The
Lord's Prayer Series, Part 2
Hallowed be your Name
Today we are going to look at the part of the Lord’s prayer in which we pray:
Hallowed be your name (Matthew 6:9).
Here is a simple explanation, or paraphrase, for this part of the Lord's prayer:
We ask that who you are and what you are like be clearly seen.
The reason for praying the prayer “Hallowed be your name” is this: Soon after Adam and Eve were created, the devil brought into the heart of man lies about the character of God. They remain with us to this day.
This is the first Sunday this year. Only the Lord knows what it will bring. What are you intending to do in this coming year and for whom? Maybe you do not have plans yet, or maybe you have many plans.
Whatever you do this year, whether it be ordinary or special, what are your motives, your reasons, for doing it? Is it for yourself or for the Lord and, through him, for others.
And how do you intend to do it ? -
in your strength and in your name?
or: in God's strength and in His name?
Paul reminds us in Colossians 3:17 the reason God made and saved you, when he says:
“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
God wants us to be in a close relationship with Him this whole year. An important part of developing that relationship is through prayer. And that is my first point:
1. Developing our relationship with God.
In the Lord´s prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray unselfishly and according to God´s priorities.
Our thoughts focus right from the beginning on God and on his desires.
Last time when I spoke on the Lord's prayer it was about the first few words: „Our Father in heaven.“
The Lord wants a relationship with us. He has no delight in hearing words that we say without thinking or meaning them,
nor hearing us because we have to pray: a duty.
He wants us to know him as Father.
I would like to remind you of the five points I spoke about last time, „What to expect from „The Best Father“, that is, from God.
The PEACE of a Father's Protection
The PAIN of a Fathers Discipline
The PLEA of a Father's Training
The PLENTY of a Father's Provision
The PROMISE of a Father's Vision.
These I took from a studying the Bible passage Jeremiah 31, in which God says how he promises to lead the people of Israel back home, as Israel's father.
Now we are continue our journey through the Lord’s prayer, coming to the second line in Jesus' instruction on prayer found in Matthew 6:9: „Hallowed by your name.“
It is of vital importance, in understanding the Lord´s prayer, to understand its context. Before Jesus teaches us how to pray, he tells us how not to pray.
Then in verse 8 of Matthew 6, we read that Jesus said:
8 "So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
Jesus is saying, God knows your needs, even better than you do.
how to come before God.
We are to focus on him first,
to first show an interest in God.
He encourages us to take time to focus on God.
We can put our needs to one side,
because they will not be forgotten by God.
He knows your needs.
He even knows what is on your prayer list before you begin to read it. Jesus is teaching us to have courage and put first things first.
To show an interest in the person we are talking to is good advice for any relationship –
think of the other,
be interested in your conversation partner.
I am not to use the person I am talking to as just two ears that will, at last, listen to me talking about myself.
We all need to talk about ourselves at some stage. We find it helps us to be able to express ourselves. We sometimes can order our thoughts better when we begin to tell someone else what we are thinking.
But a proper conversation is two way.
And you do not just begin to talk
about some problem.
You begin by greeting the other person first.
That is something I did not learn in my city culture where I was as a teenager. I would just ask for what I wanted. I would go up to someone in the street, for example, and ask, „Have you got the time?“
Here in this country, especially in the countryside areas, I have learnt to see the person I am talking to first and show respect to that person.
Now, following the unwritten cultural rules, I first say greet them for example, say “Good morning” in the local language. Then and only then, I ask them „Have you got the time?“.
In fact, I have realised that it is best behaviour for any nation to first show respect to the person by greeting them. The same goes for our Father in heaven.
The reason that God our Father likes to be greeted is that God is a person,
not a prayer answering machine.
Now, the word person is a word we use for human beings as opposed to animals. But the word “person” also applies to God.
When talking about human beings we say 1 person, but 2 people.
People is a plural word for human beings.
But God is one. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are persons of what we call the Godhead, for he is ONE. We cannot comprehend it fully. But this is how God reveals himself in the Scripture and in his dealings with us in our personal lives.
The point I want to make about this word “person” is that God the Father is a person. He appreciates being treated as a person – that is, that we come to him conscious of His presence, not just of our problems.
