Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Family: Our Father

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

What does it mean to pray, “Our Father”? It’s much more complicated than you think.  Everything Jesus Christ came to do—the reason he came, the purpose of his salvation—was that we might receive adoption. We can pray “Our Father” because we’ve been adopted into the family of God.  Let’s look briefly at 1) the gift of adoption, 2) what it means to be adopted, 3) the reason we can be adopted, and 4) how it applies to prayer. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 28, 2014. Series: The Prayer of Prayers. Scripture: Galatians 3:26-4:3. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. We all know there's a big difference between knowing about God and actually knowing God personally. To know anyone, you have to spend time with them. If you're a Christian, prayer is essential to have a deep relationship with God. You won't be able to know yourself, know God, or grow in your relationship with Him without prayer. Join us today as Tim Keller teaches on why prayer is such an essential part of life with Christ. Tonight's scripture reading is found in Galatians 3, verse 26, through chapter 4, verse 7. So in Christ Jesus, you were all children of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free. There is neither male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the time set had fully come,

God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, father. So you are no longer a slave, but God's child. And since you are his child, God has made you also an heir. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So for the next few weeks we're going to be looking at the subject of prayer. Let me just

start off by saying something kind of outrageous. And that is that if you're a Christian, prayer is the key to everything you should do and be. It's the key to everything as a Christian you should do and be. You say that's a little bit over the top. Well, all right. Let me start off and just give you a little list. You can't know yourself unless you know how to pray. It's in prayer that you actually are able to see

yourself for who you are because you sense being in the presence of a holy God, a majestic God, only the perspective that comes from sensing yourself in the presence of a great God and sensing his search light on your heart. Only in prayer do you ever really see who you are, otherwise you'll live in delusion. And we all have the person we wish we were, and we often go on thinking that's who we are until prayer. Only through prayer do you actually get self-knowledge. Secondly, only through prayer can you change yourself.

See, St. Augustine said that what really makes you who you are is not so much what you think or even what you believe, but what you love. See, you may say, for example, you may say, well, I believe in Jesus Christ, but what you really love is the idea of making a lot of money. And what really controls you, who you really are, is what captures your imagination and what gets you passionate and what drives you and what delights you and what you love. And if it's true that it's your loves that really make you who you are, there's no way to change those unless you change what you

worship. Not enough just to change what you think or even change what you are actually doing. Not even changing your behavior. It's changing what you love and that comes through prayer. So see, you can't know yourself without prayer. You can't change yourself without prayer. Thirdly, you can't know God without prayer. I mean, there's a difference between knowing about God and knowing God, right? To just to know about God, know stuff about God, that's one thing, to know God, to have a personal relationship with God. How does that happen? It happens through prayer.

Because prayer is communication. You don't know somebody if you don't communicate. So prayer is the key to knowing yourself, prayer is the key to changing yourself, prayer is the key to knowing God. And here's one last thing, read the book of Psalms and you'll see the Psalmists are facing all the sufferings and troubles of life. They're facing serious illness and financial reversal, right? They're facing relational betrayals and grief and grief and loss, they're facing all these things. But how do they handle it? They pray. That's how you get God's strength through prayer. You won't be able to access God's strength without prayer. You won't be able to change yourself without prayer. You won't be able to know God without prayer. You won't be able to know yourself without prayer. That's just the beginning of the list. I think my list could go on. Is that enough for an introduction?

Prayer is the key to everything you need to do and be as a Christian. So how do you do it? And that's a good question. In the movie Gravity, Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut who's stranded in space and she thinks she's going to die and at one point when she thinks she's going to die her character says, I've never prayed, nobody ever taught me how. That's probably not true. And the reason it's probably not true is this, she's probably heard the Lord's Prayer. And you know what the Lord's Prayer is?

It's Jesus' answer to the question, how do you pray? And the Lord's Prayer is almost certainly the most, it's probably the set of words that has been spoken the most in the history of the human race. Almost certainly more people have said the Lord's prayer than have said anything else. So it's extremely well known and it's out there and is Jesus' own answer to the question how do you pray? But in fairness the reason why it doesn't help most of us is because the Lord's Prayer, if you look at it, every single phrase in the Lord's Prayer is actually drawing on a whole swath of biblical teaching.

