Phil Wood, open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. If you didn't bring your Bible, we have that in your worship guide, the text we're gonna be looking at tonight. We are taking a break from our series of going through second Corinthians because it's the last Sunday of the month, and the last Sunday of every month, we are, we're taking a look at the lord's prayer. And so last month, we looked at our father. Tonight, we're going to look at the phrase, hallowed be thy name.
Jeffrey Heine:You might be asking, well, what about the in heaven parts? You know, our father in heaven. Well, we've already looked briefly at that the last couple of weeks as we've been going through 2nd Corinthians, and we're gonna look at it a lot more in detail when we look at thy kingdom come. And so so be patient. We're we're going to deal with that.
Jeffrey Heine:But but tonight, we're gonna be spending most of our time looking at the petition, hallowed be thy name. Matthew chapter 6. Begin reading in verse 5. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward receive their reward.
Jeffrey Heine:But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this.
Jeffrey Heine:Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Pray with me.
Jeffrey Heine:Our father, we do ask that in this moment, the name of Jesus would be lifted up high, and through your spirit, you would draw all people to yourself. Pray that no man here receives any glory or any attention. Nobody walks away from here just thinking about the musicians or the preacher, but we would walk away thinking much about you. Lord, we have a lot happening tonight with the celebration of the Lord's supper with with baptism, with meeting our new members, with our time of fellowship afterwards. Lord, we ask that in all of these things, all of these gifts and all of these symbols that you have given us, that they would help us to understand you more, that they would help us to love you with more affection.
Jeffrey Heine:And now as we look at your word, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and be remembered no more. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. When Jesus asks his disciples to pray, the very first thing he tells them to do is you you address God by saying, our father in heaven.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we looked at how we're supposed to call God our father. This is a a very intimate term. One that means that we are completely accepted by him. We, we, we, we need not fear to be in his presence. We we have his affection.
Jeffrey Heine:And when we think of a father, think of just like an earthly father. We we could go to our father and he will he will meet our earthly needs. But we don't just pray to god as father, we pray to him as our father in heaven. Now you can describe heaven a number of ways. I'm just gonna say it's it's the unique place where God reigns over the universe.
Jeffrey Heine:Earlier in the sermon on the mount, Jesus actually says that heaven is God's throne. So it's it's where God uniquely reigns. And we're gonna look more about that next month. But for now, Jesus' main point is that god is your father, but he's he's not he's not an earthly father with earthly limitations. He has no limitations.
Jeffrey Heine:He is a heavenly father. He has absolute power, absolute control. And the the reason this is important is because, as a earthly father, I know my limitations, and sometimes it's pretty discouraging. I actually like to think I'm a halfway decent dad. You know, I'm I'm a pretty good father.
Jeffrey Heine:Yet, I can pretty much assure you that tonight, when we, you know, go over to the castles for our time of fellowship, I'm going to lose track of at least one of my 3 children. And I will have no idea what they are doing. So if they make it through the evening, it will be a miracle because I I can't be everywhere at once. And so I have failed them many times. And then when Caroline was a little baby, and I'm trying to show you, you know, like, tough love.
Jeffrey Heine:We're just gonna let her cry through the night. I remember the first time we did that, she is screaming her head off in the other room, and I'm like, Not going in there. Not going in there. Not going I mean, it's just screaming, screaming. I was like, She will, she will go to sleep.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm going to win this battle. And then we wake up in the morning and we find her foot was crammed in the side of the crib. And she was just like, it was pinching her, and she was screaming all night while her dad was on the other side of the door doing nothing. You think I would learn the lesson? Well, then Natalie comes, you know, and so same thing.
Jeffrey Heine:Tough love. I'm gonna let you scream all through the night. And so she is screaming and she is crying. And finally, she goes to sleep. And when I go in there, she is just surrounded in her own vomit and that she had to sleep in.
Jeffrey Heine:As her dad, her loving dad was on the other side of the door. This as much as dads love their children, Like, I I can't I can't see through walls. I I can't I can't always be watching over her and and even when I am acting out of love, I can make mistakes. But our father is in heaven. There there is not a place we can go where we would ever escape his gaze.
Jeffrey Heine:He perfectly watches over us and he has complete control and sovereign reign and protecting us, navigating our lives. Now the lord's prayer is broken up really into 2 main parts. The the first part is set with 3 petitions, and and they're very majestic. They they're all about god. They're about god's name, god's kingdom, god's will.
Jeffrey Heine:And then the second part of the prayer is a little more mundane. It's it's about us. It's about our bread, our forgiveness, our deliverance. And so you have first part, first three requests, petitions that God teaches us to pray are all about God. I mean, just right there, you could land and you could just you could think about your own prayer life, and you could just think, where is my priority in prayer?
