AnnouncementsNewcomers FellowshipMen's Breakfast

Introduction

Well we are in this section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesusteaches us to pray. And I think it would be good rather than me readthe prayer to you week after week that we all say it together. Andjust an encouragement in these group readings to say the prayerwith some inflection. We aren't chanting a funeral ode. Let's pray toGod right now with our eyes open the words he taught us:

Oh, and by the way, some of you who might be looking at otherversions other than the ESV. For example, in the NAS at the end ofverse 13 in italics you have the closing line, 'For Thine is thekingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen .' (Mat 6:13NAS)

That last line is almost certainly not in the original text (all themanuscripts in which that italicized section appears come muchlater) which is why the translators of the ESV left it out. I alwaysthink, some scribe was copying along and said to himself, Jesuscouldn't have ended a prayer without saying amen, something mustbe missing. So he just added that real quick while nobody waslooking.

So that's the Lord's prayer, very short and very simple.

Last week we look at the very first line, really just the first phrase,

our father who is in heaven.

And that phrase is a declaration. It doesn't ask for anything. Rather,it confesses something. It confesses both the immensity of the Godto whom we pray and the relationship we have to him.

And what we learned from this was that if you want to pray to God,then the first thing you need to do is plunge yourself into thegreatness of who he is. God sits above the circle of the earth and itsinhabitants are like grasshoppers. He spreads out the heavens like acanopy in which to dwell. In a single creative word, he spoke the 200billion galaxies into existence. And yet he relates to us as a father, apatient, tender, always available source of help that we can lean into.We don't have to worry that all that power will turn against us. It's forus. That's who we pray to. So confess it.

Declare his attributes and your relationship to him. That was lastweek.

Understanding the Word Hallowed

But what about the second part of that sentence. Our Father who isin heaven, hallowed be your name. What does that mean? Thatword hallowed is a word we never use. In fact, Nate and I weresitting in his office talking aabout this passage and I said, "That's aweird word. Hey, I'm kind of embarrassed but I have no idea whatthat means? He shrugged. I have no idea what that means." So welooked it up and turns out it's just the verb form of the word holy - tomake your name holy. But that really doesn't help much either. Insome strange sense are we supposed to be praying that God'sname be made holy?

To really understand what we are supposed to be praying here, weneed to back up get our arms around this concept of holiness. It'ssuch a lofty, religious concept. Normally we think of holiness as amoral and ethical perfection or some sort of freedom from moral evil.And while that is true, it's a subset of a larger concept.

I think the best way to illustrate this concept of holiness is to thinkabout something you are really proud of.

Maybe you are a talented soccer player, or your known as asprinter.Or maybe you are known for your musical abilityor your intellectual abilityor your craftingor your parentingor your money making ability.

No matter how talented or successful you are there are times whenyou are standing in the presence of someone whose talents soeclipse yours you feel like nothing. Maybe you are an amazingbasketball player in your little fish pond but then you take the floorand onto that same floor steps the King, LeBrone James. Andsuddenly you don't even feel like playing. Your crossover move youwere so proud feels like a dribble off the knee. Your vertical leap.Your size. Your strength. Your instinctive talents. It all just feels soweak and lame. That's the concept of holiness.

If you think you’re good-looking, or you think you’re talented, or youthink you’re smart and you stand next to somebody who is ahundred times more talented, more good-looking, or smarter thanyou, how do you feel? You feel like you've encountered holiness!

When we step into the presence of God, the very best thing that you

feel so proud of looks like trash. That's why Isaiah when he comesinto the throne room of God and he sees the Lord on the throne andangels with six wings calling to one another saying Holy, holy, holy.What does Isaih do?

He's stepped into the presence of holiness and it reduces him.

Maybe you've tried to be super selfless this week. You've absorbedinjustice. You've done chores around the house without beingasked. You've gone out of your way to financially bless your family.So maybe you look at your week's accomplishments and think, manI was super selfless this week? But what happens when you stepinto the presence of God, into the presence of holiness itself, thevery definition of selfless generosity, your selflessness begins to feellike the very embodiment of selfishness. You don't have much tooffer. You realize the gap and the distance. You realize the chasmthat separates your best efforts. Your understanding of what true

selflessness has had the lid blown off. Your concept of selflessnesshas been enlarged and expanded.

You think you're powerful. Well compare your power to holiness, toGod. Your power shrinks to weakness.

You think you're wise. When holiness itself enters the room, yourwisdom becomes foolishness.