Not only do you want to talk to him, but he wants to talk to you in your spirit. God says clearly that this is the difference between him and the gods of the world, which are idols. They are unable to talk. They have no personality that responds to us, but God does respond.
Prayer is sometimes a cry to God, and sometimes it is conversation with God.
If we begin the conversation, in order to treat God with respect as a person, we must begin by focusing on God not upon ourselves.
When Jesus taught us to pray he used these words:
„Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name“
Jesus taught us to approach God with respect:
After addressing him by name as Our Father in heaven,
we show our respect by showing our interest and desire that things go well with him:
„Hallowed be your Name“
You can think of it as a greeting, just like you would greet a King.
People used to say when they spoke to a King: “Oh King, live forever.” Yet the words “Hallowed be your name” is more than an appropriate greeting. It is a prayer, a request, not for ourselves, but for God himself. „Hallowed be YOUR Name.“
Next we will look at what these words mean when we PRAY these word to God.
My first point has been about
1. Developing our Relationship with God
We are going to look at the following aspects of the words „Hallowed be your name“,
under three headings:
2. God's Name
3. Be Hallowed
4. Personal Application
As all of us are human, we think about God from our perspective. It is normal and the Scriptures do not forget that as they teach us.
Therefore, because we think from our perspective, I have three alternative titles. These titles are for the same three following points of the message. They are three questions:
2. God's Name
2. Is God interested in me?
3. Be Hallowed
3. Do my prayers make a difference?
4. Personal Application
4. Do I live what I am praying?
--------------------------
We now continue with point 2:
A name represents for others who the person is and is associated with thoughts about what that person is like.
A name is also associated in our minds with what a person has done.
Rich people and rulers build great buildings so that their name will be remembered. In the Old Testament, we read about the pride of Nebuchadnezzar. In the New Testament we read about the temple in Jerusalem. Still today historian’s call it Herod's temple.
King Herod built many castles and impressive buildings. But he was a murder, who even murdered some of his own family.
He built a huge and impressive extension over the existing temple at Jerusalem and impressed the Jews with it, including the disciples.
Bringing honour to one’s name by building an impressive building is as old as civilisation.
In Genesis 10:32-11:4 we read an extract from the account of the city and tower of Babel. The descendants of Noah began to BUILD a city with a tower after the flood.
Their reason was this, verse 4:
„so that we may MAKE a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.“
They wanted, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to take their destiny in their own hands.
Instead of worshiping God's name, they were lifting up their own name.
Their city and its tower symbolised their power and ability.
They were united in their pride in what they could do.
They wanted to show their power, authority, duration, ability, success – in fact, they wanted to be like God.
Yet God builds up for his own glory. He is building us up as a spiritual building. The thought about this comes early in the Bible:
Even though the tabernacle and the temple were made at God’s command,
they were made as pictures of the majestic buildings in heaven, not made by human hands, made for God’s glory in heaven.
The temple and the tabernacle also give us a picture of the church and of our own bodies, which were made to be filled with God’s glory.
Spiritual pictures from earthly constructions are found all over the Bible.
In the Psalm that we read together earlier, Psalm 48, we read how the writer described the earthly Jerusalem. He was describing the Jerusalem here on earth, in which he lived as “the city of our God, his holy mountain.”
In verse 3, we read:
“God is in her citadels;
He has shown himself to be her fortress.”
And then in verse 12-14:
“Walk about Zion, go round her, count her towers,
Consider well her ramparts,
View her citadels,
That you may tell of them to the next generation.
For this God is our God for ever and ever,
He will be our guide even to the end.”
The Psalmist brings a direct link between the buildings of Jerusalem with the name of his God. Up till the time he wrote, the buildings had survived the enemy attacks because God was there in his temple.
But there came a time when he left the temple, because the people had left him and followed other gods.
God would not allow his name to be pulled into the dirt – to have his name continue to be associated with deeds that he hates.
God's name is definitely to do with Him. When we pray “hallowed by your name” we are talking about him.
You may, then, be wondering why then have I linked God’s name to the subtitle: Is God interested in me?
Before Jesus taught the Lord’s prayer, he first taught that His Father is interested in us.
