Well do keep your Bibles open and turn with me once again to Matthew’s gospel, chapter 6; Matthew chapter 6. You can find it on page 811 of the church Bibles. We are continuing our reflections on the teaching of Jesus on prayer in the gospels and we began last week a close study of that form of prayer that Jesus gave to His disciples that we call the Lord’s Prayer.
You will remember that we looked at the preface to the Lord’s Prayer, that form of address that was peculiar to the prayer life of Jesus in which He now invites us to use for ourselves. We are to address God as, “Our Father in heaven.” And we noticed two themes there. First, prayer belongs to the Church of God. That is to say, it is a community discipline. We pray, “Our Father.” We pray together, always mindful of belonging to God’s people. There’s no “I” or “me” or “mine” in the Lord’s Prayer because Christian spirituality, like the Christian life, is churchly and not individualistic. And secondly we said prayer belongs to the children of God. That is to say, we pray, “Our Father.” The doctrine of adoption. We have been adopted into the family and household of God through faith in Jesus Christ. And the doctrine of our adoption, through Jesus Christ, so that we may call God our Father, is the foundation of all true prayer. We must have the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to be our God and our Father in Jesus Christ. That was last time.
And this time, we move on to consider the first petition, the first request in the Lord’s Prayer – “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” “Hallowed be Your name.” And I want you to consider three things with me as we examine this first request. First of all, I want to look at the structure or the order of the Lord’s Prayer. Here we see the priorities of prayer as Jesus teaches us to begin to ask for things; I want to notice the order in which those requests come. The priorities of prayer. Then secondly I want to look at some of the language that is used in this first petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Did you notice how abstract the language is? “Hallowed be Your name” – what does that mean? And so here we need to think not just about the priorities but also about the presuppositions of prayer. There is some truth being presupposed and summed up in this idea of the divine name. And then finally I want to think about the request itself, articulated in this first petition, the purpose of prayer; what it is we’re asking for. So the priorities, presupposition, and the purpose of prayer. That’s our outline. Before we consider it, let’s bow our heads and ask for the blessing and help of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray.
O Holy Spirit, You are the Lord and the giver of Life. You are the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of sonship by whom we call, “Abba Father.” You are the one who intercedes for us with groans that cannot be uttered, helping us in our prayers, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. How we bless You that You are our God of mercy and grace. You bring us to Christ and unite us to Him that in Him, by Your mighty power, we may have fellowship with the Father. Now we pray, O Holy Spirit, having inspired the words before us, illuminate our understanding of them that we may live for the honor and glory of the name of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 9. 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.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Amen.
The Priorities of Prayer
Well let’s think first of all about the priorities of prayer that we are being taught here in this first petition. The priorities of prayer. Priorities matter a very great deal and most of us, I suspect, have learned that lesson the hard way after getting our priorities quite wrong at some point or another in our lives. I read a story from 2010 recently about a New Jersey teacher, Marie Murphy. She got a call one day telling her that her house was on fire. So she rushed to the scene in a panic. Her concern was not for her husband or her mother who was staying with them at the time; she actually knew they were both safe. Murphy was gripped with an heroic desire to save her most prized possession. What do you think was so important that Murphy would risk burning to death in order to salvage? Not a beloved family member, not a beloved pet, not a keepsake from a lost loved one, not some priceless treasure – season tickets to the Phillies!
Consumed with a desire to save the tickets, Murphy ran into the building ignoring every single one of her other possessions, including as it turns out a certificate of fire insurance, and reached her baseball tickets just in time to see everything that she owned, all her worldly goods, consumed in the conflagration. When the Phillies heard about Murphy’s dedication, shall we call it, they sent the Phillies Fanatic – ironically so-called team mascot – and Jim Jackson, the Phillies announcer, to a pep rally at her school to surprise her with a Phillies jersey and a framed season ticket, and then they turned to the crowd at the pep rally and gave them some advice. “If you have season tickets and your house is on fire, don’t run into your house. The Phillies will reprint your tickets!” Misplaced priorities.
