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God, God, what do you think of when
I say that word? What rushes into your mind? Thoughts of who
He is and what He's done? What's the first thing you think of when
I say the word God? A very old wise man named
A .W. Tozer said, The first thing that comes into your mind about God when you think of Him is the most important thing about you.
He said exactly, quote, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
What do you think about when I say the word God? Do you think about Jesus Christ?
You think about as Paul would describe Him in Colossians as the one who rescued us from the domain of darkness?
The beloved son, Paul calls Him, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins? You think of God, when
I say God, do you think of Jesus Christ who is the creator of the world, the sustainer of the world? Paul says of Christ that He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.
You think of this great God who's forgiven us all our sins? And I hear the objections already.
You say, we're not in the Attributes of God series on Sunday morning. We're thinking about prayer on Sunday morning, attributes of Sunday night.
But this question of what comes into your mind when I say the word God is directly related to your prayer life.
So let me ask you this question. When you pray, eyes closed or eyes open, verbally or silently, in the church or at home, in the car or somewhere else, when you pray, what is the first thing that comes into your mind?
What's the very first thing you initially think about? And my take on Tozer this morning is this.
What comes into your mind when you pray is the most important thing about you. What you think about initially when you pray is very, very important.
And this is needed today because Jesus didn't just say, you know, approach God and just kind of figure it out.
Let the Spirit move you, be free, you know, follow your heart, kind of Disneyland movie -esque.
Why is that in every movie, by the way, in the Disneyland series? Just follow your heart. God knows that the fall has corrupted our hearts.
We can't trust our hearts. We need external help. So how do we pray?
Does it matter to God? How we pray? I believe that we're in a society that assaults
God's holiness. I believe that we live in a society that gives us extra helpings of God's love, and I'm thankful He's a
God of love. But I believe that at the expense of love, excuse me, at the expense of holiness, love is promoted, that God is only a
God of love, not of holiness. We need to understand when we pray that the first petition when it comes to the
Lord's prayer is, hallowed be our holy is your name, God. I think the world is working overtime, working three shifts, working the night shift to somehow destroy the character and the nature of God, specifically
His holiness, because if God's not holy, then you can kind of live as you please and sin as you please, and you don't have this
God who sees you with this immutable gaze, always knowing what you do, and He's holy and we're not, and it becomes for very uncomfortable lives.
Sadly, if you turn on TV, it's just the assault after assault after assault, these so -called
Christian televangelists. And they've turned everything upside down, for God so loved the world,
He gave His only begotten Son, that those believing in Him should not perish, but have their best life now.
I don't think they think much about the awesome, transcendent, majestic holiness of God.
The most popular American preacher was asked by Larry King on CNN, do
Jews, Muslims, and other non -Christians go to heaven when they die? Well, quote,
I don't know if they're wrong. I believe here's what the Bible teaches, and from the
Christian faith, this is what I believe. But I just think that only God will judge a person's heart. I spend a lot of time in India with my father.
I don't know about their religion, but I do know they love God. I don't know. I've seen their sincerity, so I don't know.
I know for me, and what the Bible teaches, I want to have a relationship with Jesus. Well, Larry King, although he's not a born -again
Christian, he's no dummy, and so he wants to know if this particular preacher will use the word sinner, because sinner is defined by who this sin is against, this wholly separated, sovereign
God. Don't you use the word sinner, Larry King asked him? I don't use it.
I never thought about it. I don't know which statement is more telling. I don't use it, or I've never thought about it.
But I probably don't. Most people know what they're doing wrong. When I get them to church, I want to tell them what you can change.
The root problem with all this is once you take your eyes off the eclipse of the holiness of God that is blinding almost, everything else just becomes upside down.
You get rid of holiness, and everything's wrong. Sin becomes dysfunction.
Sin becomes not living up to my best potential. Sin, frankly, isn't even a sin against God anymore.
It's a sin against yourself because you're not living up to your own best. Could there be anything more important in Christianity than the holiness of God?
One man said it is the fundamental fact of God. Another Christian theologian said, holiness is not necessarily a separate attribute as a qualification of all that God is and does.
In other words, when you say holy, it encapsulates God's holy love, his holy compassion, his holy righteousness, his holy wrath.
The word holiness just describes God. Jonathan Edwards, our own from Massachusetts, said it is more than a mere attribute of God.
It is the sum of all his attributes, the outshining of all that God is.
