All right, well, let me invite you to take your Bibles tonight and turn to Matthew 6. And then in your catechisms, we'll be considering two questions, question number 109 and 110. So tonight, We are continuing our series on the Lord's Prayer. We sang it this evening as well as last week, and we're just trying to immerse ourselves, as it were, not exhaustively, of course, you can never do that, but just immerse ourselves in this beautiful prayer that the Lord has given us that serves as a rubric for how we should pray. And I think sometimes as Protestants, we're afraid of repeating the Lord's Prayer, right? Especially those of us who have come out of Roman Catholic backgrounds or even perhaps Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, any high, high church situation where the Lord's Prayer is front and center in virtually every liturgy. It's quoted by the whole congregation, and you even see people citing it in their private meditations. But the thing is, is just because Roman Catholics do something doesn't mean it's bad. Roman Catholics believe in the Trinity. We champion the Trinity, okay? So the Lord's Prayer is central to the Christian life. In fact, I hope you're not offended by this, but Martin Luther had a Stein. I won't tell you what liquid you put in, but he was German and you could probably figure it out. And he had three things on that Stein. He had the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and anybody know? Now, Apostle's Creed. And those three things were things that he cited every single day, and I don't think that he was wrong in doing that. The fact of the matter is, we are forgetful creatures, and we need to be reminded of the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle's Creed. So the Lord's Prayer is central to the Christian life, and it's a perfect model. It is short and sweet. It is clear and concise and cogent. And while there is a place for long prayers, and while it is true that our tradition has, as its forefathers, the Puritans, who had really, really long prayers, who had certain figures in that tradition who are lauded for their long prayers, not only in services, but also in their private prayer closets. I mean, they would not brag, that's the wrong word, but they would talk about how this man and that man would pray for like three hours and how great it was. There's a place for that. But there's also a place for short prayers, right? And in fact, Kohelet in the book of Ecclesiastes says in chapter five, verse two, be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. Okay. So obviously that doesn't mean that all of our prayers should be short, but there's a place, especially in the 21st century, especially in an age where, you know, we have drive throughs and your things right away. There's a place for breathing out prayers on the go, short prayers. And the Lord's Prayer is a great one to breathe out as you're taking the kids to soccer practice. It's a great one to breathe out, as it were, when troubles begin to arise and you're seeking the face of the Lord and his will in your life. Now, the Lord's Prayer is a perfect, as I said, scriptural example of a theologically robust, all-inclusive prayer. And it stands as a model with all the essential ingredients of a prayer. In fact, one commentator put it this way. He said, the Lord's Prayer stretches from the Father at the beginning to the devil at the end, from heaven to hell, And in between, there are six brief petitions, including everything that is important in life. So tonight, I want to very briefly just address those two petitions, those first two petitions, under two headings. And here's the first heading. The first heading is, we pray that the highest form of glory be revealed for the pleasure of all mankind. We pray that the highest form of glory would be revealed for the pleasure of all mankind. And we're going to consider catechism question 109 into this heading, okay? So the catechist asks in question 109, what do we pray for in the first petition? And we answer, In the first petition, which is Hallowed be thy name. We pray that God would enable us and others to glorify him in everything by which he makes himself known and that he would dispose all things to his own glory. Now I often hear I heard a football player one time he's being interviewed and he was being interviewed because he was in the middle of a championship game. And he left the game. And he was like the star player. He left the game. Why? Because his wife was pregnant, and he needed to go attend to her, which, good for him. He should have done that, OK, despite what the NFL commissioner thinks. But in this interview, he said, here's the thing. Here's my priorities. God, family, work, country, and then on and on and on. And we get it, right? What he's saying is, he says, God comes before all other things, and then after that, it's family, and then after that, it's work. And since work is after family, that's why I attended to my family first, and work just needs to stand in line. I get it. But I think if the Bible were to refine that prioritization, it would be something like this. Here's my priorities. God in my worship, God in my work, God in my family, God in my country, God in my patriotism, God first in every single thing that I do. And perhaps that's what that guy meant. Maybe I'm just being a bully here. But I think when we think through what it means to glorify God, What it means to hallow God's name, it's precisely that. It's not a prioritization as if, because it can give the impression, God is first and then everything else, and in everything else, God isn't involved. No, God isn't hermetically sealed off from my work, from my family, from my patriotism. God