Let me ask you this, who is the most recognizable, most significant, most influential person ever to live in history? I have a lot of people saying, Jesus Christ. Well, of course that's what you say. You're a Christian. You're a little bit biased, probably. I wonder if there were an objective way, an algorithmic, computerized way to determine exactly who was the most significant person in history. Well, there's an article that I read that's tried to explain this. It explains the factors in an algorithm created to produce the list of the hundred most important people in history. This was done by Time magazine in 2013 and is the most sophisticated effort so far to determine who is more significant than whom. The article reads this way. Who's bigger, Washington or Lincoln? Hitler or Napoleon? Charles Dickens or Jane Austen? Well, it depends on how you look at it. We evaluated each person by aggregating millions of traces of opinions into a computational data-centric analysis. We ranked historical figures just as Google ranks web pages by integrating a diverse set of measurements about their reputation into a single consensus value. Historically significant figures leave statistical evidence of their presence behind if one knows where to look for it. And we've used several data sources to fuel our ranking algorithms, including Wikipedia, scanned books, and Google Ngrams. To fairly compare contemporary figures like Britney Spears against the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, we adjusted for the fact that today's stars will fade from living memory over the next several generations. Britney Spears' mindshare will decline substantially over the next 100 years as people who grew up hearing her are replaced by new generations. But Aristotle's reputation will be much more stable because this transition occurred long ago. The reputation he now has is presumably destined to endure. By analyzing traces left in millions of scanned books, we can measure just how fast this decay occurs and then correct for it. I don't know what all of that means, but it sounds pretty impressive. They went to some major effort to objectively rank the 100 most influential people. And I'll give you the top 10 list in reverse order. And just to mention, an honorable mention goes to Martin Luther. the great reformer, he's number 17. But number 10, most influential person, most important person in history, Thomas Jefferson. Number 9, Alexander the Great. Number 8, Aristotle. 7, Adolf Hitler. 6, George Washington. 5, Abraham Lincoln. Number 4, William Shakespeare. Number 3, Muhammad. Number 2, Napoleon. Number one, you guessed it, Jesus Christ. So it turns out that even objectively speaking, even from a secular study with all of their algorithms, that Jesus Christ still is the name above all names, standing strong and will do so forever. And so it should be. So it should be. Jesus was and is in an interesting sense, willing to be the answer to his own prayer, the very prayer that he gave his disciples in Matthew chapter 6. So turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. We are a half a verse into the Lord's Prayer. Last week we looked at our Father who art in heaven. And we saw five implications from the fact that Jesus told his disciples to pray our Father. The first implication is that God likes to be called Father. He doesn't like to be called our heavenly parent or our mother father. He likes to be called father. Very simple. Second implication, God must be your spiritual father. You need to be saved. You need to be in his family, be adopted in his family if you're going to pray to him as your father. The third implication is that God himself hears your prayers. You don't have to pray to God through somebody else. You don't have to go to a priest or a pastor and ask them to pray for you. You can pray directly to him. The fourth implication is that God alone is our spiritual father. You are to call no man father on earth, meaning your spiritual father, the one that you get your spiritual life from for God alone is. And the fifth implication is that God desires intimacy with you. He wants you to call him father. In fact, we went and looked in Galatians and the way Jesus prayed and in Romans that he wants you to call him Abba or daddy. And I gave you an assignment. I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands, but your assignment was that to experiment with, in your own personal prayer time, praying to God and calling Him Daddy, or Papa, or Abba, as the scriptures say to you. So that was last week, our Father, but let's move on. Matthew chapter six, verse nine. 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. And this morning, we're just going to look at verse 9b. Hallowed be your name. And there are going to be two points to help us to pray prayers that God answers. I'm sure you've prayed prayers in your life that you feel were not being answered, and maybe this will help you to figure out why that is. Two points to help you pray prayers that God wants to answer. The first one is the meaning of this petition, and then we'll look at the motive of all your petitions. So firstly, the meaning of this petition, Matthew 6, 9, This always reminds me of the little boy who was asked what God's name is, and he said, you know, he said, I know God's first name, his name is Howard. Because of the prayer, our father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name. This