Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 22 – June 1986

 

Father’s Reputation – Who Cares?

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Lord’s Day 47

Reading: Ps. 115, John 12:27-32

Singing: 224, 13, 299, 304, 488.

 

The name of God is (says Jesus) your father’s reputation.  Now who cares about that?  About that name of God the Lord?  We have a commandment in the law, of course.  You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…  You shall not treat the name of God, which he entrusted to you, as irrelevant!

Now you may have noticed that the Heidelberg Catechism (“give that We do this and that We do that”), makes a little bit of a commandment of this prayer.  Like some ministers do who use their prayers to tell the congregation off: “Lord please give that Johnnie will not be naughty again tomorrow..!”  But of course that’s not what prayer is for: to tell people off.  In prayer especially this prayer – people learn to ask God for what they cannot do – or make – or fix themselves.  In this prayer, people who have learned to say “Father” to the almighty Lord God, may learn to be concerned with Father’s reputation, Father’s good name.  And Jesus commands us to pray this.  You, then, pray like this: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be – also on earth – thy name!  Maybe we could say that the heartfelt praying of this prayer is the Christian’s most important and most humble way of obeying the third commandment.

Father’s Reputation… Who Cares?

1.  We don’t

2.  He did

3.  I, too!

4.  They all!

1.  We Don’t

We… that is: we human beings.  Psalm eight sings “O Lord our Lord how glorious is thy name in all the earth…!”  It is in the mountains and the skies, in the song of birds and the murmur of the creeks, the roar of the waterfall and the sweetness of the flowers.  But what do they do, who can KNOW what they are doing?  The beings made in God’s image, the human beings?  What do they do?  Well, it looks very much as if with all their might they’re out to out-shout the glory of God’s name here on God’s earth.  To cancel out Psalm eight.  Over the world roars our mockery our snide and sneer.  Yes and also our mirthless laughter.

The laughter of the fools that we have become, which, says the preacher, – sounds like the crackling of burning twigs under a pot: Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  We have no joy!  But man do we have fun!  Fancy believing in God!  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  Wide over God’s world rolls the loathsome lowing of the big lie.  And now right inside that world God has planted a church.  A people of His.  DO THEY do better?  Well, do they, both in Old Testament times as well as now?  Oh sure, inside that church there sounds the name of the Lord…!  Beautifully at times in four-part harmony – echoing through the arches and vaults of high cathedrals – or maybe with guitars and jumping with joy…!  But listen to what Proverbs thirty says what can happen.  “Lord,” prays the man there, “Please keep deception and lies far from me…!  Do not make me too rich or too poor…!  For if I would be too full I would say I can manage by myself; who needs God?  And if I would be too poor, I would steal and bring dishonour on the name of my God.”  Yes, and do you see it happen?  There is the church member and his neighbour sees him and says: “Hey look, he went out stealing (maybe he even stole from his church and the poor deacon just saw the two cent piece he dropped in the bag).  Look – he went out stealing…!  It seems that his God does not look after him so well.  Then God gets a bad name.  Boy does HE get a bad name!  Or maybe they say even worse: “He went out stealing and says “Father” to God!  Maybe God reckons that is all right!”  Then God gets a reputation that is even worse.  The reputation of a lawless God who does not care.  You see, Jesus tells us that we should pray this prayer in a world in which there is a church – a world where God DOES have a people.  People like David who also went stealing: who stole his neighbour’s wife and then wrote the mocker and roughneck Joab, (who himself was not above murdering people on the sly for political reasons…)  “Joab, please make sure Uriah gets killed in the battle – I have my reasons for wanting to be rid of him…!”  When Nathan goes and tells David God’s opinion of this bad sin, he says: ‘Through what you did God’s name has suffered, God’s own reputation has been slandered!”  Yes, and that was David the man after God’s heart!

Well does Jesus command you and me: you better ask God “YOUR NAME BE HALLOWED.”  For even you church people are not very good at it.  God had better look after this himself.  Psalm eight begins to sing the glory of God’s name in all the earth and well may it then ask: But what – O what is man?  Jesus says: You are not very good at this.  But now when you pray, say this: Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed by THY Name.  And as we listen in amazement, we hear how he who taught us that – the dearest child of the Father – is the one in whom God begins to answer that prayer!

Father’s Reputation – Who Cares?

We Heard… (1) We Don’t!…  But now…

2.  HE Did!

In John chapter twelve we see the Lord Jesus in agony.  He sees the cross coming, he sees the blackness coming of the deepest night any human being would ever be in.  Father, he cries, FATHER!  (And no one could use that NAME like He, the dearest of the Father’s heart!)  Father I don’t know WHAT to say?  Oh shall I say: get me out of this?  No Father, I ask this: GLORIFY THY NAME!  Give glory to Your Name!  Hallowed be Thy Name!  There…!  Now he prays it Himself and out of heaven there thunders the answer: “I have glorified My Name and will do so again!”

Ah and now we wait – what will happen?  He will do so again – the God of the path through the Red Sea!  The God of the miracles… now He will make a Name for Himself!  Well what is He going to do?  Well I tell you what happened…

The Father allowed his dearest, the only one, to be nailed to a cross.  And when the mockery and the hellish laughter our world knows so well, rises up about him, (to become the loathsome lowing of the Big lie, until that son cries out “Why my God, why, why?”) then the Father glorifies His name, by doing nothing!

