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 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. –Matthew 6:9-10
In James 5:16 we’re told, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Then James gives you the example of Elijah praying for drought and rain. Now, if you’re like me, you’re tempted to say, “Yeah, but that’s Elijah, a prophet; it’s not like he’s a regular guy.” James anticipates my foolish objection and throws in the poignant phrase, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently.” We are to pray. Jesus said we are to pray always and never lose heart. Paul said we are to pray without ceasing, always with all prayer and supplication.
Jesus commands us in the Lord’s Prayer to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s always done in heaven, but this indicates it’s not always done on earth. That means that every time it’s done on earth as it is in heaven, an assault on the gates of hell has taken place. To pray “Thy will be done,” is to do spiritual warfare.
But we must never forget that to pray “Thy will be done” is to make it our goal to have God’s will be our will. Our wills desire happiness, ease, success, and pleasure, and while God has promised all these in the New Heavens and the New Earth, we have been promised persecution, hardship, and being hated all on account of Jesus’ name in this world. In a culture where most people think the goal of life is to be happy and that’s God’s will for us too (if there’s a God worth worshipping anyway), praying for God’s will over ours is staggeringly different from the rest of the world.
The most important thing, though, about desiring God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is that there is only One who has ever done his will in all ways all the time. And that’s not us on any given period of even our best day. It’s Jesus. The Father’s will is that we embrace, believe, worship, cherish, follow, and sup with Jesus. That’s our only true hope for doing God’s will: that we are in union with the One who knows and does the will of the Father to the Father’s glory forever.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty
Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed
Be Thou My Vision
MEN’S PRAYER BREAKFAST
This Saturday, November 6 is the breakfast at 8:30. All men are invited. Enter by the northeast doors. It is always a great time of food and fellowship together!
DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME ENDS THIS WEEKEND
Don’t forget to set your clock back an hour Saturday evening before bed. If you plan properly, you’ll get an extra hour of sleep!
COMMUNITY LUNCH
Our Community Lunch will be next Sunday, November 14, after worship at the church. It would be a great time to invite someone to worship and have them join us for lunch.
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. –Matthew 6:9-10a
The return of Christ with the consummation of the kingdom is an eternal decree of God. So why would our prayer for “Thy Kingdom come” matter? Besides that, if Jesus preached any content to the gospel at all, he preached that the Kingdom has come with his coming. Why then would he command we pray for his Kingdom to come if it has already come?
The first answer to the question is that it has come and is coming. Sometimes Reformed theologians call this “the now and the not yet.” We live in the tension between the Kingdom having come (people are saved from sin and Christ rules at the right hand) and the Kingdom not having been consummated completely (there is still evil and sadness left in the world). This is a hard tension and used by the Deceiver frequently to encourage doubt in believers. This is why we pray, “Lord Jesus, come quickly!” On that day all that is wrong will be right as the poor are made rich and the rich are made poor, the weak are made strong and the strong are made weak, the humble shall be exalted and the exalted shall be humbled. Oh what a great day that will be!
The second answer is that Jesus commands us to pray that the Kingdom will come more fully upon us. That is, “Thy Kingdom Come” precedes “Give us this day our daily bread” because those who seek first the Kingdom of God will have all the things they need added to them. The counterintuitive nature of the gospel is that those who seek the Kingdom before they seek the satisfaction of their worldly desires get both, but those who seek the satisfaction of their worldly desires before the Kingdom of God get neither.
That said, and all very true, nonetheless “Thy Kingdom Come” is a prayer we must pray because we strive under the demands of the law, the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Even the Sermon on the Mount from whence comes the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s Gospel lays out the burden of perfection we bear. When the Kingdom finally comes in all its fullness, we, by the perfect life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ will meet the perfection God requires without faltering. As the fantastic Geerhardus Vos has said, “We are not received by Jesus into a school of ethics but into a kingdom of redemption.”
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
A Mighty Fortress is Our God
For All the Saints
Jesus Shall Reign
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. –Matthew 6:9
The reason “hallowed by thy name” is called the “first petition” is because it is just that: a petition, a request. It’s easy to think that it is a statement of a fact—something like, “Our Father in heaven, your name is holy!” That would be an utterly true statement, but that’s now what Jesus is saying here. This is a request, a petition that is paraphrased something like, “Our Father in heaven, let your name be sanctified, honored, adored, and revered!”
