V.1 The Lord, as a dependent Man, prayed much, and His disciples ask that they also might be taught how to pray. They did not yet know how to simply speak with thanks and with requests to their Father. When we pray to God our Father, we are showing that we realize how much we need Him. When Satan sees us kneeling in prayer, he knows we are talking with God and then we are more able to resist him (1 Pet. 5:8-9).
V.2-4 Many Christians don’t realize that “the Lord’s prayer” was given to His disciples here on earth before the Lord had died and was risen. They were praying for the kingdom of God on earth to come. It hasn’t come yet. We believers today are an heavenly people, our hopes and future are in heaven. After we’re taken to heaven at the “rapture,” “C” on your chart, the gospel that Jesus is coming back as King, will be preached to those people who never heard the Gospel of the grace of God in our “day of grace.” Then those believers will pray this prayer “Thy kingdom come.” And He will return, with us following Him, to reign over this earth during the 1,000 years of the millennium (“E” to “F”). What a wonderful future is ours. It’s worth the little, or much, we suffer for Him now. We are now redeemed and can by the Spirit, speak to our loving Father in words of our own.
V.5-13 The Lord compares a man at midnight asking his friends for three loaves of bread, with our asking our Father for our needs. Selfishness kept the man from giving bread, until the other person’s persistence bothered him so much, he finally produced the bread. Our Father is always ready “ask and it shall be given you.”
V.14-26 The hatred of the heart of man against the Lord! In verse 21 The devil is the strong man. His “goods” are the unbelievers whom he claims. But the Lord is “stronger than he” and so He has come to deliver Satan’s captives and set them free.
V.15 Is an illustration of perverted religion and verse 16 like infidelity.
V.23 The conflict of the ages is proclaimed — God or Satan. One or the other, no compromise.