Hallowed Be Thy Name Series

Hallowed be Thy Name

Matthew 6:10

Pastor Jefferson Williams

First Baptist Church Chenoa

2-17-19

Mavine

Several years ago, Maxine and celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary with a dinner cruise on lake Michigan. It was a beautiful night with wonderful dinner, a jazz quartet, and dancing, which we are not very good at.

The host of the cruise came to the stage between songs and said that there was a couple on board celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. Then he said, “Let’s all congratulate Jeff and Mavine Williams!”

I finally got his attention and he corrected himself. But it was too late. Mavine wasn’t happy!

Don’t you hate it when someone gets your name wrong? Mavine does!

We hate it because our name is important to us. It represents us and tells people something about us. When people fumble our names it makes us feel like we aren’t very important to them.

Review

This morning, we are continuing our series on the Lord’s Prayer. Last week, we studied the preface of the prayer “Our Father in heaven,” and we learned that if we have placed our full faith and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, we have the privilege of addressing God as Abba.

Abba means daddy or papa. It’s a term of endearment. In love, God chose to make us part of His family through adoption. Because we are God’s children, we can approach the throne of grace with “confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

The Lord’s prayer begins with the word “our” to remind us that we are part of a huge family of believers all over the world.

And lest we are tempted to approach our Abba/Father without awe and reverence, Jesus reminds us that God is “in the heavens.” He is not the “the big man upstairs” but the majestic and mighty King.

Solomon reminds us:

“Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.” (Ecc 5:1-2)

First Things First

The disciples were overwhelmed listening to Jesus talk to His Father. So much so that they asked Him to “teach us to pray.” (Luke 11:1)

Jesus gives them, and us, a model prayer. It is just 57 words in the Greek and it takes 20 seconds to pray but believers all over the world have prayed it for the past 2,000 years.

After setting the tone of the prayer with the preface, Jesus directs the disciples to focus on six petitions. The first three uses the pronoun “Your” and the second three use the pronoun “our.”

We are begin prayer with three vertical and radically God-centered petitions that God’s name be hallowed, that His Kingdom would come and will be done on earth as it already is done in heaven.

Halloween?

A couple of weeks ago, the children invited me to their Sunday school class to answer some of their questions about communion and baptism. (By the way, I’m so thankful for our teachers that are shepherding these young souls). As I was about to leave, I asked the class what they thought “hallowed by Your Name” meant. Without missing a beat, Cammy said, “Well it obviously has something to with Halloween!”

Even as we have modernized our Bibles and replaced “Thy” with “Your” and “art” and “is,” we still have this old English sounding word “hallowed.” The reason that we haven’t modernized this word is because there really isn’t a good word to replace it with.

In the first petition, we are asking that God would make His Name be hollowed. What does that even mean?

Hallow comes from the root word for holy. (So maybe “hollify” your name?) It means to “be set apart.”

In India, cows are set apart as holy. People literally are starving with filet mignon wandering the streets.

When we say that God is holy, we are affirming that He is altogether different from us.

So what this petition is asking is that God would make His name holy.

Wait, I have a Question

Does that strike any of you as a bit strange? If God is perfectly holy, how can our prayer make any sense? He can’t be more holy than He already is. He can’t become more glorious. What is Jesus trying to say?

We are to ask that God’s name be honored as holy, reverenced, and acknowledged by the world around us.

John Piper puts these verses in these words:

“Father, cause your great and holy name to be honored and revered, exalted and treasured above all things everywhere in the world.”

God cannot be more holy but His name, his reputation, can be more glorified by His creations.