when the prophet Isaiah has a profound understanding by sight or experience. of how he relates and stands before his God. Isaiah chapter 6 at verse 1. In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings. With two, He covered His face. With two, He covered His feet. With two, He flew. One called out to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. The foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, Behold, this has touched your lips and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven. The passage from the New Testament from John's first letter, chapter one. John chapter 1 at verse 5. He speaks to us of who God is and what that means for us. And this is the message we have heard from Him and announced to you that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned we make him a liar. And His Word is not in us. And our passage this morning from Luke's Gospel chapter 11. Luke chapter 11 at verse 1. And it came about that while he was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Amen? Let us pray. Great and mighty God, we worship You this day and we ask that You would take us to Yourself now in the reading and the preaching of Your Word. We would hear our Shepherd's voice. We would hear what He has for us and what He wants of us. And that we, by the Spirit of God within us, would be moving ever forward to the image of Jesus Christ. We ask these things in that name. Amen. Please be seated. Well, if you have read your Bible, or even parts of your Bible, or even perhaps just have heard of the Bible, you know that it is full of prayers. There are lots of examples of people praying, either giving the text of the prayer or just saying that they were. It's full of exhortations to pray. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing. Pray for all men. Pray for the king. Pray for each other. Pray for him. He wrote to the immediate recipients of his letters. And when it's not giving us descriptions or the contents or exhortations to prayers, it very often is assuming prayer, assuming that the people of God are about the business of praying. And it's an assumed activity. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, says at one point, when you pray, do such and such. He doesn't even take up the question of whether or not you would. It's assumed. as it is assumed across the Bible. From the very earliest chapters, we see men building altars and calling upon the name of the Lord, even in the first chapters of the Bible. Yet for all this prayer, either described or the content of it, or exhortations to it, or the assumptions of it, Christians, many, many, many Christians struggle with prayer. They don't know what to do with it. They don't feel good about it. They don't take it up as they ought in some way or another. They struggle with prayer and apparently. Even the first disciples had some qualms or questions about it. We know that they have some scenes. There are some scenes in the Bible where they're not demonstrating themselves as as the modern phrase is prayer warriors as they nod off at times during Christ's prayer. But here they are asking Christ to teach us to pray. They observed that John's disciples had taught John had taught his disciples to pray. We don't know exactly what that refers to and we don't need to know. What we do know is they've asked Jesus Christ their master to teach them to pray and we will consider the answer he gives not just today but on other days as well. This morning we're going to look only at A brief overview of his answer and then the first part of the prayer that he lays out before them. We'll do it under two parts. The first part, I'll call it this, the framing of a Christian prayer, the framing of a Christian prayer. And then secondly, the framing of a Christian heart. We'll take that part at more length. framing of a Christian heart. We begin with the framing or the ordering of a Christian prayer. They said, Lord, teach us to pray. And perhaps that strikes some as an odd request. Teach us to pray. Why, there's nothing to it, is there? I mean, children pray. We teach our children to pray, but we don't teach them much more than how to talk. You just talk to God. You just speak to God. It's essentially automatic. What is there to learn? There's really not much to learn, is there? It's very, very simple, this business of prayer, isn't it? Well, yes and no. Yes and no. Yes, it is very simple in a sense. There are prayers in the Bible that are so simple They're almost microscopic. In Nehemiah chapter 2, there is a moment when Nehemiah, cupbearer to the king, Artaxerxes, is in conversation with Artaxerxes, who notices that his cupbearer is sad. And he asks him, what is the matter? And he tells him he's concerned about the state of Jerusalem. And he asks him another question. And in between Artaxerxes' question and Nehemiah's answer to the king, he says, so I pray to God. Must have been a pretty swift prayer, a silent prayer offered in the brief moment between a question asked and a question answered. Prayer can be very, very simple. You can think in Luke chapter 18 of the tax gatherer who Christ describes standing in the temple and lifting up his eyes to heaven, beating his breath, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. That's a pretty simple prayer. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Prayer can be very simple. In fact, Paul says it can be so simple you don't even have words. He says in Romans 8 that sometimes we don't know how to pray and the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So that it doesn't even take an articulation on our part. But it's more of a yearning or an earnestness toward God. That's a pretty simple matter. So, in a sense, we can say that prayer is very, very simple. Any cry to God, and we would say, as we understand from the New Testament as Christians, any cry to God through Christ is prayer. Yet on the other hand, we would also say that proper prayer, Christian prayer, is not just that simple. All you have to do is read the prayers of the Bible. They're not all that short. Read Daniel's prayer, read some of Nehemiah's prayers, read Solomon's prayer, read Jesus's prayer in John 17. It's not always a simple and a brief thing. It's often very eloquent and very long and very earnest. And more instructive than that is the fact that the Bible tells us that some prayers are useless. Some prayers go nowhere. Some prayers avail nothing. James says, the prayer of a righteous man availeth or accomplishes much. Well, you can figure out the other side. The prayer of an unrighteous man does little or nothing. Proverbs tells us that the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to God. The psalmist says in Psalm 66 that if he regards wickedness in his heart, that God will not hear his prayer. So it's not simply automatic. It's not simply anything that comes to mind. It's not simply speaking or saying. There is something. to be learned, to be grasped, to be understood about prayer, and to read the prayers or the scenes of prayer in the Bible, or even more practical, to take up the business of prayer, is to discover that it's not so easy. Some of the scenes in the Bible show the person in prayer in anguish. all night long, wrestling, or as Paul says, groaning, or as Christ is in great agony in the garden, or to read many of the prayers in the psalm is to hear someone who's in earnestness and who's clearly been at it for some time pleading with God to hear. And conversely, I take you back to our disciples who, not being of that character at that time, simply fell asleep in the matter of prayer. Couldn't stay awake with Christ through the night, through the hours. Which is to say, it didn't come easily or automatically to them. The Bible describes, and our experience tells us, That prayer is not something that comes to us by natural instinct and natural ease. And so these men ask, teach us to pray. And in answer, Jesus gives what we call the Lord's Prayer. what we probably call better the model prayer. That is, he gives them a prayer in form, gives them some instruction in this matter. It's somewhat of a skeleton or a framework for prayer. And you surely recognize or many of you surely recognize the connection between this and the prayer in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6. And if you have certain translations of the Bible, you'll see where some copyists and some manuscripts, ancient manuscripts, felt the need to make the two prayers match exactly. Somebody fixed some of the manuscripts of Luke so that this prayer would read exactly as the prayer in Matthew 6. I think it's a complete mistake and an error to do so. I'm very pleased with the difference that you heard in my translation and some of your translations. The fact that there is a brevity to this and a change, not only in that some things are not included and some things are worded a little different, that's not something that needs to be repaired. That's something that needs to be observed. Because Christ was not giving them a form, praying these words exactly. He was giving them a guide. He was giving this on more than one occasion, and so we would expect that variation. He's not giving us something to be merely recited. But something that is to instruct us. And so we are instructed as we look at this whole prayer just briefly. And we see some things about it. We see its direction and its balance. That is that it has both concerns of God and concerns of man. That's the balance. But the direction is that it begins with the concerns of God before it comes to the personal or human concerns. We are instructed by that. I shudder to think how many of my own prayers begin, carry on and end with absolutely nothing that is not personally connected with me. My concerns, my worries, my desires, my hopes, my wants, my, my, my. Yet we are instructed by this prayer that it ought not, that ought not to be the way we pray. Now, we obviously have to apply some common sense there. You don't make iron-clad rules from singular passages. To read the Psalms is to be forcefully reminded that there is always a place for praying from the earnestness of a situation. There's always a place from beginning and pouring out your prayers from the trial that you face, from the calamity that's upon you, upon the great burden that you have for this situation or that situation. There's always a place and it's right at times and seasons to begin in such a way. But it is striking to me that even in those psalms, there's always a Godward twist. There's always a Godward turn. They're not wholly horizontal and personal. We get something of the direction and the balance. We get something of the scope of prayer. Everything from the kingdom of God established in the world to lunch. That's a pretty broad range. Everything from the grandest scope of the work of God in the world, across time, across eternity, to what I need today to live, to carry on, both physically and spiritually. There's a very broad scope. And corresponding to that scope is a similar tone in that this prayer, the model that is set before us, is a balance between reverence for God and yet an intimate person, a