CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD
PRAYER AS WORSHIP AND PRAISE
DR.JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 6:9 & PSALM 8:1-4
JANUARY 21, 2007
What’s in a name? Have you ever thought about that? What are names all about? For those of us who live in the western world, I think the answer is “not much.” Names don’t mean very much in the western world. We tend to choose our names phonetically. We pick a name because we think it sounds good. We rarely think about the meaning of a name. For instance, my name is James. The name James is the anglicized form of the Latin name Jocamus and Jocamus is the Latinized form of the Greek name Jocabus or Yocabus and the name Jocabus is the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Yacob or Jacob. But, you see, in any language James or Jacob, whether it’s English or Latin or Greek or Hebrew the name means the same thing and what it means is “supplanter, one who takes the place of another.” While my name is James I am not a supplanter. I haven’t taken anybody’s place. By the grace of God, I am the founding Pastor of Cherry Hills Community Church. I didn’t take anybody’s place. The only other job I’ve ever had in the ministry is when I was Minister of Education at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora and I was their first Minister of Education. I didn’t take anybody’s place. I was never a supplanter.
My wife’s name is of course Barbara. The name Barbara comes from the Greek barbaros. It also comes from the Latin barbarus. The name means, “foreigner.” The Roman world, the Hellenized world, called foreigners “barbarians” because most of them had beards and so barbarian is built on the root word of barba which means, “beard” or “bearded one” but by the grace of God Barb has never had a beard and never will. So, what’s in a name? Of course, again, not much if you live in the western world.
In biblical times, in New Testament times names were very important and the meaning of names was very, very important. A person’s name had to do with the whole person. This is particularly true when we look at God and we look at His name. In fact, when we look at His names in scripture, His names are very important. We’re told by our Lord Jesus that when we pray we are to hallow the name of God. We are to worship God when we pray and to hallow His name.
This morning I would like us to look at two questions as we look at what it means to worship God in prayer. The first question is this: whose name do you hallow? The word hallow, which obviously is rarely used. I know I rarely use it. The word hallow comes from the Greek word “haqiazo.” Haqiazo means “to make holy.” It means “to set apart.” It means “to sanctify,” “to adore.” It means, “to treat with reverence or with awe. In effect it means “to worship.” So whose name do you hallow? Whose name do you worship? Whose name do you adore? Whose name do you treat with reverence and adoration and awe?
Jesus tells us that unless it’s the name of God, your prayers will have no power. It was Jesus who told the Parable of the Pharisee and the publican who went to the temple to pray. You might remember that parable from Luke, chapter 18. Of course, the Pharisee was a religious leader. A publican was a tax collector. In fact, in the Roman world, the Treasury in Rome was called the Publican. That was the Treasury. Those who served the Treasury were described by the Latin word or the Roman word, “publicanas” so they were publicans as we anglicize it. In the Greek, when we speak of these tax collectors who gathered money throughout the Roman world for the Publican or for the Treasury, we look at the word, “taloni.” These were the tax collectors throughout the Roman world, throughout the Hellenized world who gathered taxes from the people, from the masses, for the Treasury in Rome.
In Israel, to be a publican, to join the Taloni, this was despised. People hated you if you were a tax collector, if you were a publican, if you had joined the Taloni because you had, in the opinion of most Jews, committed treason against the Jewish nation and you had sided with the Roman Empire and you were collecting taxes from your Jewish brothers and sisters and those dollars were being used to fuel the power of Rome and to fill the coffers of Rome. You were fattening your own pockets by your treason and by your being a traitor.
Once again, Jesus in a story or a parable kind of takes the lowest ring of society and creates a hero out of such a person and he take the highest, the religious leader, and kind of humbles them. So Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee, this religious leader who goes into the temple to pray. Jesus said that he stood and he prayed thusly with himself. He said, “God, I thank you that I’m not like other men, extortioners, unjust, even like this tax collector over here, this publican, this taloni for I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get” and he just bragged on himself. Then Jesus said the publican, the tax collector, would not even lift his eyes toward heaven but he beat his breast saying, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus said that the tax collector went home blessed and forgiven and the religious leader’s prayers never went past the ceiling.
