A Prayer of Total Devotion, Part 1

Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles, this morning to Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6 for our time of study and God's word, this morning. We are continuing in our total devotion series and as we continue in this series, we are gonna be looking at Matthew 6:9-13 over the next two Sundays and today we'll be looking at verses 9 and 10, and if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be a prayer of total devotion, part 1. This is, I think, the 13th installment in our total devotion series that began back in September of last year and I'm not entirely sure how the, the passages that we have been looking at as we've gone through this series have been impacting you, although I have heard from a number of you.

I do know that if you're anything like me, the passages that we have been looking at have made you want to go before God in prayer. Praying to him and asking for His forgiveness, asking for his help and expressing your desire to be fully and totally devoted to Him. And so it's only fitting that we take some time this Sunday as well as next Sunday to study a prayer that expresses all of these sentiments. A prayer that is indeed a prayer of total devotion to God.

without a doubt, the prayer that we find in Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to 13 is the most famous prayer in the Bible. it is commonly called the Lord's Prayer. And I would agree with those who might say that it should also be called the disciples prayer because in it Jesus is teaching us how to pray and, and us as fallen human beings how to pray, and there's at least one request in this prayer that Jesus himself would never pray, right? Which one is that?

Very good. It's the one on the screen. forgive us of our debts. Jesus would never need to ask that of the Father because he was perfect.

However, I don't want us to give away that title, the Lord's Prayer too quickly. I think this prayer deserves to be called very much the Lord's Prayer, because every other petition in this prayer. is a petition that Jesus himself would have prayed. And it represents his heartbeat.

At every turn, and even regarding the forgiveness request that we see in verse 12, Jesus himself does stand as our advocate before the Father, frequently praying for us, saying to the Father, forgive them of their debts. So in a real sense, we can say that this prayer is the Lord's prayer, first, giving us a meaningful glimpse into the prayer life of Jesus, and it's offered by Jesus to us. As a model for us as His disciples to follow. So let me begin.

This morning by reading this prayer that we call the Lord's Prayer. Beginning in verse 9, Jesus says, pray then. In this way Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation. But deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen. I have to share at the outset here too, this morning that this prayer is deeply personal to me. there is no prayer that I have personally prayed or listened to more in the last six months than this prayer that I just read. I have a musical version of the Lord's Prayer on my phone and one of my favorite practices each day.

is to take some time early in the day to listen to Andrea Bocelli as he sings the Lord's Prayer. And as he sings the Lord's prayer, I always imagine myself side by side with Jesus' disciples, watching him, Jesus, as he prays this prayer. The absolute adoration. of Jesus for his Father is palpable in this prayer, and I am never unmoved.

By that adoration of Jesus for his father. I don't know what to make of this, but I'll share it with you. A few years ago, there was a two-week span. In which on 2 occasions I awoke in the morning.

And feelings of intense pleasure in God were coursing through. My being I consciously felt in those two moments. That Jesus was saying to me, Milton, what you are feeling right now is a small portion of what I feel for my Father. I'm never sure what to make of Such experiences, but I can say that some of what I felt on those two occasions gets reproduced every time I gaze into the face of Jesus while he prays the Lord's prayer.

Sometimes through the voice of Andrea Bocelli. And Jesus' high priestly prayer in John chapter 17, he prays to his father on behalf of all of us who believe in Him, and he prays. These words, he says that they may be in us. Speaking of Himself and God the Father, that we would be in them.

What he's praying in that request is that we who believe in Jesus would be ushered into the thick of their relationship with each other and experience the blessings of being in that place. And them And in the middle of their relationship with each other. Speaking for me personally, I, I never feel more in that spot. Then when I gaze upon the face of Jesus, as he looks upon the face of his father and prays the Lord's prayer.

So this passage is profoundly personal to me and I know, I know that I will not do justice to this great prayer over the next two Sundays, but may God help me to do so. If the Lord's Prayer teaches us anything, it teaches us that prayer is never you starting a conversation with God. Prayer is always You responding to God, and it's always you joining Jesus in his conversation. With his father.

In fact, it's more than that. interestingly, in Romans chapter 8 verse 26, we're told that the Spirit is always interceding for us, and in Romans 8:34, we're told that Jesus Christ is interceding for us. Think about that. In the Trinity, two of the members of the Trinity are always praying to the Father for us.

