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Nothing to say, yet
CPC Sunday School | The Lord's Prayer #2 (3-10-2024)
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Nothing to say, yet
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The speaker is discussing the importance of prayer and the Lord's Prayer. They emphasize that prayer should be informed by God's word and that it is a form of fellowship with God. They also mention that not all spiritual acts are godly and that prayer should be directed towards the God revealed in scripture. The speaker then explores the Lord's Prayer and its teachings on giving to the needy, praying in secret, and fasting. They highlight the importance of approaching prayer with reverence and truthfulness. The speaker also discusses the dangers of self-centeredness and the importance of praying for God's kingdom and will. They mention that the Lord's Prayer is a confession of faith and that it should be prayed with the understanding that it is only through God's grace that we can confess it. saying this and prayer, but in the Christian life, I'm so encouraged that you are here this morning to learn this with me, that we will confess this together and that we can, when we pray for the rest of our life, hallowed be your name, that we can together be saying something that is maybe some of the most significant words that you will say in prayer and in your life. And sometimes, somebody will say something like that, which is such a grand statement, and then you might be disappointed. I hope in the Lord's kindness today that not only would what we go through today be rich for you, but would just fall incredibly short of how grand the statement is and would encourage you to be swimming in this and be thinking about this and be reflecting on this going forward from here. So this is the first, the greatest petition, and in J.I. Packer, in his book, Praying the Lord's Prayer, which is such a great little book, it says that if you spend time, as we will this morning, you will have unlocked the secret of both prayer and of life and I don't think that that is overstating anything. Here is where we're going today. We have a summary of prayer and the Lord's Prayer. What is prayer? That seems like a easy question, but what is it? What is it at its heart? And then we'll jump into the Lord's Prayer. We will go into what it means to learn the Lord's Prayer. Christ is saying, I'm gonna teach you how to pray. So what does it mean to learn the Lord's Prayer? And then let's review briefly from last week, our Father in Heaven, and then we'll jump into hallowed be your name. What name? What name are we talking about when we say your name? What does hallow mean? And then what are we asking when we say hallowed be your name? Overview of prayer that, in Concise Theology, G.I. Packer hits it out of the park when he says that God has made us and redeemed us for fellowship with him. When we have this visual revealed in Genesis of Adam walking with God in the garden, we get a sense that God created us in his image. He created us as spiritual beings. And there is, in prayer, something that is instinctual in all men to want to turn to a creator and speak to the creator. So the fundamental truth that prayer is fellowship with God, we need to start there when we're thinking about prayer. But we also need to acknowledge that as we, in going through 1 John, Sunday mornings, have heard that not all things that are spiritual are godly. So let's say that again. Not all things that are spiritual are godly. And so we see prayers around us. We see men praying around us for secondary benefits and for secondary reasons. But that God has revealed himself in his word, has been kind to open our eyes to him, and in that truth, in that God, as revealed in scripture, we pray, and we pray to that God, our Father in heaven. And so we are confessing when we say our Father in heaven. We are praying to the I am, to the God of the universe. We are praying to the God as he has revealed himself in his word. But just to tease out, and we can go into this a little bit more, that there are men that are in being made in the image of God, in a common grace, that are exercising the common grace of attempting to pray, but not praying to the God of the universe. Any thoughts or questions on that? We could spend a lot of time on that. I wanna keep pushing, but here's what I wanted to highlight, that in how God has revealed himself of who he is, and of how to pray, that shapes what we say as a response to what he has said. And so this idea that prayer needs to be, just in its purest form, just whatever comes to mind, and how you feel, and that that is a pure prayer. Nothing could be farther from the truth that a prayer is to be informed by God's word. It's to be informed by who God is. And in that truth, then we take those words, and I think last week, Mark had a quote, that nothing pleases God more than returning those words to him in prayer. Our father in heaven, you said that, let him who needs wisdom, ask for wisdom. I'm in a situation right now where I don't know left or right. Lord, would you give me wisdom? This situation is gonna drive me to my knees. But you are in scripture, bringing to, in your prayer, something that you otherwise wouldn't know, but for