Last Lord’s Day we began to consider the teaching of the Lord Jesus on the subject of prayer, and I urged that we make the request of the disciples in Luke 11:1 our own prayer for these summer weeks together. “Lord Jesus, teach us to pray. Make us a praying people. Make us a praying church. Teach us to pray.” And so in that posture of teachability and expectation, let me invite you now to turn with me once more to Matthew’s gospel, chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6. We began last time by surveying the Lord’s prayer as a whole and we drew some lessons from the structure and order from the Lord’s Prayer. Then we zoomed in, you will remember, in verse 9, on the preface to the Lord’s Prayer. The form of address – “Our Father in heaven” – and we noticed the extraordinary privilege that has been given to us that we should go to the God of glory and grace and address Him as Abba Father and know that we have His ear and come to Him with every expectation that He will hear us when we cry. That was last time.
Today, I want to direct your attention now to the first petition of The Lord’s Prayer, the first request – “Hallowed be Your name.” You’ll see it there in verse 9, and we’ll think about four things as we examine the teaching of this first petition. First of all, I want to think about the importance of this request. Why does this petition take priority in The Lord’s Prayer? “Hallowed be Your name.” Then second, we need to understand exactly what it is we are praying for. What does the name of God refer to? And what on earth does it mean to “hallow” something? And so secondly, we need to understand the meaning of this prayer. Then thirdly, we’ll look more specifically at the requirements of the prayer. Now that we know what it means, we need to know what it demands of us. So the important, the meaning, the requirements, and then finally, to help supply some final motivation, well think about the way the burden of this initial petition is demonstrated in one incident in particular in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the importance, the meaning, the requirements, and the demonstration of this first petition.
Before we look at each of those, let me invite you now to bow your heads as we turn to the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
O Lord our God, we remember the words, the promise of the Lord Jesus, “Ask Me anything in My name and I will do it.” And so, our God, we come asking in His name. Lord Jesus, we ask You in Your name, keep Your promise. Give us the Holy Spirit. Illuminate our understanding and bless Your Word to the hearts of all who hear it now. In Your matchless name we pray, amen.
Matthew’s gospel, chapter 6, at the ninth verse. This is the Word of God:
“Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Amen.
Think with me first of all about the importance of this opening petition. The Lord Jesus makes an amazing promise. We quoted it a moment ago in our prayer. John 14:14 – do you remember what He said? “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. Ask Me anything. I’ll do it!” It’s an extravagant promise, isn’t it? If we really believed it, I expect we’d all give ourselves far more than we do to the business of prayer. “Ask Me anything. I’ll do it!” Amazing. As you hear that promise, what I wonder is the first thing that comes to your mind as your most pressing need. “Ask Me anything. I’ll do it.” What comes immediately to mind? Your most longed for desire? What do you ask for first? You can only ask for one thing, it can be anything at all, and know for sure Jesus will do it. What would it be? Financial security. Physical health. The welfare of a loved one. What’s the top of your list?
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He did not exclude the most basic of physical needs as a suitable subject for the attention of almighty God, did He? He taught them to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and He ensured they would always seek pardon for their sin. He taught them to pray, “Forgive us our debts.” He understood that we are, every day, locked in a terrible spiritual battle with temptation and with satanic evil, and so He taught His disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” All of these, Jesus says, have a necessary and proper place in the regular prayers of His people. They are all good and right and worthy things to pray for. None are to be excluded. And yet, Jesus teaches us here that none of them are to claim first place, not in our hearts, nor in our prayers. When Jesus gave a version of this prayer in Luke chapter 11, the context there makes it clear it was Jesus’ own prayer life that provoked the disciples to ask for further instruction. They wanted to pray like their Master. When they said, “Teach us to pray,” the implication is, “Lord, we want to learn to pray like You pray.” And so Jesus gave them a version of this prayer that we find here in Matthew chapter 6.