Jeffrey Heine:Because the very first three things god teaches us a prayer all about him, not about us. The very first petition is of absolute importance. Hallowed be your name. Now for some reason, if you're praying this, you have to say hallowed. It's the only time ever you will say the word hallowed.
Jeffrey Heine:All the other times you will say hallowed. I don't know why we do hallowed, but we do. We say hallowed. And when we say hallowed be thy name, this is a petition. This is not a statement.
Jeffrey Heine:We're not saying, lord, your name is hallowed. We're saying, let it be hallowed. May it be this. It's a it's a petition. Now, we don't use this word hallow very much.
Jeffrey Heine:Although, on this Thursday night, we're going to celebrate all hallows eve. You know, the the day in the liturgical, you know, church calendar in which, we remember the saints of old. And we do so by dressing up like Frankenstein or a Miley Cyrus or a Transformer or something, and and going to people's homes and knocking and asking them to go as candy, or we'll egg their house. And that's how we we honor their, you know, their memory. And this all hallowed eve.
Jeffrey Heine:So given that that's the only time we ever even think of the word hallowed, we probably need to define it differently, because it does have a much different connotation to it. Probably every translation you have uses the word hallowed, and the reason is there's not really a good alternative. It's an old word, but it's really the only word that we can use. And so even though I'm reading from one of the most modern translations around, it keeps this very old word, hallow. To to hallow something means to treat it as sacred.
Jeffrey Heine:It means that you're going to make this thing or this person the most crucial, important thing in your life. It's the ultimate thing in your life. To to hallow something means that you you treasure it above all else. That you see it as ultimately beautiful. It's, it's beyond compare.
Jeffrey Heine:It's holy. And and by holy, holy just means set apart or it's not like anything else. It is uniquely treasured. So when Jesus teaches us to pray hallowed be your name, he is saying, father, may your name be treasured. May your name be adored.
Jeffrey Heine:May your name be set apart from every other name. May it be supremely honored and valued above all else. And that's our first petition. And it's it's not just your first in order. It's the first in prominence.
Jeffrey Heine:This petition is going to set the stage for all of the other petitions that will follow. So we are gonna pray that god's kingdom would come after this. But the reason we are going to pray, god, may your kingdom come, it's because we want your name to be hallowed. And so when we when we pray that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven, it's because we want His name to be hallowed. We want it to be treasured and adored on earth just like it is in heaven.
Jeffrey Heine:When we pray for bread for sustenance, we're praying that we would have strength in order to worship God in order to hallow him. When we're praying that he would forgive us, it's an order that his name would be hallowed. We pray that we'd be delivered from evil. It's an order that God's name might be supremely treasured. So so in other words, if you don't if you don't understand that we are to hallow God's name, hold it up as supreme worth, and that's the ultimate goal, you're not gonna get the rest of the Lord's prayer.
Jeffrey Heine:You might actually pray the rest of the Lord's prayer for very selfish reasons. So what does Jesus mean when he says we're to hallow god's name, what what exactly is he, you know, telling us to do it? It It it sounds a lot like the 3rd commandment. You know, the 3rd of the 10 commandments, which is thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain. Sounds like hallowing his name.
Jeffrey Heine:It was a commandment that was needed 34 100 years ago when when Moses gave it to the Israelites. It was a commandment needed 2000 years ago when when Jesus is teaching this, and it certainly is a commandment that that we would need now. Because everywhere, you know, I look, people are taking the Lord's name in vain. You you cannot watch TV. You cannot watch a movie and not hear the lord's name taken in vain.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, as I was watching some movie, and I cannot count the number of times that, you know, this teenage girl would say, Jesus Christ, or she would say, Oh my God. And it wasn't done at a prayer. It was done just as an a general expression of surprise or maybe to fill in a gap instead of saying, you know, that's that's what it was the equivalent of. And when we hear this, I I think we've become so desensitized to it, but when we hear this, it should sound like somebody, you know, scraping their nails on a chalkboard. It should just hurt us, pain us.
Jeffrey Heine:When we hear the lord's name taken in vain, said with such irreverence. To hear the name Jesus Christ used as a swear word at times is blasphemy, and and it needs to strike us as such. Now, I I know people who do that, and I don't think for a moment that they wake up in the morning, and they're like, you know, stretch, and they're like, how can I blaspheme God today? You know, let me just kind of think of what's, what's the worst way that I could possibly blaspheme his name. And, and then they go about doing that.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't know anybody who deliberately does that. A matter of fact, if you were to ask some of the people who who take the lord's name in vain all the time, they would say, I I well, I didn't mean to blaspheme god's name. I wasn't even thinking about god at all when I said it. And there's the blasphemy right there. They weren't even thinking about god.
Jeffrey Heine:The God who spoke the very universe into existence. The God who created them, the God who commands their very next breath. They don't give him a thought. There's the blasphemy. And it allows them to to say his name with such irreverence.
