Submission to God in Prayer

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Remain standing and we'll read our scripture as we prepare our hearts to hear from the Lord this morning.
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We're going to be in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 10.
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The word of God says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Father God, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you for this awesome opportunity that we have to study it together.
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We ask that you would, first and foremost, keep me from error.
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As I seek to preach your truth, keep me from following after the sinfulness of my heart and the desire I might have to preach error or to make the sermon about myself.
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Help me to focus this morning intently upon your word.
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And I pray also that you would open the hearts of the people to the truth.
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That through this, they might be encouraged to draw closer to you.
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And Lord, if there be one among us or many among us who have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ in faith and repentance, that Lord, today might be the day that they would hear the gospel and by the power of your Holy Spirit be converted to your truth.
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In Jesus name we pray and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Last week we began somewhat of a mini series in the longer series of our study of the Sermon on the Mount.
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You remember we've been in that series now for many months.
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But last week we began to look at a section on the Sermon on the Mount normally referred to as the Lord's Prayer.
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We call it the Lord's model prayer because we believe that this is the prayer that Jesus gave to us as a model for how we ought to pray.
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Interestingly enough, Matthew chapter 6 is not the only time that we see this prayer recorded in Scripture.
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In Luke 11, we also see this prayer recorded.
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And I want to read it to you now.
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If you want to hold your place in Matthew and go there, it's Luke 11 verses 1 through 4.
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And I just want to read to you the difference because you will notice that what is in Matthew's gospel is different than what is in Luke's gospel.
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And the reason is, is this is two different times.
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In Matthew's gospel, it's in the midst of a sermon.
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Jesus is talking about prayer and he's giving the correction on how to pray correctly.
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But in Luke chapter 11, it's in response to the question, Lord, teach us to pray.
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So in Luke 11, it says this.
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Now Jesus was praying in a certain place.
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And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.
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And he said, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
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Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins.
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For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
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And lead us not into temptation.
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Now you'll notice that the prayer in Luke 11 is different, but it maintains the overarching themes of the prayer given in Matthew.
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There are slight variations, but it maintains the pattern.
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And that's what we must understand about the model prayer.
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The model prayer is not something that is meant to simply be memorized and said rotely as if it were some type of a chant.
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Remember, Jesus said we shouldn't pray that way.
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He said don't pray in vain repetition as the heathen do.
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I think that's the reason why he didn't always say it the same way.
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I think he was giving us a template, a framework, not something meant to necessarily be memorized and done in a certain way every time, but that all of our prayers, every time we go to the Lord, that there would be a foundation.
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This is what prayer should look like.
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This is the framework.
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And as we noted last week, the framework begins with reverence.
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When we come to God, we say our Father, denoting the relationship and the fact that his work of adoption through the Son has occurred in our lives.
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This is not a universality statement that God is the Father of everyone.
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No, this is the statement of God as the Father of those who are in Christ.
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It's a statement of exclusivity.
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He is our Father who is in heaven.
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Hallowed be his name.
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The word hallowed, you remember, is holy.
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So not only is he our Father, but he is also the holy one who created the universe by the very word of his power.
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He spoke it into existence.
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So we come to his presence with reverence.
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And then he moves on to verse 10.
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Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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And what we see here is a shift from our starting the prayer in reverence to now continuing the prayer in submission.
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So that's the shift.
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And that's where we're going to go to today.
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The title of today's sermon is submitting to God in prayer.
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Submitting to God in prayer.
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We go from reverence to submission.
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Probably the least popular subject in all of Christianity is the subject of submission.
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Whether you talk to a group of women about wives submitting to their husbands, or you talk to a group of church members about believers submitting to one another, or you talk to church congregation about submitting to the leadership, or you talk to citizens about submitting to a government.
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All of these things we naturally recoil from the word submission.
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To us it's an ugly word.
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It's a dirty word.
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And it's a word that we do not like to bring into our particular vocabulary.
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Submission brings up pictures of slavery and indentured servitude, and things that we don't like to think about.
