Alright, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we bow in your presence on this Sabbath morning and we thank you so much that we may come into the Holy of Holies to worship you, to meet with you, our God, as we come through the blood and the righteousness of your Son, Jesus, our Messiah and our Mediator. We thank you for the Holy Spirit who works in us, that we who were dead in trespasses and sins have now become sons and daughters of the Most High God and worshipers. And as part of that worship you have called us to pray. So we ask you in this time that by the Holy Spirit you might teach us from your word how to pray and how to frame our hearts most effectually to that end. We pray in Jesus' saving name. Amen. I want to begin this morning with a couple of clarifications from last week. First of all, I used last week in the lesson the regrettable phrase guerrilla music at one point and that is a phrase I heard from a teacher many years ago when I was taking guitar lessons and I thought I knew what he meant. I was told this week that in fact it means something quite different from what I thought it meant and it should not be used. So I apologize for that and I will excise it from my vocabulary in the future. Secondly, the questioner is not here this morning but the question was raised last week about Are we permitted biblically to pray to Jesus and to the Spirit as well as to the Father? We're instructed in the Lord's Prayer to pray our Father, so does that preclude us from praying to Jesus and to the Spirit? I went very rapidly, but I hope clearly enough to answer that question from Scripture. First of all, in regard to that, we know from the Bible that all three of the persons of the Godhead are in fact fully God, they are fully divine. And so worship, and within the scope of worship, prayer, are properly made to each person of the Godhead. In fact, if you pray to God, my God, if you use those words, you're really praying to all three persons of the Godhead. So in that sense, at least, we certainly do pray to all three. A Dutch writer from the 17th century, actually 16th and 17th century, I believe, Wilhelmus Abrakel, says, we must refrain from attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible, and from making too great a separation between the persons and the divine essence. This causes some confusion in the minds of some," he says, as if it would be a concern to the one person of the Godhead if one of the three divine persons were addressed more than another. So it's not as if, on one hand, when you pray to, let's say, the Father as God, the Son and the Spirit are over here grumbling because they're not being elevated to that same position. You know, you pray to God and all three are comprehended. So all three persons are divine, first of all. Secondly, all three persons are persons. They are personal. They are thus capable of communication. I was noticing in that regard, this isn't so much prayer, but I was noticing that in Acts 8, 29, the Spirit, when Philip is out on the road where he meets the eunuch from Ethiopia, the Spirit said to Philip, go near and overtake this chariot. So the Spirit is a person who communicates. The same thing later when, before Paul and Barnabas' first missionary journey in Acts 13, they're ministering to the Lord, they're fasting, the Holy Spirit said, separate from me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. So while those are not instances of prayer from men to the Spirit, the Spirit is a communicating being. And each of the persons of the Godhead have individual and personal functions in what we call the economy of grace, the outworking of grace, so that it's proper, I think, biblically, to address each of the persons in their respective roles in that economy of grace. For example, we speak to the Father as Father, but if it's a matter of teaching or guidance we need, I think most appropriately we should address the Holy Spirit for guidance, because He is the anointing who teaches us. Or, obviously, it's appropriate to address Christ, the Son of God, in His functions within the economy of grace. And then thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, at least with respect to Jesus, the Son of God, we have clear instances after his ascension of saints praying to him. Stephen, when he's stoned in Acts 7, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, and he calls upon him in his hour of death. Paul, it's quite clear in 2 Corinthians 12, when he's beseeching the Lord to remove the thorn in the flesh, it's pretty clear that it is to the Lord Jesus whom he's directing that petition. And, of course, throughout the Gospels, before the Ascension, you have people praying to Jesus, because He's fully God. And finally, at the very end of the Bible, in Revelation 22, come quickly, Lord Jesus. There's that prayer lifted to Him as the Son of God. So I think, on balance, the evidence is quite clear that we are to pray to all three Persons. Not only may, but we should pray to all three Persons of the Godhead. All right. Hopefully that'll be clear and helpful. I want you to read this morning a few verses from Isaiah 44. