Sermon on the Mount: Countercultural Kingdom | Prayer as Physical Therapy

The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most famous sections in the Sermon on the Mount. But something we can often miss is that in the context of Jesus’ sermon the prayer is, as commentator RT France points out, a “literary digression.” In other words, the point of the passage is not merely, “this is how you ought to pray.” 

The context is about the principle that the radical obedience Jesus calls us to cannot be measured by how good we look to people around us. We struggle with that all the time, however, and so like a physical or occupational therapist giving us exercises to heal from an injury, Jesus gives us this prayer to help us pray in a way that keeps us focused on obeying Jesus. In this sermon, Joel walks through the prayer to show us how it helps us to live radically like Jesus has called us to.