is first in all of those things. And the first petition in the Lord's Prayer is very simply that God's name be hallowed. Now, hallow is a word that we don't use often in the English language, but it simply means that it be sanctified. Well now we gotta, sanctified is not a word that we often use in the English language, unless you're in churches, and so we've gotta define that. It means set apart. A more precise definition would be wholly given over to something that is separate. And when we ask that God's name would be sanctified, when we are asking in the second petition that his kingdom would come, when we're asking in the third petition that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, these are all slightly nuanced versions of the same request. And here's what that request is. It's a desire that God's honorific name, or reign, would come to full reality. That God's honorific reign in His position as God, the Triune God, in His activity through the kingdom, that it would come to full reality. and that not only those who bow the knee to Him willingly would see that and recognize it and love it and embrace it and take pleasure in it, but even those who would not bow the knee, that they would see Him for who He is. And this is what Paul says in Philippians 2, right? On that great day when Christ comes back, everyone's gonna bow the knee. It's gonna be a glorious day. It's gonna be a glorious day when people who now that you mix it up with and try to share Christ with and are just like, I don't need God, I can do whatever I want, I do it my way, they're going to bow the knee. They're going to bow the knee because they will stand in the presence of Him whom they cannot deny is Lord and King and Master. So in the first petition, let me just read from Psalm 67. You don't need to turn there, but this kind of encapsulates it. Psalm 67, 2 and 3. The psalmist prays that your way may be known on the earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. So when we pray that God's name would be hallowed, we're praying that God would reveal himself to be glorious through us, by causing our lives to be examples and portraits of grace. If I could give an illustration, it would be like this. It'd be praying that God make me a clean plate of glass through which your glory can shoot through and be seen and appreciated and gloried in by everybody around me in my sphere of influence. That's really what it comes down to. Paul describes it as a jar of clay that holds within that jar the treasure of the gospel that is to be dished out here and dished out there. So really we see ourselves as vessels, right? We see ourselves as instruments, right? And by the way, everybody is an instrument. Non-believers are instruments of their own glory, right? They are jars of clay that are dishing out their own glory and telling people how awesome they are. I see it on Facebook all the time, right? Let me tell you how awesome I am in this post. Let me show you how awesome I am by this clean and jerk that I did at CrossFit today. Man, my body's glorious, right? They're always dishing out how glorious they are. And what God is, what Lord is teaching us through this prayer and this first petition is to live your life and conduct your life and be circumspect in your life such that God's glory shines through rather than your own. So this becomes a great litmus test for us by which we test all of our actions, we test all of our words, we test all of our thoughts with this question, will what I do, will what I say bring glory, attention, fame, renown to God? This includes the mundane things. This includes the exciting things. And you know what? I think in the Christian community, it's very easy for us to give glory to God in things that are easy, right? So let's say you have children, and by God's grace, you know, you've been able to catechize them, give them a foundation, and they grow up, and they end up choosing Christ. They trust in Christ. They become Christians. And people come up to you, and they say, man, I just want to say, I've seen your life. I've seen how you've reared your children. And I think God is glorified by how you have so poured into them and put Christ before them that they've chosen Christ. And if you're a Christian, the way you answer is, well, to God be the glory, right? And that's good. That's right. It's easy to give glory to God in the good things. What about the hard things? What about cancer? What about the barren womb? What about a sense of futility, depression, discouragement, sickness, the failing of health? That's when it gets a little tougher, right? That's when we need to, in the same way that we saw God's glory being clearly shined through us through a plate of glass and the good things, need to realize that even in the bad things, the Lord, listen, has handpicked this trial for you because he wants to point up his glory through your faithfulness to his goodness. That's what trials are for. I would say it's also an added benefit that through trials we draw closer to the Lord, we learn to trust Him more, but it's really not so much about what you get out of it, it's what God gets out of it by your clinging to Him tenaciously in faithfulness. And so I think it gives us a different perspective, right, on how to think about trials. I think it causes us to say, okay, given me cancer, you've taken away this, you've taken away that. Lord, I am eager to see how you're going to use this trial to reveal your own glory. I had friends years ago when we helped plant a church in California. He was one of my best friends and their first child, when he was being born, he had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck as he was coming out of