Summary: In the Holy Bible, there are quite a number of prayers that we can model our prayer after. Praying is something that we think is very easy, but it is actually something that we have to learn for a lifetime. There are prayers in the Bible that we can model our prayers after. The Lord’s prayer is one of them, and it begins with “Our Father in Heaven”. The intimacy between Jesus and the Father can be seen in His prayer. And it is such a blessing that He taught us to pray by first addressing God as our Father.
God is our Father and we belong to Him because He bought us! In NT, we can appreciate this more because we have been bought with the blood of Jesus! This indeed is a privileged status. We are priceless - our lives are priceless. Always remember it is a privilege to call God our Father, it is a privilege to be His children!

In the Holy Bible, there are quite a number of prayers that we can model our prayer after. Praying is something that we think is very easy, but it is actually something that we have to learn for a lifetime. There are many Bible verses teaching us how to pray, and there are prayers in the Bible that we can model our prayers after.

John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray. So one day, Jesus’ disciples also came to Him and asked Him how to pray. So He taught them what we commonly call the Lord’s prayer.

I have often thought to myself, why is it called the Lord’s prayer? For a brief moment, I thought, perhaps the Lord Himself loved to pray in this manner. But very quickly, I told myself that it cannot be! As there is a part which says, “Forgive us our debts” - but Jesus has no sins or transpasses or debts that need to be forgiven! Perhaps “Lord’s prayer” is a misnomer, it should instead be called “our prayer”!

For now, whenever we gather in church, we cannot sing. At the end of the closing prayer, we recite the Lord’s prayer together. When we do something too often, it becomes like a ritual and we do not give much thought to it. Some of us can memorise this prayer, some even in two or three languages, but do we really know this prayer?

This is one of the best prayers in the Bible, because Jesus Himself teaches it to us, and tells us to pray in such a manner. We need to understand this prayer.

It begins with “Our Father in Heaven”. Common point between us and Jesus, Jesus calls God His Father as well! The prophets in the OT addressed God as either ‘God’, ‘YHWH’, or ‘Lord’. But the intimacy between Jesus and the Father can be seen in His prayer. And it is such a blessing that He taught us to pray by first addressing God as our Father.

But God being our Father is not an NT/Christian invention! It is rooted in the OT Israelite faith! There are quite a number of verses in OT that tell us that God is our Father! And Jesus now comes to us to emphasise the fact that the one whom we worship (the master of the universe, the High King of Heaven), is your Father!

The Lord’s prayer is very similar to the prayers that the Jews would recite in some of their rituals or formal worship. Two of the more well-known ones are known as the Kadish (means sanctify, came into existence in 1st century BC), and the Amidah (means standing prayer, originated around the time the temple was destroyed by the Romans).

So, we begin our prayer by saying, “Our Father in Heaven”. This talks about our relationship with God. However, we must not miss out the fact that He is in Heaven!

Isaiah 63:16-19
Doubtless You are our Father,
Though Abraham was ignorant of us,
And Israel does not acknowledge us.
You, O LORD, are our Father;
Our Redeemer from Everlasting is Your name.
O LORD, why have You made us stray from Your ways,
And hardened our heart from Your fear?
Return for Your servants’ sake,
The tribes of Your inheritance.
Your holy people have possessed it but a little while;
Our adversaries have trodden down Your sanctuary.
We have become like those of old, over whom You never ruled,
Those who were never called by Your name.

During the time of Isaiah, people of God are told that God is their Father! We talk about God being our Father, because ‘father’ and ‘son’ is a human relationship. But when we talk about our earthly ancestry, this earthly ancestry is situated in a historical timeline. However, God is our Father in heaven! Therefore, His fatherhood is beyond time and history. Verse 19 says that there was a time when the Israelites’ ancestors had no relationship with God. When the Israelites felt far from God, they feel like those from old, those whom God never ruled, those who were never called by His name.

The patriarch Abraham was chosen by God. Grandson Jacob was called Israel. However, they existed in such a distant past. The Israelites in the time of Isaiah felt that their father Abraham & Israel never knew them. Though they were Israelites, they felt unacknowledged by their fathers, they were not known by their fathers in a personal way. But God our Father is different! He is the Father of all the chosen people across all eras, across all generations. He is their Redeemer from Everlasting (verse 16)! The fatherhood of God transcends time.

