Hallowed Be Thy Name
Download MP3Good morning everybody. My name is Thomas Richie, and I'm an elder here at Redeemer. I'm a lay elder, which means I have a day job that's not a church, and I get to preach, about once a year, and it really is a privilege. It's something that I enjoy doing. I might enjoy it a little bit too much.
Thomas Richie:I went back and looked at the first sermon that I ever preached. They're all still online, which is not news for me, but you can, back in 2011, I preached a sermon on John 4 that came in about 8 seconds shy of 45 minutes long. And in totally unrelated news, Joel has given me a text to preach this morning that is 4 words long. I'm hoping those have nothing to do with each other, but we're gonna continue our study of the Lord's prayer, and we're gonna look today at the first petition that's contained in that prayer, just hallowed be thy name. And this petition is hugely important.
Thomas Richie:The Lord's Prayer builds on itself like a tower with each piece resting on the thing that comes before, supporting it, upholding it, and so we have to understand it in order to understand how Jesus is teaching us to pray. But on the other hand, how confident are you that you've ever used the word hallowed in a sentence, and you could write down clearly what it means? It's a word that is obscure and churchy. Now we know it maybe from Halloween, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Perhaps you recall the line from the Gettysburg address.
Thomas Richie:But most of us, me included, we just let the poetical words of the King James Bible wash over us. Comforting, familiar, and ambiguous as a warm bath. It's easy for me to mutter those words automatically, even subconsciously, and remain innocent of their meaning. So I wanna dig into them today. I wanna figure out what what are these words that Jesus is teaching us to pray?
Thomas Richie:Why are they important to him? Why are they important to God? And how do they point us back to Christ? So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna pray the Lord's Prayer together, and then we're gonna dive into defining some terms.
Thomas Richie:And as the other preachers have said before, as we say the Lord's Prayer together, we're gonna do trespasses instead of debts. And in the first service, I came up here without my worship guide that had the Lord's Prayer in it. And I've I've been in church my whole life, and I'm pretty confident that I know the Lord's prayer, but I've never felt quite so on the spot is when I had to start saying it, and I was like, oh, I really don't know what line comes next. All that to say, I have a worship guide now. Join me as we pray the Lord's Prayer together.
Thomas Richie:Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Thomas Richie:And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Alright. So let's start defining some terms.
Thomas Richie:Hallo, it's a very obscure verb that means to consecrate, sanctify, or make holy. Means to consecrate, sanctify, or make holy. And the Greek word that is translated as hallow for us in Matthew, is just the verb form of the adjective, holy. So to understand what it means to hallow something, we need to understand what holiness is, and that's not a topic I can handle in a sermon. That's the subject of books and treatises, and shelves, and a library.
Thomas Richie:But I would call God's holiness his transcendent, glorious otherness. It is the adjective that God uses to describe himself more than any other. He says, I am holy. Various attributes about him are holy. One commentator says that holiness is God's God ness.
Thomas Richie:It is the attribute that sets him apart from every other created thing. God is fundamentally not like us. By nature, he is different. He is eternal while we are temporal. He is all knowing and all powerful where we are limited.
Thomas Richie:He is self causing. He is the beginning and the end. In him resides all wisdom. He is the point and object of all beauty, of all justice, of all goodness, and the eternal refrain of the creatures in heaven who surround the throne, echoing back and forth one to another in ceaseless praise is holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. They never grow tired of saying it, and they never exhaust the holiness of God.
Thomas Richie:Even just sitting there and doing nothing, God's holiness is overwhelming to those that come into his presence. This is wonderfully and gloriously true, but it presents a problem to us who are trying to understand the Lord's prayer. Because if holiness is already an eternally fulfilled attribute of God, then what does it mean for us to pray holiness as a verb, hallow? Are we asking that God might become more holy? The answer is no, we're not.
