Thank you for listening to this audio production of Willow Creek Presbyterian Church in Winter Springs, Florida. We exist to glorify God by declaring and demonstrating the power of the gospel, inviting people to discover and deepen their relationship with Jesus. Now, dads and moms, I don't know if you've ever had the humbling experience of yelling at your children for doing something wrong, only to find out that they didn't do anything wrong, but that you, in fact, were at some degree at fault. I've had that experience on so many occasions, I've been absolutely humbled by it. And as our children have grown up, and as we've had new drivers in our family, one of the flashpoints for these kind of mistaken conflicts is surrounding the keys that go to our automobiles. I will go to the brass tray by our front door and look for my car keys and I won't find them. And of course, I immediately assume that some foul play is involved. After all, it couldn't be me at fault, it has to be somebody else. And so I will start parading around the house in an increasingly dramatic fashion, looking for the car keys. Who has the car keys? Who took them the last time? Who had, check your pockets, check your backpacks. Who has the car keys? Well, it was just a few weeks ago that I went on one of these tie rates and was especially adamant only to find out after searching high and low for the keys and making my children do the same that I found the very keys I was looking for in my own pocket. I was embarrassed to say the least, but I imagine many of you, if you've lived long enough to have had a similar experience, have you ever looked for sunglasses only to look in the mirror and find them atop your head? Have you ever looked for a fork when you're getting ready to eat your dinner? Where is my fork? Where did I put my fork? Why didn't no one give me a fork? Only to notice it's in your hand as you're walking around looking for it. I think most of us live our lives as God's children somewhat that way. We look around for treasures that we already possess, things that God has given to us, and we look high and low for them elsewhere, forgetting that they are already ours in Christ. This week we said, as we entered this sermon series about the Lord's Prayer, that our adoption as God's children means that we have access to the throne of our Father in heaven. We can approach Him anytime, anywhere, with any concern. One of the things that we're going to explore in the coming weeks is that the Lord's Prayer doesn't offer up sample petitions for extraordinary things. It actually offers sample petitions for what we might consider mundane things, daily bread and so on. God is not only interested in the extraordinary events of our lives, He is interested in the very ordinary events of our lives and our ordinary needs, and so we as God's children have access to approach anytime, anywhere, not because we're so good, but because our God is so good, and in Jesus Christ He's reconciled us to Him and adopted us into His family. In Hebrews chapter 4, verse 16, the writer of Hebrews, who we don't know, who wrote these great words, said that as we approach the throne of grace, we can expect to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Our position before God, the Father, is fundamentally changed. We are no longer His enemies, we are not merely friends, we are family. And so last week, we took a great amount of time to reinforce that Jesus' first words in this prayer emphasize the family relationship that we now enjoy with God. God could have taught us to pray and address our prayers in any number of ways we said. He could have said our Creator, He could have said our Lord, all of those things would be true. He could have even said our friend, but friendship is usually resting on some kind of performance. Instead, God said our Father, our family. Last week, I also shared about my grandmother, who became my grandmother around my age of 14 when my mother married my stepfather. At first I called her my step grandmother, she would have none of it. She said she didn't have step children. She only had children. I was as it were adopted into her family. While one summer she invited me to take part in the family business, they lived on a dairy farm, and they grew feed corn as well as sweet corn. And several rows of sweet corn would be harvested for the family to enjoy with the surplus being sold by the road. And she invited me to be one of her salesmen when I spent a week with her one summer. I went out by the roadside to sell corn, and I felt bad at first that I wasn't selling much corn. I wondered what was wrong with me, that I wasn't flagging down enough vehicles to buy the corn. I went in and I spoke to her. I said, I'm sorry, I'm not selling as much corn as maybe you had hoped. And she said, I don't have any expectations. If you sell corn great, if you don't sell any great, I just want you to be a part of this. And in the same way, that's what God has invited us into, our relationship with God, our work as it were in the family business, is not predicated on our performance. It rests on our relationship, given to us freely by grace, that we are God's family. See, there's two approaches we can have before God. We can approach Him as a contractor trying to earn our keep, or we can approach Him as children. The former is based upon our performance, and it can leave us feeling anxious if we haven't performed up to the