Luke 11:1-13
Please turn in your copy of God’s
Word to Luke chapter 11. Our reading will be verses 1
to 13. But today we’ll be looking at
the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which is, Hallowed be
your name. Also, you know that there’s a
different version of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter 5.
Also that our larger and shorter catechisms explain the Lord’s
Prayer. If you want an interesting exercise
throughout the week or on a Sunday afternoon, look in the back of
your hymnal or your copy of the Westminster Standards and see
how the larger and shorter catechisms explain each of the lines of
the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s hear God’s Word together,
beginning in verse one of Luke’s Gospel, chapter 11. Now, Jesus
was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of
his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught
his disciples. And he said to them, when you
pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we
ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us
not into temptation. Then Jesus said to them, which
of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say
to him, friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has
arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him. He
will answer him from within. Do not bother me. The door is
now shut and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get
up and give you anything. I tell you though, he will not
get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet
because of his impudence, he will rise up and give him whatever
he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will
be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock,
and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives,
and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it
will be opened. What father among you, if his
son asked for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent?
Or if he asked for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then
who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to
those who ask him? Let us pray together. Lord, the
word we have just read says you will give us the Holy Spirit
if we ask. And so now we pray that your
spirit’s power would help us to see and hear and believe and
understand. And most of all, do what your
word teaches us. Give us your help and blessings,
we pray in Jesus name, amen. Each morning when your first
eyelid pops open, when you are conscious of a new day and you
figure out that it’s Monday or Tuesday or Saturday or whatever
day it happens to be, when reality sets in that you must get up,
that your old bones must somehow get out of the bed, what is the
first goal, the first priority for your life that day after
the coffee, of course, after the creaky bones and the attempts
to get up, what is your first priority? Well, according to
Jesus, it should be this, that his name be honored, that his
name be glorified, that his name be hallowed. And this ought to
be our priority individually. It ought to be our priority as
families and it ought to be our priority as a church. After all, our confession of
faith, our catechism teaches us that our chief, our highest
end, our chief and highest aim in life is to glorify God and
to enjoy him forever. Is it our consuming desire as
we wake each day, as we wake each day, do we say with all
our hearts, Lord, whatever I do, whatever tasks are before me,
I want the name of Jesus to be hallowed, to be honored, and
to be full of glory. Do our lips and do our lives,
do they seek to please almighty God and bring glory to his name? Well, as we unpack more of the
Lord’s prayer, we want to consider today just those questions. The Lord’s prayer teaches us
how to pray. It teaches us a pattern for prayer.
It teaches us a model of prayer. What does it teach us about the
name of God being hallowed? Well, it teaches us a handful
of things. We find these all throughout
the scripture, but we want to consider four headings this day. And the first is this God and
his name is to be honored. God’s name is to be honored. One of the greatest books of
the last 50 years or so in Christendom has been R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness
of God. It has made probably the greatest
impact on the American church. Sproul is known for saying in
his lifetime, in his ministry, the greatest need of the church
is to understand the holiness of God. The greatest need of
the church is to understand the difference between the sacred
and the profane. And so our task as Christians,
if God is to be honored, our task as Christians, right out
of our shorter catechism, is that we know that we acknowledge
and that we esteem the name of almighty God. Some of you may
be in your Bible studies over the years, you’ve looked at the
Bible study of the names of God. The names of God are the attributes
of God. I can remember back in the 1990s
or so when this was a really popular thing. The Bible study
came to fruition one time I was standing in the hospital praying
over a man in our church. This was about 15 years ago as
a young fellow in his 30s. And he was in septic shock or
something of that nature. He was sick and nearly dying. And this lady who knew the family
came in to pray and she prayed for 45 minutes. I kid you not.
Every single name of God. Every single name of God and
pray that God’s character, God’s name that represented a certain
ability or action of his would be evident in this man’s life. Now, I’m accustomed to maybe
praying two or three minutes, but this went on for 45 minutes
or so. Every single name of almighty
God. I would bet that not a one of
us could do that. I bet that not a one of us could say we
know every single name, every single character, every single
attribute of almighty God. We don’t study the word. We don’t
study the character of God. We say theology is for the theologians
and we’re not a people of the scriptures. But the command of
God, the prayer that we make, God’s name is to be honored.
means that we should know God. We should read the Psalms. We
should study the whole of scriptures. We should understand who God
is and what he has done and what he has promised to do. We should
know him. We should acknowledge him as
God. There is no one like him. There
is no other. And we should esteem and worship
him as holy. We’re seeing a decline in the
American church of of church attendance, the staggering figure
that we hear is that church attendance is declining by 7% per year. We do the math and you figure
out in a very short amount of time, the American churches,
just as the churches overseas and in England and the UK and
in Europe, they’ll be emptied out. But what does it mean that
we must esteem God? It’s one thing to affirm him.
