Heidelberg Catechism

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #52

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 52 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 127-129.

Transition…

This week we are going to finish up with the Lord’s Prayer and complete our journey through Heidelberg. We kicked this whole thing off in January and have made our way through 2019 and through the Catechism as well. I hope and trust that it has been as helpful to you as it has been for me.

But we bring this year of the Cornerstone podcast to a close by examining the last few phrases in the Lord’s Prayer

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 127: What is the sixth petition?

Answer: “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one” means, by ourselves we are too weak to hold our own even for a moment. And our sworn enemies – the devil, the world, and our own flesh – never stop attacking us. And so, Lord uphold us and make us strong with the strength of Your Holy Spirit, so that we may not go down to defeat in this spiritual struggle but may firmly resist our enemies until we finally win the complete victory.

Unfortunately, we are all familiar with temptation. Temptation is when the desire to do something sinful arises in our hearts or presents itself in our experience. The Bible talks about temptation all the time, in fact the story of Scripture begins with a temptation.

In the garden Adam and Eve faced temptation. A created being, ultimately an enemy of God and man alike, crept into the garden and tempted them into rebellion. He tempted Eve with the thought that she could be like God, or could become god herself, with the ability to determine what was right and what was wrong. She failed and all of humanity has been paying the price ever since.

The nature of the temptation that Adam and Eve faced is the same as that which we face on a daily basis; Satan pointed out something that was appealing and used that to twist the truth and lead them into sin. The same is true for us today. Temptation is when Satan seeks to lure us into sin by dangling something before us that appeals to our flesh, but in the end will lead us away from obedience to God.

Thomas Brooks spoke of temptation in this way,

“Satan’s first device to draw the soul into sin is, to present the bait and hide the hook; to present the golden cup and hide the poison; to present the sweet, the pleasure and the profit and to hide from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin…Satan is a cheat giving them an apple in exchange for paradise.”[1]

In other words, temptation is like bait on a hook.

Now, we seldom think about the nature of temptation but when we do we tend to think about things that are obvious. But the Bible talks of temptation coming to us in very subtle ways. Satan didn’t walk into the garden with an “I hate God” t-shirt on and start attacking Eve; he simply came and pointed at the fruit and started talking about how good it looked. He didn’t sit down with Eve and devise a scheme to overthrow God, he just carefully twisted God’s word and that was all he needed.

When the Bible talks of temptation it uses the metaphor of animals being lured, trapped or enticed into danger while unaware of what lies ahead. 

Galatians 6:1-2 talks about being caught in sin like a fly in a spider’s web.

James 1:14 talks about being lured into temptation like a fish is lured to a hook by bait.

I Timothy 6:9 speaks of temptation like a snare used to catch live pray.

All of these illustrations help us to understand that the nature of temptation is subtle, crafty and will often be difficult to discern. This has been Satan’s tactic from the beginning and that is precisely why we need to pray for God to help us avoid temptation. That is what we pray for God to help us overcome the evil one who is behind all of those temptations.

On our own we are not powerful enough, wise enough, or spiritual mature enough to battle the temptation that we face in this life daily. Yes, we can grow in our faith and become more capable, but in the end, we need help from the Holy Spirit, hence the instruction to pray for His help

Question 128: What does your conclusion to this prayer mean?

Answer: “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever” means, we have made all these requests of You because, as our all-powerful King, You not only want to, but are able to give us all that is good; and because Your holy name, and not we ourselves, should receive all the praise forever.

The whole of this prayer is a preoccupation with God’s glory. This prayer isn’t the expression of our natural disposition, it is the disposition of Heaven. This prayer aims to orient our hearts around the goodness of God, the holiness of God, the provision of God, the power of God and the glory of His name.

That’s what this concluding phrase is meant to convey. It shows that the point of this prayer is not our happiness but our praise for and reliance upon our Creator God. Our prayer is not about us building our own kingdom, it is about God using us to build His kingdom. This prayer is not about our power, it is about us confessing our weakness and relying upon His strength. This prayer and this universe is not about our glory, it is about His glory.

Question 129: What does that little word “Amen” express?

Answer: “Amen” means, this is sure to be true! It is even more sure that God listens to my prayer, than that I really desire what I pray for.

Amen simply means “let it be.” It is a statement of confidence in the one that we are praying to. The Catechism points out that even though I may desire the very things I pray, God’s reception of our prayer and commitment to our good is greater than our desire. To say amen at the end of our prayer is an act of laying all that we have said at the feet of our sovereign and gracious God with more confidence than we possess that He will accomplish His holy will in, through and around our prayers.

Thank you for joining me for this journey through Heidelberg during 2019. It has been an amazing year and I hope you will check back again in 2020 to see what is in store.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.


