Word of Salvation – Vol. 49 No.4 – January 2004

 

Praying for the Holiness of God’s Name

 

Sermon by Rev M P Geluk

on Lord’s Day 47 (Q/A 122 Heid.Cat.)

Scripture Reading: Luke 11:1-14; Isaiah 37:1-23, 36-38

Suggested Hymns:  BoW 65; 159; 116:1,3,4; 454:1,2

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“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 favourably to a request. People sometimes sign a petition addressed to the parliament. The first petition in the Lord’s prayer comes after we have prayed, “Our Father in heaven.” With that opening statement we have acknowledged that God is our heavenly Father and we are His saved children through Jesus Christ. It means that when you are praying to God and asking Him things, then you have not come to Him as a stranger but as His child who confesses that from His throne in heaven the Father is able to do all what His children ask for in Jesus’ name.

But in this 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, ‘hallow’, means to make holy or to honour. So Jesus instructs us to first pray – Father, let your holy name be honoured before everything else.

The Lord did not mean, of course, that whenever we pray we must first literally say every time “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, whenever we pray, the honour and holiness of God. As we now look at this first petition “Hallowed be your name”, we firstly consider its meaning and implication, and then secondly, its practice.

1. Its meaning and implication

None of us will want to deny that many times in our lives we are more concerned about ourselves than about God. Let’s mention a few examples. When taking on a new job, then you will naturally consider the pay and the work conditions. But have you also given thought to whether this job allows you to honour and glorify God’s name? Some jobs have their busiest days on Sundays, so how can you honour God if there is no time to go to church? Other jobs may involve a lot of interaction with real worldly people, and it will be difficult for you to glorify God.

Or when you pray to God for health, which we may do, but you continue to have lots of illnesses, then do you ask God to help glorify His name when you are not well? Are we more concerned about God’s honour than about our well-being?

Or when blessed with a new baby, you may jokingly boast that your child will become famous. Or later on, when school reports indicate your child’s ability, you may be planning in what field your child will succeed the most. But do you also give some thought as to how your children can honour and glorify God the most?

We need to remember with our prayer requests that there is a cost involved in following Christ. The cost is to yourself. It’s to deny oneself the things you like to see happen to yourself or your children and instead have the honour and glory of God come first. When you remember the honour of God, then you also become less demanding in praying for things that you want for yourself. Denying oneself can be painful because it means going against your own wishes and desires. But conversion to Christ brings that with it.

However, denying oneself for the sake of God’s honour is not always an unpleasant experience. In loving God more than yourself you also experience more the love and grace of God. Denial of self adds richness to your life that an egocentric person doesn’t have. Jesus confirmed it when He said that in seeking your own life first, you end up losing it. But when you lose your life for Christ’s sake, you will find a deeper and more meaningful life.

Jack Overduin, in his book ‘Faith and Victory in Dachau’, made that very clear. In World War II, Dachau was a German concentration camp where political prisoners were sent. Many Jews died there as well. And if the camp commander was an evil man, then prison camps were terrible. Dachau was such a camp. Jack Overduin was the pastor of a church in a Dutch town and he upset the Nazis by preaching to the teachers of the local Christian school to not teach the political aims of the Nazis but to keep on honouring and glorifying God in the education of children. For saying that he was first imprisoned in the local jail but then transferred to Dachau.

Overduin knew that many did not survive the concentration camps and it might be that way for him also. So what should he pray for? If he put his own well-being first, then he could ask God to help him survive. That seemed entirely reasonable. And he had a wife and children. His congregation also needed him. But he realised that praying for his survival wasn’t putting God first. After thinking about it, he had to admit to himself that God’s concerns, whatever these might be, were far more important than any concerns he might have about himself, his family and his church.

He came to have peace of mind by thinking that if God wanted him to go to a terrible prison where death lurked in every corner, then so be it. God would have His own purposes to fulfil, which ultimately would glorify His name and be a blessing to His church and kingdom. So Jack Overduin went to Dachau with a peace that passes all understanding. He did survive, although some of his colleagues did not. When he looked back on that time in his life, terrible as it was, he knew God to be always right in His dealings with His people. God used Overduin in the camp to be a blessing to many other prisoners, and later on he wrote his book, which is still one of the best books about life in a concentration camp from a truly Biblical perspective.

Now that is the framework in which we are to understand the first petition in the Lord’s prayer. You constantly have to consider where to put your priorities. The right order to having God’s honour up front.

