February 8, 2026: Prayer, a Family Affair, Pt. 1 - Matthew 6:7-9

Last week we began our new series in the Lord's Prayer.

It is Part 3 of a multi year program pulpit that I decided to

do on the basics of foundation stones of Christianity, and I

have been fond of showing you all this triangle to help you

think about a comprehensive plan for Christian discipleship.

It's very important that we grow in maturity and knowledge in

biblical literacy, but also that we learn theology, also known as

our doctrines or our beliefs, but that we also receive

training and grow in spiritual disciplines, practices, godly

habits. And as we preach, we kind of go

around this triangle. Sometimes we're more working our

way through book by book, chapter by chapter.

Sometimes we're working through a particular teaching of Holy

Scripture and doing exposition on that.

Sometimes we're training in godliness and learning about

disciplines and holy habits. Last week I introduced this

word. Many of you know it already.

It's a fancy term. Catechesis, a very old word,

refers to the teaching process, and what you use for your scope

and your sequence to figure out what to teach is sometimes

called a catechism. The teaching content and what

we've been doing in the spring is working our way through three

very important things to basic training for Christians.

One is the Apostles Creed. Another is the 10 Commandments.

And as I mentioned, we're going through a new series on the

Lord's Prayer. All of this is coming from the

rich wellspring of Holy Scripture.

It is profoundly biblical and has a robust Christian tradition

behind it. As we learn these things

together, Ji Packer in his very accessible book called Praying

the Lord's Prayer says these three give us summaries of

knowing what we believe, how we ought to behave and how to

commune with our Lord. By the way, I recommend this to

you. In fact, I I heard from one of

our home groups are going to go through this short book together

in concert with this. This series is thrilling things.

So if you would like to look at that, come see me after the

service last week. Also by way of introduction and

talking about catechisms. I mentioned that our our

children's program, particularly Basics, Basics Junior, sometimes

Lyft, goes through sections of the New City Catechism.

So here at UCC, if your kids are in children's programming,

particularly on Wednesday nights, they not only are

learning to memorize scripture, but also learning doctrinal

summaries as well if they choose to go through this particular

curriculum. Question 38 of the New City

Catechism. Again, we looked at last week.

What is prayer? New City Catechism draws its

definition from one of the psalms, Psalm 62.

Prayer is pouring out our hearts.

That's the part from the Psalm pouring out our hearts to God in

praise, petition, confession of sin, and Thanksgiving.

Now, this isn't the last word on a definition of prayer.

This is a conversation partner. It is not authoritative for your

faith and practice to have this definition.

If you have a different definition, that's OK.

In fact, it's helpful to look at several different definitions

and see them in conversation with each other.

So I also have this book on my shelf, on my shelf, which I

love. It's put out by Crossway

entitled Creeds, Confessions and Catechisms so that I can kind of

compare the different documents and see that they say,

interestingly, the Westminster Larger Catechism has the exact

same question. But in their case, it's #178

perhaps that's why we went with New City here at UCC.

Question #178 what is prayer? Westminster Larger Catechism

says this prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God.

But this one unpacks what God means a little bit, and we get a

Trinitarian riff, hovering up ourselves unto God in the name

of Jesus Christ by the help of His Spirit, with confession of

our sins and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies.

The Heidelberg Catechism goes a step further to actually talk

about the Father. In fact, the question is framed

this way. Question #120 why has Christ

commanded us to address God as quote, our Father?

Here's the answer, beautiful answer.

To awaken in us at the very beginning of our prayer.

What should be basic to our prayer?

A childlike reverence and trust that through Christ God has

become our Father and will much less refuse to give us what we

ask in faith. Then will our parents refuse us

the things of this life beautiful and behind.

This is obviously the verses from Matthew Chapter 7, The

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

words of our Lord. Or which one of you?

If his Son asked him for bread, we'll give him a stone, or if he

asked for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your

children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven

give good things to those who ask Him?

Beautiful. And it brings up this notion of

Father. And I'm going to argue this

morning that in that one word, in that word, Father is embedded

the gospel story. Because the bad news, my

friends, is because of human rebellion.

The Bible says that we were estranged from our Father and

we're brought under the tyranny of another type of Father, the

devil, that we exist in a spiritual battle.

And that conversion is in fact a type of adoption, a release from

this illegitimate father into a beautiful relationship with our

heavenly Father. This is a very important thing

for us to understand. It's basic and foundation to all

of Christian life. Martin Luther, the great

reformer who lived 500 years ago, is passionate about the

fact that we are in a spiritual battle.

