Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed Be Your Name

Introduction

One of the earliest memories that I have as a child is praying the Lords Prayer with my grandpa before I went to bed. I don’t remember much from this time period before I was 5 years old, but I do remember hearing my grandpa say this prayer every night. I heard it so much that one night I asked him to let me say it in which I recited the prayer. At this age, I had no idea who God was or what any of the prayer even meant, I just figured it was important because of the emphasis that my grandpa put on it. This is something that stuck with me my whole life. All the way up til the age of about 26, I was lost and unsaved. I still thought it as my duty to say this prayer every night, thinking if I did so it would leave me in good standing with the God I was praying to. The problem in my life at this time was that it was all about me and what I wanted, and glorifying myself was all that I really cared about. Had I even understood the words that I was praying in this prayer, I probably wouldn’t have prayed it at this point because it was contrary to what I really wanted.

Our Father

As we look at this prayer, we see that the first couple words are who the prayer is addressed to. Jesus is the one reciting this prayer and showing us how to pray and he addresses the prayer to “Our Father.” What do you think of when you think of a father? Some of you may get warm feelings thinking about how great and caring your dad is or there may be some of us who have never met their father and have trouble understanding what a loving father even looks like. The term father used when speaking of God can show us a couple different things. First, Jesus referred to the first person of the trinity as being His father. Those of us who are born again have been born of God and can also call out to him as our father. Secondly, regardless of how good or bad your dad is, God the Father loves his children with the same love that he loves Jesus. Those of us who are saved have a very special privilege of being adopted into the family of God, with God caring for us as a Father. The Fathers love is a perfect love, not conditional on how good we are but how good he is and he is perfectly good. The Father is meant to show the intimate relationship that we have with God as children of God.

In Heaven

If you were to just pray to your father, people may be confused and think you were praying to your dad. In this prayer we see Jesus address Him as Our Father in Heaven. This is a powerful statement. Consider who our Father in heaven is.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

6 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

We see the natural response of man upon seeing the glorious Lord. Woe is me!

I am sure we could imagine what it would be like to grow up as the child of a king here on this earth. We would have a close relationship with the leader of the land, arguably the most powerful person in the area where we live. We could appeal to him and he could do everything in his power to help us in times of trouble. As cool as this would seem, this king is still limited in his power and the area in which he rules over. As children of God the Father, we can approach his throne in prayer, the one who is high and lifted up above all else and whose voice shakes the foundations and thresholds. Unlike any earthly king, the Fathers power is unlimited.

English Standard Version Psalm 115

3  Our God is in the heavens;

he does all that he pleases.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Not only is his power unlimited but so is his reach. Everything is his. So consider this. We can appeal to our Father in Heaven whenever we want, who is more powerful than the most powerful people on this Earth. This is a privilege that we have as children of God. How often do we use it? The answer to that question is not nearly enough.

Hallowed Be Your Name

We see in our prayer here that we are addressing Our Father in Heaven and now we see the first thing that Jesus asks in his prayer, hallowed be your name. I was under the impression for the longest time that this was a line of praise, something along the lines of, Our Father in heaven, Holy is your name. Yes, the name of the Lord is Holy but what Jesus is praying here is more along the lines of “Make your name Holy” or “Glorify your name.” Think about what our attitude is when we go to Our Father in prayer. I bet a lot of us are thinking me, me, me; what can God do for me? Jesus shows us a completely different model. Before he asks for the forgiveness of trespasses our daily bread or anything else, he says, “Hallowed be your name.” If any of you go through a catechism in your family worship, chances are this is the first question in it.

What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Our mindset as children of God should be first and foremost glorifying God and enjoying him forever. Jesus takes this mindset in his prayer with the very first petition being make your name holy.

What does it mean to make Gods name Holy? The Puritan Thomas Watson says, “This is hallowing Gods name, when we transfer all honor from ourselves to God.” This is why I was a hypocrite praying this prayer when I was unsaved. When I was unsaved, I wanted all honor and glory to myself while praying that Gods name would be glorified. When I was saved, I realized that God alone is worthy of honor and glory and I had wanted something for so long in my life that didn’t belong to me.

