His Name, His Kingdom, His Will

Our Father…Bless this Game

34 wins. 33 losses. And 8 ties. That glowing record is the fruit of my entire high school boys varsity soccer career. We committed ourselves to week long summer camps, and grueling, two-a-day practices, hours of training in the weight room and on the field, and yet the secret to our average, middle of the pack finishes every year was that right before the start of the game, we would all take a knee and say [recite the Lord’s Prayer]

75 games. That’s 75 prayers! And yet mediocre success. 34 wins. 33 losses. And 8 ties.

While our pre-game mantras didn’t produce the results that we would have liked to have seen, it did create a familiarity with what is commonly known as the Lord’s Prayer.

Whether you used this prayer in sports, or you grew up Catholic and often recited the Our Father as it is called, or you’ve just passed it in your reading and didn’t know what to do with it, I believe our familiarity with the Lord’s Prayer has unfortunately led us to misuse or completely set aside what was meant to be central to our lives as Kingdom citizens.

Lord’s Prayer at the Center of the SOM?

At the center of His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, His manifesto for Kingdom citizens, His instruction in the way to see the world and be in the world as His disciples so that true flourishing comes - at the heart of all that, He has not given us a mantra to be blindly recited, or a good luck charm to be tagged onto our hopes and dreams, a prayer request, or even a suggestion on how to pray.

No, at the center of His sermon, King Jesus commands His followers to “pray then like this...” knowing that when His people align themselves with this prayer, kingdoms will be toppled, the world will be turned upside down, and a revolution will happen - in our hearts and in this world.

Jesus cares how we pray

We are in Matthew 6. And in this section of we have seen so far that Jesus cares how we pray. When we pray, prayer is not meant to be a show, performing for others, trying to get the praise of men like the hypocrites do. Nor is prayer meant to be an attempt to manipulate God, with a bunch of babbling and long-winded prayer, like the pagans do.

No we are to come as needy children to our heavenly Father trusting the relationship we have with Him through Jesus Christ, who through His life, death and resurrection, redeemed us and made us sons and daughters of God. Because of our adoption, we are to come boldly before the throne, expecting in faith that our Father in Heaven - intimacy and awe - hears our prayers and delights to meet our needs.

Jesus is concerned with how we pray. But we also see that Jesus wants to teach you to pray.

Matthew 6:9 “Pray then like this...

Jesus wants to teach you to pray

Rabbis would often teach their disciples how to pray. We see in Luke 11 that the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him to teach them to pray like John the Baptist taught His disciples how to pray.

Like everything else in life, we need to be taught how to pray. Levi is learning to speak. He babbles a lot. He calls my wife Dada. When we say “where is mama” he points to her and says “Dada.” I don’t know if he is going to amount to much in life. No, we know what he means, Jo responds. But we are also teaching him, repeating the right words so he learns.

The Lord is patient. Don’t be discouraged if you struggle in prayer. Most of us were never taught how to pray. We try to figure it out on our own, but Jesus here gives us instructions in what to pray. He wants to teach us. And He is patient with the process.

Ask Him to teach you to pray.

Jesus Gives you a Pattern to Follow in Prayer

We saw last week that we have lots of problems with prayer. There are many reasons why we don’t pray - from thinking we need to perform for God, or that we need to manipulate in some way, to not seeing our need, to thinking that God doesn’t care - so these things hinder our prayer lives.

I think another problem we have with prayer is that we don’t know what to pray. When there is a crises or an immediate, in your face need, then it is obvious what to pray for. But apart from that, when we don’t know what to pray we can give up before we start.

So here Jesus says “Pray then like this,” which is an imperative, a command. Pray. My people will be a praying people. And then He gives us a pattern for prayer:

He says, “pray then like this…in this manner.”

[Golf illustration] I’ve been trying to get into golf this year. Slowly improving. I took a lesson recently from a guy who was left-handed. He was a much shorter than me, but it helped because I could watch his swing and mimic his movements. So when he said swing like this I could follow him.

Imagine if the next time I golfed with some guys, instead of my normal right-handed swing, I go to the tee box like this. The guy told me to swing like this!

Or imagine I go back to the golf instructor for another lesson. And he asks me to show the improvements in my swing. So I get out a baseball bat, toss the ball up in the air, and crush it. “I found a more effective way to hit the ball.”

In one scenario I’m trying to literally swing this way, doing exactly what he did. In the other scenario, I haven’t paid attention at all and just threw out everything he said. I’m not even golfing any more.

He is giving us a manner of praying, a pattern for prayer. Not a mantra to be recited but also not a prayer to be tossed aside and forgotten.

Follow his pattern for prayer.

What is that pattern?

The Order

Before jumping into the specifics of name, kingdom and will, just notice that there are six petitions in this prayer, and the first three are theocentric, they are God-centered.

