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Matthew 5-6 – Our Sovereign is Our Father
Becoming accustomed through familiarity can cause us to stop thinking. Seeing over and over again – through countless sermons, and even refrigerator magnets – Jesus begin the Lord’s Prayer with “Our Father”; we have become accustomed to the shock: the Almighty Creator, the Omnipotent, Omniscient, the All-everything is “our Father.” But have we missed something else, something incredible?
If we were reading the Sermon on the Mount for the first time, we might not only be shocked by how Jesus addresses the prayer, we might be surprised at how He did not. A theme running throughout the sermon is the kingdom of heaven. So maybe we should be surprised that Jesus did not begin, “Our King and Sovereign n heaven.” And yet, the very first beatitude, talking about us who pray “our Father” says, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” By addressing God as “Father” in this prayer, Jesus is not only affirming that we have a close, personal, familial relationship with God. Jesus is also confirming that because God is our Father, we are sons of the King, because “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Yes, praying “our Father” we pray as sons of the King.
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