And so I think we have to conclude that this prayer mirrors the priorities and the pattern of Jesus’ prayer life. And that means we can say that this first petition of The Lord’s Prayer was Jesus’ own great priority and burden. This was His constant focus. This was the longing of His heart and the ceaseless cry of His lips. “Father, hallowed be Your name.” Before daily bread or deliverance from sin or Satan, “Father, hallowed be Your name.” Before freedom from suffering or relief from sorrow, before all else, more than anything else, “If I may have nothing but this, Father, hallowed be Your name.” So it’s the burden of Jesus’ heart and the servant is not greater than his Master, nor is the pupil greater than the Teacher. If this was the priority of Christ’s prayers, it must be our first and great priority too as we seek to follow Him. “Father, hallowed be Your name.”
The puritan, Thomas Watson, whose book, by the way, on The Lord’s Prayer, I think, may still be the best book expounding The Lord’s Prayer in the English language. If you do not have it, it is very easily read and I commend it to you – The Lord’s Prayer by Thomas Watson. Watson says, he gives us another reason why this petition should be first in our priorities. Not only is it the burden of the heart of Jesus Christ, but Watson says, “We shall not need to pray in heaven, ‘Give us our daily bread,’ because there shall be no hunger. Nor, ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ because there shall be no sin. Nor, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ because the old serpent is not there to tempt. Yet the hallowing of God’s name will be of great use and request in heaven. We shall be ever singing hallelujahs, which is nothing else but the hallowing of God’s name.”
All the other requests in The Lord’s Prayer assume, they reflect the reality of life here on earth in a fallen, broken, sinful world; a world of need and of temptation and of sin. The answer to all the other petitions in combination only serve this first petition which, when all our needs are met and all our sins are gone and all our sorrows have passed away in the new creation at last, we will still pray, on down the endless ages of eternity, it will be our delight to cry with the saints and the angels without ceasing, “Father, hallowed be Your name!” This is our purpose. This is the end for which God created the world. The reason we were made, the reason we were redeemed – to hallow the name of God. This was the priority of Jesus’ prayers. This will be the burden of our prayers forever. Every other prayer will cease, but we will never stop praying, “Hallowed be Your name.” It is the great cry of heaven and it ought to be our cry on earth as we prepare for that great day. So first, the importance of the petition.
Now, let’s think about the definition of this prayer. If it’s important that we pray it, we need to understand it. What does it mean to hallow God’s name? Let’s think about God’s name first of all. The name of God in Scripture refers of course to much more than simply the proper noun that would distinguish God in language from other people, burdened with no more significance than names like Bill or George or Sally. That’s not what the name of God refers to. In the Bible, the name of God is really shorthand for God Himself, and especially for all the ways in which God reveals His true self to us by His Word and His works. And so Psalm 8 verse 1, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” The psalmist isn’t saying that the letters of God’s name, Yahweh – YHWH – that those letters are themselves inherently majestic. He’s saying God, whose name it is, God is majestic. And in Psalm 20, when the psalmist cries, “May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob protect you,” he doesn’t mean we should recite God’s name over and over and over like an incantation, use it as a talisman, like a rabbit’s foot for good luck in the day of trouble. No, he means that God Himself will answer in the day of trouble. And in Psalm 135:13, we are told, “Your name, O LORD, endures forever! Your renown, O LORD, throughout all the ages!” The name of God is the way God makes who He is known. It is His fame, His reputation, His renown in all the world.
The Westminster Larger Catechism sums all of that up beautifully in question and answer 190. If you haven’t read The Larger Catechism’s exposition of The Lord’s Prayer, let me commend it to you as an immensely helpful guide to understanding the teaching of our Savior in this important part of His holy Word. Question 190 sums up the meaning of the name of God like this. It refers, the catechism says, “to His titles, attributes, ordinances, word, works and whatsoever He is pleased to make Himself known by.” That’s what we mean when we talk about the name of God. It is God Himself revealed to us by His word and works.