Holiness has the idea of the ultimate standard against which allother claims are measured.

That's the idea of holiness. Holiness in its raw form seems to be thisidea of purity in attributes. Pure gold can't get any more pure right.

If you were to gaze at pure beauty, you would be gazing at a holybeauty, beauty that couldn't be improved on. If you were interactingwith pure intellect you'd be talking with a holy intellect, again, anintellect that couldn't be improved.

It's the substance in its raw, perfect, irreducible, incorruptible ,incomparable form.

That's by the way, why we normally think of the concept in terms ofmoral quality. God's moral qualities are holy. You can't get any morejust, joyful, righteous because God possess those qualities in theirpristine, undefiled, undiluted state. He's a holy God.

When you stand in the presence of God, You feel like you’re in thepresence of a burning bush, something that on the one hand isincredibly attractive but on the other hand is incredibly traumatic,because the light makes you see your darkness, because the

beauty makes you see your ugliness, because the power of it, theperfection of it, makes you see your weakness.

So the holiness of God is God’s incomparable, transcendentperfection that reveals our sin and our lostness

So again, when we say, "Our Father who is in heaven, holy is yourname" it's a declaration.

Your the standard of righteousness. My righteousness is trashwhen I look at you.You are the standard of beauty. My beauty is scrap waste when Ilook at you.You are the standard of power. When I speak, there is stillness;when you speak 200 billion galaxies obediently spin into existence.

It's more than a declaration. It's a confession. I'm not the standard. Ia lay myself like a a thing to be measured against you who are thestandard and ask you to judge me. You are holy. Hallowed be yourname. You are the ultimate standard against which all other claimsof worth are compared.

So that's the first line of our prayer.

Your Kingdom Come.

The second line of the prayer which will take up the remainder of ourtime is similar in that it too is a declaration, but even beyond adeclaration it is also a submission - your kingdom come.

Now we are in a cultural moment in which this concept is absolutelybizarre. There's a little parable about two fish who were swimmingalong and another fish swims by and says, "How's the water?" Andthey shrug and keep on moving. The one fish says to the other,"What's water?"

The idea is that when you are so immersed in something, when it'sthe air you breathe, you aren't even aware of it. And I think thephilosophical air we breathe as American's is individualism.

If there's anything you deserve, it's to do what you want. Now youwon't find any articles out there that say this explicitly. You can'tdownload a paper on American individualism. But it's everywhere.

So this prayer is like asking a fish to jump out of the water and starta new life on land. The seeking God's kingdom is a surrendering ofour own. Praying for God's will to be done is a renouncement of our

will.

That means that in any given decision, the most important factor isnot myself and my happiness and my glory and my honor and myrecognition and my comfort. That can be a tough pill to swallow.

Thomas Watson, a 17th century preacher put it in these rathersobering terms. He said when you pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy willbe done,” you are really praying two things.

Lord help me to do everything you askLord help me to endure everything you inflict.

Because the king may need you to suffer for his kingdom. As asoldier you may be asked to fling yourself into the war, or man someboring post, or work tirelessly to support the troops. But it's not aboutyour will and your kingdom. It's about his.

Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Beyond Surrender and toward Embracing

Now the way we've set it up here, this sounds like an awful thing.But listen to the prayer. Does it sound like torment? This prayer isintended to prayed as a cry, almost a plea. It's a prayer forsomething the praying man wants desperately, similar to the way athirsty man would pray for water. His surrender of his kingdom andwill is voluntary. I don't want second best. I don't want my kingdom.That would be second rate. I want your kingdom.

The point to maker here is that it's never enough to surrender ourwill. We must go on to desire God's.

Thomas Chalmers has an article I have read several times entitledthe expulsive power of a new affection and in the article he arguesthat the only way to change our behavior is to change our affections.So often we try to change our behavior by looking at the negativeoutcome of our choices.

You might say, 'well that was a terrible idea.'Look at the outcome of that decision.Look at how many people I hurt.Look at the long term misery, even though it had an ounce of shortterm payout.Boy that stings.I need to make sure I never do that again.

And that usually works for a while when the pain and sting of sin issharp. But what happens when that wears off? Suddenly you findyourself in a situation where the pain isn't very sharp and the desireis very strong. What is the only thing that can cause you to say noto your kingdom and your will?

The only thing that can truly make you surrender your kingdom is ifyou believe that another exists which is better. Then you can say no.Then you can move beyond it. If a guy is dying of thirst and hecomes across a muddy pond, he'll drink it. But if I tell him, right overthat hill is a crystal spring, he'll pass it by.

