In 1968 Irving West got into a fight at a high school carnival in Westminster, Maryland. When a police officer seized West, he snapped, “Get your g-damn hands off of me.” The next day, a judge sentenced West to 30 days in jail along with a fine for disorderly conduct. What surprised West was not the fine and 30 days in jail for his conduct, but the additional 30-days in jail with another fine tacked onto it for violation of Maryland’s 320-year-old blasphemy law, which states: “If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Savior Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity, or any of the persons thereof shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than 30 days or by a fine not more than 30 dollars.” that law has been ruled unconstitutional by the Maryland Court of Appeals since Irving West served his additional 30 days in prison.
It is possible that your understanding of the hallowing of God’s name has more to do with how we use his name than anything else. Now granted, I do believe to misuse God’s name verbally in any way is not only sinful but also a caricature of the person’s heart who misuses his name. However, to hallow the name of God has more to do with our posture towards him and how we really feel about him. To hallow the name of God is to honor who he is as holy. The Greek word that is used for “holy” is hagiazõ, which literally means, “to sanctify.” When we pray, to “hallow God’s name” it is a petition that God be known and regarded as holy.[1]
Every great work of God in and outside of the Bible where God caused a genuine revival and awakening among a people, it was in partnership with his people praying. Every season of prayer that preceded a great work of God among a people was in partnership with a genuine desire for the hallowing of God’s name by his people before the nations.
As the first century church was birthed, expanded, and turned the world upside down, it all happened as the people prayed out of a desire that God be known and regarded as holy. The Great Awakening overtook the New England States while people were praying. The modern mission’s movement began as a result of a prayer meeting. In fact, every revival, awakening, and movement that has come through the power of the Holy Spirit was the result of God’s people praying with a desire that God be known and regarded as holy.
Jesus prayed all the time; frequently we read in the Gospels that He would find a quiet place away from the noise. His prayer with the Father was the main artery for the success of his ministry and mission; it is in what has affectionately been called, ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ that he provides us with a model that he used himself.
God’s Name is to be Honored as Holy
I want you to see something that I believe will open this entire prayer up to you. There are six petitions in The Lord’s Prayer. The first is the one before us this morning: “Hallowed be your name.” I am not the only one who sees this, but just in case you have not seen this before, I want to show you something that I believe will reveal Jesus’ prayer in a way that I believe will affect your prayer life and the expectations you may have in how God should answer your prayers. So, let me just list the six petitions for you in order:
- Hallowed be your name
- Your kingdom come…
- Your will be done…
- Give us this day our daily bread…
- Forgive us as we forgive others…
- Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
Did you know that there is only one character trait (aka, attribute) of God that is emphasized more than any other, and that character trait is his holiness. Now, to be clear, there are other attributes that are true of God such as love, grace, mercy, and justice; as well as, his omnipresence (his ability to be everywhere at all times), omniscience (his all-knowingness), and his omnipotence (his all-powerfulness). However, it is not his love, grace, mercy, or justice that are emphasized in scripture to the third degree, only his holiness.
When we want to emphases something in literature, we may use an explanation mark, underline a word or sentence, use boldface type, or while texting… use all caps. But in the Bible, the primary literary device used for emphasis is repetition. Jesus used this literally devise frequently; you can hear it when we read his words, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). The word Jesus used in this verse and others like it for “truly” is the Greek word amēn, which simply means, “it is true.” In Isaiah 6:1-5, the holiness of God is the only attribute raised to the third degree:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (Isaiah 6:1–5)
Isaiah’s response to the holiness of God is the opposite of that which we read in the beatitudes. The one who comes to Jesus is blessed. Isaiah’s response after encountering the holiness of God was to pronounce a curse upon himself: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips…”. Isaiah responded the way he did because he understood the moment that he encountered the holiness of God that he deserved God’s wrath in light of his unholiness. It is in Isaiah’s statement that we get a clearer picture of the kind of posture that leads a person from the wrath of God to one who is blessed by God. Isaiah’s response helps us understand what it means to be poor in spirit, to mourn over your sin, and to finally reach the point where you are willing to surrender your will to the will of God Almighty.
What we see in the proceeding verses in Isaiah 6 is that God did not leave Isaiah to his sin but responded to Isaiah with mercy and grace: “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for’” (vv. 6-8). What is important to understand from Isaiah 6:1-8 is that God did not meet his prophet on Isaiah’s terms, but on his terms. God did not console him, pamper him, or make sure Isaiah’s feelings were not hurt. Isaiah’s sins were exposed in the presence of the holiness of God, and his response was absolutely appropriate: “Woe is me…!” Only after Isaiah recognized his sin for what it was and was undone, did God take away his guilt by atoning for his sin.
After Isaiah’s sin was atoned for, what was his response to God’s invitation: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Meekness! “Here I am! Send me.” Isaiah didn’t respond this way because he thought it would be fun, but because his desire was that God be known and regarded as holy. In the wake of the king’s death and the uncertainty of Israel’s future - in Isaiah’s mind, the thing that a people with unclean lips needed most was not another earthly king but to know and regard the one who is three times holy! John Calvin was right when he wrote: “Hence that dread and amazement with which, as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God…. Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.”[2] This is why I think the Christian Standard Bible captures the tone of the first petition in Jesus’ prayer best: “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.”
I am almost ready to show you something in Jesus’ prayer, that I believe will affect the way you pray from here on out, but before I do that, I want you to see something else regarding the holiness of God.
What Does it mean to Honor God’s Name as Holy?
