Audio Transcript

We’ve all been there. Maybe you’re there right now. You see problems in every direction. As you look at your life, all you can see are troubles. You see your sins, your shortcomings, your challenges, your relationship struggles, and all those places in life that have been long neglected and now need your focused attention. It all adds up. And now you find yourself in that place, tempted to live a life that has shrunk down to the size of your problems.

Pastor John has been there. It’s why he took a leave of absence in 2010, eight months away from ministry for what he called a “soul check” — months spent scrutinizing the problems he saw in his life, his marriage, his worship, his fathering, his pastoring, his public life, all of it. During these searching months, he pinpointed five besetting sins within himself, problem areas that needed attention. He named them, isolated them, and confessed them. He would come to call them an “ugly cluster” of sins that included selfishness, anger, self-pity, quickness to blame, and sullenness. We have talked about this season and his personal discoveries on the podcast, back in APJ 220, APJ 1227, and APJ 1501. It was a significant season in his life.

That leave ended at the end of 2010. On January 9, 2011, he preached for the very first time in those many months. He preached on the Lord’s Prayer, in a sermon titled, “Our Deepest Prayer: Hallowed Be Your Name.” In the Lord’s Prayer, our Savior teaches us to ask for several things. We ask for our daily needs. We ask for food, for personal forgiveness from our sin tendencies, for a forgiving spirit to forgive those who sin against us, and to be kept from sin. Our loving Father cares that we pray for all these daily needs. But before those requests, we first pray for greater things: that God’s name would be hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will be done (Matthew 6:9–13). From this, Pastor John took another important lesson from his leave. To explain, here he is, in that first sermon back, coming off his leave, referencing his journaled reflections from his time away.

There’s something unique about petition number one — it’s one of a kind in these six petitions. “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). In this petition, we get the one specific, named subjective response of the human heart that God wants everybody to give: hallowing. That is, you reverence, you sanctify, you treasure, you esteem, you respect, you stand in awe. Something goes on in the heart. It’s the one request that names what’s supposed to go on in the heart toward God. “Name” is who he is. When you say, “Hallowed be your name,” you mean, “Hallowed be you.” I’m hallowing, treasuring, esteeming, reverencing, honoring Yahweh, and he’s in, and signified by, his name.

One Great Purpose

Here’s another journal entry. October 9: “My One Great Passion! Nothing” — and I remember writing this sentence. I mean, sometimes I read it now and it just doesn’t have the same clout that it did then. God just says things to you, and you feel like a moment of clarity has happened, and all the clouds have been blown away, and you know something with such crystal clarity that you wish it would always be that way.

“Nothing is more clear to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name.”

Here’s what I wrote: “Nothing is more clear and unmistakable to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name. His kingdom comes for that. His will is done for that. Humans have bread-sustained life for that. Sins are forgiven for that. Temptation is escaped for that.”

If you press up as far as you can go into the mind and the intention and the purpose of God for all things, then petition one nails it. You can’t go any higher. You don’t hallow God’s name because something else better, higher, more important should happen. The hallowing of God’s name is the termination of everything. He starts with the biggest request of all: pray that that happen in everything.

Overwhelming Pressures and Problems

So, one last journal entry, October 10 — you can see the sequence going here as day after day I’m thinking about this. I just wrote this prayer: “Lord, grant that I would, in all my weaknesses and limitations, remain close to the one clear, grand theme of my life: your magnificence.”

Sooner or later in your life — young people, heads up; old people know this — pressures and problems become almost overwhelming. Physical problems: “Give me bread.” Relational and mental problems: “Please forgive me.” Moral problems: “Don’t let me go into that temptation again.” What I want you to see is this: You have a Father. He’s a thousand times better than any earthly good father or bad father.

“You can’t pray about a problem he doesn’t know and care about. None. No matter how small they are.”

You have a Father, and this Father cares about every one of us. You can’t pray about a problem he doesn’t know and care about. None. No matter how small they are. And he beckons you to come to him and to talk to him in prayer about them, because he knows what you need, and he’s not surprised by anything.

