The Lord's Prayer: Reverence

Matthew 6:9

September 15, 2002

 

Gardiner Spring is right, "There is nothing new on the subject of prayer" [The Mercy Seat: Thoughts Suggested by the Lord's Prayer, 1]. So considering the Lord's Prayer is not an attempt to be novel as though new secrets before unknown will be unfolded. Instead we are rehearsing the same truth that sustained the disciples as they sought to know how to pray. Throughout history, whether Tertullian or Augustine, Luther or Calvin, Broadus or Boyce, the Lord's Prayer has given form and life to the heart pouring cries of God's people. Last September 11th, it was the Lord's Prayer that Todd Beamer quoted with an operator before helping to lead the charge against the terrorists on Flight 93. Millions of voices will recite the Lord's Prayer this day - some with deep feeling and others by mere rote. Most of us have memorized the Lord's Prayer, and perhaps cannot even remember when - we just did it. But have we reflected on what it teaches us?

 

We consider the Lord's Prayer in detail because as Christians we must give great attention to prayer. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explained, "Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when, upon his knees, he comes face to face with God" [The Sermon on the Mount, II, 45]. Our culture values doing over being. As long as we give ourselves to religious activities then we consider ourselves spiritual. Yet prayer provides more of a barometer of the soul than the most feverish activity. For in prayer we are encountering the living God, bearing our souls before Him, contemplating Him, and seeing Him alone as our Father and Lord.  

 

Those holding strong views of God's providence and sovereignty may wrongly offer an excuse to prayer. Since the Lord knows what we need even before we ask, then why do we even need to ask?' one might question (Matt 6:8). My dear friend, Ray Pritchard, explains this clearly:

We do not pray to inform God of anything. Because God knows all things from the beginning to the end, he knows the future as well as he knows the past. It is not as if God "needs" our prayers in order to gather accurate information. God doesn't need our prayers, but we need to pray. We pray in order to express our complete dependence on our Heavenly Father. We pray to build our faith. We pray because he is God and we are not. We pray because God has ordained that our prayers are part of his unfolding plan for the universe" [And When You Pray: The Deeper Meaning of the Lord's Prayer, 17-18].


The Lord's Prayer is structured upon six petitions. Three point to God's glory, and three point to God's provisions for us. The Puritan pastor, Thomas Brooks, tells us, "The Lord's prayer is given us as a directory for prayer, a pattern and an example, by which we are to regulate our petitions, and make other prayers" [Works, II, 558]. In this way it is a pattern, a form, a skeleton upon which frame we comprise our heart urgings. It is not that we are required to use only the Lord's Prayer as our prayer, but we are to find it as the tracks upon which the train of our prayers run - it is in this sense the "Model Prayer," teaching us how to pray and not what to pray. Both mind and heart, intellect and emotion constitute the language of prayer. But we are not told to bring our random collection of self-centered desires before the cosmic dispensary. Indeed, we are told to pray, "Our Father who is in heaven." We approach the Creator of the universe in a unique way - not as one that cannot be known or that has no feelings for the creature - but as "Our Father who is in heaven." The Lord's Prayer first calls us to recognize the God-centeredness of prayer - and indeed of life itself.  Will you join me in asking the Lord to teach us to pray?

 

I. Prayer realizes relationship

 

Through prayer we enter the highest relationship possible for any human - that of the creature passing through the veil into the presence of the Creator. Through Jesus Christ we have the privilege of being ushered into the presence of One that has adopted us into His own family, so that by right of sonship we call Him "Our Father" (Heb 4:14-16, 10:19-22; Gal 4:4-7). Though all men are commanded to pray and seek the Creator (Acts 17:27), it is only kingdom citizens that have the right to call Him "Our Father." It is popular in public gatherings to quote the Lord's Prayer. We've witnessed this numerous times over the past year. While I am thankful that the Word of God is being publicly proclaimed on such occasions, we must all be reminded that the Lord's Prayer was the model that Jesus gave for those that followed Him. Prayer is relational not ritual, contrary to popular opinion. The heart of this relationship can be found in the opening phrase, "Our Father who is in heaven."

 

1. Community

 

At the doorway of the model prayer is the plural pronoun, "Our." Jesus regularly called God "Father." This title for God was rarely used in the Old Testament - only 14 times - and never in a personal way. So the intimate way that Christ called God "Father," offended the Hebrew mind. When our Lord called upon us to pray, "Our Father," he reminded us of the privilege that is ours through redemption and adoption, and the community of faith to which we are linked.

