I'd like to ask you to turn your attention to Matthew chapter 6. I'd like to look at what most of the world calls the Lord's Prayer. It's actually the disciples' prayer. The Lord Jesus Christ never prayed this way. He never had a need to pray this way. The disciples said, Father, or Lord, teach us how to pray. And he said, pray after this manner. Don't pray as the Pharisees and the hypocrites do, with a loud voice on the corner where everybody may hear you. It's not that we're never to be heard in our prayer, but that's not the purpose of our prayer. Our prayer is that we might be heard by our Father in Heaven. One of the greatest problems we encounter among people in discussing religion in general, and this goes for primitive Baptists or especially some of the sects like Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, The groups of people that think that heaven and immortal glory is made for them and we talk about that being our home and certainly that's a place where we will live. Jesus said, if I go away, I'll send a comforter. He also said that I go away to prepare a place for you. In my father's house were many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you, but heaven existed Before the earth, it has always been in the presence of God. We read in Revelation 21 about a new heaven and a new earth. But unfortunately, we're stuck in this infirm body. We're stuck here in a sinful earth. And the disciples wanted to know how to pray, what they should pray for. And I'd like to quickly look at this. And we'll start in Matthew 6 verse 9 and we recently went through this at home on Wednesday night and we took it a praise of the time, our father which art in heaven. We spent a week on that and then hallowed be thy name. You see, you begin to get an impression in this prayer that first of all we are trying to, in prayer, put ourselves where we are so that we can recognize God is where he is. And I was looking at some, Jeremiah Bass' son here a while back, Isaac, it seemed like just a couple weeks ago, he grows about four inches at a time every month, but I was thinking about what's it like to go around looking at people's kneecaps. and knowing just, you know, where everybody's hemlines are. Recognize a lady by, ladies at church by their shin bones. And it must be a confusing world for him there. And, but he has to spend a whole lot of time looking up. Well, I've got bad discs from one end of my disc to the other end of my disc. And it hurts. I can't bend over. They've fused all that. Hurts to look up. I was trying to work on a fuse under the dash this morning, and if I can get down there to look up, it hurts my neck to look up, and then my glasses are too close. I have to take them off. Things aren't working like they ought to be. You see, if we spend our life looking at God like a two-year-old, we are not going to see God. We've got to put ourselves in the right spot. And this, our Father who art in heaven, that is a confession that we are not of ourselves. We are of God. He is the Father. Therefore, we are the children. Therefore, subservient to him. Okay? Jesus said, let's just get that straight right off. Realize who you're talking to and what your relative position is. It was recently over at my dad's house, we were talking, some show came on and it was one of these shows where the video cameras in the police cars and it was amazing how disrespectful these people were to these policemen. I was raised up in a much different world than that when Razz went up north. He would call people Mr. and Mrs. and Doctor and say, oh, you don't have to call me Mrs. And he goes, you don't have to say yes, ma'am. He said, well, you just have to pardon me. I'm from Texas and that's one word where I come from. And if you could just overlook that. The few years I'm here at Hillsdale, I'd appreciate it. And he was trying to show some respect there. We need to show our heavenly father that respect. And he said, our father which art in heaven. He's in heaven, we're not. Okay? Now, those of us with some aches and some pains and some aches, keeper, we don't have to think a whole lot about we're not in heaven yet. I had a rheumatologist, one of the first men to diagnose my back problems over in Abilene. He said, Dwayne, I got good news and bad news. Good news, or he said, I got good news and I got better news. And I said, what's that? And he said, the good news is you're going to wake up one morning and your back's not going to hurt anymore. I said, what's the better news? You can fix it? He said, no, you'll be in heaven then. When you're hurting that bad, you just don't know quite how to take that, whether to jump up and punch him or appreciate it. But when it comes to us facing God day to day to day, we've got to realize that he is in heaven and we are not. We're not fit for heaven until he takes us out of these sinful bodies, gives us a glorified body, Now, when he's talking to Mary and Martha, or