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first and I am the last. Besides me, there is no God and who can proclaim as I do, then let him declare it and set it in order to me or for me. Since I appointed the ancient people and the things that are coming and shall come, let them show these to them. Do not fear nor be afraid. Have I not told you from that time and declared it? You are my witnesses. There a God besides me indeed. There is no other rock. I know not one and then later in that same chapter Thus says the Lord your Redeemer and he who formed you from the womb I am the Lord who makes all things who stretches out the heavens all alone who spreads abroad the earth by himself who frustrates the signs of the babblers and drives diviners mad and who turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolishness, and he goes on recounting other things that he alone as God does. Now in view of that backdrop that Isaiah has set forth as he speaks forth God's own words about himself in which God is saying very clearly and giving illustrations, there's no one like me. Find someone like me if you can. I want then to read together what should be in your notes there, question 190 from the larger catechism, because now we're into the petitions of the Lord's Prayer and we're coming to the first one today. I'll ask the question and I want to read this together in light of what Isaiah says. What do we pray for in the first petition? Together? In the first petition, which is, Hallowed be thy name, acknowledging the utter inability and indisposition that is in ourselves and all men to honor God aright, we pray that God would, by his grace, enable and incline us and others to acknowledge and highly prestige him, his titles, attributes, ordinances, words, and whatsoever he is pleased to make himself known by, and to glorify him in thought, word, and deed, that he would prevent and remove atheism, ignorance, idolatry, profaneness, and whatsoever is dishonorable to him, and by his overruling providence direct and dispose of all things to his own glory." Obviously this is a very helpful This part of the Catechism is extremely helpful to us in prayer. I mean, if you had nothing more than that set before you, that would help you begin to frame some petitions. And I've also set out before you there, Heidelberg 122, the parallel text in the Dutch Confession and Catechism. But I've titled the first section this morning, Words, Words, Words. Because we tend to use a lot of words in the Christian faith and in the Reformed community, and I don't know that we always have a very clear idea of what we're saying, and certainly many to whom we speak have no idea what we're saying. So what does it mean to hallow God's name? Now, if I hadn't put it in your notes, I would ask some of you to define for me what it means to hallow a thing. Because I think we need to really reflect on that. To hallow something, not hollow, that's H-O-L-L-O-W, hallow something, means, as I have it there before you, to regard and treat that thing or that person as set apart from common things and worthy of respect and awe. To regard and to treat it as set apart from common things and worthy of respect and awe. Now, I don't want to keep harping on this to the point where it becomes irritating, but really, brethren, we have to acknowledge, I think, that this whole matter of hallowing almost anything is really being lost, if it's not fully lost already, in our culture. If you don't really believe that, let me ask you the simple question, what in your life do you hallow? What do you really regard, and not just regard in your mind, but treat, as something that is set apart from common things? It is not to be handled in ordinary ways because it's not ordinary. What in your life, before what in your life, do you feel an intense inner sense of awe? I don't think the list will be very long for many of us. I'm actually stunned by this. One of the things, for example, that has struck me in my own approach to life, and as I talk, especially with young people today, even speaking about things of the faith, You know, the name God, the name Jesus, the way that we often walk into a worship service, what goes on in our minds as we kneel down or stand or even sit to pray, there's often not a sense at all, at least as near as I can hear in myself and in others that I interact with or see, there's not really a sense that what I'm about to do is tread upon ground that is really holy ground. This is not a common thing. This is not ordinary. This is, in a very real sense, off-limits in the sense that there is a very real barrier that must be crossed over because this is a different kind of territory over here and there should be a sense of awe and reverence. Something like what idolaters feel when they approach their idol. Can you imagine how the Muslims would react if you were to publicly desecrate, let's say, Well, we've seen evidence, haven't we, of how they would react. If you were to desecrate a picture of Muhammad or try to create a representation of Allah, the idolaters have a very great sense that these things are set apart. Ordinary people don't just walk up and grab hold of this. This is holy, it is sacred, it is to be hallowed. I think that we as Protestants need to think through, though we don't set up idols in our sanctuaries and so forth and use those as objects of veneration and devotion, do you hallow God and the things of God? God hallows his own name. And I want to say that God's name is not just a random candle, as we call it today. You