The Priority of Prayer
Notes
Transcript
The Priority of Prayer
Text: Matthew 6:5–15 (KJV 1900)
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
9 After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
* By way of introduction this morning, let’s catch up to where we are in the study of the Lord’s Prayer.
* We have already seen, that the key to unlock the meaning of the Lord ’s Prayer is in verse 5 of our text:
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:
* I want to remind you that The Lord’s prayer, is a continuation of the Sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5.
* Remember that the main, or over reaching theme, of the entire Sermon on the Mount, or what we call the Beatitudes, is to show that the religion that the scribes and the Pharisees were teaching the people was entirely inadequate.
* Matthew 5:20 is the key to the entire Sermon on the Mount, which includes our text this morning in chapter 6, The Lord’s Prayer.
Matthew 5:20 (KJV 1900)
20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
* Now I want remind you that the praying of the scribes and the Pharisees did not meet God’s standards, because of a very specific and simple reason-
* The scribes and Pharisees had the attitude that prayer was for them! Their praying was all wrong!
* We have been taught that prayer is for us to get God’s attention, in order to get God to do things for us- and that is entirely backwards to what God intended praying to be!
* Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer, that the true purpose of Prayer is for God to get our attention, in order that we might do things for Him!
* Again here we see that the primary purpose for praying, is not for us to tell God things he doesn’t know- the purpose for prayer is not change God’s mind into helping us with our agenda-
* but the purpose for prayer is for changing our minds to line up with the Father’s will, and to teach us to hallow the Father’s name, and to teach us to further the Father’s kingdom causes!
* This is exactly why Jesus said “Seek you first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you!
* We saw a couple of weeks ago, that Jesus doesn't teach us a specific time, a specific place, a specific posture is any better than another when it comes to praying, but that everything Jesus taught in the Lord’s prayer had to do with the attitudes of our heart about God.
* As with anything else in the Christians life, true prayer focuses on God’s will, and not our will.
* In verse 10 Jesus also said:
“Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven…
* The kind of praying that pleases God will focus on God’s kingdom, and not our kingdom that we have created for our own selves, on this earth.
* Jesus said in verse 7 of our text:
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
* In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gave us a model prayer, not to be used as a prayer that we quote verbatim, the way that we normally use the Lord’s Prayer, but as a guide to helps us shape our praying into praying that will please the Father.
* For the last two Sundays we at the first point of Jesus’ outline for praying, The Paternity, or the fatherhood of God…
* The first phrase of the Lord’s Prayer is “Our father which art in Heaven, and we tried our best for the last two Sundays to show you that Jesus intended for us to pray with the attitude that God was a father who pitied His children when they come to Him in Prayer.
“Now the second phrase of the Lord’s Prayer is what we will look at this morning:
“Hallowed be Thy Name”
* Now this phrase I think comes after "Our Father," because it's a protection against something.
* Too much "Our Father," too much Abba, too much Daddy turns into sentimentalism, and we drag God down and we make God into a nice kind of a, a buddy-buddy.
* Churches in America have watered down the Holy Name of God, to the point that we think God exists to be our buddy and wait on us hand and foot, like a personal Jeanie in a bottle.
* People talk to God in such low level concepts and terms that they
don't really do justice to God’s hallowed name.
*We've got the Daddy part down pretty much, we think God is the big Daddy that we ought to approach and He's going to give us everything we want.
* The Jews were always afraid of not honoring the Holiness of God, and so was Jesus.
* That's why, immediately after Jesus teaches us to pray to God "Our Father," Abba, then He then teaches us to pray hallowed, holy, reverenced is Your name.
* Historically the Jews were conscious of the idea that we are not to approach God in such a manner as to not reverence his holiness.
* When a Jew called God Father, he almost always immediately would add another title after that, to balance off his thinking.
* When you read through some of the Jewish prayers, over and over again you will find, this balance of the fatherhood vs.the Holiness of God in phrases like- 0 Lord, Father and Ruler of my life. 0 Lord, Father and God of my life. 0 Father, King of great power, Most High and Almighty God.