What this means is that when you and I pray, we never pray alone. At the very least, we always have the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ who are praying. With us This means that when you and I pray, When, whenever we come before God to pray, we are always joining a prayer meeting that is already in progress. Between the members of the Trinity.

Even when you pray by yourself in the privacy of your home, it's always a prayer meeting. that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are participating in. Think about it this way, if we announced this morning that we're having a prayer meeting on Wednesday night this week, and if the announcement were framed this way, how would you respond? If we said the Holy Spirit is going to be here in this room, praying to the Father and Jesus Christ is going to be here, praying to the Father as well.

And anyone who wants to come on Wednesday evening and join them. And their prayers to the Father is welcome to come. How many of you would come? We all would, who know the Lord, but that's the standing offer.

That's the prayer meeting, we are always joining in every time we come before God and pray. So it makes sense, total sense that prayer is something that we learn to do by watching Jesus as he communes with his Father. Interestingly, in Luke chapter 11. We're told in verse one that it happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray.

And then Jesus replied, And said to him, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, and so forth. What we learned from Luke 11 is that the disciples' prayer, as we sometimes call it, doesn't so much begin with the words, Father, hallowed be your name. It begins with the words, Lord, teach us to pray. And whoever the disciple is, who made that request of Jesus in Luke 11 did so after watching Jesus himself pray to the Father.

Almost certainly, this disciple, whoever he was, formerly thought he knew how to pray. Had you asked him 3 years prior, if he knew how to pray, he probably would have been offended and said, of course I know how to pray. In fact, every Jew of this day, raised in a religious home, knew how to pray. But after this disciple watched Jesus pray, He suddenly becomes discontent with his own prayer life.

He sees his own lack and he comes to Jesus and says, Lord, teach us. To pray He would only be asking such a thing because he has seen somebody pray. Like he had never seen before. Someone who prays in such a way that makes him realize that he really doesn't know how to pray at all.

And he wants to learn from the master. The Lord's prayer, guys, is us learning how to pray at the feet of Jesus. It's us watching Him and listening to Him, and it is in listening to Jesus pray that we get our start and we learn how to pray and we grow from there. Our own prayer life is birthed.

From the womb of the very prayer life of Jesus himself, and that's the privileged moment we have as we look at The Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6. To set a little bit of context for us. We should mention that the Lord's Prayer of Matthew 6 occurs in a context in which Jesus is not simply teaching us how to pray, but he's also teaching us how not To pray. And before he teaches us how to pray, he takes a moment to teach us how not to pray, and then he gives us the Lord's Prayer as an alternative.

In Matthew 6, he says beginning in verse 7, and when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them. For your Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask Him. Some might have then expected Jesus to say, therefore, You don't need to pray at all.

Right? But he doesn't say that. Instead, he says, pray then. In this way Given this truth.

That your father knows your needs before you ask them. And he gives us the Lord's Prayer. All we're gonna have time to do this morning is look at verses 9 and 10, and in these two verses, we'll observe three things that Jesus teaches us to do in his model prayer of total devotion. To God, and the first thing that he teaches us to do when we pray is to express desire that the name of our Heavenly Father be hallowed.

To express desire that the name of our Heavenly Father. Be hallowed. Look at what Jesus says in verse 9. 1st, he says, pray.

Which is an imperative. One of the fundamental things you learn from this passage is that you need to actually pray. Your heavenly Father knows what needs you have before you even ask them. He stands ready to answer your prayers and to address your needs.

So Jesus says, pray. To do anything less is to disobey God and to cheat yourself out of the blessings of communing with your Heavenly Father. Don't let anyone ever tell you that your needs, Or your problems are so complicated and so unique that praying to God does not apply in your case. Pray, Jesus says.

However, it's not enough to simply pray, we must pray correctly. This is why Jesus says, pray then in this way. And then he tells us how to pray, teaching us to begin our prayer with the words, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Notice that Jesus tells us that we are to pray to God here, not to Mary.

Not to the saints. If Jesus wanted us to pray to Mary and to the saints, this would have been a prime opportunity for him to tell us so. Nowhere in the scripture are we ever instructed to pray to anyone other than God. In verse 9, Jesus tells us, when we do address God in prayer, to say, our Father.

Such a reference to God as Father was not unheard of in the Old Testament to speak of God in relationship with the people of Israel. For example, you can write this reference down in Isaiah 63:16. Isaiah 63:16. Isaiah speaks to God and says, you are our Father.