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But yet, we also realize that the Bible teaches us that all of the submission that we're supposed to have, whether it's submission in marriage, whether it's submission in the church, whether it's submission in society, all the submission that we ultimately are supposed to have is actually submission to God.
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Because we're submitting to God's authority first in the submission to other authorities.
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Yet, therein lies the big problem.
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Because the thing that most of us have our biggest problem with is submission to God.
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I've heard it said, and I've quoted it before.
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Many of you who have heard me preach have probably heard me say this.
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There's a famous quote.
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Some people attribute it to Mark Twain.
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Others attribute it to Abraham Lincoln.
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There's really no way of knowing exactly where it came from.
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But the quote says this.
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It is not the parts of the Bible that I understand that bother me.
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It's the parts that I don't understand that bother me.
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It's the parts that I do understand, but do not want to obey.
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That's the parts of the Bible that really bother me.
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Not the parts that I don't understand, but the parts that I do understand, but yet do not want to obey.
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The problem, beloved, is twofold in our society.
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One, there is a drastic amount of ignorance about the Bible in our culture.
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But two, even for those who know what the Bible says and are literate to what the Bible says, there are many people who do not want to submit to what the Bible says.
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It's not enough just to know it.
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It's not enough just to have a vain understanding of what the Bible says.
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We are supposed to submit to what God has said.
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We are supposed to bow the knee to Jesus Christ.
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People say He can be your Savior, but not your Lord.
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Such a thing is nonsense.
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He is not your Savior if He is not also your Lord.
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The anti-lordship teaching of the modern church is heresy of the highest order.
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It is nonsense, and we ought not even entertain such a notion.
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So today in our text, we are going to look at these two statements in the Lord's Prayer.
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Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.
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And we are going to see how what we have from the Lord Jesus Christ, what we have from this prayer is an expression of two types of submission.
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One is submission to the sovereign rule of God.
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And two is submission to the sovereign will of God.
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So we submit to God's rule, and we submit to God's will.
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And we will see toward the end that these two things really flow one to the other.
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So let's look first at the sovereign rule of God.
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He says in verse 10, He says, Your kingdom come.
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Well, beloved, when it talks about God's kingdom, we have to understand that the very first thing that should come into our minds is the fact that God's kingdom, His rule is over this entire universe.
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God is the King of heaven and earth.
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God is the King whose presence is everywhere.
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We talk about omniscience, omnipotence, and what's the third one? Omnipresence.
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That God's presence is everywhere.
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One of the things I hear people say all the time, well, if you go to hell, you're out of God's presence.
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They say hell is separation from God's presence.
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Beloved, it is not.
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Hell is separation from God's grace.
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It's not separation from God's presence, because God is present everywhere.
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He is simply present in hell fully and completely in His wrath.
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But it ain't that He ain't there, because He is everywhere.
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So those people who try to soften hell, well, hell is just separation from God.
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Slow down.
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If He's everywhere, then you can't be separated.
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When we talk about the kingdom of God, we are talking about God's authority.
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Jesus wants us to acknowledge God's authority.
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He says He wants us to say to God, Your kingdom come.
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Earlier in our worship service, we read from Psalm 33.
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I want to pull your attention back there, if you'll open your Bible back to Psalm 33.
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I just want to show you a few things from this text, because this talks about God's authority in the world.
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One of the things that sickens me when I hear people say it is God didn't have anything to do with that.
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Something bad will happen.
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And some will say, oh, God didn't have anything to do with that.
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Something terrible will happen.
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Oh, God didn't have no control over that.
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That was just bad.
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God didn't have anything to do with that.
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That's a lie.
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God is sovereign over everything in this world.
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And to say that God didn't have anything to do with it is to say that God is not God.
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Listen to this text from Psalm 33.
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And what does it say about the God of this world? It says, By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made.
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Stop right there.
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Contemplate that.
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The fact that the God of this world created everything simply by speaking it into existence.
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Such a thing should cause us to stop, marvel, and buckle under the weight of such a profundity.
