In connection with the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, Hallowed Be Thy Name, we will read together Psalm 103. Psalm 103. The favorite psalm of praise of many of God's people. Psalm 103, as we give our attention to the reading of the Word of God. Praise the Lord, O my soul. All my inmost being praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will He harbor His anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field. The wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear Him and His righteousness with their children's children, with those who keep His covenant, And remember to obey His precepts. The Lord has established His throne in heaven and His kingdom rules over all. Praise the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word. Praise the Lord, all His heavenly hosts, you His servants who do His will. Praise the Lord, all His works, everywhere in His dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul. And I invite you to turn with me in the back of the Blue Psalter hymnal to page 60, Lord's Day 47. Lord's Day 47, question and answer 122. As we confess together what we believe using the words of this answer. Lord's Day 47, page 60. Question 122 asks, What does the first request mean? Hallowed be thy 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. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in our study of prayer so far, that part of that dialogue or conversation that flows from the child of God to the Heavenly Father, we have seen that with true prayer, we call upon the One who will hear us because He is our Father. And He is also the One who is able to answer us because He is God in heaven. Yet as our Lord Jesus Christ taught the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, He ordered them in such a way that the primary focus would be in the proper place and that primary focus is God. Now notice how the Lord's Prayer corresponds with God's Law, the Ten Commandments. You recall that these two things are that which make up the third section of the catechism, the section on gratitude or service. But the law has two tables, you remember. The first table which gives instruction for the believer's relationship with God, and the second table which gives instruction with regard to the believer's relationship with his neighbor. And in the Lord's Prayer, there are two sets of petitions. Again, the first set deals with God, His name. His kingdom, His will. And the second set deals with our relation to one another, with our relation to ourself, and with our relation to earthly things. But both the law and prayer place God first. And there's good reason for that. He is God. And apart from Him and apart from His being, everything else is meaningless. Our needs won't mean anything if God is not recognized for who He is. And therefore, this first petition, hallowed be thy name, is exactly that. It's a call to truly recognize God. This petition teaches about grateful living through the proper recognition of God. And that proper recognition includes, first of all, knowing God's name. Knowing God's name. And then once one knows God's name, it includes upholding God's name. Now, congregation, with these petitions, we ask God for something. And of course we know that's true when we pray for our daily bread or for forgiveness of sins or to lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. We ask God for something there. But we also ask God for something with regard to the first three petitions talking about His name, His kingdom, and His will. Yet with those petitions we are not asking for something for God Himself as if He needs anything. Again, even though the petitions themselves might suggest that. We are not asking for something that is not already true with regard to God. But as Christians, we are expressing our desire and our need to receive something from God. Even in those first three petitions, we ask for something for ourselves then in order to give back to God. But first of all, we want to understand the terms. This petition is talking about the name of God. As we have said before in other contexts, the name of God is talking about God Himself and all that He is. In older times, we know that the names said something about or names were a description of the one who had that name. Today, most often, they're simply labels. Or we, as parents, might name our children after someone, but other than that, the names probably really don't have a whole lot of significance. But we know that God is known by different names or titles in Scripture like Yahweh, Elohim, El Shaddai, or Adonai. And these all describe certain attributes of God. His power, His majesty, His sovereignty. But often in Scripture we also read the expression simply, the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord. And this, of course, refers to His whole being, to God Himself and all of His fullness and completeness. It includes all of His attributes. The psalmist says, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth. In other words, how excellent are You in all of Your fullness and completeness in all the earth. We read, Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Proverbs 18, verse 10 says, The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe. And again, all of these are talking about God in all of His fullness. And then there is the word hallow. Hallowed be thy name. Hallowed carries with it the idea of holy. Holy, we can say, means to set apart. Hallowed means different, to treat as holy, to hold as sacred, to keep as holy. It includes to glorify, to honor, to exalt, to lift on high. And therefore, hallowed be Thy name means to give God the reverence and the esteem and the glory and the praise which His nature demands and which He Himself deserves. Now again, we're not praying, hallowed be Thy name, because it's not holy enough or it's not exalted already. It is. We're not saying that we