know, we're about to name our third child and I'm struck more and more by in some senses, how, what a really, you know, the main concern for me as a parent in naming my child, and I'm not really proud of this, is just to make sure I don't stick the poor child with some sort of name that he hates, that he hates in himself and hates me for when he's 16, you know. We tend to just slap names on people and things without a whole lot of thought. God's name is not like that. God's name is not, oh well, let's name him God. God's name is His conscious, personal self-presentation of who He is. I am that I am. And I haven't stuck that label on myself just because. I am that I am represents to the people of God who He really is. It is His own conscious, personal self-presentation of who He is, and especially God's name is a self-presentation of who He is in relation to mankind, and even more particularly, who he is in relationship to his covenant people. The name Jehovah, the name Jesus, means it is a self-presentation of God in which it is said to the people of God, I am the one who saved my people from their sins, and so forth. So, God's name is all tied up in who God is, and God hallows himself, he regards himself as holy, as set apart from common things, as worthy of awe, and respect, and so he hallows his name. And we saw that in Isaiah 44. God's saying, who is like me? Find someone to whom I can be compared. Number 23, God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not make it good? And those kind of passages God is saying to his people, listen, Over and over and over again, you make promises and you don't come through on them. I am not like you. When I say something, it will absolutely be done. Because I'm God. Psalm 50, 21, you thought, God says to the wicked, that I was just like you. I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes. God is jealous for us to understand. I am not a creature. I'm not like you. I am set apart. But then God commands us to hallow his name. He commands us to do this. And in one of the most sobering passages, I think, in all of Scripture, in Leviticus 10, Aaron's two oldest boys, in the heat and excitement of a great appearance of God, shortly after they've been ordained to the priestly office, they take their censers in their hand and they take strange fire and they go and they begin to offer the strange fire before the Lord. And God sends fire from his own presence and kills them both right there before him. And then the word goes out to Aaron and to Moses, and God says, By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. This is not a playground, my worship. I must be regarded as altogether other than you. as set apart. This flows out of the third commandment given to us, you shall not take up the name of the Lord your God, perhaps most literally, for empty, worthless purposes. When you say the name Jesus, for example, you say the name Father, or Jehovah, or the other names and titles of God. You're not to take those names and titles up on your lips, God tells us, for empty, worthless purposes. Probably where this gets me the most is when I sing hymns. And I just trot through them because I know the tune and I know the words and I just race on through and so often I find myself getting to the end of a hymn and I realize I've just said the name of God several times in several different forms and spoken of his works and his attributes, and I don't think I can even really, I don't think I felt a thing. I think I just sang the song. But you see, God is jealous that we should regard, and the Catechism says, it's really an excellent definition, not just his bare name, but his titles, his attributes. For example, when we use phrases like, good grief, or other, you know, attaching the adjective good onto something, you know, there is none good but God. And you're really taking an attribute of God and reducing it to the level of an average slang throwaway term. You know, things like that, where to regard His attributes and His ordinances, His word, His works, and anything by which God reveals Himself. In fact, ourselves, you are a revelation of God. Part of the reason why it is sin, It is sheer wickedness to kill a human being, or to even have thoughts that are murderous towards a human being, is because you are the imago dei, you are the image of God, you are a revelation of God, and therefore when I treat you, I am to treat you with respect for the image of God in you, because you are a revelation of God, and so forth. So when we say, Hallowed be thy name, all of this lies in the background. God commanding his people, you are to regard me as holy. I think of Psalm 113, that wonderful psalm. Who is like the Lord our God, who is enthroned on high, who humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth. And parenthetically, I would note for you that this raises a very practical point in prayer. I've said a number of times, I think, how do you begin prayer? You know, you get on your knees, and prayer's a big task. It's kind of overwhelming. How do you begin prayer? Well, one of the most glorious ways, I think, to begin prayer, one of the most helpful ways, is with adoration. Don't begin with your requests. Don't begin even with intercession for others, or even with confession of sin. It's very useful to begin prayer with adoration. to set before