Thomas Richie:No, that's not possible. God is already fully holy, and we see this because this prayer is not directed at God becoming more holy, but at his name being hallowed. Well, what's the significance of God's name? There's this long line of Jewish Pietism that comes from the 1st century that's really interesting when it comes to addressing God directly or indirectly, but I'm not gonna get into that, remembering back to my John 4 sermon. I think I've already used all my extra time.
Thomas Richie:So we're gonna look here instead. When the prayer says that God's name would be hallowed, his name there is a stand in for all of his revealed character. When the Bible talks about God's name, it's talking about God as he has shown himself to the world, and God's name is hugely important. We only have Ten Commandments in the Ten Commandments, and one of them is that we would not take the Lord's name in vain. It is important to him, and is often a stand in for God himself throughout scripture.
Thomas Richie:So Proverbs 18:10 says, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man runs into it, and he is safe. Or Psalm 20 verse 1 says, may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. Now neither of these scriptures is saying that God's name is like a talisman that wards off evil. Instead, it's saying if we call upon the name of the Lord, if we say God, save me, that it's God's character to save.
Thomas Richie:This is familiar perhaps in that same psalm, Psalm 20 verse 7, when it says some may trust in horses and some in chariots, but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God. And we see God's name and character linked together most strongly in Exodus 33 and 34, which is the story of God, excuse me, of Moses asking God, God show me your glory. And God says to Moses, you can't see my face, but I will hide you in the cleft of a rock, and I'll pass by, and I will declare my name to you, and then you can see my back as I'm departing. And when God declares his name to Moses, he says, the Lord. The Lord.
Thomas Richie:And then he starts describing his character. A God gracious and merciful, and he goes on and on describing himself. So when God says his name, he is invoking the fullness of who he has revealed himself to be to us. And so while God can't be made more holy, we can't hallow God. Nothing can hallow God.
Thomas Richie:He's already holy. His name can be hallowed. How? By demonstrating God's holiness, his supremacy, his glory, his perfection to the world. God cannot grow in holiness, but we can grow in knowing God, and in seeing his character.
Thomas Richie:And that is what we want to see happen when we pray, hallowed be thy name. We want to see God's glory go forth in all of the earth, and for people ourselves, those here in this church, those who don't know the Lord, that everyone would see that God is holy. And we have one last piece of definitional work to do, and that is this, who is doing the hallowing? Hallowed be thy name is passive voice, and all the English teachers here are disapproving, but it leaves ambiguous as to who is acting. But if we look at this petition within the structure of the Lord's prayer, it's very clear, I think necessary to conclude that the Lord Himself is the one who is hallowing His name.
Thomas Richie:We are asking God, hallow your name. It's not a request that we would hallow His name, though that is an important point that comes up in lots of other places in Scripture, for example, the third commandment. The request here is addressed to God, and that's on purpose. Jesus had a purpose in making God both the subject and the object of the first petition. We are asking God to do something about his own name.
Thomas Richie:When we pray rightly, we align ourselves and our wills with God's eternal purposes, and with God's perfect will. The petition reminds us that God's eternal purposes will stand, and will be accomplished. Indeed, the first three petitions of the Lord's prayer don't talk about us at all. The requests are only that God will do the things that he wants to do. As it says in Romans, from him, and through him, and to him, are all things.
Thomas Richie:If we have a role in these petitions beyond praying them, that role is rooted in our desires. Do we long to see God's holiness made known above everything else? Is that the first petition in our hearts as it's the first petition in this prayer? Do we love God's will so much that we desire it more than our own will? Can we say with Isaiah in chapter 26 verse 8, your name and your remembrance are the desire of our soul.
Thomas Richie:So this first petition, this foundational petition does not aim at changing our behavior, and it doesn't aim to ask God to do something that he does not already want to do. God is already in the business of showing and revealing his holiness in the world. We are aligning ourselves with God. And if this petition is to have an effect on us, it will first and foremost be a changing of our hearts. It's tempting as a preacher to want to make this prayer about us.