Well what about hallowed? “Hallowed be Your name.” Hallowed is an archaic word. It’s not a word we use really very much at all anymore. You might, I suppose, hear someone occasionally, maybe even with a little bit of irony, talk about the hallowed halls of some venerable institution. We hear an echo of the word “hallowed” in Halloween, don’t we, which doesn’t help us much because Halloween has become a celebration of all things spooky and weird, whereas the Bible word, “hallowed,” has almost the opposite connotation. Hallowed is a word translated almost everywhere else in the Bible as “consecrated” or “sanctified” or “set apart” or “made holy.” To hallow something is to treat it with reverence and awe. It is to set it apart from every common use to a sacred purpose. Darrell Johnson, who has written another great little book on The Lord’s Prayer, says, “Hallowed means to holify something.” To holify it.
Now let’s be clear, the name of God – His title, attributes, ordinances, word and works, God’s very self – is already maximally holy, isn’t it? When the seraphim sang the praises of God in Isaiah’s vision – do you remember in Isaiah chapter 6 – they said He was “holy, holy, holy, LORD God almighty. The whole earth is full of Your glory!” In Hebrew idiom, as you may know, repetition is used for emphasis, and typically in the Bible, when emphasis is required, a word is repeated twice over. So think of Jesus, for example, saying, “Truly, truly I say to you.” Right? Double repetition. Emphasis. Sit up and take notice; this is irresistible truth. Now hear this, “Truly, truly.” Emphasis. Double repetition. But in Isaiah 6 and in Revelation 4, we have a triple repetition, reserved only for God. He is in a category of one. He is not just holy or holy, holy; He is holy, holier, holiest of all! “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God almighty!” Maximally holy. Inexhaustibly holy. All the perfections of holiness are His. Natively inhering in Him. No one can add to His holiness or take from His holiness. If we are holy, we are only holy by degrees and only holy derivatively from His perfect holiness. God makes all His creatures holy, but holiness is His by definition. He is perfectly holy. The Holy One.
And so when we pray that God would be holified, made holy, sanctified, hallowed – what can we possibly mean? There is no lack of holiness in God, is there? No room for more. He doesn’t need a top up. There’s no deficit, as if the empty light had come on, on God’s dashboard, and He needed us to refill His tank with a gallon or two of extra holiness. That’s not what we are praying when we pray, “Hallowed be Your name.” It might help to remember an old illustration – you’ve heard me use it more than once; I think I got it originally from John Piper – of the telescope and the microscope. Do you remember that? There are two ways to magnify something, right? The microscope takes something really, really small and makes it look bigger than it really is. That’s not what we are doing when we hallow God’s name. We are not making more of Him than He deserves. We are not magnifying Him from His small stature to give Him the appearance of being great. No, no, we hallow God’s name more like a telescope magnifies something. Right? A telescope takes something that we perceive to be small, because of its great distance from us, and it helps us to see it as it really is, in its true dimensions and proper scale.
And that’s more like what we are doing when we hallow God’s name. We are praying that the holiness and the glory and the greatness of God’s self in its true dimensions might at last be seen in a world that thinks Him small and distant and far off. “Father, let the world see You as You really are – in Your greatness and glory and grace. Let Your holiness blaze forth that none may mistake it or avoid it. Make it so that everyone everywhere will have to reckon with Your holiness, either by adoring it or to be judged by it. Father, hallowed be Your name.” The importance of this prayer. It was Jesus’ priority and it ought to be ours. And we will always pray this prayer, down all the long ages of eternity with Jesus. “Hallowed be Your name.” The meaning of this prayer. The name of God is shorthand for all that God is and all the ways that God makes Himself known to us. And to hallow that name is to set it apart, to reverence it, to show God to be who He really is – perfectly, gloriously holy.
And now in the third place I want you to think with me about the requirements of this prayer. A number of duties are implied here if we are going to pray these words properly. The first duty, in order to pray this petition properly, there must be the recognition that on our own we do not and cannot hallow God’s name as we should. Natively, as the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans chapter 1, “We exchange the truth of God for a lie and we worship and serve the created thing rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.” Or as John reminds us, “We prefer the darkness rather than the light because our deeds are evil.” That’s who we are by nature, isn’t it? We love our own names, don’t we? Our own glory. Our own words and works and ways. We want to advance our own reputation. We want others to look at us through a microscope so that we look bigger than we really are instead of really longing that the world would look at God through a telescope and see Him as He really is. And so this prayer is designed, right out of the gate, it is designed to humble us.