yourself the God to whom you're praying and begin to extol and expound a little bit upon His attributes. Someone asked me a few weeks ago, how do you deal with the problem of sameness in prayer? I feel like I keep saying the same things over and over and over again in prayer. How do I introduce variety into my prayer life? One of the most helpful ways I've found to do that is to adore God. To begin my prayer trying, and it's very hard work I find at times, to begin to think about Alright, let me pray to you now as Father. And Father, I thank you for your love. I thank you for your tenderness. I thank you for your patience. I thank you for your pursuit of me. You're my king. You reign. You rule. Every single thing that happens in my life today, Lord, you have ordained it and you are sovereignly governing it for your own glory. You're my creator. You are the God in whose hand my breath is. You're my shepherd. You have promised, you have guaranteed me your provision and your protection today. You will feed and nourish my soul as I call out to you and help me in my times of need. You're my saviour. You're my judge. You're my vindicator. I mean, there are so many ways in which you begin to set the names and the titles and the attributes of God before your mind, it really brings Tremendous color and texture to your prayers and then begins to give you a basis upon which to present your petition. It's very powerful. I think one of the most helpful things about that is it begins to bring God near. I don't know about you, but one of the things I struggle with most of my own prayer life is, you know, our mental conceptions of God tend to be very indistinct, and there's a sense in which that's appropriate. but I think maybe imprecise and very impersonal at times, and even erroneous at times. One of the things that adoration does is you take the language of scripture and you begin to say, God, this is who you are. You just praise him and extol him for who he is. It really does bring God very near to you. Notice this quote from Isaac Watts. This is just so excellent in helping you get into prayer. When we consider God's nature, he says, We stand afar off from him as creatures from a God, for he is infinitely superior to us." And it's true. You start to think about things like infinitude, eternality, unchangeableness, that God is a spirit. I mean, the more you contemplate those sorts of things, the distance between you and him is just immense. But you go on. Watts says, when we speak of his attributes, a great acquaintance seems to grow between God and us while we tell him that we have learned something of his his wisdom, his justice, and his mercy. But when we proceed to mention the many works of his hands by which he has tangibly revealed himself to our understanding, we seem to approach yet nearer to God. And when at last we can arise to call him our God from a sense of his special relation to us in Christ, then we gain the nearest access and are better prepared for the following parts of this worship. It's a very helpful series of reflections, I think, to show you how you can begin with God who is truly, in a sense, far off in His transcendence and His otherness. And yet, as you meditate on His attributes, His works, His special relations to you in Christ, He really does draw near to your soul. So the problem, as the Catechism states it, is that while on one hand God And this is wonderful. He wills to be known. I can't tell you why. I don't understand it, frankly. Except that he delights in himself, and so he delights in the delight of others in himself, but he delights and he wills to be a known God. He wants to be known. And he wills to be loved and delighted in and worshipped and served for who he really is. That's God on one hand. But the problem, of course, as the Catechism says it, is that you and I, by nature, are neither able nor disposed, we're not inclined to know, love, delight in, worship, enjoy, and serve God for who He really is. Paul says one of the most basic problems of mankind is that they did not honour God as God. And that's our nature. What flows out of our original sin and our original corruption is that we are pretty happily ignorant of God. When we think of Him at all, we tend to think that He's very much like us, and so why should I honor Him particularly? He's not that much different than I am. Or we are apathetic, or even worse, about really honoring Him. That's by nature. And as you look at the world and those who have not been born again, that's basically where people are by nature. They are neither able to honour God as God, to know, to love, delight in Him, and they're not at all inclined to do so. But it's interesting to me that even in Scripture, even the regenerate, even those who have been born from above, who are new creation, they cry to God to work in them in order that they might praise him. Open thou my lips, David says in Psalm 51. That would be a tremendous way to begin prayer. Open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise. Now, it's very important, I think, for us to realize as we come to prayer that prayer is hard because it is, in a very real sense, unnatural. It doesn't come naturally to us to pray. and to pray with delight, to pray with love, to pray with real knowledge of who God is. This is not something that is going to come easy, because