Sermon Tone Analysis

*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) /