personableness in the prayer. It is both reverent as one bowing before God and yet it is intimate. as one speaks to God and speaks about their own needs and anticipates that the God of all things will answer even down to our own personal concerns. Well, these sorts of things give us outline. They give us generalities, but they're not It's not the sum of the matter. As I said, just look at the other prayers in the Bible that differ widely from this in form, not in content. This is helpful in telling us how we frame up our words and how we frame up our petitions, how we order them. But that's really not the crucial matter. The crucial matter is the framing of our hearts, the ordering of our hearts in prayer. And as we consider each line of this prayer, if you consider it rightly, you will see how it is requiring of us or calling us to order our hearts, that is our disposition, our attitude toward God, our perspective of Him. in a peculiar way, a particular way, that it's calling for us to be of a certain mind and a certain attitude. So, this morning all we will consider in that way is the first line. Father hallowed be thy name. We'll consider this first portion as we consider how we are to frame our hearts to God in prayer would do so by looking at two things who we pray to and what we pray for who we pray to. Jesus says simply here father. We pray to God as father. which is so familiar to us. It is so commonplace to us. It is just the vernacular of our life. It's just the language of Christianity that we think almost nothing of it. Of course you'd call Him Father. What else would you call Him? Well, to read the Old Testament is to think of a hundred answers to that question. Jehovah, Jehovah-Jireh, Jehovah-Rapha, Jehovah-Barith, El Shaddai, El Elohim, all manner of names. The Rock, The Redeemer, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God. There's all manner of things that we could call God. But Jesus says that we begin here, that we start in our attitude of prayer to call Him Father. Not Master, not Judge, not King, not Sovereign, not even Lord. that our attitude in prayer starts with a disposition, with an understanding that we're approaching Him as Father. We could rightly call Him any of those things. And on occasion, we do address Him as King or Lord or Master or Sovereign or something like it. But Christ says the starting place of our heart in prayer, the starting place is that we come to Him not as servants or slaves or property or subjects, Or the accused, we come to him as his children. We approach God as his children. It's not something that is frequently found in the Old Testament. Very rarely do you find anyone referring to God as father, though he refers to Israel as son. But Jesus says that now and in these days and in this way, this is the dominant place. It is a gentle blessing all in one word. I love what Thomas Watson, the Puritan, says. He said it this way, the name of Jehovah carries majesty in it. The name of father carries mercy. The name of Jehovah carries majesty. But the name of Father carries mercy. He's ready to receive us. Think about how we approach certain men or in some cases even women in modern day. If they were the president or a king or a judge or your boss. We have an instinct of deference. It just seems right. An instinct of deference. And yet, while that doesn't evaporate, we're told that we approach God as Father. Not any of those other things. And so we have to ask ourselves. I'll ask you and you ask yourself. relationship of father and child inform your own approach in prayer at all? As you come to God in prayer, do you come with some understanding of God's disposition as a father towards you? Do you have some idea that He looks upon you in that way? Think of it from your own human experience. If you are a father or you had a father, one or the other, and if your father was rotten or you're a rotten father, think of someone else. Some of you had rotten fathers. But you know the ideal. You know the picture of a father. Those of us who are fathers know it more fully still. What is a father's heart toward his children? Not in sin, not in rage, not when they're stumbling, not when they're failing, but the right heart. What is the expected attitude of a father toward his children? I know, and I know of many of you, that as a father our hearts ache to do good for our children. They burn and they yearn for our children to have the best. By the best I don't mean, I'm sorry to disappoint you children, I don't mean all the cake and ice cream and toys that you want. out with grammar because those things aren't best. But I don't even mean a good diet and good house and good clothes. You want them to have the very best. That they would be spared the mistakes that you made. That they would be sheltered from the consequences of sin in the world. That they would not suffer from the foolishness of men without or foolishness within. That they would grow up to maturity quickly, not slowly. That they would understand and perceive God rightly. You want the very best for them. You want them to make all the right decisions and none of the wrong decisions. a father would gladly sacrifice himself for the good of his children. That's his heart. That's his instinct. Even rotten fathers have some instinct of that. But when we pray to God, we're not praying to a rotten father or even a pretty good human father or even the best human father. We're praying to our Holy Father. But He is our Father. And He has that desire. that the best would be for us. Does that inform you? As you cast yourself down before God in