Storing Treasures In Heaven

After lunch and it was a big job just to keep people awake, so I hope we can stay awake and profit by a few thoughts here from again from Matthew 6. We're going to be looking at the Lord's Prayer. Now this is a very inclusive prayer, in fact I have a message at home from the Anabaptists where they use this for instruction for baptism. I don't know if they always did that, but at least some of the Anabaptists felt that the gospel was completely contained in this prayer and if a person could get this prayer into his heart he would have the sum total of what it really means to be a follower of Jesus.

The disciples never asked Jesus to teach them to preach, they never asked Jesus to teach them to cast out devils, they never asked Jesus to teach him any of the things that he did except for this. They somehow realized that if the Lord would teach them to pray, everything else would be available to them. And so it's in this prayer that we're going to find everything pretty much that we need.

He said to his disciples in Gethsemane, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And I already told you that he himself in the garden was experiencing tremendous struggle in his flesh and I think singing was a large part of it, but when he came out of that garden he was ready to face the cross. Oswald Chambers said there are seven words that if we ever mastered them it would change the world.

You have not because you ask not. Those are seven words. He said if we could ever understand what those words mean and could ever apply what they suggest, we would change the world.

Samuel said to Israel, forbid it that I should sin against God in ceasing to pray for you. I guess I never thought about prayerlessness as sin, but Samuel is saying that not to pray is sin. It's actually a sin.

Okay, so that makes it pretty serious. Now this is an amazing model prayer. Like I said, it pretty much encompasses everything.

It does not have anything to do with me personally as far as making requests for myself. All of the the pronouns in this prayer are plural pronouns. It never says I, it never says me.

It always says our, it always says us. So this prayer is prayed in the context of the congregation. Also, it encompasses the past.

It says forgive us our sins. It encompasses the present. Give us this day our daily bread, which is to say all of the provisions we need for the present, and lead us not into temptation.

So it includes the past, the present, and the future. It's an all-encompassing prayer. So I've entitled this message Ten Postures of Prayer.

So let's just look at them quickly. I intend not to have a long message. This is afternoon, and you all need your naps eventually, so let's see how fast we can go through this.

So the first thing we do is we pray as sons. This will be Ten Postures of Prayer. It says our father.

Okay, so it's saying our father. So we're praying as brothers, all right? Many people see Christianity as an individualistic experience. This is how they picture it.

Our Anabaptists as a brotherhood, and there was a quote in Anabaptist literature that said no man can come to Christ, no man can come to God unless he brings his brother with him. Now that didn't mean that when you went to pray you had to get the whole congregation together. That's not what it meant.

What it meant was what Jesus said, that if while you're praying you remember there's a problem between you and somebody else in the brotherhood, it's more important to get that resolved than it is to worship. And so their concept was that when you're coming to God, the whole brotherhood is in your mind, and you have all your relationships clear between you and all the brotherhood, or else you don't come to God effectively. And so we pray as sons.

We're coming to God as sons, okay? And as brothers. I'm sorry, I got it ahead. We're coming to God as brothers.

We cannot say Father unless we claim all of our brothers. The Bible says we comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and the height and the depths and the knowledge of God. We come with saints.

And it's very important for us to have our relationships correct, and I'd like for you to turn to this passage in the Bible, which is 1st Corinthians chapter, I mean 1st John chapter 2. So if you would turn to 1st John chapter 2, you will see how important it is to have all your relationships the way they should be. It says in verse 10, he that loveth his brother abideth in the light, get this, and there's none occasion of stumbling in him. There's none occasion of stumbling in him.

What this is saying is if you fall, it was because of some faulty relationship. Sin is basically a relationship problem. If you lie to somebody, obviously you do not value him.

If you steal from somebody, obviously there's a relationship problem. If a young man fornicates with a woman, with a girl, there's a relationship problem. You go down through the sins and basically they're relational sins.

And he says if you could love everybody with a perfect love, there would be no occasion for you to sin. That's a pretty strong statement. And then he says those who don't love, they go stumbling through life, and they don't know why they're stumbling.

