Hallowed Be Your Name Jesus on Mission-Minded Praying...
Hallowed Be Your Name
Jesus on Mission-Minded Praying
Matthew 6.9-10
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.”
Introduction
Traditionally, we call this the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew’s account it is one of the last parts of the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke’s account, Jesus is giving a lesson to his disciples on prayer. It is like Prayer 101. The disciples had noticed him while he was praying, and as soon as he finished they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The Lord’s Prayer was his answer – it is how we should pray. And today, we are going to look at just two verses of that answer. It is plain to me that this model prayer is clearly mission-minded praying. If you do not see that now, I hope that you will by the time we are done. And it is my hope that we learn to pray the way the Jesus taught; that we learn to pray that God’s name would be honored and revered and worshipped and regarded as holy in all the earth, and that we pray with serious God-centered missionary ambition – because that is what I believe that is at least part of what Jesus meant in this text.
A Pattern, Not a Form
I’ll just make two points about the prayer in general before we get to where I want to focus today. The first is that this is a pattern, not a form. I do not think that it is wrong to recite this prayer occasionally, but I do think the church has to an extent misunderstood Jesus’ Prayer 101. I don’t think that Jesus meant that we take this as a form prayer and just recite it each Sunday, or every day. It is not liturgy. I think that because he said, “Pray like this.” Jesus did not say, “Pray this prayer.” In fact, he warned about empty reciting just a few verses earlier when he said, “Don’t use empty phrases like the Gentiles do.” It would not make much sense for him to say that, and then offer a verbatim script that we are to use for our prayers. And that is not what this is, it is a pattern. It shows us how and for what we should pray. The specifics are filled as they are appropriate. So praying, “Lord, help us to pay this electric bill today.” Could be what he meant by “give us our daily bread.” My point is, that this should be a living prayer, coming from our hearts, not our memories. It is a pattern, not a form.
Corporate Prayer
The second point is that this pattern has something to do with corporate prayer. I don’t think Jesus only meant corporate prayer, but it is definitely advocated here. And it might be surprising, because after Jesus’ instructions in verses 1-6, you might get the idea that the only prayer that truly conforms to Christ’s ideals is private, individual, secret prayer. He says, “Go into your closest in secret”, and “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men” and “pray to your Father in secret.” But in the same stroke, Jesus is also advocating corporate prayer. Otherwise, he would have said that we should pray, “My Father”, but we are to say “Our Father.” So I think that Jesus is teaching us how to pray in this passage, and how to pray together, or corporately. And now let’s talk about the first three requests within that prayer pattern that Jesus outlined for us.
The First Request, May Your Name Be Hallowed
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”
The addressee, “Our Father In Heaven”, tells us two things about God. First, it reveals the personal relationship that we have with God. He is our Father. We have that child-father kind of relationship with Him, and that is a theme in the New Testament. We come to Him and address him as Father, or even Abba.
The way we address God also shows God’s transcendence. He is God in Heaven, and he ultimately reigns over the universe. The two thoughts together are amazing. As our Father, he is close and personal and loving and caring for us. As the God of heaven, he is supreme and almighty and awesome. That that is to whom we pray!
After that, we launch into requests. In studying this passage, I became convinced that the first three requests (1) hallowed be your name, 2)your kingdom come, and 3)your will be done) are closely related. So close, in fact, that it is almost like saying the same thing in three different ways. And all three of them are modified by the last phrase, which gives us the venue or stage for where we want to see these requests happen – on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be your name, on earth as it is in heaven; your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven, and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. That helps us know precisely what we are praying for, and I’ll explain that more as we look at those three requests.
The first request is that God’s name would be hallowed. This is a request, not a declaration. The mood of the verb is imperative. It could be translated, “May your name be hallowed”, or “Let your name be hallowed.” Hallowed is a seldom used word in English these days, and it means to regard as holy, or revered, or set apart. So it could also be translated, “May your name be regarded as holy.”
Now, let’s think about this. Why should we pray that way, and by whom should we pray that God’s name be regarded as holy? Is it a personal prayer? Yes, it is. We should pray this way every day, “Father, help me to regard your name as holy today.” I prayed that way yesterday, on the airplane. I prayed, “Lord, I am weak. Give strength to me so that I might esteem your name in the same way that it is esteemed in heaven. And help me to live regarding and revering your name that way.” I prayed it this morning. I said, “Lord, if nothing else, may I preach in a way that would convey the idea that you are holy! May everyone who hears me this morning, see that, if nothing else.” So it is, and should be, a personal way to pray.
But it is more than that. Remember the modifying venue. We are praying that God’s name would be regarded as holy on earth as it is in heaven. It means that we are praying that all people who do not regard him as holy, would. We are praying that in every area on earth, God’s name would be exalted and lifted up, and revered, and praised, and regarded as holy – in the same way that his name is regarded in heaven. So we are praying that every person who lives in this town, everyone in this state and every citizen in this country, and every person from every nation and tribe and tongue would esteem God as holy. How is that going to happen?
The only real way that a person can regard God’s name as truly holy, is to believe in Jesus Christ. It is impossible to revere the true God as holy and his name as hallowed and at the same time reject his Son. So, one thing that has to happen is that the person must believe in Jesus. So we are, in a sense, praying that evangelism would happen, that it would be effective, and that hearts would be open to the gospel. When we pray, “May your name be hallowed”, in essence we are praying that the glorious gospel would be trumpeted to the ends of the earth; that in the hearts of Americans, and Russians, and Persians, and Greeks, and the French, and the Buryats and the Navaho and the Altayans God would be glorified through their hearing and believing the gospel. This is evangelistic praying. We not just praying that God’s name would be regarded as holy in our hearts alone. That is part. But we are praying that his name would be revered on earth – everywhere and among all peoples – in the same way that it is in heaven. Hallowed be your name! It is the same vision that David had and we can see that when he wrote,
“Blessed be the name of the Lord, from this time forth and forever more. From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.” (Psalms 113.2-3)
And that has been God’s plan from the beginning. God has always sought for men to regard his name as holy. Consider God’s words in Ezekiel 36.23:
“And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.”