could add something to God like holiness, as if we were saying that He's missing some of His holiness. But when we pray this petition, we're asking God to include us in the hallowing of His name. To make the hallowing of His name the crown of our lives. The name of God as it refers to His being points to His majesty, His greatness, His power, His sovereignty, In everything else about Him, it points to His separateness from all creatures. And our prayer congregation is that through the power of the Holy Spirit as God's people, that we would distinguish God in our lives from everything else. Our prayer is to be that we would recognize His holiness and His transcendence over all things, and that in our heart, in our soul and mind and lives, He would be set apart and that He would be given His rightful place of dominion and authority. This petition, this short petition, Hallowed Be Thy Name, is really a prayer in itself in which we ask that God would help us to recognize from the very beginning of our prayer. Help us to recognize the only one who hears and answers prayer. And as we come into His presence in prayer, it is to be our desire to give to Him the proper esteem and respect and reverence that He alone deserves. But in order to do this, we have a need to know Him. To know Him. To know God's name. The catechism says, help us to really know You. That is, give us right knowledge of who You are. Therefore, we are asking that God would reveal Himself to us. In order that we might not stand in the way of His majesty and instead be confessors of His majesty and His power and His salvation, we must really know Him and know Him rightly. That was our Lord's prayer for His people in John 17. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. See, our salvation depends upon a right knowledge of God in that apart from knowing Him through Jesus Christ, there is no salvation. Hosea 4, verse 6 says, The Lord says, My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. And that's talking about a knowledge of God and His law. Without knowing God as He is, we cannot pray to Him as we ought. So how do we know Him? How does God reveal Himself to us? Well, first of all, through creation. And we can think of those familiar words in Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. day unto day utters speech and night unto night reveals knowledge. As well, God's providence and care over His creation reveals Him. In Psalm 104, we read about the springs of water that He gives in order to nourish the earth and He gives drink to the beasts of the field. He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation for the service of man. All the animals on land or in sea, the psalmist says, wait for their food from the hand of God. God's handiwork in creation clearly reveals, as Paul says in Romans 1, God's invisible attributes, His eternal power and Godhead, therefore leaving man without an excuse. Yet that's not enough, is it? Another one of our confessions, the Belgic Confession, article 2, speaks of God's creation as a most elegant book, boys and girls, if you will, a most elegant picture book, before our eyes, which clearly reveals that there is a God. But because of sin, man suppresses that knowledge. He exchanges the truth of God for the lie. And therefore, man cannot really know God rightly through creation, or as it's called, general revelation, because of sin. As John Calvin says, we need special revelation. Scripture, which is as a pair of eyeglasses. Boys and girls, Scripture is like a pair of eyeglasses. I need my eyeglasses. If I don't put them on before I get out of bed in the morning, I can't walk very far without hitting something. My eyes are that bad. Everything's fuzzy. I can't see. Scripture is that pair of eyeglasses that makes us able to clearly read God's book of creation, to see that picture book clearly and to truly know Him. We've already considered some passages that tell us that all that we see around us has been created by God. But also God's Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light upon our path. God reveals Himself in His Word as the One who is holy, just, good, righteous, merciful, gracious, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and so much more. And in 1 Chronicles 16, David gives thanks in prayer that God is the God of strength, the God of judgment, the God of salvation, the God of loving kindness. As well, He is the God of the covenant who binds Himself to His people and promises blessing for obedience, but warns of punishment for disobedience. Yet even the special revelation of Scripture will not make sense to us apart from God's special revelation of Himself in His incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, who has unfolded to us on the pages of Scripture. Hebrews 1 begins, God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son whom He has appointed heir of all things through whom also He made the worlds who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power when He had by Himself purged our sins sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. See, only for the sake of Jesus Christ and His atoning work can we truly know God and His work of creation and redemption. Only when we have been transformed by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit can we confess with David in the beginning of Psalm 103, Praise the Lord, O my soul, O my inmost being. Praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul. And forget not all His benefits. If you notice, as we read that psalm, the entire psalm speaks of God's saving relationship with His people. Beloved, only when we know God rightly by His grace. Well, we then recognize the beauty of His work. Which reveals, as the Catechism says, His almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and truth. I have to say that it was my privilege this week to see Mike and Lisa's babies. Amazing. Amazing what God has