Scripture: Luke 11:1 & Matthew 6:9; Rev. 4:1-8
Listen Link: Listen link: www.lcepc.org then look for “sermons” tab
As you know, we read Luke 11:2 and Matthew 6:9, it is the same as the KJV version of our prayer, “Hallowed be thy name.” A lot of us know that word, hallowed, from other phrases like “hallowed halls,” when we’re talking about a great old school or some other honored institution. The word also appears in Halloween.
Synonyms for Hallowed are revered, sacred, holy, deified and sanctified. So, the English Standard version of the Bible includes these footnotes for alternate readings: “Let your name be kept holy,” or “Let your name be treated with reverence.”
It could also be connected to Hallelujah. Sing Praises. Which could also be connected to Hello and Holler because the best way to hallow God’s name is to sing His praises loudly! There actually is a version of hallo that means, “shout to call attention,” used in 1781. It could also be connected to halo, that glowing aura around a saint’s head in Christian art. Hallow as a noun means a saintly person. All Saints’ Day used to be called All Hallows’ Day until the 14th Century, and that’s why we have the Eve of all Saint’s Day as “All Hallows’ Eve,” or Halloween.
Now as we get into exploring the depths of this, I want to point out, or remind you, that the Christian’s Prayer, this pattern that Jesus taught us, is part of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon is good news to the impoverished peasant class that comprised Jesus’ Galilean audience—farmers and fishermen. And as such, it’s packed full of practical teaching and illustrations lifted right out of his listeners’ daily lives. He talks about relationships, lust, money, worrying about the future and more.
And right in the middle of this practical, relevant sermon, Jesus talks about prayer. He says, as Matthew 6:7-8 has it, “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!”
In other words, Jesus is inviting his listeners into a prayer life that’s as concrete and practical as the rest of his Sermon. Jesus wants their prayers to have more to do with their regular world than with their sacred worship spaces.
More accurately, Jesus wants the religion they experience when they gather to worship to be the same life they live when they’re working, enjoying their friends or at home with their families. The language we use to talk to and about God will shape whether faith is an integral aspect of our whole lives, or if it’s a privatized, sectioned off corner of our lives we only visit occasionally. Jesus wants their religion to be integrated into the whole of their lives, not sectioned off into special days with special language.
Jesus knew that how we learn to pray matters. So, he taught them a different way to pray. But sadly, prayer didn’t stay fresh and practical for all time. Eventually, long after the resurrection, professional church people got ahold of it and turned the Lord’s Prayer back into the disconnected, ritualistic language, simply repeated word for word, exactly what Jesus specifically told us to avoid when he first taught us to pray! Rather than drawing on plain, everyday language to connect us to the God who’s working in our plain, everyday world, the now-archaic, pseudo-King James language we English-speakers use to quote the Lord’s Prayer ensures that each new generation of Christians continues to find prayer a daunting, intimidating practice.
But God wants our prayers to be meaningful to us. It is right and good for us work at translating the language of Jesus’ prayer into practical, plain language. And that explains exactly why I am doing this series on the Christian’s Prayer.
As I said last week, I will alert you to words that are hard for us to translate or understand in English. In this case it’s the word hallowed, and the phrase, “hallowed be” God’s name. The Greek word used means to be set apart as holy. And that’s what hallowed means too. But these days, do you know anyone in the workplace or the marketplace who uses the word hallowed in everyday language? Now if I want to update the language, I am not trying to change what is written in Greek. I am not changing the Word of God. I am trying to translate the original Greek using common, everyday words that anyone can readily understand so that they really hear the Word of God as God would say it today.
In addition, the phrase, “hallowed be” is in a grammatical structure that we just don’t use in modern language. It is like saying, “painted be your house.” We just don’t talk like that anymore. Even worse, we can’t tell if that sentence, “painted be your house,” means your house is painted, or that it should be painted because it needs it. But if we had to guess, we would probably settle on the idea that “painted be your house” means that the house already is painted, sort of like pirate talk, “Arrgh, painted be your house.” However, Greek scholars know that the Greek grammar for this line of the Christian’s prayer really means both; that God’s name ought to be treated as holy, because it already is holy. And that is like saying, the paint job on your house is so beautiful, you ought to maintain it, so it stays that way. Don’t let that beauty fade.