And I believe as our Christian life and the gospel, when you divorce holiness from God and his characteristics, take out holiness from the equation of God, that it even makes our prayer life turn into self -centered narcissism.
Let's turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. You all know the Lord's Prayer. It's the most simple prayer.
It's the most common prayer. I would venture to say even if you're visiting today or a member, you would know the
Lord's Prayer by heart. If I started Our Father Who Art in Heaven, you could all repeat with me this exact prayer.
My question for you this morning is, do you know what you're praying when you pray it? Do you understand what you're saying?
It's our goal at this church is to just take a book, and we're in Matthew now, and we go through Matthew chapter 6, and then chapter 7, and then chapter 8, and just trying to teach everything that's in the text.
I believe that when we understand holiness, it'll help us understand the gospel. So too when we understand holiness, it will help us in our prayer life.
Matthew chapter 6 is the Lord's Prayer found in verses 9 through 13.
And it's really the King Jesus teaching us how to pray. I don't know about you, but I love school.
I kind of almost want to go back. After 15 years of school, past high school, I still kind of have a desire and an urge to go back to school.
I love to learn. I've had some great professors in my life, men that I've sat under that I've thought, I just wish you were my dad.
I just wish I could hang out with you. Here the school teacher is Jesus himself. How about that?
Jesus teach me to pray. How kind, how instructive. And he's going to start off as a king would say, this is how my servants, this is how those in my kingdom would pray.
And everything about Matthew is about this great king. Say, well, like what?
Chapter 1, why is there a genealogy? So and so begat, so and so begat, so and so. There's this intrigue because there's going to be a new king and people don't like the kings on the throne.
And so they try to undermine their royal ancestry and their royal lineage. You come along to Chapter 2 and you've got to have credentials if you're a king and you have to have people affirm those credentials.
And along come the magi to say, yes, this is a real king. He's got the right pedigree, Chapter 1, and we've confirmed that,
Chapter 2. Usually with kings too, there's someone coming in front of the king saying, this is the king.
He's preparing the way for the king. He's coming along saying, the king is coming. He's following in my footsteps.
I'm going to make straight the paths of the king. That great man was called John the
Baptist, and that's what he did in Chapter 3. But other so -called kings and usurpers of kingdoms aren't going to just sit back and say, go ahead and do what you want.
So Chapter 4, we see the king's authority assaulted when Satan tempts Jesus. Then we come along to Chapter 5, 6, and 7, the great manifesto of the king where the king will now say, this is what it means for me to be a king and for you to be in my kingdom.
And it's just a wonderful book. It's just one of those books. We went around the room the other day with some seminary students, and I said, just tell me your favorite book of the
Bible and why. Many, many students said, it's the book that I'm studying right now. And one would say,
Ephesians. I'm studying Colossians. And isn't that true? When you're in a book and you're studying a book, it becomes your favorite book.
This is my favorite book, Matthew. I almost want to die preaching
Matthew, but that might lend itself to an early death in my part or an extended sermon series on all of our parts.
So I don't know what to do. But I just know it's important when we say a prayer,
Matthew 6, 5 -8 has already told us don't pray with meaningless and vain repetition.
It's not as easy as just saying, well, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and just off we go. There's a group of Christians in the first century that they were told to pray this way, excuse me, in the third century, three times a day.
You pray the Lord's prayer morning, noon, and night. And if you're not careful, you will begin to not think when you pray.
Christianity is a religion of the mind. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
When I first got saved, I thought it was much easier to just go in my closet and just say bada, bada, bada, bada, bada all the time because it's hard to think.
It's hard to say, I've got to use my mind to engage this king. How do I engage a king?
It's very, very difficult. And today, this is a crucially important passage.
As we come to God, we need to understand that he's holy. And we need to understand everything is about God.
We are side players. We are two -bit players. We are thankful to be involved in God's economy, but it is about God.
One man said this is kind of a Copernican revolution, that we are not at the center of the universe. And we need to fix it in our brains that it's not about we've got good relationships, we've got our best life now, things are going well,
I don't have too much stress, economy's kind of bad, but I've got some things kind of socked away, everything's good.
But when the main issue is holiness, sin, there's got to be some kind of representative substitute who's our sin bearer.
That is the issue because Jesus said you're condemned already if you don't believe in Jesus. We've got to understand
God's holiness. And so doesn't it make sense that Jesus would help us with that?
