and godliness, everything that we need.

In an attitude of humility and dependency, we petition our father to attend to our physical needs in verse 3, and then all of our spiritual needs in verse 4. And then, having petitioned our loving, our ever-attentive father, because he never sleeps, he never slumbers, he never changes, he is omniscient, he’s all-knowing, all-seeing, and always caring, always good, having petitioned our ever-attentive father, we can say, Amen, and we can lay our heads down on our pillow at night in quiet contentment, peaceful rest.

And why is that? Because we know we have prayed according to his will. We know we have prayed according to his will. We know our prayers have ascended to Almighty God, who has all power. We know we’ve prayed according to his will because Jesus just told us to pray this. If we pray it, we’re praying according to his will. We petitioned the one who is the only absolute sovereign, the one who is the creator of all, the sustainer of all, the judge of all and by his amazing grace and through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, this God to whom we pray is the one we now call father.

We don’t petition a dead idol made of wood and stone, with no eyes to see and no ears to hear, no power to respond to anything or to do anything. By God’s grace, God has caused us to turn from worthless, dead idols, whether it be the gods of wood and stone, or in our day maybe the god of technology, the god of, of advancement, the god of progress and all the things we put our hope in, the god of science. I mean, fill in the blank. We have different gods today, but they still have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no power to act, no power to respond to our requests. They’re just idols.

By his grace, God has caused us to turn from these dead idols to turn to put our faith in him, our creator, that we might serve, live and serve the living and true God and so when we pray, when we call God father, we know that we pray to the King of the Ages, as Paul says in 1 Timothy, who is “immortal, and invisible, the only wise God.” When we pray, the one we call father is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no eye has ever seen, nor can see, because we know by nature, he is spiritual. He is invisible. And so it is to him, and it is to this God, that honor and glory belong forever and ever.

The one we call father, he rules over an eternal kingdom and dominion, and that’s a kingdom and dominion to which we belong by his grace and by his calling and we are there, not merely as slaves in his kingdom, though we’d be thankful to be there as slaves, wouldn’t we? That would be enough for us. We’re there in his kingdom not only as citizens of the kingdom, though that’s enough to us. We belong there as God’s beloved children. The King is our father. We’ve come to realize that the one we address as father is none other than Yahweh, that he is the “I AM” of Scripture. This is the mighty God who brought Israel out of Egypt, of whom that nation was taught to confess in its creed: “Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.”

So if we know this God as father, then we know for certain that he hears our prayers, as he heard the cries of Israel suffering and languishing in slavery in Egypt a few millennia ago. He knows our thoughts. He knows our cares. He knows our worries. He knows our heaviness. He knows our burdens. He knows our anxious concerns. We know that. The Scripture attests to that. We know that he is all-powerful, that he actually can do something, that he actually can answer our prayers, and if we belong to him as children, well then he wants to do something. He’s not prevented by an unwillingness. Because we also know that God is immutably good and infinitely wise, he is like the greatest of all fathers. We know that when he answers and when he acts, or if he withholds an acting, acting for some, for some reason, we know that he is doing always what is good. He’s doing what’s best. He’s doing what is wise, and always doing things in his perfect timing.

Having said that, I want to ask you and I want you to think about this for yourself: Do you know that your father is good? I mean, do you know that? Do you believe him to be wise and perfect, always knowing what is best? I’d like you to turn over to Hebrews 12, just briefly, and just want you to follow along, here. The writer to the Hebrews, he takes that imagery of God as a father and tries to encourage us to take heart and endure God’s loving discipline because God, his discipline is evidence of his fatherly love. It’s evidence, when he disciples us, that we are his sons and daughters.

He writes this in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 5 and following, he says, “Have you forgotten the exhortation that’s addressed to you as sons? ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

That question in verse 7, I wonder what you think about that, especially as you think about your own life, your father before you, grandfather. You think about other families that you know. The question in verse 7, “What son is there whom his father does not discipline?” That’s answered in our day by a chorus of voices who know nothing of a father’s loving discipline, because we’re living in the last days. This has become a foreign concept to many. You and I watch children raised in homes all the time who are neglected, not paid attention to, never disciplined, never corrected.

So many fathers and mothers today, they have hardened themselves against their natural parental instincts to pursue a life of autonomous freedom, which is a lie. Giving oneself to one’s own carnal interests is enslavement, not freedom. But I believe that there is still enough of that parental instinct, even in these cold times, for us to understand the writer’s point in the book of Hebrews. Look at verse 9, where he picks it up, “Besides this,” he says, “We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he,” “disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” Even earthly fathers, imperfect as they are, imperfect as they may be, they discipline us as best as they know, don’t they? They do what they do toward the good that they understand, even if that good is at a very low level, even if that good is a mistake. They discipline for your good.

