<p>11:2 <i>And he said to them: When you pray, say, Father- </i>The model prayer begins with the words &quot;Our Father&quot; (AV, textus receptus). Straight away we are bidden remember that no man is an island; the Lord intended us to be aware of the entire community of believers in our private prayers.</p><p>His teaching about our having a <i>Heavenly </i>Father (AV) may appear quite painless to accept; but it was radical, demanding stuff in the first century. The family then was &ldquo;the centrally located institution maintaining societal existence&hellip; it was the primary focus of personal loyalty and it held supreme sway over individual life&rdquo;. &ldquo;Our father, <i>who is in Heaven</i>&rdquo; was a prayer hard to pray if one really accepted the full import of the words; every bit as much as it is today. The idea of belonging to another family, of which the invisible Lord Jesus in Heaven was the head, belonging to a new society of world-wide brothers and sisters, where the Lord from Heaven held &ldquo;supreme sway over individual life&rdquo;, was radical indeed. It took huge commitment and a deep faith in this invisible head of the new family to step out from ones existing family. And the call of Christ is no less radical today. The social circle at uni, the guys at work, our unbelieving&nbsp;family members&hellip; now all take a radical second place to our precious family in Christ. And yet we so easily abuse or disregard the importance of our spiritual family; we too easily exclude them, won&rsquo;t meet with them, can&rsquo;t be bothered about them. &nbsp;</p><p><i>Hallowed be your name- </i>Hallowed / sanctified be Your name&quot; uses an aorist tense which implies that it will be accomplished as a one-time act; at the coming of the Lord. Indeed, the aorist tenses in the Lord's model prayer are arresting; each phrase of the prayer asks for something to be done in a one-time sense. This alone suggests an intended 'answer' in terms of the final establishment of the Kingdom. &ldquo;Hallowed be Your Name&rdquo; was actually one of the Eighteen Benedictions used by most Jews at the time. This common phrase was consciously seen as a reference to the YHWH Name (Hal Taussig,&nbsp;<i>Jesus Before God: The Prayer Life of the Historical Jesus</i>&nbsp;(Santa Rosa, CA: The Polebridge Press, 1999) p. 76). But the Lord purposefully juxtaposes&nbsp;<i>Abba</i>, &ldquo;Father&rdquo;, with that phrase. This Aramaic, non-Hebrew, familiar word, an equivalent of &ldquo;Daddy&rdquo;, is placed by the Lord next to Judaism&rsquo;s most well known and frequently used blessing of the YHWH Name. By doing so, He was making the Name even more hallowed and glorious- by showing that the essence of that Name speaks of familiar family relationship with us, and is no longer the carefully guarded preserve of Hebrew people, thought, culture and language. The Lord prayed this in Gethsemane; and it took Him so long to say these words that the disciples fell asleep.</p><p><i>Your kingdom come</i>- It has been pointed out that &quot;Your Kingdom come&quot; was violently in conflict with the Roman view that the lives of a subject people like Israel belonged to Caesar's kingdom. &quot;'Your kingdom come' is therefore a word of defiance; to pray it is a subversive activity. This is also how the authorities understand the ministry of Jesus: it is subversive and not to be tolerated&quot;. And so with us, the seeking of the future Kingdom is a radical denial of the spirit of our age, which seeks its Kingdom now; it demands a separation from the world around us. The well known description of the Kingdom in Is. 2:1-4 is in the context of appealing to Israel to change their ways. Because they would <i>then</i> walk in the ways of the Lord, therefore &quot;O house of Israel therefore Come ye now and walk in the ways of the Lord&quot; (Is. 2:5). The hope of Israel ought to motivate Israel to live the Kingdom life here and now.</p><p>Greek scholars have pointed out that some phrases in the Lord's prayer show a remarkable lack of etiquette and the usual language of petition to a superior; literally, the text reads: &quot;Come Your Kingdom, done Your will&rdquo;. Is this part of the &quot;boldness&quot; in approaching God which the NT speaks of? That God should encourage us in this (although He also encourages us in reverential fear of Him) reflects something of His humility. The Kingdom of God refers to that over which God reigns. We are &ldquo;a colony of Heaven&rdquo; in our response to His principles (Phil. 3:20 Moffat). We are to pray for His Kingdom to come, so that His will may be done on earth (Mt. 6:10). The Kingdom and the doing of His will are therefore paralleled. His Kingdom reigns over all in Heaven, for there, all the Angels are obedient to Him (Ps. 103:19-21). By praying for the Kingdom to come on earth we are not only praying for the Lord&rsquo;s second coming, but for the progress of the Gospel world-wide right now. Not only that more men and women will hear it and respond, but that those who have accepted it might work God&rsquo;s will rather than their own to an ever-greater extent. Whether or not we can physically spread the Gospel is in this sense irrelevant; our prayer should be, first and foremost if the pattern of the Lord&rsquo;s prayer is to be taken exactly, for the triumph of the Gospel world-wide. It has been pointed out by Philip Yancey that &quot;Thy Kingdom come&quot; was violently in conflict with the Roman view that the lives of a subject people like Israel belonged to Caesar's kingdom.</p><p>&quot;'Your kingdom come' is therefore a word of defiance; to pray it is a subversive activity. This is also how the authorities understand the ministry of Jesus: it is subversive and not to be tolerated&quot; (Philip Yancey,&nbsp;<i>The Jesus I Never Knew</i>&nbsp;(Harper Collins, 1998). The word&nbsp;<i>basileia&nbsp;</i>translated &ldquo;Kingdom&rdquo; definitely brought to mind the imperial reign or empire of Rome. Thus Hal Taussig comments: &ldquo;Whenever anyone in Jesus&rsquo; time used the term &ldquo;basileia&rdquo;, the first thing people thought of was the Roman &ldquo;kingdom&rdquo; or &ldquo;empire&rdquo;. That is, &ldquo;basileia&rdquo; really meant &ldquo;Roman empire&rdquo; to most people who heard it&hellip; It was to many ears a direct insult to the Roman empire. Uttered in the presence of Roman soldiers, such a prayer could have gotten a person in immediate trouble&rdquo; (Hal Taussig,&nbsp;<i>op cit</i>&nbsp;pp. 21,96). And so with us, the seeking of the future Kingdom is a radical denial of the spirit of our age, which seeks its Kingdom now; it demands a separation from the world around us. The well-known description of the Kingdom in Is. 2:1-4 is in the context of appealing to Israel to change their ways. Because they would&nbsp;<i>then</i>&nbsp;walk in the ways of the Lord, therefore &quot;O house of Israel therefore Come ye now and walk in the ways of the Lord&quot; (2:5). The hope of Israel ought to motivate Israel to live the Kingdom life here and now.</p>