Lets look at an example from Scripture of Hallowing Gods name.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not bow down and worship the image of Nebuchadnezzar because the glory of God was more important to them than all else. He threatened to throw them into a fiery furnace if they did not worship the image and they responded,

Why did this make Nebuchadnezzar so mad? Because they were making their God seem so much more glorious and important than he was. This is hallowing Gods name.

Out of all the sermons I have written over these years, this sermon for some reason was the one I dreaded preparing for the most and I am not quite sure why. After I was done studying for it, I think the understanding of this may have changed me more than any other sermon.

I was studying for this sermon at work and I realized the guy before me had left a lot of work for me to do that he should have done before I got there. My original plan was to leave it for him when he got back in so that he could do it but then I got to thinking. In this prayer I am praying “Hallowed be your name.” Is it making Gods name look holy if I wrong him the same way he wronged me or does it make God name look holy if I forgive him and do the extra work? I began to realize it is not about me but about God. I did the extra work with a smile, not out of spite or anger, but proudly with the idea that I am doing this for the glory of God. It had never felt that good to me to any work, let alone to do extra work as when I was doing it for the glory of God. We should not only take this mindset at work but in everything that we do.

Reflection and Application

Prayer is an extremely important tool for the Christian. Out of everything the disciples could have asked Jesus to teach them, they asked him “Teach us to pray.” We should approach the Lord in the same manner by seeking to understand this model prayer that he has given us.

Our Father In Heaven

The first thing that he gave us was our relationship to God as Him being our Father. Is God your Father too? He is the creator of all but only those who have been born of God can call him Father. Which leads me to the question, can you call God your Father? Those who can call God their Father are those who have put their faith in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, as their Lord and savior. They believe that he died on the cross and paid for their sins so that they wont be condemned on judgement day. They believe he rose again from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. They also believe he will come back again to judge the living and the dead. It is extremely important that we believe the gospel, not only for our prayer life, but for our life in general. For those of us who are Gods children, we can come to the Father in confidence knowing he hears us and loves us.

My challenge to you all this week is to know who your Father in heaven is. We tend to have better conversation with those we know well and I believe the same thing works for prayer to the Father. You will be receiving a handout from me and on that handout you will see it organized into 7 days. Each one of them seven days has an attribute of God along with some passages in the Bible that talk about that attribute. Our application is going to our sheet each day this week and reading the passages, and then praying to God based on what these passages have taught you about Him.

Hallowed Be Your Name

We discussed how Hallowing Gods name is making it Holy. That is our chief end in life and should be our chief concern in our prayer. Do your prayers concern Gods glory or your own? Since we are praying that Gods name is glorified in our lives, it only makes sense that we set out to do that.

My challenge to you is to think about the different areas of your life and consider whether you are glorifying God in those areas, and if not, how you can start.

For example:

Many, if not all of you are going to school. Is Gods name made Holy by your conduct at school? Do you participate in the daily gossip? If so, next time people say something about somebody that could be harmful or damaging, speak something good about that person as a response. Is there someone who usually sits by themselves at lunch who nobody wants to be friends with? Go and sit with them and be a friend. Consider the ways that you are not acting very Christlike and set out to change them. Maybe you don’t act much of anything, so in that case, what would make it look to others that see you that Christ is the best thing that ever happened to you? The guy that first shared the gospel with me was always reading his Bible every time I seen him. He didn’t want to talk about the silly things in pop culture, he didn’t cuss, something seemed so different about him. It was his hallowing Gods name in his life that God used to lead me to believe in Jesus Christ. Maybe God would use you in the same way.

Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, this world is going to ask us to bow down and worship their idols. We must respond to this with Gods glory in mind as our chief concern as they did, even at the cost of being thrown into the furnace. This prayer is saying, Gods glory above all else, even our lives.

Finally, the Scriptures tell us to pray without ceasing. We have access to the Father as children, let us bring our every need and care to him and most of all, let us pray that his name be hallowed above all else.

Lets Pray!