Matthew 6:9–10 “Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We approach our Father in heaven, orienting ourselves underneath Him as His blood-bought, covenant children, adopted into His family.

And we start with His glorious purposes and plans, not ours.

This is the God who is...

Psalm 97:9 “...most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods.”

And our prayers should reflect that. We are to...

Deuteronomy 4:39 “know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.”

Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

Should we not start by praising His name and praying that He would glorify Himself in all the earth. Should we not submit our needs and wants to His purposes? In fact, should not His glory, His fame, His kingdom, and His plan then shape and define our needs and wants?

Yeah. And so Jesus directs us to order our prayers accordingly.

Think of your prayers as being top-heavy. Let the weight of God’s fame, His kingdom, His will be first in your prayers, either spoken or just in posture, and let that direct your needs and wants, which here are verses 11-13.

Follow the order and pray top-heavy prayers.

Not just the order, but the content...

The content: Pray for God’s name to be hallowed

Hallowed is not a common word for us. You hear it in the word “Halloween.” Hallowe’en, a shortening of Allhallows Eve, and Allhallows is another name for All Saints’ Day on November 1. So it is the eve of the day of the hallowed, the holy, the saints.

This word means to sanctify, to make holy, but it is clear in scripture that God’s name is already holy.

Psalm 30:4 “Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.”

Psalm 103:1 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!”

So why pray for God to make His name holy when it already is holy? Well, “on earth and it is in heaven” actually modifies each of these clauses. So “hallowed be your name…on earth as it is in heaven. Let your kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven. And of course, your will be done...”

When we pray for God’s name to be hallowed, we are praying for Him to revered and seen as holy on earth, in our homes, in our communities, across the earth as He is in heaven by the whole host of heaven.

The four living creatures in Revelation 4 never cease to cry out night and day:

Revelation 4:8 “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!””

But on earth, God is mocked, He is spurned, He is rejected, His righteous decrees which are meant to be sweet like honey are spit out as and treated as rotten. He is not revered, He is not hallowed on earth as He deserves to be.

Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that what is good and right and true and beautiful is seen as wrong and oppressive and false and disgusting.

And so we pray, Lord hallow your name in all the earth. Work in this world so that man would see you in all your holiness and fall down before you in worship.

Not mine...

We pray for His name, His character, His excellencies, His honor, His fame to be visibly demonstrated and loved and cherished in this world.

But by praying this we are also asking Him to do the same in our lives, in our hearts. To love God in His purity and His moral perfections, is to then desire to be like Him. But so often we look like the world, and we praise what is not worthy of praise.

Our hearts so often want to pray, “Make my name great.” Give me this job so people will respect me. Bless me with this raise so that my parents will finally see how great I am. We avoid gospel conversations because we fear man more than God, caring more about our name being revered than God’s.

Starting our prayers by saying, “hallowed me your name” is asking God to knock down our tower of Babel and to make a name for Himself in our lives.

Make me holy. Cause me to revere you. Help me to acknowledge your incomparable glory and beauty and splendor, and to live accordingly. Hallowed be your name.

Pray for God’s Kingdom to Come

We have those magni-tiles that connect on the edges. You can build lots of different things with them. Levi loves to watch me build a tower and then run over and smash it. Sometimes he will crush it right when I start, other times he will wait until it is really high. But no matter what, that things is coming down. I never get it tall enough because he comes and smashes it.

And this petition is a prayer that God would smash our towers. That He would level anything and everything that stands against His rule and reign.

In the garden, Adam and Eve were God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule. They walked with God in relationship with him and joyfully submitted to His rule and reign in their lives. They were His ambassadors meant to spread His kingdom in all our earth. But they rebelled, believing the lie that they would be better off without God’s rule. They wanted to rule their own lives.

And we’ve been dealing with the problem ever since.

Man lives to establish his own kingdom, set up his own place where he can rule over others. Man wants to be honored as king, in control, living as he sees fit.

But look out in the world and see how this hasn’t ended well. Injustice. Oppression. Evil mark this world. In the kingdom of man everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Things are not as they should be, and we all feel it.

But our God is doing something about it.

Jesus showed up on the scene of human history saying, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

A better King and a better kingdom have arrived in the incarnation of Jesus the Messiah. Instead of ruling with the sword, He laid down His life to establish a kingdom of peace. The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus innaugurated His kingdom. It is here and now where anyone bows the knee to King Jesus. His power is displayed over the enemy when a sinner repents and says “I’m done. I’m don’t with building my own kingdom. You take control.” The kingdom has come.

Signs, wonders, miracles attest to, point to the Authority of the King who rules by His word. Transformed lives marked by grace, justice, and peace are evidence that the kingdom has come.

But the kingdom is still coming. The world is still broken. The prince of the power of the air has influence. And so this prayer is warfare.