isn't Howard, this is hallowed, hallowed be thy name. Hallowed means sacred. It means revered. It means honored, it means to be made much of, to be respected. To hallow something means to regard them as special or holy. Perhaps you've heard of your university as being referred to as the hallowed halls of Auburn University or whatever, the hallowed, the respected place. Now, I first want to observe here that hallowed be your name is not a greeting. It's not a declaration, your name is hallowed. It's actually a petition. May your name be hallowed. That's a good way to translate it. May your name, the hallowed be your name, is a passive imperative in the Greek. A passive imperative means that it's a command for someone to let something happen. For example, you're trying to get to where you're going, there's someone in your way, and you say, let me through. You're commanding them to just get out of the way, basically, of what needs to happen. That's what a passive imperative is, and this is a passive imperative in your prayer. So you're praying, God, may this happen. Let this happen. Let this go through. Let your name be revered. Allow your name to go forth and be hallowed, to be respected, to be honored. That's what you're praying when you say, may your name be hallowed. The Holman translation says it this way, Our Father, may your name be honored as holy. In other words, this is what's going to happen, so may nothing stand in its way. It's a petition. In your prayers, you have petitions as the part of the prayer where you ask for something to happen. And here, We're asking for something to happen, like a petition. You know, you sign a petition when you want something to happen. You get a bunch of signatures. I remember in high school, we had somebody with a clipboard collecting petitions so that we could petition the principal, the headmaster, to allow boys to grow their hair long. Our uniform code, you had to have short hair, and the boys wanted to grow their hair, so we collected. you know, 800 signatures or whatever, and took it to the headmaster, and that's when I realized that petitions don't always have any power. We still had to cut our hair. And perhaps you've made petitions to God that kind of felt like He wasn't listening, felt like He didn't respond. So why does that happen? We want our petitions to be effective. We want our petitions to be heard. We want our petitions to be responded to. So the first thing to know is, what is the meaning of this petition? What is it that you're praying? You know, if you're praying for something and you don't even know what you're praying for, then you don't actually know if your prayer is being answered or not. So what are we praying for when we say, hallowed be your name? Well, firstly, which name? Which name of God are you praying is hallowed, that people will respect and revere? Turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. in the second book of the Bible, Exodus, in the 20th chapter. Have you ever heard of Joseph Basiranius Jugosvili? Yes, you have. His name is Stalin. You've heard of Stalin, Joseph Stalin? Yeah, that was his nickname, his real name, Joseph Basiranius Jugosvili. He went by his nickname, Stalin, because it was easier to remember, And it really encapsulated the image that he was going for. Stalin means steel. And he was a cold, hard, dangerous man. It's a lot easier to remember Stalin than Bazaronius of Yugoslavia. Well, God's name, well, there's many names for God, isn't there? Our Sunday school kids have been learning them, and we've been practicing them at home. And each name of God represents a different nuance of his character. a different part about him, his character, his attributes that he wants you to know. There's I am who I am, or Yahweh in the Hebrew. And the reason our Bibles don't even write Yahweh, I explained last week, it says LORD in all caps, is because a tradition developed among the Jews that the name I am who I am, Yahweh, was so to be revered so to be hallowed that you couldn't even write it down. And so they would write, I don't know. I instead they would change the vowel pointing to change the words and it would actually make the sound Jehovah. So Jehovah is the one way we know it's not pronounced by the way, because that's what they were trying to do. They were trying to mispronounce it so no one would say the word. But that's just silly. God has provided us with the knowledge that he wants to be called Yahweh. That is his name. There are some other ones. Adonai, meaning Lord. Elohim, meaning God. Jehovah-Jireh or Yahweh-Yirah, God the Provider. El-Elyon, God the Most High. El-Olam, God Most Wise. Ancient of Days. And each of these names represents something different about God. Now in Exodus 20, in verse 7, You'll know for Exodus 20 is the Ten Commandments. And verse 7 starts off this way. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. The name of God was special enough to be the very first of the Ten Commandments. To not take the Lord's name in vain means don't use His name in a way it's not meant to be used. Don't attach His reputation to something He doesn't want it attached to. This is why the other commandments talk about not making an idol and calling it God. He doesn't want His name, His reputation attached to something made out of silver or bronze or gold or wood or stone because that's not Him. It limits Him. He doesn't want that. Only use it the way it's meant to be used. Even today, companies understand this. There are certain companies that really want to protect their brand, their image. If you had to come up with a little recipe for sweet tea, grandma's special sweet tea, and you decided to call it Coca-Cola and sell it in grocery stores, do you think anyone would have a problem with that? Yeah, Coca-Cola would. They would come and sue you for that. They're trying to protect their brand. They don't want people confused by what that name belongs with. You can't just build a little go-kart in your yard and sell it as a Mercedes Benz, because it's not. You can't just do that. And God says, I don't want you to do that with my name. I don't want you to take the name Yahweh, I am who I am, and attach it to some little idol that you stick in a closet that can fall over. I don't want that. Now turn to Exodus chapter 33 and verse 18. This is Moses praying to God. And Moses said, Exodus 33, 18, I pray you show me your glory. And he said, God said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. This is interesting. So Moses asks to see God's glory. God says, I'm going to show you my name. I'm gonna reveal my name, and I'm going to allow my character of goodness and compassion to pass before you. Now look at the next chapter, verse 34. Verse five, the Lord, Yahweh, descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh God. Compassionate and gracious slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth who keeps loving kindness for thousands who forgives iniquity? transgressions and sin Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations and Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and to worship which is a proper response to the revelation of who God is and So do you understand what happened there? I mean, we often read that passage of God's characteristics, but you see that it's in response to a petition. Moses says, I want to know who you are. I want to see your glory. And God says, I'm going to proclaim my name to you. The way you know who I am is you understand my name. If you know my name, you know me. Let me show you my name. And then he reveals his character, who he is. That's his name, his reputation, that he's slow to anger, that he's gracious, that he's merciful, that he is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This is who he is. That's his name. So when you proclaim the name of God, you're proclaiming who he is to the nations. And when you carry the name of God, you say that you're one of his children. You are a Christian. You are a follower of Christ. You are proclaiming the attributes of Christ to people who don't know him. And so when you pray for God's name to be hallowed, you're praying that more people would honor all of God, all of his attributes, all of his character, that people would come to know him for who he is. That's what you're praying for. And that's why it's important to study scripture, to know what God is like. Let me say that again, that's why it's important for you to study scripture so that you know what God is like, so you understand who he is, that you understand his character, that you know his name, his reputation, so that you can talk rightly about him to others. Have you ever heard somebody say, well, the God I believe in wouldn't send someone to hell? You know, the God I believe in wouldn't do this, or the God I believe in wouldn't do that. You really need to tell that person as gently as you can, it really doesn't matter what you believe about God. The God that you believe in doesn't exist. It's not the God of the Bible. There is only one God, one true and living God, and he has revealed his name in scripture. He has revealed who he is, what he's like, what he wants to be called. And if you believe in a different God, that's an idol. When people call themselves Christians and they go to church, but then they'll just tweak one little bit of doctrine. Well, the God I believe in wouldn't do that. Well, it's irrelevant what God you believe in. It only matters who the true God is and that we're worshiping Him rightly. I've heard people say that, well, you know, if a Muslim worships Allah, you know, a Muslim calls God Allah and a Hindu reveres the Brahmin, and the Buddhist honors Buddha, then God accepts all of those forms of worship because they're just different names for him. No, hogwash. That's not true. You can't just make things up about God. That's like a Romeo and Juliet theology. Does a rose by any other name not smell as sweet? You can just change the name, just call God whatever you want to call him and it still counts? No, names are important. Does it matter what you call God? Well, of course. Now, it doesn't matter which of the revealed names you call him. If you're thanking him for providing for you, you might say, you might call him Yahweh Yira, one of the names he reveals in scripture, the gyre, the provider. You might use a name like that, or ancients of days, or something like that, but it's not which one of them, but the fact that you're using a name that he's revealed because you're thinking of the God who is real, because that's the God that's revealed in scripture, not just one of your own imagination. Allah of the Quran is not the God of the Old and New Testaments. He's not the same God. He has different attributes. He's a different, he's a concoction of someone's imagination. Not the real and living God as revealed in Scripture. And so, the most important thing, we heard last week, what A.W. Tozer said is the most important thing about a person is what comes into their mind when they think about God. What he means by that is, are you thinking about the real God, the right God? And if not, you're thinking about an idol. And your idol might seem very similar to the real God of Scripture, but with one or two things changed that lets you get away with certain sins that you like. That's all very well and good till you show up on Judgment Day and you meet the real God. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 7, that many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do all these great things in your name? In other words, there will be people who call Jesus Lord. And when they show up on judgment day and they call him Lord, he says, depart from me, I never knew you. I never knew you, you worker of lawlessness. You were somebody who wouldn't repent of your sin. I don't care that you called yourself a Christian or that you called me Lord. I was not your Lord because you didn't obey me. You can't just paste a name on God, any name you want. It just doesn't make sense. And the other thing is that if you If you're living a life that isn't commensurate with scripture, then you're representing God in the wrong way. It's like a knockoff brand. You go to Thailand and you can buy any brand you want there. You can get Nike with a little swoosh on it. The first time you wash it, the smoosh will become a smoosh. It'll just kind of fade away or whatever, and it starts unraveling. It's not the right quality. They've just stuck a name on there. So you stick the name of God on your life, but you're just a cheap knockoff. As soon as the trial comes, it shows that you don't really trust Jesus. You don't really worship Him. When the movie Ocean's Eleven first came out, I know it's a remake of an old TV show, I saw the movie. with George Clooney in it, and there's a scene in the movie where Danny Ocean, who's like a slick con man, and supposed to be a very sophisticated dapper, and he's got these calling cards, and he would leave a calling card for someone. And I mentioned to a friend that I thought that was really cool. It's just a plain white card with his name embroidered, whatever, embossed on it. And I thought this was cool. And I said this to a friend of mine. I said, you know, it's such a pity. In the old days, people used to have these calling cards that just had your name. Not a business card that's got all your details, but just your name. Just, I was here. And then I told her about this Danny Ocean and how cool I thought that was. So for Christmas that year, she got me a box of cards, just plain white cards with the name embossed on it. And the name, I kid you not, was Danny Ocean. I didn't realize it was a gag gift. She also got me another box of cards with my name, but it worked. I looked at it and I just thought, like, what kind of knucklehead misunderstood what I was saying? Like, I don't want Danny Ocean's card. But that's kind of what you're doing when you're leaving calling cards out there saying, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, but you're not. It's not the right person. It's not the right name with the right reputation. It's just a mismatch. So you're leaving calling cards for God all over the place, but they're not Him. You need to accurately represent who He is by accurately representing His name with His character when you call yourself by His name. Look, now, I don't have any problem with you coming into this church and doing whatever you want and sinning any way you want and living any way you want if you don't call yourself a Christian. That's okay. I tell people that all the time. A young couple will come and ask me to do their wedding. And I say, well, why do you want me to do your wedding? We've never even met before. Well, you know, we're Christians and we want to get married in a church. And then I'll ask them some questions. It turns out that they're living together. And then I'll say, listen, we got a problem here. I don't mind if you guys live together, but then you can't call yourself Christians. If you're gonna call yourself a Christian, then you need to act like a Christian. And it's like I've never even heard that before. No, you have to attach your reputation to the name of Christ in a way that does justice to who he is. So that's the meaning of this petition, this prayer that you're praying. May your name be hallowed. What is the motive of this prayer? Why are you praying this prayer? And why do you pray any prayer? This is the second point that will help you pray prayers that God actually listens to. Verse nine says, you can go back to Matthew, Matthew 6 verse 9, pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Now this is a petition that's mentioned first in the prayer. We'll get to the others. Asking for daily bread, asking for forgiveness. But this petition is mentioned first. It's the umbrella motive for the rest of the prayer. And remember what we said, when Jesus delivered this prayer to his disciples, he was not giving them a rote prayer. He was not giving them a prayer to say word for word when they wanted to pray. We know that because when he gives, when he's asked a question in Luke, he gives the prayer, but it's slightly different. It's not meant to be word for word. It's meant to be a template. And so I want you to bear that in mind, that when you pray, pray to God as your father. And the first element of the template is a desire for God's reputation, God's glory, God's name to be revered. And that needs to be the motive that is the umbrella motive for the whole prayer. So everything that you pray now needs to be in line with that. You're not gonna pray for you to get your daily bread if it's in a way that doesn't glorify God. Westminster Confessions. you know, the catechism, the very first question in the catechism. What is the chief end of man? What's the answer? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. So everything we do must be to glorify God, and it's the same with your prayer. Now, you can pray anything you need to pray, as long as it's heading in the direction of glorifying God. As soon as you're praying something that is about your glory, you're going in the wrong direction, and you should not expect that prayer to be answered. You can't say, hallowed be your name. Lord, please make me great. Um, I want your reputation to go forth, but I want you to make me really, really, really comfortable. I mean, Jesus suffered and you want people to know that, but you want to be comfortable. So that's where people get a little bit, their wires get crossed and that's why their prayers are not answered because they're not actually praying prayers in line with God's name. They're praying the opposite of what they say they're praying. I want your name to be hallowed, but I want you to do it in a way that actually hallows my name. It just doesn't work. If you want to go from the west coast to the east coast, what direction do you need to drive? Don't worry, it's not a trick question. You want to go from the west coast to the east coast, what direction do you drive? East, yeah. Now, you might take one of many different routes, and you might go a little northeast at points, a little southeast at points. You might go due east at points, but you're always heading east. If you are driving to the east coast and at any point the little compass in your car says west, you're doing something wrong. Now it's the same with your prayer. You may pray for health for yourself or for a loved one. You may pray for provision, maybe a promotion at work. that you do well in your examinations at college, that you marry a certain person or whatever it is. You can pray things for yourself and Jesus teaches the disciples to do that later in the prayer. But it always needs to be in the direction of God's glory. You can never pray for something for yourself that's in the opposite direction of God's glory. James chapter 4 warns about this. James 4 verse 2, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives to spend it on your lusts. So James 4, 2, and 3 is talking about people who pray and they say, well, God's not answering my prayers. Well, there's two reasons you're not getting what you need. One is you're not praying. That's what he says. You don't have because you don't ask. Or you are praying, but you're praying with the wrong motives. You see, Jesus said, you can ask the Father for anything in my name, and you will receive it. It's the same as this, hallowed be your name. If you're praying in the direction of Jesus's name, Jesus's character, Jesus's reputation, and you come to the Father for those, and you can't fake it with God. You can't say, I really want this car, Lord, for your glory, so that people will ask me how I could afford it, and I can tell them you provided it, and you're so great, so can I please have a Lamborghini? You can't fool God. It needs to be an actual motive for His glory. Otherwise, you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly. You ask with wrong motives to spend it on your passions or your lusts. So if your prayer is for comfort or prestige or selfish desires, you're not praying for his name. You're not giving him what he wants, and so he's not going to give you what you're asking for. You need to ask in line with that. That makes sense, doesn't it? Because, well, God's the boss. A lot of people treat prayer like It's a type of vending machine. I put my prayer in, how come God's not giving it to me? Come on God, I put the prayer in, how come the little chip packet's not dropping there? It's just not how it works. You're approaching God with reverence and with honor and you're appealing for something for His glory. And he'll answer that prayer because everything that God does is for his glory. So the more you line up with that, the more your prayers get answered. If you're not praying in line with his glory, then what do you think is going to happen? If he rewards you for a prayer that's for your glory, or your comfort, or your good, instead of the good of others in his glory, then he's teaching you that that's what he wants. He's never going to do that. I'm telling you, that's what the Bible says. He's not going to do that. You need to pray in his name. My friend Don, he's a creative director of an advertising agency. He's quite high up, and he got this account for a bank. And the bank told him what he wanted, and he did this whole pitch for how they were going to, the commercials they were going to run for the bank. And the bank told him, but that's not what we asked. We want to be serious and somber, and this is all humorous and lighthearted. And he said, you need to trust me. Because I have my finger on the pulse of what's happening and what's trending, and I'm telling you that humor sells. In the old days, people liked bankers to be serious people, you know, in their gray suits or whatever. But now, it needs to be funny for people to remember the bank and stand out. And they said, no, but we want it to be serious. And he said, you need to trust me. I'm the creative director. Either you go with my idea or you fire me. And so they fired him. And he got removed from the account. And the new creative director that was given that account did exactly what the bank wanted. Why? Because the bank's in charge of how they want to be known. And people might think, but the bank needs to update its image. But the bank doesn't think that. And people often think, well, God needs to update his image too. You know, we need to make God seem a whole lot more approachable than he is in the Old Testament. You know, in the Old Testament, people come to God, and they're not doing things right, like Nadab and Abihu in the Book of Numbers, and God strikes them dead. Well, that's not going to do well for his image. Not in the 21st century. No, no, no, we need to update it. God needs to be, you know, the ripped-jeans God. The laid-back, hippie kind of God. You know, that everything's okay. You just do what you want. He's just full of love, you know, love and peace. Well, good luck with that. That's not who he is. He gets to decide what his reputation is. And he says, I'm the God who doesn't change. So you don't update him. You don't ask according to what you think he is. You have to ask according to what he says he is. And sometimes people will say to me, yeah, but you're just putting God in a box. Has anyone ever said that to you? Oh, I hate that. You know, I tell them, well, something like, you know, some people believe that God's talking to them and telling them to do stuff and that he's still revealing prophecy and all that today. And then I explain to them from scripture how that's stopped and that prophecy was for that time, but now we have his word. And they say, you're just putting God in a box. I mean, you don't want to be that guy. You don't want to be the guy that puts God in a box. But you know what it's okay to say to those people? I am putting God in a box. I'm putting God in the box that he put himself in. You say, well, let me ask you this question. Can God lie? No, scripture says God cannot lie. God is truth. Well, you're just putting God in a box. Well, yeah, the box of his character. of his attributes, of his reputation, of who he says he is. Psalm 138 verse 2, I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and for your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. That's Psalm 138 verse 2. You, God, have exalted above all things, including my opinion, You've exalted above all things your name and your word. That is the box that God has put himself in, his reputation in his word. And so this needs to be the motive of your prayer, that people get to know him. If you want God to answer your prayers, when you ask him for provision or protection or guidance or help or health or whatever, then align your motive with the hallowing of God's name and the glory of God. What about our top 100 list? Why did Jesus not say, when you pray, pray this way, dear Jesus? Why did he say, our Father? Isn't Jesus the name above all names? Let me read for you Philippians chapter two, verse five. Philippians 2.5, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. As the Son by the Spirit heaps glory on the Father, so the Father by the Spirit heaps glory on the Son. And in the Spirit we are brought into that glory fest for all eternity by having the Spirit dwelling in us and netting us together as His body. so that we give the Father glory, we give the Son glory, as the Son is exalting the Father, and the Father is exalting the Son, and we get to be part of that, that Trinitarian glory. And we get to be part of magnifying Jesus Christ, and honoring the Father, all done by the Holy Spirit. And the Father gets the glory, and the Son gets the glory, and the Spirit gets the glory, and we get to be part of giving them that glory for all eternity. Now, if you are not in Christ, then you are missing your very reason for being. You're missing your whole purpose of being alive. God has created you to be part of this, this exaltation of his son, to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus Christ, to bow the knee. And the scriptures say that one day every knee will bow. And there's only two ways that happens. One is by choice and one is by force. And it's all about timing. You will one day acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you don't do it now, you will do it on Judgment Day because He is Lord. But then it'll be too late. He will be your judge. But right now, He can be your Savior. Acknowledge Him as Lord. Bow the knee even today and accept Him as your Lord and your Savior. And He will keep you safe from the very wrath of God that you deserve because He bore it upon Himself on the cross. And it was because he was humiliated, it was because he died that shameful death on the cross for you and for the glory of God, that the Father raised him from the dead and highly exalted him, the name above every name, so that every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Turn to Jesus. Join him and his followers in lining up your life and your prayers with this petition and this motive. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.