New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 213
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, September 12, 1858.
“Our Father which art in heaven.”—Matthew 6:9.
I THINK there is room for very great doubt, whether our Saviour intended the prayer, of which our text forms a part, to be used in the manner in which it is commonly employed among professing Christians. It is the custom of many persons to repeat it as their morning prayer, and they think that when they have repeated these sacred words they have done enough. I believe that this prayer was never intended for universal use. Jesus Christ taught it not to all men, but to his disciples, and it is a prayer adapted only to those who are the possessors of grace, and are truly converted. In the lips of an ungodly man it is entirely out of place. Doth not one say, “Ye are of your father the devil, for his works ye do?” Why, then, should ye mock God by saying, “Our Father which art in heaven.” For how can he be your Father? Have ye two Fathers? And if he be a Father, where is his honor? Where is his love? You neither honor nor love him, and yet you presumptuously and blasphemously approach him, and say, “Our Father,” when your heart is attached still to sin, and your life is opposed to his law, and you therefore prove yourself to be an heir of wrath, and not a child of grace! Oh! I beseech you, leave off sacrilegiously employing these sacred words; and until you can in sincerity and truth say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” and in your lives seek to honor his holy name, do not offer to him the language of the hypocrite, which is an abomination to him.
I very much question also, whether this prayer was intended to be used by Christ’s own disciples as a constant form of prayer. It seems to me that Christ gave it as a model, whereby we are to fashion all our prayers, and I think we may use it to edification, and with great sincerity and earnestness, at certain times and seasons. I have seen an architect form the model of a building he intends to erect of plaster or wood; but I never had an idea that it was intended for me to live in. I have seen an artist trace on a piece of brown paper, perhaps, a design which he intended afterwards to work out on more costly stuff; but I never imagined the design to be the thing itself. This prayer of Christ is a great chart, as it were: but I cannot cross the sea on a chart. It is a map; but a man is not a traveler because he puts his fingers across the map. And so a man may use this form of prayer, and yet be a total stranger to the great design of Christ in teaching it to his disciples. I feel that I cannot use this prayer to the omission of others. Great as it is, It does not express all I desire to say to my Father which is in heaven. There are many sins which I must confess separately and distinctly; and the various other petitions which this prayer contains require, I feel, to be expanded, when I come before God in private; and I must pour out my heart in the language which his Spirit gives me; and more than that, I must trust in the Spirit to speak the unutterable groanings of my spirit, when my lips cannot actually express all the emotions of my heart. Let none despise this prayer; it is matchless, and if we must have forms of prayer, let us have this first, foremost, and chief; but let none think that Christ would tie his disciples to the constant and only use of this. Let us rather draw near to the throne of the heavenly grace with boldness, as children coming to a father, and let us tell forth our wants and our sorrows in the language which the Holy Spirit teacheth us.
And now, coming to the text, there are several things we shall have to notice here. And first, I shall dwell for a few minutes upon the double relationship mentioned: “Our Father which art in heaven.” There is sonship—“Father;” there is brotherhood, for it says, “Our Father;” and if he be the common father of us, then we must be brothers; for there are two relationships, sonship and brotherhood. In the next place, I shall utter a few words upon the spirit which is necessary to help us before we are able to utter this—“The spirit of adoption,” whereby we can cry, “Our Father which art in heaven.” And then, thirdly, I shall conclude with the double argument of the text, for it is really an argument upon which the rest of the prayer is based. “Our Father which art in heaven,” is, as it were, a strong argument used before supplication itself is presented.
I. First, THE DOUBLE RELATIONSHIP IMPLIED IN THE TEXT.
We take the first one. Here is sonship—“Our Father which art in heaven.” How are we to understand this, and in what sense are we the sons and daughters of God? Some say that the Fatherhood of God is universal, and that every man, from the fact of his being created by God, is necessarily God’s son, and that therefore every man has a right to approach the throne of God, and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” To that I must demur. I believe that in this prayer we are to come before God, looking upon him not as our Father through creation, but as our Father through adoption and the new birth. I will very briefly state my reasons for this.