So, if we really want everybody to understand what we mean when we pray, “hallowed be thy name,” we really should pray something more like. “Lord you are so different from us, so wonderful and special, everybody should say so, and keep it up so that your name remains inspirational and respected in the eyes and ears of all who know you and also those who learn of you.” That is kind of long, so for now we’ll settle on “Your name is to be highly regarded.” That works because if we acknowledge that his name is special, we also ought to have sense enough to respect his name for the wonderful thing it really is.
We might simplify that further by saying, “Your name is holy.” But maybe we don’t want to use the word holy in our prayer because of the way that word is used today. I’m sure you’ve noticed many people today don’t use the word “holy” the way we mean it. I am sure you have heard people express themselves with phrases that use the word holy. Surely, you’ve heard of Holy Toledo! Or maybe you remember Robin of Batman and Robin in the old TV series. Do you remember Robin? Every time something happened that was like an “aha” moment or a surprise to him he would say something like, “Holy death ray batman! He’s gonna kill us all!” And there is also a very common vulgar phrase that begins with holy that really gets the word way off the base of its true meaning.
So, we have to talk about what “holy” really means. We often think it means religious, or morally pure. But in Leviticus, the book of the law, God repeated over and over to his people, a command along the lines of, "You are to be holy to me because I, The Lord, am Holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." (Leviticus 20:26) The basic definition of holy is simply to be set apart, or separated out from everything else. God himself is very different from us. He is the creator. We are the created. There’s a very big distinction between Him and us. If we say the Lord is holy, we simply He is separate from creation, above it all as creator.
There is another big difference between him and us. He is morally perfect. We are corrupted by sin. So, when God calls us to be holy, he is not saying we can become creators. He is saying that we are to become more and more “not of” the world as our morals and character improve by being in Christ, even as we remain “in” this world for the rest of our earthy lives. To be holy is to be “in the world but not of it.”
God is calling us to be separated out from the corruption of this world. He wants us back. He wants to call us to himself. One dictionary definition of holy says, "sacred, or dedicated to God." To be Holy is to be set apart. It is to be something completely other. As long as we are “of” this world, we are not holy. God is as different from us as man is to a fish and our understanding of that difference is about as limited as a fish's understanding is of the difference between it and us. We are not holy, we are common. Our prayer needs to acknowledge that fact. We need to acknowledge to whom we are praying, "Our Father," where He resides, "In Heaven," and His superiority to us, "Your name is to be honored and respected," before we rush into our own list of grievances, requests and complaints.
When we pray, we are not just talking to our friend down the street. We are addressing the Divine Being, who desires a relationship with us and who is eager to listen and be in relationship with us. Through His Son Jesus, in us, we become Holy as He is Holy, set apart, dedicated to God. We need to sustain that connection with Him, our Holy head to live out His Holy life on this earth. That’s what it really means to be different from the world, in it still, but “of it” less and less. This is the gospel. That through faith in Jesus we are changed from unholy creatures to new and holy creatures in Christ. We are changed form creatures enslaved to sin into new creatures who do not have to sin.
When God commands us, “Be holy, for I am holy.” It turns out he is not just asking us to behave better. No, the only way we can be holy is to be found in Christ who makes us holy by his grace. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That’s what makes you holy too.
And then, God wants us to be the answer to the prayer we pray, too. We pray that everybody ought to be shouting out about how great and wonderful and admirable God is. That prayer is also answered when we’re doing the praising! After worship, during the rest of the week, the prayer you prayed, for God’s name to be honored, is answered when you tell other people how great God is. That’s evangelism!