it is who we are now in Christ, but it's not who we were in Adam, and those remnants of the Adamic corruption still cling to us. I love Psalm 8611. Unite my heart to fear your name. God, gather the powers of my being that are scattered abroad and frankly in many cases worshipping those things that are no gods at all. Gather those powers of my heart, those affections of my heart together that I might reverence your name. And you've got to do this, Lord. You've got to blow upon the coals of my heart. As I even begin prayer, to make me pray and think of you and worship you as you ought to be worshipped. So that then becomes the basis, that problem, if you will, that becomes the basis of our petition. And the Catechism breaks this petition down into a number of sub-points. We're to pray that we and all men would be enabled, made able, and inclined, we might be disposed to do these things. Now, I've set them out in your notes there. First of all, that we would be enabled and inclined to know God and all of His self-revelations, that God would give us an attentive observance to the ways by which He reveals Himself to us, that God would teach us to study Him, to not be content with a mere casual notice of Him, and his self-revelations, and I don't know if there's any area of my life in which I am weaker than this. There's an old Puritan prayer, grant me to feel thee in fire and food and every providence, and to see that thy many gifts and creatures are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me. I love that prayer. Make me feel you, God, in fire and food and warmth and clothing and when I ride in my car in the rain, the church, make me feel you in these things and see that your many gifts and creatures are but your hands and fingers taking hold of me, God laying hold of me in everything with which I interact in this created world. What does this, whatever it may be, tell me about God? How is God revealing Himself to me in this? When I look in the mirror, Now, the first thought in our minds as Christians when we look in the mirror should not be, man, you need help, or whatever. The first thought in your mind should be, behold, the image of God. He faced, run down in many cases, I sure can't wait for that new body that will perfectly reflect His glory, but there we have it, the image of God. I remember hearing an elder one time praying in Greenville. We were praying at a time when there was a particular military conflict going on and I remember him just saying with so much grief in his voice, you know, God we see these photographs of soldiers lying face down in the mud and there's the image of God lying face down in the mud. I don't know if we often think of people that way. What does this person, this delightful personality, in fact sometimes even the twistedness of human personality. You know, sometimes you look at people and you say, boy, we are so miserable as sinners. But you know something? Even the twistedness, you realize the sheer genius of what God made, that even when it's twisted there can be a kind of perverse amazement as you look at it. You know, the sheer ingenuity of people in cruelty, for example. Well, you know, it's wickedness, certainly, that people are so cruel, but God made man full of creative Impulses, and he can use it over all kinds of wickedness, but you even look at sin and crime and things in the world, sometimes I hear about crime and I think, you know, that was just plain ingenious. Wicked, utterly immoral, but what God made man to do, if we only weren't twisted by sin, it's shocking. What does this squirrel running across my path teach me? I've wondered about this so many times. Why did God make squirrels to do that with their tails? quirk thing they do. Why? I mean, seriously, folks, what does that tell you about God? Why did God make kittens to do what kittens do? I have sat and fooled around with a kitten with a ball of string and thought, this is so odd. This strange, playful, delightful little ball of fur that just spins and rolls and tumbles and jumps. What is this telling me about God? You open a bouquet of flowers. Yes, it smells wonderful and there's so much there, but don't just lose yourself in the creature. What does God say about himself in this beauty, in this fragrance, in this texture, in the fact that there's so much variety? Let alone the, quote-unquote, grander things of creation. The mountains, the oceans, the forests, the desert plains. You think about, what is God saying to me? Why did God make the giraffe? Think about what George Washington Carver found of God in the peanut. The march of time, every time you look at a clock. In a very real sense, God is telling you something about his eternality, he is timeless, and reminding you that you are at every moment one second closer to meeting him. You should never look at a clock without God speaking to you. You are on your way to meet me, and the sand is falling to the hourglass. That should give you great joy as a Christian. Every pleasure should tell you something about God's goodness. Every pain should be, as C.S. Lewis put it, a megaphone of God to you, reminding you of what rebellion against him has done to man, and how sweet and good it is to be reconciled to him in Christ Jesus. And surely, beyond those things, when we come in contact with His Word and His ordinances, there ought