You, O Lord, are our Father. But even though we have about 14 of such references in the Old Testament to God as the Father of the people of Israel, no one in the Old Testament ever spoke to God as my father. That would have been considered sacrilegious and way too familiar. But Jesus was different than anything that we see throughout the Old Testament.

The word Father or the expression, my father was Jesus' favorite way of speaking about God. We see him speaking this way of God, referring to him as Father 65 times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and about 100 times in John's Gospel alone. And the disciples as they heard Jesus speak of God in terms of my Father, they would have felt that Jesus was entitled to speak to God and about God in this way because of his unique relationship with the Father. But here in Matthew 6:9, Jesus is speaking to you and to me.

And he's instructing us to go ahead and refer to the Father in the same way that he does. The privilege that is uniquely his to refer to God as His Father now is being given to us. Imagine. How this must have emboldened and encouraged Jesus' disciples and his audience as they heard this from him.

I couldn't help but think of my own upbringing as I pondered this. My dad was a Marine for 20 years and served 3 tours in Vietnam when I was a youngster. He left for one of his tours when I was about 2 years of age. When he returned about a year later.

I didn't know who this strange man was. In our house kissing on my mom. And trying to be all fatherly toward me. I was intimidated by my dad so much so that I would never talk to him or approach him by myself.

And I don't remember that, but my dad remembers it, and he has told me this. But my dad has told me that if my older brother was in the room and he was talking with my dad or playing with my dad, then I would join my brother. And feel comfortable Doing that, but whenever my older brother would leave the room, I would leave the room quickly. But eventually I grew comfortable with my dad to relate to him, but that confidence with my dad would not have happened as quickly.

As it did were it not for the help and the presence of my older brother. The role that my older brother played in that season of my life and helping me to relate to my earthly father is exactly the role that Jesus is seeking to play right here in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. He's encouraging us, basically saying, come on, I'm going to talk to my Father, won't you come too? Let's talk to him together, and when you talk to him, say, our Father.

Because he is my father and your father too. It's an amazing privilege to have God as our Father and Jesus invites us. To make much of that here at the beginning of this Lord's prayer. In his book, Knowing God, JI Packer.

speaks these words and he says, what is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as his father. He goes on to say these words, if you wanna judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish is summed up in the knowledge of the fatherhood of God. Father is the Christian name. For God What Packer says is, So true. So it's not surprising.

To us that Jesus begins. This prayer by inviting us to join him and referring to God as our Father. Such a name for God speaks of, yes, his authority over us like a father has authority over his children. It speaks of his affection for us as family, like a father has affection for his children.

It speaks of fellowship, the way that a father can be with and communicate with his children. It speaks of God's concern for our needs, the way a father is concerned for the needs of his children. And it will ultimately speak of the fact That all believers in Jesus. Are his children.

Through faith in Christ Jesus, giving us the full rights and privileges of sonship. Which is taught throughout the New Testament. And this expression, our father is pregnant with all of that. Nonetheless, though the expression our Father expresses a certain level of intimacy, Jesus tells us.

To describe him as our father who is In heaven. Evidently, there is a place called heaven, and this is where God dwells in his exalted status where he rules from on high. If you Read prior to these words in Matthew 6, you would have noticed back in verse 6 of Matthew 6, that Jesus has already told us to pray to our Father who is in secret. So we've already learned earlier in the chapter that the father is in the secret place.

We know that God, therefore is very much present in the most secret prayer closets on earth where no other human being is present. But here in verse 9, we're learning that the same God who is in the secret places on earth, is also and ultimately in heaven. And this is very good news. To us, that our Father is in heaven ruling from on high, with authority and power at his command as the Creator and the ruler of all things.

Guys, it's one thing to have a dad who loves you and who relates to you, but that dad could be An invalid In fact, most of us will one day see our earthly father be reduced. To their deathbed and breathe their last in weakness. That's the fate of earthly fathers, but our heavenly Father lives forever. He loves us and he is the very one who is ruling on the throne of heaven and has all the resources of heaven and earth at his command as he seeks to love us.

This is our God. This is the one Jesus tells us to call our Father when we pray to Him. But he wants us to do more than this. Look at what he teaches us to say to our Father.

Hallowed. Be your name, hallowed be your name. Take the Greek word for holy. And turn that into a verb.

And that's what this word is that Jesus uses. That's what the word hallowed. Means Jesus is saying to his father, may your name be hallowed. May your name be revered as sacred and as holy.