They don't know why they're making bad decisions. They don't know why they're doing things that turn into a disaster. And he says, well, if they would really understand, they all come back to walking in darkness, which means there's some relational problem that they do not resolve, and so it causes them to constantly stumble their way through life.

So it's very important that we pray as brothers, our father which art in heaven, and then we pray as sons. We're praying to our father. And you know how children relate to a father, especially small children.

They believe in their father. My daddy said this. I had a seventh-grade schoolteacher who said that one night before she went to bed, her father read her story about an elephant.

And just to be funny, like parents do, he pronounced it elephant the whole way through the story. That's how he pronounced the word. The next morning, by coincidence, the teacher read a story about an elephant.

And when the teacher said elephant, her little hand went up, and she said, teacher, that word is elephant. And she remembered that the teacher went to great pains to explain that she was wrong, that it should be pronounced elephant. And she said, I remember my teacher could not convince me because my daddy had said elephant.

Now that's the kind of relationship that small children at least have with their parents. They believe that dad can do anything. They absolutely trust him for anything that they ask or need.

And that's the kind of relationship that we are supposed to have with our father. We're supposed to, he's to be our father. There's a song in that hymnal that says, Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for none can ever ask too much, because his powers are such.

And so that's our attitude toward our father. That's our attitude toward our brothers, okay, which aren't in heaven. So we pray as sons of a great father who we absolutely trust, and we pray as brothers who have all of our relationships ideally, not perfect, we never arrive at this perfectly, but our purpose, I told you this morning, our passion is perfection, and we're constantly pressing toward these ideals that have all of our relationships the way they should be.

So that's how we could, that's what this prayer is teaching us. The second, the next thing this prayer is teaching us is to pray with reverence, who aren't in heaven. So we recognize that God is the great other.

He's not a buddy on the same level like somebody, people sort of try to picture God, but he's the great other. He's the person who sees everything, knows everything, and we go come to him in reverence, ready to receive whatever he has to tell us. And we'll never see anything right unless we see it the way God sees it.

I think of the ten spies, or the twelve spies, they went into the land, they all saw the same thing. They all came back and said, it's a great land, it has milk and honey, it's a wonderful place. But ten of them said, but, there are giants in the land, it's a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof.

I don't know what was happening, were they killing each other? Was there a plague? But people in that land were dying. And so the implication from a natural standpoint was, if we go into that land we're all gonna die. But the two of them said, you don't understand, they are bred for us.

Of course they're dying, because God is preparing the land for us. Now why did they believe that? Because God had told them to go into the land. So the only way you can process that is, that what's happening in the land is because God is getting ready for us to enter the land.

And so from God's perspective they had an altogether different view of that land than what the other ten did, who just looking at it from a natural standpoint, that this land is a dangerous land, we shouldn't go into this land, and so they all lived in doubt, and you know what happened. But those two were able to see the picture that God saw, and they were able to go by faith, because they had a reverence. If God said, go into the land, I'm gonna take care of everything for you, then you believe that that's that's how you view the whole thing.

And so we view with reverence anything that God has said. The next thing we pray is for reverence. Hallowed be thy name.

And one of the church fathers said, that should be prayed, hallowed be thy name in us. Now I don't know if that's true or not, I let somebody else analyze whether it should be read that way, but Cyprian said, you should read this, hallowed be thy name in us. That means when we people see us, they should see an accurate picture of God.

Now for many Christians that's not so. Take that Westboro Baptist Church that goes to funerals of people and talk about awful stuff about how God's judging you, and they give an awful picture of God. In fact I hear it on the telephone all the time, Westboro Baptist, everybody knows about the Westboro Baptist Church, and the picture they give of God is one horrible picture, that God's just looking out over the battle streets of heaven ready to clobber anybody that displeases him.

That's not God. That's not the God we serve. Now he does punish evil, and that's all true, but he's a loving God who's trying desperately to woo everybody into his love, and they don't give that picture of God.