Ask yourself why? Jesus said, “He who exalts himself will be humbled. He who humbles himself will be exalted.” So what Jesus wants us to understand is if we hallow ourselves, if we hallow our own names, if we kind of live for ourselves and serve ourselves and in effect worship ourselves, we’ll never be able to pray. We’ll never have power in prayer. Our prayers will never be effectual because prayers are potent when we hallow the name of God, not our own name. And so we have this lesson from Christ that we must enter prayer with humility.
I think many of you have probably heard of Ayn Rand. Her name is sometimes pronounced Ian Rand. She was born in Russia. She died in America in 1982. She had become an American citizen and of course she was an American author, she was a philosopher, she was a social activist and pretty much an atheist. She’s famous for her books. You may have read “Fountainhead” or maybe you read her “Anthem” or “Atlas Shrugged” or even “The Virtue of Selfishness.” Ayn Rand was known for many of her books. They are still widely read today.
Her brief Anthem that was popularized I will quote and it is this. Ayn Rand wrote these words: “Now I have seen the face of God and I lift this God over the whole earth. This God whom people have sought from the dawn of mankind, this God who alone can give joy and peace, this God, this one word, I.” That was the Anthem of Ayn Rand and it has become famous or infamous, depending on the audience. Of course, Ayn Rand has countless followers today. Her philosophy was the philosophy of self-worship. I would submit to you, and God knows, there are millions of people in the world today engaging in self-worship. In fact, billions. God knows the heart of men and women the world over and billions of people engage in self-worship and they live for themselves. They serve themselves and they seek to honor and please themselves. So they join Ann Rynd in lifting this God over the whole earth, the god of I.
Of course, it did not begin with Ayn Rand. It began with the devil. The Bible tells us that in the dawn of time, he thought like that. If you look at Exodus, chapter 28 or Isaiah, chapter 14. If we have glimpses there of the dawn of time, then we’re told that Satan said in his heart, “I shall ascend above the stars of God. I shall set my throne on high. I shall make myself like the most high god. I. I. I.” Of course, the Bible tells us that Satan is the deceiver of the nations. He is the deceiver of cultures. He is the deceiver of this world and of individuals. There are many people in the world today who have bought his philosophy and who live for self. They cannot pray. People all over the world who cannot pray. They might try but their prayers virtually never go past the ceiling because they never hallow the name of God. They’re too busy hallowing their own name and so this is the question: whose name do you hallow? And it’s demonstrated in the way you live your live and I live my life and the way we think and the motives we have and who we seek to serve.
On September 1, in the year 1715, there was a funeral in Paris. It was the funeral for King Louis XIV, King of France. Certainly, King Louis XIV was one of the most famous kings of France. It was King Louis XIV who had built the Palace of Versailles. When Barb and I first went to the Palace of Versailles years ago we stood in awe as we looked at the architecture and the sheer size of this palace. It was just mind blowing. We looked out over the gardens which went as far as the eye could see and we were just stunned by the glory of this human construction built by King Louis XIV as he drained the national treasuries of France and as he taxed his subjects, his people, into starvation.
King Louis XIV loved to be called “The Great.” He chose the title “The Sun King” and he thought the rays of the sun kind of appropriate imagery to reflect his own glory. And so in the course of time, he died, and there was a funeral service for him in the Great Cathedral on September 1, 1715. That funeral service was conducted by Bishop Massillon and Bishop Massillon, when it came time for him to go up onto the stage where the casket was and give his sermon, he gave a sermon that was only four words in length, every parishioners dream. He gave a four-word sermon. What he did was Bishop Massillon simply looked over at the casket where the body of Louis XIV resided. He lifted his arms toward heaven and he said these four words: “God alone is great.” Isn’t that a great sermon?
The truth is, if we would pray and if we would have effectual prayer and powerful prayer and blessed prayer, then we must enter our prayer time with that same thought: “God alone is great.” We must hallow the name of God.
