The Books from Matthew and Luke record Jesus’ teaching about prayer – Matthew 6: 9 – 13 (6:5-15 + 7:7-12); Luke 11: 1-4 (11:1-13). Matthew’s version is part of the Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s comes after a prayer session and then much of the “Sermon on the Mount” is presented. The Holy Spirit directed these writers, and I feel it is important to include the whole teaching as part of this study. Actually, I have already written about bread, epiousios (daily), and hallow (more to come).

Jesus was teaching Jews who had knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures and traditions. So, as the Master Teacher He presented a prayer that has many layers and references that deserve looking into. I will get to the “support” text but the two versions of the Prayer have more than enough in them to start.

Reference materials have been important for this study, I have used The Blue Letter Bible text analysis, Bible Hub, Stong’s Concordance, Mounce Greek Interlinear, and I have viewed other translations in Bible Gateway. Lately, I have preferred the NASB version. Matthew has been my focus for a while, so bookmark both Gospels and be prepared to “flip pages”.

Our

In Matthew, I noticed that Jesus used three possessive adjectives in this section on prayer and in the Sermon: your, our, and My. He used these with Father to get the people thinking about the righteous relationship the Father has wanted with His children. In verses 6:5-8 “your Father” is used three times; then for the prayer He changes it to “our Father”. Simple and subtle but take a moment to reflect on that. In the Greek text Luke does not start with Our but uses hemon or “of us”. (G1473 – ego.)

Our Father

If you use a word-search tool you will find hundreds of times “father” is used in the Bible. So, I added “your” and looked for “your Father”, that narrowed the entries a lot and I went to the Minor Prophets and Psalms and found what I was looking for. (Yes, I may have missed some and this is NASB.)

Psalms 2:7 and 89:26 are verses where the Father and Son are talking to each other (Righteous relationship). Malachi 2:10 includes everyone in the Father/child relationship. There are not a lot of references like these, so they are precious and very informative. To show what Jesus was bring, as part of the Kingdom, Matthew 5:16 to 7:21 has many your Father, our Father, and My Father references.  

In Heaven

I see Jesus giving this phrase to not only say who He was praying to, but giving a definite location. Remember, the Jews were surrounded by countries who had many gods that were connected to geographical locations and temples. This also prepared the way for this prayer to go beyond the borders of Israel and still connect to Jehovah.

If “epiousios bread” had not been included Moses or David could have written this centuries before Jesus and it would have been a great Hebrew prayer to HaShem.