Isaiah 64:8
But now, O LORD,
You are our Father;
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all we are the work of Your hand.

God is our divine origin. He is the divine source of our lives, and of all the things we need to keep alive. He is also the source of our direction in life. He created us and controls our destiny, just like how a potter controls the clay! But let us also think about the clay itself. Without the potter, the clay is nothing! It is useless until it is placed in the hands of the potter. Then, it can be fashioned into a useful vessel. Likewise us, we are but dust, but we are not just fashioned by divine hands - the divine breath of God is blown into us! And that makes us noble, that makes us priceless. That creates a relationship between God and us. Humans are God’s children because He breathed into our nostrils.

When we address God as our Father, it also shows that we are in a position of need - He is higher than us, He provides for us. Jesus hence tells us in Matthew 6 that our Father knows our needs!

Matthew 10:29
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.

If God takes care of even the sparrow, how much more will He take care of us, as our Father?

When we say “Our Father”, Jesus tells us also to say, “hallowed be Thy name”. Earlier in Isaiah 63, we read about how the Israelites felt that they were never called by God’s name. Being called by God’s name is an honour. But do we honour that name? Jesus says, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

2 Samuel 6:2
And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, whose name is called by the Name, the LORD of Hosts, who dwells between the cherubim.

This is an interesting verse. In NKJV, it says God, whose name is called by the Name (Chinese only mentions the first ‘name’). In Hebrew, there is a doubling of the word ‘name’, and it is not easy to translate it.

This is interesting, because the Jews today are very afraid of pronouncing God’s name. They are afraid even to write God’s name. His name is hence represented by 4 letters - ‘YHWH’. Even when writing English, they do not dare to spell ‘God’ - they would write ‘G-d’! Verbally, they will refer to Him as ‘Adonai’, i.e. ‘my Lord’. This is why in the English Bible, ‘YHWH’ is translated as ‘LORD’.

However, another way for them to mention God’s name, e.g. to praise God, would be to say “Praise the Name!”. I am not suggesting we attach this kind of superstitious awe to God’s name that the Jews do, but rather, we can see that the Jews have an overwhelming reverence for God’s name. We Christians fall short of this by a really great distance.

Jesus says, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name”.

Before we approach God in prayer to ask for things, we ought to praise His name, and say blessed is His name! But how can we honour a name, if we cannot even honour a relationship? Name is just a name, just a word spelt out, just something pronounced. But if we really honour God, it is because we honour that relationship we have with Him - who He is to us!

Malachi 1:6
“A son honors his father,
And a servant his master.
If then I am the Father,
Where is My honor?
And if I am a Master,
Where is My reverence?
Says the LORD of hosts
To you priests who despise My name.
Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’

God says, if I am the Father, then where is My honour? Later on, the verse mentions that the priests despise His name (another mention of ‘name’!). We honour the name, we honour the relationship.

Malachi 2:10
Have we not all one Father?
Has not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously with one another
By profaning the covenant of the fathers?

God is being mentioned one again as “Father”, and here also mention the covenant of the “fathers”. We are taught as humans to honour our earthly fathers. And their fathers had a covenant with the heavenly Father! God wants us to realise that the honour due to Him, is the same as the honour that a son gives to his father. God is not just ‘a father’, not just ‘any father’, but the ‘Father’ of the ‘fathers’! He is ‘the Father’, worthy of all honour!

Deuteronomy 32:6-9
Do you thus deal with the LORD,
O foolish and unwise people?
Is He not your Father, who bought you?
Has He not made you and established you?
“Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations.
Ask your father, and he will show you;
Your elders, and they will tell you:
When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations,
When He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples
According to the number of the children of Israel.
For the LORD’s portion is His people;
Jacob is the place of His inheritance.

Here again mentions God as the “Father”, as well as their “fathers”. If you do not know why God is your Father, then ask your fathers! Because they had a relationship with God in the days of old. God wants to impress on them that He brought their fathers out of Egypt. If He had not brought their fathers out of Egypt, they would still be slaves! But now, they are His people, they are His possessions! They are His inheritance! Is this not a privileged status?