To instruct us on how to pray? To make sure we weren't praying to a God who's made up in our minds?
Of course he would, and that's why I love Jesus and I become more and more impressed with him as I study him as he speaks, as he teaches, and as he does great work.
Well, let's look at the prayer again just in general, and then we'll dive in specifically to the first petition. The prayer is a template.
The prayer is a pattern. Yes it's a great prayer, yes it's a wonderful prayer, but it's not necessarily meant to be prayed verbatim.
It's the grid. And so I think I can prove that.
Let me read the whole prayer and then let me show you the grid format and see if you can pick it up as I read it the first time.
Matthew 6, 9, pray then in this way, our Father who is 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 do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And you can see that template early on in verse 9, can't you?
Pray then in this way. This is a how prayer, this is not an exact what to pray. This is a model prayer, this is the skeleton prayer that you can hang everything on and it revolves itself around three petitions for God's glory and then the next three for us.
And it's always in that order, isn't it? Even in the Ten Commandments, when you have the tablets, there's two sides of the tablets, the first four commands,
God -centered, God -honoring, the next six, how do we relate horizontally?
And here we start right from the get -go, three focused on God and his glory, three focused on ourselves and our good, which would, of course, lend itself to God's glory.
And he says, pray then in this way. This is kind of the thought of verse 9 as a portal, it's a gate.
Here's the gate into thinking God's way, God's thoughts for God's glory and prayer.
This is the way we're supposed to think as we start moving from, I've got a busy day, I've got a hectic day,
I've had a bad day, I've got issues to do, my do list is still not complete, and now I'm approaching this throne of the king, what should
I do? What mental cogitations should go through my mind? And so Jesus sets the tone, he sets the mood, and he says, here's the kind of portico entrance where we walk in and say,
I think I have to change the way I'm thinking so I pray properly. By the way, it's not optional, do you see the text?
Pray then in this way. It's a command, and it's a command that's always ongoing. Always pray this way.
When you pray, you're a follower of Christ, you're a follower of the great king, this is how you pray, and this is how you always pray.
Not what you pray, but how you pray. The focus isn't on some kind of formula or incantation, it's focused on how do we get our mind right?
You know, when you talk to a kid and they do something wrong or sinful and you say, why did you do that?
They have a thousand excuses, but what you need to move them towards is for them to say, Daddy, I wasn't thinking right.
Did the wrong thing. So Jesus knows we're self -centered, he knows we're self -absorbed, he knows we're sinful, we're in Adam, and so he wants us to think properly, and so he says, pray in this manner.
Pray in this manner. This way. We're not going to just rush in, we're going to pray knowing that there's a
God, and just as Psalm 46 says, be still and know that I am God. We come into this porthole of prayer, and it says,
Our Father, did you notice from last week? Our Father. Communal. Covenantal.
It's a body. No more kind of New England, rugged individualism, and you know, me, myself, and I, and I'm the one, and it's just me against everybody else, against the world.
All that Western thought is replaced with this communal, Eastern thought of our.
After all, 1 John says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone who loves the
Father loves whoever has been born of him. Other Christians, we all come and we lift up our voices together exactly as Lewis Brown prayed today,
Our Father. And Jesus even tells us what to call God. I read this week in the
Times Online London newspaper, a bunch of people got together and they wanted to make a new prayer book, and they thought a better name for God was not
Father, because that's too patriarchal. So they're going to use gender neutral language for God, and they'd like to give female figures in the
Bible like Sarah and Rachel equal prominence to males. And they thought it was a shame to just call
God he. Now if you want to go to the church of Jim or the church of Julie, and you can make up whatever name you want for God, but if you want to call yourself a
Christian and you go to a church that's Christ -like, your savior, your master, your king tells you what to call
God and he tells you to call God, Our Father. So what do you think would be the best thing to call God?
Our Father. Notice he doesn't say, when you pray, say, Dear Jesus.
Certainly Jesus is God, but here the focus is to the Father because of what the
Son has done with the power of the Spirit. He doesn't even say, Come Holy Spirit, come. He doesn't say,
Help me, Mother. He says, Our Father. This was kind of a shocker for the
Jews back in those days because they didn't really pray to God as Father. They prayed to God this way,
O sovereign Lord, O king of the universe, and now to call God Father.
