A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on September 7, 2025.
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” (Luke 11:1–4).[1]
The Lord’s Prayer, as it is commonly called, is found in two places in the New Testament, the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew and here at the beginning of the eleventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel. In our Sunday worship service, we pray the version taken from Matthew, but Luke’s version, though a more succinct version, is no less lacking in the essence of our Lord’s instruction. And perhaps this is its brilliance: So much is conveyed in so few words.
The Lord’s prayer is worthy of our use, repetition, and memorization, for every man, woman, and child, but also our study, because it is not merely to be quoted but prayed, and to be prayed it must be understood. Because, the Lord’s Prayer serves as a pattern for prayer, an example to follow, given to us by the Son of God himself. Its order and its specific petitions are to be followed, as the Lord instructed. The flippancy of our modern prayer is quickly and easily corrected under its authoritative direction.
Luke does not tell us where Jesus was, only what he was doing, “Jesus was praying.” It wasn’t the first time, of course, but the occasion led his disciples to inquire, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Apparently, John the Baptist had given his disciples instruction on prayer, and Jesus’ disciples wanted the same, to know how to pray. It was a worthy request, and they had witnessed Jesus do it often enough.
When I read the disciples request, I can’t help but think of the language in our covenant child baptism liturgy, when I instruct the parents, saying, “I encourage you to pray with and for your child and to teach your child to pray.” Like little sponges, our children will learn the Lord’s Prayer quickly, simply by their presence in Sunday worship. But the primary way they will learn is from their parents, through their example and instruction. And to teach our children well, we too must learn, following the example and instruction of our Lord, who taught us, “When you pray, say …” (Luke 11:2).
Praising as Children
For the eternally-begotten Son of God to begin his prayer, “Father,” is expected. But to teach his disciples to do the same is remarkable, even culturally offensive, especially to the Pharisees, who considered themselves the covenant children of God according to the natural lineage of Abraham but would never address God directly as “Father.” In fact, scholars tell us that addressing God directly as Father is not found in the Old Testament, or the Jewish Talmud, or the Targums, or anywhere else in Jewish literature, until the tenth century.[2] And yet, when Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, he teaches them to address God directly as “Father.”
But if “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), how can we call holy God our Father, and how may we know we are praying as his children? In the previous chapter, Jesus said, “. . . no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:22). God is then known only as Father by those “to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” To whom does the Son reveal the Father? The answer, as the apostle Paul tells us, is those whom God predestined “for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1:5-6). And for those whom he predestined, God sent forth his Son to redeem us that we might receive adoption as his children.[3] According to God’s mercy and by his grace, through faith in Christ, we are justified as righteous, adopted as children of God, and made heirs with the eternal Son of God.[4] The privilege of prayer is then according to the sovereign grace of God, and as his children we pray to our heavenly Father.
To address God as our heavenly Father does not connote a lack of reverence or respect. He is not the inept father of parody nor the tyrant of mythology but the Lord of glory. And as his children we praise him, praying, “hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2). Our prayers do not make God any holier than he already is, but to hallow is to revere as sacred, to revere God’s name as he has revealed himself to be. We are praying for the preeminence of God’s name, that his character and attributes, all that he has revealed himself to be, be known and honored among every tribe, tongue, and nation, including you and me too. We pray as Jesus prayed elsewhere, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28). And it is this God-glorifying petition that sets the tone for what follows.
Living and Longing
Closely connected to the preceding petition, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come” (Luke 11:2b). Just as the psalmist sings, “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!” (Ps. 150:6), so we pray that God’s reign and rule be over all of this rebellious realm, over Satan and his minions, and every soul that shall believe, that God’s will be happily obeyed on earth as it is in heaven, which begins with us. Just as we are children of our heavenly Father, we are citizens of his heavenly kingdom,[5] a present reality and a future hope. Just as Christ ushered in his kingdom, ruling and reigning over all who believe, we live our lives accordingly, orienting our hearts and minds toward the things of God, living in the present reality of our identity in Christ but also longing for his return and the consummation of our salvation. In his epistle to the Philippians, the apostle Paul explains that since our citizenship is in heaven, we await the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, “who,” he explains, “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21). We are praying for that day!
We pray in this petition nothing less than the testimony of Scripture. At Adam’s fall, the protoevangelium was given of the woman’s offspring to come who would crush the serpent’s head.[6] We are told that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth” (Rom. 8:22), awaiting the consummation of the kingdom, over which Christ “shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). And so, we join the apostle John in praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20). Until that day, we continue to pray, in humble dependence upon our heavenly Father’s daily provision.
Depending upon Provision
When we pray, “Give us each day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3), “bread” is of course a metaphor not only for food but for our all our necessities. We are prone to take the gracious provisions of God’s common grace for granted. Jesus teaches us to pray for them, for life, breath, and everything.[7] James reminds us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (Jas. 1:17), but we must not presume that we will receive what we do not ask for, not because God withholds what we need but because we need a daily reminder of his gracious provision.