When we call to God, “Our Father” whenever we recite the Lord’s prayer, do we realise that by saying ‘Our Father’, we are acknowledging our very honourable and privileged status? Fun fact, some churches call the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father”. Whenever we say “Our Father” in the Lord’s prayer, let us say it with deep reverence. Let us say it with the 3 questions we read earlier in mind:

1. God asked in Malachi, if I am the Father, where is My honour?
2. Malachi asked, have we not all one Father? Then why do we still deal treacherously with one another?
   We are all brothers and sisters, must deal with one another with honesty.
3. Moses asked, is He not your Father, who bought you?
   We belong to Him because He bought us! In NT, we appreciate this more because we have been bought with the blood of Jesus! This indeed is a privileged status. We are priceless, our lives are priceless.

Always remember it is a privilege to call God our Father! It is a privilege to be God’s children.

1 John 3:1-2
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

There is a Christian song based on this verse, that I love to sing with great joy. The status as children of God is given to us in the here and now, not only given to us in the future when Jesus comes again! With that, eternal life has been given to us. If we do not get eternal life, and the status of being God’s children now, then when tomorrow comes, it is too late. We must become His children today. We are now called children of God (verse 2), not in the future.

Because of this, we have to start purifying ourselves to be like Him, because when He comes again, He shall be like Him! And this should be the content of our prayers. When we pray, we ask God to purify us, because when Jesus comes again, we will be even better than just children of God, we will be like Him. We will be as He is!

On the day of our baptism, there is a change in status. But from that they on, transformation must take place! So that when Jesus comes again, we are like Him, we are like God.

Hebrews 2:10-12
For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying:
“I will declare Your name to My brethren;
In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.”

Imagine we are somebody in society, well-respected, everyone wants to associate with us. We walk among the highs of society. But we have a useless brother. One day on the streets, we bump into him - reeking of alcohol, torn clothes, haven’t showered in days. And he says ‘hi brother’. How would we feel?

But here in Hebrews, it says that Jesus is not ashamed to call us His brethren! Verse 14 onwards says how He becomes in every way like us. It is not because we are nice, holy, strong, etc. that He is unashamed to associate with us. It is very much like Moses, who was not ashamed to identify himself with the Hebrew slaves, rather than to remain with his status of the Egyptian price. However, in our case, it is much worse - we are not just physical slaves, we are slaves of sin!

Hence, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us! Jesus is not ashamed to be called our brother.

Hebrews 2 also says that He declares the name of God to us! What does this mean, for Him to declare the name of God to us?

Exodus 34:5-8
Now the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.

It is so meaningful when I read Hebrews 2. First, it says Jesus is not ashamed to call us His brethren, and then it says He will proclaim God’s name to us. It is meaningful because when I remember Exodus 34, when God proclaims His own name, He says ‘keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving inquiry and transgression and sin’. He is ‘merciful and gracious’! Jesus is not ashamed to call us His brethren, because He proclaims this name that is merciful and gracious, abounding in goodness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin!

What have we done to deserve this? It is a privilege that we do not deserve at all! Knowing this, how can we not hallow or treasure this name? When Moses heard this proclamation, He fell down towards the earth, and bowed his head to worship.

All of us should prostrate ourselves, at the very proclamation of His name.

1 Chronicles 29:10-11
Therefore David blessed the LORD before all the assembly; and David said:
“Blessed are You, LORD God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever.
Yours, O LORD, is the greatness,
The power and the glory,
The victory and the majesty;
For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours;
Yours is the kingdom, O LORD,
And You are exalted as head over all.

In conclusion, here once again says “Father”. Our Father is the king, to whom is the kingdom, the power and the glory. And this is how we end our Lord’s prayer.

When we pray, when we ask God for things, we make our supplications with the trust that God cares for us, for all our needs, not just as an outsider, or as a detached Creator, but as a loving Father. When we call upon Him, do not just call Him Father, but really revere Him as our Father! Let us have deep reverence for His name. Finally, be filled with gratitude and thank Him, for this privileged status as His children.

Hymn 453: A Child of the King