He says this, for what do you think has hit her to accomplish

such great things in this Reformation?

What has checked or quelled the counsel, purposes, murder and

riot of our enemies, whereby the devil devil fought to crush us

together with the Gospel, Except, except that the prayer

of a few godly men intervened like a wall of iron on our side,

we shall nevertheless be a match for them and a match for the

devil by prayer alone, if we only persevere diligently and

not become slack. For whenever a godly Christian

praise, dear Father, let thy will be done.

God speaks from on high and says, Yes, dear child, it shall

be be so in spite of the devil and all the world.

God is speaking to us in our prayers in as much as we are

speaking to him. There is a dialogue going on and

it is a tender conversation as a father to his children in the

context of tremendous spiritual battle and acute need.

God is speaking to us through our prayers.

Ji Packer writes that every part of the Lord's Prayer is

interrogating us or questioning our faith, confronting our

unbelief and disbelief with powerful truths about who God is

and who we are. The problem of our fallenness is

a paternity problem. When Adam and Eve rebelled

against God, they fell under the devil's authority, and in some

sense they became his children. Christ himself, in a

tremendously dramatic section in John chapter 8, says this to the

John 8 · chapter mention

Pharisees in a showdown. Jesus says to the Pharisees, If

God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and

I am here. I came not of my own accord, but

he sent me. Why do you not understand what I

say? It is because you cannot bear to

hear my word. You are of your Father the

devil, and your will is to do your Father's desires.

Friends, we desperately need a good Father.

Christian conversion is presented as adoption, as was so

beautifully read from our Scripture reading this morning.

Our text this morning is Matthew 6, verse 9.

Matthew 6:9

In fact, I'm only taking on one word.

Some of you are counting all the words in this prayer and

wondering if we're going to be here for four years.

That's not the case, but I am taking one word, this word,

Father. We pray to the Father.

We pray to the Father. And if we are Christians, we are

learning even from the very words we speak as we say the

prayer of Christ that He has given to us, that we have a new

identity. No longer are we children of the

devil, we are children of God. This comes through adoption.

This is what we read in the scripture reading.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has

blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the

heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the

foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless

before Him in love. He predestined us for adoption

to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose

of His will to the praise of His glorious grace, which with which

He has blessed us in the Beloved.

This is not the only place this occurs.

It recurs in several other places.

The apostle John is particularly fond of this idea.

Look at first John 3 verse one. See what kind of love the Father

has given to us that we should be called children of God.

So we are. Conversion is adoption.

It's joining a new family. It's the release of sin and

death and tyranny under the devil.

Psalm one O 3, verse 13 says this.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows

compassion to those who fear him.

It's important to understand that we live with this

relationship of father to child under a type of authority, don't

we? Type of authority.

So we can see to those who fear him, to those who respect him,

to those who are called by His name, to those who are united

Him by faith. But what kind of father is he?

Did you see it? He's a compassionate father,

isn't he? He's full of compassion.

And So what you have in this relationship is authority and

intimacy at the same time. And any good father wants that

in the relationship with their children.

I hope that my children experience me as someone who

both has authority to teach, to guide, to discipline and direct,

but also that they experience their daddy as someone who is

gentle and compassionate, a good listener, someone who

understands so that they have this both and compassion and

fear. What kind of father is he?

We have this new identity. We are under authority.

There is compassionate intimacy. But a Father has great ability,

doesn't He? And this ability is to provide

for our needs and to protect us. Let's look at provision, the

words of our Lord. Again in Matthew chapter 6, He

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

says, look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow, sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet

your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than

they? He provides for our needs.

We're going to see that petition in the Lord's Prayer a little

bit further down, but a Father provides.

The father also protects the vulnerable, which all of us are.

Look at this from Psalm 65, sorry, Psalm 68, beginning in

verse 5 and going into 6. He is father of the fatherless

and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.

God settles the solitary in a home.

So He not only provides for our physical needs, He also protects

the vulnerable of which we all are.

He not only provides and protects, but He also provides

discipline. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 6.

Hebrews 12:6

For the Lord disciplines the one He loves and chastises every son

whom He receives. We are under His discipline, and

that is an act of love. It's part of the relationship of

being His child and He our Father.

Again, what kind of discipline is this?