prayer, or you seek Him with this want or that want or another, when you lay out your concerns and your fears and your dreads or your joys or anything else, do you approach Him understanding that the One you speak to has your best not only in view, But He wants the very best for His own. He's no negligent Father. It ought to inform us. It ought to encourage us. It ought to strengthen us in seeking Him, even when we seek Him in repentance. Even when we've sinned and failed. When you have sinned, you're not coming just to a judge. You're coming to a Father. A father who wants to see you restored may require discipline, just as human fathers do, but wants to see you restored and lifted up. It ought to work in us. Who can say these things? Who is allowed to approach God as father? Every man with a pulse? No. This is not the fatherhood of creation. This is the fatherhood of redemption. There is a broad sense in which we can say that everybody is a child of God. But we can say that about the rocks and the trees and the birds and the bees, too. They're all His handiwork in the very broadest sense. But what the Bible teaches us, particularly what the New Testament teaches us, is that the fatherhood of God that Christ has in you is the fatherhood that is by faith, that comes by faith. Paul says in Galatians that we are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. The Apostle John tells us, as many as received Him, He gave to them the right to become children of God. This is not for the world. This is for those who have come to God through Jesus Christ. Having come to God through Jesus Christ, we become His child. And we may speak to Him as such. How do you know if, in fact, God is your father? How would you know that? Well, we could answer that lots of ways, but I want to answer it this way. You know by family resemblance. You can tell the child of a father by family resemblance. You can tell it outwardly, and you can tell it inwardly. That is, outwardly, you know, generally, we'll say, you know which children belong to which house in this church because of outward things. Oh, look, they all have the same last name, and they all live at the same house, and they all hang around together, and they all go around, they're in the same minivan. We know which children go which by outward things. And so it is, we know who God's children are outwardly. They have His name. They were called Christians at Antioch and have been called Christians ever since, and we're baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We have His name, and we're in His house, and we're with His people. Outwardly, there are things that mark us, our behaviors that show us that, yes, they go along with that crowd, and they wear that name, and they're all together, and they eat together at the Lord's Supper, as it were. They eat together, they live together, they're in the house together. Outwardly, we can see who the children are because of resemblance, but we can also see it inwardly. That is, in their person. And this is true of human families. This isn't a matter simply of biology. Yes, I know that in some households you can look at father and son or mother and daughter or even across the genders and you can see. You can see it biologically. But you can also see it in homes with adopted children. It's not just a matter of physiology. It's a matter of character. The children of a household resemble their parents. They talk like them. They say things like them. They think like them. They have the same prejudices that they do. They have the same affections that they do. I discovered one time when I was a young man. This is just weird, I think. My grandfather broke his arm when he was, I don't know, before he had children. I think before he was married. And the surgeon who said it did a bad job, so his arm couldn't go straight anymore. It could only go about this far. So he would always walk around with his arm like this. And I noticed one time, I said, you know, I walked around with my arm like this. I said, stop doing that. We just adopt the traits of our parents. You know it, parents. You know you say the very thing that your parents used to say to you that you didn't like. You say it to your children. Our affections, our attitudes, we bear the stamp. of our family. And so it is, we will bear the stamp, not just outwardly of God, but inwardly. The things that God likes, we like. The things that grieve Him, will grieve us. Outwardly, we will profess Him. Inwardly, we will love what He loves. The Apostle John in 1st John has many things to say in this place. I bring many he brings many of them together at the end of chapter four in the beginning of chapter five of 1st John, where he talks about our attitude. To God, to his word, to his people. He says this in John chapter 4 verse 18, there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment. And the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And whoever loves the father loves the child born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome to us." You see how the inward and the outward are woven together. They interpenetrate. There's outward things, profession of faith, observance of commandments, which are born of inward things, a love of God, a love of Christ, a love of His brethren. We look like Him. in our affections, our attitudes, our behavior. We're not photocopies. We're not perfect reproductions. It's not that we are perfect as He is perfect, though that is our aspiration. But the family resemblance is strong. We don't approach God in slavish fear, but out of a desire to please the