"After this manner therefore pray ye:"

I have wanted write about The Lord's Prayer for quite a while. I'm glad The Lord has finally lead us here.  In no way do I claim that this study is extensive or complete, not even close.  But I'll touch on the basics.  I'm going to use the King James translation because this passage of scripture is so familiar and the King James version is the most widely known.

The Lord's Prayer can be found in the 6th chapter of Matthew and is part of the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus is teaching a great multitude of people and He basically lays out His ministry.  This sermon is absolutely full of nuggets and a person could spend quite a while studying it out.  For now, we will focus on Matthew 6:9-13.  It says, 

     "After this manner therefore prey ye: 
     Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.  
     Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done 
     in earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread. 
    And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our                debtors. 
  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from   evil:
 For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen."

I am always saying that nearly every word Jesus spoke is out of (or at least alludes to) the Old Testament. His prayer is no different.  Jesus chose particular scriptures when He constructed His prayer to drive home the point He wanted to make.

Our Father-

While Father isn't the most common way the Old Testament refers to God, it is there. Deuteronomy 32:6 says, 

"Do you thus repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people?  Is not He your Father, who created you, who made you and established you?"

  And, Isaiah 64:8 says, 

"But now, O Lord, Thou art our Father, we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all are the work of Thy hand." 

So, of all the ways God is referred to in the Old Testament, Jesus told us to refer to Him as our Father, making Him very close and personal to us.

Who art in Heaven-

This is likely a reference to I Kings 8:49 which is from Solomon's prayer of dedication for the Temple which says,

"...then may You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, their prayer and petition and may you uphold their cause." 

If this is the reference Jesus is citing, it reminds us of Gods authority over the earth and His uniqueness from our earthly fathers.

Hallowed be Thy name-

To hallow something is to make it sacred or set apart from the mundane.  This is almost certainly a reference to Ezekiel 36:22-23 which says, 

"Therefore, tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord God says: It is not for your sake that I will act, O house of Israel, But for My holy name which you profaned among the nations to which you went.  I will show the holiness of My great name..."

This brings to mind the passage in Isaiah where he saw the Lord on His throne, high and exalted.  There were two seraphim, each with six wings.  With two wings they covered their faces, with two wings they covered their feet and with two they were flying.  They called out to one another,

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; His glory fills all the earth," (Isaiah 6:1-3).  

I think that these words were more than a declaration to the universe.  I think the seraphim couldn't say anything else.  Have you ever been in a situation where you were speechless and could only say something like, "Wow!"  I think that is the idea the seraphim are conveying.  The point is, God does what He does for the sake of His Holy Name. 

So, Jesus takes us from bringing God down to us by calling Him Father to reminding us right away not to forget that God is holy and that God puts great importance in His name.  We should as well.  He is our Father who deserves our respect.

Thy kingdom come-

The entire 72nd Psalm is a prayer for the establishment of God's kingdom on earth but here are some other verses that may have influenced Jesus.  

Zechariah 14:9 says, 

    "And the Lord will be king over all the earth.  On that day     the Lord will be one and His name one."

Daniel 2:44 says, 

"And in the time of those things, the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, a kingdom that shall not be transferred to another people.  It will crush and wipe out all these kingdoms, but shall itself last forever." 

Another verse we will look at is from Daniel as well. It says, 

"The kingship and dominion and grandeur belonging to all the kingdom under heaven will be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High.  Their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them,"  Daniel 7:27.  

Thy kingdom come is therefore, a prayer of hope for all those who believe and also our agreement with God to right the wrongs brought on by sin.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven- 

We wouldn't need a particular verse to show why Jesus prayed this. The will of God was a perfect world without death or sin and His will is to restore that.  However, we do have verses that Jesus probably referred to when he prayed this line in His prayer.

Psalm 40:8 says, 

"I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

  Psalm 143:10 says, 

"Teach me to do your will, for your are my God!  Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!" 

And the verse that ties the first half of the phrase to the second, 

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," 

is Jeremiah 23:5.  It says, 

"Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land." 

God's will and God's kingdom in one verse.

Give us this day our daily bread- 

This is a big one.  On the surface, it is a reference to Proverbs 30:8 which says, 

"Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread." 

But, let's consider that shortly after giving us this prayer, in the same sermon, Jesus tells us not to worry about food or clothing (Matthew 6:31).  He tells us that our Heavenly Father knows we need them.  This leads me to think that Jesus had something deeper in mind.

While praying for God's provision, acknowledging His part in all the blessings we receive, we should not forget that Jesus called himself, "the bread of life," in John 6:35. Let us also not forget about the manna that God provided in the wilderness in Exodus 16 which Psalm 78:24 calls 'bread from heaven,' or the fact that Jesus reminds us that 

"Man shall not live by bread alone by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God," Deuteronomy 8:3 

which He also quotes in Matthew 4:4 when He was tempted in the wilderness. 

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors- 

This reminds us of our sin, our indebtedness to God and how God forgives.  If the holy, mighty God will make a way to forgive us, should we not be quick to forgive any debt made against us? 

 Psalm 18:20 says,

"The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath He recompensed me."  

This part of the prayer also reminds us of passages  like the one we find in Deuteronomy 15:1 which says, 

"At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts."  

It goes on to say in Deuteronomy 15:7-9, 

"If there is a poor man among your brothers within any of the gates in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you are not to harden your heart or shut your hand from your poor brother. Instead, you are to open your hand to him and freely loan him whatever he needs. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought in your heart; 'The seventh year, the year of release, is near,' so that you look upon your poor brother begrudgingly and give him nothing. He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin." 

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil-

People sometimes don't think this part of the prayer through.  They wonder about God leading us into temptation to sin, but the Bible says in James 1:13,

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man:"

So, now we know that Jesus isn't implying that God tempts us to sin.  As a matter of fact, the word translated as temptation can be translated as trial or affliction and many think this is a prayer for deliverance from not only the trials and tribulations of daily life, but the Great Tribulation of the last days.

The second half of this part of the prayer is to deliver us from evil.  Many translations say, "deliver us from the evil one."  Either way, this lets us know that there is a difference between sin and evil.  The definition  of sin is 'missing the mark.' As we talked about in another study, evil is the continuous mindset that would seek to harm the kingdom of God and His people.  We ask God to deliver us from evil because the enemy of god seeks to destroy us, mind, body, and soul.

For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever, Amen-

Actually, this ending isn't found in the earliest manuscripts and was likely added later by early church fathers.  Why do we continue to say it then?  Because, it too is found in the Old Testament and whether or not the earliest manuscripts contain it, I have no problem imagining Jesus closing His prayer with it. 

I Chronicles 29:11 says, 

"Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all."

As I said before, this only scratches the surface of The Lord's Prayer.  I encourage you to study it on your own.  Maybe your could study the prayer in the light of the gospel or as a picture of Exodus.  You may want to do a study of this prayer and contrast it with the opposing kingdom.  I could go on because there is a lot to study here.

Thank you for stopping by and God bless you and yours!