If we are going to pray it sincerely, the first thing we must do is to topple the idol of self from the podium of our hearts. We are not God! Did you know? We are not first. We are not holy. We are not glorious. To see God on His throne, you must first put yourself in the dust. You know that’s the only vantage point from which God’s glory is visible to a human being – in the dust, at His feet. You can’t see it from any other vantage point but from the dust at His feet. The first petition of The Lord’s Prayer, it humbles, it humbles our pride, doesn’t it? “Hallowed be Your name” not my name! That’s first. That’s the big idea. That’s the governing priority, really, of all things. Romans 11:36, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be the glory forever. Amen.” He’s first, not me. His glory, not mine. His name, not my name. Topple self from the podium of your heart. Put yourself in the dust and hallow the name of God alone.
The second duty required by this petition. First, it humbles us. We must put ourselves in the dust if we are to hallow the name of God. Secondly, to hallow the name of God begins by trusting in Him. Proverbs 18:10, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower. The righteous one runs into it and he is safe.” Salvation comes by trusting in the name of the Lord. Acts 4:12, Peter and John declare, “There is salvation in no other name under heaven given among men by which you must be saved but the name of Jesus.” You cannot hallow God’s name while refusing to trust in the name of God’s Son. All that’s entailed in the divine name, the being and nature and character of God, it’s all revealed climactically, supremely in His Son. We know Him only in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus shows us what God is like. So to hallow the name of God must begin by trusting the name of Jesus Christ. How many times have you prayed the words of The Lord’s Prayer in your life, I wonder – a hundred times? A thousand times? Did your parents teach you to say The Lord’s Prayer while you were a little boy or a little girl? Did you say them in school, maybe? Did you say them kneeling at your bedside at the end of the day? Have you found refuge in them, perhaps? At the bedside of a dying loved one when all other words failed you, these remain steadfast in your memory. How many times have you said, “Father, hallowed be Your name”?
But listen, these words only make sense when you have God as your Father by faith in Jesus Christ, His Son. And you can only pray these words rightly when you are trusting in Him, in whom the name of God alone may be truly known. This is an empty prayer, every time you’ve prayed it, it has been an empty prayer, hollow and useless if you have been a stranger to Jesus Christ to whom has been given the name that is above every name. But you can pray, “Hallowed be Your name” as it was meant to be prayed by toppling yourself from the throne and by setting apart Christ alone as Lord in your heart. We begin to pray this prayer properly when we trust, when we entrust ourselves to God’s Son truly.
Third, we hallow God’s name by the diligent practice of prayer and praise in private and in public. We hallow God’s name by calling on His name at every opportunity. If the name of the LORD is a strong tower, run into it and be safe! What are you waiting for? Call on Him while He is near. Seek Him while He may be found. Stop coping. Are you coping? Telling yourself you can do it, you can make it, you’re up to the job? Stop coping and start crying out to God in Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit. Call on His name. Remember, Jesus said, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” So ask Him! To hallow the name of God is to give yourself to the discipline of prayer. And not just to prayer, but to praise also. To hallow the name of God is to delight in Him and to give thanks to Him and to worship Him according to the holy Scriptures. In particular, we hallow God’s name by gathering every Lord’s Day with our brothers and sisters in Christ to praise Him as He has commanded in the assembly of the church. “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together,” Hebrews reminds us, “as is the habit of some.” You dishonor the name of God when you neglect to gather every single Sabbath Day to worship Him. And you hallow His name when you come to bless the living God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day.
