Hallowed Be Your Name

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Prayer

Great and marvellous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed." (Rev 15:3-4)

Father thank you that those words are true! As we come now to look at your word we ask for your help to understand it and we pray that you would change us. In Jesus’ name and for his glory we pray. Amen

Introduction
Imagine for a moment a man who falls in love with a woman. So he works many hours overtime and saves and saves and saves his money and eventually the day comes when goes along to the best jewellers in town and buys her the largest and most expensive ring they have. He’s excited as he imagines the look on her face as she unwraps the bow covering the nice little box that the jeweller has been placed it in, and opens up the box. He can almost hear the squeal of delight as she takes the ring out the box and puts it on her engagement finger and shouts ‘yes, of course I’ll marry you’. Well that is all in his imagination. What really happens is this: that evening, over a romantic meal, he gets down on one knee and says (with lines stolen from Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice), “you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on. Will you marry me?” He then holds out a hand offering her the ring in the box with the bow. To which she says, “Oh is that ring for me? Fantastic! It's the perfect size. I'd love to keep it, but I'm not up for this marriage thing. In fact – I'd rather not see you again, but I'll be happy to keep the ring. Anyway – got to go now, got some friends to meet in town. You're ok to pay for the food aren't you”? And with that she rushes away.

Now I need to make clear that is an imaginary situation and bears no resemblance whatsoever to my engagement! But the attitude with which that woman treated the man is a small glimpse of how we have all treated God. Our God created the whole world and he created each one of us. He delighted in us and created us to live in a relationship with him – even though we are so insignificant compared to how awesome he is! He is central to our very existence – without him we would neither exist nor continue to exist. God is rightly to be what our whole world revolves around. He rightly deserves our worship and the number one place in our lives because he is God.

Instead the Bible says we have all turned away from him. We are like a son who says to his Father, ‘I wish you were dead’ and who grabs his inheritance but pushes away his Father. In words from the book of Romans, the sin we are all guilty of is this: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” Romans 1:21. We are happy to grab his good and generous gifts but push him away. In effect we make ourselves and what we want more important than God and what he wants. We don’t even thank him – let alone live lives that honour him as he deserves.

Now many of us here this morning know very well that is what sin is all about: kicking God from his rightful position as king of our lives and making ourselves kings instead. We know that sin is basically making ourselves and our business the centre of our lives. You may be wondering what on earth that has to do with prayer – after all we are right in the middle of a series looking at the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

The key question I want us to reflect on this morning is this. How will having that attitude towards God – a sinful attitude - affect our prayer?

Your knee-jerk reaction may be that if someone acts like that towards God then they will not pray to him. Wouldn’t that be the obvious answer?

It may be the obvious answer but it is not necessarily the correct one. You see sin DOES affect our prayers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t pray – it just changes HOW we pray.

Christians – Jesus’ disciples - are not the only ones that pray! It is one of the world’s most popular activities. Many people ‘love to pray’. Many people are interested in prayer in one way or another. But Jesus said later in Matthew – 15:8 – quoting from Isaiah that 'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me'. The thing that marks the follower of Jesus is not that he prays, but how he prays. It all depends on what sort of praying is involved.

So let’s look at our passage for today and see what God’s word has to say to us. Matthew 6:5-13.

5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 12Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

We have been working our way through the Lord’s Prayer over these morning services and today our focus is on that last sentence of verse 9,

‘hallowed be your name’.

In verse 5 we read ‘when you pray do not be like the hypocrites…’ and then in verse 9 we read ‘this, then, is how you should pray’… so I’d like us to look at this passage under 2 simple headings.

1. The WRONG WAY to pray (vv5-8)
2. The RIGHT WAY to pray (vv9-13)

1. The WRONG WAY to pray (vv5-8)

Our focus this morning is on the phrase ‘hallowed be your name’. However the context of the Lord’s Prayer helps us understand the significance of that phrase, and so although we have looked at this more closely in a previous sermon (downloadable from the website by the way) I'd like to go back to it briefly.

Immediately before the Lord's Prayer is the description of hypocrites prayer – which is of course the wrong way to pray. There big problem that Jesus identified was that they longed for a good reputation with people. What they lived for was ‘to be seen by men’. This resulted in them praying in public – just in order to be seen and at length – so people listen and say ‘boy what a great pray-er they are’. Instead Jesus teaches privacy – v 6 and simplicity – v7-8. Not because he is against praying with others (the Lord's prayer says 'OUR father' – plural!). Not because we should never pray standing up or if we are on a street corner. The problem with the hypocrites wasn't what they did when they prayed, but why they did it. We are told they did it 'to be seen by men'.