So when it says, thy kingdom come, what's the kingdom? When it says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, what's that? Or when it says our father, which we're going to look at tonight. Every time the Lord's Prayer says, every time Jesus says say this or say this when you're praying, pray this way, unless you know a lot about what the Bible says about what it means to call God a father or a lot about the kingdom, you basically can't use the prayer, the model, the Lord's Prayer. And therefore, the more you know about the biblical material behind that particular phrase in the prayer, the more rich and powerful your prayer gets. It's almost a sense of which when Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer,

he was saying, now read the Bible, master the Bible, know all the biblical doctrine, and then essentially pray it. Because virtually the entire Bible is in the Lord's prayer compressed and turned into adoration, petition, confession, thanksgiving. So what we're going to do over the next few weeks is each week we're going to take one phrase in the Lord's prayer. It's not going to be, by the way, it doesn't mean every week we're going to go back to Matthew 6 and read the Lord's Prayer.

What we're going to do is we'll take the ‑‑ we'll name the phrase, whether it's how it would be thy name or tonight, our father. And we'll go to some other place in the Bible that gives us access to the strain of biblical doctrine and teaching which is required if you're going to pray that part of the prayer. So tonight, what does it mean? Why did Jesus say, when you pray, always, it's the first thing, he says, our Father.

This is the basis for all the rest of the prayer. Knowing that God's your Father. Treating God as a Father. Recognizing that you are his child. What does it mean to pray our father? It's much more complicated than you think. We're looking at the passage that was just read. It's other passages we could have gone to but what's intriguing to me about this passage is that in verse four and five when it describes everything that Jesus Christ came to do. You might say the climax, the reason he came,

the purpose of his salvation was what? That we might receive adoption to sonship. That we might receive adoption. And so, we can pray our father because we've been adopted into the family of God. So, let's look briefly at the gift of adoption, the meaning of adoption, what that means to be adopted, the reason we can be adopted and then we apply it to prayer.

I'm going to try to go through the first three fast so we have a little bit of time on the prayer, which means we can't really get into this doctrine of adoption too deeply. But the gift of adoption, the meaning of adoption, the reason for adoption, and then how it applies to prayer. The gift of adoption. It says here, in Christ Jesus, your children of God, through faith, in other words, all human beings, by virtue of being human beings, are not children of God. See, it says Jesus Christ went to all this trouble,

this salvation, in order that we would be adopted. It's only in Christ Jesus, verse 26 says, that we're children only through faith. Now some people say, well wait a minute, that's pretty narrow-minded. I thought all human beings were God's children. And in a sense that's true, and even the Bible says that's true,

because Acts chapter 17 where Paul is preaching to the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill he says we and he's talking about all of us are his offspring, God's offspring. There certainly is a sense in which you can say since God created all human beings he's our father for all of us. Because you can say Henry Ford is the father of the automobile or you can say Thomas Edison is the father of the light bulb. If you invented something, if you invented your own killer app, you can say I'm the father or the mother of that app. It's perfectly fair to say she's the mother or the father of that particular idea. But Paul is talking about something else. Have you ever heard somebody say, you were never a father to me? You know what that person is probably saying?

You were never a father to me. What that probably means is you were my biological originator. You did bring me into existence but you did not have a relationship with me that a father should have. You never truly loved me and cared for me and we didn't, you weren't in your relationship to me, you weren't father. And that's what Paul's talking about here. He's trying to say sure, all human beings were created by God and in that sense, you might say God is all of our father. But if you want a truly father-child relationship with the God of the universe, that only comes through Jesus.