Thomas Richie:To make it about what we need to do so that I can have a nice little list of rhyming points of application, and we can go out feeling better about ourselves if we can comply with a list. But that would miss the point. Jesus anchors this prayer to God's work, and to God's will, not ours. And while it is certainly true that God cares about our conduct as it relates to hallowing, or more frequently, profaning His name. God is the main character.
Thomas Richie:He is the actor here, and the story that He is telling us is much much greater than some small morality play. Let's look at what that story really is. Because if we look back through the great course of redemptive history, we see that God has tremendous concern for his holy name. It is a driving force in our Salvation. We're gonna start by taking a look at Ezekiel 36.
Thomas Richie:Now, I have Ezekiel 36 right here on this printed page, but I want to give you all some time to flip there. I'm going to start reading in verse 20. Ezekiel comes after Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations. If you get to all the really short prophets, you've gone too far. So as you're turning there, I'm going to start reading in verse 20, and this is just the setup.
Thomas Richie:We're really gonna finish out the rest of the chapter. Starting in verse 20, Ezekiel says this, and he's talking about the house of Israel. He says, when they, the house of Israel, came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name. In that the people said of them, these are the people of the Lord, and yet they had to go out of his land. But I, God, had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.
Thomas Richie:So Israel has been judged. They've been cast out of their land, and as a result, the people look at God's people, and they say, God is not holy. Look at these people. Look at the way they live, and look where they have to live because of their actions. And God's concern for his holy name, his regard for his own holiness, stirs him to action.
Thomas Richie:And the wind up really starts in verse 22. Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, oh house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has 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. Yikes.
Thomas Richie:This is the sound of judgment coming, isn't it? We have dis you know, if we stand in for the house of Israel here, we've dishonored God. We have profaned his name. This word profane is repeated again and again and again. Instead of holy holy holy, God's name is profaned profaned profaned.
Thomas Richie:And He says, enough. I will step in. I will vindicate my holy name. Enough of it being profaned among the nations. This sounds like someone about to draw a sword.
Thomas Richie:This sounds like the parent who says, don't make me come up there, and then they're coming up there. It's good for us to sit with that for a minute. To think of times we've heard words like this, because what comes next will shock you. Verse 24. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land.
Thomas Richie:Sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart. And a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh.
Thomas Richie:And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall be my people, and I will be your God. It's completely the opposite of what we're expecting. God says I will hallow my name, not by hurling judgement like angry Zeus from Olympus, but by showing grace to a wayward people.
Thomas Richie:By tenderly washing them. By changing their hearts, by giving us his spirit. God demonstrates his great love for the holiness of his name by saving us. And this theme is not just here, it's throughout the Bible. If we look back at Exodus 34 that we talked about, when God proclaims his name and his character, what does he lead with?
Thomas Richie:He says his name, the Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger. Psalm 79 contains basically the prophecy of Ezekiel turned into the form of a prayer. It says help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and atone for our sins. For your name's sake.
Thomas Richie:Right? Not for our sake, but for your name's sake make us right with you. Our opening scripture had this theme, Psalm 111 verse 9 says, he sent redemption to his people and has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. Again, Isaiah 29 verses 22 and 23 says Jacob shall no more be ashamed.
Thomas Richie:No more shall his face grow pale. For when he sees his children in the work of my hands in his midst, they will sanctify my name. It's another way of saying hallow my name. They will sanctify the holy one of Jacob, and they will stand in awe of the God of Israel. And the last example I'll give you is Mary carries this theme through the Magnificat, and she says, he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
Thomas Richie:You see now where and to whom this prayer, hallowed be thy name, points. It must point us to Jesus. He brings this prayer into its sharpest focus. Not just through his teaching, but through his how he teaches us. How he demonstrates that towards other people, the example that he gives, but also in his own flesh.