Now that’s the usual way we attack our problems — directly. “God, help me! I’ve got a problem.” And all the attention begins to focus on the problem. And yes, God, you’re saying “Come,” but your life is starting to shrink up around the problem or the set of problems. You wake up thinking about them, you go to bed thinking about them, and your life is shrinking little by little down around this cluster of pain and problems. Marriage problems, or kid problems, or health problems, or work problems. Your life is just shrinking down, and all the while you’re calling on the last three petitions, “God, help me. I need some bread. I need some money. I need some forgiveness. I need some help morally.” You’re crying out, and your life is just shrinking down.

Ballast of God’s Supremacy

Now, when I say it that way, I don’t mean, “Stop doing that.” I do not mean, “Stop crying out to God.” I don’t mean, “Stop knowing your problems are there and saying, ‘I need help.’” I want you to see that God offers you another strategy of victory. It’s not different; that is, it’s not contradictory. It doesn’t replace what I just described. But it is indirect. There’s a direct way — I’ve got a problem, and I’m going after it — and then there’s something indirect, and here I’m thinking about the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

God made you to be a part of something big. He made you to be a part of something spectacular and magnificent, and you’re allowing, perhaps, your life to just shrink down around these problems. God’s in it, and he’s patient, and he’s loving, and he provides help, but I’m just saying that there’s another strategy. There’s another way to add. It’s a supplemental remedy for life. Namely, to be drawn up. Let yourself be drawn up into the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

God made you to be a part of hallowing his name, and extending his kingdom, and seeing his will be done. He made you for something magnificent. Something mundane as well. Oh yes, he made that. He cares about that. He wants you to live there. But what we fail to see — I speak from experience — is that when we lose our grip on the greatness of God, and his name, and his kingdom, and his global will, we lose a divine equilibrium in life, and we become increasingly vulnerable to those problems overwhelming us.

When we lose our grip on his name, his kingdom, his will — the big, universal, global, glorious, awesome, magnificent purposes into which we have been caught up — when we lose our grip on that, and life begins to shrink down around even a God-pursued problem solving, we lose an equilibrium, a divine equilibrium. I’ve called it ballast before in life, in your boat. You have this little boat, and the waves are there, and your ballast is heavy, deep, and I’m just shifting images here to go up into those first three petitions.

Feet on the Ground, Eyes Up

I’m pleading with you as I close that you not lose your grip on the supremacy and centrality of hallowing the name of God in your life. I’m urging you, from the Lord’s Prayer and from experience, that you do go to God for bread, and you do go to God for forgiveness, and you do go to God for overcoming besetting sins, and you do go to God to advance his will and to seek his kingdom, and you do all of it for the hallowing of his name.

The great value in your life, in your marriage, in your parenting, in your single life, in your friendships, in your studies — the great value is that I will live so that both my heart and other hearts hallow, esteem, reverence, lift up, honor, value, treasure the name of God over all things.

Keep your feet on the ground. We live there. We will never not live on the ground, with its mundane aspects. But you may not see it clearly now, but I testify, and I say from Scripture, there is more deliverance, more healing, more joy in the hallowing of God’s name as your supreme goal and priority than you ever dreamed.

It’s so indirect that it just feels often irrelevant. I’ve got this massive problem and you’re telling me to hallow the name of God? Yeah, I am. It is a request. “Hallowed be thy name” means, “Let your name be hallowed.” And who needs to do it more? I do. It’s a global prayer, but it starts right here. When I wake up in the morning, I’m not hallowing the name of God most mornings. I’m thinking about my problems, and they seem to be bigger than God. So I pray this. This is a prayer. Isn’t that encouraging that Jesus would tell us, “Ask the Father to help you hallow him”?