But by the way, can I just point one thing out quick? You notice up here in verse 26, it says, so in Christ Jesus you are all children of God. And if you have an older translation, you'll see it says in Christ Jesus you are all children of God. If you have an older translation you will see it says what the Greek word says there is in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God. Well the modern translation wants to be a little more gender sensitive so it doesn't say sons it says children because he is talking to men and women. But you know what there is a lot of places in the Bible where I think that's good

to turn the male pronoun into a more generic pronoun because it is talking to men and women. But it doesn't work here. Because what Paul is actually doing is he's saying something very radical. Adoption then and now is a legal, you know, it's a legal institution. Today you adopt a child, we'll get to this in a second, there's all sorts of legalities. In those days it was also a legal institution but it was virtually always done when a man who was an heir and had an estate and didn't have someone to inherit it. When you had a man who had a great estate and had a lot of money and didn't have anyone to inherit the estate, he would adopt someone to become his heir and that person would become his son and then he would inherit the estate.

It was never done for women. Women were never adopted to be the heir of the estate. Men were adopted. And that's why to be adopted literally meant you were adopted into sonship. You were now the son and you were now the heir. Women weren't adopted. But Paul has the audacity here to take a legal institution in which only men participated and turn it and say this is what God does for us. he adopts us,

he makes us his heirs, he adopts us into his family and he applies it to all Christians. See he says, so in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, men and women, Jew and Gentile because you see immediately he says there is neither Jew nor gentle, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. To say to women you have an equal share in the inherited glory through Jesus Christ, you have an equal access to the love and commitment of God, we'll get to this in one second, was a radical thing. And in some ways by trying to be sensitive, the English translator is actually kind of ruin the radical nature of what Paul is saying. He is trying to say, you know what, out in the world, women, out in the Roman world, you can never be sons but in the Christian

church you can be. You are heirs. You are equal. Now, that's the gift of adoption. It's a gift. It's not something that's there automatically. It's a gift that's been procured by Jesus Christ. But what does it mean? And we've actually already begun to hint at it. There's three things it means. There's actually more than three things, but there's three things that are here and it's enough to give you the gist. To be adopted meant then and it also means spiritually now, you get an inheritance, you have unconditional access to the parent's love and protection,

and you get a new name or identity. So you get an inheritance, you get access, new relationship, and you get a new identity. Let's look at these three things. First of all, if you were adopted, then and now, it means the child who is adopted becomes an heir of the wealth of the parent. Which means, for example, if you invented a killer app and you sold your business and now you're a billionaire because you took the risk and you had the smart app and you sold your business and now you're a billionaire because

you took the risk and you had the smarts and you did all that and you're a billionaire now, you earned it, right? But now if you adopt a child, that child is also wealthy. That child didn't do nothing to earn that money. It's the child's legally. We're told here since you're his child, verse 7, God has made you also an heir. I look at my time and I would love to just sit and speak slowly and meditate with you on this astounding statement for the next 15 minutes, but I don't have the time to do

that, until everybody is weeping because that's what really ought to happen. But I don't have the time, but here's the best I can do. What does it mean to be an heir of God? You know, it's one thing to be adopted by a billionaire and now you're wealthy. Automatically, guaranteed, nothing you earned or deserved. You didn't do it. You didn't take the risk. It's just yours. You know, legally you're united to the family and now you have part of that wealth. It's one thing but what does it mean to be in Christ Jesus and therefore a child of God? What is God worth? And what does that mean? One thing it does mean, here's one little glimpse of this, is in Romans 8 where Paul gives a,

this is a parallel passage to Galatians 3. And in Galatians 3, we just read it, but in Romans 8, Paul says this, "'The spirit you receive does not make you slaves "'so that you live in fear. "'Rather the spirit you receive "'brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry Abba, father. Now for children we're heirs, heirs of God and coheirs with

