Word of Salvation – Vol. 36 No. 33 – September 1991

 

Praying For The Holiness Of God’s Name

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 47

Reading: Isaiah 37:9-23; 36-38

 

‘Hallowed be your name’ is the first petition in the Lord’s Prayer.  In a petition you are asking someone to do you a favour or to respond to your request.  This first petition comes after you have acknowledged that God is your heavenly Father and that you are His saved child through Jesus Christ.  So when you are praying to God then you do not come to Him as a stranger but as His child who has confessed that from His throne in heaven the Father is able to do all that His children ask for in Jesus’s name.

Having acknowledged who the heavenly Father is and what He can do, we may now proceed to place our requests before Him.  And in His model prayer, the Lord Jesus teaches us to first pray for the honour and glory of God’s name.  For that’s what ‘Hallowed be your name’ means.  The word ‘to hallow’ means to make holy, or to honour.  So Jesus instructs us first to pray: Father, let your holy name be honoured.

Of course, the Lord did not mean that whenever we pray we must literally first say: ‘Hallowed be your name’.

The Lord’s Prayer is not the only prayer Christians may use.  We may also choose our own words but in the model of the Lord’s Prayer, we are taught to make our first concern the honour and holiness of God’s name.

In praying for the holiness of God’s name, therefore, we will now first look to its meaning, secondly, to its implications, and thirdly, to its practice.

1.  When we first of all consider the meaning of this first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, then none of us will deny that many times in our lives we are more concerned about ourselves than about God.

For example, in looking for and taking on a job do we first think about the amount of money it will bring in, or do we stop to think about what doors could open up to us so that we are able to honour and glorify God’s holy name?

In thanking God for health or praying to Him when we are sick, do we make His honour the first concern in our lives?

It’s very easy to think of our own well-being first, isn’t it?  When a couple are blessed with a newborn baby, then they may joyfully boast that their child will become a future prime minister and they are thinking of how they all will be famous, but Hannah prayed that her child Samuel would always serve the Lord.

We need to realize that there is a cost involved in following Christ.  It is to deny oneself and to put God first.  Denying oneself is always painful for it goes against your own wishes and feelings.

But conversion to Christ brings that with it.  However, in loving God more than loving ourselves, we will also experience richer lives.  For he who seeks his own life first will end up losing it.  But he who loses his life for Christ’s sake will end up finding a more meaningful life than he ever had before.

In his book ‘Faith and Victory in Dachau’, Jack Overduin made that very clear.  He was about to be transported to Dachau concentration camp and feared for his life.  Many, he knew, would not survive.  What should he ask God for?  Well, if he thought of his own well-being first then he could think of plenty of things to ask; all entirely reasonable.  But it wasn’t putting God first.  After thinking about it he reminded himself that the furtherance of God’s concerns were far more important than any concerns he might have about himself, or even of his wife and family.  So he came to have peace that if God wanted him to go to a terrible prison where death lurked around every corner, then he would accept that.  Obviously the Lord had His own purposes to fulfil which would be a blessing to His church and kingdom.

So Jack Overduin went to Dachau, willingly, and in peace.  Later, when he looked back on that period of his life, he knew God to be always right in His dealings with His children.  Jack Overduin was made a blessing for many of God’s people in that prison, and besides, he was able to write a beautiful book which has and still is a blessing to all who read it.

This then is the framework in which we are to understand the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer.  To pray, ‘Hallowed be your name’, means putting God’s concerns first, and that is the honour and glory of the Father’s name.  We constantly have to watch all we do so that we have our priorities in the right order.  And for Christians the first priority is the precious name of our triune God.

God’s name identifies His Person.  To misuse God’s name, as in swearing, is to insult His Person.  To honour and glorify His name is to bless and praise and worship His Person and all His works.

2.  In the second place, what are the implications when we pray: Hallowed by your name?  We just said that it is to bless, praise and worship God’s Person and all His works.

But what does that imply?  Obviously it is not meant to add to God’s holiness.  As the sun is always shining, so also is God always holy.  But the light and the warmth of the sun’s rays can be hidden by darkness and blocked by clouds, and so also can God’s holiness not receive proper recognition by men.  When we pray that God be made holy and honoured, then we are asking God to make Himself known, honoured, worshipped and praised for what He is.  We are actually saying, ‘Father let your name be sanctified’.  Please, go ahead, and do whatever needs doing so that you are honoured and glorified.

We, your children here below know and believe that you are able, for you, O God, are in heaven and from there you rule over heaven and earth.

