Praying the Scriptures: The Lord's Prayer, the Teachings of Christ, and the Biblical Faith

by Josepha Lecke

The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s gospel is the textual center of the Sermon on the Mount. It is a devotional and devout implementation of the essential teachings of Jesus. Its petitions reflect both his doctrine and ministry. The context of the prayer is the Old Testament, and by this prayer Christ put into the mouths of his disciples the faith content of the Old Covenant, even as his instruction and messianic work is the fullness of the New Covenant. In the Lord’s Prayer we see how Jesus prayed based on his belief, his teaching, and his life. While this prayer is a unified whole of interlocked petitions, each petition is a doctoral loci that is expounded by Jesus in fuller detail by his direct teaching and action. He lived his teaching like many of the Old Testament prophets, and summed them up in teaching us to pray. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we pray not only in faith, but we pray our faith. We speak to God because of what we believe and, as in many of the Psalms, in the Lord's Prayer we pray what we believe even as we address Our Father on the basis of that faith.

99 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 6, 2020