Christ. Okay? Sounds just like this? Right. But then Paul pushes ahead and just says something, gives us an implication, a glimpse of the future that's not in this passage. And then he says this. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits an eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the

children of God. It goes by fast. It took me years of reading this before it began to sink in. Here's what it's saying. Our inheritance is glory. We're going to get the glory that Jesus Christ secured. What is glory? we're going to get the glory that Jesus Christ secured. What is glory? You know, whenever Ezekiel gets a vision of glory or Isaiah gets a vision of glory, all I know is this, that this is guaranteed, this is an achievement, this is not something that if you live a good life you'll get, no, no, this is guaranteed. Sometime in the future, if you're a child of God, you will become glorified. That means you'll be so endowed with, you will be so infused with such unimaginable degrees of majesty

and perfection and bliss and wisdom and greatness and beauty and blessedness. And it will come greatness and beauty and blessedness and it will come down on us so powerfully that we're told that the created order, that's nature, that's the mountains and the oceans. See, nature right now is in a state of decay. There's suffering, there's death in nature. It's broken, right? We're told that when the glory comes down on us, the freedom and glory of the children of God will be so explosive that it will envelop the entire created order and it will heal the created world nature of everything that's wrong with it. We'll bring the world with us. Our glorification will be that

incredible. This is beyond anything you have ever wanted because it's just way beyond the greatest thing you could ever imagine for yourself. You have no idea how happy you're going to be. You have no idea how beautiful you're going to be. You can't imagine. You can't even get near it. And it's guaranteed.

It's automatic. You didn't earn it. You didn't deserve it. Let me ask you a question. Do you have any idea how consoling this is, how sweet this is, and how if you were even able to walk around every day with just a molecule of the sense and of the reality of that future assured glory, how that would make you able to handle things. I mean, we should, you know, there's a lot of things we face, there's a lot of pressures we face, there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of darkness, there's a lot of difficulties.

But you should just think about this. And if this was real to you at all through your prayer life, if you ever got a whiff of the reality of it, so it really, so if you ever get to the place where you hear this, I'm hoping it's happening a little bit right now. As I'm trying to describe it, I mean I'm not doing a great job, but if you're even beginning to go, wow,

hold on to that, because that's what we've got coming. We're heirs. When you pray to God, is it more like a chat, or are you really connecting with Him in a deep and meaningful way? We'd like to help you establish a stronger, deeper, and more personal prayer life.

Tim Keller's book, Prayer, Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, offers biblical guidance as well as specific ways to pray in certain situations, such as dealing with grief, loss, love, and forgiveness. In the book, Dr. Keller helps you learn how to make your prayers more personal and powerful through a regular practice of prayer. Prayer, Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, is our thanks for your gift to help us reach more people with the life-changing power of the gospel. Request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's

Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. If you are his child, God has made you an heir. And that means it doesn't really matter what your boss thinks about you. It doesn't matter if somebody sliced up your reputation. It doesn't matter whether you've got a chronic ailment. It doesn't matter if you put on 10 pounds. Really. What are you upset about? Look at this. If you've got a trillion dollars Look at this. If you've got a trillion dollars in a Swiss bank and somebody picks your pocket of $5 here, do you go berserk? And yet a lot of us do. Somebody criticizes you, something goes wrong today, oh, your reputation has been a bit besmirched and we melt down. Either you're not a child of God or you are and you have no

idea what that means. If you let it melt you down. That's the first thing, you're an heir. The second thing is you have access ‑‑ you have a relationship in which you have access to the love and the time and the attention and the protection of God unconditionally forever. It says here, because you're his sons, God sent his spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit of Christ, our Abba father. By the way, it's interesting to watch people who know something about language try to figure out how you translate Abba. And of course the problem is we don't exactly have a word like it. It's an Aramaic word and it was actually a word used by children to talk to their parents and it's a word that then later on they use as adults. It's not quite like daddy or mommy, it's more like mama or papa. In

the southern United States, very often, even when you're grown up, you may still call your mother mama. And it reminds you that you were a child, but at the same time, it's not mommy. It's a little bit hard to translate this word, but what it does mean is because of who I am, because I'm your child, I have an access to you that nobody else in the world does. So you may have a great boss. Maybe your boss, maybe he or she is very kind to you and is trying to develop you and is very, seems very committed to you and is, really wants you to succeed. But let me tell you something. Your boss is not a parent. Your boss is not a guardian. When you adopt a child,