actually Thomas and Mary Magdalene, on the day of his resurrection, when he's talking to Mary, she's holding on to him, and he said, Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended unto my Father. In Texas, it's common to say that he hadn't gone and presented himself a perfect sacrifice before God in heaven. But that's not what that word means, that touch me not. It's the active present tense, which means you are touching me, stop touching me. And if she could have defiled the sacrifice, it was already defiled because she was already touching him. It comes from the word leros. Another place where he actually, just a few moments later, He encounters Thomas, who had doubted him, said, I'll not believe unless I touch him with my own hands. And he told him, he said, touch me, which means to feel, like tactile, okay, to feel, to see if it's smooth, rough, hot, cold, to see if it's really, and he says, a spiritual body hath not flesh and bone. The word there is argos. Very different words. Leros means to grasp somebody and restrain them from doing the work. He said, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my father. He said, he was implying there, I've got things to do. You're keeping me from doing the work that I have to do before I go to my father. I'm not going to my father yet. There's something I've got to do. And he spent the next 40 days until Pentecost among the people. appeared to him there in the house to them and came through the door and Thomas made his confession. Then he appeared to them eight days later and several times he appeared and eventually went to heaven on the day of Pentecost. That's one of the most important things in praying is recognizing that we are not God. We're not close to God. We're far below God. We're completely dependent on God. And that he is our father, and our fathers are expected to protect us and provide for us. And even so, in calling him father, we lay claim to every promise that he's ever made to his children. We call to mind. And the better studied you are, the more faith you're going to have when you pray this prayer or any other prayer that you pray, because you're going to know what promises he made to his people, whether they be in obedience or disobedience. There's 613 commandments in the Old Testament. And, you know, do this or don't do this, and of those 613, at things, commandments he's given there. We should be mindful of those things and call them to mind when we call him father. Our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We've got to realize that his name is holy. Dwayne is not a holy name. Dwayne's kind of a strange name. It's mainly in the south. mainly felons or blacks. It's Southerns, white felons or blacks. It's just, that's the way it is. You look up Dwayne on the Social Security website. You can see how many people were named Dwayne last year in the United States. I think it was 24. 24. You think that name means anything? It don't hold water. It's not good for anything. I have to call people and say, this is Dwayne Schaefer. You'd think, how many Dwaynes could they know? People call me all the time and say, hey, this is Greg. Well, I know 40 or 50 Gregs, but I'm still careful to tell them who they're talking to. It's important we know who we're talking to and that his name is Holy. There's a Jewish radio talk show host named Dennis Prager. I'd highly recommend him. And once in a while, he will invoke the name of God, and he does so carefully, and he specifies, and he makes it clear to his audience that I do not use this term loosely, but he says, I hope to God that is not true. It means that is my prayer. To God in heaven, who is all powerful, that what you've said is not true. He recognizes the name of God is holy and that's why we should not take it lightly. People are loose and they'll say, oh Jesus. And I'll say, in the mercy room, I'll say, oh excuse me, if you're praying, I'll come back later. They go on praying. Or they'll say, oh my God. I'll say, oh, excuse me, if you need to pray and be alone, I'll come back in a little while. Well, it cuts their prayer short. They'd rather see me than talk to God, is what it comes down to. Well, actually, it comes down to they just don't have any respect for the name of God. If you're going to invoke the name of God, make sure you do so carefully. Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. A kingdom has got a king and it's got subjects, okay? And we're reminded again of our position and his position. He's in a kingdom. We are his serfs. We are his servants. We are his slaves. The Greek word for it is hupodolos, which means underservant or under rower. And on those trirene ships that the Greeks had and the Persians, they had two levels of rowers come out and oars. And the worst one was to be on the bottom because all the dirty stuff from the guys chained above you came down on you. And you also had, it was harder for you to manipulate your oars, they were shorter, and so you didn't have as much leverage. It wasn't fun being an under rower, but we've got to realize that's where we are compared to God. And in the kingdom of God, we've got to be willing to be that hupodolos and so that we might be underservants. Even the apostle Paul considered himself that. Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. And this is where we start getting difficult. Thy will be done. How many times have you gotten yourself into a problem, had difficulties, and you weren't smart enough, you're like Merrill Lynch or AGI, you weren't smart enough, or GM, you weren't smart enough to keep yourself out of trouble. But you figured out how you can get yourself out of trouble. So you tell the government, we just need $60 billion and we can straighten this all out. Well, my friend, if you are in a $60 billion problem, why should I believe that you can get out? That you're smart enough to figure your way out. It's just not going to happen. And so we have to say, thy will be done. And we are told to pour out our prayers and our hearts to God. We're told to pray that way, but we've always got to say, but Lord, whatever I've asked for, if it's not Thy will, Thy will be done. And the whole purpose of this prayer, and you can say, well, what about the lady when he talked and he said, if thou sayest to this mountain be moved, it will be moved. My friends, that's only if it's God's will. It's not so you can have better view, more valuable landscape, easier access to the bag 40. The purpose of prayer and meditation is so that our minds and our hearts' desires might converge and be the same as those of God. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. I'm laying aside my will. I'm right up front, God, in my praying, I'm confessing that I am way below, I'm way down here, and you're way up there. And that I'm not even worthy to talk to you, except you're my Father. You're my Father, and I'm your child. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, and in earth as it is in heaven. And it's even a desire in that in earth, I don't believe that's talking about all the world, I believe it's talking about these earthly carnal bodies. That we might live as people, that we might have a faith and a home that causes us to live and walk by faith so that we don't, you can tell us from the rest of the people of this world. One of the Indiana Jones, and I may have used this a couple of years ago, one of the Indiana Jones movies, I think it was Search for the Lost Holy Grail or something, and he figured out that there's an invisible path across this chasm, but he won't walk out there over it. What Indiana Jones does is bend over and picks it up and he scatters, throws some sand and that sand stands there and outlines the edge of that clear platform that he can walk across it. See, he didn't have faith. Faith would have just walked him right across into the mouth of that cave on the other side of that 300, 400, 500 foot chasm into that cave where that precious vessel was that they were searching for. You see, we have got to learn, we're saying, Lord, teach me to live by faith, accept the things that you want for us, thy will be done. Then the next verse, he comes down in verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread. That's not asking a whole lot. But, you know, if I'm hoping and expecting the Lord to come back tomorrow. I don't need a whole lot, do I? You go back and you look at Moses and the wilderness, go over to Exodus about chapter 9 or 10 there where they've got the manna. He only gave it to them a day at a time. Some of those people like, it's kind of like the, Here a while back, my nephew went to Walmart and they priced it instead of one little box of shotgun shells for $5.49, they priced the whole case for $5.49. Well, he couldn't get enough of them. And so, these people that had eaten up everything that they could have brought out of Egypt, And he said, Lord, we want some of these. Well, he gave them this manna out there. Jewish legend says that manna actually tasted like whatever you had an appetite for. Boy, it'd be chicken fried steak every meal. And I'd like to have it out at Stephenville Cattle Auction Company on Wednesdays. It's all you need and it's fried just right. It's got good gravy and good potatoes. He said, but if you like octopus or, you know, broccoli, asparagus, that's what it would be. That's what they believed. That God pleased us and nourished us because it was his will to please us and to nourish us. So then he says, give us this day our daily bread. You know, we can become covetous and greedy. Look what happened when those people in the wilderness, except on the day before the Sabbath, gathered more than what they needed. It putrefied. Well, if you had that in a jar and it putrefied, you'd have to get a clay jar, my goodness, you'd have to get a whole new jar. You don't just rinse putrid stuff out of a clay jar, do