I invite you, beckon you, in 2011, to go deep and go high in the Lord’s Prayer. Let him be a sweet, close, tender, warm, need-meeting, caring Father to you. And on that, rise up and join him through prayer and life in the seeking of his kingdom and the doing of his will — all to the end that his name be hallowed.

Why haven’t you joined that church you love?

Maybe that question applies to you right now. It certainly applied to me at a particular season in my life. I had been going to the same church for more than a year. The preaching was faithful, and the people were warm and sincere. I had come to know several of the families and had even spent some time with the lead pastor. I wasn’t visiting other churches anymore. I had found my church, and yet membership never really crossed my mind (except maybe briefly when the church celebrated new members).

Why didn’t I join a church I loved? Well, in part because I was still in college and assumed membership was something I would consider after I was out of school and had landed a job somewhere. While we can talk about whether college students should join a church or not (generally speaking, I think they should), I’m not as concerned with that question. I’m more concerned with the mindset I see in my younger self — a mindset I believe is prevalent today: I’ll wait to join the church until I’ve figured out the rest of my life.

Looking back, I now realize just how little I knew about the necessity and joy of actually committing myself to a particular people in particular pews under a particular roof.

Surrendering Self-Sovereignty

Interestingly, we don’t often put off baptism in the same way (at least in my experience). People who come to saving faith in Jesus generally seem eager to say so in the water. My young children, for instance, already love baptism Sundays at our church and look forward to them. There’s a palpable sense of anticipation and celebration in the room. When someone comes up out of the water, the whole church spontaneously claps and cheers.

Does a similar sensation rise in us, though, when someone joins the church? Does it bring us to the edge of our seats?

It really should, shouldn’t it? Culturally speaking, church membership is an even more dramatic statement of our devotion to Christ than baptism. To be baptized today, at least in America, may be odd to our neighbors or coworkers, but it’s not all that shocking or inflammatory. To covenant ourselves to a particular local church, however, and freely submit our decisions, our time, our money, our relationships, our lives to its members and leaders — to give them the authority to excommunicate us if necessary — now that’s controversial. That will raise some eyebrows. Membership says, “What I’ve found in Jesus is worth more than all the freedom, independence, and self-sovereignty I surrender — and far more.”

In an age that suspects and even despises authority, church membership is a loud, arresting statement of our devotion to Christ. It’s John 13:35 in real life with real promises: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Isolated from Commitment

So what keeps us from joining a church? On the surface, some of us put off membership because it feels more like a formality than a necessity. I’m consistently here and even helping out, so why do I need to be a “member”?

Below the surface, though, our reasons may grow heavier and more sensitive. First, we might fear that the church we’re currently attending might not be the best church for us. What if a better church comes along? What if I find a church with better preaching, or better music, or better small groups, or better kids programs? I don’t have to rehearse our generation’s tendency — whether it’s a job, or a potential spouse, or even Friday-night plans — to push every decision to the last minute for fear of something better coming along. We’ve been trained to despise commitment of almost every kind because it inevitably limits our options.

“Committing to a church means committing to sacrifice, to show up, to confess, to confront, to forgive.”

Beyond our wandering eye on Sunday mornings, we might also fear the costs of major commitment. Meaningful membership in the church is undeniably costly. As in a marriage, we don’t know what the next months and years of church life will bring — for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. We can’t now anticipate how conflict will upset and perhaps even divide the body. We can be sure, in any church, that we will sin and be sinned against. Committing to a church means committing to sacrifice, to show up, to confess, to confront, to forgive.

Whatever’s keeping you from committing to that church, I want to help you over the hurdles of your fears by reminding you of who you are without a church committed to you.

1. You are a toe without a body.

First, without committing to a church, you’re an amputated arm. You’re a member of the body — an eye, a kidney, an elbow — but without an actual body. And eyes and elbows don’t survive apart from the body. “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). This isn’t optional to Christianity; this is Christianity.