Then the sin-bearer walks the road to the bitter end so that sin would be defeated and a new beginning could be made for all who trust in him!  Oh the surprise of the way God secures His reputation: A newborn sinner, a people picked up from death, learns to sing with Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord O My Soul, and all that is within me, bless his Holy name; Who so has healed my diseases and so has redeemed me from my iniquity!”  Bless the Lord, for who can bless and praise His name like me whom he gave life from the dead!?  Oh the surprise of the way GOD HIMSELF alone hallowed and glorified his name.  When he raised this Jesus from the dead, Satan would lose his claim and death its sting!  And after that victory, this Son went to heaven.  But the last the earth saw of Him were two hands stretched out in blessing over it, and the commandment to His church, to go out and tell the good news to all the nations, and to pray to God that he should – and shall! – continue this work of his hands.  You pray to My Father what he will surely continue to do: Hallowed Glorified by THY name!!

I am with you and so will be the Spirit of the Father!  The restless Spirit working on the answer to this prayer.  Earth shall no longer be the silent planet!  Hallowed by Thy name!

Father’s Reputation – Who Cares!

(1)  Well, we humans don’t – but (2) Jesus Did… and so now the Christian begins to learn to pray this prayer.

3.  Who Cares?  Well, now with Jesus I Do Too!

Then we begin to pray this.  Oh also this prayer we can only BEGIN to pray here.  In this too, our obedience is only a small start!!  The more I pray this, the more I realise that!  What a life-long battle.  Yes also what a life-long battle, what a striving even for the Holy Spirit to break me out of that small circle where “I” am the centre.  Where everything and everybody must serve and please… Me.  Where again and again the subject of conversation is always Me… Me… Me.  Even my prayer gets that way: God, look after Me… Me… Me!  And even if I cry “why” like Jesus did, it is not LIKE Him.  For it is the angry cry with which I call the heavenly butler!  “I pushed the bell for You to serve me, why didn’t You come running, God!??”  Oh the bitter prison of a life where everything must circle around Me… Me… Me!  Where first my parents must coddle Me… then my husband, my wife, is there to serve Me…!  And at last the children must stay around just to look after Me… Me… Me!’  The church is there to give Me security even over the grave, and for the rest I live for Me…!  This is the loneliest prison of all.  Hallelujah!  Jesus came to set me free from it and so he says gently or sternly: Now get on your knees, close your eyes and fold your hands and say: FATHER, THY NAME be HALLOWED!  And now get up and open your eyes and get busy and keep on asking this.  Keep praying this and watch me change that prayer into a song.  The beginning of a song that shall never end.  Lord not to me, no more to us but to THY name give the glory.  And look how that ends: we and our children no more in the lonely silence of death, shall bless thy name forever and ever.  We are alive!  God, thank you, no more in prison!  Yes, then that prayer we pray begins to be a song.  The song of trust and surprise.  You who FEAR the Lord, now also TRUST that Lord!  Look what HE does when HE starts looking after HIS OWN reputation; He the jealous God!  Then God begins to answer this prayer through you and me, who pray it first and begin to sing it, sing it in the strangest places: “Father your name!”  We sing it out of the depths, from the sick beds where we used to cry “Why Me!”  Sing it at work in the world as we realise: IT BELONGS TO GOD AFTER ALL.  The Devil is NOT BOSS any longer!  Where a Christian school we set up or a book we write, a child we bring up or the wage we give a worker or the faithful service we render, (maybe to a cruel boss like Daniel did) begins to sing: Lord, use me, let YOUR name be hallowed!  Let them see that YOU live!  O Father, YOUR reputation in the world!  Kill the lie and let the song break loose!

Then finally – we learn from this prayer to get mighty home-sick for the day that it shall no longer be “HALLOWED BE THY NAME” but “GLORIFY THY NAME” – what Jesus prayed himself.  You know the difference?  Hallowed comes from holy, and holy in the Bible means: set apart.  It means: respected, while many do NOT respect!  When you think of something being HOLY you think of something being screened off.  The way that most holy place in the temple was, a big curtain, something specially kept clean in a sea of mud, isolated: wipe your feet man, you’re now getting onto a special place, holy land.  Yes you’d better take those shoes right off!

Hallowed Be Thy Name: Lord let it be kept clean where the mud flies and the rotten tomatoes.

But we learn from this prayer to be longing with deep homesickness.  For the world where that name is GLORIFIED!  Where the praise to that name is no exception but rule.  Sometimes God’s children see a glimpse of that.  Way back in the dim past of the Old Testament, when God’s children did not know what we know of the life God gives after death, and the beauty he creates on the new earth, the writer of Psalm 115 already sang as he prayed; Not to us Lord, not to us but thy name give the glory.

And is it any wonder that the homesickness that spoke that prayer was full to the brim with hope!?  For man!  Is this world going to see things when God will answer fully THAT prayer now rising from His children!  “The dead do not praise the Lord!” sighs the Psalmist, not knowing much better, “No, neither do they that go down into silence!  But we! – he sings surprisingly, not even realising what he sings!  (For such is the song this prayer creates, we sing already of what no eye has seen and no ear heard, when we sing of God giving glory to His name and restoring HIS reputation in this place!) BUT WE… – we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forever!

Amen