Matthew 6:5-13
Introduction: This Lent we are learning or re-learning the Lord’s Prayer together as we look at each part of the prayer and practice using it as a pattern for our prayers. “Hallowed be your name” is the first petition in the prayer and the most powerful, disruptive and explosive of them all. To release the power of this prayer into our lives, we need to know three things about it:
1. What We Are Asking For
The petition is made up of two parts. Each of these need to be defined so that we understand what we are really asking for when we pray, “Hallowed be your name.”
1) Your Name – In the Bible, God’s name is more than the specific titles and words we use to describe him. God’s name stands for his total person and character. God’s Name is God as he really is; God as He has revealed himself to be. 2) Hallowed Be – Hallow is an old English way of saying “regard as holy”. To hallow someone does not mean to make them holy, set apart or special, it means to recognize, treat, acknowledge and honor them as holy. So “hallowed be your name” is asking that we and others recognize, honor and treat God as He is. In other words, we are asking that we and others would step further into reality. The most solid reality in all the universe is a Holy God. Whenever the curtain of heaven is pulled back for us in the bible - what we find is all the hosts of heaven crying out “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6:3, Rev. 4:8). In this petition, we are asking that we and the whole world might enter into this reality – that we might more fully praise, adore and worship God for who He is.
2. When We Are to Ask for It
There is a clear order to the whole Lord’s Prayer: The order is God first, then us. We pray “Your” before we pray “our”. We begin with God’s name, kingdom and will before we ask Him for anything. This is a key lesson from the Lord’s Prayer. But there is also an order to our God-ward prayers. Even before we ask that God’s purposes and will be accomplished, we pray for Him to be praised, adored, worshipped for who He is.
Jesus is teaching that this order should more and more characterize our prayers as we grow. This order is the path to and a sign of spiritual maturity. Why? Because without praise (or with little praise) our relationship with God will always become more about us and less about him. Hallowed be your name is praising God for God - for his name; not for what we can get from him, but for who He is. Until we can praise God like this, he won’t be real to us and we won’t be changed because we are just coming to God for what can get from him – not for him.
3. What Happens When God Answers It
When God answers this prayer two things happen - 1) we really know and recognize in our hearts (not just our minds) God as He really is which leads to us 2) seeing ourselves as we really are. This is where it gets powerful, dangerous. In the bible, whenever someone encounters the holiness of God’s name, they are overcome with fear. Why? The holy reality of God reveals the reality of our sin. But God never leaves them on their faces in fear. He always draws near and says, “Do not be afraid”. He hides Moses in the rock and proclaims his name to him, he takes away the guilt of Isaiah’s sin; he touches John and reminds him of what Jesus has done for him. (Isaiah 6:1-7, Exodus 33:17-23, Rev. 1:17-20).
What do we learn from these examples? When God answers this prayer we really see the name of Jesus for what it is (or better, who He is). “There is no other name given under heaven by which we are saved (Acts 4:12)” Whenever God answers this prayer in a person’s life, Jesus becomes more real, beautiful, wonderful and precious to that person. Covered in the atoning work of Jesus, the holiness of God goes from a reality to avoid to a beauty to behold. This is the power for real change. What we most hallow and worship in our lives is what most shapes us and drives us. The more holy God is to us, the more holy we will be. When God answers this prayer in a person’s life, they cannot be the same.
DISCUSS
What about the sermon most impacted you or left you with questions?
In your own words define what we are asking for when we pray, “Hallowed be your name”. How much of your own prayers are spent asking for this or doing this?
The Bible teaches that God’s name is the most important and valuable thing to God (see Ezekiel 36:22-23). At first this sounds strange. Why is it not conceited but loving and right for God to value his own name? For help discuss the excerpt from the sermon below:
“If God is God, then there is nothing more serious or harmful than misrepresenting Him, slandering, insulting his name. If God is God, there is nothing more important to our own lives, their meaning/destiny/purpose, than knowing Him as he really is. If we get God wrong, then we get everything wrong.”
Simone Weil said what we are asking for in this prayer is “for something that exists eternally, with full and complete reality, so that we can neither increase or diminish it, even by an infinitesimal fraction”. How might thinking about God and his holiness as the most solid reality there is motivate us to pray this prayer more often and more urgently?
Why is it important that we learn to praise God first before asking anything from Him? Why is this hard? What might this look like?
It was said in the sermon, “Hallowed be your name is the prayer we need God to answer to change our sinful patterns, habits and addictions. Asking for change without praise and adoration will never change us. Why? Because what we most hallow/worship is what we obey/desire. ” Do you agree or disagree with this? Have you seen this play out in your life?
PRAY | Spend time yourself or with a group slowly praying “Hallowed be your name”.
Begin by asking God to make himself more real to you. Pray the words, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”.
Don’t ask God for anything except that you might more honor, know, treat and recognize him for who he is.
Praise God using short simple phrases and descriptions of the character of God from Scripture. It may be helpful to use a few familiar Psalms or other passages as a way to meditatively fill and focus your mind.
Make room for silence.