So now we come to our main point, our second and final point and that is this. We want to look at this second question, “How do we hallow God’s name in prayer?” Obviously, we don’t want to hallow our own name. How do we hallow the name of God in prayer? The Jews, for centuries, struggled with this. They wanted to hallow the name of God. They respected the Ten Commandments and the Decalogue and they wanted to remember the name of God and keep it holy. They wanted to keep it holy so they wanted to hallow God’s name. They took this with a kind of crude literalism, and they thought of the name of God as disclosed by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai where God gave Moses his very own name which theologians have called the Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton simply means four, “tetra” and letters, “grammaton.” So, four letters. It really consists of four consonants so the name of God has four consonants. The Jews decided they would hallow this name, the name of God. The name of God, The Tetragrammaton as given to Moses on Mt. Sinai was, when rendered into English, YHWH. It could be rendered into English as JHVH because it’s difficult to equate the Hebrew alphabet with the English alphabet. It could also be JHVH. You see, originally, the ancient Hebrew had no vowel points, just consonants, so no one really knew how to pronounce the name of God. YHWH generally believed should be pronounced Yahweh but it could be pronounced Jahvey, but however it’s pronounced, it is the name of God and it means, “I Am.” He is the Great I AM. I Am that I Am. I am He who is. That is the divine name so the Jews thought they needed to hallow this name and we’ll hallow this name by never speaking it. They decided they would never hallow God’s name by never speaking His name. They would not make His name common. Every other name on earth we can use, but the name of God we will never speak. So they thought they could hallow the name of God in this way. What they did was they found another way to address God. They took the vowel points off of the Hebrew word for Lord, “Adonai.” They took those vowels and they put them under the Tetragrammaton and created a hybrid word, Jehovah. So they began to call God Jehovah. It was a circumlocution. It was a way of saying the name of God without having to really say the name of God, so whenever they prayed, they would speak to Jehovah instead of Yahweh or Jahvey. Jehovah.
Today, throughout the Christian and Jewish world, most scholars would admit this was kind of a waste of time. To hallow the name of God does not mean to refuse to mention His name. It doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s deeper than that. It has to do with your heart. It has to do with the way you live your life. It has to do with your thoughts. It has to do with your motives. To hallow the name of God is a lot deeper than simply not speaking God’s name.
Now I will admit I can’t stand it when people use God’s name as a swear word. When people do that with God the Father or God the Son, it offends. I grieve. I do. But I also know that hallowing the name of God is a far deeper issue. It has to do with worship and it has to do with whether or not our lives are surrendered in worship and praise. So when we hallow God’s name in prayer, that means we need to pray in such a manner as to worship. Our prayers need to praise God. I think of this word for worship in the Bible, “proskuneo” in the New Testament and it sometimes is rendered worship and sometimes it’s rendered prayer because prayer and worship are very much joined in the Bible but proskuneo literally means, “to kiss towards” or “to kiss up.” Kuneo, “to kiss” and pros which is a prefix with a diversity of possible meanings but it can mean “up” so worship is to “kiss up.” Prayer is to “kiss up” so every time I pray, I start by kissing up. That’s how I want to begin my prayer. I want to “kiss up” and I don’t want to do that in some gratuitous sense. I’m not trying to shine God on. I want it to be genuine so that it reflects my heart in a love for God. So when we pray, we begin by kissing up but it needs to come from the heart and it needs to be a genuine love. Jesus taught us this, that when you pray, you begin by hallowing God’s name and you “kiss up.”
This morning as we look very practically on how to hallow God’s name and how to worship in prayer, what I would like us to do is to take a few moments and go as briefly as possible through the divine names in the Bible. When I pray, I often go through this discipline. I go through the divine names. I would encourage you to do the same. I’ve listed the divine names on your program for today on the essentials so you can see all the divine names there. You can see the scripture references for the divine names and you can also see there the different meanings of the divine names. I want you to learn how to pray like this. I want you to go through your prayers daily and hallow the name of God because as you go through the divine names, you will inevitably look at the nature and character of God because the divine names reveal His total person. And understand this: God doesn’t need your worship. There is not a single verse in the Bible that indicates that God needs my worship. God wants us to worship. That’s clear biblically. God wants your worship, God wants my worship, but He doesn’t need it.
