Good morning. The Scripture reading this morning is from Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 9. That’s on page 811 in your pew Bible.
And as you’re turning there, let me just say hi to everyone. It’s so good to see so many of you that I’ve known for many, many years. If you don’t know, I used to live here in Jackson, my wife, my daughter and I, for a number of years, back, way back; I may as well say 1902 as to say 1985 to ‘89, and in ‘89 we moved to Orlando, Florida. But I have a daughter and three grandchildren who live right here in Jackson, Mississippi so I’m here a lot and the ministry that I serve was also founded in Mississippi. And so Mississippi and Jackson remain important to me and my life, and First Pres and it’s support and prayers for me, I’m grateful to you, and for your friendship through the years.
Hear now the Word of God from Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 9:
“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. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’”
May God add His rich blessing to the reading of His Word. Let’s pray together.
Our Lord Jesus, we have just heard these words that You taught Your disciples thousands of years ago, and we come to You today. We come to You because we call no one our Teacher but You. We love no one like we love You. We long to see no one like we long to see You. And so we’re asking You now to send Holy Spirit to us. May He be poured out on every soul, every heart in this room this morning, so that we may see Your truth, that we may hear You speak, so we may be set free to serve and to love You more dearly. And as You do this, we will give You the praise for it and the honor for it all. Amen.
This is missions emphasis Sunday. Could you tell from the flags hanging from the balconies? I hope so! Now if you came here knowing this was missions Sunday at this church, you are a very brave person because you already know what’s going to be said in every single talk that is given throughout this whole period of time. And so we may as well say it and get it out of the way. Jesus has put His people on a mission. Jesus has put all of His disciples on a mission. And there are many ways to sum up what that mission is, but let’s just put it as plainly as we possibly can this morning. Jesus has called all of His people to do all they can to ensure that everyone throughout the world hears the good news about Him. Now you’ve heard that before. You’ve heard that you are to pray for this, that you are to give of your goods and your wealth for this. You’ve heard that you are to find ways to serve in that great mission, that great worldwide mission.
But today, we are going to see just how important that worldwide mission was to Jesus of Nazareth. And we’re going to do that by looking at this passage that we just read that we usually call The Lord’s Prayer. Now you typically, what we think of The Lord’s Prayer, is something like this – “This is how I am supposed to pray.” So let me just pause for a moment and say this to you. I don’t care where you are in your spiritual life. You may be a very spiritual person who prays every moment of every day, or you may be an ordinary follower of Jesus who slips in a prayer here, slips in a prayer there. You know how it is when you go to bed at night and you realize you really haven’t prayed all day and so you put your head on the pillow and you say, “God, please bless…” and you’re asleep! Well that’s the way many Christians are. But I can tell you this. If something big is happening in your life, you are going to find yourself praying. If your family is in trouble, you’re going to find yourself praying, follower of Christ. If you cannot find a job, you are going to find yourself praying. If your business is failing, you’re going to find yourself praying. If your children are sick, you’re going to find yourself praying. Why is that? It’s because we pray about the things that are important to us.
And so it is that Jesus is not simply telling us how to pray, but He’s also telling us what was important to Him, what He wanted to be important to His disciples there before Him that day, and what He wants to be important for you and me as His followers even today. And most of us can find important things in this Lord’s Prayer; things that we consider to be right up there at the top of what we ought to be giving ourselves to every single day. But most, unfortunately, we find ourselves finding those important ideas, those priorities of our Christian lives, in the bottom half of the Lord’s Prayer. You know how it goes, “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation.” I hope everyone in the room today is seeking the constant help of God to sustain them day by day. I hope all of us today are seeking forgiveness of our sins from God. I hope that all of us today are seeking help with the great temptations and the great tempter who is always trying to take our attention away from the things of God. Those are important things.
But there’s a natural tendency among us to think that those are at the top of the list, the most important things in the world. After all, I can’t live unless God takes care of my daily bread. After all, I have to have personal forgiveness for the things that I have done that are wrong. And I certainly need help with the temptations of life. And if I can just do those things, if I can just get those things from God, then I’ll be okay. Maybe even my nuclear family will be okay. And if you’re very spiritual, maybe even your extended family and some of your friends will be okay as well. And aren’t those things important to us? Well they should be. After all, they’re in The Lord’s Prayer; the list of top priorities. But remember where they are in this prayer. They’re in the bottom half of The Lord’s Prayer.
And what I want to suggest to you this morning is that Jesus’ top priorities for us, those things that were most important to Him, to His disciples, even for us today are not found in the bottom half of The Lord’s Prayer but in the top half of The Lord’s Prayer. And you know how it goes too. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” You know all those words that we hurry through so that we can get down to something that really means something to us – “Give us this day our daily bread.” And I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus put these at the top of The Lord’s Prayer to instruct His disciples and to instruct us on just how important these matters in the upper half of this Lord’s Prayer should be in our lives.