When it comes to prayer, the dangers of getting our priorities wrong are not nearly so obvious, though they may well be quite serious nonetheless. In the Lord’s Prayer, it ought not to escape our notice that Jesus does not begin with our needs. We made this point last time. We don’t pray, “me” or “mine” but “our” throughout the Lord’s Prayer. We pray for one another. We pray together. And so the prayer does not begin, appropriately, with our needs, or even with the needs of our neighbors. How does the Lord’s Prayer begin? It begins with God. Do you see that? In fact, the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are all Godward in their orientation. “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Your kingdom come.” It’s about God. The word “you” and “your” is center stage. It’s the key word in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer, not “me” and “mine.” We are praying for God’s glory, God’s kingdom, and God’s will to be done. Before ever we begin to pray for our daily bread or the forgiveness of our sin or our combat with temptation, it’s probably not without significance that the Lord’s Prayer in this connection follows the same pattern we see established in the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments, you remember, deal with love of God. And then the last six deal with love of neighbor. That’s the pattern of a life that is pleasing to God. It is God-centered, and as a result and as a consequence of that God-centeredness, it is then concerned with the welfare of others. And Jesus here is teaching us to reflect in the priorities of our prayer lives the priorities of the Law of God for the whole of our lives. God comes first. God comes first.
Thomas Boston, the 18th century Scottish Presbyterian theologian, said of this first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be Your name” – “This is first of all put into our mouths because of all things it should be nearest to our hearts.” “This is first of all put into our mouths because of all things it should be nearest to our hearts.” “Hallowed be Your name.” The glory of God, the praise of God, the honor of God. Or listen to the way J.I. Packer said it. “Jesus’ pattern prayer, which is both crutch, road and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves…” I like that definition of the Lord’s Prayer don’t you? It is “crutch, road and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves. Jesus’ pattern prayer tells us to start with God, for lesson one is to grasp that God matters infinitely more than we do.” God matters infinitely more than we do.
Now that sounds a rather stark and uncomfortable challenge, at least in our own ears in this particular cultural moment, don’t you think? It confronts our contemporary values, doesn’t it? God matters more than we do. I wonder if you really believe that in the core of your being – that He matters more than I do. God first. That’s the order of the prayer because that needs to be the order of our lives. It’s actually the only way to live a happy life, a blessed life, a life as it’s supposed to be ordered. Your life will always be dislocated and broken until it is ordered correctly according to the Word of God where God comes first and you do not. For as long as you are first, your heart will never be truly happy or at rest. Man’s chief end, remember, is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” And so the Lord’s Prayer here is calling us to reexamine not just the priorities of our prayer lives, it certainly is, but the priorities of our whole lives so that when we sit down to pray, certainly we mustn’t rush to our shopping list of needs. We are being called here to begin reminding ourselves that God is God and we are not. We are being called to humble ourselves, to bow first in adoration and in praise.
Do you linger in the adoration of God or do you rush on to the stuff that you need so that you can get to the things you want to spend your time on. We’re not to start with what we want or what we think we need or what we feel our neighbors need even. We are to start with who God is and the honor He deserves. That’s certainly a large part of the message of this part of the prayer, but the Lord’s Prayer presses beyond the order of our prayers actually into the order of our daily lives, into the order of our deepest heart priorities. You are not to come first in your own priorities, in your own estimation, because you were not made for you. God is first – His will, His kingdom, the glory of His name, because you were made for Him. You were made for Him!
And so then we need to ask ourselves in all honesty before God – Does He really come first in my life, in your life? Does He really? For whom am I living, are you living? Who gets first place in my affections? Upon whose glory do I spend most of my time reflecting? About whose reputation am I most concerned? Upon whom do I spend my time and my talent and my treasure? Is it really the living God or is it in fact myself, my comfort, my reputation, my welfare, my agenda, my preferences? The priorities of prayer. I wonder if they are reflected not just in your prayer life but in your life as a whole.