the womb. And apparently it was around his neck for something like 10 minutes and it was choking him and he couldn't breathe. No oxygen, no blood to the brain. And the doctors were frantically doing everything that they could. I mean, they literally, they had to do an emergency C-section right away. They were literally pouring like Novocaine or whatever over a belly as they cut it. I mean, it was just, it was really bad. And he ended up having cerebral palsy, and to this day has cerebral palsy. And the parents are good Christian people, and they embraced it. They accepted it. They said, this is the Lord's will. This is the Lord's will. This is what he has given to us. And so we will glorify him in every way that we possibly can with this child. And I remember them recounting to me a conversation they had with her in-laws, no, his in-laws, who were Roman Catholic nominal Christians. And basically they said, aren't you mad at God? I mean, how could you not be mad at God that he gave your kids cerebral palsy? And they just said, this is what the Lord has given us. Who are we? Who are we to argue with what the Lord has given us? He has given us not this trial not to argue with him or to naysay him or to tell him that we have a better plan than him or complain the rest of our life or say, woe is me and play the violin. He has given this child to us. in a state that will probably have to care for him for most of his life for his own glory. And so we embrace it. And I've never forgotten that story. And I've heard from non-Christians who have seen Christians like this in this situation that have just been tenaciously faithful to the Lord in the hard things as they hallow God's name. And I've seen these non-Christians say, you know what? I don't believe, but I'll tell you what. If I did have faith, I would want to have faith like that because the God that you serve is a majestic God. That's what we're talking about. Hallowed be your name. As a result of the conduct of these Christians, they have a higher view of God. Even if they don't believe, they should and we want them to, but they have a higher view of God because of the conduct of these Christians. So that's what it means to sanctify or hallow the name of God. But then secondly, let's consider question 110. And under this heading, very simply, we pray for the full expedited coming of the kingdom of God. So question 110. The catechist asks, what do we pray for in the second petition? And we answer in the second petition, which is thy kingdom come. We pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced ourselves and others brought into it. and kept in it, and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened." Under this heading, consider three thoughts. Number one, we pray that God would exterminate the kingdom of gloom, or the kingdom of Satan. You can put whatever you want. That he would exterminate the kingdom of gloom, the kingdom of Satan. Now, what is the kingdom of Satan? The kingdom of Satan is multifaceted in its manifestations and expansions. So what is it? Any opinion, any action, any thought that raises itself up against the knowledge and kingship of Jesus Christ is part and parcel of the machination that we call the kingdom of Satan. So listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 10 5. He says, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The world has a system of thought. It is an interrelated system of thought. By the way, it is a sloppy interrelated system of thought. It is an inconsistent. It's really not interrelated, OK? It is completely chaotic. But it is, in some sense, a system of thought that presents itself against the knowledge and kingship of Christ. So in our country, when laws are passed in our land that unjustly murder the life of a child or redefine God's definition for marriage or redefine God's definition of what gender is. And yes, we should fight for that. You should fight for that and mainly on your knees. They are all making claims against the kingship of Christ. Remember. We are sanctified not only in our hearts and in our souls, but we are sanctified in our what? In our minds, right? God renews our minds. And what is it that we do in our minds? We come up with thoughts. And all of our thoughts, whether you're a believer or non-believer, either conform to the reality of what is true, which has been determined by whom? By God. Or you make up claims of truth, quote unquote truth, pseudo-truth, according to your own machinations. In other words, King Jesus makes a claim not only on souls, but he makes a claim on truth. He makes a claim on what is and how we should think about it. This is why, whether you like it or not, the Christian church is embroiled in these culture wars. This is why we make a big deal about these things. We make a big deal about the definition of marriage. We make a big deal about the definition of gender. I've literally been told by non-believers or professing non-believers, why do you care what homosexuals do? Because I care for their souls, that's why. It's not just that I want my children not to be affected by those things, that's true, but that's way down the line. What I care about is their souls. And if they are embroiled in a culture that is telling them that it's okay to be that way, that you're born that way, and being born in whatever form that you're in, ipso facto makes it okay, then they're being fed a bowl of lies. Satan is whispering into their ears and deceiving them just as he did Eve, he continues to do it. And so the gospel is a claim, not just on how people get into the kingdom of God, the gospel and the full revelation of God is a claim on truth. So anything that presents itself against those claims is part of the kingdom of Satan. Now, all of that comes back to that in our prayers, we want to pray that God destroys the kingdom of Satan. So I'm just going to say this, okay, in this point. We as a Christian church and we as a Christian people need to make greater use of the war psalms of the Psalter. We have lost that. We have lost the utilization of the war psalms of the people of God because we've been influenced by a culture that tells us that it's mean to pray imprecatory psalms against people that you don't like. Well, I'm gonna read something that is part of the Christian canon, part of the Christian Psalter, the book of Psalms, Psalm 58. Listen very carefully, and this is what is applicable for us today. Listen to how the psalmist prays. Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly? No. In your hearts you devise wrongs. Your hands deal out violence on earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray from birth, speaking lies. They have venom like the venom of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stops its ears so that it does not hear the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter. O God, break the teeth in their mouths. Tear out the fangs of the young lion, O Lord. Let them vanish like water that runs away when he aims his arrows. Let them be blunted. Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun. Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns, whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away. The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. Mankind will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely there is a God who judges on earth. In your prayers, people of God, make use of the whole word of God. Don't wave your Bible in the air and say, every word is inspired and inerrant. It is, and so use it as it is. Use the Psalms in your prayers, on your knees, in your private prayer chambers to pray against the kingdom of Satan, that the Lord would exterminate it. Secondly, expand the kingdom of grace. We pray that His kingdom would be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and that He would preserve us or keep us in it. Now, what is the kingdom of grace? Very simply, I've talked about this a lot in the pulpit, The kingdom of grace, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, however you want to define it. The Bible uses very multifaceted terms to describe it. It is the new heavens and the new earth. It is God's reign on earth in every molecule and every fiber and every being of every plant and every human and every porcupine and everything. God's reign on earth. Now, when Jesus came, he inaugurated that kingdom. He came and established his reign as king, and he is seated at the right hand of the father. He now rules over all the earth. He has started the realm of that kingdom, which is you and me, by making our hearts new. So we are a new people spiritually, but it has only been inaugurated, and when he comes back, he will consummate it when he brings new heavens and new earth. Right now, the way we see the kingdom of God, and I hope this is a question you have, have you ever asked yourself the question, what should I look for when I'm looking for the kingdom of God on Earth now? You guys have any thoughts, anyone? Any answers to that? What is the kingdom of God? Apart from just believing and being made a recipient of the kingdom of God, where can we see the kingdom of God today? Huh? Church? Absolutely. That's right. In what other ways do we see or hear the kingdom of God? When the gospel is preached. When the gospel is preached, that is the message of the kingdom. Our liturgy, our worship service, Coming back to what J.D. said, J.D. I think was probably focusing on the people. You could see the realm of the kingdom in the church, but you can also see the rhetoric of the kingdom in the liturgy. When the minister stands up and gives the call to worship, it is a call for the kingdom of God to break in in a mighty and fascinating way here in this place. And then we lift up our war psalms to the Lord and praise and worship to him and pray that his kingdom would come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We confess our sins to him. He condescends in the person of his son, Jesus Christ, and grants us forgiveness. There are power encounters going on in the liturgy. There is no reason to yawn in the liturgy in the house of God. There is no reason to be bored in the liturgy in the house of God, because what is happening is powerful things. And you're falling asleep if you're not regenerate. Or you're falling asleep if you're regenerate, but you don't see the grandeur of what's going on. Mount Everest is going on here on Sunday morning, and I would say on Sunday evening. It's glorious things. And then when the minister raises his hands and gives a benediction, you know what he's doing at the end? He's pronouncing blessing on you. Not by his own authority. He's a filthy worm. but he's pronouncing blessing on you that comes from the triune God. Those are powerful things. That's the kingdom. So in our evangelism, there is kingdom activity going on, and that brings us to our third and final prayer requests on the kingdom, and that is expedite the kingdom of glory. We pray that the kingdom of glory may be hastened, that the fullness of the kingdom would come in. We are essentially praying, Maranatha, Lord, come quickly. Can we expedite the coming of God's kingdom through political action? No. Thank you. We cannot from a top-down way. One thing that we might be able to do that would help is to fight for and speak out for, as I said, religious liberty, because insofar as religious liberty is granted in a society, what can go