Father that we love. That we love. All of this should have some bearing on our attitude as we say the word Father, as we think about our Father in prayer and in life. That is whom we pray to. What is it that we pray for? We frame our hearts in each of the petitions, but consider the first. Hallowed be thy name. Hmm. What in the world does that mean? When I was a child, I thought it had something to do with hollow, something being hollow. You know, I just, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a preacher and I don't use the word hallowed very often. It's just not a word we use. What in the, it doesn't mean, children, it doesn't mean anything about hollowing something out. That's not what hallowed means. What does it mean? Hallowed be thy name. We'll take it. It's got two parts. One is easy to grasp and the other one is not difficult, but not as easy. We'll take the easy first. Hallowed be thy name. By name, what do we mean? We don't mean a sound. We don't mean a moniker. We don't mean something that is attached to somebody so that we can identify them. We mean the person themselves. When the Bible speaks of the name, they're speaking of the person. In fact, even this morning in our call to worship, In Psalm chapter 34, verse 3, you see this parallel. Magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. The name and the person go together. We're baptized into the name. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but Paul says we're also baptized into Christ. The name and the person go together. When a woman takes a husband's name, she doesn't just change what's in the phone book and stay at her house and he stays at his house. She's taking the man. And his name is a signal of that. That part is easy enough where to hallow the person of God. The being of God. Now what does it mean to hallow? Well, it means to make holy. We make something holy. We hallow something. We make it holy. Think about in the tabernacle, in the temple, they had all the furniture, and they had those priest garments, and they had those animals, and even the priests themselves were hallowed. They were made holy. That is, they were set apart. Think of the Lord's Day. That is, hallowed. The day that is set apart from the rest. To hallow something is to set it apart, to make it holy. Well, that's straightforward enough. But how in the world do we make God holy? How do we make God more holy? How would sinners set apart the one who is most set apart? That doesn't compute. And it doesn't make sense to us. How would we make the One who is so holy that the angels that are around Him are covering their eyes and covering their feet even as they sing out thrice holy God? How would we make Him more holy? Well, we can't. He doesn't need our help. There's not a bit of holiness that is lacking. He's not looking to be completed. We don't make Him more holy, but what we do is we make His holiness known. We perceive it. We understand it. We grasp it. We own it for ourselves and for others. We bring Him glory by the proclamation and the apprehension of His holiness, both for ourselves and for others. When we pray, Hallowed be Thy Name, we're not praying that God would be changed. We're praying that men would be changed. other men and ourselves. We're praying for a change in people. We're praying, when we pray, hallowed be thy name, and we're praying this, we are praying in regard to others. In regard to those who are not Christians, we are praying essentially one of two things. When we want God's name to be hallowed amongst unbelievers, We're asking Him to do one of two things. The first is to convert, to change, to make alive those who are dead, to take the heart of stone and make it a heart of flesh, make those who are enemies become His friends, as was done across the Bible in various ways. You can think of the city of Nineveh, the city which was the capital of an enemy of Israel. Under the preaching of the Gospel, the whole city converts. You can think of the Apostle Paul breathing out threats and death on the church who becomes the great apostle of the church. That's what we're praying for. The change. The conversion. What many of us can describe in our own life where we went from somewhere between indifferent to hostile to God, to those who follow God, who love God, who would give our lives for the Gospel. We're praying that as one thing. That God would show His strength in the weakness of men, his wisdom in their foolishness as he changes them and makes dead men alive. That's one way that God will hallow his name amongst unbelievers. The other one is their destruction. We are praying either for the conversion or the destruction of the unbeliever. Just as God was glorified and was hallowed in the destruction of Pharaoh and his empire. As both Pharaoh and all his deities and all his followers were overthrown. God is glorified in that. A judge is glorified when he dispenses justice. even harsh justice. If He dispenses true justice, it is a glory to Him. And He is honored. And He is hallowed. And so, our God is a judge. And our God is a potter who makes pots. And some pots He makes for a glorious end. And some pots He makes for a dishonorable end. And there are no other ends. And so when we ask that God's name would be hallowed in the world amongst unbelievers, we're asking that He will either make those people His own, convert them, or that He'll overthrow them. That ought to sober us in the business of prayer. That ought to focus us in the business of prayer. God will be glorified in all people. There is not a soul that has ever been created that