 

As Paul explained the assurance that belongs to the child of God, he does so by a three-fold emphasis on sonship, even telling us to cry out to God in the most tender term, "Abba! Father!". With intimate family terms, he explains that the regenerating work of God's Spirit and the rights of redemption through Christ frees us from the slavery of sin, and brings us into an eternal family:

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:14-17, italics added).


Rather than putting this in the singular, 'you are a son of God', the biblical writers maintain the sense of community among God's children. With the common individualism that permeates the Western mind, we need to be reminded that we are a community of faith. As Don Carson put it so firmly, "Christians are not to pray in splendid isolation, and not to construe spirituality in terms of the rugged individualism which stamps so much Western thought.... There is, no doubt, a place for paying as an individual to God; but the general pattern of our praying must be broader than that" [The Sermon on the Mount, 62]. So we recognize the community of believers as we address, "Our Father in heaven."

 

2. Paternity

 

There is a keen sense that "Our Father" marks off Christians from the rest of the world, and even from Judaism. No one else has the right to speak to God with such intimacy as those whom He has redeemed through the blood of His own Son. J. I. Packer expressed it so well: "You sum up the whole of the New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one's holy Father" [quoted by Sinclair Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount, 119].

 

And we are told to pray, "Our Father who is in heaven." Because of the effectiveness of Christ's redemptive work, and the faithfulness of his high priesthood, we can come boldly before the Creator of the vastness of the universe and pray, "Our Father who is in heaven." We do not come to a generic deity, using prayer as a therapeutic treatment for our woes. We come to the Creator, the Sovereign Lord of history, the Ruler of the ends of the universe, and we call Him, "Our Father."

 

How does such a title of our God affect you? Some of you may have bad memories of your earthly father. I have observed through the years that some people have unfounded fears of God, and grave apprehensions of depending upon Him because they bear deep wounds of their own earthly fathers that disappointed them time and time again. The image of father brings pain to them and not delight. They could never measure up to their father's expectations or demands. They never felt an intimacy with him because of his self-centered ways. That is why our Lord distinguishes the Heavenly Father from all sinful, earthly fathers. He is not like those bad memories that haunt your understanding of God. He is "Our Father who is in heaven." His Fatherhood of the redeemed family implies His own covenantal commitment to us. He cares for us, so we can cast our burdens upon Him (I Pet 5:7). He knows our needs before we ask because His eye is upon us (Matt 6:8, 25-34). He treats us as sons and not as slaves (Gal 4:6-7). He welcomes us to His throne to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:14-16). Gardiner Spring gives us a picture of what it means to call upon God as Father.

Secrets may be committed to God that cannot be committed to another. The world knows not of this relief, to spread before Him the secret wants of the soul; to tell them one by one; to tell them all. The conscience, wounded by a sense of sin, finds healing there. Want there finds supply; distrust finds confidence and depression finds praise. Ignorance is enlightened there; poverty is enriched, and weakness becomes strong. Darkness is there dissipated and trembling hopes encouraged. The bruised reed is not broken there, nor is the smoking flax quenched. Grace there cherishes what it bestows, and completes what it begins....

 

There are no broken cisterns at the mercy seat; it is all a fountain of living water, where streams flow from it, without which this earth were a desert [14-15].


 3. Enormity

 

Lest we become too familiar and casual with the Father, Jesus reminds us that He is "Our Father who is in heaven." While "Father" points to His immensity or nearness, "in heaven" points to His transcendence or otherness. This prepositional phrase helps to remind us of "his infinite greatness with the addition in heaven" [L. Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, 144]. Don Carson points out how the ancient Jew had such lofty views of God's transcendence that he often had no concept of His personhood, and could certainly not think of Him in terms of relationship. On the other hand, our modern way of thinking puts such emphasis on God's nearness that transcendence and sovereignty have almost disappeared from our thoughts of God. And consequently, many of the choruses that are so popular in evangelical circles offer a trite, casual, neighborly view of God that is so familiar as to lose any sense of deep reverence and awe [Carson, Sermon on the Mount, 63-64]. 

 

We need to think with the biblical writers as they pondered the enormity of our God. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth, who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!" (Ps 8:1). "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" (Ps 19:1). Isaiah explained that the Lord is so transcendent and majestic that  "all the nations are as nothing before Him, they are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless" (40:17). "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in" (40:22). And again, "Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing" (40:26).