level that we think we need to to be accepted and approved. My initial fears that I wasn't selling enough were predicated on viewing myself as a contractor and not a child. But just as my grandmother invited me to view myself rightly as her grandchild, God invites you to view yourself, not as his contractor, not as his hired and, but as his beloved son, beloved daughter, a prince, or a princess in his kingdom. Your work in the family business, so to speak, is an invitation born of grace, not something you've secured by your works. Of course, your works matter. You're taking part in God's work and bring great joy to you. You can even become the occasion where you feel the truth that you are a family member more deeply. But listen carefully, feeling that truth more deeply does not make it any more true. The experience of God's grace, the enjoyment of that grace, doesn't change the fact that God's grace is fixed and immutable in our lives. Unlike contractors, children have a relationship with their loving parents independent of their performance. Certainly, they can grieve their parents, but their parents, if they are loving parents. If they are like our father in heaven to any degree, they will not disown their children. They act in response to their love, not as a means to secure it. And even if a parent makes a decision in their lives, that is not something that they particularly enjoy. If a loving parent makes a decision for a child, that the child objects against, hopefully behind even that objection, is the trust that the parent means well. And how much more so is that true of God, that behind all that God does for us, whether we like it in the moment or not, is a prevailing concern for our good and the promise of a coming glory. He says that the troubles we have are not worth comparing to the glory that is yet to be revealed. God has a plan and a purpose for us, even in our trials, even in our problems, and how beautiful is that. That access gives us confidence. Last week I shared a quote from Tim Keller, probably the most influential pastor in my own life, my understanding of prayer, much of what I am saying, and the servicers resting upon his insights into the scriptures. Tim Keller said this, the only person who dares wake up at King at 3 a.m. for a glass of water as a child, and we have that kind of access. And my question to you this morning is, do you enjoy your access to God the Father? Do you remember who you are, day by day, a moment by moment? Do your prayers reflect a trust that you are God's beloved child? Or do you, like me, searching for car keys, forget the treasure that you already possess? There's two identities, and every morning, like this, we face a choice. We can view ourselves before God as one of two things. A contractor trying to earn his keep or a child, enjoying his or her place in the family, in the family business. If we view ourselves as the former, we'll be anxious, swinging on some kind of emotional pendulum back and forth between feelings of security and feeling shaky before God, because what we have ultimately grounded our confidence in is not the assurance of his love, but our level of performance. And sometimes we'll feel as though our performance is good, that we've prayed enough, that we've studied God's word enough, that we've honored him enough that he would be pleased with us as a good employer, and other times we'll wonder. And honestly, if we're really reflecting rightly, we will always feel insufficient to stand before God in our performance. After all, what if God, looking at us, sees such deficiency that he wants to break the relationship? If we're a contractor, and that's our mindset, we will be filled with anxiety. We can even be filled with anger when we feel that we've done the right thing, but God hasn't rewarded us as we think we deserve. But if we view ourselves as a child of God rightly, that can produce contentment and calm in our lives. Because we know whether our performance waxes or wanes, God is true to His word. But His performance unlike ours will never fail. How do we get to that point of enjoying that contentment and calm? How can we get to a point of experiencing in prayer that sense of peace? That's the question before us this morning. How do we put away the identity of a contractor and take on our correct identity as God's children? To answer that question, the Lord's Prayer continues with another phrase, hallowed be thy name. Hallowed be thy name. This morning I want to share with you a simple truth that God's presence in your life, God's love, should be the center of your soul's universe, that God alone can be the center of gravity for your soul. I've recently been watching this great series on Amazon Prime called How the Universe Works. It's steeped in naturalistic assumptions. If you're not familiar with that term, basically it's steeped in the assumptions that God does not exist and that all that exists is just merely the product of matter plus time plus chance. That the universe is a closed system impersonal that God is not at work. And as I'm listening to this series, I'm enjoying it not because I agree with the assumptions that lay behind so much of what is said but rather because I reach the opposite conclusion as I see the beauty of the universe as it is portrayed in this series. That God in His power has created something so beautiful. And one of the recent episodes that I watched it described the