What mattered to them more than anything else was to have a good reputation. That was more important to them than God was. Did that mean they did not pray? No it didn’t. In fact we are told they loved to pray. Remember sin DOES affect our prayers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t pray – it just totally changes HOW we pray.

You see the aim of the game was to get a good reputation – so they would pray out loud, in public and with many words. The way they prayed showed what they valued most.

And if we take a step back and think about our prayer life we may be shocked with what we see. We may feel quite satisfied just because we pray. But the key issue is not DO you pray, but HOW do you pray.

Maybe we too are guilty of praying so that we receive the attention of those around us. Do we only pray when we are with others? What does that show us?

Don Carson –

the person who prays more in public than in private reveals that he is less interested in God's approval than in human praise.”

We need to take seriously Jesus’ warning and ask ourselves what is it that I value the most – speaking to God or what others think of me?

But the thing to take note of is that the wrong way to pray comes from the wrong way to live. And the wrong way to live is to consider anything or anyone more important than God in your life. If you are doing that – it may show up in the fact that you never pray. Or it may show up in how you pray. Let me give you another example to show you what I mean.

Suppose you want something – say a husband, or a wife, or a child, or a car or a house. Not bad things to want at all. But suppose you want it more than God. How might that effect the way you pray.

It may mean that is all you ever pray about. The desire for that thing has taken over your life and so it takes over your prayer – yes you are praying, but all you ever talk about is that issue. Now it's not wrong to be persistent in prayer. It is not wrong to continuously ask God for things that we long for. That is not the problem. But do you see that sometimes prayer can become a bit like a lucky charm – something you do to get what we want. But God is NOT an ATM machine! Prayer is not a case of typing in the right numbers and then expecting things to pop out.

Another way wanting something more than God effects our prayer is that it can make prayer very haphazard. You may notice that your prayer life is not regular. So when things are not going well in that particular area of your life – you pray lots. But when things are going well – you hardly pray at all.

Listen – left to our ourselves any praying we did would both start and end with ourselves. And that ultimately is the wrong way to pray. But lets turn now to the second heading:-

2. The RIGHT WAY to pray (vv9-13)

Jesus takes it for granted that his disciples will pray. He says 'and when you pray...' (v5, 6, 7). He then goes on to teach them the right way to pray. And what he gave them - the Lords Prayer – is a guide to how we should pray. It is a model to shape all our praying.
Calvin said;

"no-one will learn to pray aright whose lips and hearts are not schooled by the heavenly Teacher.”

Well we've seen Jesus tells us how not to pray and now he teaches us the right way to pray.

There is no problem with regularly repeating the words of the Lord's prayer exactly as Jesus taught it. One of the best things about doing that is it helps us memorise it, so we can easily use it as a guide when we come to pray. We can use each line as a heading for a section of our prayers. Because the most important thing is that we learn to pray LIKE THIS – in others words in this WAY. As Jesus said: 'This, then, is how you should pray”.

As you can see the prayer is wonderfully straightforward. 1) Approach – addressing God. 'Our father, in heaven'. 2) 3 requests concerning God – his name, his kingdom and his will 3) 3 requests concerning our own needs.

The way we are taught by Jesus to approach God in prayer is wonderful! We are told to address God as Father – it is so easy to feel guilty or ashamed as we come to pray and feel we cannot talk to God. But because of Jesus – and his death in our place on the cross – those who trust in Jesus can approach God as our Father because we have been adopted into his family. Once we were children of darkness (rejecting him as our God), now we are children of light and belong to his family as his children. It's an amazing reality.

But by teaching us that our FIRST request should be 'hallowed be your name', Jesus shows us that when we pray we should be more concerned about God's Kingdom than our own necessities. It is so easy to come to prayer preoccupied with our own personal needs – maybe it is worry about salary and finances, paying our rent, our health, education of our children, comfort, holidays, friendships with the opposite sex, owning our own home, our marriage, concern for our extended family, how well our business is doing, promotion at work, finding a job and so on.

But the Lord's prayer shows us how we should pray.

We must concentrate first on God. God wants us to want his will before we want our will. He wants us to be concerned about the affairs of his kingdom before we are concerned about the affairs of our little kingdoms. This is how we should pray as his disciples, because this is how we should live as his disciples. We come submitting ourselves to God and putting his honour and glory above our own.