 

And yet this transcendent God tells us - as kingdom citizens - to call upon Him as "Our Father who is in heaven." What does this say to us? "'In heaven' refers to heaven as the center of the universe and the seat of all authority, power, dominion, and greatness," writes Ray Pritchard. Yet "you are on earth and are therefore limited to this little ball of dirt floating around the sun in a little corner of a big galaxy called the Milky Way. And that galaxy is just one of millions of galaxies in a universe so huge that we cannot accurately measure it." Pritchard adds, "To say that we are "on earth" means that we pray from a position of weakness and comparative insignificance. God is in the seat of authority and all power" [33]. But this God confidently tells us to pray to Him as "Our Father who is in heaven." With all the tenderness of fatherhood, yes even multiplied by infinity, He calls upon us to pray to Him as our heavenly Father.

 

It is in the sphere of relationship to God as Father that kingdom citizens find the significance of prayer. It is not a psychological exercise that helps us to cope with the troubles of life, but the heart of children gathering into the bosom of their Father to find peace, comfort, security, and provision for every need. Do you see the Father like that? Are you in relationship to Him through faith in Jesus Christ alone? Then pray, and pray often and boldly, to the Father in heaven.

 

II. Prayer breathes reverence

 

Why are we to pray? I suppose the most basic answer that most would give is "to get things" or "to make us feel better." Yet that is far from the biblical meaning. "The object of prayer is the living God," wrote the 19th century pastor Gardiner Spring [p. 6]. We find this in the first petition of the prayer, "Hallowed be Your name." Kent Hughes explains, "The God-given order for prayer is to have regard for God first," as opposed to seeing prayer as a shopping list for our wants [The Sermon on the Mount, 162]. Prayer brings us into the presence of the living God. It is Him with whom we have to do. If the chief aim of man is "to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever," then we must see the centrality of prayer as a gift of grace for developing relationship with God and reverence for God.

 

1. Toward His Person

 

This reverence for God begins with recognizing His personhood. Unlike the God of Deism (so popular in the 18th century and continues popularity with much of the media's concept of God) that was impersonal, and more of a Star Wars type of "force," the God of Holy Scripture is a living Person. So Christ instructs our praying to give deep, intense consideration of the divine person when we pray: "hallowed be Your name." The ancient view of "name" conveyed the concept of personhood. It was not simply a moniker by which you are called, but recognition of the character and nature of the person. So when someone in the Old Testament had an encounter with God and learned something more of His character and attributes, he would express this by the title he used for God, e.g., Jehovah-Jireh, Jehovah-Tsidkenu, and El-Shaddai. God's reputation and personhood was conveyed in His name. When Moses encountered the Lord at the burning bush of Mount Horeb, the Lord revealed Himself as "I AM THAT I AM," the One that is eternally present, the One that is not bound by time or space, the One that cannot be held hostage by the puny ways of nations. Carson explains, "In the semitic perspective a person's name is closely related to what he is" [Sermon on the Mount, 64]. 

 

As we hallow the name of the Father, we pause in prayer to contemplate who He is and what He is. The use of "Your name" calls to mind the divine attributes, and the full extent of the divine character that we find revealed in Scripture. Spring helps us to see this.

We may not think of our Father who is in heaven as we think of any other being in the universe, nor address Him as we address another. He is in heaven, highly exalted as God over all, reigning there in invisible majesty, and dwelling in light that is inaccessible and full of glory. He is venerable for His greatness. He decks Himself with light as with a garment, and is arrayed in majesty and excellency. He stretches out the heavens as a pavilion. He lays the beams of His chambers in the waters. He makes the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the wind. The alterations of day and night, cold and heat, and all the varieties of the seasons, are determined by Him.... He does great things that are past finding out, yea, and wonders without number.... Clouds and darkness are round about Him; justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne. A fire goes before Him and burns up His enemies round about. His lightnings enlighten the world, and the earth sees and trembles. The hills melt like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see His glory. We call Him our Father while angels bow before Him, and before the splendor of His glory cover their faces with their wings. With what sacred emotions ought such a Being to be approached! [ 47].


We are to hallow Him, "asking that God's name be made great instead of our own" [Pritchard, 62]. We are to recognize the greatness of His name, and attach the worth due to His name that we are capable of doing with our finite minds. When Ezekiel prophesied against ancient Israel, the word of the Lord explained that the foundational problem was Israel's failure to recognize the Lord's name. "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,' declares the Lord God, 'when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight" (Ezekiel 36:22-23).