And when Jesus uses the word name, he's probably isn't thinking only of the name Jehovah or Yahweh. Though he definitely has that name in mind. He's probably also thinking of all of the names of God that are given throughout the scriptures. But in addition to that, I don't think he's just thinking of a name for God as something separate from God Himself.

In the scriptures, God's name stands for God Himself. As he is revealed in nature and in scripture. Basically, here Jesus is saying to the Father, may you be revered as holy, and may any name used in description of you be viewed as sacred as well. Given this meaning, Jesus is teaching us here that God is absolutely distinct from us.

He's unique and separate from us and that we should revere God as such. This is not a prayer, guys, that God's name be made holy or more holy than it already is, but that it be treated as holy among men. And saying, hallowed be your name, we're expressing the desire that all men might receive God's revelation of Himself and his word and revere and honor God and His name as they should. The desire here is that men may set apart the name of God and set it apart from anything that is profane.

And that they would prize and honor and reverence and adore. God as infinitely holy. And here in this petition, Jesus is expressing his desire, and he's telling us we should express this desire, that the one true God be honored. For the holy person that he is.

Holy, holy, holy, the seraphim say of God in Isaiah 6:3. Holy, holy, holy, the living creatures say in Revelation chapter 4, verse 8, and this utterly holy one is our Father. We cherish his closeness to us, but we just as much cherish. His distinctness from us.

We are grateful for his attributes that we can share in and thus be like Him and we're just as grateful for the attributes of God that we could never share in and that make him infinitely different from us. We praise Him, we revere him, and we honor his name, and we rejoice whenever. God's name is revered and praised and esteemed as holy by others. This is what we are saying when we pray to God and say, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Anyone who prays this way then seeks to live a life. That enhances the reputation of God. That causes his name to be treated all the more holy. By those who observe our life.

And we grieve that Our own failures and the failures of others that give the enemies of God opportunity to blaspheme his name. Jesus here is telling us that this is the place to begin our prayers to God. There's something else that we should do when we pray, and this brings us to the second thing that Jesus teaches us to do in this model prayer of total devotion. And that is when you pray to God, express desire for God's kingdom to come.

Express desire for God's kingdom to come. Look at what Jesus says in verse 10. Your kingdom Come I dare you to pray this petition. And mean it In his latest book on the Lord's Prayer, Al Mohler.

Says the Lord's Prayer is the prayer that turns the world upside down. There is no clearer call to revolution than when we pray, Your kingdom come. Such a request assumes that there is a kingdom of God that the Father rules over from heaven and that this kingdom rule has not yet come to earth and covered the whole earth as it will in a future day. But we long for the day when God's kingdom will come.

We welcome it. We desire it. In fact, we demand it. Keep in mind that this is not worded as a petition or request.

It's an imperative, expressing a deepest wish with great urgency. A heart that is devoted to God can't wait for God's kingdom to come in full force and cover the whole earth. When God's kingdom does come in a future day, You can know that it will come in answer to The urgent prayer of millions of saints who've been praying for it to come for centuries. May your kingdom come.

You may hear that and say, OK, I'm gonna start praying for that. Well, be careful what you wish for. If you do pray for God's kingdom to come, be prepared for it to come in ways that you might not be expecting. The disciples, no doubt, are going to follow Jesus' pattern here and they're gonna start praying for God's kingdom to come, and they will do so with a particular image in mind of what the coming of God's kingdom should look like.

Little do they know. That it will come With Jesus suffering and dying on a cross and then being raised from the dead and then ascending to glory, and then with him coming to earth thousands of years later to establish his reign upon the earth. God's kingdom will come, all right. Just not in the way the disciples who will be praying this prayer would have anticipated.

In fact, later in the gospel accounts when Jesus tells the disciples that he must suffer. And die, Peter is gonna rebuke him, saying, God forbid that this should ever happen to you. But such a death was an important part of the coming of God's kingdom, a kingdom that would expose and change men's hearts and deliver them from their own sins. Understand also that when you pray for God's kingdom to come, you, you aren't just praying an eschatological prayer for God's kingdom to come at the end of time.

You're also praying for God's kingdom to be spreading in the here and now. Where God's kingdom spreads over the earth, one person at a time, one heart at a time. As person by person, people are being saved and surrendering to the rule of God over their lives. And praying this prayer, you're also praying that God's kingdom rule.

will increasingly extend over your own life and reshape. And revolutionize what your own personal life is all about. Think about it. You can't very well say to God, may your kingdom come.