you? He told them, you trust me a day at a time. A day at a time. And that's very hard in this world today. Listening to talk radio. Watching news. Hearing about people getting laid off. Knowing people that are getting laid off. Having kids graduate from college and there's no jobs out there for them. Those are very difficult things. And to say the Lord will provide for you. Don't know how. Nothing else. I guess some of you boys might move back home. You might not get that $40,000 a year in benefits and promise of a raise if you've been a good employee after a year. You may get a bed and a blanket and two meals a day, maybe three, and maybe rice and beans every meal, but I promise you there's fences to build, there's gates to fix, there's cattle that need branding, vaccinated, all those things, and so you'll have work to do, but you'll have the bread that you need for that day. That's something that God has already promised us though, isn't it? He's not asking for something. He's not telling us to ask for something God hasn't already promised. Not yet. Everything He's told us to ask for, even thy kingdom come, thy will be done, was promised to us already. This is just laying hold, and it's a Pentecostal term, laying hold on the promises of God. Okay? But we ought to be able to do that. Jesus taught us to pray that way. He said, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Oh, my goodness. Remember the guy that the fellow owed him some money, a lot of money, or a little bit of money actually, and the guy couldn't pay it. And that man had just been forgiven a very large debt. which if you look at the size of his debt, I calculated it one time, the size of his debt was around ten times the gross national product of Israel at that time. Ten thousand talents. It was an incredible amount of money that this guy was forgiven. And I'm sorry I don't remember the exact amount, but it was up there comparable to the gross national product. of the entire nation of Israel. He had been forgiven of that, and there's this guy that owes him just a few pennies, and he can't forgive him of that. If we're going to lay hold of the promises of God, we've got to follow the commandments of God that thou shalt. One theologian said God's a God of thesis and antithesis. That means yeses and noes. And there's no room in there for how comes. Why? All of you that raise children, one of the words they learn quickest, and you can, I don't know where they learn it. I think it's coming to church probably. They say, why? You can say, Raz, carry out the trash. Sunday night, the trash runs tomorrow, so I say, Raz, carry out the trash. Why? I'm not telling you why. I don't want you to be stupid all your life, but I tell you what, you just obey. And by the time you've gathered up the trash around the house, like we do every Sunday night, It'll dawn on you somewhere in there that Sunday night I'm thinking. And you take and gather up all this trash, you put it in the trash where the coons can't get it and set it up on the tailgate so the dogs and the coyotes and the foxes can't get it, where the trash man can get it and make sure you didn't put something in it that he won't haul off. You do that and then if you don't understand, you come back and we'll sit down and discuss it and I'll illustrate it. You know those boys never came back. They just don't come back. Who are we to ask God why about these things when it's a question of obedience so much of the time? And when we are obedient, I tell you, it's just like me raising those boys. They come, when they're in obedience, they come to understand why they were told to do that. You young men are taught to discipline your minds and work hard and stay busy. And you may not understand that now, but someday you'll have a family and it'll keep you from lust, from covetousness. It'll make you a better husband, a better father, a better provider. It'll do all those things. You say, what does that have to do with working hard, being diligent, paying attention, reading my Bible? It has everything to do with it. So moving on, he said, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. That lead us is a passive word. It's not that God is the author of evil. Don't tell anybody I preached that. But sometimes he passively opens that up. I learned a long time ago to pray every day. Lord, don't give me any bad choices today. It's just like taking a multiple choice test. I learned that if I went back and changed an answer, there was over a 70% chance I would change it from the right to the wrong answer. So, I started getting a new pencil and very ceremoniously cutting that eraser off of my pencil and then there was an empty trash can about 30 feet in front of me on the front row and I would take that eraser and throw it into one of those ten classroom bins, and it'd go ting, ting, ting, and boy, it'd just drive the other 205 people in the room crazy. But I learned that there was no looking