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But let's move on.
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It says, By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made.
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And by his breath of his mouth, all their host.
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He gathers the water of the sea as a heap.
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He puts the deep in the storehouses.
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Let all the earth fear the Lord.
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Beloved, the Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
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I've heard modern Bible teachers say, We need not fear the Lord.
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We reverence the Lord, but we don't fear the Lord.
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Beloved, if you don't have a God that you fear.
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I have a father who I feared.
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And people say, Oh, you reverence your father.
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No, I had a pretty healthy fear of my daddy.
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Because I knew there was a line I dare not cross.
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Still to this day, he's 69 this week.
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Right, dad? Turned 69 this week.
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I've still kind of got a little bit of a fear of it.
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Because he's my daddy.
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And there's a righteous fear there.
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So too is there a righteous fear of God.
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Should be.
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It says, For the fear, let all the earth fear the Lord.
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Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
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For he spoke and it came to be.
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He commanded and it stood firm.
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God spoke and the world came into existence.
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He commanded, it stood firm.
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The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing.
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And he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
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People think they're in control of everything.
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People get so upset because they say, Oh man, everything's out of control.
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Well, I know one person who's in control of everything.
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And that gives me confidence.
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I love to, you know, come around election time.
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I tell people God is still going to be on his throne on Wednesday.
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Don't we vote on a Tuesday, right? Yeah.
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We vote on Tuesday.
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God's still on his throne Wednesday.
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Does that mean we don't vote? No, we go vote.
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We participate as God has given us ability to do that.
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But we need not ever think that God is not in control.
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Because if we do, we will begin to work as the Armenians.
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We will begin to work and think that we have some power over God.
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And we do not.
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We need not think like them.
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Verse 11.
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The counsel of the Lord stands forever.
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The plans of his heart to all generations.
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Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
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The people whom he has chosen as his heritage.
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Again, speaking of God's righteous choice.
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There is that the Lord looks down from heaven.
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He sees all the children of man from where he sits in throne.
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There he sits on his throne.
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He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.
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He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.
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There is nothing that we do that God does not see.
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There is nothing that we are that God does not know.
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There is nowhere that we can be that God is not there.
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He is God.
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He is the king, the master, the ruler of this universe.
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And when we pray his kingdom come, what we are praying is that we desire his rulership over our lives.
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We desire his authority in our lives.
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We're also praying something else.
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When we say your kingdom come, there's also a sense in which we are praying that God would add to his kingdom through our evangelistic efforts.
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How? Because we're praying that the kingdom of God would come to the hearts of men.
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Now, wait a minute, Pastor.
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You're not sounding like a good reformed theologian.
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Listen closely, folks.
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God has chosen and determined whom and how he will save.
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But he has also chosen the means how he will save his elect.
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What is the means, beloved? Evangelism.
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We go out into the world and share the gospel because we know that we are the tool, we are the instrument by which someone will hear the gospel and God, by his Holy Spirit, will convert their soul to be saved.
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We are not like the hyper Calvinist who would say that God already has determined so we have no part in the matter.
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No, we believe that God has chosen, but we also believe he's chosen us to play our part, to go and share the gospel with every creature, knowing that God will do his work that only he can do, which is convert the soul.
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But he will do it through our ministry of evangelism.
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We preach the gospel as the Bible says, we do our part and God is responsible for the increase.
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As Paul said, I planted a polished water, but yet God gave the increase.
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But when we pray thy kingdom come, what we're praying is that the kingdom of God come into the hearts of men.
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We want men and women around the world to hear the gospel and the kingdom of God to increase.
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We want this world to be one for Christ.
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We want to see people converted to Jesus.
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We know the beauty and the value of his kingdom, and we want people to see the beauty and value of his kingdom and relish in it as we do.
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The more people that love Jesus, the better this world will be.
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Such a simple thing to say, but isn't it the truth? The more people that love Jesus, the better this world will be.
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So we pray that God's kingdom come to the hearts of men.