His plan has always been this. And so we pray for ourselves and for the nations: Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come…
There are a lot of ideas about what this passage means; there are a lot of ideas about what the kingdom of God means. I won’t stand here and say that I have no idea. I have an idea, and I think that I am right. But I acknowledge that I might not be, and that I bring to the relevant texts some presuppositions (ones that I think are defensible). But one common exegetical mistake many preachers make is that we regard the phrase kingdom of God as a technical term and translate it with a specific – loaded – meaning every time we encounter it in scripture, and I think that it is a mistake, and that no definition presupposed upon the phrase kingdom of God, be it the literal 1000 year reign of God on earth or otherwise, can work in every occurrence. In other words, there is a general meaning to the phrase, and according to that general meaning we can understand that a text means at least that much. The general meaning of the phrase Kingdom of God is this…. It is the place or the area or the people over which God reigns as King. That is the unloaded translation of the phrase kingdom of God. It always means at least that much. Sometimes it means something more specific, other times its meaning is general. But it means this much, at least, in every occurrence: the place or area or people over which God reigns as King.
And so when we pray, your Kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven, we are praying that the extent of His kingdom would become universal on earth. It is eschatological in the sense that it looks forward to an ultimate fulfillment, but it is also practical in the sense that we are praying for it to become so now. It is not much different than wording it like this, “Father, be king over all the universe, over every nation, over every people group, in every heart. May the extent of your kingdom, the place where you reign, be as universal on earth as it is universal in heaven.” And that too, is evangelistic, missions-minded praying. We are praying for the nations: May your kingdom come.
Your will be done…
The clearest, perhaps, expression of evangelistic and mission-minded praying is in the last of the three petitions. In praying your will be done we are petitioning God to accomplish his purposes on earth. It is mission-minded and evangelistic when one considers the purposes of God which are stated in the Bible, Old Testament as well as the New. Even as far back as the Abrahamic Covenant, we can see clearly the universal and world-wide purposes of God. He told Abraham in Genesis 22.17 & 18:
I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed...”
The only plausible explanation is that in your offspring refers to Jesus Christ, who is Abraham’s descendant, and it shows that God’s purposes in the blessings of Salvation through Jesus are intended for all the nations of the earth. Many in the Old Testament saw that vision and purpose. David is a shining example. He saw and shared God’s universal evangelistic to-all-the-nations purposes, and we see it at many points in the Psalms (Psalms 67 & 97 are two examples) and we see this passion even in David’s youth. You remember, when David approached the giant he proclaimed that he would be victorious. And he said that it would accomplish God’s purposes in a universal way. He said;
You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts… This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down… that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
God’s purposes are to ends of the earth. They are for all the nations – all the earth. He wants the whole world to know him and glorify his name. That is why Jesus commissioned us to go into the entire world and preach the gospel. And why he prophesied to the apostles in Acts 1.8, his last words on earth, that we would be his Spirit-empowered witnesses to the ends of the earth. And why Paul strived to preach Christ where he had yet to be named. And it is why he said that the feet of those who bring good tidings are beautiful.
Pray like this… for missions & missionaries
So when you pray like this, when you pray in the way that Jesus instructed us, you should pray that God’s global purposes are accomplished on earth. When you pray, hallowed be your name, you should pray that your missionaries are effective in the proclamation of the gospel so that God’s name is hallowed among the nations in Africa and South America and in China. When you pray, your kingdom come, your will be done, you should pray that our mission efforts would be effective and that our missionaries are strong and courageous and culturally relevant in their witness so that lost people groups would stop worshipping fire and hills and water and rocks and idols and that they would turn to the one true God through Jesus, who reigns in heaven. When you pray, Father, your will be done… you should pray for every evangelistic outreach of the church; every effort to pierce the darkness with the glorious light of the gospel. You should pray for your unbelieving neighbors, your unbelieving parents, and the unbelieving tribes of the world. You should pray for the millions who have bought into the lie and false promises of Islam, and the billions that worship and serve the creation rather than the creator. This is mission-minded praying, because our God’s purpose is to be known in all the world.
So my challenge this morning is to pray like that!
Finally, there are two reasons why I think the most effective missionary challenge is a challenge to pray. People underemphasize prayer in missions thinking that it is the least we could. Being involved by giving and going are seen as ways where we can be more involved (as compared with prayer). But I think praying for missions is one of the most effective involvements (of the three, praying, giving and going), and I think that for two reasons. First, is that I have read a bit about history and the history of the modern missionary movement and have seen how many missionary efforts began as people prayed. Many missionary endeavors began as people met the challenge to pray that God’s name be hallowed on earth, that his kingdom would come on earth, and that his will and purposes would be accomplished on earth.
The second reason is that, like no other way that I know, praying forms and shapes the mind to accomplish God’s will. In other words, if I really wanted you to go to the mission field, and it seems to me that at least some of our 180 members should go, I would first challenge you to pray. And if I wanted you to give more time and money towards missionary efforts, and I think we should continue to give as much as we can, my challenge would be to pray. As we pray, God does something in our hearts.
So my challenge this morning is to pray like this; “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.