Now, as an outline or pattern, this is where we can also be led to pray for all our missionaries. That is because our missionaries are busy sharing the good news with new people who haven’t heard of God before so that more and more people find out how wonderful God is and learn to call him wonderful and awesome perfect and loving.
Even in Heaven, the creatures round His throne, constantly praise God for how "other," and "Holy," set apart, He is. He is the only uncreated being. All else, angels, creatures, and humans; all are created by His Will. We address our Creator, when we pray to Him. That means that God’s name should be treated with respect and honor. But why? Because He is so wonderful! God is gracious and compassionate, merciful and kind, all born out of a perfect love that desires to save and that is expressed through the grace of God in sending his own son to die on a cross to cleanse us of sin and make us holy. This is where all the perfect moral characteristics of God are captured in a single word, “Holy.” And if you are using the word holy with that understanding of its meaning in your use of the Christian’s prayer pattern. That’s great! It’s a pattern. We don’t all have to use the exact same words to be using the same pattern.
So, whatever words we, or you, use in place of “hallowed be thy name” I pray that we will understand this line in terms of a prayer that changes the world in which we live. This line is not merely a line of praise that proclaims that God is honorable. The Greek includes the idea that God’s name should be made honorable in the eyes and ears of all who hear it. We get to do that. We get to tell everyone how wonderful God is in his holiness. Again, that’s Evangelism.
So if I could rewrite the Christian’s prayer the way I think it would mean the most to us, it would start this way, “Our perfect Father who lives in heaven, everybody should know how wonderful you are and say so.”
For the health of your spiritual life, I am now giving you an assignment. For your prayer practice always start your prayers remembering that God is your Father in Heaven, a spectacularly wonderful, good and awesome being who loves you with all His power and will. That doesn’t mean you will never have any problems. But it does mean that your problems can be put in perspective and dealt with from a standpoint of faith in God. Instead of telling God how big your problems are, you can tell your problems how big your God is and put them in their place, by putting God in his place first as the most wonderful Lord of All, because that’s what He really is. Amen.
Listen Link: Listen link: www.lcepc.org then look for “sermons” tab
As you know, we read Luke 11:2 and Matthew 6:9, it is the same as the KJV version of our prayer, “Hallowed be thy name.” A lot of us know that word, hallowed, from other phrases like “hallowed halls,” when we’re talking about a great old school or some other honored institution. The word also appears in Halloween.
Synonyms for Hallowed are revered, sacred, holy, deified and sanctified. So, the English Standard version of the Bible includes these footnotes for alternate readings: “Let your name be kept holy,” or “Let your name be treated with reverence.”
It could also be connected to Hallelujah. Sing Praises. Which could also be connected to Hello and Holler because the best way to hallow God’s name is to sing His praises loudly! There actually is a version of hallo that means, “shout to call attention,” used in 1781. It could also be connected to halo, that glowing aura around a saint’s head in Christian art. Hallow as a noun means a saintly person. All Saints’ Day used to be called All Hallows’ Day until the 14th Century, and that’s why we have the Eve of all Saint’s Day as “All Hallows’ Eve,” or Halloween.
Now as we get into exploring the depths of this, I want to point out, or remind you, that the Christian’s Prayer, this pattern that Jesus taught us, is part of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon is good news to the impoverished peasant class that comprised Jesus’ Galilean audience—farmers and fishermen. And as such, it’s packed full of practical teaching and illustrations lifted right out of his listeners’ daily lives. He talks about relationships, lust, money, worrying about the future and more.
And right in the middle of this practical, relevant sermon, Jesus talks about prayer. He says, as Matthew 6:7-8 has it, “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!”
In other words, Jesus is inviting his listeners into a prayer life that’s as concrete and practical as the rest of his Sermon. Jesus wants their prayers to have more to do with their regular world than with their sacred worship spaces.