So the only way we can really say with longing, "Your kingdomcome. Your will be done." is by seeing the superiority of God'skingdom and will. The idea is displacing not extracting. That's why Ilove the title of his sermon, "The expulsive power of a newaffection." Your are removing the old affection. But you do it byinserting a better one. My heart is only so big and there isn't roomfor God's will and my will. There's no room in my heart for two

kingdoms and so I guess my will and my kingdom will have to go. It'sa happy farewell.

Let's put some legs on this. What does that mean practically?

It means there a certain disillusionment with the things of this world.

I don't love what this kingdom has to offer.I'm tired of gadgets promising to make my life better.I'm tired of the sexual sewer that this world has to offer.I'm tired of the endless entertainmentInstead I long for your greatness.Instead I long for experiencing your will the way you intended it.Instead I long to worship you as I understand you.

May your kingdom come.

For our book club we are reading a Brave New World where there isa world envisioned where all suffering is eliminated. People geteverything they want whenever they want. And there's one line inthe book that struck me like a tone of bricks. One of the characterswho ends up being exhausted by the non-stop pleasure says tohimself, "What fun it would be if one didn't have to think abouthappiness."

Don't you get this sense every once in a while? So much pursuitand running after all the trinkets and toys and vacations andexperiences with me at the center. What fun it would be if one didn'thave to think about happiness!

Your kingdom come, your will be done.

Any voluntary submission is a confession of superiority. It's really a

confession of holiness. Previously, I believed my will to be the good,beautiful and holy standard. I believed my will the hub around whichthe world must obediently revolve. But now I see that I must revolvearound the hub of God's will. It's not an embittered surrender. It's ananticipation of something better.

This prayer isn't a prayer where we are asking God to bend into us;rather, it's a prayer that functions much like a heat gun where as wepray we melt and soften our will into God’s. God is the form andprayer takes our raw material and softens our will so that it conformto him. So the goal of today is to turn on that torch and soften us upso that we can say with longing, "Your kingdom come, oh Lord."

The Problem with the World

We need to see the relationship between praying your kingdomcome and your will be done. It is one and the same prayer.

You see, we'd all have our kingdoms if we could impose our will oneveryone around us. But what invariably happens when we try isthat our will is in competition with everyone else's will. So the historyof the world is really just a history of competing wills.

Every person in the world is trying to establish his kingdom byasserting their will. And if if you look down the corridors of history,certain people have had reasonable success in establishing theirkingdoms. They have strongly exercised their will over their fellowhumans in order to establish their kingdoms.

Alexander the Great had an enormous kingdom. He was thesovereign of it. I read a book last year on Alexander the Great byJacobb Abbot which was creatively titled Alexander the Great. It was

such an interesting book in that it described this poisonousprogression of power. At first Alexander was such a noble ruler. Hewas generous and merciful and disciplined. But all of these qualitieswere in service to his great lust for power.

The more he acquired the less he needed to be merciful.The more he expanded his empire the less it made sense to begenerous.The larger his kingdom grew the less disciplined he became until,seated on his throne in luxury he tragically drank himself intodangerous levels of toxicity and weather from poison or some othermeans, died at the age of 32.

Alexander got his kingdom. He got his way. But let me ask: whowants to live under Alexander? I'm not here saying, Alexander, mayyour kingdom come. He had a good shot. There were good thingshe did, but I don't see that as a Utopia my any stretch. So many diedneedlessly. So much suffering. So much injustice. So muchrampant immorality. No thank you.

What about your kingdom? Even if you haven't dominated empires(which I don't think is anyone in this room but correct me afterwardsif I am wrong), you have had some experimentation with running akingdom. A kingdom just means sphere of influence. Any time youhave control, your exercising a certain amount of dominion. Any timeyou get your way, your getting a slice of your kingdom. If you havecontrol of your free time, you are exercising dominion over that sliceof time. Maybe your kingdom is your family or a group of people atyour work. How is that going for you?

You see, no matter if you are in charge of 2 kids, 2 companies, 2countries or 2 continents the end result is always the same. It's fullof pain. It's full of imperfection and suffering.

But as we said earlier, we have to move beyond confessing thebankruptcy of human kingdoms or even the bankruptcy of ourpersonal kingdom. We're still going to drink the stinky water unlesswe can anticipate the crystal spring right over the hill.

We have to see that Jesus offers something better!