God revealing himself in scripture. And that this is something that we will grow in, and we will mature in for the rest of our lives. Lord's Prayer is in Matthew six. We see it again in Luke 11. We can talk briefly about that, but in Matthew six, it is sandwiched between two sections. The first section is a section on giving to the needy. When you give to the needy, don't do this. Everybody, you know, it's just, you know, I hate to bother everybody, but I wanted you guys to notice that this person's in need, and you just, you don't wanna miss this, what I'm about ready to do, but I don't even have my wallet, but. And then walk away. You've gotten your reward. That's what Christ says. That do that in secret, because if you are doing that for that purpose, then you've gotten your reward. And then he uses that again for the Lord's Prayer. When you pray, don't pray like this. Like the, like a loud trumpet where you're bringing attention to yourself, and people are saying, wow, what a guy that is. You are to pray in secret, find a place in your closet, and the Lord seeing you in secret will reward you. He uses that exact same phrase. And then he goes on, and he ends with a teaching on fasting, that when you fast, don't put on, you know, clothes, and don't make yourself look miserable. And then they, so that people that see you will say, he's probably fasting, and he's probably a holy man. Look at that guy, right? No, do it in secret. Do it in a way that the Lord who sees you will reward you. So we have that theme and that pattern, that exact same, exact same words of the Lord who sees you will reward you. And then in Luke 11, we see a truncated version of the Lord's Prayer. And it ends with this very interesting section of what father among you that when you ask for an egg, or you ask for bread, will give him a serpent or a scorpion instead. So that our father, leaning forward, kind, wants us to grow in holiness, and wants us to grow in asking him, and wants us to fellowship with him, and wants us to approach him and say, Lord, I need your help. That this is breathing for us spiritually, and he wants us to mature in that. Learning the Lord's Prayer. So it starts with what not to do. It says don't be like the, what did he say, the Pharisees? Who, you know, speak loudly. So it starts with what not to do. That is very clearly giving us a principle that prayer is not horizontal. That when we pray that it is vertical, first and foremost, there is a place for public prayer. We see that in Acts. But that it's heart and at its motivation. It is our heart to reverently go before our Lord and to say, speak to him and say things that are true about him. So don't be like the hypocrites. We see this, that why do we need to learn how to pray? J.I. Packer hits it out of the park. When we are left to ourselves, any praying we would do, I think it should say, would both start and end with ourselves. For our natural self-centeredness knows no bounds. Where do we see this around us in our lives for us, parents with young kids, right? We see this in our kids. That the ability to make the whole world revolve around you as a young kid is just part of being immature. And as we grow, we grow more and more outside of ourself, our ability to see others, to see others' needs, to see when others are hurting. This is a sign of maturity. And no more do we see a greater example of the flip side of the Lord's Prayer of saying, our Father in heaven, hallowed be my name. My kingdom come, my will be done. That this is the full-blown maturity of not being in God's family. This is the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. You remember this, that we studied Noah, we studied the covenant. And here we are, Genesis 9, that God says, go, multiply, fill the earth. And what does the Tower of Babel represent? In Genesis 11, come, let us build a city and a tower. Let us make a name for ourself. So we're not saying, hallowed be your name. We are saying, let us make a name for ourself. And so remember we talked about in the covenant series, we've got these two seeds that start in Genesis and that are gonna keep going throughout all human history till the end. The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And the seed of the serpent is going to be praying, hallowed be my name, hallowed be my kingdom come, my will be done. And it is only in God's grace can we confess the Lord's prayer and pray that in our hearts. Any thoughts or questions on that? Okay. With God's grace, we confess in Psalms 115.1, not to us, O Lord, but to your name, give glory. The picture is here. What do we have? I'm gonna give you a little bit of Navy. Jeff, you can't answer, it's not fair, but a little bit of Navy trivia. Anybody on the left? Let me see if this works. Yep. And then this? Yeah, and we call that in the Navy. You will know somebody who was in the Navy if somebody calls that a ship, they're like, well, actually, that's a boat. So, you know, ship, boat, and that's a fast attack submarine, two kinds of submarines. But let's say that the submarine, where is it headed right here? Well, it's kind of hard to tell. There are some people on the top here. Where does it want to be? What is it designed for? It wants to be underwater. That's why they built it like that. If this acted like that, we've