Let me begin by showing you what honoring God’s name as holy does not mean. You cannot honor God’s name as holy if you believe yourself to be the center of his universe. As the Creator, the only one who has any right to be the center of creation is the One who created it in the first place.
After God delivered Moses and the Israelites from the clutches of Pharoah and his army by parting the Red Sea, Moses and the Hebrew people sang a song that is recorded for us in Exodus 15:1-18 (you should read the entire song when you get a chance); it is in verse 11 that we understand why it is that we exist for God and not the other way around: “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”
Edward Leigh, a puritan who lived in the 1600’s described the holiness of God as the “beauty of all God’s attributes, without which his wisdom would be subtlety, his justice cruelty, his sovereignty tyranny, his mercy foolish pity.”[3] Stephen Charnock, a puritan pastor in London during the 1600’s said of Exodus 15:11 that it is, “one of the loftiest descriptions of the majesty and excellency of God in the whole Scripture.”[4] Charnock then wrote a 134 page discourse that explains why he felt this way about Exodus 15:11.
Permit me to briefly share with you a short list of people who did not honor God as holy.
Nadab and Abihu, like their father Aaron, served as priests before God. They had experienced God is many different supernatural ways, and yet they decided that although there was a certain way they were commanded by God to mediate the sacrifices of the people before him, they would instead offer the sacrifices their own way. I am not sure what motivated them to do this; maybe they thought it would cut down time, or that they simply wanted to try something new. Whatever the reason was that led them to offer “strange fire” their choice reflected that they did not regard the holiness of God.
We are told in Leviticus 10:1-2 that, “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.” Listen to how Moses broke the news to Aaron about the death of his two sons: “Then Moses said to Aaron,‘This is what the Lord has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” What was Aaron’s response to the news? Did he protest? Did he complain how unfair that was? No. We are told that, “Aaron held his peace.” (Lev. 10:3).
In the first three chapters of 1 Samuel, we learn about another priest by the name of Eli whose sons had no regard for the holiness of God. We are told that in Eli’s old age he rebuked his sons for the way they behaved as priests: “Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, ‘Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people’” (1 Sam. 2:22–23).
Eli’s rebuke of his sons was as far as he went in addressing their sin, he went no further. We learn that Eli was also guilty of not regarding God as holy by the way he served as a priest. He literally got fat on the sacrifices the people of Israel offered by eating the best parts of what was given to honor the LORD. God judged Eli’s sons through their deaths, and he also judged Eli through his own death, but not before God rebuked him with the following words: “Why do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel.” Then God warned Eli: “I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed” (1 Sam. 2:28-30).
In Isaiah 6 we are told that Isaiah had a vision of God in the year that King Uzziah died. What led to the tragic ending of his long succession as king was his pride. King Uzziah thought that no one had the right to tell him what he could or could not do… including God himself. Only the Levitical Priests were permitted to mediate the worship of Israel in the temple. No one else was permitted to burn incense in the place that was consecrated as holy except for the men who belonged to the one tribe God set apart from the rest of the tribes of Israel, the tribe of Levi. When King Uzziah attempted to enter the temple to burn incense, we are told that the priest Azariah and 80 other priests tried to stop the king; we are told what happened next in 2 Chronicles 26,
But Azariah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the Lord who were men of valor, and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God.” Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord, by the altar of incense. And Azariah the chief priest and all the priests looked at him, and behold, he was leprous in his forehead! And they rushed him out quickly, and he himself hurried to go out, because the Lord had struck him. And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. (vv. 17–21)
There are many other stories in the Bible that serve to warn us of the dangers in approaching a holy God in a way that we fail to regard and honor him as holy. There is the story of King Saul who failed to obey all that God instructed him, so God removed his kingdom from him (see 1 Sam. 15). There is also the story of Uzzah who thought the dirt was filthier than his hand when he saw the Ark of the Covenant teeter, and placed his hand on it to stabilize it, and then died as a result (see Num. 4:15-20; 2 Sam. 6:5-7). These stories are not only in the Old Testament, but they are also in the New Testament with the death of Ananias and Sapphira who lied about how much they gave to the Church out of a desire to be honored and esteemed (Acts 5:1-11). Finally, there are some of the Corinthian Church who used their communion time as an excuse to get drunk; many got sick and died, as we are told that God brought the sickness upon them as a form of judgment for their sin (1 Cor. 11:27-30).
I share these stories with you to help you see the importance of the first petition in The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name.” So, here is what I want you to see that I believe will affect the way you pray, worship, and live your life. The five petitions that follow this first petition in our Lord’s prayer serve the first. Now, read our Lord’s model for prayer with that in mind:
- Your kingdom come… for the hallowing of your name.
- Your will be done… for the hallowing of your name.
- Give us this day our daily bread… for the hallowing of your name.
- Forgive us as we forgive others… for the hallowing of your name.
- Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil… for the hallowing of your name.
Do you see it? We exist for the renown of God’s holy name! He is the center of the universe, which means that we are not. What this means my dear Christian is this: all that we do is not about us, but about “Our Father who is in heaven.” He is the Creator, and we are the creature. He is in heaven while we are on earth. He is heavenly while we are earthly. He is eternally sufficient while we are utterly dependent upon him.[5]
All that we do should be motivated and shaped by a desire for the hallowing of God’s name in and through our lives and the world around us just as we are repeatedly reminded throughout Holy Scripture:
“For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Isaiah 48:11)
“For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 1:11)
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33–36)
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20, ESV)
Only when God becomes the center of your universe, will you be able to see your life and world properly. When God is your true center, only then will you experience the satisfaction and joy you designed you to experience.
“Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exod. 15:11)
