Hallowed Be Your Name

Preached at Cornerstone Church in Cascade, Iowa on June 8, 2014.

Today we find ourselves in Matthew 6:5-9. Today marks the second week in our four or five week sermon series on prayer. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get right to work.

• Matthew 5:5-15 – “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
  
  

Prior to the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says these things about prayer:

1. Prayer is assumed. Verse 5, “When you pray.” Every son and daughter of God should talk to their Father. Period. If you aren’t praying regularly it is a sign of a strained relationship with God.
   
   
2. When you pray it is between you and God. No one else. You are to do all you can to direct your heart and your mind to be in His exclusive presence.
   
   
3. Prayer is not about words as much as it is about your heart. Jesus explicitly commands us not to pray vain with repetitious prayer. Don’t heap up empty words. Pray from your heart, not your lungs.
   
   

After these words on prayer Jesus then gives us an example of how to pray.

• Matthew 6:9 – “Pray then like this:”
  
  

I want us to consider for a moment what is happening. Emmanuel, God with us, God incarnate, Jesus Christ is giving us an example of words that should be springing forth from our heart and out of our mouths. God is telling us how His children are to speak to Him. This is, once again, a window into what God sees as supremely important to Him and should be to us.

Having said that, how often have you taken your prayers and lined them up to the Lord’s prayer? As I stated earlier, prayer for Christians is assumed. If you are a true child of God, you will pray to him. You should pray without ceasing. When you pray, are your prayers “like this” or like something else? If not, why not? Are you praying wrongly? Perhaps.

• James 4:3 – “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
  
  

Today, let us commit, not only to being people of prayer, but those who pray with a right heart. With this said, what do we see in the Lord’s prayer? First, I want to draw your attention to structure. Jesus splits the prayer into two parts. The first half you see the primary focus being on God.

• Matthew 6:9-10 “…hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done,”
  
  

The second part you see the primary focus on us.

• Matthew 6:11-13 - “Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts…lead us not into temptation,”
  
  

I do not believe that Jesus is random, and I do not believe in coincidences. Jesus is intentionally giving us both a specific and general example of how we are to pray. In our petitions we should focus on God first and then ourselves. The irony is that when we put God first, we are actually the ones that are rewarded.

With all of that under our belt, I want to work through the Lord ’s Prayer verse by verse and word by Word. Therefore today, we are going to examine on verse 9.

• Matthew 6:9 – “"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
  
  

First let us look at the first two words of the Lord’s prayer, “Our Father.” As you can see, the word is “our” not “I.” The example Jesus gives us is a corporate prayer, a group prayer, a family praye. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus told us to “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” And now he starts the greatest prayer in the Bible as “our.” Is Jesus schizophrenic? No. As I said last week, praying in secret is a matter of your heart and mind, not about individualism. Prayer can and should be both an individual endeavor and a group endeavor. God desires, and has always desired, that His chosen people would pray together.

• 2 Chronicles 20:4 – “And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord. “
  
  
• Joel 1:14 – “Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.”
  
  
• Acts 1:14 – “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”
  
  
• James 5:16 – “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
  
  

It is time to lay down our Christian individualism, as if there is such a thing, and become the family God desires us to be. Come Wednesday night to prayer meeting. Come with an Acts 1 and a James 5 heart. Let us devote ourselves to prayer, confessing to one another praying for one another. If Wednesday night doesn’t work in your schedule find others and commit to pray with them over lunch or early mornings before work or school. Let us pray like Jesus says to pray and be able to say “our.” Not just “I.”

The next word that I want us to meditate on is “Father.” This word has become empty to us as it relates to God. In the days of Jesus, this was not the case. Calling God Father was highly unusual, prior to Jesus. Only a handful of times in the Old Testament is God referred to as Father. However, when Jesus comes onto the scene that changes dramatically. Father becomes the primary way that the Christians address God. To us this title is second nature, but to the Jews during the days of Jesus, it was enough to start a war. Jesus coming into the reality was the tipping point to this transition. Why? Because it is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that we have the right to address God as Father. It is his blood that signs our adoption papers.