earth and the earth that we inhabit is existing in something it called the Goldilocks Zone. And if you remember Goldilocks, the old story, Goldilocks broke into a cabin owned by some bears and went up to the tables in the dining room and saw three bowls of porridge and one bowl of porridge was too hot. And another bowl of porridge was too cold and the third bowl of porridge was just right. And so they call the zone in which the earth exists, the Goldilocks Zone because a little bit this way or a little bit that it would be too cold or too hot but we are in just the right orbit for life to flourish. I would say the same thing is true of our souls that unless we are in the proper orbit around God, we will move outside so to speak the Goldilocks Zone for our souls. We are designed to be in a proper orbit around God. And if our lives are not finding their center in God, then we won't enjoy what would otherwise be ours, the freedom and the flourishing that comes from having God at the center. This fact is perhaps why Jesus moved so quickly in the Lord's prayer from adoption to adoration. What we ultimately adore in a word what we hallow will set the orbit of our lives. So what does it mean to hallow? Hallows are not a word that we use very often anymore, right? In fact the most common usage of the word hallow comes on October 31st of every year when we celebrate with candy and costumes, Halloween. And if you are a student of history or language, you know that Halloween has its origin, its etymology and some old English meaning all hallows even or all hallows even, something we know also is all saints day. And if we can bridge these two together, all hallows even all saints day, we have something of a hint of hallows meaning generally it means something sacred. Anything set apart is holy, however in the context of the Lord's prayer it means just a little bit more than that. Not only holy, not only sacred and set apart, but also ultimate because what is hallowed in the Lord's prayer, the name of our Lord, His very identity, His reputation. Not only sacred, not only the center, but the ultimate reality of the universe and the ultimate center of our lives and the proper center of our souls. In Exodus chapter 20 verse 7, the Old Testament, in the Ten Commandments God was very careful to protect the holiness of His name in His law. He said, you shall 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. To invoke the name of someone else is to invoke their personhood, their reputation, their authority, and so we are commanded to never take the Lord's name in vain. That is to not bring Him glory, proper glory in the use of His name. We should be very careful with the Lord's name even as Jesus invites us to approach the Lord using His name, but hallowing it properly. God's zealous for the glory of His name. In Isaiah chapter 42 verse 8, the Old Testament prophet speaks the word of the Lord. He says, I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory I give to no other nor my praise to carved idols. God is zealous for His glory. He zealous for His name. He will not share it with anyone. But yet in the Lord's prayer, we are invited to approach the Lord using the name of Jesus. In fact, it is through that very name of Jesus and only in that name that we can be saved. In Acts chapter 4 verse 12, the Apostles testified and there is salvation to no one else for there is no name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. God's name is the ultimate sacred, proper center of our lives and He gives us our proper orbit. The proper orbit of our souls is only found as we hallow His name. That is the orientation of the Lord's prayer. As we come to the Lord, we come acknowledging that He is intimately involved in our lives, but most properly at the center of our lives. In other words, our true center is God. Adoption should therefore, listen carefully, lead to adoration. When we reflect upon the fact that God has drawn us into His family, that He who is great and greatly to be praised, has condescended to enter into our lives and draw us into His family, to adopt us as His own children, the natural impulse, born of God's spirit, the spirit, the Bible calls the spirit of sonship, what is consistent with our being God's children, what is born in us is the desire to adore God. Just for this reason, that's the Westminster shorter catechism begins this way. So many centuries ago, written to reflect this ultimate truth, the first question of the shorter catechism, the issue of primary importance, what is man's chief end, what is humanity's chief purpose, design, what is its end, and the answer, man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. God at the center of our lives, the object of our deepest adoration. We've been made in His image. God designed us because we are in His image to love and be loved just as He loves and is loved. You remember Jesus as He prayed. He prayed to the Father with adoration. He loved and loves the Father and His greatest delight, the Lord Jesus was at the Father delighted and loved Him. You remember when Jesus was baptized, the sky spoke, God the Father spoke in saying, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. God the Father adores the Son and the Son adores the Father, the Father and the Son adore the Spirit and the Spirit adores the Father and the Son and into this relationship of love in the persons of the Trinity, God has invited us to