[1] Thomas Brooks Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (chapter 2, pg. 19) www.preachtheword.com/bookstore/remedies.pdf

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #51

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 51 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 126.

Transition…

This week we continue working our way through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on the phrase:

Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 126: What is the fifth petition?

Answer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” means, because of Christ’s blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do or the evil that constantly clings to us. Forgive us just as we are fully determined, as evidence of Your grace in us, to forgive our neighbors.

Forgiveness is at the very heart of the Christian gospel and it is right at the center of this prayer. In fact, it is sandwiched in between our need for bread and our need for protection.

11 Give us this day our daily bread,

12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

I could be wrong, but it seems that Jesus wants us to pray in three ways here: for our body, our heart, and our soul.

Last week we discussed the need we have for physical nourishment, our need for daily bread. Jesus wants us to know that God is concerned with even the most basic needs that we have. He also wants us to remember that the basic needs that sustain us in life are a gift from God’s hand.

The truth is we take far too much for granted. Jesus wants us to pray for God to meet every daily need that we have, and He wants us to thank Him for every daily need that is met.

The second part of this prayer focuses on the needs of our heart. We need forgiveness and we need God to soften our hearts so that we can forgive others. Jesus wants us to pray that God would forgive us our debts and that we would forgive others when they are indebted to us.

Forgiveness is one of those words we use so often that it has a tendency to lose its meaning. As a father, I instruct my children to forgive one another all the time but I don’t always define what it means. Therefore, they may come away thinking that to forgive someone simply means that we act like they didn’t do anything wrong. But that is not the Biblical concept behind forgiveness.

The Biblical concept behind forgiveness is that we owe a debt and that debt must be paid. Every human being has an obligation to obey the commands of our Creator and when we fail to do so, we fall into debt. Jesus is making that connection here in his model prayer when he uses the term debt.

Before God we owe a debt on account of our sin. When we sin against God, we are building up more and more debt. Every lie, every hateful thought, every disobedient action are all plunging us into deeper and deeper debt. The price to be paid to free us from that debt is death and judgment, “The wages of sin is death…”

“But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.” In His life, Jesus never went into debt before God. He kept the law perfectly. On the cross, He paid the price for sins, not His own, but for ours. When we come to see our sin and the debt it brings before God, and then we receive the free gift of forgiveness that Jesus offers us; that is when we are saved.

When we are drawn to faith in Christ, by believing in Him and turning from our sin, the Bible says that we were saved. It says that we are justified before God, which means that we were declared to be righteous in His sight. Our sins were forgiven, and Christ’s righteousness was credited to our account. All of this is true in a legal sense.

But in a relational sense, we need to continually seek restoration and forgiveness, hence why Jesus is teaching us to pray for forgiveness.

This is the point of I John…

I John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Jesus wants us to come to God confessing our sin and seeking forgiveness. But He also wants us to forgive others when they sin against us. He wants us to cancel their debt, to overlook their offense and to pardon someone for the wrong they’ve done to us.

Jesus even tells us that our refusal to forgive others will keep God from forgiving us. Does this mean unforgiving people lose their salvation? I think it means that a hard and unforgiving heart is evidence of someone who has never truly experienced God’s forgiveness; or they are so hardened by sin that they have forgotten.

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant, a man who had been forgiven a huge debt but who wickedly punished those who owed him. Jesus called the man wicked. He pointed out, “I showed you mercy because you pleaded with me, but you refused to show mercy to those who pleaded with you” and He ordered the man to go to prison until he had paid off his original debt. The point is that an unforgiving heart reveals an unforgiven heart.

 

Or at least a heart that has failed to grasp the wonder of God’s forgiveness. There are people who have hurt us. There are people who have treated us so poorly that we have come away feeling inadequate, unworthy, unlovable. We have deep wounds that have healed somewhat, but they are always tender.

God wants us to forgive the people who have hurt us in this way. He wants us to accept their apology, to stop holding their sin against them, to let go of the bitterness that we feel toward them. He wants us to do this because we have grown to understand how much He, our God, has forgiven us.

We grieved His heart. We ignored His love. We shook our fist in His smiling face. We have insulted His wisdom, we refused to acknowledge His glory. We cheered with the crowd as His Son was killed on the cross.

But His love for us never wavered. He had a plan that one day He would show us what we had done. He would cause us to see our sin for what it is, and He would turn our hearts so that we could see His amazing grace in Christ. By no merit of our own, God forgave us, He washed away our debt. He cleansed the stain that it left behind and He has welcomed us into His family.

He has forgiven all those who receive Christ by faith and as we grasp the weight of His forgiveness, we are made able to forgive those who have sinned against us. That is what this part of the Lord’s Prayer is all about.

Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we are going to finish up with the Lord’s Prayer and complete our journey through Heidelberg. I hope you will join me for that final discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 52 and questions 127-129.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #50

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 50 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 125.