Jeffrey Heine:God is not central to a person's life. That's gonna be the outflow of it. And really, when you think of it that way, these people are not so much breaking the 3rd commandment, they are. But really, they're breaking the first, that thou shall have no other gods before me. Or another way of saying that is that god should be first and foremost in my thoughts and in my affections.
Jeffrey Heine:That god should be of central importance in my life. That god should be the one who I build my entire identity on. God should be hallowed. When Jesus teaches us to pray hallowed be your name, he's not so much reminding you of the 3rd commandment as he is reminding you of the first that you should have no other gods before him, that there should be nothing, nothing that you build your life on apart from him. There's nothing that you should treasure more than him.
Jeffrey Heine:So, the question is this, how do we know? How do we know if we were actually doing this? How do we know if we're worshiping other gods before the one true god, the lord god? How do we how do we know if we're really hallowing his name? And by his name, I mean, his character, his his being, his person.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus tells us how when he's one of the ways how, when he sets up this prayer in Matthew 5. Look again at verse 5. Look at verse 5 and 6 with me again. Jesus says, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others.
Jeffrey Heine:And truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. Your father who sees in secret will reward you. So here, Jesus is setting up a contrast between hypocrites who pray in public and a prayer life done in secret. Now, why are these people here who pray in public, hypocrites?
Jeffrey Heine:That's one of the questions you have to answer. Why the hypocrites? A a hypocrite was an actor. It was one who responded to a cue, one who would put on a show for for others, who what they did outwardly doesn't really match their inward person. That's that's a hypocrite.
Jeffrey Heine:But why were these people's public prayers hypocritical? Well, was it because they didn't pray at home at all, and so just prayer in general was hypocritical for them? Or was it how they prayed at home when they are in secret was vastly different than how they prayed when they're with people. And I and I think that's what Jesus is driving at. He's sensing that the way that these people would pray in public did not match their inward desires and how they would pray in private if they did pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Because because, you know, public prayers are they're always centered around God and and praising him and adoring him. And so you're going to pray things like, you know, if it's a public prayer, God, you are Holy, you are majestic. God, you you reign supreme in power and you're glorious. And you're gonna pray things like that when you're praying in public. That's what public prayers look like.
Jeffrey Heine:And I think Jesus is calling them hypocrites because that's not what their prayers look like when they were in private. Privately, their prayers were a lot more probably centered on themselves and their needs. So if or when these people would pray in private, they would, they would pray all their true affections, which were centered on themselves. Then they would be rightly called hypocrites. I think Jesus is saying that what you pray for in private truly reveals what you hold dear in your heart.
Jeffrey Heine:So what do you pray for in private? Does it match how you pray in public? What what occupies most of your private prayer? Perhaps a better way or another way of thinking about this is, what drives you to pray? What what happens in your life that that makes you pray?
Jeffrey Heine:Do do you only pray privately maybe when your health is threatened? When you have a serious sickness, then you go into your closet and then you pray, and you and you pray, god, make me well. If so, what you are hallowing is your health, not God. If perhaps when there's a financial crisis and it comes upon you, and that drives you to pray, that's the only time that you pray. Then what you are hallowing is money, not God.
Jeffrey Heine:If you only pray when you're having marital problems or or if you're single, you only pray in order that you might get married. It shows that marriage is what you hallow, not God. What what drives you to pray? I could give you an indication of what you're hallowing. Is the praise and adoration of god what drives you to prayer in secret.
Jeffrey Heine:So how you pray in private reveals what you hallow. If you only pray when you are in trouble or when something is being threatened, and that's the only time you pray, that thing in your life that's being threatened has the affection of your heart. It's what you hallow. It's what the Bible would call an idol or a god. So you're violating that first commandment.
Jeffrey Heine:You're having other gods besides him. Because all of us, when we pray publicly, of course, we're going to praise and we're going to adore God, but what really holds our inward affections? What drives us during those times? We go to the closet. I feel like I need to be clear on this.
Jeffrey Heine:Please pray for your health. You know, please pray about your jobs and your marriage. Do all those things just like you're supposed to pray for daily bread. Alright? But once again, what frames it?
Jeffrey Heine:I pray for a good marriage so that god, your name might be hallowed and treasured. The hallowing of God frames and directs all those other prayers. So what do you do if this is not you? You know, like, you know, you're hearing this and, like, I hear that. I agree with that, and that honestly is not me.
Jeffrey Heine:How do I how do I change this? How how can I increase my affections? If if you would, let me point you to one place. If you would turn to Exodus 34. Exodus 34 verse 5.
Jeffrey Heine:Exodus is the 2nd book in the bible, so you'll be turning a good bit. This is perhaps the best passage that I know of to, understand how God himself hallows his own name. This is how God hallows his own name. Set the context here. Moses has requested to see God's glory.