What kind of picture of God do people get looking at my life? Do they get an accurate picture of a redemptive God, a loving God, a God who understands, who will go to the nth degree to try to help them get to where God wants them? Is that what they see when they look at me? Do they see a picture of God? That's what we pray. We pray that that how would be thy name? We want to do nothing to besmirch God's name, and we hear stories of many Christians who the life they live in the picture they give is a horrible picture of God if they claim to be God's followers, and that's very sad. That's tragic.

We should have a passion for sanctification, okay? We sing the song, Oh to be like thee. We want to be holy people. That word holiness scares some people away, but the word holiness comes from this word, wholeness.

It means perfect liberty. It means perfect everything. I have them listed here.

Let me read them. Perfect liberty, perfect fulfillment, perfect success, perfect peace, perfect power, perfect well-being. It's to be whole.

That's what holiness means. In fact, it's the Greek word, or is it the Hebrew word? I don't know which. It's the word halak, which means health.

That's where the word holiness comes from, and so that's what we want to picture to the world. Number five. So we come to God as sons, believing every word he says, acting on every word he says to the best of our ability.

We come as brothers, realizing we have to have all of our relationships correct. We come with reverence, wanting to do nothing to besmirch his name. We come praying for reverence, so we'd see everything from his standpoint.

And finally, we come, thine is the kingdom. You know, most people's idea is God's greatest interest is to get me saved and get me to heaven. That's not God's greatest purpose.

In fact, my personal salvation is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end. God is making up a kingdom.

He cannot have a redeemed society unless he has redeemed individuals. So that part is very important. It's very important to experience personal redemption, but that's a means to an end.

It's not an end in itself. As soon as we make it an end in itself, it becomes a major problem, because Jesus said, if you seek to save your life, what will happen? You'll lose it. And Charles Finney wrote a book years ago called Lectures to Professing Christians.

This was to Christians, and he made a very strong statement in the book, and I read it years ago, and it's the only statement I remember out of the whole book. Here's the statement, he whose primary purpose, now I'm not saying this shouldn't be any part of a person's purpose, but if this is his only purpose, he whose primary purpose is to escape hell shall surely go there. And then he quoted the verse, he that seeks to save his life shall lose it.

Our personal salvation is a means to an end. If it does not become a contributing life to the kingdom of heaven, it has missed its purpose. Now I'm not saying you won't go to heaven, I don't, that's, Charles Finney made that comment, I don't make that comment necessarily, but that's how important he saw it was not to be thinking about me.

And that's part of the problem with, last night we talked about the gospel song, a lot of the songs are about me. Wounded for me, wounded for me, I think 21 times, and it's in my hymnal by the way, the word me is used. Somehow we have to get the emphasis beyond that.

It's not about me, it's about his kingdom. The city of Philippi was an excellent picture of what the kingdom of God looks like on this earth. Philippi was a Roman city in the middle of a Greek culture.

When you walked toward Philippi, you heard the Greek language, you saw Greek custom, you saw Greek law, everything was Greek, till you stepped inside that city and then everything was Roman. Roman language, Roman law, Roman togas, Roman, everything was Roman. Just a tremendous contrast because a Roman Emperor had established that city in his name, Philippi.

That's how we are as Christians. We are living as aliens with a culture all of our own that's totally different from the culture around us, in its values especially. You know, Christianity has more to do with values, I shouldn't say has more to do, but it has to do with, I'm sorry, has to do with values.

Most of Christianity gets described in terms of morals. Is it right to do this or is it wrong to do this? Is it a sin to do this? If I do this, that's morals and that's true. Christians don't lie, they don't steal, they don't fornicate, they don't do any of those awful things.

But there's another level and it has to do with values. Now we're talking about what is most important. We're not talking about what's right and wrong.

We're talking about what's important. What is the most important thing to you? Well, let's talk about the word worship. This actually is a contraction.

The original word was worship. Now we have to do with values. This isn't morals, this is values.