A totally opposite view was present in the promotional material I received about a crusade to be held in Perth, WA. There was lot of stuff about the man who was to preach in the crusade and little about God. A poster showed the preacher in a prominent way laying hands on people. There was a write-up describing the preacher as a man with many gifts and talents, heralding his achievements and positions he held, all saying how important and influential he was. It further said that the preacher expected God to do healing miracles when his crusade was on. This is how he put it: “I am expecting God to confirm His Word in miracles, signs and wonders just as in the Bible days.” He concluded be adding: “I also believe for this year to be a year of prosperity in every area of your life.”

It is clear that this preacher’s gospel is of the ‘health, wealth and happiness’ variety. But what irks most is the man’s lack of humility. People like this preacher would never admit it, but the impression given is that God must be glad to have people like him around to do His work. As for the claims of success of his healing ministry, there have been many times in the history of God’s redemption that the Lord glorified Himself by not taking sickness away and by allowing for situations like that which Jack Overduin experienced.

When you pray that God be made holy and honoured, then you are also asking the Almighty to sovereignly do whatever He wills to be done for His name to be praised. The implications of such a prayer are enormous. When God answers this prayer, then people who dishonour Him are going to get hurt.

We have a powerful example of this happening to Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who laid siege against Jerusalem with a great army at around 700 BC (2 Kings 18,19; Isaiah 36-37). Sennacherib was very powerful indeed and had conquered many nations. There is a clay tablet describing his exploits in battle in the British Museum. He was a proud man. His arrogance comes through in what he made his field commander say to Hezekiah, who was Judah’s king at the time. Sennacherib knew that Israel worshipped God who was known as the Maker of heaven and earth.

When Sennacherib thought the time had come to crush Jerusalem, he told Hezekiah’s servants not to depend on their God, for nothing could withstand the might of Assyria. Hezekiah’s servants pleaded with Sennacherib’s field commander, who was making these terrible boasts, not to speak in the Hebrew language, for they were afraid that the soldiers on the wall would also hear and be demoralised. The field commander then began to shout louder to make sure the soldiers heard and he insulted Hezekiah and also God.

It distressed Hezekiah much and he sent word to Isaiah the prophet of God, telling him how Israel’s God had been insulted and ridiculed. Hezekiah asked if Isaiah would pray to God and perhaps God would rebuke Sennacherib. In reply Isaiah told Hezekiah that God had said that Jerusalem had nothing to fear for God will bring about Sennacherib’s death.

Some time later Sennacherib repeated his taunts in a letter to Hezekiah. In it he 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'” (Is 37:10). He added that other gods had not been able to stand against him either.

Hezekiah took that letter to the temple and spread it out before the Lord and then he prayed: “O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God. It is true, O Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands. Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.” (Is 37:14-20).

In other words, Hezekiah prayed, “Lord in heaven, ‘Hallowed be your name’.” And through His prophet Isaiah, God answered Sennacherib: “Who is it you have insulted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!” (37:23). God said many more things in defence of His holy name and mighty works. And He also took action: “The angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp.” (37:36). Sennacherib then withdrew to his own capital and not long after, while he was praying to his false gods, two of his sons came and killed him (37:38).

Now that’s a powerful example of what God did when He was ridiculed and His covenant people began to pray “Hallowed be your name.”

Let us then pray like this when we pray about our own and each other’s marriage, about our singleness and single mothers, family, church, and school, and many other things that are important to God’s kingdom. Let us not pray for happiness first of all, or for spiritual experiences, or for success, but that God’s name will be blessed, worshipped, and obeyed 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 also, of course, is the fact that God can remain silent, even keep Himself hidden. It has happened many times in the Old Testament period, and it usually meant that God’s people were persisting with sinful things.

The New Testament letter of James also speaks about this. It asks where the fights and quarrels come from. The answer is – from the desires that battle within you. James explains that people want things so badly that they are prepared to kill for it. They don’t get what they covet because they don’t ask from God, and even when they do ask, they do so with wrong motives that aim for self-fulfilment (4:1-3).

Not like Jack Overduin who reached the point where he was ready to follow God into a terrible concentration camp. We must desire God’s honour and holiness before we desire anything for ourselves.