got problems, right? A ship is designed to float and to go fast on the water. A submarine is designed to seek the Secret Service quietly to be under the water. These were designed and are happiest when they are doing what they were meant to do. Adam and Eve in the garden, who are our first parents? Let's go back to the catechism. Who were our first parents? Anybody? Oh, man. Adam and Eve, and in the garden, they were holy and happy. Holy and happy. They were doing what they were designed to be, and they are walking around happy and holy. Here we are. What is our chief end? Shorter catechism. Question one. Say that again, somebody loud. To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Two things. Packer makes this excellent point. It doesn't say what are the chief ends of man. What is the chief end of man? Singular. Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And that there is this ungodly concept that if we are to submit to God's will, if we are to pray the way that He tells us to pray, and somebody brought this up last week as an example of why maybe we don't pray, that He's going to, as an unkind father, just put His thumb in our eyes and in our life and just make us miserable. Holiness is hard, but this ungodly concept that is God wants to just make you miserable, and we miss entirely. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. That God wants us to be holy and happy to recover that. That the chief end of man is to glorify God, to say what's true and right about God, to want His glory to spread, and then for us to enjoy that. That in that truth, we find enjoyment. What do we do on our own, left to our own? Let me get my kingdom sorted out. Let me make myself happy the way I see it. And then what's left over, I'll fill God in with the gaps. And He turns that upside down. That the chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Thoughts or questions on that? A Steinway piano that we have here. Christ saying pray then like this. Christ is teaching us. So a piano is a great example of this. We have been enjoying going and listening to the symphony as a family. From Pippa, who probably takes a nap by the second half. But we have heard some incredible piano players. And when we walk in and hear them, they have this brochure and you open it and it has these little bios of these people that are playing piano. And it says something like, Sven Andersen studied at the Vienna Academy of Arts and won the European under 17 competition. And we are excited to have him here making his debut. Please give a warm Dallas welcome to Mr. Sven Andersen. I have never read in opening that brochure where it says, Sven Andersen enjoys sound. He has never played the piano before, but Sven enjoys noises. And he enjoys loud noises and soft noises. And we have invited him today with his love of noises to enjoy our Steinway piano. Buckle up Dallas, we do not know how this is going to go, but we hope you enjoy Sven Andersen's piano playing. Why is it that we don't see that? We value in our life, in our world around us, the training and discipline it takes to do something as beautiful as playing piano. Where's my piano dropouts that did maybe a couple months of piano lessons? A lot of us. And I remember the feeling of sitting at the piano. What did I want to do? I wanted to just go at it. And it happened to be my grandma that was my piano teacher, but she wanted to do a month's worth of piano theory. You know, the big pianos, the small pianos, the forte pianos, and I wasn't having it. You know, I was interested in doing something else. Baseball practice. You know, you get up for the first time and what do they want to do, right? And a good coach says, slow down. Here's how you move your hips, right? That's not instinctual, but if you want to be a big hitter, where does that power come from, right? So we have, just in everyday life all around us, situations where if you're going to do anything well, you're going to train. And so Christ, the God-man, God himself as man is teaching us as men and women how to pray, right? What better instructor is that in how to pray? And in how we pray, you remember when Christ says that unless you come as a child, that we are to pray with a childlike faith, which is different than a childish faith. How is that different, anybody? How is a childlike faith different than a childish faith? Thoughts on that? Right, those are different. Pam. Well, if you listen to a little child pray, just talking to God, they're just so honest and open and childish is weird, because they might be being silly and goofy and that kind of thing, but when they're really praying, it's just special. Yeah, that's right. So there is a sense of dependency and a pureness in approaching and spiritually talking to the Lord as a child to a father. Childish is what we talked about earlier where you are either not taking it seriously or don't know the Lord of the universe to take it seriously and to reverence and to hallow his name. Here's how the Lord's Prayer is broken up. You have the beginning portion of the address, and then you have Petition 1, Petition 2, Petition 3, on earth as it is in heaven, and so here is the biggest transformation in preparing for this series is that when I would pray the Lord's Prayer, and maybe I'm alone in this, but