Whatever is the most important thing to you, that's what you're worshiping. What's your first priority? You say, well, I don't know what that is. Well, you can find out very quickly.

Go home and ask your family, the people who know you the best, your wife, your children, ask your employer, ask your fellow employees, what gets me the most excited? What do I talk about the most? What seems to be the most important thing in my life based on what you hear me talk about and see me getting involved with? And for most people, that would not be Christ. Were you ever in a situation where you were talking about something, there was somebody sitting back in a corner that didn't say anything at all, and everybody else was talking, and after a bit somebody said, fishing, and that guy came alive, and he had stories to tell, and he was excited, and everybody stopped what they were talking about to listen to him talk about his fishing. Now I'm not saying fishing is wrong, but I'm saying it's wrong if it's your number, if it's the only thing in life that's the most important thing to you.

Well, whatever that is, it's pretty important for us to figure it out, because whatever that is, that is number one in our life, that we get the most excited about, that we talk the most about, that we spend our time, most of our time, that is the thing we're worshiping. Because worship is the, is what you give to the thing that has the number one most important value in your life. Okay, that's why what Jesus had to say about money, about possessions, is in chapter 6 of Matthew, rather than chapter 5, because it has to do with this subject.

In fact, if you go to Hebrews chapter 11, which we say is the faith chapter, there's nothing said in that whole chapter about those people's morals. In fact, there were people in that chapter that had some pretty bad moral lapses. But this chapter 11 is all about this, and the most amazing value statement in that chapter is when it says this, Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ, something none of us would want in the flesh.

He esteemed the reproach of Christ of more value than the treasures of Egypt. That is quite a value statement, and he proved it. He proved it by the way he lived.

He lived in a way that he became completely estranged from Egypt. So, do values, looking at this chapter 11 of Hebrews, they have more to do with faith than our morals? I would say yes. In fact, I would say our morals come out of our values.

If you have your values right, your morals would be right. But values, I don't hear much talk about values. Most of the sermons I heard growing up were about what was right and what was wrong, and they were good sermons.

I don't want anybody to leave here and say that I devalue that kind of preaching. But do we ever get to this? Do we ever get to this level in our teaching and preaching and living? And so that's where we are on the area of worship, and this is very important. This really has grown on me as I've gotten older, to get my values right, to make sure that what I emphasize in life is really true worship, is really true faith.

So I think values and faith are very close together. If you have all your morals right and you have all your values wrong, I don't think you could ever be considered a person of faith who believes in an unseen world instead of the world that we see. That's the most important.

And then we pray for obedience. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Are we really concerned that we're doing here exactly what God would want us to do? That's what we're doing here on this earth.

Well, people say, well, how do you know the will of God? So I want to give just a couple little statements. Nothing is the will of God if it contradicts anything in the Word of God. And you say, well, that makes sense.

Why do you have to even say it? Everybody knows it. Well, does everybody know it? There are people who live in absolute disobedience to the Word of God. And it's a little bit like somebody, you come somewhere to a bank and someone's outside on his knees praying his heart out.

Oh, he's praying and praying. And you say to him, what are you praying about? Well, I'm trying to find out if God wants me to rob this bank. Well, get up off your knees, my friend.

You don't need to pray about that. It's been clearly told. But you have people praying whether they should go into the military.

I hear them on the telephone. He's really praying whether God wants him to go into the military. Or maybe some woman is praying whether she should be wearing a covering.

And people are praying for all kinds of things and telling all kinds of things that God's revealing to them. They don't need to pray. It's very clear.

All they have to do is do what we've already been told. So that's the first principle. Make sure that what you're doing does not violate anything that we have been clearly told.

Number two, you've got to commit to do God's will before he's going to tell you what to do. Jesus said one time, if any man will do the Father's will, he shall know whether what I'm saying is of myself or whether it's from God. So I picture it this way.

You say, God, I want to know your will. Would you please write it down for me? And God says, sure, I'll be glad to list it. But did you see that line at the bottom? As soon as you put your John Henry on that line, I will start telling you what I want you to do.

