Message from the Master September 3rd, 2006 Lord, Teach Us To Pray - Hallowed Be Your Name James Hogg was the governor of Texas at the end of the 1800s. Now, you’ve probably never seen Governor Hogg, probably never even heard of him. But I’m guessing you have a picture in your head of what he looks like. If you’re familiar with the long-expired show, The Dukes of Hazzard, you may be picturing someone like the character Boss Hogg, who was a rather large gentleman and not very neat. What if his name, instead of James Hogg, were James Frog, or James Turtle? What picture might pop into your mind when you hear those names? In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us the value of a name, specifically, the value of God’s name when he teaches us to pray to our Father, “Hallowed be your name.” Today God will speak through the life and message of the prophet Jeremiah, who gives us an excellent example of how to keep God’s name holy in our living and our teaching, and why doing so can, at times, be so painfully difficult. (15) You understand, O Lord; remember me and care for me. Avenge me on my persecutors. You are long-suffering – do not take me away; think of how I suffer reproach for your sake. (16) When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty. (17) I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation. (18) Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? Will you be to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails? (19) Therefore this is what the Lord says: “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them. (20) I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you,” declares the Lord. (21) “I will save you from the hands of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the cruel.” Let’s play with some more names. What do you think of when I say “Tiger Woods?” You may have thought of golf, NIKE, winning, or any number of other characteristics of Tiger Woods. Now, I didn’t mention golf, Nike, or winning when I said his name, but I’m guessing you may have those things anyway. What do you think of when I say “Jeffrey Dahmer?” You might think of murder, cruelty, Milwaukee, prison, or any number of other characteristics. But again, I didn’t mention any of those things before many of you most likely thought of them. Why is that? It’s because a person’s name is basically their reputation. When you hear someone’s name, you don’t just think of the arrangement of letters that make it up. Your mind brings forward everything you know about the person with that name. Michael Jordan. President Bush. Osama bin Laden. Pete Rose. Ronald Reagan. Madonna. Neil Diamond. Billy Joel. What went through your mind when you heard their names was their reputation, whatever information, relevant or not, true or not, that your brain has stored about them. When people hear your name, they think of everything they know about you. Jeremiah understood this about God in our reading today. When he spoke the Lord’s name, he also spoke what was in his mind when he called his name. Jeremiah called on the Lord because he knew he was understanding, mindful, caring, protective of his people, long-suffering with his people – apparently, all characteristics Jeremiah needed in his life, but how did he know God had all that to offer? Have you ever met Osama bin Laden? I’m guessing you haven’t, but I’m assuming you still have an opinion of him. Had you ever met Ronald Reagan? Most of you haven’t, but we still know so much about him. Why is that? It’s because we have the advantage today of having so many peoples’ lives on display for us in the pages of magazines & newspapers, and on the screens of our televisions and computers. Have you ever met God? Have you seen his face? Have you touched his hands? Have you felt his breath? Then why is it that you or Jeremiah or anyone else knows who he is and what he does? It’s because we have the advantage of having his characteristics on display for us in the pages of Scripture. It’s in the pages of Scripture that God has chosen to reveal to us his name, his reputation, everything we know about him. And if you look through the pages of Scripture, you will find that God has given himself more than one name. He has a multitude of names, and they each reveal to us a different aspect of his reputation. He calls himself “Immanuel,” which literally means, “God is with us.” From this name God wants us to know that wherever we are and whomever we are with, we never have to feel alone or helpless because God is in fact with us. And whenever you hear his name, Immanuel, he wants that aspect of his reputation to pop into your mind. He calls himself “King of kings,” meaning that there is no one higher than him who can overrule him on anything. So when you start to think that sin rules the world, or that that devil has final say over you, he wants you to hear this name and be assured that someone much greater, stronger, and loving is protecting you. God has many other names – The Holy One, Messiah, Alpha and Omega, Morning Star, Good Shepherd, the Resurrection, the Way, the Truth, the Life, and plenty more. And each one conveys a different aspect of who God is and what he does, and your time would be well spent becoming more familiar with each of his names and what they mean. Because each one of them gives a unique promise to you. They each emphasize something wonderful that God wants to do for you. So we have God’s name down. God’s name is his reputation as revealed in Scripture. But what does it mean to “hallow” something? From my own personal experience, I don’t know if I’ve ever used this word except when speaking the Lord’s Prayer. It’s easy to get this word confused with the word “hollow,” as in, a tube is hollow. But that wouldn’t be right. We would then be praying that God’s name would be void of any substance or meaning, which I’m sure none of us want to imply. The first definition of the word “hallow” given by the dictionary is “to make holy.” So really, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we’re saying, “Our Father in heaven, holy be your name.” We want God’s name to be holy. Now, there is a common mistake people make when considering this petition. You see, often, when you want someone to “be” something (“hallowed be your name”), you mean that you want that person to “become” something because they are not that way yet. When you say, “I want to be an astronaut,” you are implying that currently you are not an astronaut. When you say, “I want my car to be fixed,” you are implying that currently it is not fixed. In this case, when you pray, “Hallowed be your name,” that can be taken to mean that God’s name currently is not holy, that he has to become holy, in a sense, that he has to prove his holiness to us. This is a very easy mindset to slip into because we see so many unholy things around us that often it’s difficult to believe that a holy God really exists or, at the very least, is interested in our lives. Even Jeremiah thought this way. He said, “Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable?” Basically, ‘Listen, God, if you’re so holy, and you claim to be so interested in me and my life, then why are so many difficult things happening to me?’ Jeremiah’s ministry was tough. It was painful. People tried to kill him. Others beat him. Very few listened to him. And not just for a couple days, but for many decades. And Jeremiah looked at all the ongoing difficulties in his life, and thought to himself, “I’m supposed to be representing a holy God whose heart wants to relieve the burdens of every man, woman, and child. But it’s hard to do that when so many of my burdens are still weighing me down.” Jeremiah went so far as to describe God as a deceptive brook, as a source of refreshment that looks so promising before you need a drink, only to find out on first taste that the water is polluted or poisonous. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever looked at your life, seen your struggles, noticed that they aren’t going away, and wondered where God’s holy love for you and your life happens to be when you need it so abundantly? My pain of cancer, divorce, an abortion is unending. My wounds from my rebellious children are grievous. The financial wounds of medical bills from ongoing treatments seem incurable. Lord, my energy is so quickly drained by the burdens of anger, betrayal, bitterness, disappointment, and failure. Will you be to me like a deceptive brook? Will you look so refreshing before I need a drink only to leave a bitter taste in my mouth after I’ve taken a drink? Where is your holiness when I need it most? I need it now, and it’s obviously lacking. Hold on a second. Speaking of taking a drink, why don’t you. Or at least imagine that you are. Imagine it’s a very hot day, and you just finished mowing the lawn and pulling the weeds. You’re exhausted. You open up the fridge and take out a cool can of soda. You take out your favorite glass, and after opening the soda, you begin to pour it into the glass. You’re not sure if the entire can is going to fit, so you slow the pace of the pour as the can gets lighter. Near the end there’s only a slender stream of soda slowly filling the glass. And as the last drops drip in, a crown of soda peeks over the top of the glass as if it’s hanging on for dear life. Now, I’d like you to take that same glass and fill it with water. If you just looked at your radio and thought, “This guy either misspoke or he’s crazy,” then you’ve just identified what’s so crazy about doubting God. You can’t fill a glass that’s already full. In the same way, something that is fully holy cannot become more holy, and God is quite fully holy already. One of God’s divine characteristics revealed to us in Scripture is that his character is eternal. He cannot change and will not change throughout eternity. And when he created everything we see, he was completely holy. We know this because the universe was completely holy. That is, there were no mistakes, no errors, no flaws, no sins. In the words of a holy God, it was “very good.” And a holy God will only label something “very good” if there is nothing at all bad about it. And there wasn’t. That obviously is not the world we see today. But what changed in the world was not God. If you’re looking for the reason why your life may be empty of much goodness and full of good amounts of anxiety and pain, well, you can’t look at God’s full glass. You have to look at our empty glasses. Looking around our world and seeing so much evidence of unholiness isn’t proof of God’s lack of holiness. It’s proof of ours and of the world’s around us. It’s not God’s fault you may lash out at your kids. It’s not God’s fault when someone pulls the trigger on a life. Corporate corruption is not God’s fault. God is not the one who steals. He is not the one who lies. God doesn’t look for shortcuts. He doesn’t have lustful eyes. It’s not his fault the bills aren’t paid, your mom got sick, or energy costs rise. It’s our fault, and the fault of those around us. And who labels these things faults? Well, only a holy God can truly identify every fault, and he has identified all yours. So, to hallow God’s name does not mean that God is lacking in any way. This petition begins with a recognition of where we lack and against whose standard we sin. We are sinful human beings, and we have sinned against a God whose holiness is so abundant that he can cover himself with our human flesh, live in the midst of sinful men, expose himself to every temptation, allow the devil to lead him to a painful death at the hands of some very evil and misguided men and not only maintain his own holiness, but cause the abundance of his holiness to overflow into the empty glasses of the sinful world. That is what the Lord promised to do when he told Jeremiah, “If you repent, I will restore you.” On a cross on a dark Friday, pierced with nails and stuck with thorns, Jesus, the Son of the most holy God, did exactly that. He poured out his holy blood and filled our cups to overflowing. So then, for what are we praying when we say, “Hallowed be your name?” The second definition of the word “hallow” is “to regard something as holy” or “treat something as holy.” Basically, we are asking God to help sinful men and women like us to display and reflect in our lives the holiness that saved us, to allow the world to see through our words & actions the holiness that fills us. We are praying that God would help us love our enemies as God loves us, speak kindly about those who may not speak so kindly of us, to tell the truth when lying may temporarily spare us some humiliation, to respect and work hard for a boss who may not respect us, to love your spouse in the same way that Christ loves us, to forgive those who hurt us, to reach out to those who need us, to use the life God created for us and the strength his Spirit gives us to allow all people to see through us the Savior who fills us. May our Father’s name be hallowed in your life.