Transition…

This week we continue working our way through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on the phrase:

Give us this day our daily bread…

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 125: What is the fourth petition?

Answer: “Give us this day our daily bread” means, be pleased to provide for all our bodily needs so that we come to know that You are the only source of everything good, and that neither our work and worry nor Your gifts can do us any good without Your blessings. So, help us to give up our trust in creatures and to put trust in You alone.

Trust in God alone, that is what is at the heart of this part of the Lord’s Prayer. It is trust in God down to provide the very crumbs of bread that will keep us alive today. If you think about it, this is a desperate prayer for God to take away the nagging hunger that our bodies feel constantly. This prayer is like a baby crying for milk and being fully dependent upon mother to provide it.

We’ve all been hungry before, but how many of us have been truly hungry. By God’s grace alone we live in a land where food is plentiful and cheap. Aside from the occasional natural disaster preparation, there is seldom a time when our grocery store shelves are empty. There is always food nearby.

According to the US department of Agriculture, it is estimated that Americans waste 30-40 percent of the food supply every year. That is, we throw away or allow to go bad 133 billion pounds of food which costs around $161 billion dollars. We throw away an unthinkable amount of food. If this startles you and you think you might like to change your habits in this regard, check out usda.gov/foodwaste.

Food is plentiful in this country and has been for decades, which means that most of us, though not all, are not worried about where our next meal will come from. Most of us, assume that there will be food on our table, in our pantry and refrigerator. We take this for granted and this prayer is confronting that in us.

I know that it might be difficult for us to imagine this but try to put yourself in the Israelites shoes/sandals as they were on their way to Mt. Sinai. They were in the wilderness and all they had with them was the stuff they packed up on Passover night in Egypt. They didn’t have grocery stores along the way. They didn’t have anywhere to get food and water. They had to rely on God’s daily provision, or they would surely die.

If you can imagine what that was like, then you can begin to grasp the heart cry behind this prayer. When we ask God to give us our daily bread, we are giving voice to a desperate plea for God to care for us every day. We are also recognizing that the daily bread that sustains us actually comes from His hand.

Even the good things, like food, that we have in abundance; can get in the way of our gratitude to God for the blessing of His care over us. When we take for granted the basic necessities of life, we will inevitably fail to praise God for His generous provision. And make no mistake, every gift that we receive is from His gracious hand.

James 1:16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Everything we have is from God and our gratitude to Him should be constant and sincere. In fact, Heidelberg wants us to understand that when we pray for God to give us our daily bread, we are putting our trust in God alone. We are battling the self-reliance that is in each of our hearts and we are placing our hope and our trust in God as the provider of every good gift.

At no point should we assume that this prayer is a license for us to stop working and simply ask God to give us what we need. That’s not the point at all. The point is to help our hearts grasp the reality that everything we have comes from the Lord. The job that we have which allows us to buy the food at the grocery store is a gift of God’s blessing. The fact that we have grocery stores, and food in those stores, and the means to buy that food in those stores; all of this is a blessing from God that we do not deserve.

We should be grateful and prayerful. Too often, we fail to pray with sincerity for our daily bread and this might be a display of our lack of confidence in God’s provision and too much confidence in our own ability. Yes, we work to provide good things for ourselves and our family, but the whole process of our needs being met is overseen by God.

Now, I want to go back to the illustration of Israel in the wilderness that I mentioned earlier. There was an entire generation of Israelites who experienced God’s daily gift of bread, but that generation didn’t inherit the Promised Land. In fact, 40 years later a new generation was set to go into the Land and Moses had some final words for them.

God had blessed this generation. He had care for them, led them, provided for them and even helped them win military battles to stay alive. But there was a strong possibility that they would forget all the good things that God had done. So in Deuteronomy 8 Moses says to them, “Don’t you forget that the Lord is the One who brought you here.”

He tells them, “God cared for you…He fed you with manna from heaven…He made the clothes on your back to hold together and not wear out…beware lest you say in your heart, ‘my power and my might have gotten me this.”

This was a real issue for that generation of Israelites and it’s a real issue for us today. We have a tendency to forget that all of life is in the palm of God’s hand. We have a tendency to forget that all that we have comes from His hand. We have a tendency to trust in our own ability rather than to confess our desperate need.

This prayer is an antidote to self-reliance so let’s make this our prayer but also our attitude. “Lord, give us this day our daily bread.”

Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we are going to talk about forgiveness of debts and deliverance from evil. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 51 and questions 126 and 127.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #49

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 49 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 124.

Transition…

This week we continue working our way through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on the phrase:

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 124: What is the third petition?

Answer: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” means, help us and all people to reject our own wills and to obey Your will without any back talk. Your will alone is good. Help us one and all to carry out the work we are called to, as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven.