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We pray that God's Holy Spirit would use our evangelistic efforts to reach the wretched souls of men and convert them so that they would follow Christ.
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That's our heart and our soul and our goal.
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So we go out and preach the gospel and we pray, Lord, your kingdom come.
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In addition to this, we must not also forget that when we pray thy kingdom come, we are also praying for the culmination of the kingdom wherein Christ will return perfectly in his second coming.
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One of the biggest failures of modern Christianity, especially American evangelicalism, is the lack of longing for Christ's return.
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Think on that for a moment.
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One of the biggest failures in modern Christian evangelicalism, especially in America, is the lack of longing for Jesus's return.
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Most people are very comfortable in their lives.
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Most Americans are very comfortable in the way that they live.
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Even those among us who are in poverty have much more than those in other nations.
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And there's a certain level of comfort.
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It's been said that the average American dishwasher eats better than like an eighth of the world or something.
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The dishwasher itself gets more nourishment every day from the food that comes off of our plates than goes into the stomachs of many children.
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So in America, we get comfortable.
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And we're comfortable in our lives.
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And so we don't pray that Jesus will return.
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We don't pray his kingdom is going to come.
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We don't say thy kingdom come.
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We say my kingdom come.
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And we have guys who go around and teach you to pray for Mercedes and teach you to pray for your best life now and your best parking space now and all this nonsense.
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Beloved, it is idolatry.
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It is not biblical Christianity.
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And what it has led to is it led to what I call the infinity pill problem.
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I believe in my heart that if you were to take the average person in the church today and you were to offer them a pill that would extend their life into infinity, this life, that if you took and said, here's a pill and if you take this pill, you'll never again get sick.
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You'll never again go hungry.
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You'll never again go thirsty.
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And you'll never die.
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I think the average Christian would take that pill.
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Why? Because we don't long for the kingdom.
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Why would you want to live in this life of sin forever? But we do.
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And we would.
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And shame be on us for that.
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That's a problem.
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We get so captivated by this world that we don't long for the next.
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Beloved, the Bible says our citizenship is in heaven.
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Philippians chapter three, verse 20 says you are not a citizen of this world.
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You are a pilgrim here.
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You are passing through.
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Jesus told us if we love this world, then we don't love him.
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If we are his, we will long for another world.
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Every time I hear about a baby being killed in the womb, my heart longs for another world.
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Every time I hear about a family being destroyed by adultery and divorce, my heart longs for another world.
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Every time I hear about a person who goes into a crowd of people and destroys their lives by killing them indiscriminately, my heart longs for another world.
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Every time I hear about a soldier who is injured and comes back hurt and his life is changed forever, I long for another world.
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Beloved, do you long for the kingdom? I don't know if we do.
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And that's a problem.
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The attitude that God desires of us is that our prayers are saturated with a yearning for his kingdom to come.
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So we submit to it.
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And we submit to his rule.
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We also submit to his will.
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And that's where the text goes on.
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It says in verse 10, it says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Now, a few weeks ago, I made a point in a sermon that God has decreed all things which will ever come to pass his eternal decree.
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We also call his determined plan and purpose.
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If you've ever said God has a plan for everything, God has a purpose for everything.
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You agree with me that God has decreed all things because he it ain't a plan.
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If it ain't plan, it ain't purpose.
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If it ain't a purpose, am I making sense? Hopefully I am.
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When you say he's sovereign, you're agreeing with me that he's in control and he has a plan for all things.
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So in that sense, we say God's will is always done in the sense that God is always in control and he could he could stop the things he could.
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But he decides to allow things and he he moves things forward with a purpose and he has a purpose for all things.
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We understand this.
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So in that sense, we can say God's will is always done because God has the authority over all things.
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Yet in this passage, we are told to pray your will be done.
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Why would we be admonished to pray your will be done if his will is always done? That's an important question for reformed theology.
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If you are a student of reformed theology, which if you're here, you are.
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Why do we say your will be done if his will is always done well? Herein lies a place where we need to make a distinction.
