From “Our Father”

      As we prayed the Our Father in yesterday’s service, I was stricken by a very powerful observation concerning what the Lord Jesus has directed us to pray.

      In earlier occasions I have also observed that the Lord Jesus teaches us to pray differently than He prayed and prays. Whenever Jesus prays, He prays: “My Father.” But He teaches us to pray: “Our Father.” This is because Jesus is the only-begotten of the Father, even from eternity. Jesus is truly one with the Father. We are made to be brothers of Jesus, created in His image, for Jesus is the very image of God.

      In His prayer for His disciples Jesus prayed that they would be made one even as He and the Father are one. He did not in any way imply that we would be one with Father, except that we are made to be one in Jesus. In Jesus we are made to be one, even as in the Godhead the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. In Jesus, in His body, we are married to God, as St. Paul declares this mystery in Ephesians 5. We are not married to God as individuals, but together as the bride of Christ. Thus we pray, “Our Father.”

      In this connection, as we pray the Our Father, I observed yesterday another affirmation that this prayer is really very simply an extended “Amen!” to all that God teaches us in the Holy Scriptures. I observed that the Fourth Petition begins a reiteration and explanation of what we prayed in the first three petitions. In the first three petitions we affirm that as our Heavenly Father, God proclaims His holy will to be that His kingdom comes to us even now as we live our earthly lives and that His good and gracious will be worked to us and in us so that we live in accord with His good and gracious will within His Holy Church and in our daily lives. Having prayed this as what God’s will is for His beloved children, we then affirm this as our Daily Bread, our daily need fully supplied by our loving Father. Then we affirm that God’s kingdom coming to us through our baptism and being renewed among us in the Holy Supper, we receive God’s promise to forgive us freely of all of our sins so that we eagerly will also freely forgive all others for whom Jesus has won this forgiveness. We then further acknowledge that this is the very means by which God delivers us from the evil one and all of the evil in the world so that we live in the safety of His household all our days. We then conclude, praying an extended doxological Amen.

      Truly the Lord is our Shepherd and as His beloved sheep we shall have no want.

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Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday anniversary. It was a joy to celebrate with her the gift of life that God has bestowed upon her and the gift of her life and love that He has bestowed upon me through her.

This celebration was also a reminder to me of the reality that I face every day, the reality that I can never be to her the husband that I desire to be. She does not fuss about this fact, but I do. I often ponder the frailty of my love and the impotence of my strength in providing for her.

I have often wondered how I would do if anything ever happened to her so that she truly depended upon me. Before we were married she had cancer. What if it should return someday and she depended upon me to care for her? What sort of husband would I be? When I consider the poverty of my current bestowal of love to her, I cower to consider how I could fail her if she ever really needed my love to be strong.

I am very grateful to know that my strength comes not from my internal fortitude but from the Lord. I also am very grateful that my wife knows this as well, both regarding my strength and hers.

How can I even properly account how blessed I am to have such a wife in the Lord? She tells me regularly that her greatest blessing and joy is in having a husband who preaches the Gospel. She speaks of her gratitude to God for the fact that I count the Gospel as the one thing necessary and that I spend my days searching the Scriptures so as to be able to direct her to that one necessary thing in her life and in our life together.

Can any man be more richly blessed?

Oh, what a happy birthday! Oh how wonderful that God has brought my wife into the world and has given her to me for as long as we both shall live.

Happy Birthday, Dear! Thank You, Lord!

Our Daily Bread

Smack in the middle of the Our Father the Lord Jesus placed the Fourth Petition: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

What did the Lord Jesus mean by this? We usually hear from this the wonderful explanation that Dr. Luther supplies in the Small Catechism.

However, considering the context of the entire prayer, could it be that the Lord was teaching much more to us as His disciples?

Consider His declaration to the Jews in John 6:26-35.

Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?

Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.

Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

With this declaration from the lips of the Lord, does the Fourth Petition sound richer and fuller? Is there a reason that this sits in the middle of the prayer that He gave, saying, “When you pray, pray this”? Could it be that the Lord means for us to receive this petition as more than the center of the prayer but also the very foundation of our life of faith?

Since Jesus declares that faith in Jesus is the work of God, does it not seem fitting that He would teach us to pray that our Father in heaven would daily give us this bread of faith for our life in Him?

Wouldn’t you agree that this is “food” for thought?

Give Us Our Daily Bread

In our prayer that the Lord Jesus supplied us, He teaches what we are unwilling to hear.

Right in the middle of this prayer He teaches us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

What does this mean? Why is this placed in the center? We tend to want to put it first, asking for this and that need and want of body and soul. Yet the Lord Jesus places it squarely in the center of the prayer that He commands us, “Pray like this.” In our attempts at piety we may even be tempted to place this at the end of our prayers. But not our Lord. He places it in the center, where we cannot miss it.

Why?

Because this petition is not what we think it is.

If we examine this prayer carefully, very carefully, and if we examine it from the perspective with which our Lord commands us to pray, we learn that each petition is really a repetition of the previous one, with them all centering upon the central petition of “Give us this day our daily bread.”

If you doubt this, consider what Jesus told Satan.

Matthew 4:3-4

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Then again in Matthew 6:31-33 the Lord declares:

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Is this not what the Our Father teaches us to pray? If so, then, where do we find our daily bread?

Acts 2:44-47

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

Is this not what our Lord teaches us to pray in the prayer that He gave to us?

If we prayed with this as our understanding, would we not continually say with David in Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. . . . Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.