If we're used to experiencing the the rage of a bad father or

the frustrating inconsistencies of a bad father, the Bible

teaches us that that's not the case at all.

We have a good and loving father.

He does not do things that bad fathers do.

Look at Ephesians chapter 6. Paul says right now to human

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

fathers others do not provoke your children to anger.

Some translations have exasperate your children, but

bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The Lord is that kind of father. His discipline includes

instruction and is not to frustrate or exasperate, but to

lead and to guide us. As we continue through our

biblical survey, we come to 2nd Corinthians chapter one, verse

3. Blessed be the God and Father of

our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all

comfort. What kind of dad is he?

He's merciful, he's full of comfort.

He's someone that you'd want to come home to.

And in fact, in Jesus's arguably most famous parable of all time,

the parable of the prodigal, the son knew that he could go home

and he was met with abundant forgiveness and provision, mercy

and and compassion. So not only does he have give us

discipline, but he also gives us mercy and comfort.

But he also is a father who rewards and blesses Matthew

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6 for and your father who sees in secret will reward

you. Help my kids experience a dad

who rewards them that blesses them.

This isn't a source of encouragement, kind of

exasperation and futility. Romans 8 says this. 16 B.

We are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of

God and fellow heirs with Christ, not only does he reward

us, but he promises us a future, a future that's rich, a future

that's used with a language of inheritance.

He's going to prepare a place for us, to bless us, to give a

home forever to us. All of this is included in that

one little word when we say Father and dress the Lord in

this powerful term. But we're going to learn as we

move into the next movement of this sermon that prayer is a

family affair. Prayer is a family affair.

We're not only praying to the Father, we're praying to the

Father in the name of the Son. No chance of ever calling God

your Father without the person and the work of Jesus Christ,

his Son. He is the one, His agency is the

the thing that allows us to be adopted as children of God.

He's the one that does it. And so when we pray, we pray in

the name of the Son. Now we know this, right?

Even when you're a little kid, your parents are teaching you

the script for prayer. At the end of the prayer, you

say in Jesus name, Amen. Right?

In Jesus name, Amen. Why do we do that?

Because we rehearse and live out our theology in the words that

we say by concluding our prayer in the name of Jesus.

Now you may ask, well, why doesn't the Lord's Prayer

conclude with in Jesus name, Amen.

And I will say many theologians will agree that it is embedded

in the term Father. And if you know your Bible and

you know your theology, you know the only way that you can say

our Father is because of the agency and the person in the

work of Jesus Christ, his Son. Prayer is a family affair.

We pray to the to God the Father according to Jesus example,

don't we? If you read John chapter 17,

John 17 · chapter mention

you'll see Jesus call Godfather over and over and over again at

least six times. He says father in this long

prayer, his high priestly prayer.

And so when we say our Father, we are praying like he prayed

when he addressed his Father as Father.

We also learned this idea of agency is deeply within the

Bible. Jesus will say this in John

John 14 · chapter mention

chapter 14. Jesus said to him, I am the way

and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, You

listening, you looking except through me.

Without Jesus, there is no relationship with the Father.

It's through his agency and his person and work that we can call

God our Father. Again, John chapter one, verse

12. But to all who did receive

Jesus, who believed in His name, God gave the right to become

children of God. So once again, we can see

directly, it's because the person and the work of Jesus

Christ that we can have adoption with the Father.

He is our elder brother. He does it all.

Not only is He the only way of the Father and the agent of

adoption, but He commands us to pray in His name.

As we've already said, John 14, and this is all over in John's

gospel. Jesus will say things like this.

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that my Father,

that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

So we pray to the Father in the name of the Son.

But remember, prayer is a family affair.

We pray by the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit, The Holy

Spirit is the means by which we pray.

Now that's kind of, you know, we get in an English grammar class

like what what is the means? If you think about a ship, a

sailing vessel that has to move, it needs wind to push the sail,

to open it up, to propel the ship.

The Spirit is often referred to as a breath, right?

I cannot speak to you without exhaling a little bit of air

through my vocal cords in order to make sounds.

My breath is the means by which I speak, and the Bible teaches

us that the Holy Spirit is the means by which we pray.

The Holy Spirit is the means by which we pray.

I also want you to notice the close association between the

Holy Spirit and the idea of adoption.

Look at Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention Romans 8 · chapter mention

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back

into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoptions as sons

by whom hear that the language of means, by whom we cry, ABBA,

Father. You can't even say our Father,

if the Holy Spirit isn't animating your prayer.