* In the eighteen prayers a Jew had to pray every day, this is the way they began. In every one of those prayers you see 0 Father, 0 King, 0 Lord.
* In the ten penitential days at the time of the Day of Atonement the Jews prayed a prayer. As they prayed this prayer, forty-four times they said, Our Father, Our King, Our Father, Our King, Our Father, Our King, because they never wanted the concept of God a Father to cause them to be sentimental about God who was also a majestic sovereign King.
* And this is how they guarded carefully the issue of sentimentalizing God.
* In First Peter 31:15 Peter says, "Sanctify the Lord God in your heart." He uses the same word hagiazn, a greek word that means to reverence God, treat God as holy, treat God as separated, extraordinary, uncommon, worthy to be adored and praised and glorified.
* What does it mean to hallow God’s Name?
*To Hallow God’s name to set God’s Name apart from everything common and profane, to esteem, to prize, to honor, to reverence, to adore Gods Name as divine, infinitely blessed, the name of the true and only God.
* The Jews knew that you cannot speak of God in earthy terms, you cannot drag God down to street talk, God must have titles that are fitting for His power and His holiness and His majesty!
* How easy around saying, "Hallowed be thy name," "Hallowed be thy name," and have no idea what we're even saying!
* When you pray “Hallowed be thy name” you are asking for God to have highest, most honored, place in your heart and in your thinking.
* Jesus prayed, “Father, honor your name in me." In John 12, that was His reason for praying, and that should be our reason for praying too.
* Most people focus on prayer only in response or reference to how it works, not what it is for. Jesus knew what prayer was for, and that influenced how Jesus taught us to pray.
* Prayer for us has become a means to an end and that end is usually a
means to a selfish end.
* One person said, "Men usually ply their prayers like sailors do their pumps when the ship leaks." That's generally true.
* For most people today prayer is sort of a last ditch effort, it's kind of like a spiritual parachute, you're glad it's there; but you hope you never have to use it.
* In must people’s understanding, prayer has a way of being given the wrong perspective, because we see prayer in our way, instead of God's way.
* In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is teaching us to see prayer according to God’s perspective.
* As we've been learning in our study of the Lord’s Prayer, given by our Lord as a model for all prayers, prayer is not primarily for our glory, but prayer is for God God’s glory.
* Prayer is not so much to gain for us what we think we need, as it is to give to God an opportunity to manifest His glory in us.
* Prayer is primarily for God, and only incidentally, and as a by-product, is prayer for us.
* Someone once said that “true prayer brings the mind to the immediate contemplation of God's character- and holds it there until the believer's soul is properly impressed.”
* True worship begins with God; true worship is forgetting about our self, and remembering God.
* Unfortunately most people think of prayer as an effort to bring God into line with their own desires, and this is a very predominant movement today in the church.
* People are going around teaching that prayer is claiming things on God- staking claims on what God has to do, going into God's presence, affirming that God must do this, and God must do that!
* These people inadequately interpret the Scripture, and they tell
people to demand things from God, by their faith they are to demand that God does this and demand that God does that.
* A person with the right attitude of prayer realizes that he, or she, is in no position to demand anything from God!
* We hear these kinds of preachers and Bible teachers on TV claiming things like, “if you're a spirit filled Christian, you should never know a day of illness in your entire life!”
* They teach people who are ignorant of the Word of God, that if you demand to be well by your faith, that God is required to keep you well.
* This kind of false teaching has become a common approach to prayer- that is that prayer is all about demanding things from God on your conditions.
* This kind of false teaching is just like the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees who Jesus called hypocrites! Jesus said don’t pray like them!
* And whether we like to admit it or not, in many cases that's the way we pray!
* Jesus taught his disciples that that is not the way you are to pray!
* You are not in the place of priority in prayer! You don't go to God in prayer demanding anything, or commanding God to do anything, or affirming that anything you claim in the Name of Jesus, you will have!