Sometimes I have non-Christians come up to me and they say, “We don’t understand the Christian need to worship and we don’t understand the Christian God. We don’t understand a God who just wants people to adore Him and praise Him, worship Him in perpetuity without end. His ego must be so damaged that He is never sated and that He just needs to be praised forever and ever and ever. We don’t understand that. We don’t understand this Christian theological construct of worship.” I always say to them, “You really don’t understand it because God doesn’t have an ego like that. God doesn’t have an ego like that and He doesn’t need our worship. He wants our worship but there’s a different reason. We need to worship Him. What God knows is we have a need to worship Him. We need to worship Him and God knows that when we worship Him, it transforms us so that when we worship God and we look at His nature and we look at His character, it changes us. So God doesn’t need our worship but He wants us to worship because he knows first of all that it fills a vacuum in the soul but secondly it transforms us.” As we look at His divine names, as we look at His divine character, it changes us. That’s what prayer is about: transformation. We saw that last week.
So we look at these divine names briefly, Jehovah-Hoseanu. God is Jehovah-Hoseanu. Of course, it’s not really Jehovah. It’s the hybrid. It’s really Yahweh-Hoseanu but Jehovah-Hoseanu means, “The Lord our Maker” so as we hallow His name in prayer we begin by calling Him “The Lord our Maker, Jehovah-Hoseanu” and acknowledging that He knows us inside out. It is the Lord who has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of his pasture.
It was Henry Fall who first went to Japan in the early 19th century and he discovered that the Japanese knew something the rest of the world didn’t know, and that was that every single human being in the world had a different fingerprint. The Japanese would sign official documents with the use of fingerprints and now it’s done all over the world in various ways but we’re all unique, aren’t we? God has made us and He’s made us each one unique. God knows your uniqueness and He knows my uniqueness and so He knows our brain chemistry. He knows our genetic structure. He understands our weaknesses, our temptations, our flaws and our strengths. In the midst of knowing all of this, He loves us and He alone is qualified to judge us but we come into prayer and we call Him Jehovah-Hoseanu, “The Lord our Maker,” and He knows everything about you and everything about me.
He’s also Jehovah-Sabaoth, “The Lord of Hosts.” We call Him this and we hallow His name. Jehovah Sabaoth is used 285 times in the Bible. This is a common name of God. It means, “The Lord of Hosts.” It’s used in three ways. First of all, it refers to the Angelic Host. He is Jehovah-Sabaoth. He rules the armies of heaven. He is Lord of the Angels. Secondly it is used in the context of Israel. When the armies of Israel would go into battle, they would call Jehovah-Sabaoth. He was the Lord of the Armies of Israel. Thirdly and most commonly, Jehovah-Sabaoth referred to the “starry host.” He is Lord of the Host in the sense of the galactic systems. He is not only Jehovah-Hoseanu, The Lord our Maker, but He is the maker of everything. He has made the galaxies and the star systems and pulsars and quasars. He has made the universe and cosmos. He is the Lord of Hosts. Jehovah-Sabaoth and we acknowledge His greatness as we begin our prayer and so we hallow His name.
He is Jehovah-Rohi, “The Lord our Shepherd.” I think as you come to prayer and as we come to prayer and we address Him as Jehovah-Rohi, the Lord our Shepherd, it’s an acknowledgement that we are in His flock. It’s appropriate, I think, at that time of prayer to maybe turn to Psalm 23 and say the Lord is my Shepherd. Maybe you’ve memorized The Lord is My Shepherd and you can recite the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” Maybe you haven’t memorized it. It’s perfectly legal in the midst of prayer to open your Bible. You can open your Bible to Psalms 23 and you can read that and it’s a beautiful way to recognize The Lord Your Shepherd, Jehovah-Rohi.
Of course, you can also turn to the New Testament and you can look at the Good Shepherd passages in the Gospel of John and the promises the shepherd makes to his flock. “I know My sheep. They hear My voice. They follow Me. I give them eternal life. No one is able to snatch them out of My hand. My Father is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” These are promises of a shepherd to His sheep so as you call Him Jehovah-Rohi, The Lord our Shepherd, it’s good to look to these portions of scriptures.
He is also of course Jehovah-Jireh. In this materialistic culture and in this western world, we’re so affluent, this is surely the favorite title of God, Jehovah-Jireh, “The Lord Who Provides.” And He does provide for us. As Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount, even as God clothes the lilies of the field and feeds the birds of the air, so God clothes and feeds His people. He provides for us and we acknowledge Him as Jehovah-Jireh but remember that title was taken from Genesis and it’s a passage where Abraham is taking his son Isaac to Mt. Mariah for sacrifice and it was there in the thicket that God provided the ram, the sacrificial lamb, and Abraham called God, Jehovah-Jireh, The Lord Who Provides. When we pray and we say Jehovah-Jireh, we think of God’s provision of His own Son who is our sacrificial lamb and who gave His life in atonement for our sin. The Lord has provided for us, Jehovah-Jireh.