To believe in Jesus means being united with his global body, and being united with his global body means belonging to an actual local body, a church. Biblically speaking, trying to follow Jesus without meaningfully committing to a church would look a lot like a toe flopping around on the sidewalk. You’re not helping anyone walk, and no one’s helping you see and taste and smell. The apostle Paul goes on:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” . . . But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Corinthians 12:21, 24–26)

“You weren’t meant to suffer alone, or rejoice alone, or make decisions alone.”

You weren’t meant to suffer alone, or rejoice alone, or make decisions alone. Membership stitches your toe to rest of the body — to all you need to follow Christ. It joins you to a group of people who are now committed, before God, to your spiritual and eternal good.

2. You are prey without protection.

Second, without committing to a church, you’re a sheep without the up-close direction, provision, and protection of a shepherd. Whether you feel this way or not, your soul is on the outskirts of the flock, in danger of starving or being eaten. Christ has called and given undershepherds to watch over you (1 Peter 5:2), but you’ve chosen to take your chances among the wolves rather than committing to a flock.

“Obey your leaders and submit to them,” Hebrews 13:17 says. This might scare some away from membership. The verse goes on, however, “. . . for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” These men are charged by God to feed, guide, and protect you — to pursue the spiritual best for you — and they will have to give an account for the work they’ve done. They’ll stand before God to explain how they pastored you.

Maybe most important of all, when someone falls into unrepentant sin — and you could fall into unrepentant sin (1 Corinthians 10:12) — Jesus puts the responsibility for that sinner on the gathered church.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. (Matthew 18:15–17)

Tell it to what church? To the church he belongs to, the church that knows him and has the authority to put him out of the church, for the sake of his soul, if he refuses to repent (1 Corinthians 5:13). Perhaps the greatest reason to actually join a church, then, is to know that at least one group of faithful brothers and sisters has promised to come after us if we wander from the Lord.

3. You are a stranger without a family.

One of the enduring lessons of the last couple of years is that we were made, in the deepest parts of us, to belong. John Piper says, “The more disconnected we are from a local church, the more confused we will be about who we are and who God made us to be. We find our true individual selves in relationship to others” (“Should I Commit to One Church?”).

Social distancing wasn’t just uncomfortable or inconvenient; it was offensive to our nature. We felt this viscerally, didn’t we, after many of us had been lulled into forgetting, lulled into thinking that community was a nice but optional feature of the good life. No, we desperately and constantly need one another — and not just through texts, calls, and livestreams, but face to face (2 John 12). We’ve relearned the vital beauty of what we heard all along:

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

From birth, you were meant to belong — to know and be known, to stir and be stirred, to encourage and be encouraged. That kind of love happens through commitment — not through a group of regular attenders, but through a devoted family.

So, if you’re a toe without legs and arms and a head, if you’re a lost sheep with bad eyesight and a loud stomach, if you’re a brother or sister without a father, a mother, or siblings, join that church and experience what it really means to be home.

Audio Transcript

We know that one day Christ will return to earth physically to rule over the nations. We long for that day when he rides his white horse, his eyes “like a flame of fire,” “clothed in a robe dipped in blood” — and all in order to finally rule over the nations “with a rod of iron.” That’s what we are told to expect in Revelation 19:11–15. But does Christ rule over the nations right now? And if so, how? It’s a very good question to us from the west coast of India. “Greetings to you, Pastor John. My name is Fernandes, and I live in Goa. My question is this: Is Jesus Christ ruling over all the nations of earth now, as Paul seems to indicate in Romans 15:8–12? It seems like he has ‘all authority in heaven and on earth,’ according to Matthew 28:18. Or is this rule to come in the future, as 1 Corinthians 15:27–28 seems to suggest? Will he rule over all the nations after his second coming? Will he rule in a different way, now spiritually and later physically? Pastor John, how do you think through the reign of Christ over the nations?”

What I see in Scripture, Fernandes, are at least three ways God rules over the nations — or we could say three stages in history in which God brings the nations into complete submission.

God’s Everlasting Dominion

First, there’s the absolute, all-embracing, all-pervasive rule of God’s providence over all nations at all times and in all places.