our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, that I had been praying to declare, to rightly declare God's name being holy after addressing our Father in heaven. So what I was praying, which is not a wrong prayer, but it misses what Christ is hitting us with and teaching us the Lord's Prayer, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, is not going before the judge and saying what you would say before the judge, your honor, may it please the court. So you're recognizing the judge, rightfully so, in respect, your honor. May it please the court. So it is an introductory statement about his authority. It is reverent, but this is not what that is at all. It is going before the judge and saying, your honor, now I have a motion. I want to submit a motion to the court. You are asking the court to do something. You are asking the God of the universe that has jurisdiction over the entire world. He created this. As Father in heaven, I'm now asking you to do something, to hallow your name. This is, if you're already there, why didn't you tell me about this? If you're not already there, this is transformational. That if we think about the Lord's Prayer and this being the first petition, there must be something important about that. If Christ is saying, here's how you play the piano, here's how you pray, and if the very first thing that he says to you is, this is it, this is the priority, this is the first petition, hallow my name. Then let's spend some time figuring out what does it mean to hallow the name of the Father? Any comments on that? Okay. Popular baby names for 2024. I hesitated to put this up there as being too distracting, but we have, we have some names, and you know, I could comment on some of these, but then somebody would come up afterwards and they would say that, oh, our niece just was named Iceland and then, you know, I would have to dig my way out of that. So I'm not gonna even touch this, but this is the 2024 names. We've had two babies born this week. Any more that I don't know about? I mean, we have at least two babies born. Sea Camp Clan is growing. And what was probably, you know, a lot of back and forth with husband and wife was figuring out the name. We did that, you know. I always got, I think at one, I got a veto. We could have gone in some interesting directions, but the back and forth of what to name and what do we want this child to be called every time they're met? Ryan. Your parents spent time figuring out what your name was, and they knew for the rest of your life that when you shook somebody's hand, they would say, my name is Ryan, and that that would be a part of your identity. If I forgot your name, it is Ryan, right? And if I said, you know, which I've done before, and I, ah, I can still remember, you know, that feeling of forgetting somebody's name, right? Why is it such a gutting feeling if you're on the side of the handshake where somebody says, Bill, how are you? Like, oh, no, it's okay, it's Ryan. Like, why is that so gutting? Because the very first way that we tell somebody that we value them is by saying that I spent just enough time to remember your name. And we struggle, I get it. It's not saying that if you have, you know, I get it. It's hard, it's hard to remember people's names, but it does say something. If you remember a name, it says that it wasn't, you are important enough to me that I'm gonna remember your name, okay? That is for God's creation, in naming God's creation. What about the God of the universe? How important is it that we know his name, we know what he says about himself, and that we treat his name like he has revealed himself to us? God said to Moses, I am who I am. Say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. You had a start. You had a birth date. Christ himself, the God of the universe, three persons in one, had no start. I am. God reveals to himself, I am. Yahweh, with no beginning, with no end, all-powerful, think about our attribute series of how God has revealed himself in his name. Exodus 34, 14, you shall worship no other God, for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. Isaiah 57, 15, I am the high and lofty one whose name is holy. If you go to the Lord in prayer, and you talk about the Lord, and just like if somebody, a friend of yours, with their name, talked about that person in a way that was disrespectful or derogatory, I'm gonna submit to you that your measure of friendship to that person can be measured on how you respond to that. That if somebody says that so-and-so, and says something derogatory, if you're a friend of that person, it's a pretty good time to stand up and say something. That we think about the Lord's name, and we think about how we hold that, how we speak about that, and how we are around when other people hold that and speak about that, and how God has revealed himself. How much more important is it for us that we know that God's name is jealous, that he is the high and lofty one, that he is holy for us to protect that name both in our life and around us? Questions or thoughts on that? We have the privilege of knowing God's name, creates both duty and delight. The response to that is a reverence for how God has revealed himself to us. Look at the third commandment. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. What does it mean to take the Lord's name in vain? It is to profane his name. It is to not hallow the name. That is breaking the third commandment. Thoughts or questions on that? So let's get into what does it mean to hallow? Hallow means sanctify. So when we think about sanctify, we think about that most often in terms of our lives as we're being sanctified or made holy. But it also can mean to treat as holy. So God is not, his holiness does not diminish, it does not increase. His strength does not, his love does not diminish or increase. He is. And so what we are talking about is to treat the name of God as holy. And let's look at three biblical examples of hallowing the name of God. Numbers 20, 12. Because you did not believe in me to sanctify me or hallow me in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them. Moses, wandering through the wilderness, right, does not obey very explicitly what God says to do to bring water to his people, right? So example number one, and when we do not believe somebody, what are we doing? If you tell me something about yourself, Paul, yesterday I was in Philadelphia, and I just say, I just don't believe you. I'm calling you a liar. There's no other way to put that. And so in 1 John 5, 10, he who does not believe God has made him a liar. So first and foremost, we hallow the name of God by believing him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him, right? So first and foremost for our salvation, that we confess Christ first and foremost, believing in him then for the promises of life. How do we hallow the name of the Father? Believing what he has revealed, what he has said about himself and his word about himself and for us to do. Secondly, Isaiah 8, 12 through 13. Do not call conspiracy all that this people call conspiracy and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread, but the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread. So secondly, when we think about hallowing, it is to fear what God fears, not to fear what men fears. So when we think about what is it that, when we go about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we have opportunities to align our life with what God fears or align our life with what men fears. And in response to that, we either stand for God and stand for what he has said and trust in him, or we cower, there's no other word for it, we cower. And then we know when we cower and we know that feeling of cowering and we run to God in forgiveness for that. But this is the second way to hallow his name, to fear what he fears, not what man fears. And then thirdly, Leviticus 22, 31 through 32. So you shall keep my commandments and do them. I am the Lord, but you shall not profane my holy name, but I will be hallowed among the people of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. Leviticus 22, 31 through 32. What does it mean? It means to obey his commandments. That is hallowing the name. Like your kids, you know, that you often hear this phrase from parents, obedience is better than sacrifice. And that as children of the Lord, that first and foremost, that we say, okay, we honor the Lord and we want to follow the Lord, but we don't obey the Lord, first and foremost. Like when we look at our kids and when our kind father in heaven looks at us and says, you say you hallow my name, follow my commandments. You say you hallow my name, then hold my name reverently enough to fear not following what I have said in my word more than what this guy next to you says. That is what it means to hallow the Lord. So here we are, what are we asking when we say, hallowed be thy name? We look at petition one, right? Is hallowed be your name? From that petition, and I'm not gonna steal thunder from next week. We've got petition two, your kingdom come. From that, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So we've got, Dan's gonna cover here and Brian's gonna cover here. This is the primary prayer. And from that, we see this good fruit. And we see this development of God's kingdom coming, of his will being done. From this, from God's name being hallowed, from God's name being made hallowed in our lives and around us. This is rich in the Institutes of Christian Religion on this specific section. It says, what does it mean to hallow the name of God? It means that in part, if he punishes, let him be seen as righteous. If he pardons as merciful, if he is true to his word as faithful. In short, let there be nothing in which his glory does not brightly shine. And thus, let his praises be engraved on every heart and ring out on every tongue. Lastly, let all ungodliness, which defiles and dishonors his holy name, which obscures or degrades this Halloween, perish and pass away. In Halloween, we see two things. We see the positive and we see the negative. We see the building up and we see the prayer for destroying. We see that our lives would become more and more godly and we see the prayer that what is ungodly and what is evil around us would be diminished and destroyed. We see this as well in the shorter Catechism question 190. For what do we pray in this first request? In relevant part, it says that we would enable and incline us and others to know, to acknowledge and to esteem him highly, his titles, attributes, regulations, word, works, and