back. If I, the answer, if I changed, I was probably going to change from wrong, or from right to wrong. And so, as we look at this, and lead us not into temptation, we say, Lord, don't give me any bad choices, because I'm liable to make the wrong one. Lord, if you'd give me an eraser, I'm liable to depend on that eraser, and think, well, I can just go back and change that. Or, I'll just try this. I'll go over here. Nobody will see me on this side of town. Then I can just, you know, pay cash for everything over here or I'll just make sure I don't run into anybody. Or if I do, I'll tell them I was looking for somebody, somebody called and needed some help. There's all kinds of things you can come up with. So he says, lead us not into temptation. It means don't leave a passive door open. Raz called me a few weeks ago. He had thought he had a job, a pretty good offer. He had several interviews. They flew him to Washington, D.C. He called me and he sounded pretty happy. And I said, how are you doing? He said, I'm doing great. He said, God answered a prayer today. I said, what was that? And he said, God shut a door. He took away one of my choices today. See, he was raised to pray every day, Lord, don't give me any bad choices. Lead me not into temptation. Lord, I am satisfied to walk the path that you put in front of me. And he says then, but deliver us from evil. You see, there's evil on all those sides. If you've read Pilgrim's Progress, you know the castle there with the two lions and Christians afraid to go into the castle. And the evangelist, he said, don't worry about it. He said, those lions are on chains. If you just stay in the middle, they can't reach you. That's the way it is. When we walk a straight and narrow way, When we walk the way the Lord guides us and the way the Lord has instructed us, we're not going to fall into this harm. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We're praying, Lord, keep me on that straight and narrow way. Don't give me any bad choices today. Whatever choices are out there that might be evil or wrong or bad, take them away. You don't know what things are going to happen. You just don't know. Brother Zach and I were talking about something here today. In 1976, a man died in a plane crash. He was a student pilot and taking lessons the same time my father was out in West Texas. Years later, about 1992, his wife gave me his books. Then in 1994, I believe it was, I was called to pastor Singville Primitive Baptist Church. Well, they hadn't been having annual meetings, so I decided this would be a good time to have. And I'd met Brother Zach a few times. I had enjoyed a couple of times I'd heard him speak at Harmony Hill. And his name kept coming to mind. The deacon said, you pick. And so I'm praying about this and I was getting ready to do some Bible study and there was a reference book that I'd never used before, I think it might have been Nate's topical Bible or something like that, that had been, belonged to Brother Parker. And before I started, I prayed, Lord, please help prepare my mind for worship on Sunday and show me, Lord, who it is that has a message to bring to us. I opened up that book and a stapled booklet sermon fell out and it was on the full support of the gospel ministry by Elder Zach Gess. We invited Elder Zach Gess to that meeting. Well, he came and preached and there was some girls or a particular young lady that lived nearby that drove over on Saturday named Rachel Inman. And a young man named Isaac Jeff didn't get to come out originally with the rest of the family. Remember this? He came out on Saturday morning. And Rachel was up on the corner of the porch talking to me. And we, as we were visiting up there and some other people, we had actually decided not to have church Saturday morning, but to have it Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. which is a big mistake because everybody's used to doing it the other way, except for the fact that God had something to do. And I believe that you all will understand it's a blessing that Isaac and Rachel married. Well, it all goes back to James Parker dying, and his wife giving his books away, and Brother Zach having preached to him years before, giving him that. He sticks it in a book. I'm praying. It falls out. It opens up there. I call Zach Guess. He says, yes, I'll come out. He comes out. Then we announce the meeting. Rachel Inman comes. Then Isaac shows up later, drives all the way out by himself. And y'all have been greatly blessed. Some people say all things work together for good to those that love God, but they really don't mean all things. Well, I don't know the mind of God, but I have learned to trust him. And somewhere in there, I don't know what James Parker might have been spared of. He may have had a terrible cancer growing in his body. It was a great loss to many people. Made a lot of people, he was in his mid, late 30s, I'd say, or, yeah, probably late 