When you are at the same time resisting the movement of his kingdom into your own life. To pray for God's kingdom to come is to pray for God's kingdom interests to succeed in the world, to succeed here in the city of Riverside and throughout our nation and around the world and in your own life each day. And to make your own life all about participating in the advancement of God's kingdom in any way that you can. Also understand that If you're going to take up the mantle to be praying for God's kingdom to come, You just need to know that you're inviting conflict.

You're asking for something that is going to create trouble. Satan presently rules as the prince and the power of the air. The kingdoms of this world are under Satan's clutches, and billions of people the world over, including in the United States, are citizens of the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of darkness. So to pray for God's kingdom to come is to pray for something to happen.

That will inevitably lead to the clashing of God's kingdom with Satan's kingdom. And in the clash of those two kingdoms, Lightning will flash and sparks will fly and you will find yourself in the midst of all of that. You will find yourself being persecuted for the cause of Christ. At various points in time, when you pray for God's kingdom to come.

Guys, you're praying a prayer that is profoundly subversive to our culture today, and you're begging for trouble. So Knowing all of that, will you still pray, Father? Your kingdom come. What you can know for sure from this request that Jesus teaches us to pray here.

is that history is moving toward a culmination, that one day God's kingdom will be established over the whole earth. And guys, that's the grand scheme of history. That's the real story of what's happening in the world. And one day God's kingdom will be established over the whole earth.

And in praying this prayer, you are expressing the fact that you desire for this outcome to happen. You rejoice in every little advance of God's kingdom in your own life and in the lives of others. And you're willing to play your part. And serve on the leading edge of the advancement of God's kingdom as it encroaches upon an end to any territory that right now belongs to Satan.

Praying for God's kingdom to come. Also means that your trust. is in God and not in the princes and the presidents and the prime ministers of this world. You will go to the ballot box, you will cast your votes, you will let your voice be heard in any way that our society will accommodate your voice and you will pray for those who serve in our local and state and federal governments.

But you are not naive. that the kingdoms of this world will not hold the ultimate answers. To what plagues our society today. that whenever you vote someone into office, that you are not voting for a Messiah, ever because that position has already been taken by Jesus.

And the prayer of your heart, each day, even for our own country is not so much, Lord, make America great again. Your prayer is, Father, may your kingdom come. Also, to pray for God's kingdom to come means that you aren't saying my kingdom come. No one ever starts their day out loud, consciously by saying, hallowed be my name, my kingdom come, my will be done.

Yet that is the default setting of every human heart. Unless God performs a miracle of salvation in that person's life. Most people are living for the kingdom of me. They spend their life monitoring and defending and serving the interest of the kingdom of me.

And they will judge and they will exile people for the smallest infractions, banishing them from their petty little kingdoms of me. But this is not the case with someone who is truly and meaningfully praying. The Lord's prayer, praying to God, saying, your kingdom come, not mine. There's a third thing that Jesus teaches us to do in this model prayer of total devotion to God and that is express desire for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Express desire for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Observe how Jesus' prayer continues in verse 10. He says to the Father, your will be done on earth. As it is in heaven.

Anyone who prays this prayer understands that God evidently has a will that is revealed in his word. And they believe in the goodness of God's will and their prayers that God's will will be done on earth in the same way that it is right now being done in heaven. In other words, perfectly. Such people are not pessimists.

who have given up on planet Earth, saying, Lord, just get me out of here and take me home to heaven. No, they're praying for Earth. They're praying for the people. On this planet.

They're praying for God's will to be done on earth as it is right now in heaven with absolute totality and perfection. Do you realize that this is a prayer that actually will not be answered entirely, even in the coming millennial reign of Christ upon the earth. It's a prayer that will be answered. In totality, after the creation of the new heavens and the new earth in the eternal state.

So this is a forward looking prayer, an eschatological prayer, a prayer of a person who longs for all that the book of Revelation promises to come to pass. It's a prayer for Christ to return to earth, a prayer for Christ to establish his 1000 year reign upon the earth. A prayer for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdoms of our Lord. It's even a prayer for Christ to defeat the rebellion that will occur at the end of the millennial reign of Christ upon the earth and a prayer for God to cause our present heaven and earth to pass away and for the new heaven and new earth to be put in its place, and then for God's will to be done on the new earth with absolute perfection.