* Jesus taught that isn't true praying! That is the way the Pharisees prayed!- and it was inadequate, and that kind of praying was hypocritical! Don’t pray like they pray!
* You hear these religious Pharisees, Religious Hypocrites, on TV all the time, promising people ”if you just believe that you have it, then you will have it.” They like to use the words “name it, and claim it.”
* That kind of teaching about prayer is baloney! That is not true!
* What this really is, is false teachers, manipulating ignorant people, playing games with their minds, and worse than that, it is playing games with God's sovereignty!
* Prayer has as its real purpose, the uplifting of God, the setting of God in His rightful place, the manifestation of His majesty, and His sovereign will in our lives.
* Prayer is for God, that's why Jesus outlined the Lord’s prayer this way:
- "Our Father, which art in heaven," that's the paternity of God.
- "Hallowed be thy name," that's the priority of God.
- "Thy kingdom come," that's the program of God.
- "Thy will be done," that's the purpose of God.
- "Give us this day our daily bread,' that's the provision of God.
- "And forgive us our debts," that's the pardon of God.
- "And lead us not into temptation," the protection of God.
- "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen." That’s pre-eminence of God in prayer!
* The Pharisees, and the scribes, and the Jewish people who followed their teaching, had changed prayer from what God intended prayer to be.
* Prayer was meant by God to be a vehicle for a display of God’s Holiness, and they had make it into a man-made, perverted, traditional exercise, by which they drew attention to themselves.
* They used their prayers hypocritically to show how spiritual
they were, they assumed that in their prayers they were informing God of things He didn't know, and they actually went into vain repetition like the heathens did, as if they could badger God into giving them what they demanded.
* They had created a kind of praying that was illegitimate, perverted, substandard, non-scriptural, and Jesus is confronting them here in Matthew chapter 6 to set the record straight.
* In chapter 6 Jesus said, Your giving is not according to God's standard, He says, Your fasting is not according to God's standard, and here in this section, your praying is not according to God's standard!
* In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is saying now let Me set it right, here is how prayer ought to be!
* In verse 9, He said "After this manner, therefore, pray ye:" Not the way You've been doing it, here is the way to pray- not self-centered, self-righteous prayers, but prayers that focus on God.
* Prayer always begins with God's priority.
Arthur Pink says, "How clearly then is the fundamental duty in prayer set forth-
Self and all its needs must be given a secondary place,
and the Lord freely accorded the pre-eminence in our thoughts and supplications.
This petition must take the precedence- for the glory of God's great name is the ultimate end of all things." End quote.
* The phrase "Hallowed be thy name," puts God in the most important place in prayer.
* Even though God is:
- even though God is my loving Father
- even though God loves me and wants to meet my needs
- and even though God has the heavenly resources to meet my needs
My first petition is not on my own behalf it's on God’s behalf, "Hallowed be thy name!"
* Friends, this is a warning against all self-seeking prayer, at the very start. God is to always have the priority in prayer.
* Now I suppose if you're like I am you've been raised in a church, you've said, "Hallowed be thy name," a lot of times in your life,
* -you've fumbled through the Lord's Prayer again and again and
you've heard the word hallowed and the concept of "Hallowed be thy name," but I wonder if you really know what it means?
* It isn't a casual bit of religious routine, it's not just reciting some words that are nice thoughts about God, “Hallowing God’s name” is way more than that!
* Hallowing God’s name opens up a whole dimension of respect and reverence and awe and appreciation and honor and glory and adoration and worship for God.
* Do you see the concept of God’s name in the phrase “Hallowed be thy Name?”
* God’s name here is not restricted to a title, but it encompasses the entirety God’s attributes.
* Today we think of somebody's name and that's all it is, a name, and it really doesn't mean much other than a name. We even ask the question in one of our famous pieces of literature, “What’s in a name?”
* We don't have that concept in our minds of God’s name that we need to have.
* We need to, to go back, and think through the term “God’s Name,” a Hebrew would see it.