The implications of such a prayer are enormous!  When God answers this prayer, then people who dishonour Him and ignore His name are going to get hurt.

We have a powerful example of this happening in the second book of Kings – chapter 18 & 19 – and the same account is also told in the prophecy of Isaiah, (chapter 36 & 37).

It’s about the king of Assyria, named Sennacherib, who laid siege against Jerusalem with a great army.  This took place about seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth.

This Assyrian king was very powerful indeed and he had conquered many nations.  There is a clay tablet in the British Museum that has writing on it from this king, by the hand of his secretary, about his exploits in battle.  He was a proud and arrogant man.  This vanity also comes through in what he had to say through his field commander to Hezekiah, who was king over Judah at that time.  Sennacherib had heard that the Israelites worshipped God whom they said was the maker of heaven and earth.  In fact the Assyrian king seemed to know quite a bit about Israel’s God.  And now that he was ready to crush Jerusalem, he told Hezekiah’s servants not to depend on their God, for He would in no way be able to withstand the might of Assyria.

Hezekiah’s servants pleaded with Sennacherib’s field commander not to speak in Hebrew for they were afraid that the soldiers on the walls of Jerusalem, who were within earshot, would be demoralised.  The field commander then began to shout to all those on the wall and insulted them, their king Hezekiah, and also God.

So upset was Hezekiah that he sent word to Isaiah, the prophet of God, and told him how Israel’s God had been insulted and ridiculed.  Hezekiah asked if Isaiah could pray to God and perhaps God would rebuke Sennacherib.  In reply, the king heard from Isaiah that God had indicated to His prophet that Hezekiah and Jerusalem had nothing to fear, for God would have Sennacherib killed.

A little later, Sennacherib repeated his taunts and this time in a letter to Hezekiah.  In it the Assyrian king had written: ‘Do not let the God you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria’.  Other gods, he said, were not able to stand against him either!

Hezekiah took that letter to the temple and spread it before the Lord.  Then he prayed, ‘Deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.’

In other words, Israel’s king prayed, ‘Lord in heaven, hallowed be your name.’  And through His prophet Isaiah God answered Sennacherib.  ‘Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride?  Against the Holy One of Israel!’

God said many more things in defence of His holy name and mighty works.  And He also took action.  “That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp.”  Sennacherib then withdrew to his own capital and not long after while he was praying to one of his false gods, his own sons came and killed him with their swords.

That’s a powerful example of what God did when He was being ridiculed and His children began to pray.  ‘Hallowed be your name.’  The implications then of this first petition are far-reaching indeed.

Let us pray like this when we want a better marriage, a Christian family, a faithful and obedient church, a truly Christian school, yes, and many other things that are important to God’s kingdom.  Do not ask for things that aim to bless you first.  Pray instead that God’s name will be blessed, worshipped and praised more and more.  Pray that God will so work, that His almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy and truth begin to shine forth.  For when all that begins to happen then we will see marriages, families, churches, schools and nations change for the better.

Implied, of course, is the fact that God can stay silent and keep Himself hidden.  It happened many times in the Old Testament period, and it usually meant that God’s people were persisting with sinful things.

The letter of James also speaks about this.  It asks where fightings and quarrels come from.  The answer is from the desires that battle within you.  James explains that people want things so badly that they will kill and covet.  They don’t get what they want because they don’t ask from God, and when they do ask then they ask with the wrong motives.  Their motives are self-fulfilment (cf.James 4:1-3).

Like Jack Overduin who came to the point where he was ready to follow God into a terrible concentration camp, so we also must put God first.

We must desire His honour and holiness before we desire anything for ourselves.

Nearly all of us find that too difficult.  We somehow think that if we put God’s interests first, then we will not see the things we want and our hopes and aspirations will not materialize.  And then we are confused and disappointed when God does not answer our prayers.

God is not selfish when He insists that we first pray, ‘Hallowed be your name, before we start on all the things we have set our sights on.  You see, the Lord knows that when He and His will are honoured then everything else will begin to fall into the right place, both for God and His people.

Did not the Lord Jesus say, ‘Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’? (Matthew 6:33).  And remember also the commandments.  In the commandments God comes before man.  It’s first the worship of God alone, then the proper worship of Him, then follows God’s name, and His day.  Only then does the attention swing around to people.

The goal of every life should be God.  He is to be first in everything and in the centre of everything.  When we begin to see that, our lives will have a peace that passes all understanding.  You may still experience all kinds of misery and difficulties through circumstances or from people, all ruled over and given to you by God, but you will be like a rock that stands firm in swirling waters.