More accurately, Jesus wants the religion they experience when they gather to worship to be the same life they live when they’re working, enjoying their friends or at home with their families. The language we use to talk to and about God will shape whether faith is an integral aspect of our whole lives, or if it’s a privatized, sectioned off corner of our lives we only visit occasionally. Jesus wants their religion to be integrated into the whole of their lives, not sectioned off into special days with special language.
Jesus knew that how we learn to pray matters. So, he taught them a different way to pray. But sadly, prayer didn’t stay fresh and practical for all time. Eventually, long after the resurrection, professional church people got ahold of it and turned the Lord’s Prayer back into the disconnected, ritualistic language, simply repeated word for word, exactly what Jesus specifically told us to avoid when he first taught us to pray! Rather than drawing on plain, everyday language to connect us to the God who’s working in our plain, everyday world, the now-archaic, pseudo-King James language we English-speakers use to quote the Lord’s Prayer ensures that each new generation of Christians continues to find prayer a daunting, intimidating practice.
But God wants our prayers to be meaningful to us. It is right and good for us work at translating the language of Jesus’ prayer into practical, plain language. And that explains exactly why I am doing this series on the Christian’s Prayer.
As I said last week, I will alert you to words that are hard for us to translate or understand in English. In this case it’s the word hallowed, and the phrase, “hallowed be” God’s name. The Greek word used means to be set apart as holy. And that’s what hallowed means too. But these days, do you know anyone in the workplace or the marketplace who uses the word hallowed in everyday language? Now if I want to update the language, I am not trying to change what is written in Greek. I am not changing the Word of God. I am trying to translate the original Greek using common, everyday words that anyone can readily understand so that they really hear the Word of God as God would say it today.
In addition, the phrase, “hallowed be” is in a grammatical structure that we just don’t use in modern language. It is like saying, “painted be your house.” We just don’t talk like that anymore. Even worse, we can’t tell if that sentence, “painted be your house,” means your house is painted, or that it should be painted because it needs it. But if we had to guess, we would probably settle on the idea that “painted be your house” means that the house already is painted, sort of like pirate talk, “Arrgh, painted be your house.” However, Greek scholars know that the Greek grammar for this line of the Christian’s prayer really means both; that God’s name ought to be treated as holy, because it already is holy. And that is like saying, the paint job on your house is so beautiful, you ought to maintain it, so it stays that way. Don’t let that beauty fade.
So, if we really want everybody to understand what we mean when we pray, “hallowed be thy name,” we really should pray something more like. “Lord you are so different from us, so wonderful and special, everybody should say so, and keep it up so that your name remains inspirational and respected in the eyes and ears of all who know you and also those who learn of you.” That is kind of long, so for now we’ll settle on “Your name is to be highly regarded.” That works because if we acknowledge that his name is special, we also ought to have sense enough to respect his name for the wonderful thing it really is.
We might simplify that further by saying, “Your name is holy.” But maybe we don’t want to use the word holy in our prayer because of the way that word is used today. I’m sure you’ve noticed many people today don’t use the word “holy” the way we mean it. I am sure you have heard people express themselves with phrases that use the word holy. Surely, you’ve heard of Holy Toledo! Or maybe you remember Robin of Batman and Robin in the old TV series. Do you remember Robin? Every time something happened that was like an “aha” moment or a surprise to him he would say something like, “Holy death ray batman! He’s gonna kill us all!” And there is also a very common vulgar phrase that begins with holy that really gets the word way off the base of its true meaning.
So, we have to talk about what “holy” really means. We often think it means religious, or morally pure. But in Leviticus, the book of the law, God repeated over and over to his people, a command along the lines of, "You are to be holy to me because I, The Lord, am Holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." (Leviticus 20:26) The basic definition of holy is simply to be set apart, or separated out from everything else. God himself is very different from us. He is the creator. We are the created. There’s a very big distinction between Him and us. If we say the Lord is holy, we simply He is separate from creation, above it all as creator.