It’s one thing to know him. It’s another to say we’re Christian.
But do we gather to worship him in spirit and truth for all that
he is? Do we esteem him in our daily
lives, in our thoughts and in our words? And in our deeds,
you might ask, what is honoring God look like if I pray the Lord’s
prayer every week as we do in our pastoral prayer section of
our worship service? If I’m praying, hallowed be your
name. What am I praying for? What am I asking God? Thomas
Watson, several hundred years ago, wrote in his Body of Divinity,
he wrote a list of practical ways that we can hallow God’s
name. Now, don’t try to write all these
down. You won’t get them all. You can catch me later, snap
a picture of this piece of paper. We can profess his name before
men. We can have a high esteem and appreciation for him. We
can set him highest in all our thoughts. We can trust his name. We can mention his name only
in the highest reverence. We can love his name. We can
worship his name in spirit and truth. We can hallow his day. Keep the Sabbath holy. We can
give to God the glory in all we do in service. We can obey
him. We can praise his name. We can
sympathize with him. We can grieve when his name is
dishonored by the world. We can give the same honor and
worship to the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. We can stand
up in defense of his revealed truths. We can lead as many people
as is possible to worship and love his name. We can prefer
the honor of God’s name before all that is dear to us. And finally,
I think the most practical, we can live a holy life. God’s name is to be honored. The second thing this passage
brings to our minds and hearts is this. You cannot honor God
properly. Now, it sounds a bit like a downer
of a statement, but listen to what I have to say. Moses never
made it into the promised land. If you’ve ever been to the holy
land, maybe you’ve been to Jordan and you’ve been to Mount Nebo
that is a mountain that looks into the promised land. God told
Moses, you’re not going to go into the promised land. You won’t
lead my people in. It was Joshua and Caleb who did
so. But on the top of Mount Nebo,
there’s a church and it’s where Moses saw the panoramic view
of the promised land, the land that God promised to Abraham,
to Isaac and to Jacob. And Moses did not make it into
the promised land because he dishonored God in front of the
Israelites at Meribah. Now, remember, Meribah is the
place where more than one time the Israelites whined. Some of
you parents know this. Oh, it’s spaghetti night again.
Oh, we don’t have any milk. Mom, you didn’t go to the grocery
store. We’re out of this or that. And so God’s people, just like
we do, they wind. God, we’re hungry. God, we’re
thirsty. Well, at Meribah, they were always
thirsty and needed water. And God told Moses in times past,
you tap the rock with your staff and water will come out. Well,
in this particular instance, God told Moses to speak to the
rock. But instead of speaking to the
rock, because Moses was angry, he hit the rock twice. And God
was angry with Moses. And he said that you have dishonored
me in front of the people. Because of your unbelief, you
have failed to uphold God as holy before Israel. You have
broken the faith. And so you will not lead my people
into the promised land. Friends, we cannot honor God
properly. He gives us his commands. He
tells us how he has to be honored and revered. We just make up
new ways ourselves, don’t we? We say, surely God will accept
this from me. You remember early in the scriptures,
Cain and Abel made sacrifices to God. Abel’s sacrifices were
accepted. Cain’s were not. God wants to
be worshiped in the way that he wants to be worshiped. He
prescribes his worship in his word. And even Moses, the great
one of Israel, could not honor God properly. But we give thanks
for one greater than Moses, even Jesus Christ, who has led his
people through a greater exodus. And he leads us into a better
promised land than Moses and his ministry of mediation. So God is to be honored. But
we cannot honor God properly except by through faith in Jesus,
Jesus, who loved to do the will of God, who His heartbeat to
honor and to bring glory to the name of God. And so we can only
do so through faith in Jesus. There’s a third thing that this
passage brings to mind. God is to be honored. You cannot
honor God properly. The third is this, the world
dishonors God. This may be a statement that
you say, you’re telling us the obvious. Yes, we see the atheism. Yes, we see the idolatry of this
world. Yes, we see the ignorance of
the people of God. The world dishonors God. And I would even dare to say,
brothers and sisters, the church very often dishonors God. We have created gods unto ourselves. We’re like the Old Testament
Israelites where God says, worship me this way, serve me this way,
obey me this way. And we mix it up with a little
of this and a little of that. And we sprinkle a little Jesus
on top. And we think, boy, we’re really following the Lord. And
just like Old Testament Israel, the church in our modern day,
just as the world does, we dishonor God. We don’t regard his day
as holy. We think of his ordinances and
Sunday services as optional. We do what others do. We follow the ways of the world. And before you know it, dear
friends, the church finds itself in maybe like the Old Testament
ways. We’re syncretist. We mix the
church. We mix the worship with a little
of this and a little of that and the other. We sprinkle Jesus
on top. And so the church is rent asunder
with heresy and scandal and with paganism. So this leads us to
what is our desire? What is our prayer? That’s the
fourth thing we want to consider today. God is to be honored.