So let’s start at the beginning with what He says about God Himself – “Our Father.” Those are precious words to followers of Jesus because we know that the One who made everything and the One who sustains everything can become the personal, intimate Father of people like you and me. That He can know our name, that He cares about us, that He protects us, that He longs to be with us. He longs to help us. But you know as well as I do that very often what happens when we hear those words, “Our Father,” is a picture of God sort of pops into our heads and it’s the picture of God as a great old granddaddy with a long, white beard, sitting up in heaven on His heavenly rocking chair, rocking back and forth like this, looking down on the earth, ringing His hands and saying to Himself, “Oh, I wish My children on the earth would just pay more attention to Me. If they would, I would take care of all their needs because after all, I, God, exist to make them happy!” That’s what sweet granddaddies are like. I know; I’m the sweetest of them all. The most important thing in my life is for my grandchildren to love me. And I know exactly how to do it – I make them happy. And when I walk into the room with my grandchildren, even today, though they are teenagers, when I walk into the room they say, “Oh this is going to be a good day! Pops is here! I’m going to get something good out of this day!” If they want one, I’ll get them two. If they want a little one, I’ll get them a big one. It doesn’t matter. All I care about is that they love me. Right men? Right grandfathers in the room? It’s one of the most important things in our lives that our grandchildren love us.
And sadly, that’s often the way we think of the God of the universe. But I have some good news for you. That’s not what Jesus tells us is at the top of the list for people like you and me who seek to follow Him. He tells us, rather, a different portrait of God. And we get the first clue by the fact that He doesn’t simply say, “Pray, Our Father;” He says, “Pray, Our Father in heaven.” And every time you look in the Scriptures, whether it’s the Old Testament or the New Testament, when you look in the Scriptures, the portrait of heaven is the same. Heaven is the throneroom of God. Heaven is the place where God sits on a throne, blinding, glorious light radiates from Him, a river of fire pours out from beneath His feet, and there are creatures surrounding Him who are crying out day and night, “Holy! Holy! Holy! Hallowed be Your name!” That is the portrait of God that Jesus is painting for His disciples to orient them toward the most important thing in our faith. And that is this – that God is our King enthroned in heaven and His name is to be kept holy. The honor and the glory of God is at the top of the list. The honor and glory of God as our King is at the top of the list.
Now Jesus said this because the most prominent way the Scriptures reveal God to us is that He is our King. And in His day, that made a lot of sense to people because they lived in a world where there were lots of kings, human kings. But for you and me, especially those of us who were born and raised in these United States of America, this is a big problem because we do not know what it means to live under the authority of a king, exalted on his throne. We don’t know what it means to have someone ruling over us who holds our lives and our deaths in His hands, who manages all things, who is in control of all things. In fact, we rebel against such a notion because in our country, those who rule over us rule because we consent to their rule. And if they don’t do what we like, eventually we get rid of them; put somebody else as our rulers. You see, in our nation, we have a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. But I hate to tell you this but it’s true. If that’s the kind of government you have – of the people, by the people, for the people – then it’s not long before you have religion that is of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Jesus tells us, however, that our God is the King of the universe. And as the King of the universe, He rules over all with or without our consent. This is so very important to all of us as we consider the mission, as we consider the mission upon which Jesus put us all, because as our King, the Lord has called us to a mission that is very inconvenient. Do you know why it is that we don’t like the idea of having human kings rule over us? I think you know exactly why. Why don’t we want a human king to rule over us with absolute power? Well it’s because kings are very inconvenient to have around. I mean they think bizarre things, human kings I’m saying. Like their agenda is more important than your agenda for your life! Can you imagine a person thinking that? That their honor is more important than you honor. Kings believe that what they want should be accomplished by you and you ought to be happy to serve them. In fact, human kings throughout history have also believed – this is a crazy idea but they believed it – that we ought to be ready to die for them and be happy to do it. When you have people around you like that, they’re terribly inconvenient for your life.
But I think that tells us something about our Christian faith. And that is, that the God of the universe, the King ruling over all things and serving that God is not convenient. So if you’re here today and you find that your Christian life and your commitment to the mission that we have, every aspect of your Christian walk, if you have found that it just is, well, “I’ve gotten so used to it. It’s very convenient for me. It fits like a hand in glove in my life. No challenges. No, I don’t really have to reconsider anything. No, it really doesn’t require much of me. It’s just the way I am,” if your religion has become convenient, then maybe, maybe you still don’t know what it means to say that God is your King. Our God, His honor, is more important than our honor. His agenda is more important than our agenda. And we ought to be happy to serve Him. We ought to be happy to die for Him. This is what our Lord Jesus was saying to His disciples when He said, “Pray this way: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name.”