know His love and to love Him in return. We've been created in His image. It's what we were designed to do. We are designed to worship and we will worship. It's not a question of whether you're religious or not. We're all religious. It's just a question of what form our religion takes. Sometimes our religion takes traditional forms, the worship of a particular God. Other times, the religious impulse that's woven into every human being takes other seemingly irreligious forms, the secular forms of chasing after worldly things, taking good things and making them ultimate things. You might object and say, I don't believe in God. I don't worship anything. Make no mistake. You do. We all worship. It's just a question of what? Our prayers are a reliable guide into what we consider the center of our lives. Even if our prayers are directed toward God the Father rightly, the form and content of our prayers can tell us a lot about what we really worship, about what is truly the center of our lives. Do we tend to pray only in times of crisis? Or do we pray because we long to be with God? In those moments of crisis, what we testify, if these are the times that birth our prayers, is that whatever we're seeking, whatever created that crisis is for us closer to the center of our universe than we want to admit. Do we tend to pray only for the fulfillment of particular desires? Are we long on prayers for certain things? Perhaps a spouse or a promotion at work? Are we long on prayers for those sorts of things? But when those things are granted, we become increasingly prayerless. What we testify is that at the center of our souls is perhaps something worldly, at least a little too close to the center. Do we tend to pray only in public to be heard and seen by others? That was what Jesus called out the religious leaders of his time with as we read last week. Do we tend to pray only as a quid pro quo? We pray as a means of getting rewards from God, what we're saying in those moments, might be that we value the gift more than the giver. Do certain losses prompt prayerlessness? When God doesn't come through for us, as we expect, or as we desire, do we return to the Lord and say that He is not enough to maintain the relationship, but only that thing we saw it would have been sufficient to continue. In that moment, is God truly the center of our lives? These are always to reveal what's truly at the center. So who alone can fill that space? Well, the truth is that God alone is worthy of that honor. We should hallow Him before and beyond all else. That's why the Lord's prayer moves quickly from the doctrine of adoption to the practice of adoration. God alone can bear the weight of being the center of our lives and our souls. There's a little phrase wedged between our father and how it would be thy name. Do you remember what it is? Who art thou in heaven? And that's very significant. It's the bridge between adoption and adoration. When Jesus counsels us to begin our prayers with our father, he's saying that God is near us. He's imminent. He's involved. That we can refer to him as Abba, our dad. Because he's not simply far off. He's drawn near to us with tender affection. We enjoy an intimacy with God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And God wants us to ground our prayers and the confidence that comes from that intimacy. But Jesus doesn't leave that prayerful instruction with just the intimacy. He moves beyond imminence to transcendence immediately. Our father who art thou in heaven. Though he is near to us, he is beyond us. Though he is involved in our lives, he is infinitely more powerful, infinitely more wise, infinitely more majestic. And beyond all of those things, God exists in his glory. The prophet Isaiah reflected upon this. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 22, you don't need to turn there, just listen to these words. It says, it is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. The biblical portrait of God is that he is high and lifted up and his spread, a canopy of creation around all the individuals of earth who art to him like tiny little creatures. He's so vast and infinitely beyond. Isaiah continued and Isaiah 55, 8 through 9, with the conclusion or the implication of that transcendence. God says, regarding his wisdom for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways declares the Lord. For is the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. What's our father saying? He's saying, I've come to you to be with you, to have every hair on your head number, not as a matter of trivia, not as an expression of omniscience, but to have every hair on your head numbered because I dote on you and I love you and I know everything about you. But even though I've drawn near to you, I'm not confined to you. I am so much beyond you. And as we reflect upon the grandeur of God, what is the conclusion, but to adore him and to worship him when we see him more and more rightly? That's been the conclusion I've been reaching as I've been watching this series about the cosmos. It's so interesting how looking at the vast cosmos can prompt unbelief and belief, deepening unbelief for those who see a naturalistic universe in which there's no personal creation or personal involvement, a closed system, and those who see in the creation something interrupted by the fall, but whose splendor one day will be realized in a fullness never before achieved, looking