In that future state. This is a prayer for long range thinkers. But again, this Prayer is not just some eschatological prayer. It's also a very personal prayer, a prayer for God's will to be done in my own life, in the here and now.

It is a prayer of personal surrender to the will of God. It is a prayer for God's will to be done in our church, for his will to be done in our care group, in our relationships, for his will to be done in our homes. What is the will of God for your life today? How does God want you to live your life?

Today, if you truly pray this prayer, you will want to open your Bible and read your Bible in order to know the will of God. In the grand scheme of history and in your own life from day to day. And you will surrender yourself to doing His will today and tomorrow and the next day. People who pray this way.

Again, are doing the opposite of saying my will be done. They understand Those who pray this prayer that there will be moments when God's will and their own will will be in conflict. And in such moments, they're wanting God's will to be done over their own will. They don't give heed to the advice.

In fact, they despise the advice of this world which says follow your heart. Instead, their mantra is, I'll follow God's heart. That's what they're praying here. When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, he prayed 3 times for the Father to let his cup of suffering.

At the cross passed from him, yet each time Jesus said, yet not my will but yours be done. So this prayer that Jesus is teaching us to pray here in Matthew chapter 6 verse 10, is, is Not just something he wants us to pray. It's something that he himself prayed in his darkest hour when the cross was looming before him. He was willing for God's will to be done in his own life even when God's will meant that he would be crucified on the cross and bear the punishment for our sins and suffer unjustly.

Are you willing to pray for God's will to be done? Even if you knew that it might be God's will for you to suffer unjustly, Are you willing to pray for God's will to be done, even knowing that there will be times where God's will will be the absolute opposite of what you are craving to do. This is actually where the rub is for most people. Most of us think That the idea of God's will is a nice idea until God's will contradicts our own will.

We'll follow God's will so long as it agrees with our will, and then when our will. And God's will contradict one another, we choose to follow our will, which means that we were never following God's will in the first place. The ultimate determiner of what our behavior all along was, was simply, what is my will. And if God's will happens to conform to my will, I'll go ahead and do that.

But if they contradict each other, then I'm going to pronounce my will good. And I will follow my will. But people who pray like Jesus teaches us here are people who don't trust their own will. They know that there are often times.

Moments when they would say that there's a way that seems right to a person, but the end thereof are the ways of death. And they trust God's will. More than their own will, and they want God's will to be done even when His will contradicts their own. So notice the 1st 3 petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

Hollow would be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. There you have it.

Your name, God, your kingdom. And your will. John Stott says it this way, in the Lord's Prayer, Christians are obsessed with God. With his name, his kingdom, His will, not with theirs.

True Christian prayer is always a preoccupation with God. And his glory. And guys, therein lies the deliverance from self that all of us deeply need. Our natural tendency is to be consumed with my name, my kingdom, and my will.

Or as John Stott says, we are concerned about our own little name. About our own little empire. And about our own silly little will. And nothing is more deadly and more stifling to true joy in life and this preoccupation with self that comes naturally to all of us, right?

As Timothy Keller says, nothing makes us more miserable than self-absorption. The endless, unsmiling concentration on our needs, wants, treatment, ego, and record. But on the other end of the spectrum we discover our truest. And happiest selves when we put our lives in orbit around God's name, God's kingdom, and God's will.

This is why the Lord's Prayer is such a wonderful prayer for us to embed into our own prayer life. We come to God in prayer and Maybe on a given day, our heart is roiling with anxieties and frustration as we are obsessing over our own name and our own kingdom and our own will. Yet this prayer, when we begin to embed it into our prayer life, lifts us beyond all of that to something far greater. And more wonderful And when we let ourselves go there, we find the peace.

That we're looking for, right? So which will it be for you? Will your life be all about God's name? God's kingdom And God's will.

Will you look at God and say, your will be done, or will you say, no, my will be done? Some of you in this room are at that crossroads. In a big way, and all of us find ourselves at this crossroads multiple times a day. A number of great thinkers have pointed out that there are only two types of people in the world, those who say to God, Your will be done.

And those who say to God, no, my will be done. One of the most requested songs at funerals nowadays, amazingly. Is the song My way Sung by Frank Sinatra. If a song will be played over the loudspeakers of hell, it will be this song.

You guys know how the song goes. I won't sing it to you this morning. But the last verse of this song goes like this, for what is man? What has he got?

If not himself? Then he has not To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows. And did it my way.