I think that this is one of the more controversial aspects of the Lord’s prayer for several reasons. First, there is quite a bit of confusion about the will of God in general. Is God’s will for us something akin to a step-by-step knowledge of every facet of our lives? In other words, is God’s will some mysterious thing that is hidden and we are asking God to reveal it? Or is God’s will something that is fixed and knowable?

Second, there is also quite a bit of insistence in the Christian world for our will to be seen as the greatest gift that God has ever given to man. Man’s free will is a sacred thing in many Christian circles and that means that it would be wrong for God to violate the will of a human being in any way.

In order for us to get a grasp on what we are praying for when we say, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven” we need to try to understand the will of God more clearly.

So, let’s talk about the 3 Categories for understanding the will of God. First, there is something that theologians refer to as God’s Will of Decree or the Sovereign will of God. This refers to what God has ordained to happen from before the world was made. God’s will of decree is fixed and absolute.

Isaiah 46:9 I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…I have spoken and I will bring it to pass: I have purposed and I will do it.

What God decrees to take place will unquestionably occur.

We see God’s will of decree in action within the New Testament when we look at Ephesians 1.

V. 4 - He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will…

V. 11 – In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of His will…

God has a plan and this plan was set in motion before the creation of the universe. This plan has been unfolding for ages and it was ultimately accomplished when Jesus came to earth and laid down His life to save God’s chosen people from their sin. This plan continues to play out as the good news of Jesus Christ spreads to the four corners of the earth and it will be consummated when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead and then usher in His kingdom upon earth. From start to finish this plan of God will be accomplished precisely according to God’s decree, God’s will.

God’s will of decree is also seen in that He upholds and accomplish his sovereign purpose down to the very smallest detail.

Matt 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

God’s will of decree accounts for and ordains the last breath of every sparrow, it accounts for the fall of every leaf, it accounts for the snowflake, the rain, and even the graying hairs on my head. This is detail beyond our comprehension but such is the knowledge and will of God.

God has a plan for everything, and He carries out that plan to perfection. This is God’s will of Decree.

There is a second category and it addresses God’s Will of Desire[1], sometimes referred to as His will of Command. This aspect of God’s will has to do with what He desires from His creatures and where the will of decree cannot be undone, God’s will of desire can be disobeyed.

Take for instance, the 10 commandments which lay out how God desires His people to live in the world. These commandments give moral direction for our lives and they reflect the very moral character of God Himself. But even though it is God’s will that mankind keep the 10 commandments, they are disregarded every day. It is God’s will that we love Him and not the world. It is God’s will that we obey Him but in our rebellion we disobey.

Seen in this way God’s will of desire refers to the call upon mankind to obey the commands of God and here are a few passages that reveal this distinction.

1 Thess 4:3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

That last passage makes clear that this aspect of God’s will relates to something that we are called to do. It relates to the way God commands us to live.

The third category refers to God’s Will of Direction and this describe how God directs us in making non-moral decisions on a day-to-day basis. These are the decisions about where to live, what job to take, and what person to marry; and of the three this is what we think about the most and it is the one most often abused.

When we talk about God’s will of direction, we are really asking the question, “Does God have a plan for my life that He expects me to live out?” The answer is yes! God does have a plan for us. He does want our lives to be directed by Him. He does want us to live in a way that brings glory to Christ and joy to us.

He wants us to trust in His sovereign will of decree. He wants us to follow His will of command by faith and the power of the Holy Spirit. And when it comes to His will of direction we rely on God’s Word; both the wisdom and direction it provides for us.

So, the question at this point is, which one of these are we praying for in the Lord’s Prayer? The Heidelberg says that we are praying for God’s will of Desire to be done, or God’s will of command to be obeyed.

Here’s the answer again,

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” means, help us and all people to reject our own wills and to obey Your will without any back talk. Your will alone is good. Help us one and all to carry out the work we are called to, as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven.

We are praying for God’s will to rule over our own. We are praying for our hearts to be so moved with love for our heavenly Father that we reject our own wills and obey His will without any argument.

I’ve been a Christian long enough to know that this is a big prayer because I don’t want to submit my will to His and neither do you. Oh sure, ideally we would never place our will over the will of God, but in reality we do this all the time. Every time we sin we are placing our desire over God’s, our will over His. Every time we say, “I know what the Bible says, but I want to do this…” we are rejecting God’s will and substituting our own.

In His Word God has given us the knowledge of His Will. In God’s Word we have clear, unchanging, God-breathed direction for our day to day lives.