Jeffrey Heine:God somewhat agrees, and he says, alright. And so he hides Moses in the cleft of a rock, and he covers him with his hand, and he walks by Moses. And then as he releases his hand, Moses gets to see just a glimpse of of God and his glory. And as God is passing by, he declares his name. Yahweh.
Jeffrey Heine:Yahweh. But he doesn't just say his name. He goes on to kinda tell what he means when he says it. Here, you get a glimpse of god treasuring or hallowing his own name as he is walking by Moses declaring it. And so that's that's the context here of exodus 34.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll begin reading in verse 5. The lord whenever you see the lord in all caps, that is the name of the lord Yahweh. Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed Yahweh. Yahweh.
Jeffrey Heine:A God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, Keeping steadfast love for 1,000. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the 3rd and the 4th generation. So so that's how god hallows his name by by by saying these these words.
Jeffrey Heine:See, he says, Yahweh, Yahweh And when you think of Yahweh, when you think of me, think of this. And he says, I'm merciful. I'm gracious. I'm slow to anger. I'm abounding in steadfast love and faithful, and I forgive sins.
Jeffrey Heine:Treasure that. Delight in that as I am delighting in that. However, god then reminds them that he's holy and he's just And he says, and I will by no means clear the guilty. Look at verse 7. I mean, verse 7 is one of those verses you should probably have highlighted, starred, underlined everything in your bible.
Jeffrey Heine:It is one of the most crucial verses in the bible. He says, he's a God who he is keeping steadfast love for 1,000, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty. That makes no sense. I'm the god who forgives and I will by no means clear the guilty.
Jeffrey Heine:I hold them accountable. I wait. Can you run that by me again? You're the you're the god who forgives. You're gracious and you're merciful.
Jeffrey Heine:I forgive. And yet I will hold you absolutely accountable. I will not clear the guilty. And god holds up both of those things, and he says, you wanna hallow my name, you wanna treasure my name, hold up both of those things. What god is doing is he is pointing to the cross where we see that on beautifully on beautiful display.
Jeffrey Heine:Or when we look at Jesus, we see that God is forgiving, that he is gracious, that he is loving, that he has been faithful when I have been faithless. And that warms our hearts, but but we also wanna serve a just god. We also wanna love a just god, but that's a big problem for us. And so, once again, when we look at Jesus, we see, he doesn't clear the guilty, but he has placed my guilt upon Jesus, and he has poured out his wrath on Jesus. And so, at the cross, we see both the love of God and the justice of God, the mercy of God and the wrath of God bound together on beautiful display.
Jeffrey Heine:Says, you want to hallow my name. Think of that costly love. Think of that costly love that has drawn you to myself. And when that is center and that is foremost, my name will be hallowed in your midst. We're gonna take time to remember that in a couple of ways now.
Jeffrey Heine:We're gonna remember that in the the visible way of the Lord's supper, taking communion, and we're also gonna see that on display, when we have baptisms outside, when we have another picture of the death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus. I'm thankful for the tangible displays that we have, these reminders, to help anchor these things in our soul and to to remind us that these are real. When when Jesus said he's the bread of life, sometimes we could just we just it could be merely a thought, but but then he he breaks bread and he gives it to us. And he says, just as this bread is real, I am real. My body was not just broken on a page.
Jeffrey Heine:It was really broken for you. So we remember that at this time. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and he broke it. And he said, this is my body broken for you. In the same way, he took the cup So this is the cup of the new covenant.
Jeffrey Heine:This is cup as my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sin. The apostle Paul would later say, as often as you eat of this bread and you drink of this cup, you proclaim Christ's death until he comes again. We remember we collectively remember both the grace and the mercy and the loving kindness of God, And we remember the wrath poured out on sin, and we see those things on beautifully pictured before us on the cross and we hallow his name. This is how we're gonna take communion tonight. We're actually gonna have 3 lines.
Jeffrey Heine:So we'll have a line here, a line in the middle, a line there. And just come as as the Lord leads, and if you would just, break off a piece of the bread and just just dip it in the cup and take. And then you're welcome if you wanna pray at 1 of the the kneeling benches here, return to your seat to pray or to sing. We're gonna have some songs going on the during this time. Feel free to do as the lord leads.
Jeffrey Heine:Pray with me now. Our father, we pray that we would, in this moment, hallow your name. That we would adore you, that we would treasure you, that we would see you as supremely valuable and of infinite beauty and worth beyond all else. I pray we would see those things as we focus on the cross, And as we take of this tangible reminder of that. So God, as we do this, we ask that you would come and this would not just be communion in name, but it'd be communion in spirit, and that indeed that you would be present here in our midst.
Jeffrey Heine:Spirit, now anchor these things in our hearts and our souls. Give us new life that we might see and celebrate the name of Jesus. And we pray this in His name. Amen.