Why should we be jealous of the sanctity of God’s name? Because he is, of course! Of the Ten Commandments, one of them is devoted to this exactly, “Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 5:11) Wow! That means his sanctity of God’s name is a top priority for him. Is it for us?
Someone has said (source untraceable) that when we pray the first petition, our request is “cause your word to be believed, cause your displeasure to be feared, cause your commandments to be obeyed, and cause yourself to be glorified.” We hallow the name of God when we trust him, revere him, obey him, and glorify him. It must be the believer’s passion that the whole earth gladly hallow the name of God.
And you know what? It will happen someday. Our prayer is that it happen today, but without a doubt it will happen on the Great Day of the Lord when 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 (Philippians 2:9-11). Every Islamic Imam, every Buddhist monk, every Scientologist, every gentle but unbelieving grandmother will bow their knee and confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord. Every time we pray for the Name to be hallowed, we look forward to that great day. And our prayer will be answered because Christ has so hallowed the name of his Father that we finally can too.
That’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in baptism and the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Rejoice, the Lord is King
Baptized in Water
All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name
ADULT BAPTISM THIS SUNDAY!
Don’t miss this special celebration of the promise that as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly His blood and Spirit wash away the impurity of our soul, that is, all our sins.
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven. –Matthew 6:9
Jesus commands us to pray a certain way, not merely to our Creator, Judge, or even King, but to our Father. Justification is fundamental; it is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. But it is legal; it is forensic. It is a declaration by God as judge that penitent sinners are not and never will be liable to the wrath and punishment they deserve because Christ is their substitute and sacrifice.
Yet justification is not all there is. Adoption also comes with salvation, and while adoption is impossible without justification, it is an even greater privilege because it is a move from the court room to the family room. In justification God is judge who reviews the facts with regard to those on trial, but in adoption God is the Father looking on his children with love, with affections to his heirs. That’s “our Father.”
Then in wonderful balance, Jesus adds, “In heaven.” As Jeremiah speaks for the Lord: “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord?” (Jer. 23:23,24)
In other words, he’s no teddy bear to make me happy and just be there if I need him. He rules heaven and earth! That’s the only kind of God who could answer the prayers of broken and sinful people so perfectly for their salvation every time, all the time. He’s so great and loving simultaneously that he answers the prayers we should have prayed and looks down from heaven on us with the same favor he did on Christ.
Jesus tells us to pray to our Father in heaven because through his perfect life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection, we are truly the children of God who get to call him Father even while he is far off.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Our God, Our Help in Ages Past
Like a River Glorious
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. –Matthew 6:5-8
Many people know the Lord’s Prayer, fewer know that it (in Matthew) is in the Sermon on the Mount, and far fewer know that the verses above are the introductory context of Jesus giving us the exemplary prayer. Notice that the contrast is between the “god” of the hypocrites (read: outwardly religious types), the “god” of the Gentiles (read: religious when convenient) and “your Father.” The outwardly religious and conveniently religious are alike in that they do pray and they see that prayer as a transaction. The transaction is culture-affecting public religiosity or many words in exchange for answered prayer.
It’s different for Christians. Because “your Father knows what you need before you ask him,” it is not a transaction for them. Christians don’t have to talk him into it or perform certain works to earn answers to prayer. This is because God is not merely their Creator (though he certainly is), nor is he merely their King (though he certainly is), but God is their Father. The relationship is not based upon relationships such as landlord-tenant, employer-employee, or any other mutually agreed upon, yet temporary arrangement. It is as Father-child, which does not vary with performance.