The Presuppositions of Prayer
Then secondly notice the presuppositions of this prayer. And here I’m really thinking about the vocabulary of it. We said earlier it’s a rather abstract prayer. “Hallowed be Your name.” What does that mean? There’s a great deal of truth actually being presupposed and compressed into this idea of the divine name. “What’s in a name?” we might ask. Well names today in our culture don’t tend to mean a whole lot. They may have a certain sentimental significance for us if we are named for some previous family member perhaps. As often as not, however, we name our children because we like how their name sounds next to our surname. “In traditionally Christian societies,” writes Gerald Bray, “babies may still be named for the saint on whose day they were born or baptized.” That was certainly the case with Martin Luther who was baptized on St. Martin’s Day, the eleventh of November, 1483. “Surnames are often more easily understandable and presumably they reflect some past reality,” writes Bray. “But how many people who are called ‘Taylor’ or ‘Smith’ exercise those professions now? And who would suppose that someone called ‘Johnson’ was actually the son of John, or ‘Thompson’ the son of Thomas? These names became fossilized many centuries ago and it would not occur to us to attach any real meaning to them now.”
But you probably know that typically in the Bible things are very different. Names function differently. They’re much more than convenient labels to differentiate one person from another. They are descriptors. They reveal something of the character or the mission of the person who bears their name. So for example, Moses’ name comes from a Hebrew word that means “to draw out; to draw from the water” which tells us both about his origin – remember, he was plucked from the river Nile by the daughter of pharaoh – and about his destiny. He would save the people in the exodus by leading them through the waters of the Red Sea. Or think of Abram. His name means “father of the nation,” but when he entered into covenant with God and God called him, his name was changed to “Abraham,” which means, “father of many nations” because God had promised that all the nations of the earth would be blessed in Abraham’s seed.
Maybe the best example known to all of us is what Gabriel told Joseph when he was told of Mary’s pregnancy. “She will conceive and bear a son and you shall call His name, ‘Jesus.’” Why? Because we like the way it sounds? No, because this is His mission. “He will save His people from their sins.” The name Jesus, Yeshua, means, “the Lord saves; the Lord is deliverance.” And so when God met Moses in Exodus 3 on the mountain and told Moses His name, He told him something about His being, His nature. He was revealing Himself to Moses – “I AM that I AM.” God is the self-existent, infinite, eternal and unchangeable One. So when we talk about the name of God in Scripture we are talking about God Himself as He is revealed to us. It is a revelation word, shorthand for all the ways in which God makes Himself known to us.
And so for example, the Puritan, the great father actually of English Puritanism, William Perkins, speaking about God’s attributes, works and word, said this. “God is known to us by all these as people are known by their names.” So when we talk about the name of God, we are talking about all the ways God makes Himself known. It is a revelation word. That’s why, when the Shorter Catechism expounds this petition of the Lord’s Prayer, it tells us in answer 101, “We pray that God would enable us and others to glorify Him in all that whereby He maketh Himself known.” In every way that God makes Himself known, we pray that He would be honored. And when it expounds the third commandment – you remember the third commandment? “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Answer 54 says, “The third commandment requieth the holy and reverential use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works.” And in answer 55 it says that, “The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God makes Himself known.” And so when we talk about the name of God, we are talking about all the ways whereby He maketh Himself known. We are talking about His titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works.
The Name of God Reminds Us of Our Duty
And that’s important, first of all, because it reminds us of our duty. Doesn’t it? We are never to take the name of God in vain. We are always to reverence it and worship and adore the name of God which stands for all God is and has shown Himself to be to us in Jesus Christ. We can take His name in vain by a flippant and casual use of it, by a willful and callous misuse of it reducing it to a swear word. We can also misuse His name by a causal indifference toward all those ways by which God makes Himself known to us – by handling sacred things profanely or by ascribing a sanctity to that which is wicked. It becomes an acute, an especially acute challenge on the Lord’s Day. Don’t you think? How easily we misuse the name of God. Actually we commit blasphemy when we sing His praises while our minds are thinking about lunch; when we take the name of God upon our lips and our hearts are cold and hard and indifferent. When we engage in outward, sacred duties while wandering far from that broken and contrite spirit that God will not despise; when we do not bow before the cross of Jesus Christ in repentance and faith but continue to resist Him and rebel against His rule. While feigning faith and going through the motions of outward worship, we take the name of God in vain. And so this first petition calls us to our duty, and actually exposes how far short of obedience we often fall, even here, even now in these most sacred moments of our week.