done. What He can do. What He will do. You see, beloved, in creation, we see God's power in the strength of the storm. We saw the pictures of the hurricane on the East Coast this past week, in the tornado, in the earthquake. We see His wisdom in the diligence of the tiny ant. I understand that some of the boys and girls here from school have studied the ant in the first couple of weeks of school. And you've seen the diligence of the tiny ant, that diligence which is spoken of even in the Word of God. Beloved, we see God's goodness in each and every new day. Every morning when we awaken to a new day and open our eyes, we see God's goodness. But we also know that God's work of redemption, His redeeming work clearly reveals also His power, wisdom, goodness, justice, mercy, and truth. As redemption was accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ and is applied by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only when we really know Him will we sanctify or set God apart in our lives and acknowledge and confess His glory and praise Him and worship Him for who He is. But to really know God is also to know that He will not tolerate those who reject Him, those who treat Him as unnecessary, who consider this life and this world apart from Him. To pray, hallowed be thy name, means to pray that God will continue to reveal Himself to us daily and to others through His Word that we might properly understand our relationship with Him. And therefore, really, beloved, this petition is a prayer that His church would be preserved and extended and that the ministry and the preaching of His Word would continue. It is a prayer that all of our children's instruction, whether at home or school or in the church, that every bit of that instruction flows from a right knowledge and understanding of God. And it is this prayer that God blesses this knowledge in our hearts and lives unto salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, living gratefully before the God of our salvation means to know Him and to give Him first place in our lives. Not to give first place to our own thinking and our own desires, but first place to God because He is the One who gives us life. And therefore, beloved, with our lives, as those who know God's name, we are then called to uphold God's name. What does the first request mean? The second paragraph says, 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. In other words, those who pray this prayer, hallowed be thy name, having been born again, must also live this prayer. It's not just a hypothetical situation. It must be lived. It is to be practiced. That is, giving God the place of honor in our lives. After all, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, this is the cheap end of man to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And therefore, we are called to examine ourselves daily to see if that is truly our goal as confessing Christians or if we desire a different chief end. Those who rightly know God, know Him through Jesus Christ and we know from God's Word that He forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion. He satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. From everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear Him and His righteousness with their children's children. Those who have been brought from death to life are called to hallow Him throughout our daily walk, every moment of every day. That's what it means to be a living sacrifice. What's on the inside and what's demonstrated on the outside must be in agreement. They must agree. To talk the talk, but not walk the walk. It's not the work of Christ living in you. But it's the work of the devil. It is to follow the father of lies. John says, if we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. And this is nothing more than to draw near to God with our mouths while the heart is far from Him, which is offensive to God. Beloved, we confess that we are God's workmanship and the workmanship, that which is made, must then reflect the character of the Maker, of its Maker. Some people, and maybe someone here can do this, some people are able to look at a famous painting or other work of art just by the style and workmanship they can tell you whose work it is. I can't do that. Some can. God's workmanship of us is to be clearly evident in our lives, First of all, in that we give honor to our Creator. If we call God Father, we call Him Father and children must then reflect His image. But if we call Him Father but then reflect the image of the devil, we blaspheme His name. And we also become the occasion for the world to blaspheme His name. You see, not only are we to direct all our living, what we think, say, and do, so that your name will never be blasphemed because of us, but also that God's name always be honored and praised, and we can add, because of us. We are to uphold God's name in our own lives, but also in the lives of others, as much as we are able. You might say, wait a minute, we're not responsible for the actions of others. How can we be? And I often say that to my children when they have been fighting. I remind them that they are responsible for their own actions. And that's true, of course, unless we are the cause of another's actions. If others know that you claim to be a Christian, that you attend a church regularly to sit under the preaching of the Word, but they see you living as the world, participating in worldly activities that have no place in the Christian life, beloved, that will shape their idea of Christianity and the God that we serve, and it will shape it wrong. And if by your actions or gestures you cause another to take God's name in vain, you are responsible. Oh, they are for their sin to be sure. But so are we if we are the cause of leading them astray. And it's dangerous for us, as Proverbs 28, verse 9 says, one who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. The