That is precisely the reason why we can rest in the knowledge of God's care as we pray.
That is why we can look away from ourselves to show interest in God our Father as a person.
In teaching us to pray, Jesus stretches us to our limits by getting us to stop thinking about ourselves first. He encourages us first to think about the One whom we are talking with. The One we were made to worship.
When we remind ourselves of who He is and what He is like, it will become apparent that He is interested in us. As we relate to our heavenly Father, coming to him through Christ in interest and love for Him, something happens, automatically:
Faith rises in us so that we can confidently ask him the other things in the Lord’s prayer: our daily bread, forgiveness for sin and help to overcome temptation.
So God is interested in us, because he loves us.
God is also interested in us because his name is upon us and actually in us and we in him, through BAPTISM in Water and BAPTISM in the Holy Spirit.
His name is upon you when you came to believe in Christ and gave your life to him. His name is still linked with yours if you are backsliding, that is, if you are in disobedience to God and no longer seeking him. His name is linked with yours because you are his child and he wants you to return to him.
There is a direct link between God’s name and your name, between God’s name and his people, for he has chosen to identify with you and me. God’s name and the name of Jesus Christ is identified with his people, whether you and I are obedient or not.
In the Old and New Testament we clearly see the pain for God in keeping to this principle of continued identification. This is found both in the Old and the New Covenant. God has not stopped identifying His Name with His people Israel.
Here is an example of that identification, of that link.
In Joshua chapter 7, we read how Israel had been defeated by their enemies at the city of Ai. Joshua said to the LORD in Joshua 7:9
„the Canaanites will ....surround us and wipe out our name from the earth. What then will you do for your own great name?“
Israel were representing God to the nations around them. God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that he would bless the world through their Seed, that is through their descendants, especially through Christ.
Without Israel continuing to survive, there would have been no representative. Without Israel, Christ the promised Saviour would not have come to vindicate God’s name.
Here is another example:
God speaks through Ezekiel in Ezekiel chapter 36 that he is going to bring his people Israel back to the Promised Land from all the places throughout the world where he had scattered them.
He says in verse 22:
Therefore say to the house of Israel,
“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone.”
The name of Israel is intertwined, or associated, with God’s name.
Therefore, they way the people were towards their God had a bearing on what others think about God. It still has an influence.
It is exactly the same for you and me.
Our response to our God, as Christians,
the way we live as individuals,
the way we are as a church
influences the way others think about God.
If we do not live according to his Word and believe his promises, how will others be able to see and know that God is a good, faithful and just?
Proverbs 28:7
“He who keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons disgraces his father.”
That is, such a son gives his father a bad name.
The world has, from the beginning, been lied to by Satan. The world believes that God keeps us from the having the best and that he is actually not for us.
That is why, when you or I mention the name „God“, in conversation, people especially here in Europe, are embarrased. They have a long history of the church in which God has been connected with boredom and the power of man.
In addition, man and women everywhere who do not know God, want to keep on in a life of sin, because they are convinced that God only wants to restrict them and make them unhappy. That is a lie from Satan, because Jesus came to give us life. When we pray: “Hallowed be your name”, we show God that we desire that lie to be exposed.
Because God answers the prayer of faith, it will inevitably mean that our lives will be transformed by God’s power, so that people will see in us how good God is.
We have looked at the theme “Your name” now come to the next part:
Be Hallowed / subtitle: Do my prayers make a difference?
The word „hallowed“ comes from the verb „to hallow“, which means to make holy or to consider holy.
It has the same meaning as the closely related word „to sanctify“ from which we have the word „sanctified“.
It is a difficult word for us to understand these days, as we do not have the physical pictures that the Jews had. The Jews understood it, because they had the temple in Jerusalem, which was for them a holy place and the city and the hill on which it stood was considered holy.
In the Psalm that we read together, Psalm 48, the writer described Jerusalem and the mountain on which it was built as “the city of our God, his holy mountain.”
The word holy or hallowed always links what it describes with God. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle, the tent in the wilderness was used for worshiping God. It was dedicated to God and became holy. Later, the articles in the temple in Jerusalem were holy, that is, they were associated with, or linked up with God. They were considered pure. These articles were considered separate from everything else, dedicated to God and to bring him glory and to be used for his purposes only.