The Name of God Speaks a Gospel Word to Us
But in this first petition, focused as it is on the name of God, we are pressed beyond our duty not just showing us the bad news of how far short we fall of our obligations toward the good news of what God has done to meet us in our sin. When we talk about the name of God, we are actually being pressed toward the Gospel. The name of God speaks a Gospel word to us. After all, one of the ways Jesus articulated His mission, the reason He came, was to make the name of God known. John 17, “I have manifested Your name to the people You have given Me out of the world.” In John 12, after raising Lazarus from the dead, all the momentum in John’s gospel begins to build from that moment on toward the cross. So John 12 is the pivot, it’s the hinge in John’s gospel. From that moment, everything is about the cross. It’s focused on Calvary, on the climactic sufferings of Jesus. And in John 12:28 it’s clear that Jesus knows this pivotal moment in His earthly ministry has arrived and so He says, “Now is My soul troubled! And what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour?’ But for this hour I have come into the world. Father, glorify Your name.” And then John says, “A voice came from heaven saying, ‘I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.’” What’s Jesus praying for? He’s praying in view of the coming ordeal of Calvary. He’s praying thinking about the cross. And He’s saying, “Father, when I go there may Your name be glorified, may Your name be hallowed, may it be displayed in all its beauty and majesty to the world. May You be revealed like never before at the cross.” And the Father answered, “I have glorified it in the life and word and works of My Son, the Lord Jesus, during His earthly ministry thus far, and I will glorify it again.” The climactic moment of divine self- revelation where His name is made most fully known, where we see the heart of God for the world, is the cross of Jesus Christ.
And so when we pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” we are reminding ourselves of good news. God has made Himself known to us in Jesus Christ who gave Himself for sinners. And we are praying, “O God, may many, many more come to see the wonder of Your love revealed here; see Your heart disclosed to the world here. And may You help me to live constantly depending upon it, resting in it, ever assuming that I have all the power I need to myself but casting myself, abandoning myself to Your grace in the Gospel of Your Son.” So the cross is the center, actually, of this first petition.
The Purpose of Prayer
The priorities of prayer. The presupposition of prayer – all the ways in which God is made known. That’s what’s being presupposed. And He’s never more clearly seen. He makes Himself known never more fully than at the cross. And then finally notice the purpose of the prayer. What is it we’re really asking for when we’re taught to pray, “Hallowed be Your name”? We don’t use the word “hallowed” very often. We might, I suppose, walking through the precincts of Yale University speak about “these hallowed halls,” but the word is not a common one today. It means, “to recognize as holy; to set apart and to value something as sacred.” Of course there’s a sense, isn’t there, in which no one can make God’s name holy. God’s name is ineffably holy. God is holy. He epitomizes holiness. No one can add to that holiness or subtract from it. But when we say, “Hallowed be Your name,” we are saying we want the world to see You as You really are. We want the world to honor You in all the beauty of Your holiness as You truly deserve.
I think it was John Piper who somewhere speaks about one of the synonyms the Bible uses for “Hallowed be Your name” when the Bible calls us to magnify God’s name. Have you come across that phrase – “magnify the name of God”? And Piper says, “What does it mean to magnify?” Well there’s two ways you can magnify something. You can magnify it like a microscope. So a microscope takes something that is very, very small and then enlarges it to make it look bigger than it really is. Or you could magnify something like a telescope, that is actually very large but in our perception is very small, and helps us see it in its true dimensions at last. He says we are to magnify God like a telescope and not like a microscope. We’re not making Him bigger than He really is, but we are seeing Him as vast and majestic and holy as He truly is. And so when we pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” we’re not making God holier than He is; we are recognizing the holiness of God and the majesty of God and the glory of God as He deserves to be known.