That may seem harsh – but remember we come to a God who is our loving Father in heaven – we don't need to worry. He knows all about us and is willing and able to provide for our needs. It is NOT wrong to pray about these things – but we are taught here by Jesus himself that when we pray we should be first of all concerned about God. Even when we do come to pray for our needs – as Jesus goes on to teach us to do – we need to place those requests within the framework of our concern for God.

This is how we should pray as his disciples, because this is how we should live as his disciples. Just a little later in the chapter we hear Jesus say these words -

“do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:31-33)

See first his Kingdom. That is how we should live and that is how we should pray.

It's clear then that the prayer begins with a concern for God. But what exactly does ‘hallowed be your name’ mean?

Let's think first about God's name: may seem a little strange. Why not just say 'may YOU be hallowed'. Names don't usually meant as much in our culture as they do in others, where a persons name is closely tied up with the people themselves, with who they are and their character. And that is the case here. Throughout the Bible God has many names all of which reveal aspects of his character. But the obvious name (and aspect of) God that I think this is referring to is the name 'Father', that the prayer begins with.

Hallowed: Only say it in church! Not usually used in language. Pray without thinking what it means. It means to recognise that God's name (and therefore God) is holy – that he is set apart 'there is none like him', different, absolutely sacred, pure, unblemished, without error.

This is not a prayer that God would be more holy – how can than be?! He is as holy as he can be already. We are not being taught that we should ask for God to be made holy!

No - what we are asking for is that men and women get to know God as he really is – to recognise that the God who has been revealed to us by Jesus is holy. It is a longing for everyone, everywhere to know him by his name, by the character that he is and to worship his as he deserves. We are praying for people to come to know him as their Lord and King.

In contrast to the hypocrites, whose first concern was for their own reputation, their own name, we are to have as our first concern the name, the reputation of God.

But what exactly are we asking for? How will we know when it has happened?

All throughout the Bible we see that our God is a God who speak and a God who acts. He reveals himself to us in those two ways. And the reading we had earlier from Ezekiel was a promise that God would act in history. Why would he act? So that all would see that he is a holy God.

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. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.”(Ezekiel 36:22-23)

God has a plan! And it is to save the whole of creation – which has been totally messed up by our sinful rejection of God. How is this going to happen? God’s plan all revolves around the Lord Jesus Christ - who came to the earth to reveal the Father to us and who ultimately, came to die a criminal’s death even though he was innocent. Jesus died on the cross instead of me – taking the punishment I deserved for my rebellion against God and making it possible for me – his enemy – to be his child if I trust in Jesus. None of that has anything to do with me – it was all to do with his distinctness and holiness. When he takes us and transforms us into new creatures – men and women who live our lives for him. When he does that HE received the glory. His name is hallowed.

We catch a glimpse of that happening in our reading from Revelation 15:3-4:-

"Great and marvellous are your deeds,
Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
King of the ages.
4Who will not fear you, O Lord,
and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed."


In effect we are saying to God – I want what you want. I want to make your mission, my mission.

And as we pray it, it invites us to be the answer to our own prayers! God doesn't need us to pray this – we do. As we pray we are 'retuning' and 'adjusting' ourselves and our lives in line with what he wants us to do. Even when we come, later in the prayer and this series to pray for ourselves – our daily bread, forgiveness and protection from the evil one – we are praying for what is needed for the troops in order to fulfil God's purposes and mission. Martin Luther,'By our praying we are instructing ourselves more than we are him'.Where God's name is hallowed, He will be loved and revered, His kingdom eagerly anticipated, and His will obeyed.

How can one pray for God's name to be hallowed, and then not have a concern to tell others about how great a God he is, so that they can hallow him!

This is just the heading! Our prayers can be much much wider. As we pray for mission partners round the world do we long to see God's name hallowed through their work. It means we will long and pray for the 2.72 billion people who are in societies that have virtually no churches or Christians – such as the Uyghur people in NW China (where members of this church are involved). It means we will thank God for the Uyghur lady who became a Christian at this church just 2 days ago!

Do we really want his name to be hallowed? When we pray – what is our primary concern?

Let us learn to pray as we live. Let’s seek first his kingdom. Let’s live like that, Let us pray like that.

Prayer
Father you are holy and you are wonderful. You have shown us that most clearly through Jesus’ death on the cross and the love that you have lavished upon us in making it possible for us to come back into a relationship with you. Father we long, as a church and as individuals, to lift high your name and to worship you. Father we long to be a part of what you are doing in making your name known across the globe. We pray that in every way you would be hallowed. Father hallowed be your name. Amen




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