everything else by which he is pleased to reveal himself and to glorify him in thought, word, and deed. To the effect that he would, now here's the other part, thwart and do away with atheism, spiritual ignorance, idolatry, or any kind of desecration and whatever else dishonors him. And then that by his invincible providence, he would direct and regulate everything to his own glory. This is a first. So 947 gives us time for discussion. I was concerned I was gonna run out of time. But when we think about, and we can have some time thinking about this together, of what it means to hallow the name of the Father, I want us to spend some time in how your prayers may or may not reflect us in terms of maturity in your prayers as you've seen yourself mature, and in terms of reflecting on the Lord's prayer specifically. If we looked at, you know, if we had to grab small little, like in the Nazi concentration camps, little pockets of paper and just put down Christian truths, surely we'd put the Lord's prayer down as one of them. We might put the Ten Commandments down as another one. We might put the Apostles' Creed down as another one. Put it on a little three-by-five card and so that we would carry these truths. The Lord's prayer is on that level of fundamental truths for us to know when we are young and for us to know as we mature in life. You do not get to a place when you're 60 or 70 or 44 where you say, Lord's prayer is elementary, my friend. Let me tell you about something else. You will never say that. We will never exhaust the depths when we say the Lord's name be hallowed because we're learning more and more about the faithfulness of the Lord in our life. We're learning more and more about who God is in our life and so we never exhaust the Lord's prayer in our life. We've got some time. Reflections on that. What are your guys' thoughts? Dan. As I consider the idea of lawlessness, I've often thought about it in two ways. One is that if we're hallowing, we're here to Lord to honor him and to think rightly after he has revealed himself to those involved and how we're taking a more active hallowing and we're bearing the name and we're making the commitment to the faith for the purpose of sharing the name. What are your thoughts on that? And one is that we should be more passive and more active in terms of... Yeah, I'm going to circle back to you. I want to hear your thoughts on it as well. There is, as we said, that internally our prayers will reflect and Al Mohler does a great job of this in his book on prayer. There's nothing else that'll reflect our theology more than our prayers. That when we pray, we are revealing what we believe about God. We are either revealing a small God or the God of the Bible. And so if your prayers reveal your theology, then your theology, your orthodoxy is going to always, always pave the way for your orthopraxy, how you act. And so that if we do not start with the right understanding of God, that God has forgiven us, that our salvation first and foremost is dependent on him, then that orthodoxy is going to create in us a response of how we treat one another, that there's no place for me to look at you and say that I am all mightier than now, that my good works are in some way because that is where my salvation came from, that I look at you in pride. And so it's going to affect, what I believe is going to affect how we relate with one another. And so that as we pray, back to what you were saying, Dan, as we pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, you are aligning your heart with right teaching and with right theology. Then what are you going to do? You're going to then want, that's going to influence how you live, the decisions you make, how you talk, how you act, that may make significant decisions on how you pursue life, on how you pursue career decisions. I've got a career opportunity for you. And just to drill down on this, and it is a Saturday, Sunday, that's all you got to do. You got to work Saturday and Sunday. And you're going to make, you're going to do pretty well. You're going to make enough money to set you up for life, to Saturday and Sunday obligation. You may, well, you look at that and you say, oh, the commandment of the Lord is to hallow him is to obey his commandments. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. So in good conscience, can you take that job and hallow the name of God? There are jobs, as the Westminster says, in necessities of mercy, in necessity and for acts of mercy that require us, and we think about our law enforcement officers, we think about people that work in the medical industry, I get that. But what I'm driving at is that it will influence how you make decisions in life around you. And then there's also an evangelistic component to it, that if we want his name to not be defiled around us, then we want our community here in Allen to hallow the name of God. And here's the incredible thing, to Allen's benefit, to our benefit, like it is not the benefit of our country to defile the name of God. It is not the benefit of, any more than it is to the benefit of our home to defile the name of God in our homes. What are your thoughts on that, Dan? Yeah, I totally agree with that. I guess another way to say what I was thinking along those lines is