to be in our hearts this very Lord's Day. Cause me to know you as you reveal yourself to us today. Brethren, it is something that cannot be said too often or too loudly. God meets with His people in His ordinances. This is why we keep the Sabbath. This is why we come to worship. It's not because we're some of those legalistic Sabbatarians. It's because we come to meet with God. And in the heart of one who has been born from above, there is a very intense desire which will have its fulfillment in eternity. I want to meet Him. I want to be with Him. I want to know Him more. And that's why I worship. But we're not simply to know God. Not just to take all this in with our heads. We're to take it into our hearts and reflect upon the fact that God is revealing himself to me in this. He's God. We're also to acknowledge God and all his self-revelations. There's a difference between knowing someone and acknowledging someone. I'll illustrate this for you. If I were to stand at the door after preaching a sermon, and let's say that Sonia Scott comes up to me and she sticks out her hand and greets me very warmly. And I stand there with a plastic smile on my face. Inside I'm thinking to myself, ah yes, Mrs. Scott. I know this lady. I love this lady. I so enjoy getting to know her and Mark. I look forward so much to getting to know them more in the days ahead. And I'm thinking about the various interactions that Sonia and I have had in the past. Thinking about all that I know about Sonja, the lighting in it. Meanwhile, I'm standing there with a flashlight on my face, and Sonja's got her hand out, and I'm just standing there staring past her, vacantly. You know, come in, Pastor Miller. Knock on wood. What's going on? You see, I know her, but I'm not acknowledging her. And that's the difference. It's not enough to know a person, is it? It doesn't really matter if I know you, if I never acknowledge you, I'm frankly rude. The same with God. There is an expression of our knowledge when we acknowledge Him. God delights to have us express our recognition of who He is. There is a sense in which God calls upon us to approve of Him. When I reflect upon His goodness and His mercies to me, and for that matter I reflect upon even His judgments in the earth, and His power and His wisdom and all that I see, so I can't even walk across crunching snow or across grass or feel the beating of my own heart without being confronted with His glory and His majesty. But God desires that we as people should express to Him our approval. God, You are awesome! That's really what worship is. And to esteem Him highly. And I've coupled that in your notes there with, to glorify Him, because I think in many respects those are synonymous phrases. To esteem God highly and to glorify Him. What does it mean to glorify God? And, you know, I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about this. It's remarkable. It's probably one of the most well-used phrases in all of Reformed theology. The chief end of man is to glorify God. But if someone were to sit you down and say, what does it really mean to glorify God? You know, I don't know. I've had a lot of trouble with that over the years. Just really getting down to some concrete idea of what I mean when I say glorify God. You know, my children asked me one day, What does it mean to glorify God? What do you say? Well, my humble meanderings, and as I've thought about this, have led me to at least this much of a conclusion, that to glorify God is first to think of Him as He really is. To allow your small, little, constrained mind to be stretched and opened by God's self-revelation in the scriptures to see and really understand who he really is and to think about him as biblically as you possibly can. Where he becomes magnified in your thoughts. I'm sure I've said this many times, but Don Whitney, when I was worshipping the church he pastored in Chicago, he used to open almost every service with the prayer, God, give us great thoughts of you today. That's something I pray so much for us as a church. God, give us great thoughts of you, because we're going to walk in this morning, all of us. If I do it as a pastor, I feel for those of you who... I don't actually have a lot of exposure to the world in my week. I really feel for those of you who have spent so much time engaging the world every day. We come into worship so often, our minds are just... they're really constrained when it comes to thinking about God. You know that feeling where by the end of a worship service you almost feel warm enough to worship inside? You finally have maybe some enlargement of heart before the Lord. Give us great thoughts of you today. To think of God as He really is, as the part of glorifying Him. Secondly, to speak of Him as He really is. I've said this, again, many times, but Joel Robbins one time said something that I will never forget. He said, you know, Ben, if at any time of day or night you were to say to me, Joel, God says that He drew us out of darkness into His marvelous light, that we should show forth His excellencies. If you were to say to me at any time of day or night, Joel, Talk to me about the excellencies of God." He said, I'd probably be tongue-tied. And that's convicted me so many times. If you walked up to me after church today and said, alright, Pastor, tell me the excellencies of the God