There is another big difference between him and us. He is morally perfect. We are corrupted by sin. So, when God calls us to be holy, he is not saying we can become creators. He is saying that we are to become more and more “not of” the world as our morals and character improve by being in Christ, even as we remain “in” this world for the rest of our earthy lives. To be holy is to be “in the world but not of it.”
God is calling us to be separated out from the corruption of this world. He wants us back. He wants to call us to himself. One dictionary definition of holy says, "sacred, or dedicated to God." To be Holy is to be set apart. It is to be something completely other. As long as we are “of” this world, we are not holy. God is as different from us as man is to a fish and our understanding of that difference is about as limited as a fish's understanding is of the difference between it and us. We are not holy, we are common. Our prayer needs to acknowledge that fact. We need to acknowledge to whom we are praying, "Our Father," where He resides, "In Heaven," and His superiority to us, "Your name is to be honored and respected," before we rush into our own list of grievances, requests and complaints.
When we pray, we are not just talking to our friend down the street. We are addressing the Divine Being, who desires a relationship with us and who is eager to listen and be in relationship with us. Through His Son Jesus, in us, we become Holy as He is Holy, set apart, dedicated to God. We need to sustain that connection with Him, our Holy head to live out His Holy life on this earth. That’s what it really means to be different from the world, in it still, but “of it” less and less. This is the gospel. That through faith in Jesus we are changed from unholy creatures to new and holy creatures in Christ. We are changed form creatures enslaved to sin into new creatures who do not have to sin.
When God commands us, “Be holy, for I am holy.” It turns out he is not just asking us to behave better. No, the only way we can be holy is to be found in Christ who makes us holy by his grace. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That’s what makes you holy too.
And then, God wants us to be the answer to the prayer we pray, too. We pray that everybody ought to be shouting out about how great and wonderful and admirable God is. That prayer is also answered when we’re doing the praising! After worship, during the rest of the week, the prayer you prayed, for God’s name to be honored, is answered when you tell other people how great God is. That’s evangelism!
Now, as an outline or pattern, this is where we can also be led to pray for all our missionaries. That is because our missionaries are busy sharing the good news with new people who haven’t heard of God before so that more and more people find out how wonderful God is and learn to call him wonderful and awesome perfect and loving.
Even in Heaven, the creatures round His throne, constantly praise God for how "other," and "Holy," set apart, He is. He is the only uncreated being. All else, angels, creatures, and humans; all are created by His Will. We address our Creator, when we pray to Him. That means that God’s name should be treated with respect and honor. But why? Because He is so wonderful! God is gracious and compassionate, merciful and kind, all born out of a perfect love that desires to save and that is expressed through the grace of God in sending his own son to die on a cross to cleanse us of sin and make us holy. This is where all the perfect moral characteristics of God are captured in a single word, “Holy.” And if you are using the word holy with that understanding of its meaning in your use of the Christian’s prayer pattern. That’s great! It’s a pattern. We don’t all have to use the exact same words to be using the same pattern.
So, whatever words we, or you, use in place of “hallowed be thy name” I pray that we will understand this line in terms of a prayer that changes the world in which we live. This line is not merely a line of praise that proclaims that God is honorable. The Greek includes the idea that God’s name should be made honorable in the eyes and ears of all who hear it. We get to do that. We get to tell everyone how wonderful God is in his holiness. Again, that’s Evangelism.
So if I could rewrite the Christian’s prayer the way I think it would mean the most to us, it would start this way, “Our perfect Father who lives in heaven, everybody should know how wonderful you are and say so.”
For the health of your spiritual life, I am now giving you an assignment. For your prayer practice always start your prayers remembering that God is your Father in Heaven, a spectacularly wonderful, good and awesome being who loves you with all His power and will. That doesn’t mean you will never have any problems. But it does mean that your problems can be put in perspective and dealt with from a standpoint of faith in God. Instead of telling God how big your problems are, you can tell your problems how big your God is and put them in their place, by putting God in his place first as the most wonderful Lord of All, because that’s what He really is. Amen.
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