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I'm going to take and put on the hat of the professor now for just a moment and make a distinction for you, because if there is anything that is a prerogative of the theologian, it is the prerogative to make distinctions.
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We must, like in the Trinity, when we talk about God as one in essence and three in persons, we have to make a distinction between essence and persons because that allows us to make the definition understandable.
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So, too, when we talk about God's will, we make a distinction between what we call the preceptive will of God and what we call the decorative or the decretive will of God.
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Now, I'm not trying to confuse you this morning, and normally I would do this on a whiteboard and I'd write it out for you to help you understand, but I didn't bring it with me this morning.
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So you just kind of tune your minds in with me and let me help you understand what I'm saying.
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When I talk about the preceptive will of God, I'm talking about the will of God, which comes to us in the word of God, the precepts or laws of God.
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God has commanded, thou shalt not commit murder.
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That's a precept.
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That's a law.
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And by that we say that's God's will, that you shall not commit murder.
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It's his precept.
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But yet we know people murder every day, right? People are murdered and commit murder every day.
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Then we have what we call the decretive will of God.
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Sometimes people call this the secret will of God.
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And the preceptive will is sometimes called the revealed will.
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God's revealed will versus the secret will.
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Because the secret will is how he's bringing all these things together to work out to the end.
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You know that little passage that you quote all the time? God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him.
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You quote that a lot, I'm sure.
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If you've ever been to the hospital and seen somebody sick, you're going to, in your mind, have to go back to Romans 8.
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Hey, God works all things together.
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You've got to have something to give you some peace.
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Why do you believe that? Because you believe God's will is in there working all these things together.
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You believe that that's true.
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We call that the decretive will of God.
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He's decreeing these things to work together.
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Okay? So we talk about the preceptive will, the decretive will.
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When Jesus says, thy will be done, which one is he talking about? I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, he's talking about the preceptive will.
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Because he adds the statement, on earth as it is in heaven.
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Beloved, there is only one place in the universe where the preceptive will of God is done perfectly.
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And that's in heaven, in his presence.
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The angels of the Lord do the will of God always.
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The ones who didn't, guess what happened to them? The Bible says they were cast down.
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And they have no opportunity for redemption.
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You know that's why Satan hates you? He hates you because you have something he can never have.
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You have an opportunity for redemption through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Satan has been cast out and exiled forever.
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And he never has an opportunity for anything other than hell.
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That's all he has to look forward to forever.
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And he hates God and he hates you.
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So when we talk about the preceptive will of God, we're asking, we're saying to God, we want men and women in this world to obey you.
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Your will, as it is revealed in your word, be done.
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We want people around the world to obey God.
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Wouldn't it be a different world if men and women obeyed God? Families would look different.
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I imagine they'd be a lot bigger if men and women obeyed God.
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Why do I say they would be bigger? Well, we don't seek family anymore.
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We really don't.
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As a society, you see a woman with five, six kids.
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What does the society say? Oh, you're crazy.
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The Bible says our quiver being full is a blessing, not a curse.
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You know what's a curse? Debt.
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And you know what we apply for? Debt.
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You know what we spurn? Children.
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We apply for the curse and we spurn the blessing.
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Beloved, the precepts of the Lord should be the very yearning of our heart.
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This is a call for submission on our part and obedience.
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Because when we say your will be done, unless we're seeking to do his will, then guess what? We're lying.
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Don't say your will be done and then go live like the heathen because you're a hypocrite.
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You say your will be done and then you seek a life of obedience.
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So first, it's a statement about yourself.
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Lord, I pray your will be done, that I would do your will.
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But I also pray that others would do your will as well.
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That we would obey the perceptive will of God.
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And you know what? We won't outside of the grace of God.
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We won't do it.
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We will not submit to God's will.
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We will not obey his will outside of an extension of his grace.
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The Bible says to us that it is the Lord who works within us both to will and to do his good pleasure.
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What does that mean? It means this, that even the desire to do God's will comes from God working in us.
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The very nature of our soul is in rebellion against God.