This is good news because as a transaction, we would have to wonder if he will answer in our favor. The more keenly we are aware of our sin, the more anxiety there is that our prayers won’t be answered. But because God has sworn by himself to provide for and protect his chosen ones and given us Christ to ensure that all transactions are taken care of, we can pray with a child-like trust that his answering our prayers is simply his keeping his promises.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
This is My Father’s World
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. –Genesis 45:4-8
Finally Joseph reveals himself in the second visit by his brothers (or third if you count the short trip away with the silver cup in Benjamin’s bag). Just after Judah’s confession and repentance and offering himself as a substitute, Joseph’s plan to reconcile the family has utterly succeeded (since the providence of God is inescapable!). Joseph cannot hold out anymore and reveals himself. The brothers are too undone by the revelation at first, so in the passage above Joseph has to take control again and force them to accept it.
Joseph begins to deliver one of the most mature answers about God’s providence imaginable. How’d he get that? He got it through suffering. One of his earliest memories probably is being saddled up on a camel and taken away from the only home he had known, Paddam-Aram, from the only grandfather he’d ever known, Laban, only to encounter his uncle Esau who would very likely slaughter his dad (Jacob), if he didn’t go ahead and slaughter the entire family. That’s followed up with his only sister Dinah being raped by Shechem precipitating his brothers to deceive, torture, and then mass murder an entire town. Along the way, his mother, Rachel, dies giving birth to his brother Benjamin. His brother Reuben tries to displace his father by having physical relations with his father’s concubine. He barely gets to meet Isaac, his other grandfather, who promptly dies. And all this before Jacob is 17 years old!
By that point his brothers hate him so much they won’t even as much as greet him, and then at 17 they plot to kill him (and nearly do!), but instead sell him to slave traders after throwing him in a grave-like hole. He is then paraded naked with chains on his feet and neck before a crowd and purchased by a guy whose wife demands sex from him, falsely accuses him of attempted rape, and gets him thrown into prison.
This has not led him to hate or even be angry with God, but to interpret all this together as God working good in his life and the lives of those around him. In other words, it was not God’s fault all this had happened, but it was God’s loving and benevolent will that all this happened. What wisdom!
Question 27 of the Heidelberg Catechism speaks to this so well:
27. Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. God’s providence is His almighty and ever present power, whereby, as with His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by His fatherly hand.
Of course, this could not be true for us since God is holy and we are not unless one greater than Judah offered himself in our place and one greater than Joseph chose to forgive and receive sinful brothers. Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, has done both!
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord
Lead On, O King Eternal
My Hope is Built on Nothing Less
CHURCH PICNIC
This Saturday, October 2. If you didn’t get the email invitation or haven’t responded to it, please click here to let us know if you’re going to be there! There will be fishing in the pond, lots of outdoor space, and (of course) OU messing with Texas. Kickoff is 2:30 so we’ll start at 2:00. The Men’s Prayer Breakfast is postponed one more month because of the picnic.
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 “Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to Sheol. For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.’ Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.” –Genesis 44:31-34
This is Judah speaking above. Joseph had sent the 10 brothers back to Jacob and Benjamin in Canaan to retrieve Benjamin and bring him back. Simeon was kept as a hostage to ensure their swift return. Jacob completely loses it when he hears about this and forbids their return.
Then he got hungry; they all did. This famine was really bad. So Jacob consents to the 10 brothers (sans Simeon) going to Egypt. When they got there all 11 were together. Joseph then wants to send them back to get Jacob, keeping Benjamin as the hostage this time.
Judah’s impassioned reply is that his father would be destroyed by such a thing. This is interesting because Judah was the one who presented Joseph’s blood-soaked coat to their father 20 years ago and let Jacob believe all this time that Joseph had been torn to pieces. That’s not honoring your father!
But now after all these years, Judah wants to honor his father. Judah has accepted his place and begs Joseph not to keep Benjamin there for the sake of his father. Rather, Judah offers himself as a substitute in Benjamin’s place. What a beautiful story of reconciliation, self-sacrifice, and repentance!
Except, of course, that’s not the gospel. We must not miss that there is a Greater Son more concerned about the happiness of his Father and the welfare of his brothers than Judah. In fact, for the sake of them all he offers himself as a substitute in our place. That is Judah’s greatest son—not David, though he was a great one, but—Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, that his Father and brothers would be forever reconciled.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
O Father, You are Sovereign
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” –Luke 16:14,15
This is a fascinating two verses that follow the parable of the Dishonest Manager. It is a difficult parable involving, at least possibly, some sarcasm. While we may not have an easy time understanding the parable without some study and Spiritual discernment, the Pharisees apparently got it right off. That’s because Jesus was talking about them! They are the dishonest managers who are shrewdly defrauding less-exalted people in the name of God.
