At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray 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, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The next petition is a bear. It is the one part of the prayer that the Lord goes back to comment on after He is done teaching the prayer (Matt. 6:14-15). There He says bluntly that if we forgive, our heavenly Father will forgive us. He says also that if we refuse to forgive, then our trespasses will not themselves be forgiven.

The word used in the prayer is the word for debt or obligation, while the word in the Lord’s commentary is the word for sin or trespass. The word rendered as forgive is the same word throughout. We ask God to forgive our obligations to Him, and we show our understanding of what we request by extending that same forgiveness of obligations that others owe to us. When the Lord goes back to comment on it, and uses the word for sin or trespass, this shows that He is including the obligations we create by our misbehavior, or by our falling short. This means that when we ask God to forgive us for those things that we did on purpose, we must also be fully prepared to forgive others for the things they did to us on purpose.

We often confuse forgiveness with pardon. We are prepared to pardon others for the things they did accidentally. If someone bumps into you in a crowded room, jostling you accidentally, he will say, “Pardon me,” and you will say, “Don’t mention it.” But forgiveness is required when the person does it on purpose. We often respond that we can’t forgive that—he did it on purpose. But the only things you can forgive are those things that were actually sins. That is what God forgives in us, is it not?

So the reason it is a bear is that we tend to judge others by their words and actions, and we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and motives. He did this, while I meant that. This is simply a way of using unequal weights and measures, and it is not surprising that those who wrong us come up short so frequently.

The thing we must seek to learn in all this is the perspective to see ourselves as one of the characters on the stage, and to look at the scene as a whole—instead of trying to interpret every scene with one character missing (you).

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray 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, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The next petition is straightforward, and concerns our earthly needs. The prayer has begun by hallowing the name of the Father in the heavens, and then prays that His kingdom which is also in the heavens would descend to earth. Having come down to earth, the next petition concerns how we will stay alive in the meantime. What shall we eat while the kingdom is coming?

The petition contains the request proper (give), and it contains the timing of the request (this day), and it contains the amount needed (bread for the day).  

When we ask God to give us bread, we are looking for something that many unbelievers receive as well, and they receive it without asking. And if we failed to make this request on a given day, we would also likely find our bread anyway. How is it then that this request is not a superfluous one? The answer to this is not so that we might have bread today (which God in His kindness gives abundantly), but rather that we might learn the important lesson of where all bread comes from. We don’t ask for the things we need so that God can find out we need them. We ask for things from God so that we might remember that we need them . . . and Him. Earlier in this sermon, Jesus had explicitly said that God gives rain to both the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45). Both the just and the unjust get the water, but the just get the fullness of the blessing.

It is the same with this bread. Unbelievers get bread too, but believers get the bread of life as well as the Bread of Life. In John, the Lord identifies the manna that was given in the wilderness as “bread from heaven.” The word for bread (artos) is the same as the word used in the Lord’s Prayer. “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat” (John 6:31). And the Lord teaches us that there are two layers to it. There is the physical sustenance that we receive, which unbelievers also do, and then is also the kind of faith which receives spiritual nourishment alongside the physical nourishment. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51).

Putting all this together, we should never ask for our daily bread unless we are also seeking Christ. We thank the Father for the buttered toast in the name of Jesus, and as we do so, we are communing with Jesus as well.

At the end of this chapter, the Lord teaches us that we should not borrow difficulties from tomorrow, as though we might run out of them today. Each day has plenty of trouble, and the Lord’s teaching is that each day has plenty of provision as well. We are asking God for “just on time” provision, and we are asking God for enough provision to last us until tomorrow, when we will ask again. If someone assumes that they need not do this because they have enough bread in the pantry and freezer to last them for weeks, they have forgotten another lesson from this great sermon. “Where thieves break in an steal, where moth and rust destroy.” Even when we think we have plenty of bread, we are dependent upon God for every moment of every day, and every bite of every meal.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray 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, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The petition right after thy kingdom come is the prayer that our Father would see to it that His will is accomplished on earth the same way as it is accomplished in Heaven. As already mentioned, the obvious meaning of this is that we are praying that we would be as obedient to the will of God here on earth as the angels are in Heaven. May God’s will for earth be done with the same alacrity that happens when He wills for something to be done for Him in Heaven. Presumably angels don’t do their chores while moping, grumbling, and dragging their feet. Delayed obedience is disobedience, and sluggish obedience is disobedience. So we are asking God to make us quick to hear His will, and just as quick to respond to it.

But we also noted another way to apply this request. Our Father is located in Heaven (ouranos), and we are talking about what happens in Heaven (ouranos), and just a moment before this petition, we all just hallowed the name of God the Father in Heaven. Putting this together, our desire should be to have the name of God glorified and lifted up on earth the same way we glorified and lifted it up in Heaven. If we flip this around, we will have a hard time asking God to establish His name in the earth if we have been trivializing it through our clichéd prayers and pop worship in the heavenly places.

So as His name is worshiped and hallowed properly here on earth, His kingdom comes to earth. It is, after all, the kingdom of Heaven. When we pray for the kingdom to come, we are asking for a reunification of Heaven and earth sadly divorced through the rebellion of man.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray 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, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The next petition in the Lord prayer is for the kingdom of the Father to come. We are addressing the Father, as was made plain at the beginning of the prayer, and we are praying for His kingdom to come. There are a number of key observations that can be made about this.

The first is that Jesus wanted His followers, down throughout church history, to be praying for (and therefore longing for, and working for) a coming kingdom. Our task is not to labor for the kingdom to go, but rather for the kingdom to come. Our task is not to get the saints out of here, but rather to bring the kingdom of God down to earth.

The second thing is that the process has already begun, and needs to be understood as a long, slow, and gradual process. After John the Baptist was imprisoned, the Lord Jesus began His preaching ministry in Galilee saying this: “And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The coming of the Christ inaugurated the advance of the kingdom, but this occurred at the point that Daniel saw in his vision, when the stone was cut without hands.

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever” (Daniel 2:44).

The stone struck the statue of the great pagan kings, and after that it grew into a great mountain. That great mountain is the kingdom of God. The kingdom was established in the ministry of Jesus Christ, and has been growing since then. It has been steadily growing because we all—as instructed—have been praying for it to come.

The next point is that we should understand this petition in the light of the following one. What does it mean for the kingdom to come? The next prayer is for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. The most obvious application of this, which is quite appropriate, is to be praying that we would be as obedient to the will of God here on earth as the angels are in Heaven. When God wants something done in Heaven, presumably the angels do it with suitable alacrity. That being the case, if we are thinking about what we are praying, we should not be dragging our feet in our obedience.

The last application is to understand this petition in light of what follows and also what went before. We have just finished hallowing the name of God the Father, and the Father is “in Heaven.” We have been praising and honoring Him there. As the Spirit gathers us up together in the worship service, we are escorted into the heavenly places, where we honor and hallow His name. Having just hallowed His name in Heaven, we are now asking that His name be hallowed on earth, as we have just hallowed it in Heaven. So as God’s people worship Him rightly, His name is hallowed in Heaven, and then also on earth. As His name is worshiped and hallowed properly here, His kingdom comes.  

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