you worship, could I immediately open my mouth and begin to say, let me tell you, and just run through a long and passionate list. Here's who He is. Here are His excellencies. No, I mean, that's hard. It requires learning to speak, learning to put into words who God is. Hallowed be thy name. And then, thirdly, to glorify God is to act upon who He really is, to live that way, and thus to reflect in our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds, to reflect His glory. That's really to glorify God, to reflect His glory, to make Him in our daily lives appear glorious. Hallowed be thy name. Work among your people that we would not only know you, not only acknowledge you, but we would also esteem you highly, and that that would work itself out, God, in our lives. And for that matter, may that be true of all New York City and the world, that people would show forth in their lives a reflection of the glory of you who are the true and everlasting God. We're praying for that in this petition. Now obviously that has some negative implications. Because in that we are asking God, and the flip side of the coin is that God would prevent from occurring or remove where it has already occurred these things. Atheism It is biblical. In fact, it is very important. We would pray that God would throw down atheism. He would throw down ignorance. Especially in these days, I think. We're quickly reverting to times that are not so very different, perhaps, from medieval times, where there was so much illiteracy in the world at that time. And while people can read today, sometimes, You know, in many ways our culture is not a culture that fosters deep knowledge, a lot of information, but there's information sometimes without knowledge. And we should pray that God would cast down the ignorance that we naturally have of who He is, our ignorance of the grand events that are going on in our world as Christ brings His Kingdom to fuller and fuller expression in the earth. Deliver smart ignorance, God. Deliver the world from its ignorance. Throw down idolatry. Throw down false religions. Bring Islam under the heel of your son. Bring Buddhism under the heel of your son. And so forth. Profaneness. Arise, O God, and plead your own cause. The times when you read the sheer mockery that goes on in this world as people mock Christ, and it's so explicit at times. They mock the things of God. They mock the people of God. Rise up, O God, and defend your cause in this earth. Remember the reproaches and the blasphemies of those who reproach and blaspheme you. You know, brethren, heaven forbid it. And I say that mindful of who is in heaven. Heaven forbid it that we come to the place where we are so infiltrated by the democratic mentality of our time that we somehow think, not so much on paper, but in practice, that everyone should be able to share any idea that comes to their mind because all ideas are equally valid in the marketplace of ideas. Now, whatever your view may be on how that ought to be outworked politically, There are ideas that it is sheer blasphemy to even speak or put in print. Rise up, O God. Vindicate your name and your cause in this world. And throw down whatever dishonors you. That's the negative implication of this prayer. And it's not a spiteful thing. pray with hatred of those who are bound, as we ourselves once were, in atheism, or ignorance, or idolatry, or profaneness. We pray above all things, as we pray that God would throw down false religion, that He would rear up more and more the citadels of the true religion of Jesus Christ, and that thousands of Muslims, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Jews, and those of other faiths, God would bring them to His Son, and they would acknowledge He is the Messiah. He is the true and only prophet of God. He is the Other, this true and living God, of whom many of these world religions speak. And of course, by his overruling providence, direct and dispose of all things to his own glory. Again, Wilhelm Sabrakel says in his work, The Christian's Reasonable Service, I want you to listen to this, this really struck me, he says, The Lord Jesus, in the first petition, establishes the glorification of God's name as the goal as to why we are to desire the other petitions. I relate the prayer that God's kingdom would come and His will be done and to serve. I relate that back to the fact that I want supremely His name to be hallowed in the earth. I relate my own petitions for bread and for forgiveness and for God to keep me from temptation. Those things really matter ultimately because they are means by which God can glorify His name. When God brings bread to my table, it glorifies His name. When God forgives me, that is to the praise of the glory of His grace. when he keeps me from temptation, he proves that he is, in fact, the Lord who is my shepherd. And so this is an exceedingly important thing, this order of petitions, that Jesus sets this right up front, that prayer, Hallowed be thy name, this is the great thing we desire as the people of God, the glory of the God we serve. And everything else is subservient to that. So I hope this might be helpful in explicating to you something of what Jesus is getting at in that little phrase, how would be thy name, and then I want to give you my library suggestion and leave a few minutes for questions. This week, Isaac