Yes. It was my way. Even non-Christians have a huge problem with this song. Writing for GQ magazine, which I have never quoted from in a sermon.

Before Scott Meslow, who is by no means a Christian, says, My Way is a song that celebrates individuality in such a manner that any self-important fathead can take it on as a personal anthem. It is a song designed to appeal to egomaniacs. There are those who say to God, Your will be done. And there are others who say, my will be done.

I'd rather do it my way. And in the end, God will say to them, fine. Have it your way and that. is hell Jesus shows us a different way.

He shows us the Father's way. What I love about Jesus is that he is God. And he prays to the Father here, hallowing the Father's name and wanting his kingdom to come and his will to be done. This is what Jesus' life on earth was all about.

When Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted of the devil, Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of this world. If Jesus would just bow down and worship him. This was Jesus' moment. His chance to establish a kingdom on earth that would be separate from His father's kingdom.

And that would hallow his own name at the expense of his father's name. A kingdom that would not require a cross. And Jesus refused. 3 years later, Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane and the father points him to a cross and Jesus says, not my will.

But your will be done. At every opportunity, Jesus deferred to the Father. He glorified the Father, just as he does at the beginning of this prayer, and what did the Father do? For Jesus.

He raised him from the dead, He ascended him to his right hand, and he glorified Jesus and gave him a name that is above any other name, insisting that every knee bow to Jesus and acknowledge Him as sovereign Lord. This is the way things work in the Trinity. In the sacred dance of the Trinity that CS Lewis speaks about, Jesus assumes his place in submissive orbit around his father, and the Father exalts him, Jesus, to the highest heaven. And in the first half, don't miss this guys, in the first half of the Lord's prayer, we see Jesus in that worshipful submissive orbit around the Father, and he invites us to assume our place next to him in that orbit.

Saying together with him, Father, may your name be hallowed. May your kingdom come, may your will be done. And if we join Jesus in his submissive orbit around his father, it is here that you and I will find our deepest needs being met. We will discover our truest selves.

We will blossom as the fully. Human persons that God has created us to be. This is the place where we're the least self-absorbed. And at the same time, the most truly ourselves.

This is the spot where we position ourselves to be glorified by the Father far beyond our wildest dreams. Those who seek after their own name. Being hallowed and their own kingdom coming and their own will being done, will find their desires taking them all the way down to the very depths of hell. But those who lose themselves as Jesus did and does here in this prayer in seeking after God's name and God's kingdom, and God's will will find themselves exalted by the Father to the highest heaven.

If you devote yourself To God, living a life of total devotion to Him. You will find yourself stunned. By how totally devoted God is to your highest good. And how much bigger God's dreams are for you than any dreams you ever dreamed for yourself.

Eye has not seen nor has ear heard, neither has it ever entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those who love Him. Some of you This morning You are not a child of God, but you can be, before you even walk out of this room. Look to Jesus who, who died for you, call upon his name, repent of your sins and believing Him as your Lord and Savior. And take your place alongside of Jesus in submissive orbit.

Around this amazing God. To all of us who are children of God. Jesus says to us every day, and in this passage, he says, I'm going to my father right now to talk to him. Won't you come too?

Let's pray together. Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will.

Be done. Let's pray together. Lord, we, we should feel this way with any text. That we ever study, but there's something sacred.

In this spot where we find ourselves here. As we assume a position alongside of Jesus and we Watch him as he beholds your face and speaks to you and Tells us to join him in The place that he has assumed around you and And to speak the same words that express his own heart towards you. And I pray, Lord, that we would be a people who don't recite the Lord's prayer as a meaningless repetition, but that we allow this prayer to become deeply embedded into our consciousness, to embed itself deep into our prayer life.

To where it, it just gives profound shape and marks deeply, not only the way that we pray to you, but the way We live our lives.

Change us. Change us Some people say prayer. Doesn't change God, prayer changes us, and boy does this prayer change us. If we would allow it to You're a good God, Lord, and we just thank you for this, allowing us to visit this holy spot.

And do whatever good work in our hearts that we most need. This morning, save souls in this room this morning. Maybe who are tired of. Living for the kingdom of me, and they find something here, your spirit's working in their heart and calling them to this grander thing.

Give them the grace to respond, Lord, and to look to you as their Savior. We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, and we ask that you would receive. The funds that we give in this offering and do much with all that is given. For the glory of Jesus Christ in whose name we pray.

And all God's people said,