The Sermon on the Mount: Lifting Up God's Name - Matthew 6:9

Introduction

Read Matthew 6:9-15

Matthew 6:9–15 (ESV)

Pray then like this:

“Our Father 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 lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Last week we began to look at this model prayer. It is most commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer,” but some have suggested that the name “the Disciple’s prayer” is a more accurate name as Jesus is teaching His disciples in how to pray.

Last week we looked at how Jesus invites us to pray to God our Father, the One who loves us and invites us into intimacy with Himself, the One who sits enthroned in heaven and deserves our worship and respect, and the One who unites all His children, those who come to Him in faith and repentance.

In this model prayer, Jesus gives us six things to pray for, the first three which relate to the things of God.

The first thing Jesus tells us to ask for is “Hallowed by Your Name.”.

Hallowed - Sanctify - To Make or Show as Holy

We cannot make God Holy… He already is.

We want to show Him to be Holy as we see and respond to His holiness

John Piper often uses the idea of telescopes versus microscopes.

Do we seek to see God’s glory like a telescope or a microscope?

Microscopes are tools to help us see minuscule and tiny objects and organisms. It enlarges the appearance of tiny things so we can see them.

On the other hand, telescopes help us to see things that are large, but are so far away we are blind to their existence. They are zooming in to objects that are vastly immense and large and bringing their visibility nearer so we can see them.

In this prayer, Jesus is not asking that God would help enlarge His glory and His character. God is already infinitely huge and glorious.

But our sin has so distanced us from His glory that our eyes are blinded to who He is. So Jesus is asking that our eyes be opened like a telescope so it can overcome the distance our sin has put between us and God so we can see and experience the beauty of God’s glory and holiness in a new way.

So Jesus wants us to have a spiritual telescope that brings near God’s character and glory to us.

What is it that we are supposed to honor and sanctify?

His name.

What’s in a Name?

Names in the Bible Represented the Nature and Character of the Person to which it belongs

Tony Evans - “Getting to know God by His names is more than simply learning a new word or discovering a new title He goes by. Learning to know God by His names opens up the door to knowing His character more fully and experiencing His power more deeply.”

The Names (Character) of God

Elohim: His Nature as God of all Creation

Yahweh: “I Am” - His covenantal and relational name for His people.

Adonai: The Lord - His name which communicates His right to rule over all Creation

Jehovah Jireh: The God Who Provides - The name Abraham came to know as the One who provided the ram in Isaac’s place on the altar.

Jehovah Tsaba: The Lord Our Warrior - The God who fights for His people

Jehovah Shalom: The Lord is Peace - God is the One who gives peace and wholeness to His people even in the midst of chaos and brokenness.

Jehovah Rohi: The Lord My Shepherd: God is the One who leads and cares for His people

Jehovah Nissi: The Lord My Banner -

Jehovah Mekoddishkem: The Lord Who Sanctifies

Jehovah Rapha: The Lord Who Heals

Jehovah Tsidkenu: The Lord our Righteousness

El Elyon: The Most High God

El Shaddai: God Almighty

El Roi: The God Who Sees

Immanuel: The God Who is With Us

Yeshua or Jesus: The Lord Who Saves

Pray to Love God for Who He Is

Ask to see and know God for who He really is

As we pray for God’s name to be Hallowed, we want to pray that God would help us to know Him as He truly is. We want to see His glory and beauty, not for what we want Him to be or think He should be, but as He truly is.

Too often, we come up with our own thoughts of who we think God should be and we end up making a god in our own image and ultimately worshipping a false image of Him.

First, this means we are praying that God would lead and direct us to spend time in His Word to see Him as He has revealed Himself to us. Everything we know and believe of God should be informed by His Word. Even our experiences of Him should fall in line with who He has told us He is in His Word.

Second, this means we are praying for God to not simply keep our knowledge of Him to a simple head knowledge, but that we would experience Him as He works in our lives. This means, asking Him to open our eyes to see how He is working and involved in our lives, in both the good times and the bad times of life.

This begins with our experience of God as Savior in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Before we can truly know God as anything else, we must first know Him as Jesus, the Lord Saves.

Have you experienced the salvation Christ has purchased for us on the cross by receiving His grace by faith? Have you experienced the love of God by submitting yourself to Jesus as Lord and King over your life? You cannot truly know God as anything else until you experience Him as Savior.