at the glory of the sun, the moon, the stars, the cosmos and realizing that these are the pledge of a future glory, a creation not only restored, but one day filled in ways that the mind can't understand, that we cannot even imagine. God is our object. He's the only one worthy of supreme glory. When the angels broke through and spoke the words of Christ coming into the world, God's ultimate expression of imminence, taking on flesh and dwelling among us, the angels responded with songs of praise, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased, with whom is God pleased? He's pleased with you, his beloved child, his glory is in the highest, but he's come to you and now you are the object of his pleasure, along with his son Jesus. Only God is worthy. Only God can bear the weight. When several years ago I was over at a friend's house, and they had a little child that had one of those toy trucks that run on a battery, the plastic ones, not very big. The little child wanted to be so much like his father that he would drive around his little vehicle and try to do with it what he saw his father doing with the full-size Ford truck in the driveway. It was cute to watch him, but I did have to wonder how successful the child would be towing a family boat behind this little plastic toy. The same is true of us. We oftentimes try to take our little things and make them pull the weight that only God can pull. If you expect your wife or your husband to give you what only God can provide you, an ultimate sense of security, an abiding sense of significance. If you place that burden upon your spouse, you will exasperate them. You will grind them down. If you are an insecure person and you're always looking to someone around you to give you that ultimate and abiding sense of security, you will destroy the relationship because that person cannot bear the weight. They cannot fulfill that expectation. There's no word they can say that will ever be enough and there's no number of reassurances that'll ever be able to give that will silence that fear in your heart and in your mind and in your soul. They simply cannot bear the weight, but one can. God, when your wife or husband fails to provide the most profound needs of your soul, you can either look upward toward the Lord or you can look outward and the temptation when you look outward will be to find another person that might be able to do what this person was not able to do, but the sad experience of human history shows that that solution's not to be found outwardly, horizontally among those around us can only be found in our Lord. If you expect your children to give you an identity through good behavior or accomplishments, if you believe that your children, the way they turn out, is going to make you feel significant as a person. You're placing a burden upon them that's going to exasperate them. What happens when they grow up? And they choose another course than the one that you in your heart and mind long for for them, but really for you. What happens when they grow up and move away? What happens if they return home to the Lord before you? If you peg your identity and worth to them, you will lose all sense of identity. The same is true of work, the same is true of accomplishments, the same is true of maintaining our public image and so much more. And so where is God in your life truly? Not where do you affirm he is theologically, but where is God practically in your life? And how do your prayers speak the truth of where God is? Is he truly hallowed as the center of your soul? God needs to be at the center. Oftentimes it's not so much that we love the wrong things. There's nothing wrong with loving your spouse and finding some sense of completion within them. That's by God's design. There's absolutely nothing wrong with loving your children and desiring the best for them. That's part of God's design. There's nothing wrong with loving your work and using the gifts that God has given you in your vocation to glorify Him and service to others. That also is by God's design. There's nothing inherently wrong with being concerned for a good reputation. The Bible continually calls us to guard the reputations of others and to guard our own reputation with outsiders as well as those within the church. Nothing wrong with those things. The problem comes when we take those good things and we make them ultimate things. When we move them from the periphery to the center of our lives and make them the ultimate sacred priority of what we're all about. It was Augustin in the 4th century in the city of God who said this. He said, though something is good, it can be loved in the right way or in the wrong way. In the right way, that is when the proper order is kept in the wrong way when that order is upset. The constellation of your solar system, so to speak, would be God at the center and then everything radiating outwardly in its proper orbit, loving everything else as an expression of ultimate love for God. If we would love things rightly, God must become greater in all of our lives. And the Lord's Prayer teaches us that if we would pray rightly, we would first praise God for his place in the center of our lives. Thank you for listening to this audio production of Willow Creek Presbyterian Church in Winter Springs, Florida. For worship times, directions, or just to learn more about the ministry of Willow Creek, please visit us online at willowcreekchurch.org.