 

With Thomas Boston we can pray that the Lord "would make the honour [sic] of his name to break through all impediments in the way of it laid by men or devils... that he would drive his triumphal chariot over all the opposition made to it in the world, and appear unto men in his majesty and glory" [Works, II, 567]. Prayer breathes reverence toward the Lord, asking Him to show forth the glory of His name in the world.

 

2. By His people

 

But prayer also has an effect upon kingdom citizens in the way that we hallow the name of the Lord. "Hallowed be Your name," is structured so that a more literal translation would be, "Let your name be hallowed," or "May Thy name be held in reverence." The Christian calls upon the Father in heaven to glorify his name in all its uniqueness and fullness. The old term "hallow" is a translation of a word used over two dozen times in the Greek New Testament. It means "to treat as holy, to reverence" [Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament, 18]. It is the same word that Peter uses when he commands, "But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts," implying that we are to treat or regard Christ as holy and distinct with great submission, reverence, and adoration (I Pet 3:15). Isaiah explains the meaning when he declared, "It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your dread. And He shall be your fear" (8:13). The basic problem of Israel was that they had failed to treat the Lord as He deserves to be treated. So the Lord explained to Isaiah, "Because this people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service. But they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence [the same word] for Me consists of tradition learned by rote" (29:13).

 

The passive voice of the prayer means that we are praying that the Lord will so work in His mighty saving power, and through the displays of His righteousness in judging rebellion, that He will be glorified before all - and especially in the lives of His children. Martin Luther asked in his Greater Catechism, "How is it [God's name] hallowed amongst us?" Answer "When our life and doctrine are truly Christian" [quoted by Kent Hughes, 164]. So what does this imply about praying for the hallowing of the Lord's name? It means that we are asking Him to so work in sanctifying power in our lives that we might display the glory of His name as His people. For this reason, prayer is a time of daily consecration, and yielding to the will of God. It is a time for being searched by the Holy Spirit so that hidden sin is exposed and turned from. It is a time for laying our understanding of Scripture before the Lord, and pleading for His grace to obey.

 

John Piper points out four ways that we are to hallow the name of the Lord. First, we hallow Him by believing Him. On that occasion when Moses struck the rock twice in anger rather than speaking to it as God had told him, the Lord's reply shows how Moses failed to hallow Him: "Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy [to hallow] in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them" (Num 20:12). Believing Him hallows the Lord.

 

Second, in the passage I read from Isaiah 8:13 we find that the Lord is treated as holy by His people fearing Him and not men. "And He shall be your fear." Piper comments, "You hallow him by not fearing what men fear but fearing God. Very practically it means that when God commands you take your stand for him in a hostile situation, you fear displeasing God more than you fear the hostility of man." 

 

Third, Leviticus 22:31-32 tells us, "So you shall keep My commandments and do them: I am the Lord. And you shall not profane My holy name, but I will be sanctified  [hallowed] among the people of Israel; I am the Lord who sanctifies you." "We hallow the name of God when we keep his commandments. We profane the name of God when we break his commandments."

 

Fourth, When Aaron's sons died before the Lord because of treating Him in an unholy way, "Moses said to Aaron, 'It is what the Lord spoke saying, 'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored" (Lev 10:3). In this sense, to hallow and to glorify are practically synonymous, so we hallow Him when we glorify the name of the Lord [www.soundofgrace.com/piper/110484m.htm].

 

3. With aim for all peoples

 

As we pray for the hallowing of the Lord's name, we are looking beyond our own lives, and even beyond our circle of influence. We are praying that all peoples throughout the earth might hallow the name of the Lord. This means that our praying takes on global proportions - it has a missionary thrust. "Hallowed be Your name," implies a holy jealousy for the glory, worth, and honor due to the Lord. We are not content to until the nations are brought "into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory," as Piper put it [Let the Nations Be Glad! 11]. "May Your name be hallowed among the Massai!" "May Your name be hallowed among the Persians and Turks of Central Asia, and the Khandeshis and Saharias of India!"

 

Conclusion

 

Jesus taught his followers how to pray in the Lord's Prayer. We see that it begins with thinking upon our Father in heaven, contemplating His worth, majesty, attributes, the revelation in His names, and mercy. We also see that we are to pray with a view to living obediently in word and deed before the Lord for the hallowing of his name before the nations. My brethren, let us never approach prayer without a God-centered aim, and a heart bent on hallowing His great name.

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