Psalm 103:19: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” That’s true now, and that’s true always.
Psalms 47:2: “The Lord . . . is . . . a great king over all the earth.”
Proverbs 8:15: “By me kings reign.” There’s no reign of any king anywhere at any time except by God’s decree.
Daniel 4:17: “The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”
And when God puts the kings in place, he governs what they do. Proverbs 21:1: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”

The most dramatic instance of God’s ruling the wills and actions of sinful rulers is the way those rulers conspired to put the Son of God to death.

In this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28)

“Christ’s rule at this point is not to build a political or national or earthly civic order. That comes later.”

In other words, God governs the actions of sinful rulers, like Herod and Pilate, to accomplish his purposes, without himself ever sinning. So, the first way to think about God’s rule over the nations is that it is total, constant, and infinitely wise and just — now and always. “He does according to his will among . . . the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35).

Christ at God’s Right Hand

Second, God puts his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, on the throne of the universe at his right hand and with all authority in heaven and on earth.

And what’s new about this stage in God’s reign over the nations is, first, that before the incarnation, there never was a God-man to sit at God’s right hand to rule the nations, whereas now, the eternal Son of God is clothed with humanity, and according to Acts 2:36, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

So, as Jesus sends out his disciples and says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18), he has rule as the God-man at the right hand of God now and forever. That wasn’t always the case; that’s new. All of that providential rule of stage one is vested now in the incarnate Son of God. Jesus says in Luke 10:22, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” Or John 5:22, “The Father . . . has given all judgment to the Son.”

Now, the second thing that’s new about this rule under the crucified, risen, incarnate Son of God is that the purpose of the rule is to establish God’s saving reign in the hearts of millions of people from all the nations of the world. His rule at this point is not to build a political or national or earthly civic order. That comes later. His purpose now is to establish his saving dominion in the hearts and lives of all the elect from every tribe and tongue and people and nation in the world.

He is sovereign in every way, but he uses his sovereignty now to rescue captives by destroying the authority of Satan in the hearts of his people, and by gathering his elect from all the nations. The penetrating thrust of the kingdom in this age is salvation and sanctification — that is, the beautification of the bride of Christ for presentation to him at the last day. That’s the dominion of God over the nations through Christ now.

When God Is All in All

Third and finally, the stage of God’s rule over the nations that is yet to be from where we stand now is going to begin at the second coming of Christ.

So, during the second stage, Christ is mainly invisible as the one who wields the power of providence and salvation. But that will change at the second coming of Christ. He will no longer be invisible — he will no longer reign invisibly from heaven — but will himself stand forth and be visibly, bodily present on the earth as the King of all kings.

Listen to the difference between the present reign over all things and the future reign over all things. We hear the difference. We hear the description of the present reign in Ephesians 1:20, and we hear the contrast of what it would be like at the future reign in 1 Corinthians 15:22. Let me read those two, and you’ll hear the contrast.

[God] raised [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. . . . And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church. (Ephesians 1:20–22)

In the present, Christ is seated above all rule, authority, power, and dominion, who still are very active in this world, these evil powers. But he rules over them, seated at the right hand of God, invisibly performing his influence while they have some sway on the earth. Then comes the contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:22–24,

As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits [his resurrection], then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

“One day, every rule and authority and power will be destroyed; opposition will be over.”

So, there’s a difference: In this age, before the second coming of Christ, Christ sits at the right hand of God far above all rule and authority and power, and does his saving work. But in that day, every rule and authority and power will be destroyed; opposition will be over. Christ reigns until that work is completely finished. And then Paul adds, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). And Revelation 20:14 describes that: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.”

Then Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father, and God will be all in all, and through Christ, and through his body — his people — God will reign forever and ever in the new heavens and the new earth, and his people will be “from every tribe and [tongue] and people and nation,” whom Christ has made “a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” forever and ever (Revelation 5:9–10).