What kind of implications come with that? Provision, protection, dependence, the fatherhood of God for his
Christians. Unless we think God is just some kind of grandpa and we're going to call him buddy or something, some kind of the big guy, you know,
I'm just talking to the big guy or that somehow God is, you know, the higher power God. He's not just father close, but what does the text say?
How did Jesus instruct us? Our Father who art in heaven.
He's a close father, wonderfully, thankfully, but he is overall.
He is above all. He is sovereign over all. He's a source.
He's beyond all. And so, lest we kind of become too cutesy and too familiar, Jesus says,
He's our Father, but He's our Father who is transcendent, so you don't become so familiar that something wrong might happen.
Hey, big guy, how you doing? I don't even like it when people do that to me.
I went to Lowe's the other day and we wanted to shop a little bit, so in we go to Lowe's and thinking, this is kind of nice, and I went up to the man and Lowe's seems to be very nice, the people, and they know what they're doing and they come rushing over to help and I thought
I was in the Midwest or something for a minute when I was up there and walked over and I said, you know, I'm looking for some dirt.
I'm just looking for, I mean, who would buy that? You know, we're in 2008 when you have to buy dirt, and so I said, you know,
I just look like a bag of dirt, some kind of topsoil, you know, it doesn't have to be organic or anything. And the guy looked at me and he goes, it's over there, dog.
It's over there, dog. I thought it's high holy father to you, pal.
No, I didn't. I didn't say
I have an earned doctorate, I'm to be revered, but it just didn't seem right.
It was too flippant. It was too, I'm the customer. Now, I didn't have on a suit or anything, backwards collar, but it just, dog.
And so I told the kids and the kids were flabbergasted, dog. So all day I'm just thinking of dog. So then on the way out,
I saw him, I said to the kids, so we walked by him and I said, see you later, dog.
He looked at me like, sup, God is close.
He's a father. And because of Christ, we can rush into the father's presence, where's children.
But there's an element of prayer that still should be not higher power, big dog, man in the sky.
It's too flippant. It is too irreverent. Jesus, kindly and rightly in a way that would glorify the father, reminds us that we're to approach
God with the knowledge that he's father yet still revered. How about this? Don't turn there, but let me read to you 1
Peter 1, verses 17 to 19, and you'll see this double idea of father yet holy.
Listen to 1 Peter 1, verse 17 to 19. Even if you address as father, the one who impartially judges according to each man's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life, but with precious blood as the lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
Even if you call God your father, there should be a holy transcendent fear. So Jesus basically summarizes
God's greatness in heaven and his goodness, our father, so that we might not just come with fear, but come with fear and confidence, that we might not just come with love, but with love and a sense of awe, both.
Listen how Matthew Henry models how to approach God, learning at the feet of Jesus Christ.
This is just incredible. We come to you, our father, as your children, saved by your mercy and grace, adopted into Christ Jesus into your family, members of your household, and enjoying all the privileges of the children of God.
We rejoice that you have predestined us to adoption as sons in Christ Jesus. In the fullness of time, you sent your son to redeem us that we might become your children.
We come to you no longer as slaves or orphans, but as sons and heirs. We are your body.
We are your temple. We are your people. We are your bride whom you love and nourish and cherish.
We are your family, and we come to you as brothers and sisters in Christ. We rejoice that you love and pity us, even as a father pities his children.
We rest secure in your strong protection. We find fatherly refuge in you. No one shall pluck us from your hand.
We are kept by your power. You are a father for us who knows our needs even before we ask.
You are a father who gives good gifts to his children. So we come to you boldly and securely in Christ, confident to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us.
We come knowing that we are pitied, provided for, and protected, knowing that you, our
Father, are working all things together for our good, that none can separate us from your love, and in Christ we overwhelmingly conquer.
That is exactly what Jesus was trying to teach us when we come to God as our Father who are in heaven.
Well, let's go to the first petition. If we've just reviewed the preface, then let's go to the first petition.
There are six petitions in the prayer, the model prayer. We've seen the porthole or the entryway, and now we come to petition number one, the first petition that's still vertical, still
God word, and then later in the series we'll get to the rest. We look today in your
Bible in chapter six, verse nine of Matthew, hallowed be thy name.
It's still in my brain, King James only. I probably won't say hallowed be your name because it is stuck irrevocably,
I think, in my mind. Hallowed be thy name. That's probably how you memorized it as well. How do we pray this way?