Because God knows he's going to say some things you don't want to hear. And unless he has your commitment ahead of time, you're not going to do a number of these things. And so God only reveals his will to the people who really have committed themselves, whatever you tell me to do.

You're on the throne. I'm on the cross. And once you get in that position, then you're in a position to hear God's will.

The third thing that I have is you're committed to pleasing God. Number one, nothing's the will of God if it's not in the Word of God. Number two, I'm ready to do whatever God tells me to do.

And number three, my whole attitude is I want to please God. Is pleasing God different from obeying God? Yes. If you go to town and you tell your one of your children, the garden needs weeding, I'm sorry, I'm going to go to town.

Would you straighten up your room? Would you wash the dishes and sweep the house? And you come home and they've washed the dishes and they've straightened up their room. They've obeyed. But if after they have done all of that, they say, now wait a minute.

I remember dad saying the other day that the garden needs weeding. And he didn't tell me today I had to do that. And it's an awfully hot day.

And weeding is the worst job that I can possibly think of. But I'm gonna do it because I really want to see dad's smile when he comes home. That's pleasing.

In fact, God said to David one time, go ahead and build the temple. The prophet said to David, go ahead and build the temple. And then God told him in the night, no, no, go tell David he's not to build the temple.

But I want you also to ask him this. Did I ever say I wanted a temple? We'll go back and read what God said. He never said he wanted a temple.

He gave him a tabernacle. He told him exactly how to build it. And he'd have been perfectly happy to dwell in that tabernacle, I think, the rest of his life, the rest of humanity.

But David wanted to build a temple. And so Nathan was to tell David, because you want to build God a house, he's not gonna let you build it. But he's so pleased that you wanted to build it that he's gonna build you a house.

And that's where he told David, there'll always be someone from your line on the throne of Israel. God loves the person who wants to please him. Most people are focused on obedience.

We hear a lot about obedience. But we need to think in terms of pleasing God. Not necessarily just doing what we have to do, but doing things that we know get the closest to the heart of God.

So this is not legalism. This is pleasing God. A lot of people, for instance, let's take the tithe.

They tithe. I give a tenth of my money to the Lord. The rest of it, then they do what they please with it.

The person wants to please God, wants God to be pleased with everything he does with his money. He doesn't just do part of it and then the rest of it's mine to do what I please. That's most people's idea about life.

I do what God says I have to do, and then whatever he hasn't said anything much about, then I'm free to do whatever I please. No, no. We're here to please God.

Okay. Let me tell you what legalism is. Legalism is what I just described.

It's someone who keeps part of, or something that they're told to do, and then the rest of it they basically live for self. Okay. Legalism is whenever a person, what, how can I explain this? It's a little hard for me to put it in words.

The focus is on the letter. It's not on the person. The person who's not legalistic, his focus is on the person.

He's connected the truth with the person. He wants to please the person, and this is simply a means to an end, and he's not satisfied until he has pleased the person. Okay.

The next thing we pray for is necessities. Give us this day our daily bread. Notice it's us.

That means when you get your paycheck at the end of the week, that is not your paycheck. That is our paycheck. Give us, not me, give us this day our daily bread, so what God gives to me belongs to the whole brotherhood, and Christians love to give.

They're like their father. God loves to give. He lavishes gifts on us, and a Christian does the same thing.

In fact, turn to a passage I love, which is 2 Corinthians chapter 9. In fact, it's where my favorite scripture is. 2 Corinthians chapter 9. We're looking at verse 6. But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.

That word cheerful is this word in the Greek. God loves a hilarious giver. I tell people when we take, I was listening this morning, no I wasn't, but when we pass the offering basket, you should hear chuckles up and down the pew.

This should be a hilarious experience. God loves a hilarious giver. Okay.

Now, if you are a hilarious giver, look how God responds. And here's my favorite verse in the whole Bible, verse 9, verse 8. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you. Now, first of all, we have to talk about grace.