Luke makes an editorial comment that the Pharisees, “who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.” That follows up with Jesus’ summary and heart-piercing statement about their self-justification and that God knows it. “For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
The difference between the righteous and the wicked in scripture is not that the righteous necessarily behave better than the wicked or that the wicked necessarily behave better than the righteous. The difference is that the wicked are those who justify themselves (thus exalted among men—at least in their own mind) and the righteous are justified by God (thus not worthy of men’s exaltation). But hear this: to be justified by God is to be in union with Christ, and Christ is exalted by God because God knows his heart.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name
Beneath the Cross of Jesus
Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine
VISITING PREACHER
Pastor Mark will be away on vacation this Sunday and we are thrilled to welcome back the Rev. Perry Brackin preaching on Romans 3:21-26, “Christ Died for God and for You.” Pastor Mark will be back, Lord willing, September 26 to continue in Genesis 45.
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 As they emptied their sacks, behold, every man’s bundle of money was in his sack. And when they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were afraid. And Jacob their father said to them, “You have bereaved me of my children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin. All this has come against me.” Then Reuben said to his father, “Kill my two sons if I do not bring him back to you. Put him in my hands, and I will bring him back to you.” But he said, “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is the only one left. –Genesis 42:35-38
The 10 sons of Jacob, sans Benjamin, went down to Egypt (the land of sin and oppression) looking to buy food with their silver. They encounter the man in charge of the food, the Prime Minister of Egypt, Zaphenath-Paneah (AKA Joseph, the brother they had thrown in a hole and sold for silver). Zaphenath-Paneah sends them back home to get Benjamin for the return so this chosen family could be saved.
When they get home they find that their silver is back in their sacks. For ordinary people, this would be cause for great celebration. For these guilt-ridden guys, it is an unimaginable horror. Would the Egyptians think they had stolen the money? Is God punishing us? What is truly terrible is that they sold Joseph for silver and now it appears he has sold them for silver!
Jacob had twelve sons. Joseph was the favorite, but he is “no more,” as they say, and now the truly favored son is Benjamin, Joseph’s younger brother of their favored mother, Rachel. Jacob just flat-out puts his foot down: there is no way he is going to take a chance on losing “the only one left.” It seems like the other guys might have wanted to say, “Uh, Dad, I’m left too,” but apparently that’s not the way it worked around there.
Jacob could only assume that Benjamin would become “no more” by making the journey. After all, over 20 years ago the last time Jacob sent out the favored son with the brothers was when Joseph became no more. Since we can read the story ahead, we know that he was wrong. Benjamin would not be lost.
Our God and Father had a favored Son. He knew that if he sent this Son to go down to the land of sin and oppression, he would be abused beyond measure by the people there. In fact, the Son would be sold for silver and thrown in a hole. But the Son had to go down for the Chosen Family to be saved. The Father, out of his great love for the Family, sent his Favored Son that whosoever believes in him would not perish, but eat of the Bread of Life and drink of the Cup of Blessing forever and ever.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
O Worship the King
The King of Love My Shepherd Is (Psalm 23)
How Firm a Foundation
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.” So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth. –Genesis 41:55-57
Who would have thought that a Hebrew would be the source of living bread to save untold numbers of people from destruction? Who would have thought this would not be just for Egypt, but for the whole world? Who would have thought this Hebrew would have to be rejected by his own people, sold, falsely accused, apparently forgotten by God, and endure manifold humiliation and disgrace to be exalted to this high position, where even the most powerful people in the world must depend on him even to live?
Hear the excellent and necessary advice of Pharaoh for all who are starving: “Go to Joseph Jesus. What he says to you, do.” Jesus has promised all who hunger and thirst for a righteousness not their own: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” –John 6:51
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart
And Can It Be That I Should Gain
MEN’S PRAYER BREAKFAST
We will not have a meeting in September because of the holiday weekend.
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (in Galatians) is continues. Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
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