The most wonderful implication of this prayer is of course the full coming of God’s kingdom at the end of time.  Then all opposition to His Person and works will have been overcome.  Every blasphemer will be silenced and only the pure praise of God’s people will be heard.

3.  In the final place let us see what it is like in practice when we pray for the holiness of God’s name.  We can speak here of several things.

Let us first mention our knowledge of God.  If we are serious about glorifying God then we will pray also for a true understanding of God through His Word.  We will want to search the Scriptures, together with other believers and by ourselves.  If there is something we don’t understand about God, or something that puzzles us, then we will try to get to the bottom of it by seeking answers from the Bible.

We will join in the worship services with joy, for there we can praise and worship God together with all the believers and learn from His Word.  That’s the first practical issue that comes from praying, ‘Hallowed be your name.’ For how else can we go about glorifying God’s name if we don’t even know who He really is?

There are plenty of people who think they know what God is like but by the way they think and behave it is obvious that they don’t really know God, for they dishonour Him more than they honour Him.

It is also a dishonour to God when Christians are more familiar with the contents of films and books than with the Word of God.

So, if we are going to pray ‘Hallowed be your name’ with real commitment and sincerity then we will want to know all we can about God’s Person and works form the Scriptures.

Following on from needing to know God’s Word, Christians also need to be able to see God in His creation.  Christians ought to be vitally interested in the current emphasis on environmental protection, for it has to do with preserving a beautiful earth which the Lord has made for our use and benefit.  To pray ‘Hallowed be your name; also means that the whole of nature may be so preserved that the mountains and hills, the rivers, lakes, and sea, trees and animals may all continue to glorify God, the Maker of them all.

Yet, the Christian also knows that the earth’s resources are given by God to benefit man.  So mining is not automatically wrong, having animals for food is to be received with thanksgiving, and clearing forests in order to grow crops can be a positive thing.

The great difficulty, of course, is to strike a balance that prevents us from destroying the very creation which God has given for our existence.  Again, it calls for people to know how to put God first and thus be kept from exploitation for purely selfish gains and personal ambitions.

Then we must also realise that Christians can give God a good name or a bad name in the world.  The Heidelberg Catechism says that this first petition of the Lord’s Prayer also means that we so direct our living, in what we think, say or do, so that the name of God will never be blasphemed because of us but always honoured and praised.

We’ve all heard and seen how millions in the Muslim world mourned for their dead leader in 1989.  But the way these people behaved in their grief sadly shows that they do not know the true God who has conquered the power of death in the resurrection of Christ.

Islam is indeed a very poor religion because it does not want to know Christ.  What that means can be seen in how the leaders of Islam call for death and vengeance upon its opponents.  In Islam there is no room for forgiveness, and none for mercy.

We have also seen the true face of communism in China when the people’s own army ruthlessly killed its own people.  The terrible things that have happened have given China and its hard-line leaders a terrible name.

So here we have two recent examples of how those who bear the name of a religion and of a political system have given these a bad name.  Of course, we also know of South Africa’s racial problem and Australia’s as well.  And those who mercilessly push for gains in the capitalistic west also have a bad name.  The world is full of examples of people and causes not worth following.

And now you know, of course, what is coming next!

It is this!

Do we as Christians cause others to think so much of Christ that they too will want to follow Him and obey His will?  We who bear the Saviour’s name, do we honour Him in all that we think, say and do?

Sadly, we have to say that we are doing the same sins as Israel of old when they as a covenant people of God brought shame to His holy name.  Their behaviour was at times so low, yes worse than the heathen, that even these heathen blasphemed God’s name as a result of what God’s people were doing.

Christians can discredit each other more than non-Christians do among themselves.  Christians can behave in ways that cause unbelievers to snigger and feel glad that they are not part of us.

How necessary then for Christians to pray as Jesus taught us.  To earnestly pray that God’s name not be blasphemed because of us but always honoured and praised.  That means being a church that really is a church of the Lord Jesus, where He is pleased to live and work.  It means to live lives in which sinful ways are broken with and where God’s help and guidance is sought.  It is to get rid of all entertainment that dishonours God’s name.  It is to genuinely praise and worship God so that others find God’s peace and comfort when they are among us.

Yes, praying for the holiness of God’s name means that our whole life continually is at God’s disposal.  From the moment we pray for the honour of God’s name, we are to be committed to a life that is marked by true Christian discipleship.  May all that lives and breaths praise God for evermore.

AMEN