forth unhindered? The gospel. But here's the glorious thing about how God works. Even when religious liberty is smashed and smothered, The church still gets the gospel out, right? And the blood of the martyrs is the what? The seed of the church. So that's what I love about God and his majesty and his kingdom and the juggernaut force of his sovereignty, is you just can't stop him. You wanna keep the church down? Yeah, go ahead and try. How's that working out for you? 2,000 years in the church, the kingdom, Christianity, one of the three largest religions in the world, and expanding, and people are still getting saved, 2,000 years later. But we pray, we pray that the Lord would expand the kingdom. Now, by the way, I'm not trying to disparage political action. We should be involved. You're also a citizen of what? The kingdom of man. And I care about what happens here, okay? I want my trash picked up every Wednesday, okay? Those are important things. And I care that my politicians be upstanding men and women, even if in reality they're not. I pray for those things. But I'm saying that, I'm saying that we can't expedite the coming of the kingdom of God by political action. By the way, those of you that are familiar with these terms, there are some Christians called theonomists who believe in restoring the Mosaic law at the highest political level so that we would execute homosexuals and witches and heretics. And I think that's a bad idea. But even the cream of the crop of the theonomist, if you wouldn't ask them, how do we expedite the kingdom? The cream of the crop, Joe Morecraft III, one of the greatest speakers in the theonomist camp, he would say, by evangelism. And he's right. So even with our differences theologically, he gets it and we get it. The way we expedite and grow the kingdom is through evangelism. Now, why do I say that we expedite the coming of the kingdom through evangelism? Well, because of something that Jesus says in Matthew 24, 7 through 14. Listen to this very closely. He's talking about the end of the age, and I'm going to end here in just a second. He's talking about the end of the age, so the future, what's going to happen at the end, and he says this. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death. And you will be hated by all nations for my namesake. Verse 10. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased. Boy, we're seeing that. The love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed to the whole world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come. What do you think is connected with the end? I think it's fair to say when that last elect person believes, Jesus is gonna come back. So I think evangelism is the closest we can get. I don't wanna quite say it in the way of pushing God's hand, we can't do that, but evangelism is the quickest way and the best way that we can expedite the kingdom of God. And this is one of my greatest prayers for Grace Covenant Church, is that we would so desire the kingdom that we would be intentional about seeing the kingdom expanded by opening our mouths in evangelism. We're so timid, and what's worse is we often use our theology to make ourselves feel better about it, right? You know what I'm ashamed about? I'm ashamed that when I was a new believer, zealous, ignorant, I was Peter, I was the one that had the foot-shaped mouth, I was the guy that said things that I shouldn't have said. But when I was a young, zealous believer, I evangelized more then than I do now as a theologically reformed person and pastor. I'm ashamed to confess that. And I think that it's a trend in our tradition that we need to fight against. And it's a trend that particularly in our communion at Grace Covenant Church, I pray ardently that the Lord would break us from. The Lord would help us to open our mouth that we would not be afraid of the culture, that we would not be pleasers of men that so desire to be liked and esteemed by other people that we refuse in shame for our Lord to speak his name. I'm not telling you to be blockheads. I'm not telling you to be obnoxious, but I am telling you, I think we could all do with a little more intentionality in opening our mouth for the Lord. So a greater desire for the kingdom only comes from a greater love for the king. When he is all in all, fear of man's opinions tend to fade away, don't they? When his truth is the song of our hearts, we tend to fight more to preserve the truth, whether it's in the public square as we speak to others or on our knees as we beg God to preserve it. So at the end of the day, our prayers that the Lord's name be hallowed and His kingdom be expanded, come down to this, our love for Jesus, what He has done for Him, that double imputation, that double cure that He gave us, and out of gratitude for what He has done for us, speaking His name. So do you love Christ tonight? I hope you do. I know you do. I know you do. May we all pray that the Lord would help us to sanctify His name and expedite His kingdom, not only in our prayers, but that we would also open our mouth and bring it about through evangelism. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your love, your great love for us. We pray that you would help us in the weeks to come, in the years to come, to continue to soar in worship in this place, that we would really see our time of worship as the breaking in of the kingdom of God and be mesmerized by it. And that, Father, we would go out from this place in that mesmerized state and that glow of coming down from the mountain would translate into the glow of evangelism in our workplaces, with our families, at the market, wherever we can let your name loose. We ask all these things in your son's name. Amen.