What does Jesus intend for us to understand? I believe that it is radical to believe that God is our
Father who is in heaven, so too I think this will be radical. I will challenge you. Here's my kind of duel today.
I dare you to pray the same way you did yesterday as you will this afternoon after this prayer. I dare you.
I don't think you can. I don't think you can listen with your Bibles open saying, I'll just pray the same old way.
I was so convicted. I would even... I don't want to tell the story ahead of time, so let's get back to the text. I'm just very convicted about my prayer life, not even from last week.
How could we be more convicted after last week? Well, even more this time. Let me give you several shades of the color of prayer.
That is to say, this is a robust passage and I'm just going to kind of take different angles and I'm just going to call them shades for the sake of argument today, for the sake of an outline.
Different shades of the color of prayer so that you might pray more in line with what Jesus teaches.
In Jesus' school of prayer, hallowed be thy name. I think as we see all different sides, you'll understand the fullness of it.
I went to the IMAX movie a while ago and to see the Alps on IMAX, I just thought this is grandeur and splendor.
But here we have the real teacher teaching through his inspired transchronological word and I think it's even more impressive than an
IMAX. Shade number one, hallowed be thy name should teach you that no matter what your circumstances might be, you must not pray with a focus on yourself.
Said again, this first idea, when you say hallowed be thy name, it's not about you, it's about God in other words.
It's not about us at all. Do you see the text? Hallowed be thy or your name.
We will get to this fatherly love that desires the children to say, Daddy, I'd like bread.
Daddy, I'm struggling with temptation. Daddy, deliver me from evil.
We'll get to those. But to start off, there's not a prayer about self at all found in hallowed be thy name.
Before I ask for myself, yea, even before I ask for my friends, before I ask for those at church, before I ask for the government, before I ask for my son, my daughters, it doesn't matter if there's a war going on, a plague going on, a calamity, oil prices, health, sickness, cancer, it doesn't matter.
Jesus says when you pray, you first realize hallowed be thy name. There's something more important than us.
There's something more important than me. And it is the hallowed name of God. Some of you have been taught to pray
ACTS prayer, A -C -T -S, right, the acronym? The S is supplication, moving backwards.
The T is thanksgiving, moving backwards. The C is confession, and the A is adoration.
Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication are requests. Before we get to the supplications, we're in the adoration mode.
We are not the center of the universe. And we know that intellectually, but it's good to be reminded in prayer to say with Peter in his first epistle, in all things that God may be glorified through Christ Jesus.
It makes sense, doesn't it? Haven't we been purchased? Haven't we been dead to self?
Haven't we died to self? Haven't we been crucified to self? Have we not echoed with Paul in Galatians 2,
I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.
First Corinthians chapter 6, we are not our own. We have been bought with a price. I can prove it another way.
Flip over just quickly, keeping your thumb on Matthew 6, go over to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and I think you'll find a verse there that will remind us that we are not the center of everything.
We've been delivered from that. We were unbelievers and we think everything revolved around us until we moved out of the house and realized that we didn't really work with our employer or anybody else.
We still like that. We kind of like everything revolving around ourselves, and that's just what self does because it tries to say,
God, I don't want things to be revolved around you. I don't want them to be revolved around me. So it just follows nature.
Idle worshipers worship themselves typically instead of some kind of little block of stone or wood or soap. 2
Corinthians chapter 5, verse 15 reminds us that there's no sense looking back to our old life.
It's not about us anyway. We're dead. And he died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.
We live for Christ Jesus. So does it make sense then that we should all pray that way as well?
Of course it does. We should be just like John the Baptist. I must decrease so Jesus must increase.
And if we are left to ourselves, I believe that we will pray selfishly.
We will start our prayers with ourselves. We all end our prayers with ourselves, and the middle will be about ourselves.
We are not to pray selfishly. We are not to pray like we're at the center of the universe. We are not to pray what
I call seeker -sensitive prayers, me -sensitive prayers, you could call it.
We do not pray, hallowed be our name. We do not pray, hallowed be my name. We do not sing the song,
Lord, I lift myself on high. I love to sing my praises. I'm so glad I'm in my life. The focus is not on the family.
The focus is not on your spouse. The focus is not on your relationships, your finances. About church people, hallowed be thy name.
We must say purposely and full of intent, I will disregard myself because self is trying to raise up like some kind of ugly cyclops.