We cannot honor him properly. The world dishonors God, even
I think the church. Very often dishonors God. So
what should be our desire? What should be our prayer? When
we pray, hallowed be thy name. Well, the catechism teaches us
two things about our desire, our prayer. And the two things
are this, that God would enable us to hallow his name and that
he would incline our hearts to hallow his name. This morning
was a little cloudy. It was nice to be at home. It
was cozy to be in bed. I don’t get the option. I still
got to get up early, but it can cross the minds of many Christians
today. I think I’ll just sleep in. It’s
a good day to be at home and increasingly more and more people. See God as optional and we need
God by his grace, God by his spirit, just as he had to do
in the days of the Israelites and their unfaithfulness. We
need him to do that for the church in this day and age to fill us
with his spirit of grace, to enable us to hallow his name
and to incline our hearts to be like the heart of Jesus. who
was conscious of the glory of God and did everything possible
that he could do to bring the most glory to the name of his
heavenly father. And so we pray that God would
enable us to hallow his name, that he would incline our hearts
to love him and hallow his name, that he would give us the spirit
of grace to do that. We also pray that he would restrain
those in the world who do not honor the name of God, that he
would convert the pagans, that he would lead people from atheism
to theism, that he would save lost souls, that he would stop
the mouths of hypocrites and that every man, woman and child
would know and acknowledge and esteem God as holy. and deserving of their praise.
And we pray that that would happen both in this life and in the
life that is to come. Is this something new? Is it something new that we should
hallow God’s name? Is this something that that was
just for the disciples and now for the church? No, this was
God’s program. This was God’s design in the
garden. Adam and Eve were put in the garden to dress the earth,
to keep it, to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth for
the glory of Almighty God. They were in the paradise of
God in this garden, and they had fellowship with the heavenly
father. Abraham was called out of paganism. He was called out
of Ur of the Chaldeans to live a set apart holy life that hallowed
God’s name. Moses the same. His job as a
mediator, as a deliverer, was to deliver Israel out of Egypt
and into the promised land that God’s people there might serve
and worship him. Joshua and Caleb brought the
people into the promised land. They settled the promised land.
Everyone received their inheritance in their portions. They brought
the tabernacle. They eventually built the temple
and their life in the law of the land, their life in the moral
law and their life in the laws of the Levitical worship were
set that they might regard God as holy. and honor his name. David ruled as a king for the
glory of God. Solomon built the temple and
the splendor of God, the presence of God, the holiness of God,
which heaven cannot even contain. And for sure, no temple and the
glory of God settled on the people of Israel. They glorify God as
a nation. They worshiped him. Their way
of life was a witness. The whole world would look in
on Israel and say, look at them. They live differently. There’s
something about them and their God. And now, dear brothers and
sisters, as the Church of Jesus Christ, we don’t live together
in one nation and have people looking in on our witness. We
go out into the world and we go as salt and light. We go as
missionaries. We go as witnesses. It starts
in our homes. It makes its way into the schools
and the doctor’s offices, our places of business. But we go
and we live for the glory of God. Everything we do, we must
do because God says, as I am holy, be ye holy as well. Hallowed be thy name may be one
of the shortest petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. But let me
tell you, dear brothers and sisters, it is a mouthful. And so tomorrow
is your first eyelids open. As you think past the coffee
and as you think past how you’ll roll out of bed, may the first
beat of your heart be for this, that God will be honored in every
thought, word, and deed. That God will be honored as you
know, as you learn of him, as you acknowledge him, and as you
esteem him as holy, so that the world may know of the same God
whom you have come to know. Pray with me. Lord, we pray that
the self-revelation of God, you almighty, will be known and loved
and appreciated and acknowledged, that you will be highly esteemed
by us and all people. We pray, our Father in heaven,
that you would reveal yourself and let us know and recognize
and acknowledge you and that the name of God, your name alone,
may stand out in all the world. as a name of infinite wisdom
and knowledge and power, as a name of absolute lordship and sovereignty,
of unchangeable righteousness and truth, of matchless beauty,
of purest love, of boundless grace. May your name represent
abundant mercy. May it be the only name that
is worthy of all glory and adoration and praise forever. So incline
our hearts and so shape our lives that this may be so. And it’s
in Jesus name we ask this, amen.