1. It is God’s will and purpose to save sinners by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life.

2. It is God’s will that we seek His Kingdom above all else.

Matt 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

3. It is God’s will that we pursue sanctification (holiness) in grace wrought obedience to Christ.

1 Thess 4:2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor…

4. It is God’s will that we rejoice in the gospel, pray to God and give thanks for all of the blessings of God’s grace

1 Thess 5:16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

5. It is God’s will that we bear fruit and increase in the knowledge of God.

Col 1:9 be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

6. It is God’s will that we be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Eph 5:17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit 19  (which means) addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

7. It is God’s will that we submit our lives to God and be renewed in our minds by His Word.

Rom 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

This phrase in the Lord’s prayer is aiming to place God on the throne of our hearts and to help us recognize that His will alone is good. It is a prayer for God to help us because He knows we are going to need help to obey the way He calls us to. In fact, we are praying that He would work obedience in our lives such that it rivals the angels in heaven.

And all of this starts with us. This prayer is preoccupied with God’s glory not ours, with God’s kingdom not ours, and with God’s will not our own.

Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 50 and question 125.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.


[1] I am using the categorical language employed by Kevin DeYoung in his book Just Do Something chapter 2.

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #48

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 48 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 122.

Transition…

This week we continue working through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on one phrase right at the start of this prayer.

Your Kingdom Come…

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 122: What does the second request mean?

Answer: “Your kingdom come” means, rule us by Your Word and Spirit in such a way that more and more we submit to You. Keep Your church strong and add to it. Destroy the devil’s work: destroy every force which revolts against You and every conspiracy against Your Word. Do this until Your kingdom is so complete and perfect that in it You are all in all.

The word kingdom is a massive word and it is rich with meaning. A kingdom implies three things: A King, a people and a land. In order for a kingdom to be all three of these must be in place. You can’t have a kingdom without a king, and you can’t have a kingdom without people and you can’t have a kingdom without a defined space of land for those people to dwell upon.

When it comes to the Kingdom of God those same three things must be in place. When we talk about the Kingdom of God, we think it terms of God’s rule over God’s people in God’s place.

Another bit of language that you may have heard along the way is that the Kingdom of God exists in an already and a not yet kind of way. The kingdom of God has already been established by the coming of Jesus but it has not yet come in its fullness. IOW, Christ has been enthroned as King (Matt 28:18) and those who believe have already been set apart as His people; but we are not yet united in the New Heavens and New Earth that are to come.

So, when we pray, “Your kingdom come” we are asking God to extend His rule over our hearts and lives. We are also asking Him to come, or to come again and more fully establish His Kingdom on earth as He has promised.

But the catechism focuses more on the fact that we are asking God to work in the here and now by His Spirit and Word. When we ask God to let His Kingdom come, we are asking Him to work in us to make us more like Jesus. We are asking Him to grow us in faith and obedience, in faithfulness and sanctification. We are praying that Christ would extend His rule in our hearts.

We are also praying that Christ would extend His rule in the Church, not just our own local church but in the Church throughout the world. This is a big prayer, but this is how Jesus teaches us to pray and we could stand to meditate on this a little bit more. It’s easy for us to get in the rut of thinking only about our individual needs, or about the needs in our own individual church; but this prayer causes us to look up and cry out for the spread of Christ’s rule throughout the world.

Finally, the catechism teaches us to think about this prayer (Your Kingdom come) in the sense of spiritual warfare between the kingdom of God and the work of the enemy. To pray for the spread/coming of Christ’s kingdom is necessarily to be praying for the complete overthrow of every kingdom that would oppose Him, and that means the Devil.

Don’t let the spiritual warfare aspect of this frighten you away, because later on in this prayer Jesus is going to instruct us to pray for protection from the Devil. But in this part we are praying that God would tear down and overthrow every rebel kingdom that seeks to stand in the way of God’s kingdom being established in the hearts of God’s people all over the world.

So this is a pretty big prayer and now that we have a clearer understanding of what it means, we should be motivated all the more to pray as Jesus instructs us. “Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come…”

Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer to learn what it means for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 49 and question 123.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #47

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 47 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 122.

Transition…

This week we continue working through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on one phrase right at the start of this prayer.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 122: What does the first request mean?

Answer: “Hallowed be Your name” means, Help us to really know you, to bless, worship, and praise You for all Your works and for all that shines forth from them: Your almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and truth. And it means, help us to direct all our living – what we think, say and do – so that Your name will never be blasphemed because of us but always honored and praised.

Now, I’m going to be honest and tell you that I have grown accustomed to thinking that the phrase, “Hallowed be Your name” was something that we do as we pray more so than thinking of it as a request within our prayer. I thought of it as something that one does as he/she begins to pray. IOW, Lord I hallow Your name.

I recognize that You are holy and I honor your name as I pray. This is an old-fashioned word that we don’t use that often nowadays, but hallow means to set apart as holy, to recognize as holy and to praise someone for their holiness.