I don't know what it looks like. We're to think through these issues. It was
Friday night, 3 o 'clock in the morning. I needed to get up because I thought, you know what, I'm just going to lay here.
I went to bed at 12 and it's 3 o 'clock in the morning. I have a wedding to do. Steve's daughter's going to get married and I want to try to do well and I don't do well without sleep.
I've been studying this passage all week and now it's about 3 o 'clock in the morning and finally I had enough nerve to say,
God, could you please help me to sleep? I want to serve you tomorrow. And then the second I uttered those words out of my brain because I was quiet because I didn't want to wake up my wife, oh, hi, honey,
I can't sleep, can you? I said, you know what, that's the wrong way to pray.
Is it right to say to our Father, I'm tired and I can't fall asleep, could you help me fall asleep?
Is that a good prayer? Is it okay to pray? Of course, but it's taking the order and switching it around.
So then I thought, you know what, better late than never, time to learn. God, your name should be hallowed and if you need to hallow your name and to make it holy in the eyes of the people coming to the wedding through a tired, weak, frail, bags under the eyes man, then do it.
Matter of fact, that's what God always does and is pleased to do. God, it's your name at stake, it's not my small issue of sleep.
When we were kids, we were taught when you get on fire, you're supposed to do what?
Stop, drop, and roll. I don't know who came up with that advertising and that slogan and that campaign, but it was effective.
Stop, drop, and roll. I've only been on fire one time in my life and I forgot it, so a lot of good that did.
Some guy had to come over with a blanket and put me out. I kid you not. We might lose some of these kind of pop slogans, stop, drop, and roll.
We know the truth, but here this is basically the same thing with our attitude. It's just time to stop and drop, to think, you know, this isn't about me.
This is nothing about Mike and his small little world. You say, well, who's it about?
It's not about me. If I have to force myself to think about matters that are infinitely more important than myself and even other people, even my family, what should
I think about? Well, you know the answer, and so let's make that shade number two, prayer shade number two, hallowed be thy name, should not only say no to self -prayers, but secondly, it should impress upon you that your greatest concern must forever and always be the glory of God and his honor.
Hallowed be thy name. So it's like a coin. The negative side's number one first shade. The positive side now is this shade number two.
It's not about us, so it's about God's glory. We squash ourselves thinking about ourselves so we can think about the greatness of God, his honor, his glory.
Did you know there's nothing more important in this universe than God's glory and his name? I'll just push it as far as I can, if you'll let me.
Your health is not important, as important. Your finances are not important. Your children is not as important.
Your mother is not as important. Your job is not as important. Your school is not as important. Nothing in this world is as important as God and his glory.
So therefore, when you approach this Father who's in heaven, what should be the preeminent thought?
The most important thing. God, glory to be hallowed.
Did you know the most important thing when you pray is not even answered prayer? Hallowed be thy name.
It's like a gun in the Olympics for the starting. Like the sprint, and here goes the gun, whack!
Hallowed be thy name. The Father's glory, not mine. And when it comes right down to it, doesn't it make sense?
Who has more on the line? Me? You know, one day
I'm going to die, and you're going to bury me in a grave, and one generation might remember me, and then it's over.
God has more on the line. God has more at stake. It's God's reputation, not my reputation. Jesus has kind of given us like mental epoxy to our brains to think
God, the singular and plural God, the singular God, God of the universe, who manifests himself in three persons,
Father, Son, and Spirit. He is the one that should receive the focus. He is the one that should have the glory.
He is the one that the world is about. Now, there were some pretty amazing things going on in the
Old Testament, things where you'd say to yourselves, they should go, help, first.
But before they prayed help, they did something else. Case in point, 2 Kings 19. Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it.
He went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. Hezekiah prayed to the Lord. Basically, here's what he needs to pray.
Help me, the Assyrians are coming to destroy me. So what did
Hezekiah pray first? Oh, Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, you are the
God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth.
It's about you. David did the same thing, 1 Chronicles 29.
So David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly and said, blessed are you, O Lord, God of Israel, our
Father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth.
Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and you exalt yourself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all, and in your hand is power and might, and it lies in your hands to make great and strengthen everyone.
Therefore, our God, we thank you, and we praise your glorious name. Any petitions? Any supplications?
Any, it's my neck's on the line, it's my fame and reputation, David says, no.
No personal request yet, and it goes on and on that way. The inevitable pattern,
Jeremiah, O Lord, God, behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm.