I didn't talk about it the whole time in these messages. This is a very important concept that we understand what grace is. It's there in Ephesians chapter 1. The word isn't even there, but the concept is there.

It says, he has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Some past, some versions say the heavenly realm. So here is the heavenly realm.

What's there? Well, it's God's unlimited love. It's God's unlimited power. It's God's unlimited wisdom.

It's God's, just fill in the blanks. All of it. Unlimited.

It's God. And he says that he's able to make all of that, through Christ, available to little people like us. And this passage is saying that God is able to make all of this abound, that means unlimited, that we always will have all sufficiency in all things so that we can abound unto every good work.

But don't take it out of its context. If you are not a hilarious giver, I'm not sure God will be a hilarious giver either. Now he'll, he's a generous giver, but he looks for the people who are hilarious givers, and then he gives in kind.

This is a tremendous concept. We should work. The Bible only gives one passage where it says why we're to work.

Now obviously it's understood we work so we can meet the needs of our families, but it says we need to work with a motive to give. Okay? And 2 Corinthians 9, if you go to the chapter before, a passion would be to have equality in the brotherhood. So that if somebody has too much, it helps the person who doesn't have enough.

And it's all equaled out. There are no rich people, there are no poor people. In the world, that's the ideal society.

I mean the liberals are always talking about the haves giving to the have-nots, and let's equal it all out, and that all sounds great. That's communism. But communism won one-third of the world with that promise.

From each according to his needs, to each according, I'm sorry, from each according to his, what is it, from each according to his means, to each according to his needs. And one-third of the world said that's great, we want communism. And they didn't deliver.

But the Christians should be able to deliver. They should be able to say this is what we believe. We believe in equality, and then the world should see it actually happens.

Okay? All right. So we pray for necessities. We lay up treasure in heaven.

Okay? We visited my uncle one time in Wilmington, Delaware. He's not a, he was not a Mennonite. He's not living any longer.

And he was a multimillionaire. And he said to me one day when we were there, he said, well Johnny, and we were driving in his Parkview Avenue Lincoln to somewhere, and he knew what I believed. And so he said, well Johnny, we can't take it with us.

And I wished afterward I'd have said, Uncle John, you can take every penny of it with you, but you've got to give it ahead of time. You can translate it all into heavenly wealth, every bit of it. Okay? That's the picture that we get.

That we can lay up treasure in heaven by giving ahead of time. All right. The next thing we pray for, and I'm going over these terribly fast, but I hope you're getting them, these ten postures of prayer.

The next is we pray for forgiveness. This is the only part of the prayer that Jesus repeats, because I think he realizes how important this is for us to learn to forgive. What do you do when you forgive? It means you absorb the hurt and the indignation of the wrong on yourself, and let the other person go free as if they never did it.

And that's why we don't do it, because that's so unfair. My children would say to me, well Dad, you don't know what he did to me. And I would say, well that's what forgiveness is, what he did to you.

You take that all on yourself and let them go free. That's what Jesus did to us. He took it all on himself, and he lets us go free.

Joseph, 17 years of age, he's carried into Egypt. It's to be another 13 years before he finally is exalted to be ruler in Egypt. So for those 13 years, the boy was mistreated.

He was mistreated by his brothers, sold into slavery. He was mistreated by Mrs. Potiphar. He was mistreated by the people in the prison.

They forgot about him after he tried to help them. And yet when he was finally placed in a position of leadership and was given a wife, his first son was born. Does anybody remember what the name of that boy was? What did he call his first son? Nobody remembers.

Manasseh. Does anybody know what Manasseh means? God hath made me to forget. Really? If you'd asked Joseph to tell you about his life, he'd have said, I don't remember.

No, Joseph could tell you every detail of that awful story, but there'd be no bitterness, there'd be no anger. God had taken it away. And that gives me hope to forgive.