That’s the spirit with which I have understood that phrase for many years and I don’t think this is a completely wrong way to approach it. Acknowledging the holiness of God resets our heart and mind around the most important thing about our prayers, namely the one we are praying to. My requests, my needs, my doubts or concerns aren’t nearly as important as my acknowledgement that My heavenly Father is holy and deserves to be honored by me.

But the Heidelberg brings out the fact that this is not simply a statement that we are making as we pray to God; this is actually our first request, “Lord would you hallow your name in me.” Jesus is telling us that the first thing we should pray for is for the name of God to be glorified and set apart as holy.

What is the significance of this? Jesus wants us to understand that the first and most important thing that we pray for should be for God’s name to be glorified. The most important thing is not that we get what we want, nor that we get what we need; but that God’s name and renown would be magnified in my heart and life.

How much does this change our prayers? How much should this change our prayers? We should enter into prayer with the chief concern for God to be glorified and the additional confession of sin or requests for help should serve that purpose. IOW, prayer is not chiefly about changing God’s heart so that He will do what I ask, but about changing my heart so that I can acknowledge the glory of His name.

The catechism goes on to say that this request is about us getting to really know God… to bless, worship, and praise You for all Your works and for all that shines forth from them. Knowing more of God is the greater part of the Christian life, all of life for that matter. I don’t simply want to know things about God, I want to know Him, truly, deeply, intimately. I want to grow in my experiential knowledge of my heavenly Father. That’s what this prayer is asking for.

As we grow to really know more of God we will praise Him, which is another way of saying that we will hallow His name in our heart and life.

Would we naturally think this way about prayer unless Jesus pointed it out to us? Maybe, but probably not. If we approach prayer without Jesus’ instruction, then we will overlook God’s glory and go straight to our needs. But this instruction causes us to slow down and recognize something beyond our simple needs. It causes us to see the need for more of God.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with praying like a child and asking God to bless us according to our needs and according to His will. Jesus teaches us about that very thing in Luke 11, but even then, the need for us to acknowledge God’s glory above our own is key.

When we pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name” we are saying that the thing which matters most in our prayer, in our lives and in this world is that God’s name be glorified.

Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer to learn what it means for us to ask for God’s Kingdom to come. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 48 and question 123.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #46

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 46 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 120-121.

This week we will begin working through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgives us our debt, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

This is a prayer that many of us learned as children and have repeated over the years in various settings. I first learned it with my football team in junior high and we would pray it together before games. I wasn’t a believer back then but still this prayer became etched in my memory and it still serves me well today.

I became a Christian while in college and as I began to learn various spiritual disciplines that help believers grow in faith and love, this prayer became much more precious and meaningful to me. It helped me to rehearse certain truths that my heart and mind needed to meditate on. It gave me a guide for how to shape my prayers, and I really needed that because no one took me aside and taught me to pray.

Transition…

But in all honesty, that’s exactly what this prayer is; it is specific instruction from Jesus on how His disciples, how believers in Christs, should pray.

Luke 11:1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name…

So, this is Jesus teaching all of us how to pray. Jesus is giving us a first-hand lesson on what it looks like for us to pray to God. This is how we should pray and this is how we should understand our relationship to God, whom we are praying to. And the first thing that Jesus tells us should adorn our prayers is an acknowledgment that God is Our Father.

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 120: Why has Christ commanded us to address God as: Our Father?

Answer: To awaken in us, at the very beginning of our prayer, that childlike awe and trust toward God, which are to be the ground of our prayer; namely, that God has become our Father through Christ, and will much less deny us what we ask of Him in faith, than our parents refuse us earthly things.

For some of us, the command of Christ to call God “Our Father” comes with some difficulty or personal baggage. For some of us, the Fatherhood of God is a bit challenging because you grew up without a father. Or maybe you grew up with an angry and abusive father who never showed grace, or perhaps a weak one who never stood up for you to protect you. Some of us were blessed with wonderful fathers, strong and safe, with big hearts and firm hands; I thank God for my father.

Others may struggle with the Fatherhood of God because they consider it sexist and would prefer to worship a goddess. But God hasn’t revealed Himself to us in that way. He is never called goddess, mother, or queen in the Scriptures but rather God, Father and King. In Matthew’s Gospel we see the Fatherhood of God referenced 44 times, second only to John’s gospel where God is called Father 109 times.

The Fatherhood of God is foundational to Christianity. The whole goal of Christ’s mission is to reunite us with our heavenly Father.

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus is the way, the way to what, the way to the Father. When a person comes to faith in Christ they are adopted into God’s family and made a child of God and an heir of the Father’s kingdom right alongside Jesus. Through Jesus we have a relationship with God that is defined as a relationship of a father to his child.

My wife and I have been married for almost 19 years and we have three children; Caroline 15, Luke 14, and Samuel 11. As they have grown and matured they have gotten better about how they ask for things, what they ask for and when they ask; but when they were younger they would ask for whatever they wanted with no regard for decorum.