So what does this great King of ours, this heavenly King of ours, what does He want? What is His agenda? Jesus moves right to it in the second part of this top half of The Lord’s Prayer. You know how it goes. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.” You see, I told you He’s thinking of God as King. “Our Father, may Your kingdom come.” Now that’s an old expression. A lot of you who are younger than me, and that’s most of you in the room I suspect, a lot of you probably haven’t heard that expression very much, but it used to be something that we in the south would say a whole lot – “when the kingdom comes.” I had a grandmother who said it all the time. All the grandchildren would be there for Thanksgiving, we would have dessert, and we would go into the kitchen with our empty plates and says, “MaMa, can I have some more ice cream? Can I have another piece of pie?” And she would look at us as she was washing the dishes in the sink, turn around and look at us like this and scour at us and say, “Sure, when the kingdom comes!” So I learned around four years old that that means, “No! Never! Get out of here! You’re bothering me!” It was just an expression people used – “when the kingdom comes.”
So Jesus, what did You mean when You say, “Pray, May Your kingdom come”? Well He tells us right away. “May Your will be done.” I can understand that. What kind of King would God be if His will was not being obeyed? Okay, so that part I get. But here’s the challenge. Jesus, where do You want the kingdom to come and where do You want God’s will to be done? Be careful now. Jesus is about to turn your religion on its head. Did you hear what He said? “May Your kingdom come, may Your will be done, on earth…” I want you to notice that Jesus’ mission was to bring the kingdom of God, but the destiny of God’s rule, the destiny of obedience to the Lord was not heaven. It was the earth. Heaven was the standard that Jesus used for describing what He wanted to happen on the earth! “May Your kingdom come, may Your will be done, on earth as it is already being done in heaven.”
And so when you look at the Bible and you ask, “Well in that throne room up there, how is God’s will obeyed?” and the answer is, “Every creature in that throne room does exactly what God the Father on the throne commands to be done.” Even Satan himself, when he is in the throneroom, doesn’t even think about doing something other than what the One on the throne says. I don’t know what happens to you if you do, but it won’t be pleasant, I can guarantee it. And you would do the same if you were before the blinding radiance of God on His throne. You would not even imagine doing something other than what He says ought to be done. So throughout the heavenly court, God is obeyed perfectly and Jesus says, “My goal, My dream, My vision, My purpose is for that to be true everywhere in the world.”
So very often, followers of Jesus have been told that the ultimate goal for their lives is this – “Come to Jesus, have faith in Him, walk with Him, so that when you pass away you will go to heaven and spend eternity in heaven.” Now don’t misunderstand me. I want you to come to Jesus. I want you to walk with Him. You should do those things so that you can, when you pass away, go to be with Him in heaven. But that’s not the ultimate goal. That’s not the mission. That’s not the great dream and the great vision of our faith. Our great dream and our great vision is that one day the whole earth will become the kingdom of God as heaven already is the kingdom of God. It’s what the Bible calls “the new heavens and the new earth” that Jesus will bring when He makes all things new. When He returns in glory, that is where we are going. Those of us who pass away are going to heaven, and as we are in heaven, we are waiting for that glorious day because Jesus will not remain in heaven forever. He will return to the earth, bring the new creation, and those who are with Him in heaven and those who are with Him on earth will inherit the earth. It will be ours!
Imagine this world without sickness, without death, without war, without crises, without shame for anything you have ever done. Imagine a world like that, so wondrous, so glorious, so holy that God’s glory Himself lights up the world. And you will be there with Jesus, ruling over it with Him. That is our goal. That is our mission. Nothing less than that is worthy of our King Jesus, and nothing less than that is worthy of those who follow Him. And so it’s no wonder, is it, that Jesus Himself said, “When you begin to worry about the things of this world, keep something in mind – seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” That is our mission.
So here’s the challenge for us all. Why do we ask the Lord to take care of our daily bread? It’s so that we can serve the mission of bringing His kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. Why do we pray for forgiveness of our sins as we are forgiving others around us? It’s so that together we might see and serve the kingdom of God coming to the ends of the earth as it is in heaven. And why do we pray for deliverance from the evil one and his temptations? It’s so that we can serve this great kingdom agenda that our God, our royal Father in heaven has for us. This is our mission. Jesus put it this way. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come, may Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Follow the words of Jesus and make that the top priority of your entire life.
Let’s pray together.
Our Lord Jesus, we delight in You and we praise You. We give You thanks and ask now that You would write these words on our hearts that we might not sin against You. Amen.