And fourthly, we are to hallow God’s name by honoring Him in all that we do. We hallow His name by honoring Him in everything that we do. Colossians 3:17, “Whatever you do, in word and in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” Part of what we are praying for in the first petition is the grace to consecrate all of life to the glory of the name of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ. Pray every morning, “Father hallowed be Your name in my work, in my attitude to my work, in my habits, in the way I refuse to join the office gossip, in the way I strive to be diligent and reliable and trustworthy. Father, hallowed be Your name today in my sincerity, in my integrity. Let Your name be hallowed in the way that I deal with my colleagues, in the way that I speak to them and speak about them. Make me a representative of Your name, and make all my doing and saying reflect well on the name that I bear. And when I come home, Father, hallowed be Your name in my marriage, in the way that I talk to my spouse, in the patience that I exercise with my children, when I am tired and I am tempted to put my needs ahead of my wife or my husband or my children. Help me remember whose name I bear and whose glory I serve. Help me to hallow Your name like Jesus hallowed Your name and gave Himself up for the people He came to serve and He so loved.” In everything you do, in work and rest, in recreation and in your vocation, with family, among friends, on your own and in public, you bear the name of God with you. So pray for grace, whatever you do, to do it for the glory of the name of God that you might hallow His name in all of life.
We hallow God’s name by repentance, toppling self from the throne and putting it in the dust. We hallow God’s name by faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. We hallow God’s name by prayer and praise in private and in public. And we hallow God’s name by seeking His glory in everything that we do. So we’ve seen the importance of the prayer, the meaning of the prayer, the requirements of the prayer, and finally and very quickly, let me reflect on the great demonstration of this prayer in one incident in the life of Jesus Christ. Maybe the best place that I could find that exemplifies this prayer embodied in Jesus’ life is John 12:28. The Lord Jesus is contemplating the climactic sufferings of His life and ministry at the cross. He anticipates all that Calvary will hold for Him, and He says, “Now is My soul troubled. It’s overwhelming as I contemplate the horror that waits. Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”
Here is the duty of the first petition of The Lord’s Prayer embodied, isn’t it? More clearly perhaps than anywhere else in holy Scripture. When the hell of the cross already cast its shadow over our Savior’s soul, and the foreboding of coming divine wrath fell upon His consciousness, and everything in His human nature shrank from the agonies He knew He must shortly endure, He doesn’t resist the will of God. He refuses all alternatives. This was His purpose. This is His mission – to die in the room and stead of sinners, bearing their guilt away forever. And so He says, “Father, even in the cross, glorify Your name. Hallowed be Your name. If the glory of Your name in the salvation of men and women from every tribe and language and people and nation means nails in My hands and feet, if it means the hell of Your judgment falling on Me instead of them, if that is the price of hallowing Your name, well then, Father, I pay it gladly. Your glory is more dear to Me than My life. The cross is a reasonable cost to pay for the glory of Your name, and I do not hesitate to pay it in full.”
Now one ever lived or prayed the first petition, “Father, hallowed be Your name,” like Jesus Christ. And nowhere was God’s name more hallowed than at the cross. And nor will we find a better motive anywhere to move our own hearts to hallow God’s name in turn than to look long and hard at your suffering Savior, bleeding and dying for you. Look at the cross. Look at your Savior who glorified God by thorns on His brow and nails in His hands and feet and bore the dreadful curse for your soul, for the glory of the Father’s name. Look long at the cross and topple yourself from the throne of your heart. Begin now in earnest to hallow God’s name as you ought by faith in Jesus Christ who died for sinners and by a life newly consecrated to be every moment of every day to the praise of His matchless name. May God help us all to do it. Let us pray.Our God and Father, as we bow before You we adore You for the Lord Jesus Christ who bore Your name, hallowed Your name, lived for the glory of Your name, died that Your name might be exalted and honored and adored among people from every tribe and language and nation forever and ever and ever. We are the great beneficiaries of His obedience as He sought to hallow Your name. And He taught us to pray and to live for the hallowing of Your name. But O God, we confess how short we fall, how we put our own name, our own reputation, our own glory first. Forgive us for the idolatry of self that ensnares our hearts. Teach us, as we stand here together as it were under the shadow of the cross, teach us to topple self from the throne of our hearts and by faith and in true repentance, clinging to Jesus alone to help us, grant that our lives might be freshly consecrated to the hallowing of Your name. For we ask it that You might be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen.