Hallowed be Thy Name Thy Kingdom Come 1986

I'd like to begin today by reading to you from Luke chapter 11, starting at verse 1. Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Hallowed be thy name.

I was praying the other morning, and shut my eyes, and saw a fire. What does it mean, Lord? It means that you're looking at Babylon. So looking at Revelation 17, 15.

And he said to me, the waters that you saw, where the harlot Babylon is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast, will hate the harlot Babylon. And they will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh, and burn her with fire.

For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose, by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And the woman that you saw is the great city, Babylon, which has dominion over the kings of the earth. Babylon is the world system.

And the chief characteristic of Babylon is that it does not hallow God's name. It has no sense of the holy. Revelation 18, 9. And the kings of the earth who committed fornication and were wanton with her, Babylon, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning.

And they will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, Alas, alas, thou great city, thou mighty city, Babylon, in one hour has thy judgment come. And all the shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning. What city was like the great city? And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out, Alas, alas, for the great city, Babylon.

Of course, we don't have to read the book of Revelation to watch Babylon going up in flames. All we have to do is read the newspaper. Babylon has been burning for a long time, since long before we were born.

And we have no idea when Babylon will finally come crashing down. But meanwhile, Babylon is where we live, where we raise our children, and where we fulfill our purpose. While Babylon burns, we are really faced with three options, three ways we can go after this.

One, we can let it burn and get all we can out of life while it burns. Before we die or Babylon comes down, get all the gusto you can, live it up, take care of yourself and your family, and let it burn. The only problem is if we live that way, we're part of Babylon, and we burn with it, because we have no sense of the Holy.

Hallowed be thy name means nothing to us. Second option, we can join the revolution. Whatever left-wing or right-wing group we think will put out the flames.

World government, the peace movement, liberation, and I'm not knocking this, there are people who are making absolutely awesome sacrifices doing marvelous things, giving up all kinds of things, spending years of their lives in prison in the struggle for justice. Problem is that when the evil empire falls, and our, whatever it happens to be, new regime comes up to take its place, it's still Babylon, and it's still burning, and we're burning with it, because we have no sense of the Holy. Hallowed be thy name means nothing to us.

Third option. Third option is that we can get serious about the kingdom of God. The order which will not only take the place of Babylon when it falls, but which is really already here.

And the way we get serious about the kingdom of God is to begin to learn what it means to pray and to live. Hallowed be thy name. Southwest Detroit is a unique place, because all three of these options are being aggressively pursued.

Here in Southwest Detroit, lots of people are busy getting all the gusto they can. We got drugs, alcohol, prostitution, flashy cars, while they're even making a Hollywood movie here right now with all the blood and gore that Babylon loves. But Southwest Detroit also has revolutionaries.

We probably have, undoubtedly have, the heaviest concentration of revolutionaries anywhere in the state of Michigan. If you took a line and drew a circle on a three-mile radius around this building, you would include most of the revolutionaries that are in this state. And again, I'm not talking these people.

I'm talking about men and women whose commitment to what they are convinced is the answer is far more serious than most Christians. They're trying to put their lives where their mouths are, most of these people. But Southwest Detroit also has the kingdom of God by an act of God's grace and mercy without any really help from us.

Reading from Mark 4, verse 26, Jesus said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow. He knows not how. The earth produces of itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts forth the sickle because the harvest is coming. With us or without us, the kingdom is here, and it's at work, and it's growing. Wherever the flames of Babylon are burning the hottest, there the moving of the kingdom of God is also taking place.

And you will find the movings of the kingdom wherever people are learning to pray and to live. Hallowed be thy name. Babylon began to burn when this planet was invaded by the kingdom of God in the person of Jesus.

Jesus, the one who lived. Hallowed be thy name. Lo, I have come to do your will, O God, not mine.

And who also said, I have come to spread fire on the earth. And he did it. And he began that fire.

He ignited that fire in Babylon. The moment his head dropped lifeless to his chest, as he was hanging on that cross, and he died. At that same moment, not far away, the veil in the temple that separated the holy of holies from the holy place ripped from top to bottom as the earth trembled and shook as a sign that the door to the kingdom was now open to his followers.

The door was open and still open. Most people today, even professing Christians, seem to think that the door of the kingdom is a door of escape from this world. You go through that door and you escape the hassle and the conflict and the danger and the pressure of living in Babylon.

It's not true. When you go through that door into the kingdom, you enter into a life of conflict. And you become a threat to Babylon, far more serious than that of any revolutionary.

See, we don't carry guns. We don't even carry placards. And we're not going to make the evening news.

But if we are living as sons and daughters of the kingdom and fulfilling our purpose as sons and daughters of the kingdom, we are spreading fire in Babylon that Babylon cannot put out. Even while we rescue human souls from their Babylonian slavery and bring them into kingdom freedom. And we do this by living the power of the mind.

What's happening right now is that the spirit of God is doing some heavy recruiting for the kingdom. People are being drawn into the kingdom who have been on the fringe of the kingdom all their lives. People who have never seen the kingdom.

People who have been enemies of the kingdom are being drawn in. And we're seeing this here. We're seeing it almost every day.

People are being drawn in. And they are being drawn. And we are being drawn by having our eyes open to behold the holiness of the living God.

And to begin to understand what that means. What it means to truly worship him and bow and bow and prostrate ourselves before him. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. When we truly hallow God's name, worship him, bow before his holiness, pay him high honor, instantly the kingdom comes to us. Moses, at the age of 40, tried to force the kingdom to come by being a revolutionary.

He killed an Egyptian who had been abusing a Hebrew. And he was sure, I'm sure he was sure, that all the Hebrews would rally behind him and the revolution would begin. But it didn't happen.

Moses, at the age of 80, met God at the burning bush in the wilderness of Sinai. And the first thing God taught Moses was to hallow his name. Take off your shoes, Moses, you're standing on holy ground.

Moses jumps back, takes off his shoes, falls down before God in silence. Now he begins to have some sense of the holy and as he does, the life of the kingdom comes down into this man, anoints him and sends him forth to free the Hebrews from their Egyptian body. Nothing happened of any value, of any ultimate significance in Moses' life until Moses learned to hallow God's name, to see God as holy, to pay him high honor.

Simon Peter was a man who from his earliest years yearned to see the kingdom of God, thirsted for it, wanted to see God's power moving in Israel and in his own life. But Peter had no sense of the holy, had no idea what it meant to truly worship, how to take off your shoes, until one day Jesus of Nazareth said to Peter, all right, launch out into the deep, let down your nets for a catch. Master, Rabbi, we toil all night, we were up all night fishing, didn't catch one.

Nevertheless, at your word, I'll let down the nets. When Peter sees that net coming up loaded with fish, he knows he is looking at a sign from God and he's filled with dread, fear, awe, worship. Now he begins to take off his shoes.

Depart from me, I'm a sinful man, O Lord. And as he does this, the kingdom comes down. Don't be afraid.

From now on, you're going to be catching men. But it took Peter about three more years, a little more than three more years, for him to truly learn to hallow God's name. Peter, like most of us, was a hard head.

He'd get the insight and lose it. He'd get it for a while and live it for a while and miss it again and go off on his own tangent. But finally, about three years later, Jesus is with the disciples as they're approaching the town of Caesarea Philippi.

They sit down to rest and Jesus says to the disciples, Who do men say that the Son of Man is? And they answer, Some say you're John the Baptist, back from the dead. Some say you're Elijah or one of the prophets, Jeremiah. But who do you say that I am? Now Peter finally takes off his shoes.

Looking at Jesus, he says, You are the anointed one, the Son of the living God. And with this, the kingdom comes with power upon people. You're Peter, the rock.

And on this rock, I'm going to build my church and the gates of death shall not prevail against it. And within a week, Peter is looking into the blazing, transfigured face of the Messiah. His life catches fire soon after this with a fire that is going to inflame Babylon and that is going to sanctify and cleanse and refine his whole life.

Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. The people in this body, the ones who are here now and the ones who may not be here now, the people in this body who are and will be experiencing the power of the kingdom of God are those who are answering the call of Jesus to hallow God's name, to worship, to take off their shoes in the presence of the holy.

Put in simplest terms, Jesus, risen from the dead and alive forevermore, is in the midst of this flock now. Some of us will see him and some of us will not. We will not see him if our eyes are blinded by our own arrogance.

We will see him if our eyes are opened by a spirit of repentance and awe. And when we bow before him and take off our shoes and humble ourselves, the kingdom of God comes to us as it came to Moses and as it came to Peter. The most important prayer for us to learn at this time is hallowed be thy name.

And it means three things. First of all, hallowed be thy name means that I take off my mask and confess my desperate need of God's grace. Not only at the moment when I get saved, but every moment, every hour of my life.

Reading from Luke chapter 12, verse 1. In the meantime, when so many thousands of the multitude had gathered together that they trod upon one another, he began to say to his disciples first, Beware of eleven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, covering things up. Nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light.

Whatever you have whispered in the private rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops. So he's saying, Come out into the light. Come out into the open.

Take off the covering. Admit what's there. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the temple that day, his first response was, Woe is me.

I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And as he in this way takes off his mask, admits his own need without pointing his finger at fifty other people, but looking at his own need first, the kingdom comes to him.

One of the seraphim takes a burning coal from the fire, brings it over and touches his mouth and says, Lo, this has touched your lips. Now your guilt is taken away and your sin is forgiven. It's absolute arrogance to stand in the presence of God in church or alone or wherever we are and pretend that we have it together when in fact our lives are a mess.

We're in need, desperate need. But when we come into the presence of God and cry out, Lord, forgive. Lord, save.

Lord, heal. Then our mask is coming off. We're taking off our shoes.

We're hallowing God's name. And the kingdom comes to us and forgives us and heals us and saves us. Secondly, hallowed be thy name means that I put the fear of God's holiness above the fear of man.

People today among Christians are afraid to even talk about the fear of God's holiness. But Jesus wasn't afraid to talk about it. Reading in the same passage, Luke 12, I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.

But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear him who after he has killed has power to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not.

You are of more value than many sparrows. Most of us have spent most of our lives driven by the fear of man. We're afraid of what people might think of us.

We're afraid of what they might say about us. We're afraid of what they might do to us. The worst thing they can do to us is kill us.

And they might. But we will be delivered from all that fear if we will fear the one and the only one who deserves that fear. The God who numbers every hair on our head, watches over every sparrow, and he alone decides who goes to hell.

If we will stand in awe of his glory and bow before his holiness, we will be delivered from the fear of man and we will walk through this world in tremendous freedom and we will be anointed by the power of the kingdom. Finally, to howl God's name, to say, howl be thy name, means that I do whatever I have to do to substitute the fear, the trust that I had in money with rather trust in God. And if you look at the 12th chapter of Luke, he goes into much detail about these three points.

And he spends a lot of time talking about our attachment to money, to manna. But I'm just going to read a few verses from Luke 12, 32. Fear not, little father, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open for him at once when he comes and knocks. To have our loins girded and our lamps burning is to absolutely clear away those things in our lives which cause us to be anxious about money. Even if we have to get rid of it all.

Whatever we have to do to get rid of that anxiety about money. It's typical of being a human being. It's been around long before they ever started printing dollar bills.

But we will have the money we need. And we will need money, but we'll have all the money we need in our private lives and in our corporate lives. We will seek the kingdom first.

And when we seek the kingdom first, the kingdom will come to us. He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.

May God help us to build our prayers and our very lives on this foundation. Hallowed be thy name. May God help us to take off our shoes and truly worship.

Now that worship begins with silence, and that's what we're going to do again today. It moves into praises and thanksgivings and sounds and songs of joy. But it began when Moses was told to take off his shoes that day.

He didn't say, thank you, Jesus, hallelujah. He was on his face. There came a time when he could say, thank you, Jesus, hallelujah.

But it began with silence. First he has to understand who he's dealing with. And we need to do the same.

May God help us now to just wait in total silence and let the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, speak to our hearts.