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MATTHEW 6:9b
(Reading: Ezekiel 36:22-32)
You Know & Show the King
Congregation of our Jesus Christ…
There was a parable our Lord told once entitled 'The Great Banquet.'
It is found in both the gospels of Luke and Matthew.
Matthew, however, tells the story in such a way that it becomes clear it's actually a different story than that in Luke 14.
Matthew does this by specifying that the man having the wedding is a king, and, when ending the parable, he adds something to the parable which quite distinctly shows that kingship.
You see, Matthew describes how, when the king came in to see the guests - those folk he had rounded up off the highways and the byways of the city and the countryside, after those originally invited had declined - that king noticed a man there who wasn't wearing wedding clothes.
The king asks the man, "Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?"
That man is speechless; what can he say for he couldn't have got in without first being offered one of those special gowns to wear?
For not only does the king invite those folk, he even helps them to be able to come by giving the right clothes they need.
It's exactly the same if you were invited to visit our King at Buckingham Palace.
With that invitation, or upon your arrival there, you receive quite clear instructions as to how you are to address the King and give him the correct curtsies.
The man in this parable refused to do this.
With much more than just a simple oversight that man actually severely dishonoured the king.
This is far worse than putting your arm around a Queen!
It is as insulting as if someone had spat in her face!
Congregation, who makes royal protocol except Royalty itself?
And who can enable us to approach God in prayer if it's not the Lord himself?
Our first aspect is exactly about this … WHEN YOU MEET THE KING.
Now, just as we need the Spirit of God reminding us of his great and splendorous holiness, so we also need his help to come to him with the sense of awe and splendour which is appropriate for his glory.
It is all there in one Greek word in our text.
A word which is imperative and passive at the same time.
It both calls us to go and for us to be lead to go!
You see, WHEN YOU MEET THE KING … YOU MUST RESPECT HIM AS KING.
This is shown in the word “hallowed.”
The word “hallowed” means this name is different or separate from other things.
That's why we get the word "holy" from the same word, the word 'hagios'.
So when a person is 'hagious' it is because he's separate from other people.
The temple was 'hagious' because it was different than other buildings.
The altar in the temple was 'hagios' because it was there for a different purpose than ordinary things.
God's Day is 'hagios' because it is different than other days.
All these things are not the same as other things - they are essentially unique and especially so.
And there's something else too about a name in Jesus' time.
WHEN YOU MEET THE KING … YOU CALL HIM KING.
When we use a name it's an identification - that's what we call someone, a verbal tag to pick them out with.
Not much different than having a number actually.
But for the Hebrews then the 'name' means the nature, the character, the personality of the person as they knew about him.
In fact, so closely was it associated with what a person was like that when someone changed in a sudden way, like Saul after the Damascus Road experience, he was given a new name.
Imagine then all which God's Name had in it!
Not just the name 'God' itself but all those different names God is given throughout Scripture.
Why, there's 'El', meaning simply 'God', "the Mighty One".
'El Shaddai', which we might remember from the song, means God Almighty, the God of hosts, the source of salvation for all his people. (Gen.17:1; Exod.6:3)
'Elohim' is plural; it means God in the fullness of his power. (Gen.1:1)
'Elyon' points to the God Most High. (Num.24:16)
'Adonai' points to God as Master or Lord. (Exod.4:10)
'Yahweh' means "I am that I am", or "I shall be what I shall be." (Exod.3:13,14)
'Yahweh' became particularly used for God's unchangeable covenant faithfulness toward His people.
And then, on a number of occasions these names were combined together to make another meaning altogether.
Dear friends, the first petition, the first request, in the Lord's Prayer, is more than a simple request.
It is really a wanting to 'get-to-know-you' for the most important person in your life.
And unlike what many believe today, that person is not you, or what you can become, or what you have been.
This person is someone who is so far beyond and above and deeper than us that we become insignificant dust specks blown by a mighty desert storm.
Congregation, this is really the most overwhelming sense of reverence.
More than meeting an earthly king or queen, we come to meet the King of kings.
Here there has to be the sense of honour, and glorying and exalting God.
To properly pray this is to be humble in spirit, grateful in heart, and to so consider what God has done that our observation becomes rapturous astonishment itself!
Then you worship.
Then there is the echo: "I will praise you O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High." (Ps. 3:1f)
Congregation … YOU WILL SHOW IT WAS THE KING YOU MET.
This is our second aspect.
Where is that echo found?
Where would we hear the constant refrain to the Majesty and Might of our God?
Verses like this… "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
“You have set your glory above the heavens…
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars which you have set in place, what is mind that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" (Ps.8:1,3f)
Where is it?
It's in the psalms of course!