Thomas Richie:If I might detour back into grammar for a second. Jesus didn't teach us to pray, our father who art in heaven, your name is holy. He could have done that, and our sermon would have been the same up to this point. But he gave us a verb. He gave us this imperative commandment, and the tense in Greek is immediate.
Thomas Richie:It has a, as one commentator says, it has a sharp edge or an urgency to it. God, might you hallow your name today. Might I see your name hallowed. Might it happen through things that happen every single day. As the Westminster Larger Catechism says, we ask that God, by his overruling providence, would direct and dispose all things to his own glory.
Thomas Richie:God's desire to hallow his name means grace and salvation for us. A true and certain hope, But it means something different for Jesus. I'll give you a second to turn in your bibles to John 12, where we're going to pick up in verse 27. In John 12, Jesus has just come into Jerusalem through Palm Sunday. It's the triumphal entry, and he is heading towards his death.
Thomas Richie:He's heading towards the cross. And he knows it. And he lets us in to his inner life. He lets us in to his prayer life, and in so doing, he gives us an extremely insightful commentary on the first part of the Lord's prayer. Might not have been his first purpose, but it's a great benefit that comes to us down through the ages.
Thomas Richie:He says this in verse 27 and 28. Says, now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.
Thomas Richie:I'm gonna read it again. Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.
Thomas Richie:He has a choice. He says, God, I have 2 prayers that I can pray right now. I don't particularly, in my flesh, want to go to the cross, And I can ask to be delivered, and in fact, he will. He's gonna ask, is there any way that his cup can pass from me? Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.
Thomas Richie:We see that prayer here. He says, God, my own fleshly desire is to avoid this suffering, but I recognize that your purpose is that I go through with it, and my overriding desire, more than my desire to avoid pain and even death, my overriding desire is that, Father, you would glorify your name. Even if it means the cross, that's okay. That's what I signed up for, at the cost of my life. Father, glorify your name.
Thomas Richie:That means something very different for Jesus than it means for us. We've seen again and again how God has said, when I display my holiness, when I vindicate my holiness, I save. And Jesus is staring at a very different problem. Because vindicating the holiness of God requires God's justice to be vindicated as well. And Jesus will bear in his flesh and his spirit the judgment that's meant for us.
Thomas Richie:Nevertheless, he says, Father, glorify your name. And God immediately and audibly, even eagerly answers this prayer. In a voice that many who overheard it mistook for thunder, God himself said, I have glorified my name. I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. Do you want to see the undimmed glory of the holiness of God?
Thomas Richie:Behold, Christ on a cross. A God unlike any other God. Redeeming the broken and the lost. Laying down comfort and perfection in order to take up suffering, and to wear the shame of our sin. A God willing to go down to the grave to vindicate his holiness, and to save his people, and a God who rose because it was not possible for death to hold him.
Thomas Richie:A God who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being born in the likeness of men, And being found in human force human form, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. Even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him, what? The name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.
Thomas Richie:If you want to see God hallowing his name, look to Jesus who vindicates God's perfect justice, and displays his perfect love. Who holds together in his body these 2 opposing forces that seem like they would rip the universe apart. If you want to know how God is different than anybody else, than any other thing in all of the world, behold Christ's sacrifice on your behalf. Pray with me. God, your word is a great gift to us.
Thomas Richie:A great source of instruction. A great hope. But, God, even more than that, your words are the words of life. And we find in your word the truth about our salvation. That it is your character to save.
Thomas Richie:That you are not a god like other gods, who rejoices in crushing, But you rejoice to show mercy on those to whom you will show mercy. And I thank you for sending your son for us. Thank you for revealing in him your holiness. God, might our hearts respond. Might our hearts well up to say that you are holy, holy, holy different than anything else.
Thomas Richie:That the name of Jesus is above every other name. That there is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved. Would you fill us with the love of your character, And would you fill our lives with the display of how you have changed us for your name's sake? Amen.
