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Intro…

Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 47 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 122.

Transition…

This week we continue working through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on one phrase right at the start of this prayer.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.

Lord’s Day Focus...

Question 122: What does the first request mean?

Answer: “Hallowed be Your name” means, Help us to really know you, to bless, worship, and praise You for all Your works and for all that shines forth from them: Your almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and truth. And it means, help us to direct all our living – what we think, say and do – so that Your name will never be blasphemed because of us but always honored and praised.

Now, I’m going to be honest and tell you that I have grown accustomed to thinking that the phrase, “Hallowed be Your name” was something that we do as we pray more so than thinking of it as a request within our prayer. I thought of it as something that one does as he/she begins to pray. IOW, Lord I hallow Your name.

I recognize that You are holy and I honor your name as I pray. This is an old-fashioned word that we don’t use that often nowadays, but hallow means to set apart as holy, to recognize as holy and to praise someone for their holiness.

That’s the spirit with which I have understood that phrase for many years and I don’t think this is a completely wrong way to approach it. Acknowledging the holiness of God resets our heart and mind around the most important thing about our prayers, namely the one we are praying to. My requests, my needs, my doubts or concerns aren’t nearly as important as my acknowledgement that My heavenly Father is holy and deserves to be honored by me.

But the Heidelberg brings out the fact that this is not simply a statement that we are making as we pray to God; this is actually our first request, “Lord would you hallow your name in me.” Jesus is telling us that the first thing we should pray for is for the name of God to be glorified and set apart as holy.

What is the significance of this? Jesus wants us to understand that the first and most important thing that we pray for should be for God’s name to be glorified. The most important thing is not that we get what we want, nor that we get what we need; but that God’s name and renown would be magnified in my heart and life.

How much does this change our prayers? How much should this change our prayers? We should enter into prayer with the chief concern for God to be glorified and the additional confession of sin or requests for help should serve that purpose. IOW, prayer is not chiefly about changing God’s heart so that He will do what I ask, but about changing my heart so that I can acknowledge the glory of His name.

The catechism goes on to say that this request is about us getting to really know God… to bless, worship, and praise You for all Your works and for all that shines forth from them. Knowing more of God is the greater part of the Christian life, all of life for that matter. I don’t simply want to know things about God, I want to know Him, truly, deeply, intimately. I want to grow in my experiential knowledge of my heavenly Father. That’s what this prayer is asking for.

As we grow to really know more of God we will praise Him, which is another way of saying that we will hallow His name in our heart and life.

Would we naturally think this way about prayer unless Jesus pointed it out to us? Maybe, but probably not. If we approach prayer without Jesus’ instruction, then we will overlook God’s glory and go straight to our needs. But this instruction causes us to slow down and recognize something beyond our simple needs. It causes us to see the need for more of God.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with praying like a child and asking God to bless us according to our needs and according to His will. Jesus teaches us about that very thing in Luke 11, but even then, the need for us to acknowledge God’s glory above our own is key.

When we pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name” we are saying that the thing which matters most in our prayer, in our lives and in this world is that God’s name be glorified.

Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer to learn what it means for us to ask for God’s Kingdom to come. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 48 and question 123.

Conclusion…

If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.

Thanks for listening.