you are the child's legal guardian. You are responsible for that child. You need to protect that child. That child is your responsibility, the protection and the well‑being and the care of that child is your legal responsibility as well as your emotional desire, right? And your boss, no matter how good your boss is, your boss is not your guardian. Because in the end, no matter ‑‑ if you keep coming in late, if you screw up, at a certain point your boss has to say, you know, I really like you and I really care for you, but you're out of here, terminate. But parents don't do that. If you've got three children, which I have had, which I do have, excuse me, I can just

tell you as a parent over the years, when one of the children is acting up or having trouble you don't terminate the child. Actually your heart, if anything your heart gets more engaged with the child. Kind of weird, right? No, it's not. Because you're the parent. Have you ever heard of the war of Jenkins-eer? I'll bet you haven't. I'm betting you haven't. If you have heard of the war of Jenkins-eer, you need to please write a note to the office of redeemer and we will give you a cash prize. The war of Jenkins-eer, which started in 1739 was because there was a British ship that was attacked by a Spanish ship. It was an act of piracy,

completely unprovoked. The Spanish ship attacked the British ship, took it over and in the ensuing battle the captain of the British ship whose name was Captain Jenkins had his ear cut off in the battle. His ear was cut off. Well, he saved his ear and it was put in a bottle of liquor and sent to Parliament. And there it was taken out, it was displayed in a session of Parliament and an account was read of what had happened and as a result Parliament declared war on Spain in 1739. You know why? Over an ear? Yeah, because you see an attack on a citizen of the crown is an attack on the crown. And see that's just national solidarity. You know that family ties are even stronger, isn't that right? Family ties are stronger.

When Saul was persecuting Christians, he was killing them. And then Jesus showed up on the road to Damascus and appeared in glory and Saul fell to the ground. Remember what Jesus said? Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Not them, me. You know what he's saying? You know what family ties are like. You attack one, you attack all. And see, basically what this means is that God is unconditionally committed to you. You have his attention, you have his ear, you have his time, you have his love. He is legally and personally unconditionally committed to you

forever. That's a strange ‑‑ it's an astounding thing, too. One last thing, but we have to be brief. The third thing, of course, is you not only get an inheritance when you're adopted and you don't only get that kind of access and that commitment and that guardianship, but thirdly you get a new name, which means you get a new identity. And this new identity, according to the Bible, means that you're no longer a slave, you're a son. See? Because you were his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, so you were no longer a slave but God's child. I need to get to prayer, so I can't take much longer on this. But Elaine de Boutin, who

wrote a book, he's a French philosopher, and he wrote a book called Status Anxiety. He said there's really two kinds of societies. He says you have traditional society in which you get your self worth and your significance by fulfilling a role, a social role. You're a good father or mother, a good son or daughter, a good member of the tribe. In traditional society the family means everything, the community means everything, your individual freedom doesn't mean anything and what your job is, is to fit in and be the good son and be the good daughter and traditional societies have lots of moral rules and he says of course what that means is in traditional societies people are always being crushed with guilt because you're never a good enough son or daughter, you're never living up to your parents' expectations, you're

just crushed with guilt. There's no freedom there, you're just crushed with guilt. Ah, he says, so let's go to western society, an egalitarian, individualistic, meritocratic society where you decide who you want to be and then you go for it. And he says we're not crushed by guilt, we're crushed by anxiety. He calls it status anxiety. You've got to be good, you've got to make the money and you've got to look good. What you're anxious about is how you look. In traditional society, you know, any old ‑‑ you can wear any old thing because what really matters is you're a good son or daughter. But in western society you need to look good. You've got to impress people. But notice what it says? In Christ your children of God and all of

you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. What does that mean? Baptism doesn't save you. It identifies you publicly. And what this means is, and Elaine deBatton says, you know, if you're in the western world, you're crushed by anxiety, you're trying to live up, you're trying to be good, you're trying to get into the best school, you're trying to keep your figure, you're trying to do all these things, it's so important to look good, but if you go to traditional society, then you're trying to do all these things, it's so important to look good, but if you go to traditional society and you're crushed with social expectations and guilt, ah, but you know what Paul is saying here? If you're getting your self worth from your performance one way or another, of course you're a slave. But what if you know that God is no longer