• Ephesians 1:5 - “he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,“
  
  

This is the amazing thing about what is unfolding in this moment. Jesus is teaching us to pray a prayer that is radically intimate, and he is the only means by which we can achieve it. Without placing your trust in Christ, you can't say “Father”, without faith in Christ you can't say “our”, without believing in Christ this prayer is completely pointless to you. It doesn't matter how often you repeat it like a broken record, without Jesus Christ you might as well be reading off a cereal box. Jesus is the cornerstone to everything, even this prayer.

When we begin our prayer with “Our Father” we are saying something overwhelmingly profound and wonderful . With these two words we are placing ourselves on the lap of our Father, and this is by far the greatest gift we can fathom. The Almighty, Sovereign God of the Universe, is our Dad, and he wants us speak to Him with this on our lips and on our hearts.

With this said, what does God want us to request?

• Matthew 6:9 – “"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
  
  

The first request that our Dad wants us to make to Him is that His name be hallowed. First let us ask the question, what is in a name? The answer is everything. The name of something is a summation of who they are. When you speak of me, you speak of all of me. Every thought, every action, every attribute, and every emotion. When we speak of the name of God we are likewise speaking to everything He is. God's name is a description of all of Him. Nothing else completely describes Him.

Next, what does it mean to hallow. Hallowed means to be sanctified; to be holy.. To set apart as not common, sacred. What does that look like. It looks like Isaiah 6.

• Isaiah 6:1-4 - “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"
  
  

To hallow God means to see Him as completely other. To stand before Him and to see Him on His throne high and lifted up. To recognize His majesty, His authority, His power, His sovereignty. To see Him in all His glory, and to respond in worship. This is what it means to hallow our Father, and Jesus tells us that when we pray we should have this be our first request, and yes, I say request.

When Jesus says, “Hallowed be Thy Name,” it is not a statement of fact. It is a petition. It is a request. Jesus is saying, “Father, make your name hallowed. Father, make your name Holy. Father, let your majesty, your authority, your glory be seen and revered. Father, cause us to see you high and lifted up and cause us to worship you! This is what “Hallowed be your name” means, and this is the first request that Jesus tells us to pray to our Father.

I want us to think about something for a second. This prayer is Jesus' example of how we are to pray in the midst of life. Let that sink in. Life is a mess. Life is full of trials and tribulations. Life consists of cancer, broken hearts, financial stress, deaths, loneliness, anxiety, stress; the list goes on an on. Life is broken, and Jesus is not oblivious to this. In fact, Jesus is more intimately aware of this than an of us. He gets your pain, and with that in mind, Jesus says to start with God's Holiness. This is to be first on your heart, despite the storm of your life.

Why? Why would God put our pain on hold, for the hallowing of his name? Perhaps he knows something we don't. In fact, what are we told in verse 8?

• Matthew 6:8 - “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
  
  

So yes, God does know something we don't, or at least He knows something and He is trying to teach us. The truth is that our greatest need, no matter what our circumstances, is that God would be hallowed in our lives. What you and I need more than anything is a heart that sees the awesomeness of our Dad.

When we approach our Father with tears in our eyes and brokenness in our hearts, and crawl up on his lap and seek His face, what we need more than anything in that moment is to feel the sovereign, all powerful, arms of God wrapped around us. We need to know that our Dad is an awesome God. We need to recognize that there is nothing that is outside His control. That he is able. We need to feel his love and his strength. The hallowing of God in your life, puts everything into its proper perspective.

When we do this, when we hallow the name of God in our lives we, we find joy in the midst of our suffering. We find peace in the midst of the storm. We find contentment in the midst of all circumstances. We are able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, for God's rod and his staff comfort comfort us.

The hallowing of God is the foundation of our lives. We are designed to stand upon the foundation that is the Holiness of God. Too often, instead of planting our feet upon the rock of God's sovereignty we seek the quick fix of the removal of the thorn.

Here is the question that I will leave all of us with today, do you believe it? Do you trust Jesus in the example that He gives? Do you believe that your greatest need is the hallowing of God's name in your life? Do you believe that the deeper you go in the hallowing of God's name the higher he will lift you above the waves crashing against your boat?

We are told not to put God to the test, but we are told to trust Him. So I say to you today, trust Him. Change how you pray, put God's glory upfront where it belongs.