Praying for Grace to Worship God Acceptably
So when we pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” what are we asking for exactly? Well aren’t we asking first for grace to worship God acceptably as He deserves to be honored – with reverence and with awe. We’re asking for clarity – to know Him as He has revealed Himself to us in His titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works. And for grace that would generate affections in our hearts that correspond with who He really is, that we might fear the Lord and rejoice before Him with trembling. One of the ways, actually a good way practically you can do this better, is by going through the Bible and noting the titles and the names of God. Herbert Lockyer has a great book that compiles all the names of God. I’d recommend that to you. You can find all the names of God listed online, all the names of God from Scripture. It might be a good thing for you to hallow the name of God at the beginning of your daily devotional time, to take one of His names or titles and to ponder, “What does it teach me about who He is and what He is like?” And then turn it into prayer and praise. Adore Him for what this tells you about His character. And then apply it to your various prayer needs and requests. “Since this is what You are like, O God, be faithful to Your name, to Yourself. Your own honor is on the line. And so hear and answer. Act according to Your character in this situation, for these loved ones, in my life, in the Church, in the world. Glorify Your name.” We are to hallow the name of God in our worship and in our devotion, privately in families and together on the Lord’s Day.
Praying for Grace to Live in a Way that is Consistent with the Name We Bear
Secondly, aren’t we asking for grace to live in a way that is consistent with the name that we bear? I want my sons to live in a way that does not bring dishonor on the family name. They bear our family name. This is who we are. This is how we live. And I want them to be consistent with that. You know, you were baptized into “the Name,” the singular name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And when you believe the Gospel, you were united to Christ and you were given, as it were, a new name, a new character, a new nature. You bear the name of God. Everywhere you go, you carry His name with you. You represent Him as a member of the household of faith. And as we pray, “Hallowed be Your name,” aren’t we praying, “O God, help me today as I go to work, as I talk with my colleagues, when I come home, when I speak to my spouse, to my children, with my friends. O God, help me in the places that I go, in the things that I say, in the way that I use my time and talent and treasure to live in a way that is consistent with the name that I bear, that my conduct and not only my words might bring You glory.”
Praying for God to Keep His Promise
And finally, we’re asking for God to keep His promise. Actually, this is one prayer – there may be other prayers like this, but this is one prayer I know for sure God will always answer in the affirmative – “Father, hallowed be Your name. Father, glorify Your name. I don’t know what to pray for. I am at the end of my wisdom, at the end of my resources in this dark trial. I don’t know what to pray for, but Father, this is what I know – Glorify Your name in this trial, amidst these tears, in all the perplexity of this moment. Do what You have promised to do. In all the wisdom and sovereignty that You display, glorify Your name. Glorify Your name not just in my life but in the world.” Look at the world around you. We need to remember this is a prayer God has promised to answer in Afghanistan, in Washington, D.C., in Jackson, Mississippi. He’s promised to answer. One day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. One day every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He has promised His name will be hallowed; it will be hallowed one day. He will come in glory and sin and Satan and all who ally with him will be overthrown and dealt with in justice and a vast company that no one can number will assemble before the throne of God and of the Lamb from every tribe and language and nation and adore Him who redeemed them for Himself by His blood. And His name will be held in honor. His name will be hallowed. You can pray this prayer with absolute certain confidence that God will hear and answer.
And so we are reminded here, as we are in the next two petitions as well, of our glorious destiny, of our glorious destiny. What a privilege it is to bear the name of God, to be called by the name of God, to be saved through Jesus who makes God’s name known, because we belong in that great company who will rejoice to hallow His name, not only here and now but hereafter and forever. And so lift up your hearts and pray with new boldness, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.”
Let’s pray together.
Our Father, we do adore You as the Holy One, as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Father in Jesus Christ who You have made Yourself known in Him, shown us what You are like. Help us to adore You and to live for You and to make You known. Make us willing instruments and agents of the hallowing of Your name, not only in our worship but in our work, in our words, and in all our ways. For we ask this for Jesus’ sake, amen.