your boss, no longer your employer, but your father, that you're accepted, that you're loved. You're free. You're not a slave anymore. You're free. And here's the reason why, and I get to this. The reason why is because when you want to do the thing you ought to do and When you want to do the thing you ought to do and are built to do, then you are absolutely free. See, look, there's plenty of times in which you need to do something even though you don't want to do it but it's the right thing to do. Of course, that happens often. But when you're doing that, you're feeling kind of constrained.

Here's real freedom. Real freedom, ultimate freedom is when you desperately want to and delight to do the thing you ought to do and the thing you're built to do. And how can that happen? How can you have this inner freedom? If you see how it is that you receive this adoption. This adoption was given to you as a gift. How?

Verse four and five is a wonderful summary of the gospel. Wonderful. See what it says? When the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, he became human, born under the law to redeem those under the law. What does that mean under the law? Under the law. You and I owe God. He made us. We should be living for him, but we're not. We owe that and we can't make good on our obligation. Jesus Christ comes in and he becomes a human being. And he fulfills the obligation that we owe.

He comes under the law. He lives the life you ought to live. He loves God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind. He loves his neighbor as himself. But then at the end of his life, he redeems us. You know why? The word redeem is a very specific Greek word that means to pay the price that secures a slave's freedom.

To pay the price to secure the slave's freedom. And you know how he paid that price? On the cross, he lost his prayer. See, whenever Jesus Christ prayed, whenever Jesus Christ talked to God, anywhere in the Bible except once, anywhere he talked to God, he always called him Father. Always called him Father. He didn't say Lord Almighty.

He says father Over and over and sometimes even calls him ABBA Showing that he has this intimacy showing he has this confidence So Jesus Christ prayer life is always marked father ABBA father ABBA Only one time and only one time does he ever talk to God and not call him father and you know where that is It's on the cross. Oh, he's still loving God. He says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He's still loving God, my God. He's still obeying God, my God. But he doesn't say Father. You know why? Because the Father is not being a guardian. The Father is not protecting him. The Father is not showing his love.

The Father is not there for him. The Father is doing what fathers are not allowed to do. He's abandoning Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus got what we deserve. He got cast out of the family so that we could be brought in. He paid the price that we deserve to be paying, that we owe. Jesus Christ lost the sonship that he, pardon me, that he deserved so that we could have the sonship

we don't deserve. He was cast out. He paid the ultimate price so we could be brought in. And when you see him doing that, you want to please him finally. You're not obeying God just because that's the only way I have to, I don't want to do it but you know what, if I want to get to heaven, if I want to get my prayers answered, I just got to have to do it. No, no, no, that's not freedom. Here's freedom. John Newton's hymn, to see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice transforms a slave

into a child and duty into choice. To see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. When I see that he did that for me so that I could be his child, that makes me a child. Not just legally, but really. Now I want to please him. Now I want to do something for him. Transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. Something I want to do. And now I'm free. Now, do you realize what it means to pray our father? Do you know what that means? It's not just a warm, cuddly feeling that you say I'd like to call God father. As soon as you say our father, that's coming in Jesus' name. I know the term ‑‑ some people point out that in the Lord's prayer it doesn't end in Jesus'

name. But it doesn't have to end in Jesus' name. Because in the first words, our father. Because now you know, because I took you into the rest of the Bible, that you have no right to go to God and say our father unless Jesus Christ had done all that he did for you. And so even to say our father is to say, Lord, I don't deserve this, is astounding, it's amazing the cost that Jesus Christ bore in order for me

to come like this with complete confidence is something that moves me. You know, if you're praying, Our Father, who art in heaven, you won't be able to get past Father without it just melting your heart down, if you understand what it means. And think about this, Jesus prayed Our Father. Why, he was perfect.