world watches believers. You are a book. And as Paul says, you are written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God. And therefore, please consider, beloved, what kind of reading material are you? It takes work to live the Christian life. It takes work to hallow God's name. The Catechism rightly says, help us to direct all our living, what we think, say, and do. We must do as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. That means that we must exercise strict discipline in our lives with regard to the Word of God. Again, we pray, Hallowed be Thy name, which, as we have said, is a request for the proper knowledge of God which we need to rightly sanctify, glorify, and praise Him. And this proper knowledge comes only from His Word applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Beloved, if we truly pray this prayer with the right disposition of heart, really desiring that knowledge, then we will use every means given by God to get it. Every means. That includes attending worship with God's people around the Word of God every time we meet. Those who only come once on Sunday when the opportunity is twice only get half of what God has to offer. I was reading in a book this past week of a famous Reformed pastor who passed away over the last century. He said that when he was asked the question, every time he was asked the question, why should I come to church on Sunday night? His first answer would be because you might, if you don't, you might miss something wonderful that God might do. And beloved, it might even be for you. See, if that describes you, then I have to ask, are you on a special diet or something? that you can only handle one serving instead of the two that God has to offer? We come together for God, first of all. Not for ourselves. Not for each other. But for God. But also, to pray this prayer only then not be zealous for God's Word and that God's Word go forth is to be a hypocrite. And the Bible is clear that there is no place for hypocrites in the kingdom of God. Shame on the preacher. who prays this petition from the pulpit on behalf of the congregation but then fails to seriously study God's Word throughout the week and instead comes to the pulpit and preaches his own philosophy. Shame on the one who prays this petition but then whose seat is empty for worship. Shame on the family who prays this petition but never opens the Bible in their home or neglects the Christian training of their children. You see, this prayer requires that we live in close contact with the Word of God and that that which contradicts God's Word be avoided and pushed out of our lives. Beloved, to truly desire God's name to be hallowed in our lives means that we would never intentionally do something that would compromise His sovereignty and majesty and power, His whole being, and especially that we would not treat Him as non-existent, whether at home or school or work or in any of life's activities. To truly desire that God's name be hallowed by us means that if God would be more glorified and honored in my sickness than in my health, then I must be content in that. And I am to glorify Him in that. And if I am better able to testify by God's grace of His providence and care when I have little, then let me never have much. And may I glory in His goodness. the glory of god is to be before my health and my wealth and my popularity and my position or anything else and may we never blaspheme god's holy name by trying to reduce who he is while exalting ourselves the third commandment says you shall not take the name of the lord your god in vain and with this petition hallowed be thy name the believer asks for the grace of the holy spirit of God, for the strength to be obedient to that commandment. Our Lord Jesus Christ hallowed His Father's name. In John 12, Jesus said, Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. And the glorifying of the Father's name meant the depths of death and hell for Christ. But that's why His people can pray this prayer, because for the sake of Jesus, the Spirit of God makes us able to hallow God's name. By the grace of God, His people hallow His name not because of themselves, but because it is no longer they who live, but Jesus Christ lives in them. Beloved, we have been reminded and taught that our greatest need is that God be recognized in our lives as He really and truly is. Because if He is not, we will have no use for His kingdom. We will not seek His will. Our daily bread will not work for our good. We will not forgive others and we will already be lost in temptation and delivered unto evil. And those who refuse to recognize the truth of God in this life will recognize Him later on, but from the depths of hell as there they suffer the reality, the truth of God's wrath. But for those who are brought to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ by the grace of God, They will see Him as He truly is and will be given the humble desire to praise Him as we ought. May we seek to hallow God's name, singing with the angels of God, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And beloved, may the name of God and His honor be the crown of your life. Amen. Shall we pray? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Father, indeed we pray that we might rightly know You. That we would set You apart in our lives to treat You as You are, namely, as You are holy. Father, we are amazed that in Your holiness that You have looked upon us who are so unholy and called us to be Your people. And we thank You, Father, for the holiness that we possess only in Jesus Christ, our Lord. We pray, Father, that we would be conscious each and every day of our lives, of our living, of our speaking, of our thinking, of our acting, that in all these things we would indeed hallow Your most holy name. Grant us the strength to that end, O Lord, In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray these names. Amen.