Of course, we live in a modern world in which we conveniently purchase what we need. We work and earn the funds to purchase what we eat, what we wear, where we live. We should be grateful for such convenience but also cautious of presumption. Dale Ralph Davis wisely asks, “who do you think enables the economy to produce the food and who gave you your job to pay for the stuff? As Jesus’ disciples we are always totally dependent on our Father. The text in the manna story, ‘they gathered it morning by morning’ (Exod. 16:21), is still the story of our life.” Dependence upon the Lord is learned, and praying for our Father’s daily provision is a spiritual discipline that teaches and develops it.
Forgiving as Forgiven
The apostle John teaches us to readily confess our sins to God, who is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). As sin is “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God,”[8] only God can forgive sin, every sin that he already knows we have committed. Therefore, John explains that denying our sin that we should confess reveals a lack of self-honesty and the absence of faith, an unwillingness to be forgiven by the One most offended. In contrast, given the presence of our sin nature, the Christian life is, as it were, a life of continual repentance. This involves the continual practice of prayer but also the practice of forgiveness, forgiving others as God has forgiven us.
Our forgiveness is not conditioned upon our forgiveness of others but informs it. As John Calvin comments,
[T]he forgiveness, which we ask that God would give us, does not depend on the forgiveness which we grant to others: but the design of Christ was, to exhort us, in this manner, to forgive the offenses which have been committed against us, and at the same time, to give, as it were, the impression of his seal, to ratify the confidence in our own forgiveness.”[9]
Just as faithful as our Father forgives us our sins, we must be faithful to forgive the offenses of others against us.
To emphasize this point, Jesus uses the metaphor of debt: “we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4a). When someone offends us, or “sins” against us, so to speak, it is as if they have incurred a debt that we may hold against them. But for those who are in Christ, we who see God’s forgiveness of our sins as infinitely greater than any sin against us, we forgive just as we have been forgiven, seeing others not through the lens of what they owe us but liberty in Christ. A transformed heart, by God’s grace through faith, results in a transformed life, characterized by the same mercy and forgiveness received from God. When someone does not forgive others, it reveals that they have not experienced God’s forgiveness. To say, “I will not forgive,” reveals not only a calloused heart but likely the absence of Christ.
The best place to confront unforgiveness is on our knees. As we confess our sins, receiving the forgiveness that flourishes and nourishes our fellowship with God, we remember the forgiveness we owe those indebted to us. And should we find ourselves fixating on the offenses of others, this petition reminds us that our sins alone provide plenty for us to pray for.
Faithful through Testing
Since Adam’s fall, there is one thing we are sure to face in this life: temptation to sin. And so, we pray, “lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:4b). The language of this petition is difficult for the literalists, because it sounds as if we are praying for God not to do something he might do. But such a deduction is to misread the poetic brevity of the prayer. Scripture is clear: Our heavenly Father is neither the author of sin nor tempts anyone.[10] And yet, there are times when he allows us to be tested to strengthen our faith.
So, what are we praying in this petition? First, it is a petition of humility, a kind of confession of our weakness, of our propensity to sin, and our absolute dependence upon the Lord. As we sing in Robert Robinson’s hymn,
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love.[11]
When tempted to sin, our flesh wants it, desperately, often powerfully. Recognizing this reality leads us to pray for the Lord’s provision, that he keep us from temptation to sin and keep us from sinning.
Second, we are praying that the Lord continue his work in us, conforming us to the image of his Son,[12] that through our Holy Spirit-enabled obedience we will mature in Christlikeness. We do not mature in Christlikeness by sinning, nor continue in sin that grace may abound. [13] Rather than walking ambivalently toward sin, the apostle Paul says, “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (Rom. 6:13). And, one of the ways we present ourselves to God is through prayer for deliverance, knowing that he who taught us how to pray was also “tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Let us then be faithful to pray as our Lord taught us, following the pattern and petitions he has given. Consider that our Lord Jesus has given us a prayer, which contains, as Calvin says, “all that he allows us to seek of him, all that is of benefit to us, all that we need ask.[14] Such is the kindness and mercy of God, who has given the prayer he desires to hear from us.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] https://www.ligonier.org/posts/privilege-addressing-god-father
[3] Gal. 4:4-5
[4] Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 4:4-7
[5] Phil. 3:20
[6] Gen. 3:15
[7] Acts 17:25
[8] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 14, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 363.
[9] https://biblehub.com/commentaries/calvin/luke/11.htm
[10] Jas. 1:13-15
[11] “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” Trinity Hymnal, Revised Ed. (Suwanee: Great Commission Publications, 1990), 457.
[12] Rom. 8:29
[13] Rom. 6:1-2
[14] John Calvin, Ford Lewis Battles, trans., Institutes of the Christian Religion, III: XX (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960).
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 