Satan and Jesus

Look at Matthew 4. Jesus is led out to the wilderness to be tempted. Satan goes after his identity. Then he offers him all the kingdoms of the world.

Matthew 4:8–10 “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ””

He wanted the son of man to have the Crown without the Cross. And he will do whatever it takes for us to fall for the same lie. To pray your kingdom come is to ask God to establish his gracious rule and reign now in this life, to push back the darkness, to smash the magnitiles of pride man sets up. And to usher in the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, where His rule and reign are celebrated.

One day this will happen.

Revelation 11:15–17 “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.”

God has ordained that your prayers be a means to that end. What a privilege.

Not mine...

And as we pray for the global progress of the gospel to the unreached places of the earth, we are also praying he would do that in our hearts. Praying this is to admit that His kingdom is better than ours. It is to acknowledge that we still want to be on the throne. We want the world to revolve around us. And so it is a prayer of repentance as well, God may your kingdom come, not mine. As much as I want it, what’s best for this world is not my rule and reign, but yours.

I affirm that you are in charge, and that the values of your kingdom are better than the values of mine. In yours:

humble will be exalted

last will be first

leaders serve

rich bless the poor

Strong care for the weak

put others first

I usually want the opposite. God your kingdom is better. May it come here as it is in heaven.

Pray for God’s will to be done

All of these petitions overlap, for where God’s name is hallowed, there is the kingdom. When people bow the knee to King Jesus, God is seen as holy. And where His rule and reign are cherished, there His will is done. All of these fit together.

We are so ready to come to God with our plans, our list of wants and needs. We don’t express it, but we in a sense say “God, may my will be done in heaven and on earth.” And then we get discouraged when it isn’t.

Disciples pray for God’s moral will, to be known and loved in all the earth. That His word would be known and cherished, and that societies would reflect His moral will.

And we also pray for His plans and purposes, His will for history, his decrees and counsels, to be done on earth. Ephesians 1:11 “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,”

And we get to pray that His eternal plan come to fruition here and now. And ultimately the will of God will be fully expressed and shown when Christ returns in power and glory, establishing the new heavens and new earth.

Not mine...

To pray this prayer is to not just ask that His global purposes be fulfilled, that justice and mercy rule, that Habakkuk 2:14 “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” be fulfilled.

But in our hearts, that we would surrender our will, our plans, to Him. Look what Paul says about this in 2 Cor 5:15

2 Corinthians 5:15 “and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

In heaven, God’s perfect will is done. BY the power of Jesus, we are freed to no longer have to live tight fisted, holding onto our plans. We can joyfully bow the knee to Him, and follow Jesus in saying, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Warfare

I was reading in Acts this week and noticed something interesting. The disciples heard Jesus teaching on prayer. Acts is marked by prayer. And as the gospel goes forth, the kingdom is spreading, we see this in Acts 17

Acts 17:6–7 “And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.””

Where God’s name is hallowed, his Kingdom is coming, His will being down, kingdoms are toppled and the world is turned upside down. It’s a beautiful thing, happening near and afar to this day.

Thinley Story and Video

One of the things I loved about serving overseas was meeting locals who had come to Christ and who had been serving Him for years in absolute obscurity. I think of a guy named Thinley who spent 9 years in India pursuing peace by becoming a Buddhist monk. He said that as time went on, he was really burdened with his sin, as he was unable to stop sinning.

He told his guru about this and asked if there was a way to be forgiven. But his teacher only told him to meditate longer. So, he did one more year of silent meditation at a monastery. During that time, Jesus showed up in one of his dreams, speaking his language. He told Thinley that if he would follow him, he would find the answer he was looking for. A couple years later, in a different city, he met a guy who shared a little gospel tract with him. In that gospel presentation was John 14:6, and when he read Jesus’s words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life., no one comes to the father except through me,” he knew that the man from his dreams was Jesus.

So Thinley decided to follow Jesus, and in time as his faith was made known, as his light began to shine, he was beaten and kicked out of the monastery, disowned by his family, and left with nothing. Not knowing what to do, he went to Nepal and got some training in the bible, then went back home to Bhutan to make Christ known to his people. This man has a burden for the Dzjonkan people to know Jesus, and he is faithfully laboring in complete obscurity there to the glory of God.

The Lord’s prayer is a great encouragement to him as he labors for the gospel in Bhutan. He is seeing kingdoms topple and the world turned upside over there. May there same thing happen here, in Louisville, and in our hearts.

Not Soccer Victories...

This prayer may not lead to many victories on the soccer field, and it may not lead to all the victories that you want to see in your lives. But this prayer is turning the world upside down, and the victory is His. May we join Him in that as we pray this prayer and see our priorities

God we pray that you would continue to align our plans with your will, and that by the power of your Holy Spirit, the daily good works of this church would lead to your kingdom to come in Louisville and to the ends of the earth, so that your name might be hallowed and you might be glorified.