Whatever your father was like, I don’t pretend to know that. I’ve always known a father who is a strong, wise, godly man, one who I respect and look up to, and I long with every fiber of my being to honor him. Whatever kind of father you had and whatever weakness, whatever pain he caused in the family, or rift, or whatever, perhaps you can sympathize with him just a little bit, knowing that you, too, have sinned in your parenting, knowing that you, too, have inflicted pain, suffering. You’ve caused neglect. You don’t want to hurt your children. You don’t want to do that, whether it’s your own children, whether it’s step-children that have come into your family through a blended marriage, whether it’s foster children, adoptive children, or any kind of children. You discipline your children, you discipline them imperfectly albeit, but you discipline sometimes even sinfully. But at the heart of that discipline, you are doing what seems best to you at that time.

But God, he disciplines us for our good, so that we can share in his holiness. And what is holiness in God but happiness? God is the blessed and only potentate. He is blessedness in himself. He has all blessedness, and he wants to bring us into it and that blessedness is his holiness, and the holiness is blessedness. He disciplines us so we can share in that. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Because that is what Jesus means to evoke in us, a child-like trust in the father’s goodness for the purpose of prayer, so that we pray, so that we seek him in intimate, communication, communion, love, and affection.

And this is where this concept of fatherhood that Jesus brings out in one word, father, this is where this becomes so vital because since prayer is our means of communing intimately with God, expressing all of our concerns, our thoughts, our anxieties, since prayer is how we find grace and mercy from God at all times, including times of deepest need, since prayer is how we confess our sins, seek cleansing from our guilt, cleansing from an accusing conscience, covering for our shame caused by our sin, pleading the forgiveness by his blood, since prayer is how we seek God’s help, we seek his wisdom for guidance, we seek his power for holiness and his grace from growth to maturity, look, since prayer is all that and so much more, it is essential to our spiritual growth.

And that is why Jesus deals with the most vital factor in our praying in the very first word that comes out of our mouth in prayer, and it’s the word of address. And that word of address is meant to instill in us an orientation to God. He tells us, “When you pray, say, ‘Father,’” and that is about the vital starting point of all prayer, and the issues is this: the issue is trust. You do not pray and seek or petition one you do not trust. This has to be one of the most important uses of this doctrine, about the fatherhood of God to teach us to trust in him. The more we trust God, the more we believe his promises, the more we take him at his word, the more we’re going to be inclined to pray, and the more he opens up the floodgates of heaven to dump blessing upon blessing upon blessing upon us. So Jesus tells us, his disciples, when you pray, you address him as Father.

What is it to address God as father? What is it to address God as father? What does it mean and what does it not mean for God to be father? What does it mean and what does it not mean for God to be father? Let’s deal with the second question first and just eliminate a false idea. What fatherhood does not mean. What fatherhood does not mean. It’s a common notion, the belief that God is the father of all by virtue of we are all his children, he created us, and if anybody believes in that kind of thing anymore, by virtue of creation, we’re all sons and daughters of God, and it’s a concept that’s meant to unite everybody, bring everybody together under the fatherhood of God. Both liberals and pagans believe in this concept of the fatherhood of God because it supports a belief that there is a spark of goodness in all of us, a spark of the divine in everyone.

So believing in the universal fatherhood of God supports the idea of the universal brotherhood of mankind, or in some cases, the sisterhood of mankind, right? But it’s an attempt to find common ground with all humanity, to promote what’s really a superficial form of unity, not a deep one, but a superficial form of unity and promote a universal philanthropy, again a sense of good feeling around the whole earth. We’ll all light our lighters or candles or whatever and sing We Are the World, you know? We’re all under God. We’re all children of God.

That hope, as you know, as we all know every time another war breaks out, is undermined by the stubborn reality of the universality of sin. Sin destroys. Sin divides. Sin sets us at war with one another. There is a division going on in the world. We’re not united. The biblical doctrine of original sin, a sin-cursed world, innate depravity of all mankind and every individual on the planet along with the constant, repeated demonstration of sin’s effects, the repeated evidence of sin’s entrenched place in the heart of mankind, the liberals ignore all those evidences. They reject all those things as an assault, when you point them out, reject that as an assault against people’s self-esteem. Talk of ugly things like sin just exacerbates guilty feelings, unnecessary shame, negativity, and they want to avoid that like the plague.