30s, early 40s. Made a lot of people realize the brevity of life, the danger of flying. There were three or four pilots in the church at the time. Do you know what? It showed me years later, there was a man who studied the word of God, and when he found some, a treasure, he kept it. And that sermon was a treasure, and he stuck it in that book, and I stumbled on it years later, The Providence of God. He says, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom. It's your kingdom. Everything I do is for you. I've got a nice house, and I thank the Lord for it. And many of you have been there, but you know what? All I did was tear out the old stuff. Then I had skilled men come in and do the new stuff. But people tell me, I've got a nice house. I didn't build it. I didn't build it. Somebody else. They go, wow, that's a nice railing up there. I didn't do that. I didn't have anything to do with that. Somebody else did that. And that's the way it is. Our service in the kingdom of God. Continually pointing toward heaven. especially pointing our minds and our hearts, thy kingdom come. And he says, for thine is the kingdom. The kingdom is yours. I don't claim any part of the kingdom. I don't own 200 acres up there. I don't own a bigger lot than you do, a bigger mansion, as some might say. It's just like yours. But you know what? We're not going to heaven. for our glory and good anyway. We're going there to praise God. And if you think we're going to go up there and we're just going to be walking around and, oh, I hadn't talked to you and, you know, meet John Gill and say, how in the world did you learn so many languages before you were 14 years old? That's not what's going to be going on in heaven. Go back and look at Isaiah 6, those cherubims. For eternity, they've been flying around Him saying, holy, holy, holy. And then they start over on the second verse. Holy, holy, holy. One preacher I heard, he said he was traveling and got stuck in a traffic jam going up from Virginia up to New York. And he had a little boy and they got in a traffic jam on the interstate. The little boy said, Daddy, I want to dink. And he said, oh, isn't that cute? A few minutes later, he said, Daddy, dink! Dink! And he said, son, we'll get drinks later. He said, about 200 miles later, I wish that kid couldn't talk. It wasn't near as cute. Wasn't near as cute. But you know what? We're not ever going to get tired of praising God. And we will never over-exalt Him. People, their kid will do something their kid's supposed to do anyway, and then they want to give them an award and put an announcement in the paper and hang a banner up and throw a party. My goodness, that's not what heaven's going to be like, Sister Beecham. We're going to heaven to praise God. And there's not going to be intermissions where he says, that was a real good job. Now, let's try it all again and see if we can't get a little better. We're going to praise God. Now, what in that prayer there, and he says, for Thine is the kingdom and the power. You have the power to keep all your promises. that I'm laying hold of today, that I'm claiming today, and the glory. When I get it, I can't say, boy, isn't that a good garden I planted this year. Boy, I tell you, I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. That farming paid off, didn't it? Look at that crop. Boy, next week, I'm going to be hauling that off. Big hailstorm hits or blizzard and blows it all down on the ground. You see that it wasn't me that raised that corn, hardly at all. Dependent on the Lord. That's where the glory goes. Forever, it says. Amen. Amen in Hebrew means let it be so. It's like having something notarized. Stamped. Cannot be revoked. Okay, now what in there is glorifying the man? Everything in there points to God in heaven. and him being in control of everything, us being down here and him being up there, us claiming the promises that he made. He has all power to bestow those promises. We say, Lord, we even want to be like you. We want to be like we're going to be in heaven. We wish that we could be that now. But until then, Lord, we claim your promises and we look to you with prayer and hope and faith. And Lord, please provide us our daily bread. And Lord, the second thing I'm going to ask you is, Lord, let me forgive other people the way I've been forgiven. I don't have time to tell you the experiences I've had with that in the last couple of years. I've got to think about people I need to ask forgiveness about. I've been on the phone writing letters, trying to get over people, and it's just people say, what are you talking about? I've done a lot of apologizing the last few years, but you know what? We owe our greatest apologies for trespasses. But we've got to learn to forgive people the way we hope that our Father will forgive us as he's promised that he would through the blood of Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior. Thank you for your time and attention.