Now this is all good in theory. But what happens when life is hardand its really hard to actually pray, your kingdom come. Whathappens when God's will is causing lots of suffering? What then?How can I continue to pray this even in a storm of life where I amtruly suffering for being a follower of him. If I just stopped pursuinghim hard, all the difficulty would let up.

Here's where we really need to compare kingdoms. Here are threethings to remember when you are struggling to pray, Your kingdomcome; your will be done. And what we are going to do is put togetherthe whole prayer so far.

“Thy will be done” is a surrender, which sounds bad unless you stopand use your head. Jesus’ thought here is that he’s your Fatherwhich of course means you’re a child. When 4-year-olds go asktheir 40-year-old father for something and the 40-year-old fatherdoesn’t give it to them because the 40-year-old father can seethings the 4-year-old can’t we don't criticize the father, we smile atthe child.

“No, I don’t want to let you play in that crawl space down there,because there's black windows and brown recluses in there andthey'll bite you and your hand limbs will slowly rot and you'll die.

Of course, whenever the 4-year-old hears the father delay or denythe request, the 4-year-old melts down, because the 4-year-oldthinks he or she knows better than the father. He wants hiskingdom.

So all our stamping about and whining that life is hard or boring or

not satisfying, all our worrying all our fretting, all our bitterness, allour frustration, it’s us spiritual 4-year-olds thinking we know how ourlives have to go and God is not going to get it right. God my will. Mywill. I can see better than you.

Do you know what Jesus Christ is inviting us to do here? He issaying, “Oh, lay down this horrible crushing burden of thinking youknow. You don't know.Would you want a 4 year old running for the president of the US?He can't possibly know. The founders of our country set the age of35 as absolute minimum life experience to run the country.

Listen we are limited. Severely limited. The difference between a 4-year-old and a 40-year-old is considerably smaller than thedifference between you and God. Just let that soak in. God is askingyou to trust in his perfect insight.

So God has perfect insight. You

We won't spend even one minute on this point because this was themain point of last week. But just to remind us. God not only sees all,knows all. But he also has power to work in accordance with hisknowledge.

This is hard to overstate how exciting this is. If you surrender yourkingdom and surrender your will, you can guarantee that everythingthat happens, is motivated from perfect love. You can't say that ifyour trying to setup your kingdom. Think about combining all thesethings in a single person.

You see Gandhi had pretty good insight. He had wisdom. But helacked power. So I don't want to be in his kingdom.

Zeus was said to be powerful. That's great. But Zeus doesn't loveme or even care for me, so I don't want to be in his kingdom.

My mom loves me. But my mom doesn't have any political power.So I can't be part of her kingdom.

But God has all of these. On the one hand you have the power ofGod. We looked at that last week. Our minds are just blown when

we look at a single solar flare, and then try to conceptualize thatthere are 5 more starts in the universe than grains of sand on all thebeaches on all the earth's surface.

But not only is he powerful. He's also loving. You have the cross.The cross! What does that tell you about God? He loves you. Ohhow he loves you. That he would descend from the heavens hecreated, seated above the circle of the earth, and be humiliated witha whip and be stripped naked and nailed to a spike of wood and leftto die in torture.

Clearly he is powerful. And clearly he loves me. And he knowseverything including me. I may not understand why he is currentlyruling the way he is. I may not understand why my particularsituation is so painful or difficult, but I cannot deny that he loves me(he died for me) and I cannot deny he is powerful to change things ifhe wanted (after all he created supernovas with a word). So I musttrust.

John Wesley had a very famous prayer he used to pray all the time.It’s just another version of, “… thy will be done …” This is how itused to go. “I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thouwilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me tosuffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee … Letme be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me havenothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure anddisposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son andHoly Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenantwhich I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”

You can only say those words if you look at your 40 year old fatherand say, "You know what, I trust him."

And so we cry out, 'your kingdom come' It's a surrender, aconfession, a request, an expression of hunger and thirst. Ourkingdoms are wrecked. Your kingdom come.

And come he will.

That day is coming, but what does that mean right now? How do weeagerly anticipate in God's kingdom now? Well one of the ways to

do that is to invest in it. Putting your time and resources intoministry. Just coming to church every Sunday is good but that's notwhat it means to be about Jesus' kingdom work. One hour a weekinvolvement is not the cry of man who says, your will be done. Yourkingdom come. So what I want to do now is ask Jeremy Putman tocome up and let you know about ways you can invest in God'skingdom in children's ministry and then after that Jim Stout is goingto come up and let you know about some small group opportunities.