The Sermon On The Mount: The Lord's Prayer

The problem with the way the Pharisees interpreted the law was that they didn’t give God the reverence that he deserved nor did they see man in the proper light as God’s masterpiece (Eph. 2:10), as God’s precious creation made in his likeness. The problem with the way they were interpreting the laws for murder, adultery, divorce, oaths and retaliation was that they did the bare minimum in keeping it.And when I say the bare minimum, I don’t mean they didn’t try. They did. They were just being moral about it. It was enough not to literaly kill someone to be declared just in keeping this law. The same is true for the rest. But Jesus, takes them deeper, to the root. It’s not enough not to kill the body. The problem was that love was absent. You
In it Jesus refocuses our attention. It’s about putting God on the throne, admiting his rule and authority. The model prayer has three emphasis according to Myron S. Augsburger, (1) the honor that is given to God through our worship, (2) our dependence upon God makes us humble and (3) the hope that we have under the lordship of God ( Augsburger M. S. 1982, p.87). The prayer brings us back to a God-centered life instead of a self –centered life. It’s about honoring God, depending upon God and hoping in God. The prayer is made of 6 petitions and is stuctured in two parts: the first part, that is the first three petitions, has to do with God and the second part, the last three petitions, has to do with us (Bruner, F.D., 1987, p.238). As the prayer opens, Tolbert says “This prayer, sometimes called the Model Prayer, begins with the two basic presupositions of Christian prayer. The first of these is the conviction that God is “Father”… Second, the supreme desire of the believer is for God to be honored and his will to be done” (Tolbert, M. O., 1975, p.57). The first petition is to see God’s name be honored, set apart, made central. Bruner says that our main concern in life, our main thrust in life, the thing that should occupy all our atterntion and all our pursuits, should be that “God be treated as God” and even more this petition is addressed to God himself to “make himself central and God under all skies”
First it deals with our basic needs- food, then our being needs – forgiveness, safety. It is most needful to pray that God’s honor, authority and will be fulfiled on earth, but at the same time, Jesus does not leave us in the spiritual realm, but brings our reality into the prayer too. Our felt needs press upon our hearts, but how we meet those needs is by God’s provision and mercy. We are called to pray for our food, not only to work for our food. What we have is not truly ours, but it is God’s stewardship entrusted to us. Unless we see our bread as coming from God, our work as coming from God, we will fail in honoring God. The fifth petition is about asking God for forgivnes, as Bruner says it “To be able to ask God the Father simply to remit debt and to overlook sins is beathtaking” (Bruner, F. D., 1987, p. 251). It means admiting our own failure, both the things that we have done to break God’s law and the things that we have not done to keep God’s law, it means mourning for our sins, but not remaining in a state of sorrow and despair, but looking to God for the forgivness that he grants us in Jesus. As 1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We cannot ask for forginess without granting it ourselves to those that harm us or wrong us. It’s not about