Sermon Bible Commentary
Matthew 6:9
(with Romans 8:15)
I. I observe, first, as suggested by the place where we find the words "Our Father," that when we can truly and intelligently call God by this name new life is given to our devotions. It is not without significance that the prayer, so simple in its terms and so wide in its comprehensiveness, which Jesus gave us, both as a model and a form, should begin with these homely words. They bid us pause a moment and definitely realize what God is to us, and in what relationship we stand to Him, before we go forward to present our petitions.
II. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father new joy is given to the discharge of duty. Duty, considered simply as such, is a cold, stern thing, and needs love to inspire it before it can become joy. Duty thinks mainly of the work to be done; love thinks of the person for whom it is performed. Until, realizing that God is our Father in Jesus Christ, our hearts glow with affection toward Him, every attempt which we make to do His will must be simply and only an effort to do duty. But when, through faith in Jesus Christ, we get to know and love God as our Father all this is changed. Duty is transfigured into delight.
III. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father a new significance is given to our earthly trials. Discipline is a privilege that the Father reserves for His own children. All our trials are tokens of our Father's affection.
IV. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father a new glory is given to our conception of the heavenly world. Jesus teaches us to say, "Our Father which art in heaven," and so leads us to look upon that land as our home. Home is the centre of the heart, and so, by enabling us to call God our Father and heaven our home, Jesus centres our hearts there, and gives us such an idea of its blessedness that we scarcely think of the outward accessories of its splendour, because of the delight and anticipation that we cherish of being there "at home with the Lord."
W. M. Taylor, The Limitations of Life,p. 95.
The Hallowed name of Father.
I. There is no greater secret of all truth and holiness and joy than to have correct and grand views of the fatherly relationship and character of God. Therefore, by all strange ways, the enemy of our peace tries to misrepresent it. One method which he uses is this: He will even set forth Christ as a most loving, gentle, attractive Being, that he may, through Him, disparage and distort the Father. "Christ," he says, "came in between the severity of God, the wrath of the Father, and the sinner," concealing that there is no such thing in the whole Bible as the Father's being reconciled to us; but that it was the Father's own pre-ordaining love which planned and executed the whole scheme, whereby we are reconciled to Him.
II. God has made the father His metaphor. It is the strictest and most beautiful of all the metaphors of that great One who can only be spoken of by metaphors. (1) A father's love must of necessity precede the love of the child; long before the child can really know or love him, he has known and loved the child. The child's love is the response and echo after long intervals. You cannot conceive the time when God began to love you; but you can easily date almost the hour when you began to love Him. (2) Just as a father, being a man, trains his child for manhood, so God, being eternal, trains His creatures for eternity. You can only read a father's love in that light. It is always prospective love. Mysterious just because God sees a future which His child does not see.
III. A father's love is a very wide thing. It takes in with a large embrace all the little things and all the great things in his child's life all and everything.
IV. A father's love never dies. Whatever the child may do, whatever the father may be constrained to do, upon whatever his child does, it does not alter a father's love. He may punish, he may be angry, he may hide himself; but his love is unchanging. In this his relation approaches and assimilates to God's relation to His creatures.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,8th series, p. 29.
The Spirit of this Invocation is the Spirit of Faith.
I. Consider the filial spirit of the believer. (1) The filial spirit is a childlike spirit. In receiving the spirit of adoption we are not only admitted into the family of God, but we are converted and become as little children. (a) A child is earnest; (b) a child is unsuspicious and frank; (c) a child submits to discipline in faith. (2) The filial spirit is a spirit of dignity and perfection. There is not merely a filial relation, there is also a filial resemblance. The filial spirit is the spirit of perfection. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." To resemble God, to walk worthy of Him, to be conformed to the image of Christ the Elder Brother, to be filled with the Spirit, this is the aim and the standard of the spiritual life.
II. The spirit of the invocation is the spirit of love. "Our" is a word of love; its character is Pentecostal, for Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. The new covenant is now established, and God has a people who dwell in Him and He in them. (1) "Our" we say, for, belonging unto Christ the Head, we belong unto all, we are debtors to all, and servants of the brethren for Christ's sake. (2) Honouring and loving all men, let us cultivate especially fellowship with the saints. (3) We must be very near to God if we wish to get near our brother's heart. (4) Love is the soul of communion; and love means self-sacrifice.
III. The spirit of the invocation is the spirit of hope. "Our Father which art in heaven." The child asks, " Whereis heaven?" The thought of riper years asks, " Whatis heaven?" Yet the child's question is true and deep; unless we view heaven as a reality, our thought of heaven as a state will become vague and unreal. Heaven is a place, and not merely a state. Philosophy may think it more rational and spiritual to suppose that, as God is in every place, He is in no place more than another. Scripture maintains most emphatically the omnipresence of God and the spiritual character of worship, and yet as distinctly teaches that there is a heavenly sanctuary, a throne of grace, the dwelling-place of the Most High. We regard heaven, (1) as the place where Christ now lives; (2) we remember that all spiritual blessings are treasured up for us in heaven.