Therefore when we say: “hallowed be your name” we are asking God to link up with , associate himself something more important than an temple article or a building.
We are asking God to associate himself with his name, especially here in our Situation.
We want his name to be considered pure,
to be considered separate from everything else,
We want his name to bring him glory
and to be used for his purposes only.
A name says who a person is, and is associated with what he or she is like and what he or she has done.
When we pray “hallowed by your name”, we are saying to the Lord God:-
“I ask that who you are and what you are like be clearly shown.”
You can pray this in your own words. I sometimes pray it in words like this:
“May all that is brought into connection with you,
either bring you glory or no longer be connected with you
– let your name be separated from evil.
May that which began with you not now bring dishonour to you.
Rather, may your character as a holy God, who hates what is evil and loves what is good, be vindicated.
May you be cleared from every wrong impression that has been given about you through lies, disobedience and rebellion.
We want your name to be lifted up, to be clean and pure, separated from all else.
We know that when this happens, those who are discrediting you will be defeated. Those who love you will rejoice.”
When God made man, it was so that his name, that is, who he is and what he is like would be reflected in us.
This Bible reading today was from Genesis. In Genesis 1:26 we read:
„Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness
… and further down in verse 27:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.“
Adam and Eve disobeyed God – a sign that they no longer believed that God is totally good. They believed a lie about him.
God made Adam and Eve to reflect his honour and glory, but mankind (firstly with Adam and Eve) believed the lie about his name, about his character, and rebelled.
Our prayers make a difference, because we are no longer working against God’s purposes when we pray “Hallowed be your name”. We are working with God in line with the reason why he made us. We are beginning to bring glory to God, by believing in his goodness. The fact that we want his name to be vindicated, shows that we want people to know how great he is. We want the lies about him to be exposed. God will certainly want to answer that prayer.
This brings me to my final point:
4. Personal application / subtitle: Do I live what I am praying?
In Psalm 23:3-4 we read the following about the the Lord, my Shepherd:
"He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name´s sake."
When we walk in good paths, in paths of righteousness, God's name is honoured, for we are associated with his name.
If we let ourselves be led by God’s Holy Spirit, he will lead us along right paths, and it will make a difference to what people think of God. It will bring God glory.
Let us not only pray the Lord’s prayer
Let us live the prayer!
How would my prayers be different if I prayed from God´s point of view –
that is, praying with longing for that to happen which will clear his name. I would begin to see him at work in that which gives people opportunity to turn back to God in reverence and godly fear.
How would my life be different if I lived the prayer “hallowed be your name”,
making it a priority?
I would begin to desire that the Name of the Lord,
which I bear as a believer,
be honoured through my life, that is,
through my attitudes and my speech,
through my priorities and my decisions
through my daily habits
whether I am at work, at school, at home or with believers in the church.
In the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament,
God gave people over to what they wanted,
when they refused to cooperate with him,
when they no longer wanted to reflect his glory.
He has endless patience, but he is also jealous for his Holy Name.
In order to save his name from mockery and scorn, he banished the people of Jerusalem from the City that bore his name in the time of Jeremiah the prophet. Soon after, in the time of Ezekiel the prophet he promised to bring them back againwith the words:
“I will now bring back Jacob from captivity and will have compassion on all the people of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name” (Ezekiel 39:25).
When we ask God to hallow his name, we do not actually now how he will do it in a certain situation. We do not need to explain to him how.
Recently we see that the God of creation, the one who has all things under his control allowed a terrible Tsunami disaster to strike South Asia, with an estimated 150’000 deaths . Jesus did not promise anything other than disasters for the world as it comes to its end.
We do not know when the end is, but we know that God is just and looks at everything from an eternal perspective.
Some of the people who died when the Tsunami wave struck were Christians. They were ready for eternity. Many people who were struck were not ready for eternity. Some of the survivors are believing Christians, and many are not.
In this and other situations that we are not fully able to understand, let us ask God to glorify his name.
Let us pray together this as a believing earnest prayer:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name...”
Amen!