in the end of days will not honor and glorify God one way or another. And we are praying that God would be about the business of revealing His holiness in the world. It ought to sober us and make us earnest for their good and not their destruction. But when we pray that the name of God would be hallowed, we are not praying simply for others. We're praying also for ourselves. We're not praying only that other men would change. We're praying that we would be changed. We are praying first that we would be changed inwardly. That we would have an ever deepening perception and grasp and understanding and apprehension of who God is in His holiness. That we would have a clearer understanding that He is our deep and singular need. That we are utterly dependent upon Him. That nothing else will fit what ails us. When we say to God, Your name be hallowed. Your name be made holy in us. We're asking first that we would understand Him as He is more fully and see our relationship to Him. as those utterly dependent upon Him. As those who know that there is only He alone who can fit our need. Like Isaiah, who stands before God and immediately is filled with a sense of his own inadequacy, his own sulliedness, his own filth, his own sinfulness, that he is undone by God. even as God is gracious and merciful to him. As the psalmist in Psalm 42 who sings and teaches us to sing, as a deer pants for the water brook, so my soul thirsts for God. Deer don't go to the water brook like we go to Starbucks for the flavor. It's a necessity. It's life-saving. It's life-sustaining. That's the apprehension we must have, even as Jesus teaches us in the Beatitudes that we would hunger and thirst for righteousness. As Paul teaches us from his own experience that though he had a fine resume of worldly righteousness, a Jew of Jews, he says, whatever I had, it is rubbish. compared to what I have in Christ. He is what I need. I am a part, I'm undone apart from Him and I'm completely perfect in Him. Even as Mary in the passage that we looked at last week is composed at the feet of Christ. Listening to the Lord's words, seated at His feet, as it says in verse 39, so it is when we ask that the Lord's name would be hallowed within us. We are asking that we would come to that perspective, that understanding. This is absolutely crucial. This attitude, this perspective is absolutely crucial and it is woefully lacking. That which ails church and nation, the frivolity and shallowness of the church and the decadence of the culture can find their root right here. An absolute obliviousness or at best, a surface grasp of the holiness, the otherness of God and what it demands of us what it requires of us. We will do nothing for the good of church or land if we neglect this. This is the root of our flavor as salt in the world. This is the source of our life, our connection to God. If we are apathetic about who He is and what He is, then we can expect like for So we are asking, when we pray this, for an inward dependence and perception. And that inward work will bear itself outward. And thus it is. We see in our day, I am persuaded by an absolute disinterest in such things as the holiness of God. And what it means to us, we see the fruit of it. So that the church is becoming indistinguishable from the world. Our marriages look like the world. Our children look like the world. Our ethics look like the world. Our conversation looks like the world. It's getting very difficult. It's statistically almost impossible to tell the church from the world. Now, that said, I do believe that a more refined definition of the church would show that difference more clearly. Most people who run surveys take a pretty broad definition of the church. But nonetheless, even amongst evangelicals, even amongst those who profess a belief in regeneration, being born again and the like, it is fast passing that we can tell the church from the world. Or when we can tell, we can't tell nearly as much as we should. The Bible, particularly the Apostles, are consistent. They're consistent that our apprehension of God, our understanding of Him, our embrace of Him, our engagement with Him will bear evident and tangible fruit in our lives. The Apostle Paul speaks in Romans 12 of our minds being transformed and our lives, living our lives as holy sacrifices to God. Peter speaks of us nursing on the Word of God like a babe on milk that then is born out as we live our lives using the language of the Bible before the Gentiles, that is before the world, and then he runs through case after case after case of where we will be manifestly different. John says that if we know God who is light, that is purity, holiness, perfection, then we will walk in the light. We will walk in a manner that reflects that connection. James says if you have faith, you'll have work. It's all over the Bible. And the apostles consistently hit this point. That an apprehension, an understanding of God as He is, will manifest those same traits in us. So when we ask that his name would be hallowed, we're asking for a deep and a deepening apprehension of who he is within that will then bear that same fruit without. You know, describing it is one thing. Having it is another. To describe the process, to describe what we are seeking, to describe what is in view is not that difficult. To say that we should have a deep apprehension of God and his nature and a hunger for his holiness and a yearning for it and that should bear fruit in us. That's not hard to say. That's simple. How do we have it? How does it happen? The answer is simple. The answer is very simple. But it's not easy. See, some things are simple but not easy. And this would be one that is simple but not easy. It's as simple as asking the question, Lord, teach us to pray. That's very simple. I understand something has to happen. So I ask the Lord, teach us to pray. That's simple. And and the form of the answer is simple. He says, we'll pray for these things. Pray, Father, hallowed be thy name. That's simple. It's as simple as asking. If we want this thing, we ask for it. Ask for holiness. Ask for depth. Ask for maturity. Ask for insight. Ask for wisdom. Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask and ask some more. That's simple. But it's not so easy. Because there's something else that's involved. Christ has answered them with words, but he's also answered them with action. And it came about that while he was praying in a certain place, after he had finished. Consider that. Jesus Christ sets aside time and place for prayer. Jesus Christ untouched by sin. Jesus Christ unsullied by sin. Jesus Christ not fallen in nature. Jesus Christ whose mind, affection, heart, will are pure and perfect. Jesus Christ who always does what's pleasing to the Father. Jesus Christ whose obedience to His Father is His meat and drink. Jesus Christ sets aside time and place for prayer. If Jesus sets aside time and place, What about us? You see, the answer is simple, but it's not easy because it's a matter of life and it's a matter of nurture. You see, when it's a matter of life and nurture, neglect is easy. You can think of your own example. Think of a garden. You can neglect a garden easily, but you can't rush one. You can't rush a garden. You can't rush maturity. You can't rush nurture. Think of a child. I can neglect a child easily. I just do nothing. But I can't rush them to adulthood. I can't command them to be mature today. I just must nurture that in them. It's very simple. Gardening is simple. Raising, you don't believe me, but raising children is really fairly simple. We got six billion people on the planet. Most of them are getting it done. Not always great, not always the best, but you know, food, clothes, shelter, relative obedience to the law, getting them from infant to taxpaying citizen is not that hard. To do it well, to really do it well, is very hard, but it's simple. The simple is what you do. You love them. You teach them. You give them boundaries. You give them truth. You raise them up. And then you love them some more. And then you love them some more. And then you love them some more. None of it is pretty complicated. You don't have to be a genius to be a parent. You don't have to be a genius to be a gardener. You just have to be diligent. That's where the not easy part comes in. You have to do it every day. I took two weeks off of my garden last year. We bought our vegetables last year. I took the two most crucial weeks off, the first two weeks. We planted them and went out of town. And no rain followed us while we were out of town. You can neglect a life, but you can't rush a life. A garden's life, a child's life, your own life of faith. You can neglect it, but you can't rush it. It's very simple. Put time into it. Set aside time and place. Nurture your relationship with God. He is your Father. He's not your CEO. He's not your judge. He's not just your ruler. He's not just your maker. He is some of those things. But He is your Father. You are in a relationship with Him. He loves you enough to send His Son to die for you. He has done everything to bring you up to Him and into Him. And now if you would mature, if you and I would grow in holiness, we must do the simple Difficult thing. Simply invest ourselves in the business. Set aside some time. Set aside a place. If Jesus Christ draws off from the world to pray, Jesus Christ who repelled sin, Sin found no nook or cranny or hold to Him until He said, I will take it upon Myself your sin. But it had no purchase in Him. It had no place in Him. But He says, I must draw off and nurture My relationship with My Father in whom I have a perfect union with. Then what about us? How much time? Measure your TV time next to your prayer time. Just set them side by side. And if you lack maturity, and you lack grace, and you lack patience, and you lack the fruit of the Spirit, just put them side by side. Put your internet time next to your prayer time. Put your golf time next to your prayer time. Put your garden time next to your prayer time. The point isn't whether any one of these things is absolutely prohibited. The question is where do you invest yourself? It's simple. But it's not easy. But the end is worth it. Jesus has not called us or given us, I should say. Jesus has not given us a formula. He's given us an opportunity. He's given us a golden gift that we may nurture a life with God. Not, say, an incantation or a magic spell but that we may nurture a life with God. That we may begin by saying, Father, and we may end by knowing it. I am His child by His grace. May we seize hold of it and bear fruit for Him. Amen? Let us pray. Great and mighty God, I convict myself and perhaps some here. Forgive us as we have failed to take up the things that you've given to us. They are not fun to us, but they are fruitful and rich. Teach us to take up that which is simple and hard. Show us yourself in it. O mighty Father, O great and glorious Father, O reigning and stupendous Father, O merciful and loving Father, stir within your children that we would see you better and therefore we would show you better in our lives and in the world. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.