Nothing is too difficult for you who shows loving kindness to thousands but repays the iniquity of fathers in the bosom of their children after them.
Oh, great and mighty God, the Lord of hosts is his name. When we pray, we say to ourselves, push down our own needs, even if they're great needs and real needs of food, for instance, and shelter.
And then secondly, we want to exalt God's name and his honor. Third, prayer shade number three, hallowed be thy name instructs you to pray that God's name would be treated as holy, that God's name would be treated as holy.
That's really the essence of what Jesus is saying. It's not about us, it's about God, but specifically now as we move into number three,
God, would you make your name be treated as holy, hallowed be thy name. God, your reputation, true or false, in this world is thought of in an unworthy manner by most.
By most, your name is not honored, it is in fact blasphemed. By most, it is not thought of as in an honoring way and as a deferring way, submitting way.
No, it's slandered. It's defamed. It is trashed in the media.
It is trashed in pop culture. It is trashed by your neighbors. Now we can't make
God's name more holy. How could we add more holiness to God? Then he'd be less than holy, true?
But with the psalmist, we say in Psalm 34, oh, magnify the Lord. How do you magnify the Lord? If he could be more good than he is, then he wouldn't be the best good.
And we know that's what the scripture teaches, he's the best good. If he could be wiser, he wouldn't be the all wise
God, he wouldn't be God. If he could be more sovereign, so we can't make him more holy, but we can want his holy influence to spread so people might speak well of him and be treated as holy.
Can't you think of Jesus when he was burning with desire and passion to think zeal for my father's house as what?
Consumed me. He was consumed with the glory that should go to God. And they would take that for themselves.
They would put up a big mirror and say, we're going to reflect God's glory and refract it upon us.
Hated that. He wanted God to receive the glory. So what does it mean for something like this to happen, to make
God's name more holy? Would you turn with me to Ezekiel, please, 36. Ezekiel 36, and let me give you an illustration of this very, very thing.
And I think when Jesus was writing this, he didn't write it when he was teaching this and then Matthew wrote it.
This is what was in the mind of Jesus. Certainly a perfect Old Testament student, an Old Testament student that would believe in Genesis, would believe in the
Ark, would believe in Sodom and Gomorrah, would believe in Jonah. After all, if any of those things were not true, he would have come along and said, why believe it?
It's all allegory made up. He affirmed and confirmed the Old Testament. And here in Ezekiel 36, this language of showing forth
God as holy so his name might be treated holy is easy to see. We tend to go to Ezekiel 36 to show the new birth, water and the spirit for being born again in John 3.
I think we'll miss out if we don't zoom in to Ezekiel chapter 36.
What does it mean for God to show forth his name as holy so other people might treat him as holy?
And we're going to see here in Ezekiel chapter 36 that it's done as God fulfills his promises, as God fulfills his word and shows that he is true and right, trustworthy, his word can be trusted and that his reputation is at stake and so he'll do something about that.
Ezekiel 36, verse 16. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, when the house of Israel was living in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds.
Their way before me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity. Therefore, I poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they had shed on the land because they defiled it with their idols.
I scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed throughout the lands. According to their ways and their deeds,
I judged them. When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned my what?
Holy name. Because it was said of them, these are the people of the
Lord, yet they have come out of his land. Israel has profaned God's holy name and all the other nations are saying, that God, he doesn't keep his promises, he promised them the holy land and they're not in it and look at this
God. And all the other people were looking saying, based on Israel's actions, this God can't be trusted. He's not revered.
His name's not set apart. He's just the run -of -the -mill typical God who is really a made -up thing.
Verse 21, but I had concern for my holy name. Who's speaking? God has concern for his holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went.
Do you think God's going to stand for that? I've had my reputation slammed and slaughtered before.
I tried not to somehow stand up for myself for the most part.
But do you think God is going to let his name, his holy name, be profaned, stepped on?
Verse 22, therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the
Lord God. Why would God raise up holiness, show for things? For Israel's sake?
No. For God's sake. It's for his glory. It is not for your sake,
O house of Israel, that I'm about to act, but for my, what? Holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.
I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst.
For what reason? So God's name would be treated as holy. Look at how the other nations must even know that.
Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when
I prove myself holy among you in their sight. Isn't that good?
They'll all see. They'll all see that God should be treated as holy based on what God would do.
And when we pray, God, would you please be treated as holy? God, do something.