That if I forgive and I take the pain and the indignation of the wrong on myself and let the other person go free, that doesn't mean we're never going to talk to them about it. We might sometime, but it's not going to be an anger and selfishness. It'll be constructive help to help them with a problem maybe that they had with the way they treated us.

But as far as the treatment was concerned, we can let it go with the promise that God will make us to forget the anger and the bitterness of the situation. That's a tremendous comfort to me, that if I take upon myself the hurt and the indignation, let the other person go free, then he's free, I'm free, everybody's free, but it's all said and done. This is a tremendous concept.

Corrie Ten Boom one time had a dream that she, there was this enemy of hers in a cage, and she was going around the cage with a stick and he couldn't get away, and she was punching him and making him miserable. And God in the dream said, Corrie, open the door of the cage and let him go free. And Corrie said, no.

And finally the Lord convinced her. She opened the door, let the man out of the cage, and guess who came out? Corrie herself. Jesus said, if you don't forgive, forgiveness is basically releasing, you will not be released.

People call me on the phone and all they have addictions, and they have depression, and they have loneliness, and they have all these things. The first question I ask them, what is your relationship to your parents? Oh, my parents. Okay, as soon as you let your parents free, God is going to think about your freedom.

So I don't want to hear about your loneliness, and I don't want to hear about your depression, and I don't want to hear about your addictions. I mean, listen, I'm more compassionate. I don't say that, but that's what I'm thinking, until you're ready to let everybody in your life be free.

If you want to be free, everybody else has got to be free. Well, how does this work? Well, Corrie Ten Boom also tells a story of someone after a meeting where she was speaking, was coming forward and shaking out his hand and saying, holding out his hand and saying, Corrie, will you forgive me? Well, it was the man who, when she was in that prison at Belsenbergen in Germany, who had gone out of his way to make her as miserable as he possibly could. He was an awful person.

And here he was, asking her to forgive him. And she said, as a Christian, I still had horrible thoughts about this man. I could not forgive him.

But she said, then I remembered that I have no control over my feelings, which we don't really. I do have control over the members of my body, and the Bible says if we yield our members, that's what we're supposed to do. So she said, I thought, well, I at least have control over my hand.

So she reached out her hand to shake his hand, and she said, and that's when the miracle took place. That's when this grace all came flooding in. And she said, and by the time I clasped his hand, I was able to say, brother, I forgive you, and my heart was filled with love and forgiveness.

But you see, we wait for God to give it before we act. And God is saying, I want an act of faith. I want you ready to say I forgive you when you don't even feel it.

And once you do what I've told you to do, then I will do what you can't do. Am I making any sense? Forgiveness. We were not made for unforgiveness.

I told you this morning, even our body breaks down if we don't do what is right. Okay, the next thing we pray is against temptation. Lead us not into temptation.

Well, what's the difference between temptation and what we all experience? Well, when we get into a bad, a difficult situation, our temptation is to blame others, to blame circumstances, and even to blame God. And we're praying that, Lord, when I get into temptation, help me not to blame other people, help me not to blame circumstances, and certainly help me not to blame you. Help me to take full responsibility for my life, and help me to do what you want me to do so you can pour out your grace upon my life.

That's what we're praying. We're not praying that we won't have trials. In fact, I want you to turn to Romans chapter 5 and see what Paul's attitude was toward trials.

He says that we rejoice in the grace of God, and then he says in verse 3, and not only so, we glory in tribulations. How many of you people glory in tribulations? By the way, the word tribulation comes from the Latin word tribulum, which was the flail that they used to beat the grain out of the stalks. It's severe pain.

And Paul says, I glory in tribulations. Why? Because they work patience. He says, every time I go through it, I know what's going to happen on the other side.

And so each time I go through it, I'm able to handle it better. It helps me with patience, because I know what's coming. And patience works with experience, which is character.

And character works hope. Like I said, you have experience with this. And the love of God, then it shed abroad in my heart.

So all that has to happen before we really experience the love of God toward other people. So the Bible says, do all things without murmurings, and do all things without disputings. Murmurings toward God, disputings with brethren.