It is going through the agency of Christ to give you

communication with God that has been so broken by sin.

Prayer is a miracle. Prayer is impossible without

God's work on our behalf. Goes on to imply this.

Look Romans chapter 826. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in

our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.

Guys, do you think you really know what to pray for as we

ought? Do you think you really know

what's best? How many times have you been

totally confused? Maybe in the midst of a

confusing crisis you have. You can't see the top from the

bottom or the end from the beginning, and you just cry out

to God. God help me, I don't even know

how to pray. I don't even know where to

start. It's exactly what this verse is

about. The Holy Spirit is there, He's

there with you, animating that prayer, even if it comes out as

a confusing groan. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in

our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.

But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings

too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows

what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes

for the Saints according to the will of God.

Prayer is a family affair. Amazing truths, all embedded.

If you know your Bible and if you've been taught to understand

what's going on in that term, our Father, the Gospel is

embedded. How can we go forward as people

in this world, this confusing world, this hard world played by

sin and death and the devil? How can we go forward and apply

some of the things that we've learned?

Hopefully I can give us some some practical things to think

about in this next section of application, this next section,

1st, 1st, I hope. I hope that when we come into

prayer, we realize that we're receiving a gift.

We're not giving God anything. We're receiving something.

And the first thing, the very first thing to receive is the

gift of salvation itself. So you've never given your heart

and your life to Christ. The Bible says you have a

paternity problem. You got the wrong daddy, an

illegitimate father, and what is needed is a miracle of redeeming

love where by faith we repent, we repudiate that relationship,

we renounce and denounce the devil, We turn to Christ and say

here I am, save me, Lord Jesus, pick me up.

I am yours. Convert me, adopt me, put me

into the forever family. I am yours.

We have to receive His grace before we can respond in faith.

Maybe you've been a Christian for years and years and years,

and you'll say with me that prayer is hard and I'll agree.

I'll say yeah, prayer is impossible.

Not only you need converting grace, you need sanctifying

grace, a fresh relationship with God that reminds us that he is a

good Father, that he is produced adoption by the agency of his

Son. Very costly gift.

And then even now He will give you the grace to pray when you

don't know what to pray with inexpressible groans.

So we receive from him. That is the first thing.

The posture is like this. We see the second thing that we

need, the second thing that we need to do coming to prayer.

Once we've received the glory of the gospel in the term our

Father, then we can begin to practice.

You know, we'd like to think that we're good at prayer and

most of life. We would like to think that

we're just fine most of life. We'd like to just skip over all

the practice and all the hard work and all the learning.

We just want to skip over that to the part where we're awesome.

Just let me skip to the part where I'm awesome.

How do I do that? I say to my kids, there is no

skipping to awesome. It's a long uphill battle of

lots of work and practice. Now it's a little bit scary to

for me to say to you, we need to practice and becoming better at

prayer. Isn't prayer just something that

we pour out our hearts to God completely extemporaneously and

whatever words that come out? Yeah, there's a place for that,

absolutely. But we can also learn how to

pray as the disciples asked. Jesus.

Lord, teach us to pray and to consider deeply what these words

mean, that we can actually begin to pray in a trinitarian manner.

What does that mean? Perhaps you would like as an

action step, instead of always saying Lord when you're

addressing God or God when you're addressing God, to begin

very deliberately saying our Father when you address God and

that you can continue to say in the name of Jesus or in Jesus

name, Amen. But perhaps sometimes I tell

people to mention the Holy Spirit too.

This is a family affair. You'll hear people conclude

their prayers sometimes here in Jesus name and by the Spirit.

One God forevermore, Amen. So that in that arc of that

prayer, all three persons are addressed not as three gods, but

as the one and only true God, the Holy Trinity.

We can practice and develop our prayers to pray in the manner of

our Lord in a deep and meaningful way.

The prayer will continue to change us and mold us and shape

us into the image of Christ. It will confront our bad

thoughts and our false identities and reforge them into

the spirit of adoption that we've been talking about.

It's beautiful, highly formative.

And Speaking of formation, I think what many of us here

really deeply need is healing. We need healing.

And here we're going to talk about how the prayer to our

Father perhaps does need to bring tremendous healing because

perhaps for you, the category of Father is deeply broken, so

broken that you don't even want to say it or use it.