Still, we profess the universal fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of mankind. There are many who continue to hold fast to the false comfort that God is everyone’s father and believe that that, in some way, provides a refuge, a safe harbor, as it were, under God’s fatherly love. And it’s a love, that’s a benign love, that overlooks sin; it sets justice aside to act in a benign way toward not sinful creatures; we don’t want to call them that, but erring creatures. We make mistakes; we don’t commit sins. As one of my favorite painters says, “happy little accidents.” But this universal fatherhood of God, promoting a benign love in God, God loves everyone unconditionally. He’s unconditional in his love. He gives grace. He accepts everyone, and he doesn’t judge anybody. A very popular notion today.

When you look to Scripture to find out in what sense God is father to all mankind, you quickly see that fatherhood does not provide the kind of comfort and refuge that some try to find in it; passages like Acts 17:28, Paul cited the Cretan poet Epimenides, “In him we live and move and have our being,” and a Cilician poet Aratus, for “We are indeed his offspring.” And that gives a sense among the pagans, among the philosophers, that there is a universal fatherhood of God, and Paul even seems to acknowledge the fatherhood of God in a general sense. If we look back to Malachi, Malachi 2:10, the Jews also believed that. They said, “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” But then God turns around and he does with, he does what with that statement? He uses it as a source of indictment, “If I am a father, where is my honor?” That’s a passage of indictment, not comfort.

And so you can see in Scripture that, yeah, there may be a warrant for this universal fatherhood of God concept by virtue of the fact that he brought us all into existence. But that is not a refuge or a comfort for unbelievers, liberals, pagans, far from it. The fact of God’s universal fatherhood over all human beings by virtue of bringing mankind into being through creation and then sustaining all creation through his kind providence, what we call common grace, common grace in creation, common grace in sustaining us, that doesn’t become a reason for benign love and to us to take comfort. It becomes a reason for condemning everyone who is unrepentant and unbelieving. That’s Paul’s entire argument in Romans chapter 1, that although everyone knows God in some sense, having this innate sense of the divine, “they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him,” Romans 1:21.

But what happened? “They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. They claimed to be wise, but they,” like Epimenides claimed to be wise, Aratus of yesterday, and the liberal theologians of today, but “they became fools.” How so? “Because they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal man, birds, animals, creeping things,” Romans 1:23, “and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.”

So they take this universal fatherhood of God, a benign love, they don’t give honor to God or give thanks. They take refuge in that and then start worshiping the creation instead of the creator. If that’s evidence of the fatherhood of God, you’ve got to ask a question: What son or daughter of God does that? What true child of God rejects his father, doesn’t honor him, doesn’t give thanks, but instead commits cosmic treason and lives in abject rebellion in such wretched and degrading forms of idolatry?

Thomas Watson points out that we may consider God to be father by creation, then he says this, “But there’s little comfort in this, for God is father in the same way to the devils by creation. No hope for the demons,” for as Watson continues, he says, “He that made them will not save them.” Same goes for anyone, anyone, who hopes in the universal fatherhood of God alone, who finds comfort alone in the mere fact that God made him brought him into existence. For he ignores what happened after God created everything and called it good, when our first father Adam plunged the race into sin. He ignores his own sin against the God who created him. He ignores the certainty of coming judgment. This universal fatherhood of God is no refuge at all from the wrath to come.

And thankfully, thankfully that’s not what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, “When you pray, say, ‘Father.’” He’s speaking to his disciples, who have a right to call God father. He’s not speaking to the pagans. He’s not speaking to the liberal Sadducees. He’s not even speaking to the Pharisees and say, “When you pray, call God ‘Father’” because in no sense was God their father and so when you hear people who pray and recite the Lord’s Prayer and call God father, they are practicing regularly taking God’s name in vain. But that’s not what Jesus meant, here. We are eternally grateful for the implications of divine fatherhood that go far beyond mere creation.

I like what Charles Spurgeon said about the fatherhood of God by virtue of creation. He said this, “I believe God has made many things that are not his children. Hath he not made the heavens and the earth, the sea and the fulness thereof, and are they his children? You say these things are not rational and intelligent beings. Ah, but he made the angels, who stand in an eminently high and holy position. Are they his children? Unto which of the angels said he at any time, ‘Thou are my son’? No, beloved, it needs something beyond creation to constitute the relationship, and those who can say, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven’ are something more than God’s creatures.”