But our experience of God should not stop there.

We should want to experience the God who sees during our times of pain and loss.

We want to acknowledge His almighty power as we rejoice in the blessings of life.

We want to experience God as our banner, the one who unites us and gives us our identity as His holy people.

We want to see Him as Lord over our lives, worthy of our complete and total submission to Him.

Come to God Praising Him

As we experience the beauty of God’s glory and character, we want to come to Him praising and worshiping Him.

This begins with our prayers. As we pray that God’s name would be hallowed, we spend time in prayer praising Him for who He is and for His goodness seen in our lives.

Too often, we begin our prayers with our own requests and needs.

However, Jesus is inviting us to begin our prayers by praising our Father.

Praise Him for His blessings to you. Praise Him for His work of leading you to grow in holiness and sanctification. Praise Him for His constant faithfulness and forgiveness for your sins.

But this can also include singing. Through the Scriptures, God encourages His people to sing praises to Him. Why?

Patrick and I were talking the other night about the act of singing and how singing engages a part of our heart that other ways do not. Now, I know that not everyone enjoys music in quite the same way, but there is a way in which music engages our hearts in a very unique way. And I loved gettin to hear Patrick talk about how music leads Him to grow in His love for God and leads him to share the testimony of God’s goodness in His life.

Again, we want to be sure that our songs are rightly informed by Scripture, but singing is a beautiful part of honoring and hallowing God’s name in our lives.

Live Out Your Praise to God

But we do not want our praise to simply be words that we speak. It is possible to sing and speak the right words, but not truly have a heart that loves God.

This was Jesus’ complaint of the Pharisees, “The people honor me with their lips, yet their hearts are far from me.”

We want to ask God to help us to praise Him from our hearts that lead to a loving and outward sacrifice of obedience to Him.

Hebrews 13:15–16 (ESV)

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

What is the fruit of the lips that acknowledge His name, His character?

It is shown through the lives of those who seek to honor Christ by their lives. Those who love God cannot but help to live for Him and for His honor and glory.

If you know that God is your shepherd, then you will follow Him as He gently leads and guides you through life. He will lead you to serve those around you, to love your enemies, and to bless those who curse you.

Have you experienced Him as the Lord Who Provides? You will seek to trust Him to provide as you give back to Him what already belongs to Him.

Do you know God as the Lord who Sanctifies? You will seek to put to death the deeds and desires of the flesh, such as greed, anger, lust, gossip, jealousy, and slander, just to name a few as you seek to experience the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in your life. You will not be satisfied with the presence of sin in your life, but rather you will daily seek God’s presence and help to transform you more into the image of Christ.

Those who have seen the beauty and glory of God will seek to honor and lift up His name in their hearts, in their words, and in their lives.

pray that God will honor His name through your life and obedience to Him. He alone can give you the strength and ability to live for Him.

Pray for Others to See Who God Is

Next, we want to pray that God would lead others to see and experience God’s glory and beauty. Part of this is praying that God would use us to make His name and character known to those around us.

Make God’s Name and Character Known to Others by How You Live

First, we want to pray that God would use us to help others see Christ in us.

This is a follow up to praying that God would help us live and follow Christ in obedience. As we experience God’s goodness and character, we want to live in response to who He is. Then we want to pray that others would see what God is doing in us and experience the goodness and faithfulness of God in what they see.

Pray that God would use you to shine His light in such a way that would lead others to glorify Him.

It is one thing to know that this is what we need to do. But we need to pray that God would actually enable us and work through us to accomplish what we cannot do on our own.

Make God’s Name and Character Known to Others by How You Tell Others about Jesus

Along with praying that God would use our lives to display the character and goodness of Christ, we also pray that God would give us the words to say to point others to Jesus so they know who to look to.

1 Peter 3:15 (ESV)

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

As we see and experience who God is and live out the hope we have in Him, it should cause our lives to lead others to see His goodness. But our lives alone are not enough to point them to Christ. They will ask, “Why do you live with such hope?” especially in a world where it is difficult to see the goodness of God.

This is where we need to be ready to explain to others why we are living in such a way. Ask God to give you the words needed to help others see and experience the goodness of God.

My prayer for us as a church is that we would daily ask and seek for God’s name to be honored and lifted up here in Socorro and that God would use us as His church to point others to Himself because of how He is working in each of our lives.