A. Saphir, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p, 95.
God is the proper subject of our first desires in prayer, God in all, and in ourselves as parts of all: if He is served by men, we, who take our stamp and our habits from the age in which He places us, shall serve Him better also; if His will is done here as it is in heaven, we, who are here, shall bear our part in doing that will. And so we pray first for these wider blessings, these which will bring others in their train, and the very desiring of which draws our thoughts to their right aim and object, and divests us of all mere selfish regards. And among them stands foremost this petition: "Hallowed be Thy name."
I. What is Thy name?The name of God in Scripture signifies that revelation of Himself which He has made to His creatures; that preached and written and recorded character of God which at the age in which men live He has been pleased to manifest to our race. Thus, when we say, "Hallowed be Thy name," we mean, "May that revelation of Thyself which Thou hast made in Thy Son Jesus Christ be hallowed."
II. And how hallowed?Not made holy; this it needs not. When we say, Let Thy name be "held holy," we mean, Let Thy revelation of Thyself, as a reconciled Father in Christ, be known and appreciated by men as belonging to and penetrating their character and hopes, in a way in which the ungodly world can never know nor appreciate it; let all men be put in possession of its secret, and make it to themselves the highest reality of their being. It is indeed a missionary prayer in the highest sense; for to this end all the labours of the Church and ministry tend, and when this is so, then will Christ's kingdom have come, and God's will be done, in the very highest and most blessed degree.
III. But he who prays for all includes also himself. God's name should be hallowed in and by us, (1) in our thoughts, (2) in our conversation.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. ii., p. 149.
I. What is meant by the name of God? (1) God has revealed His name in creation; He has written it on our heart and conscience. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork." The things that are made declare His eternal power and Godhead. The conscience also beareth witness, and thoughts within us could not accuse, did they not know justice and purity, love and truth. (2) God revealed His name to Israel. He revealed it (a) by special revelations, (b) in the history of the nation, (c) in His law. (3) Christ, the Word of God, is the name. And having received Christ the name, the next commandment is to hallow the name.
II. "Hallowed be Thy name." What is meant by the name of God being hallowed? The petition implies: (1) The desire to know God's name. The name of God is now simple the highest, deepest, most comprehensive name, the name above every name, even Jesus. To hallow the name of God is to look unto Christ. (2) To hallow the name of God is to treat it as a reality to remember God is what He calls Himself. (3) To hallow the name of God is to rejoice in it. The more we know of God, the more comprehensive is our view of Christ; the more many-sided our conception and experience of God's attributes and works, the greater will be our joy in His name. (4) To hallow God's name is to keep it separate, distinct from our own opinions, and the corrupt thoughts and desires of the heart. (5) To hallow God's name means not to divide the name of God, but to regard it as one, sacred and inviolable in its unity. (6) To hallow God's name is to live and walk in Christ, as the Apostle Paul speaks of his ways which are in Christ Jesus. (7) To hallow God's name means that we ourselves should be manifestations of God, reflecting His image, showing forth His will, resembling His character. Christ was the name of the Father sent by Him into the world; even thus are we called by Christ's name and sent by Him, that the world may see in us His love and spirit.
A. Saphir, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 125.
This petition evidently involves a request
I. That the glory of God may be revealed. God's name cannot be hallowed until it is known, and it must be told us before it can be known. Our want of reverence springs partly from our ignorance. To see God at once leads to service and love. We do not know God's name. Bits of it we can make out. Something of His power we can read in nature; something of His wisdom; something of His general kindliness. And these we put in, rightly enough, as part of His great name. But the rest of His name is obscure. To know God is no light blessing, but is the great one which takes precedence of all others. (1) To see God is a converting and quickening experience; (2) and as all sanctity depends on it, so all consolation flows from it. Therefore, in the foreground of all your petitions put the prayer for God's revelation of Himself, and present and urge it until in richest fulness the answer comes to your heart.
II. This petition prays for a reverent use of all the knowledge of God that comes to us. We can abuse all things, even the mercy and the truth of God. And it is possible for the name of God to be imparted to us in some degree, and yet for us to lose all the service it was meant to render. We have, therefore, to pray that the revelation of God may meet with reverence from us and others, that every result which God's disclosure of Himself ought to have on us may be realized. If you analyze the general idea of hallowing God's self-revelation, you will find it to contain various qualities of gracious character. (1) The prayer for power to hallow God's name is a prayer for faith; (2) it is a prayer for obedience as well; (3) it is a prayer for zeal for God's glory; (4) it asks for a worthy estimate of man. It is thus no formal petition and no mere doxology, no compliment merely, or word of homage. It is a great prayer man's darkness begging light, and man's weakness begging strength.