If they wanted something or needed something they would come with a childlike expectation that no request was too big, no want was off limits; they just came and asked. I have one son who still thinks he should have dessert after every meal and he still asks for it.

Our prayers to the Father should be guided by a more mature request than for ice cream three times a day, but the attitude, the impulse, the recklessness that governs a child’s requests should inform the way we pray to our heavenly Father.

Now, I am an imperfect father, but my desire is to be generous with my kids because I love them, and I want them to be happy. I want to give them good things, cool things, fun things. But my desire to be generous doesn’t even come close to God’s desire to be generous.

Who is God? He is the universes Creator and Sustainer. He is holy, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; and He is our Father. He knows everything, even our needs before we present them to Him. We don’t have to persuade Him or manipulate Him into caring for us, He loved us before we were born, and He will love us forever and He desires to give us the best gifts in the world.

Why Did Christ command us to call God “Our Father? Because Christ wants to kindle in us what is basic to our prayer – the childlike awe and trust that God through Christ has become our Father.” Childlike awe causes us to respect and revere the name of God. Childlike trust causes us to know that there is nothing greater than our Father’s will being done.

 

Question 121: Why is it added, In Heaven?

Answer: Those words teach us not to think of God’s heavenly majesty as something earthly; and to expect everything necessary for body and soul from His almighty power.

There’s a song that we teach to our children and it goes like this,

My God is so big, so strong and so mighty

There’s nothing my God cannot do

It is a comforting thought to know that there is nothing beyond the scope of God’s power. It is comforting to know that this limitless and powerful God is our Father. It will change our life when we grasp that this almighty God has instructed us to come to Him in prayer asking for every need that we have to be supplied by His power.

God is not a limited Father who can’t tell the difference between a good gift and a dangerous one. He is not an influential man who has limits, but rather is the sovereign ruler of all who has everything at His disposal. When we pray to Our Father in Heaven we are taking our requests, the needs of our body and soul, to the very throne room of the universe.

Our prayers are echoing in the throne room of Heaven. Our prayers are pinned up on Our Father’s refrigerator. God hears you and His heart is inclined to you because you are His child.

I think we could all stand to learn again what it means to pray like a child. When Jesus wanted to teach his disciples about the dynamics of the Kingdom, He invited a child to come and sit next to Him and Jesus told the disciples that they needed to be more like the child. Humble, needy, unashamed, unembarrassed, bold, playful and willing to come and ask God for everything.

And this God who is our Heavenly Father will meet all of our needs, both body and soul, according to His will for us and out of the almighty power that He wields.

Thank you for joining me today to discuss Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer to learn what it means for us to ask for God’s named to be hallowed. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 47 and question 122.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day #45

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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 45 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 116-119.

This week’s questions are aimed at the Christian’s prayer life.

Question 116: Why do Christians need to pray?

Answer: Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. and also because God gives His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for the these gifts and thanking Him for them.

We are still in the gratitude section of the Catechism and we need to remind ourselves that we have arrived at this point only because we have travelled through the guilt and grace sections. We started out the year 2019 by opening the first pages of the Heidelberg and learning that the greatest problem facing humanity is not a political one, it is not a financial one, nor a social one; it is a spiritual problem.

We live in a natural state of sin and misery. God has graciously revealed to us that the root of all that has gone wrong in the world is the separation that exists between the Creator and His creatures. We have sinned and our sin sets us at odds with our Holy God. But God’s mercy is greater than our sin.

In Christ, God has poured out grace to cover our sin. On the cross, Jesus paid our debt and has ransomed us from our guilt and into relationship with God. Once we were far off but now by the blood of Christ we have been brought near to God. By faith in Christ we now have a relationship with God and prayer is a key component in that relationship.

Transition…

In prayer we express our gratitude for God’s love and grace. In prayer we ask God for forgiveness, wisdom, strength, and help. In prayer we seek the comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit. In prayer we talk to our heavenly Father. Most of us know this, but at the same time, most of us still struggle with prayer.

In his book, A Praying Life, Paul Miller asks us to imagine a trip to a prayer therapist who is going to help us with our prayer struggles. The therapist begins the session by asking us to describe what it means to be a child of God.

You reply that it means you have complete access to your heavenly Father through Jesus. You have true intimacy, based not on how good you are but on the goodness of Jesus. Not only that, but Jesus is your brother. You are a fellow heir with him.

The therapist smiles and says, “That is right. You’ve done a wonderful job of describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like for you to be with your Father? What is it like to talk with him?”

You cautiously tell the therapist how difficult it is to be in your Father’s presence, even for a couple of minutes. Your mind wanders. You aren’t sure what to say. You wonder, does prayer make any difference? Is God even there? Then you feel guilty for your doubts and just give up.