*The Jews had such a sacredness attached to God's name that they were concerned about not saying the word that was the name for God.
* For example, you may remember that in your Old Testament
Particularly you read the word Jehovah.
* Did you know that there is no such word as Jehovah in the Hebrew language?
* Although it appears in the Bible, all throughout the Old Testament there is no such word.
* You say, well then, where did it come from? How did it get in the Bible?
* The real name of God is found in Exodus is, He said, "I AM THAT I AM:" is Yahweh, Yahweh.
* The other familiar name for God is Adonai, which means Lord, the Lord God, Yahweh, Adonai.
* Now the Jews didn't want to say the name of God, they wanted to hold the name of God as sacred and Holy. So, a Jew wouldn't say Yahweh.
* So you know what they did? They took the consonants out of Yahweh, then they took the vowels out of Adonai, and they put them together and came up with the name Jehovah, which is really a “non-word.”
* They made the word Jehovah up so they wouldn't have to say the real word that is really God's name.
* Now what Jesus is teaching us here, about hallowing God’s name is, that we respect God for who He is, not just His name, as a name, but the totality the attributes of God- everything that God is.
* Now the Jews weren't esteeming the name of God for who God is, but they were only acknowledging the letters of God name- like everything else, they missed the point of hallowing the name of God.
* God had intended that, not just the letters of his name be holy but, what God’s name represents- who God is with all of his attributes, was to be reverenced and honored, and set apart!
* We use a phrase today that goes “well so and so has made a name for himself,” meaning that a person has a good name.
* When we say this we mean there's something about this person’s character that is worthy of our praise.
* The name that he has made for himself, then stands for the whole character of that person.
* I'll give you an illustration of this, if you go back to Exodus chapter 34 you'll find this principle.
* Now Moses is having a little discussion with God about His glory. Moses wants to be sure that God is with him, he wants to be confident that God is' there.
* And he says to God, Show me Your glory God! don't give me a job that I can't do without You!
* Lord, I want to know You're here by, visibly seeing Your glory.
* The Lord says okay. Now He shows him His glory, then you
come down to, Exodus 34:5, and the Bible says "The LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD."
* Now the Lord comes down and proclaims His name, now what
did He say? Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord over and over?
* What do you mean He proclaimed His name? Verse 6, "The LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed," in verse 5 it says He proclaimed His name, in verse 6 it says He proclaimed this.
* Therefore whatever God says in verse 6 is the equivalent of His name.
He says, "The LORD, LORD God," does He stop there?
* No goes on to proclaim Gods name, "merciful, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, who will by no means clear the guilty," that means He is a holy just God, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children," He's a God of judgment and so forth.
* Now do you get the picture? God says, I will proclaim My name, here's My name, "merciful, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness, truth, keeping mercy, forgiving iniquity," etc, etc.
* In other words the name of God is the composite of all of His attributes, do you see now? All that God is, is embodied in His name.
* So God’s name is not a title, but God’s name is a total.
* In other words you might begin to pray the Lord’s prayer this way:
Our Father, who loves us and cares for us, and who has in
heaven supplies to meet our every need, may Your person, Your identity, Your character, Your nature, Your attributes, Your reputation, Your very being itself be hallowed.
* That's what it's saying. This is not some glib phrase, "Hallowed be thy name," thrown at God periodically in a ritual!
* This is a way of approaching God continuously, to understand the fullness of who He is, and to hallow, or set Him apart, from all others, for who He is.
* To "Hallow the name of God" is to perceive Him in the fullness of who He is.
* But what does it mean to hallow?
Let me tell you what it means.
* Hallow comes from a Greek verb hagiaz, that word is a very important word in the Bible and it's used repeatedly, the noun form of the word is hagios which means holy. Holy be Your name, that's what hallowed means.
* The definition of the word Hallow, as used in this reference here in our text, means to treat something or someone as sacred, to hold something or someone as set apart and holy, to regard someone as separated.