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But God works within us to will to do his good pleasure.
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I wrote a prayer this week.
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I don't normally do that.
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But it's become part of some of what I'm doing as my own personal discipline to write out prayers.
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I know people say, well, pray from the heart.
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And we ought to pray from the heart.
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But sometimes sitting down and actually writing out what we are thinking and keeping like a diary, like a journal of prayer is a good spiritual discipline.
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And I wrote this and it's very brief, but I want to share it with you.
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Grant us submission to your precepts, O Lord.
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Break our very knees beneath us if you must.
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But let us never stand in rebellion against you.
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Have you ever prayed an imprecatory psalm on yourself? That's what it is.
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God, if you have to break my knees to keep me in submission, do it.
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Don't let me.
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Don't let me rebel against you.
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There's a lot of people who talk about knowing God's will.
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Probably one of the number one questions people ask me when we're in private conversation.
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Pastor, what's God's will for me? And normally it's something about a job.
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Should I go to L.A.
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or New York? Sometimes it's about should I get married or should I not get married or something like that? But my answer is always the same.
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So I'll go ahead and tell you, if you ever ask, it's always going to be the same.
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First Thessalonians chapter four, verse three, the very first part.
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This is the will of God for you, your sanctification.
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And it goes on to talk about abstaining from different things like sexual immorality.
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But you can just stop right at the word sanctification.
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This is the will of God for you, your sanctification.
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That you would be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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That is the will of God for you.
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That is the will of God for everyone.
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That you would submit to Jesus in every area of your life.
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That you would not have a closet at home that you keep those things which you are here trying in vain to hide from God.
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Because that's what most of us do.
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If our life were a house, we've opened our living room to God.
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We've opened our bedroom to God.
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But we have a box under the bed with our pet sins that we have chosen to keep in our lives.
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So as to say to God, you can't see here.
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This is my black box.
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Beloved, when we say your will be done, we are saying we don't have any more black box.
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We don't have any more locked closets.
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We are saying God, your will is my desire.
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Let your kingdom come.
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Let your will be done.
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Beloved, this morning you are in one of two conditions.
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And I want to finish with this.
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This morning you are in one of two conditions.
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You are either in Christ by faith and repentance.
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And if you are, I pray for you.
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I pray two things.
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I pray that you would yearn for Christ's kingdom to come.
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And I pray that you would yearn for obedience to his will.
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But beloved, there is also the chance that you may have come in here today and you are not in Christ.
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You may have come in this morning and this all may be foreign to you.
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And the language I'm using may not be something that you're used to.
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And I want to give you a prayer as well.
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My prayer for you is this.
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That God would make your need of Christ so clear to you.
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And that he would break your heart under the weight of your own sin so strongly.
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That you would not know to do anything else but to cry out for a Savior.
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So it's one or the other.
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Either you're a Christian who needs to be more like Christ.
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Or you're one who is outside who needs to come in to the Savior today.
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Let's bow and pray.
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Father, you are holy.
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You are infinite and wondrous.
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And when we consider your ways, we are struck by their profundity.
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Father, we pray for the believers, Lord, who have heard this message.
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That it would be used of you to draw them closer to you.
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And closer to conformity to the image of Christ.
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We know that your will, your perceptive will for all of us is our sanctification.
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And I pray that you would work that in our hearts.
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And that we would submit to it.
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And that we would not rebel.
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And that if we choose to rebel, that you would break our very knees beneath us.
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That we couldn't stand in rebellion against you.
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Father, I pray for those who are listening to me now in this congregation.
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Or may later listen by audio.
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Lord God, if there are those who have not heard the gospel.
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I pray that they would understand.
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That before we can begin being conformed to Christ.
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We have to first be reborn by the Holy Spirit.
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And I pray that they would understand their sin.
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That they would understand their need of salvation.
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And that they would call out to Christ.
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And be saved.
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We thank you, oh Lord.
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For all your blessings.
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We give you praise for them in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Beloved, please stand as we sing.
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If you have a need for prayer, we encourage you to come.