R. Glover, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 7.
I. God is our Father (1) by creation; (2) by regeneration; (3) by adoption.
II. The petition "Hallowed be Thy name" relates to what is called "declarative glory" a prayer that God's name may be made known, and honoured by all His creatures. The desire that God's name may be hallowed implies (1) that we have a just sense of His majesty and holiness; (2) it is a prayer that all people may learn to love and obey that gracious Father in whose service we find such freedom and delight; (3) it should remind us of the various ways in which our heavenly Father is treated with disrespect and contempt.
J. N. Norton, Every Sunday,p. 59.
The Messianic Kingdom.
I. Who is the King? In one sense the King is God the Father. It is to "our Father in heaven" that the petition is addressed, "Thy kingdom come." His glory, His self-manifestation, is the one great purpose of God, and His is the kingdom, for of Him and to Him are all things. But the Father has appointed Jesus His Son to be the King, even as Christ is the Vine, while the Father is the Husbandman. Christ was appointed from eternity to be King, (1) as the Son of man; (2) as the Son of David; (3) as the Son of man and of David after His humiliation, suffering, and death. The Son of God became man, not merely to suffer and to die, but to reign. He took upon Him our nature, that through suffering He might enter into glory; as man, even as the Lord, whom they have pierced, He is to reign in righteousness and peace, the glory of Israel as well as the light to lighten the Gentiles.
II. When will the kingdom be established? It is to be brought about not gradually, but suddenly; not without observation, as is the kingdom of grace in the heart, but with great and mighty signs. The essential features of the kingdom are: Satan bound, the earth renewed, Israel converted and restored, the Church glorified, and Antichrist judged and vanquished; and the crisis, the turning-point, to bring about these changes, is one it is the direct interference of God, the appearing of the great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
III. The character of this kingdom. (1) In manifested power on earth. The kingdom is to be on earth. Christ and the glorified saints reign over Israel and the nations. Jerusalem is the centre of the world; the land of Israel is restored to wonderful fertility and blessedness. (2) It is spiritual. It is a kingdom of grace, in which spiritual obedience is offered, and in which men worship God with renewed and sanctified hearts. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah. The eternal principles of righteousness and love which were embodied in the Mosaic law will then reign upon earth in the spirit of liberty and power.
A. Saphir, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 173.
References: Matthew 6:9. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 213; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 45; G. W. McCree, Ibid.,vol. x., p. 216; J. A. Spurgeon, Ibid.,vol. xi., p. 209; A. P. Peabody, Ibid.,pp. 289, 309; P. J. Turquand, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 344; M. Dods, The Prayer that Teaches to Pray,p. 25; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 303; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 349; F. D. Maurice, The Lord's Prayer,Philippians 1:13; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year,p. 34; J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week,p. 409; A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons,pp. 396, 408; J. M. McCulloch, Sermons,p. 60; A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer,p. 24.
I. The request. (1) We are in debt to God. We have only to listen to the voice of conscience to admit this at once. For amongst the deepest of all our instincts is the sense of responsibility a feeling that some things are duefrom us. (2) The Saviour's word, assuming the guilt of sin, proclaims at the same time the possibility of its pardon. How sweet is the suggestion of this word that forgiveness is granted to those who seek it! For forgiveness is a great word. It means forth-giving that is, the absolute dismissal and sending away of that which we acknowledge. This precept assumes the cross which is to follow, on which, owning the sin of men, sharing its curse and praying for its pardon, Christ makes propitiation for the sins of the world. It teaches us that "without money and without price" this most needed and richest of all gifts is to be obtained.
II. The clause which is added to the petition, "As we forgive our debtors." The Saviour does not take away with one hand what He gives with the other, and the addition of this clause does not proceed from any desire to limit the outflow of pardoning grace. He wants, on the contrary, to get the hearts of all who offer this petition into the mood which shall be most receptive of God's infinite gift. Observe: (1) A certain fitness to use and profit by God's blessings is uniformly a condition of their bestowment. Common mercies may be bestowed irrespective of spiritual character. But all His higher gifts are bestowed where they are welcomed, enjoyed, improved where they will be productive of some Divine result. (2) Penitence is the condition of heart to which alone God can impart forgiveness. (3) Wherever there is repentance it is easy to forgive our debtors. When the spirit of all grace has touched us, and our soul has become tenderly sensitive to the greatness of its Saviour, regardful of the claims of man, and obedient to the promptings of its own higher life, then humility beholds no fault equal to its own; and the heart, purged of its selfishness by its contrition, pities those who have injured it, and so penitence easily pardons every fault by which it has been injured.
R. Glover, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 74.