Bible reading
1 It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.” 2 And He said to them, “When you pray, say:
‘Father, hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 ‘Give us each day our daily bread.
4 ‘And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”
Source: Luke 11:1-4 (New American Standard Bible)
Bible Study summary
The fatherhood between God and us
A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation
Psalms 68:5
Before we know God our Father, we are like fatherless orphans in this world. God found us and provided us a home and protects us under Him. Many people are still spiritually fatherless in this world, but no one is there to guide and help them. By addressing God as ‘Father’ at the beginning of the prayer, Jesus is restoring the relationship between his disciples and God.
This relationship is not just a title, but God plays the actual role of a father. This is described in 2 Samuel 7:14 –
I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men.
God takes the responsibility of shaping and molding His children into His character.
‘Hallowed be your name’ – What does it mean?
In Ezekiel 38:23 (I will magnify Myself, sanctify Myself, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the Lord.), we can see that ‘make Myself known’ follows right after ‘sanctify’, which is synonymous with ’‘Hallowed’. Similarly, ‘hallowed be your name’ also implies ‘made known of your name’. Here Jesus is praying for God to do something in order to make His name known to the world, so that God’s salvation can be done in more people. This is described in 1 King 8:43 (hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, to fear You, as do Your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by Your name.).
To sanctify also means to purify. Being Christians, we need to remember that we represent God’s name in this world. Our behaviours and characteristics show to the world what God has taught us; in other words, when our behaviours are against God’s principle, we are bringing a bad image to God. In Ezekiel 36:23 (I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,” declares the Lord God, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.), God was not pleased when His name was ‘profaned’ by the corruptions of the Isrealites.
‘Your kingdom come’ – why did Jesus ask for this?
Kingship has to do with authority and power. Without a king setting the order for the country, things would be in chaos, and people would have no peace. In fact, chaos is still happening in this world; and even if it seems like we are living in a peaceful environment, chaos could come at any time with a certain trigger. This is why we ask God to come and be our kings – we need God to set the order for this world, which will eventually bring peace among the people.
‘The daily bread’ – what is it? Why are we praying for only a daily supply of bread, instead of some larger quantity?
Here we need to recall what happened in Exodus, when the Isrealites had to collect the manna daily. Like the Isrealites, we are on a spiritual Exodus too. Although we’ve left behind the world’s bondage, we’re still wandering in a spiritual wilderness until God’s kingdom comes one day in the future. While we are still on this journey, we seek for God’s guidance and wisdom from His words, which are the spiritual bread that sustains us daily. And not only is this bread keeping us well-fed, the enjoyment it brings should not be overlooked too, as Ezekiel found the ‘scroll’ to be ‘sweet as honey’ (Ezekiel 2:9 – 3:3).
‘Lead us not into temptation’ – how to interpret it?
Temptations can be manifested in many forms. Some are obvious, like money and fame; others are probably hidden and difficult to recognize, for example the temptation of testing God, which turns out to be a serious offence against God (Deu 6:16). Hence it’s important to pray for God to help us recognize these temptations so we don’t fall into them.
Reading the Lord’s prayer makes me reflect on my own prayers. Then I realized how many times I forget to pray about His kingdom to come and His name to be known. These items were left out because they sounded too grand to me, and I didn’t know how I should approach them in my prayers. But God’s words once again reminded me what these phrases entail.
It’s also amazing how Jesus perfectly summarized pretty much all of our daily issues into merely five lines – just think about how many problems are originated from disorderness, from an unwillingness to forgive someone, from the unawareness of temptations… When I recall my prayers, which are sometimes all about the small issues that I encounter everyday, I realized that I wasn’t praying for the root problems.
Bible study by Pastor Calvin
Summary by Kylin