That's all past. We don't do that anymore. We don't murmur toward God.

We don't dispute with our brothers. We are not led into that temptation. We never take deliverance for granted.

But we know that God will have to help us with this one. And then we pray for deliverance. Deliver us from evil.

Now, the church fathers also said, there should be deliver us from the evil one. And that's how I always pray it. Deliver us from the evil one.

It's actually the devil that we want to be delivered from. And everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be delivered from anxiety, poverty, broken dreams, broken hopes.

Everybody wants deliverance from the present problems. And we pray for that. We pray that God will deliver us.

David said, deliver me from blood guiltiness. Paul said, oh wretched man that I am. We all want to be freed from this problem situation that we find ourselves in.

And we pray that. Freedom to be our best. That we'll be conquerors of all those things.

There's a song in the hymnal that says, oh life in whom is life indeed. And I love the next statement. Through whom our best desires are freed.

Stir thou that life within us, we pray. That song says. All right.

So Jesus recognized evil as a reality. And he wants us to pray for deliverance. And then we finally say, thine is the kingdom.

We remember this is not our kingdom. We don't have to make this happen. We just simply have to do our part.

It's his kingdom. The first use of the word kingdom is in the Old Testament. Where it talks about that Israel was to be a kingdom of priests unto God.

We're just simply intermediaries. Mediating God's grace on the generation around us. Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.

So now, let me go through these just quickly. We're to pray as sons. God is our father.

Whatever he says is right. No matter what we think or feel. That's how we're gonna pray.

We're to pray as brothers. We're to make sure all our relationships are the way they should be. We're to pray for reverence.

We're to see God as the great other who sees the total picture. And we have to let him help us to see that perspective. We're to pray for reverence.

That we would live in a way that people would get a proper view of who God is. We're to live for realization of the kingdom. Our personal redemption is only a means to an end that God wants to redeem society.

We're to pray for obedience. We're to pray for necessities to be shared with the brotherhood. They're not our necessities.

We're to pray for forgiveness and we will be free to the extent that we free others. We're to pray against temptation that we would not blame God and others but we would take personal responsibility and we're to pray for deliverance. It's all in this prayer.

It's all in here. So my prayer is that we can live this prayer and demonstrate the reality of this prayer and the whole Sermon on the Mount to the world in which we live. I'm reminded of the old couple who went to Africa and served there all their lives until they were so old that people forgot they were even there and then they decided to come home and they were on the same ship as Teddy Roosevelt who was coming back from one of his safaris in which he had shot a bunch of exotic animals and they docked in San Francisco and Teddy Roosevelt got off the ship to the ticker tape parade and they led him down through the streets.

All the people followed him and the old couple was left standing on the deck and the dear old brother looked at his wife for one moment of bitterness and said this is not fair. He goes to Africa for two weeks for his own pleasure and look what he gets. We went to Africa and we spent our whole lives there and we sacrificed everything we had and look what we get.

There's not even anybody here to welcome us and she turned to him and said dear we are not home yet. We're still in an alien world. Someday we will come home and I want to guarantee you something.

What we receive when we enter those gates into that land will be far greater than any ticker tape parade. The Bible talks about it in the book of second Peter about the reward we will receive and so let's persevere to the end with those things we've talked about here today. Let's be people of faith.

Let's put first things first. Let's let's live in a way that if somebody says what's his what's his number one value in life without any question people will say the kingdom of God, Jesus. That's all we hear him that that's that's what he gets the most excited about.

That's what he spends his most time with. That's where his investment is. No question.

Let's live that way. Shall we bow our heads for prayer? Father I thank you for this wonderful kingdom prayer. Lord we pray this sometimes pretty hypocritically.

We aren't really doing what we're praying and I just pray Lord help us each day to become more aware of your kingdom and how each activity and each thought makes its contribution as we go about our responsibilities and I pray Lord that you would bless this congregation. I pray that they would live in such a way that they would be known for their heavenly character on this earth. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.