Nearly all of us find that very difficult. For it could mean we might not get to see the things we want. Our hopes and aspirations may not materialise. Yet God is not selfish, nor indifferent about us when He insists that we first pray “Hallowed be your name.” You see, the Lord knows that when He and His will are honoured, then everything else will begin to fall into place, both for God and His people. God is the beginning and the end, the centre of everything. In Him all things hold together. If we don’t honour God before everything else, then everything starts to fall apart.

Did not the Lord Jesus say, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”? (Mt 6:33). And remember also the order of the Ten Commandments. There, too, God comes before man. It’s first the worship of God only, then the right kind of worship of Him, then follows God’s name and God’s day. Only then does the attention swing around to ourselves.

The goal of our lives then should be God. In aiming for this goal we may still experience problems and difficulties. But in all these God is still the Ruler and we knowing and believing that He is will enable us to hold on to Him. To not hold onto God in hard times is like being swept away with the wild currents of life’s uncertainties.

The most wonderful implication of this prayer, “Hallowed be your name”, is of course the full coming of God’s kingdom at the end of time. Then all opposition to God and His works will have been overcome. There will be no murmuring and complaints. Only the praise of God’s people will be heard.

2. Its practice

We must mention several things here. Firstly, our need to know God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture. If you are serious about glorifying God, then you will ask God to help you understand Him from His Word. You will search the Scriptures, together with other believers but also by yourself. If there is something about God that you don’t understand, then you will try to get to the bottom of it by seeking your answers from the Bible.

False teachers will of course also claim that their answers are from the Bible. Therefore you need to be open to the fact that we can misunderstand the Bible’s teachings or arrive at wrong conclusions. So it’s good to realise that we are not the first ones to study the Bible. The church has done it already for two thousand years. The church is not above the Bible but it’s certainly helpful to become familiar with the Confessions that came out of the Reformation.

A preacher, for example, would be arrogant and foolish if he thought his personal understanding of the Bible is good enough for the making of sermons. He will go to the Bible first and make a thorough study of what the passage says. But then he best go to reliable commentaries and also how the church’s confession have understood the doctrines of Scripture. The same with you. If you say, this is what I believe the Bible is saying but ignore what the historic Christian faith has understood what the Bible is saying, then you are also arrogant and foolish.

Then the prayer, “Hallowed be your name”, will also make you a faithful churchgoer. For there you join fellow believers in the worship of God, something that God has commanded us to do. You want to hear and learn from the preaching of the Word so that you are regularly reminded to put the honour of God first.

God is also the Creator and therefore you want to honour Him by respecting the works of God. You don’t go wrecking things in nature for the fun of it. You don’t destroy living things in nature when these do not harm man and are not a pest. To pray, “Hallowed be your name”, also means that the whole of nature may be preserved, that mountains, hills, rivers, lakes, the sea, trees, animals and man may all glorify God, the Maker of them all. God has also commanded that we live from the earth’s bounty and therefore we strive for a balance in subduing the earth in order to have it provide for us food, shelter, clothing and other necessities, and keeping nature in its natural beauty.

Praying “Hallowed be your name” also means that we continue to oppose the theories of evolution. God’s name is not honoured and glorified when the beautiful things of nature and the wonderful ways of animals and insects are explained according to scientific theories and assumptions that leave God out of it altogether. How can anyone ignore God the Creator when explaining the intricate workings of the creation?

There are several scientists who, whilst not believing in the Creator, have openly stated that the theories of evolution are impossible to maintain from a truly scientific point of view. The real difficulty, however, for many evolutionists is that the only alternative to a belief in evolution is a belief in God the Creator, and that is really what they do not want to do, because they are unbelievers. And so instead of admitting that God has made everything and made man the crown of His creation, they will continue in stubborn denial of God and say that man and other forms of life have evolved from slime.

The Catechism reminds us that praying “Hallowed be your name” means that we ask God to help direct all our living – what we think, say and do – so that God’s name will never be blasphemed because of us but always honoured and praised. That includes the science laboratory and the bedroom, the class at school and the kitchen, our work and our church – everything.

May God’s name, then, not be blasphemed because we Christians pray one thing and do the opposite. May our Christianity be consistent and God glorifying. When we pray “Hallowed be your name”, then we also have to confess often that we have been guilty of dishonouring God. We cannot pray this first petition with proud hearts, full of ourselves and our religious experiences. This prayer “Hallowed be your name” can only be prayed in humility, on our knees, and with an attitude of ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord.’

Amen.