* The essence of the word holy is “different.” We in essence are to pray that we make God’s name different that anything else in the universe! High and set apart- none other like him!
* That is why God is called the Holy One, He is in a different sphere, He has a different quality of being than our life.
* This word hagiaz, or Holy, is used in Exodus 20 verse 8 where it says, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." What does that mean?
* The Sabbath day ought to be different than every other day, there ought to be one day different than the others.
* In Leviticus 21:8 it tell us that the priests were to be holy, they were to be different than other men, they were set apart to serve God.
* Holy means to be set apart, to be different, to have another sphere of living, to exist in another quality of being. That's basically what it means to be holy.
* God lives in another sphere, God exists at a different level, God is separated from us, God is uncommon, extraordinary, unearthly, separated from sinners, holy, undefiled the Bible says. He is holy, apart from us.
* Now this phrase “Hallowed by thy name” comes after "Our Father," because it's a protection against something.
* Too much "Our Father," too much Abba, too much Daddy turns into sentimentalism, and we drag God down from His Holiness to our level.
* We make God into a nice kind of a, a buddy-buddy, and that’s the opposite of hallowing God’s name.
* Now out of this comes the idea of reverence, when we pray this first petitions is saying, we are to speak to God in terms of reverence, may Your person be reverenced, is what we're saying.
* Let me give you an illustration of what it means to not reverence God.
* In Numbers, chapter 20, we find that the children of Israel are in the wilderness and they're getting very thirsty and there isn't any
water.
* It says in Numbers 20, Verse 2, "There was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together unto Moses and
against Aaron."
* The people of Israel had turned against their leaders, and they blamed them for their lack of water.
* Moses became angry at the rebellion of the people, and instead of speaking to the rock that it might give water, Moses struck the rock.
* God was angry with Moses because Moses failed to reverence, or “hallow” His name before the people.
* The Bible says:
“And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, (listen to this) Because ye believed me not,to sanctify me"
* that's the same word in the Septuagint, hagiaz, to see Me as one to be reverenced, to be revered, to be honored, to be glorified, to be set apart, to be obeyed.
* Because you didn't do that,
"in the eyes of the children of Israel, you shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them."
* Moses was angry because the people complained against him, and he struck the rock giving the people the impression that it was by his own rod, and by his own power, that the rock brought forth water.
* Listen to what the Bible says:
* In Numbers 20: 9, "Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice;"
* In this passage, God was so angry with Moses because He did not reverence His name before the people, Moses was never allowed to enter the promised land!
* Now this leads me to the most important part of this sermon today.
* We “Hallow God’s Name,” or make the Name of God holy when we illustrate the attributes of God’s character in our own lives.
* When we pray “Hallowed by thy name,” we are promising to illustrate the holiness of God in our own lives.
* The implication of praying “Hallowed by thy Name” is that through me, let Your name be hallowed in my life, let Your name be made holy in my life, in my presence,
* How do you we really reverence God this morning?
* We hallow God's name when we live a life of obedience to Him!
* Now when it comes to prayer, we reverence God by making prayer a priority over all other things in life.
* Like God has purposed that we set a said a day among the other days to make it holy, we should set aside times to pray, and make them holy as Jesus did when he left His own disciples and went into a mountain alone to pray.
Conclusion:
* So what conclusion do we draw from the phrase “Hallowed by thy Name.”
* You cannot come to the fullness of hallowing God’s name unless you live a life of obedience to God.
* To say, oh yes God, I believe that You exist, I believe that You are who the Bible says You are, oh yes God, I'm aware of Your presence in my life, and then to disobey God with your life, cuts off the capability of a person to reverence God’s name.
* You see, the prayer is not just that God's name be hallowed in heaven, it's not just that God's name be hallowed around the world, it's that God's name be hallowed in me!
* To pray with the right attitude is to pray with the attitude “God let me be a vehicle to illustrate Your holiness!
*That's where prayer begins. Before you start asking for what you should get you need to ask God for what you should be!