The psalms which are sung prayers to the Lord, prayers which encompass all those things which we would pray about, especially the person of the One we pray to!
"Hallowed be your Name" means that we who have meet this Person are also calling all people to do the same!
YOU WILL SHOW IT WAS THE KING YOU MET.
This means we’re fighting against blasphemy - because that is a growing abuse of the Lord's Name in our time.
But also, positively, we are crying out for everyone to use his Name in the right way.
When we sing words like those of Psalm 34, "Glorify the LORD with me; let's exalt his name together," we invite the world of creation and especially the world of mankind to praise His God.
In other psalms, David traces God's steps in history.
He wants his children and everyone to adore and glorify the Lord because of his wondrous actions.
And seeing what God does - his wisdom and goodness in nature - he wants others to share in it too.
As David sings in Psalm 19, the verses 1 till 4, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
“Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
“There is no speech or language where their voice isn't heard.
“Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world."
It reminds me of the song many Christians love, "O Lord my God when I in awesome wonder, consider all the works Thy hand hath made, I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed; Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee: how great Thou art…".
When we look within ourselves and outside upon the world, we are driven to God.
In the words of Immanual Kant, "the moral law within us, and the starry heavens above us," drive us to God.
YOU WILL SHOW IT WAS THE KING YOU MET.
And when we meet this God we not only praise him for all his works, we also, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, know what shines forth from those works - his almighty power, his wisdom, his kindness, his justice, his mercy, and his truth (Q & A 122).
No one could reverence those Greek and Roman gods with their loves and wars, their hates and adulteries, their trickeries and their deceit.
No one could have any respect whatsoever for changeable, immoral, and impure gods.
But in the God we know we can have the complete opposite - his great qualities demand no less!
And when this God came in person to this earth of ours, how much weren’t all these marvellous qualities proved to be so true?
Was there ever a man who walked this planet quiet like the God-Man?
Could anyone else possibly compare with God’s one and only Son?
The gospel of John especially highlights the amazing visitor to our world.
Right in the first chapter the apostle opens up the wonder of what it was to have the divine visitor, “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.
“We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (1:14.)
And when Jesus himself spoke of this, it is in the High Priestly prayer of John 17.
There he prays to his Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.
“And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” (v4f.)
We, however, he lifts to the Father, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.” (v7.)
Congregation … YOU WILL SHOW IT WAS THE KING YOU MET - IN PERSON!
That’s where we must look.
The Christ who knew that glory which always belongs to the Father, “the glory I had with you before the world began,” he was filled with this sense of the glory of God, and his one desire was that all people would come to know it too!
It’s so far apart from what this world now thinks about God.
And now only out there, it’s also in here!
I mean, you test your ideas of God by the teaching of Scripture and you’ll see how much you miss the majesty and might of God!
Martin Luther in his Catechism answers the question “How is God’s name hallowed among us?” by saying, “When both our life and doctrine are fully Christian.
This means that when what we believe in our hearts, and the way we live our lives, is completely consistent with God’s Word, then we know and show what we pray!
Then we do what we always ought to do with our prayers.
You see, we don’t mean that prayer unless we’re already answering it in our own hearts and lives.
It makes sense - doesn’t it?
How can we be expecting the Lord to answer our prayers if we aren’t being open to receiving him in the first place?
YOU WILL SHOW IT WAS THE KING YOU MET - IN PRAYER.
But if we do direct all our living so that he is honoured and praised, then others too will be brought to hear and see what we say.
As Jesus spoke earlier in this Sermon on the Mount, “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (5:16.)
Then this part of the Lord’s Prayer is already being answered.
I hope I have conveyed something of the seriousness of this.
That we pray is vitally important - you cut your life-line if you don’t!
And what we pray is just as important.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews reinforces how much this matters.
In chapter 12, verses 28 and 29, a chapter which warns of the ultimate consequences of rejecting God, he also makes this point for believers, “since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let’s be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
Reverence for God means we live in a God-filled world, living a life in which we can never forget God.
Beyond church and beyond Christian fellowship, we have this awareness of God which is everywhere and at all times.
Who God is demands nothing less!
He has saved us for nothing less!
Even now he calls us to do nothing less than that!
YOU WILL SHOW IT WAS THE KING YOU MET - EVERYWHERE!
Another Catechism, The Westminster Shorter Catechism, sums it up well, “Man’s chief end” - his very purpose for being here – “is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”
The way Jesus began this prayer is the whole way we live our lives.
Because then we’re showing it was the King we met -once and for all time!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Not to us, O LORD, not to us
but to your Name be the glory
because of your love and your faithfulness.
May our lives know and show the most marvellous and mighty fact of your Kingship over all things - physical and spiritual.
In Jesus’ saving name, we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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