Do something. We know eventually it'll happen, but we're praying now, we're crying out, God, do something so people won't go, oh, there's that kind of weak, emaciated kind of Jesus who can't do anything except, you know, we'll throw him a few little worship bones on Easter and Christmas.
God, show yourself to be the holy king so that people might bow down. I think that's a prayer request that God would love to grant.
You say, well, that part's good. Let me give you the last implication, the last shade of color.
For those of you that are counting, I'm not going to give you the number because I have four or five more. You know, that's what you do when you preach and you say, you've got nine.
I've got nine shades. Some people, they can't sleep. They just probably pray,
God, would you please have Pastor Mike give us all nine? And they ought not to be praying that way. They ought to be praying,
God, would you make yourself holy? Hallowed be thy name. Pray your shade.
Hallowed be thy name. What's the last shade we have here? It implies that you're praying for God to make you holy.
You already are holy in Christ Jesus, but now practically, personally, on a day -to -day basis, if you're winning his reputation to be made known as honorable and great, then as Israel would profane the name of God and God would say,
I'm going to rescue you and I'm going to do something so that you'll be holy as I'm holy, so too doesn't it make sense for the church that if we want
God's name to be declared, that his vehicle for his name to be broadcast, the church, that the church herself with the individuals and the corporate body should be holy?
The answer is yes. This is a prayer that says, God, may you be revered across the world and God, may everything
I say and do and think show forth your glory as well. So people look at me and say.
Only God could do that to that person, that that person is a good representative of this great
God. This is the same root word hallowed. It's in first Peter, chapter three, verse 15, sanctify
Christ as Lord in your hearts. So for us, we think about the way we evangelize,
God, help me to be a holy evangelist, help me to be a holy spouse, help me to think of world's missions in a way that would would extend your.
Praise, say, well, this is hard, how can
I do this, how can I say holy is your name? When after all, the name of God is his attributes, the sum of all
God's attributes, that God's name would be done. How could I do it? I fall short. I can't live up to this standard.
I've shamed God this way. I can't do it. Well, someone has done it for you.
If you're a Christian. Last passage, John, chapter 17. Do you know it was Jesus's pleasure to treat
God this way? Jesus was a walking banner for hallowed be thy name. This is how
Jesus lived, how he thought on the way to the cross, when he was preaching, as he was healing. It was it was a consuming, burning passion.
And so when I fall short, I say to myself, God, a forgive me and be thank you that Jesus has obeyed in my place.
I have been in Christ and I am now seeing what it's like for Jesus to say I will burn for the passion and glory and honor of my father.
John 17 for how about this for prayer? This is a prayer. I have glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do.
Verse six, and here it is, this is the one who's our representative substitute.
This is the one who's died in our place, who's lived in our place. And when God sees us now as Christians, he doesn't see idolaters who are selfish.
He sees those who have a consuming, a consuming, burning desire for God's glory.
And we are in Christ. And look at what Jesus said. John 17 six. It's it's the sermon. It's Jesus living out what he taught us to do.
I have manifested your name to the sons of men whom you gave me out of this world.
They were yours and you gave them to me and they have kept your word.
I've been on this earth for my whole mission. I have manifested your name. I have lived under the banner.
Hallowed be thy name. Let's pray our heavenly father.
Hallowed be your name, father, it is the desire of this church.
It is our desire that your name might be multiplied. Throughout all the nations that your name might be honored, that people would no longer use
Jesus and God as merely slang or curse words. But they would use them in worship and adoration at the name of Jesus.
Every knee would bow. Lord, it is our desire and we would confess that we do think about ourselves.
We do think about our reputation and our agenda. We fear people. At work and other places, because what they might think about us,
Lord, would you give us a holy boldness that we might be like Jesus and we might say on our deathbed, we have manifested your name to all those that you have brought us in contact with our neighbors, our friends.
Lord, we are thankful that even though we're sinful, we stand forgiven because of how Jesus prayed, how he lived, how he died.
We are in Christ perfect. Lord, help us to live up to who we are. Help us to act more and more like your children.
And father, for those that are here today, who have in essence blasphemed your name because they have not bowed to Jesus Christ, because they love sin.
They love immorality. They love idolatry. They love sacraments. They love themselves.
God, like us as a church, would you rescue them through the great power of your spirit and cause them to be born again so they might hallow your name by bowing to the risen savior in Jesus name.