Your therapist tells you what you already suspect. “Your relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you don’t. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help.”[1]

I think we all need some help in the area of prayer. So, let’s see what Heidelberg has to say that might help us.

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 117: How does God want us to pray so that He will listen to us?

Answer: First, we must pray from the heart to no other than the one true God, who has revealed Himself in His Word, asking for everything He has commanded us to ask for. Second, we must acknowledge our need and misery, hiding nothing, and humble ourselves in His majestic presence. Third, we must rest on this unshakable foundation: even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord. This is what He promised us in His Word.  

This is a very thorough answer and every line of it has something to teach us. Let me encourage you to take your time and go through this line by line, meditating on the instruction found here. We could spend the rest of our time in this devotion, teasing out all the points mentioned here but for the purpose of this devotion I will offer a summary of this answer.

Our prayers should be directed by Scripture. The first part of this answer assumes that the person praying has a thorough grasp of Biblical truth. God isn’t interested in vain, repetitious or arrogant prayer. He is God and the way we approach Him needs to be informed by what the Bible teaches us about Him.

Our prayers should be from a heart that remembers our guilt and God’s grace. We are the ones facing sin and misery, not God. God is not obligated to do anything for us, not obligated to give anything to us, not even obligated to listen to our plea for help. But He does because He is majestic and gracious.

Our prayers should be motivated by the confidence that we have through Christ. We do not come to God in prayer on our own, we come through the blood and mediation of Jesus. It is because of Him that we have a relationship to God and this knowledge should guide and motivate us to prayer.

So our prayers should take all of this and more into consideration.

Question 118: What did God command us to pray for?

Answer: Everything we need, spiritually and physically, as embraced in the prayer Christ our Lord Himself taught us.

I’ve never really gotten over the fact that Jesus told His disciples that the reason they don’t have certain things is because they have failed to ask for those things. “You have not because you have asked not.” He also said that we don’t have things because we ask with wrong motives, meaning we simply ask for things that satisfy some fleshly appetite not a spiritual one.

All of this, and the catechism is aimed to help us realize that we are helpless children and our God is a wise, loving and generous Father. We come to Him with every need that we can think of and when we run out of things, we look to Him and His Word to help us grasp what our true needs are, and we ask for those as well.

Too many of us take prayer for granted and therefore we don’t pray. Too many of us treat prayer like an unimportant thing and therefore we don’t pray the way God tells us to. Too many of us pray selfishly and get frustrated when we don’t get what we want.

But now that we have a relationship with God through Jesus, our prayers should be shaped by the Father-child relationship. We should pray with a sense of our Father’s gracious presence. We should pray with the knowledge of His Fatherly generosity. We should pray with our mind on His Kingdom and how He wants us to live while still in this world.

That is how I would summarize the way Jesus teaches us to pray.

Question 119: What is the Prayer?

Answer: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgives us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

In this model prayer, Jesus wants us to pray sincerely, humbly and confidently. He wants us to pray with His saving grace as fuel, in fact we can’t come to God unless we come through Jesus, through the fountain of flowing grace. But by faith in Christ we come and pray.

He wants us to pray from the heart and from our head. He doesn’t want vain repetitive babbling. He doesn’t want pseudo-spiritual and hypocritical speeches. He wants honest prayer to flow from the hearts of His children to their One True Father in Heaven.

The essence of Christian prayer is relational communion with our heavenly Father. When Jesus teaches us to pray, He tells us to approach God with love, as a son or daughter would approach their father. He teaches us to begin our prayer with, “Our Father…” How does a child talk with their father? Loudly, boldly, unashamedly, desperately, with no regard for decorum. They will interrupt you in a second if they have a need, or a want, or even an idea. Big words never enter that conversation, but feeling, and emotion almost always do.

Paul Miller,

Being a child in prayer means to just come. Children are not tied up in all the details when they come to their parents. They just come.

Jesus invites those who are weary and heavy laden to come to him. He doesn’t call the organized and fixed up but the broken. Why do we forget that when it comes to prayer? The dirty, imperfect and broken you is the real you. Don’t try to put on the spiritual façade in prayer. You can talk to God about whatever is on your heart, so just come as you are. Be weak and open in prayer before God. In this way you are remembering and applying the gospel to your prayer life. We need to learn helplessness. That is what a child reflects.[2]

Don’t come to your God pretending to be something or someone you are not, He can see straight through that. But come as you are, open your heart to His saving grace in Christ. Repent and receive Jesus as savior and Lord, and when you bow before Him in prayer you will find all the love you will ever need. Come broken and find His compassion. Come needy and find His supply. Come confused and find His Wisdom.

Thank you for joining me today to discuss Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer and I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 46 and questions 120-121.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.


[1] Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 5). NavPress. Kindle Edition.

[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/helping-your-people-discover-the-praying-life