He was a perfect son, He was a perfect son. He was a perfect son. And so he deserved God answering every prayer and listening to him every time. And now Jesus says when you pray, pray our Father, why? Because I died for you and now you're in Christ Jesus. And when you believe in Jesus Christ, you're brought in as it were and when God hears you,

he sees Jesus. He treats you as if you, he sees Jesus. He treats you as if you deserve what Jesus deserves. The attention he deserves, the love he deserves, the regard he deserves, how much does he deserve, everything. That's how God treats you now. So to pray our Father means on the one hand to come with humility. Never come to God saying, come with humility? Never come to God saying, well, God, I've lived a pretty good life, so you need to give me this. If you come like that, you're not coming in Jesus' name, you're not coming to God as a father, you're forgetting the fact that this is undeserved. In fact, if you have even the slightest hint in your heart that God better give you what I'm about asking,

you're asking for now, because actually, I've lived a pretty good life and I deserve this. God can't give that to you, it would be the worst thing for you. It's not safe to give it to you. I've talked to so many people over the years as a pastor who said, well, I lived a pretty good life and then I asked for this and God didn't give it to me,

so I walked. How could God possibly give you something when you got it, it would just confirm you in your trajectory away from God into self-sufficiency, into pride, into arrogance. He couldn't give it to you. To pray our Father means I don't deserve this, but secondly to pray our Father means I know you're going to hear me. And you know, even if he doesn't give you ‑‑ we'll get back to this later in this series ‑‑ even if he doesn't give you exactly what you asked for, if you're a parent, you know this.

You ache for your children to be happy. And when you can't give your child what the child wants and the child starts to cry, you die inside. And you try to figure out some other way to give them, in another form, what they were asking for. Don't you think God's gonna do that? There has to be absolute humility to pray, our Father, but also total confidence, shameless,

shameless confidence that God is hearing you and is going to take your prayer and do something incredible through it, even if it's not exactly what you asked for. But lastly, intimacy. Abba Father, the Holy Spirit comes into your heart. What that means is that if you're a child of God, then you've got the possibility of in prayer having experiences of God's nearness and joy and love that you haven't begun to tap into. Thomas Goodwin tells a story, he said he was walking along and in front of him there was a man and a little boy, this has meant a lot to me, a man and his little

boy walking along and at one point the father turned around and picked the son up and said, I love you. And the little boy hugged the father and said, I love you too. And then he put him down and they kept on walking. And John Thomas Goodwin said, was the child more legally a son in his father's arms than when he was on the street? No. But he was experiencing his sonship. And when the Bible says the Holy Spirit sends the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit comes into your heart crying out the Father, it means it's the Holy Spirit's job to give you a sense of closeness with the Father, to give you a sense of the reality of his love, so that you really sense his embrace,

so that you sense his kiss. We're all settling for too little in prayer. We're settling for too little of the experience that really the Holy Spirit's been sent into your heart to give you. To pray our Father is to pray with humility, is to pray with confidence, is to pray with shamelessness, is to pray with humility, is to pray with confidence, is to pray with shamelessness, is to pray with joy and is to pray with the expectation that there is

a love to be shed abroad in your heart that you haven't even begun to experience. So ask for it. Let's pray. Our Father. Tonight we realize what it takes, what it took, for us to be able to say our Father. It thrills us, it shocks us to be able to say our Father. And it immediately begins to empower the rest of our prayer. If we start our prayer saying our Father, fully cognizant

of what it took for us to be able to enter into your presence with that kind of confidence, oh, that begins to actually pick our prayer life up and electrify it and it begins to empower it and all these things that are really dependent on prayer and our lives begin to flow in. Please Father, help us, help us to learn how to pray. Teach us to pray and give us all the benefits and greatnesses that would be in our lives as individuals and as a church and as a body if we learned it. So teach us this fall, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

fall we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. It's our hope that today's teaching encourages you to go deeper in your prayer life. We invite you to help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit GospelAndLife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2014. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. you