Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Hallowed Be Your Name

Matthew 6:7-9

by Dave Wilkinson

January 3, 1999

As a nurse tells the story, "A precocious 4-year-old was brought to the ER with a severe cough. She kept up a non-stop conversation while I was trying to assess her lung sounds. Finally, I said, "Shhh, I have to see if Barney is in there." The child looked at me and calmly stated, "I have Jesus in my heart. Barney is on my underwear."

That child knew who belongs where. That’s what we’re in worship to learn.

It can be hard to put ourselves out of the picture and focus on God. But if we are going to worship, that is exactly what we must do.

There is a common worship model which sees the preacher as the performer, God as the audience, and the congregation as the critic. But we are not the audience in worship and we are not the critic. God is the audience, God is the critic, and we are all the performers -- even if that performance is giving reverent attention to God's word as it is read and preached. Actually, you’re the performers. I’m just the prompter.

Jesus reminds us of the relationship between us and God in the Lord's Prayer. The prayer begins by giving God his proper place. The first three petitions are for the hallowing of God’s name, the coming of God’s Kingdom, and the doing of God’s will The prayer begins by putting God in the center. The circumference can only be right when the center is right. All other things can only take their proper place when God is given the central place. And the Lord's Prayer begins with the majesty of God, the purpose of God, and the acceptance of the will of God.

The first of these God directed petitions is perhaps the most difficult for us to understand. Every Sunday we pray "Hallowed be Your Name". But what do we mean? What are we asking God to do and why are we asking him to do it?

In biblical times, the name stood for much more than the handle by which a person was called. The name meant the entire character of the person. That is why God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Jacob’s to Israel. A change of character calls for a change of name.

The same thing is true today -- though with companies rather than individuals. Take, for example, the name BMW. When we see that name stamped on an automobile we immediately have a degree of respect for it. In that name resides the reputation of one of the world's most renowned engineering firms. That name stands for the finest in mechanical engineering. It represents the most advanced research. It bears the stamp of meticulous care and precision. It symbolizes the ultimate in reliability and dependability. It denotes the highest degree of craftsmanship and design.

In the same way, but much more so, God’s name is God’s character -- who God is. David writes in the Twenty Third Psalm: "You lead me in paths of righteousness or right paths for your name's sake." David means that God stakes his reputation as God on his behavior toward us -- on leading us right. Psalm 9:10 declares of God: "'Those who know Your Name will put their trust in You." This means that those who know who God is -- His proven love, His mind, His heart will gladly put their trust in Him. They know that God can be trusted so they put their weight down.

That’s the meaning of the name. And we pray that it might be hallowed. What does this mean?

Unfortunately, the word hallow is not in common use today. For us to say, "Father in heaven, may Your Name be kept holy," sounds sort of distant, It smacks of musty, dim churches. Some associate it with all the tired traditions that somehow have been unfortunately identified with the idea of holiness.

Holy doesn’t mean boring. It means healthy. Our word holy comes from the old Anglo-Saxon words halig or hale. These meant that something was very special, sound, healthy, or whole. If you doctor asks "How do you feel?" and you say "I'm hale and hearty,"you mean that you feel in excellent health -- wholesome, and fit -- so he really doesn’t have to poke you with that needle.

Jesus says that we are to ask God to make His Name hallowed. What we are actually saying in this part of the Lord’s Prayer is, "God, be yourself." For when something is said to be holy, the first idea is that of being completely sound, solid, whole, healthy and wholesome, without blemish, weakness, soft spots, and without in any way being defiled or contaminated.

We need to pray for this. Because, quite frankly, if God isn't holy, we are all sunk. We need to know what God is like and we need to know that God will be consistent with his own self. We need to know that God never gets up on the wrong side of the bed and never has an off day.

Now, in fact, God will be true to Himself whether we ask him to or not. But when we pray. "Hallowed be Thy Name", we are also praying a second prayer. Yes, we are praying that God will be God. But we are also praying that we will do our part in recognizing God as God. We don’t just want God to hallow His own Name. We are saying that we are willing to do our part,

How do we do it? How do we do our part in hallowing God’s name?

Well, to start with, we hallow God’s name when we worship God as God knows Himself to be, and don't try to whittle him down to a more manageable size We hallow God’s name when our beliefs about God are worthy of God. True doctrine and true teaching are reverence to God and false doctrine and false teaching are irreverence to God.

We do not truly worship God until we stop worshiping what we conceive of Him to be and start worshiping what he knows Himself to be. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "The prayer that precedes every true prayer is this: may it be the real You I speak to and the real I that speaks to You."

God revealed Himself in Exodus 3:14 as who He is. "I am that I Am." -- "I’m not what you think I am but who I am." But because we are so likely to make mistakes, and to confuse partial truth for the whole truth, Jesus tells us to pray that our concept of God may be accurate so that His name may be hallowed among us. The man or woman who brings to his or her concept of God ideas which have no place there, takes the name of God in vain. This is true of the New Agers, it is true of the cults, and it is true of us if we try to reshape God into our own image.

A second way we reverence God and hallow God’s name is when our way of life brings honors God and attracts others to Him. If the Christian is just as likely to collapse under sorrow; if her life is just as frustrated and unsatisfying as the life of the non-Christian; if he is just as worried and anxious, just as nervous and restless, just as guilty of petty dishonesty, of self-seeking, of measuring everything against material values as the person who makes no profession of Christianity, then quite clearly no one will want Christianity because the obvious conclusion is that it doesn’t make any difference. Frederick Nietchze, the famous German pagan philosopher, made a statement that flings a challenge at every professing Christian, he said: "Show me that you are redeemed and then I will believe in your redeemer."

When we pray "Hallowed by Thy Name", part of our prayer is that God will enable us to show that we are redeemed, so that in our lives He may be glorified, and that through us others may come to desire to know Him. If we sincerely pray "Hallowed by Thy Name" we will find special pleasure in seeing others come to honor and worship Him as we do.

And if we pray with sincerity "Hallowed by Your Name" it's bound to make a difference in our own thinking and conduct. For as we are reminded of the of the One who deserves our worship, and as we dwell upon Him with our thoughts, a reflection of our adoration will show up in the way we live. We become what we think about.

So if you want to become a new person, a better person, realize first that God can receive honor from you And then pray that God’s character and goodness, and compassion will now be revealed through you as his child. Pray daily, "Hallowed be Thy Name -- in me."