that there's, in some ways there's a prophetic hallowing where you're considering that he's revealed himself to us, that he's putting nothing else before him, that we're not representing him in any way, and that you're bearing his name properly. And then there's second table hallowing where it's rather than our relationship to God, our relationship's to one another. And so whether we're honoring authority with our mother and father, or honoring the image of God in another person, not killing them, not having violence, or those kind of things. So I think about it in some ways, upward-oriented and outward-oriented hallowing of God's name. Yeah, that's good. That's a really good division there. And as we send our kids to go to somebody's house, you know, and they come back, what do you say, how'd they do? You know, ah, they were terrible. They were disrespectful. They went into the fridge on their own. They left it open. They left the gate open in the back. And they left a mess everywhere. But other than that, you know, pretty good. There's nothing more gutting than to get that report about your kids. Why is that? Because your kids reflect your training. The kids reflect your name, your last name. And so around us, you know, we want to reflect God's name and how we act and how we talk and how we walk and the decisions we make. Other thoughts? Nigel. I just wanted to ask to re-explain the fair, fair what God fares more than what man fares. Just if you could explain that in a short bit. Yeah, there's a sense where, and somebody said to me that, just remember equality with man, but inequality with God. So that as we relate with one another, that there is a sense of honoring that takes place in our elders, but we are all equals, right? So that we look at each other in a way that pales in comparison to how we look at God. When you are in your mind, when you are reflecting on a God that has no beginning, that has no end, whose strength, you know, is such that he can say something and make the universe, create the universe in existence by his word, that he is the great governor in the end that will judge all men living and dead, that he is patient enough to not, like we would in anger, you know, smite an entire country when a country is not hallowing the name of the father, that this kindness and this long suffering and this patience in us creates, not only it creates a holy reverence and a fear, that it creates a healthy fear before the God of the universe. And I don't like, I'll just tell you personally, using Lord of the Rings analogies or, you know, or Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe analogies, but I'm going to do that. I'm gonna break my own rule. Aslan, right? A story that's written to try and capture some of this truth. Is he, what was the line? Is he a, is he a safe, thank you, Lion. He's not safe, but he's good. And so, you know, we would never think about the God of the universe as being safe with that power. Rightly so, we have a reverence before him that we are a creature that was designed to do something. And then he, not only as creatures, opened our eyes to be his children. And then that rightly creates in us a posture of good fear. There is a bad fear aspect of that where that can get distorted, like all good things. You know, where at the Lord's Supper, you know, where we would so fear the Lord that we also don't hold fast his promises of forgiveness. That we don't run to the Lord's Supper, you know, as a child that runs to the father and says, I'm sorry, I was wrong. You know, where we would see God in a way that would be disproportionately only fearful and not carry his other attributes to run to him where we would sin or fall short. Any follow up on that, Nigel? Yeah, I was just, wasn't sure, I guess, what was being explained. I guess, in the term that you were using, you know, fear what God fears rather than, so. Right, and then, what does man fear? Like, just in terms of, what would it mean to, what would be a practical example of what does man fear? We don't want to be politically incorrect, right? Man fear is being politically incorrect. What does it mean to fear what God fears in that situation? That we could so align our life with how men are gonna respond to us that we would, our gravestone would read, he feared what man feared. And that would not be a life well lived. He feared what God feared. And that is a life well lived. And I think that that is what that passage that we read about in that fear was talking about. Other thoughts? You know, the incredible thing is that as we have the name, God's name being hallowed, Christ teaching us this, and at the very end, Christ sits on the judgment seat. And he gives us his name. He gives us his identity. And that this is the rich hope that we have in Christ. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, it is right for us to stop now and to hallow your name. We pray, Lord, that today that your name would be esteemed, that it would be held high, that it would be seen as holy, that we would not do anything to profane your name or bring dishonor to it, that we would find in hallowing your name the great riches, the great desires, and the great enjoyment of life. And we do pray this in Christ's name, amen.
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