Watts' Guide to Prayer. This along with Matthew Henry's Method of Prayer that we talked about two weeks ago, and then last week the Valley of Vision put out by Banner of Truth. This is a marvelous little work. It'll help you organize your prayers as he sets, he organizes prayer along the division of invocation, adoration, confession, petition, pleading, profession or self-dedication, thanksgiving, blessing, and then the amen. So he kind of takes you through the various parts of prayer. His section at the end on persuasive arguments to learn to pray is what I've read of it, very helpful. I commend this work to you. I'm trying to put these things before you to get them in your libraries. They'll help you learn how to pray, very practical stuff, and really will draw your heart to the Lord. So, okay, enough from me. Questions? Mr. Macaluso. Well, you made those comments about taking certain positions and then whatever your political position might be. I think it's important to kind of express what that would mean because I think if we're going to be asking God to accomplish these things in the world, that it is important to take that political position into consideration because should we as Christians want prayer to accomplish that, or should we want the power of the faith to accomplish those ends? And is there a separation there that we would want to, as Christians, emphasize so that we would have God's work done in a proper way? I don't know if you're asking me to respond to that and give you my view, I would much rather not, but I think you're exactly right. The question was, can we really separate our view of the involvement, let's say, of the magistrate, I think as the Confession puts it, in God throwing down false religion and so forth. I don't know that you can separate those two, but certainly for us who are not magistrates, I think primarily we pray. There is a place in the Catechism, which we'll come to a couple of weeks in which we are to pray that the church will be furnished with all gospel officers and ordinances, purged from corruption, and in this shall countenance and maintained by the civil magistrate. So at least confessionally we must pray that God will move in the hearts of civil magistrates to give a place to the church and maintain her and protect her so that she can do her work of gathering in souls and so forth. So at the very least that, and there's much more we might and perhaps should say about that, but I'm not prepared to do that of course right now. So, Sonia. and God's sovereignty, and when you were saying about glorifying God, we think of the great Lord Jesus rising up early in the morning, a little gray, and utterly dependent upon his Father. And I think that the commentary on glorifying God would be Jesus in John 17, where he says, And in John 12, when he raises up Lazarus, we hear the great Lord Jesus' prayer on that. And he really is our model. And those are the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit. And we really see this in Jesus. The king, praying to his father, would let this cup pass three times. And still he knew that this wasn't going to happen. He's praying to his father on that. You know, any view of the sovereignty of God that does not drive you to prayer has got to wrestle with that simple fact, Jesus prayed. Now you explain that. So yes, now Sonia, and then gentlemen, please come, if it's time, you're welcome to go. I don't know if I'm wrong, but I feel like there's two kinds of prayer for me. One is thankfulness and acknowledging His greatness and His blessings and asking Him for His mercy on me and my family and everyone that I love and know in the world. There's a dialogue that goes on during the day, like a question comes up. Why is this happening? Or what should I do about that? And not saying, well I have to go through this whole liturgy of, well you're the brain one, you know, I'm sorry about that. This is like I mean, I don't think it's wrong to have this kind of casual, not, you know, it's like, you're my friend, you're next to me, you're always with me, I can ask you, can you help me, get me out of this? I mean, you know, it's not something... Yeah, that's a good point. Not to take too much time with them because they don't have much, but anything that I'm saying about this whole matter of especially beginning prayer with adoration is not to in any way I'm talking more here about formal times you've set for prayer. There is that sort of, if you will, a running dialogue that we have in our hearts as we are pouring forth, pray without ceasing, pouring forth prayers throughout the day. But I think even in that more, quote unquote, casual prayer, we must pray with a sense of who the God is to whom we are praying and have that reverence for him. And one of the things we ought to work on, I think, Sonia, is to not just have petitions pouring forth throughout the day, though we should have that, but learn how to go along and just be thanking and praising the Lord throughout the day. Just, Lord, you're wonderful. Lord, this is beautiful. You made this. Those kinds of, you know, ejaculatory prayers that are aimed at adoration, not just petition. So, you know, again, just trying to flesh us out a bit. So, yeah. We are out of time. I want to be a man under authority. So, Mr. Shishko, if you can pray for us and we will dismiss.