And I want you to know I have deep compassion and empathy, if

that's your story. Few weeks ago, my family, we

went up to Goshen, Goshen, IN, That's where we're from, spent a

few days relaxing. And one of the things to do in

Goshen, if you want to, is go to the old bag factory.

Yeah, they've got this historic bag factory where they used to

make bags years and years and years ago.

It's now been converted into, you know, swanky little shops

and places to get a bite to eat, antique floors, beautiful place,

old safe, very interesting, can walk through it.

It's a thing to do in G town. I think it's probably more fun

for grown-ups and children. But my kids, they, you know,

they put up with us. When you go into your old bag

factory in one of these areas, they have this gigantic guest

book. It's huge, massive book on a

table. And at first, I didn't know what

it was because the pages were blank.

There's a huge lines register or something here.

Wonder what this is. So I flip back a few pages and I

see, oh, there's dates and names, and this is where you can

sign. Yeah, I went to the old bag

factory, and I'm from Duluth. Great.

But the page right before our blank page, instead of having

names, there was scrawl on this huge paper just scrawled across

the entire page. I hate men.

And I read that and I was, I was so sad.

I was so sad to to think, to think about the, the kind of

life where you're going up to a guest book in a tourist place to

write in big letters in the guest book.

I hate men. What kind of what kind of

brokenness does that represent? Brokenness on whoever harmed

that person and brokenness for the result both and so and so

when we come to the text and we're we're supposed to pray our

father, that's that's some people's lived experience, the

broken category. So there's two options now, you

can just sort of like ignore everything we've been saying

about the goodness of the fatherhood of God and try to use

some other word like God or Lord or something.

Or what I would say is the more redemptive thing is to try to

heal it. Let the Holy Spirit heal it.

The miracle of redeeming love that brought Jesus Christ back

to the from the dead can reverse any brokenness.

That's what we believe. That's we come in what we come

in here and sing, and that's what we try to live any

brokenness in the Lord. I think the Lord is honest about

this. I think the Bible is honest

about this and still asks us to step toward it.

I want you to look for a second at Psalm 27, verse 10 and just

Psalms 27:10

sit with me in the first half of the verse.

For my father and my mother have forsaken me.

They're gone, They left. They're not here.

I'm abandoned. They're gone.

Then this is what the Bible does.

It comes in with these massive gospel words like but, but the

Lord will take me in. He is the Father to the

fatherless. He is the kind and merciful

father that will rebuild the category if we will go through

the hard work, the surgical work of bowing before him and saying

this word, our father. I'll land with a quote from the

great late Ji Packer. Any time you hear a theologian

saying highest privilege, you're going to stop and pause.

Especially with Ji Packer. Adoption is the highest

privilege of the gospel. The traitor is forgiven, brought

in for supper, and given the family name.

To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be

loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.

I think he's right, my friends. And we tend to really think and

sing about the pardon that we get, this amazing pardon.

You know, I was guilty. I deserve to be punished.

The judge gave me a great pardon and I'm free.

Praise God. That's all awesome.

But I think Packer's right when he says hang in there.

There's more. Because in this story, the judge

not only pardons you, but he adopts you into his own family,

a traitor, adopted in his own family, given the family name.

He's an heir to everything. That's our story.

And that's what has to be rebuilt, even if we have

tremendous brokenness. And this is how this is how

prayer changes lives, especially prayer according to the word of

God. So I'm going to conclude and

then I'm going to pray. But in our prayer, I'm going to

do something every week, which is have us all, if you want to

pray together, the Lord's Prayer.

And when we get to the confusing part, when we don't know what

we're all going to say, let's say trespasses, forgive us our

trespasses. We're going to do the old way

that I learned from my grandma. OK.

Also, when we get to that part, the musicians will come up and

we'll begin. We'll finish with a song of

response. So here's the conclusion.

And then I'm going to move right into the Lord's Prayer.

You're welcome to join me. Oh, by the way, if you don't

know it, no problem. Just listen.

And if you come week after week, by the end of this long series,

you'll probably have it memorized too.

OK, parents, teach it to your kids.

Pray it regularly. That's what we're trying to just

sort of really leaven the dough with.

So let me conclude, and then we'll pray the Lord's Prayer

together. Our sin enslaves us to a wicked

father, the devil, but God in the Gospel adopts us into a new

family. Prayer is conversation with God

addressed to the Father in the name of the Son by the Holy

Spirit. Pray with me, our Father, who

art in heaven, hallowed be your name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will

be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our

trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.