God of course is Jehovah-Rophe and so as we hallow His name we call Him Jehovah-Rophe, “The Lord Who Heals, The Lord Our Healer.” I know this is a controversial subject and there might be many opinions in this room with regard to divine healing, but I believe and have no doubt that God has the power to heal and Jesus Christ is the Great Physician and indeed God is Jehovah-Rophe.
I told the discovery class yesterday, our new members class, that I accepted Christ when I was five and I’ve told you that. I accepted Christ when I was five at my mother’s side and I’ve been walking with Christ for 56 years. In those early years I had some times of doubt, in high school and in college… intellectual doubts. I never let go of the commitment that I had made to Christ but I had doubts in the midst of my faith and now I can stand before you and honestly say I don’t doubt. I don’t doubt because I’ve seen God. I’ve seen Christ. I’ve seen His power. I’ve seen Him heal. I’ve seen him heal miraculously. I’ve seen Him work miracles and I’ve felt His presence and I’ve seen His power in ministry and I’d be a bigger fool than I am if I doubted now. He is Jehovah-Rophe.
I love that passage in Matthew 8 where the leper comes up to Jesus and the leper comes to Jesus in violation of all law, in violation of Jewish law, in violation of Roman law because both by Jewish law and by Roman law, lepers were not allowed to come within a hundred yards of a normal human being. They were relegated to the dens and caves of the earth where they were expected to live and die in isolation and if they came within a hundred yards of a normal human being, the leper had to shout out, “Unclean! Unclean!” That was the life of a leper. This leper who came to Christ in Matthew 8 surely had the same leprosy that characterized the biblical period. It would have been tubercular and anesthetic, so this leper’s neurological system was degenerating, his muscular system was beginning to experience atrophy, his body was ulcerating to the point of creating a stench and he was destined for coma and for death. He was desperate and so in violation of all law, he came right up to Jesus, fell down before Him and in his desperation he said, “Lord, if You will, You can make me whole.” What a moment as Jesus reached down and touched him. No Jew would have done that. This was defilement and this was unclean. No Roman would have done that, but Jesus did. He reached down and he touched the leper and He said, “I will. Be whole. Be healed” and by the power of the Son of God he was healed. Jesus can do that.
I know God doesn’t always heal in the way we want Him to but when you come to Him in prayer, call Him Jehovah-Rophe. Remember, maybe right now you’re young and you feel pretty studly and you feel pretty strong and you don’t feel very vulnerable but I promise you there’s going to come a time in your life when this name is going to be precious to you and you’re going to cry out to Jehovah-Rophe. You might as well begin to hallow His name now. Hallow His name.
He’s Jehovah-Shammah. He is the “Lord Who Is Present.” I think sometimes even Christians do not understand the presence of God. I know most of you are familiar with the Ten Commandments, you’re familiar with the Decalogue. You might not be able to recite them all. I think most of you know the second commandment is “Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image.” Have you ever wondered why we’re not supposed to make graven images when we worship? Why does that bug God? Why does God not want us to use graven images when we worship Him? Maybe God just feels like there is no image that could adequately represent Him. Certainly that would be true.
It’s kind of like when we go to the Department of Motor Vehicles. You go to the DMV and you get your picture taken. You know it doesn’t represent you. It’s kind of like some “most wanted criminal list mug shot.” Maybe God feels a little bit of that about idols and images but scholars today understand the issue is far deeper because in the ancient world, graven images were used to try to control the presence of God. And so when they had an image of a god, they would place it in the room if they wanted the presence of the god in the room. If they were taking a trip, they would take the image with them to guarantee that the god would travel with them and be present. But if they wanted the god removed, if they were going to do something that might offend the god, they would put the image in the drawer or they would cover it with a blanket or they would remove it from the house. They tried to control the presence of God through graven images and God wants everyone to know for all time, you can’t do that. “I am Jehovah-Shammah. I’m omnipresent. I’m everywhere. You can’t get rid of me. There’s nothing you ever do that I don’t see. There’s nothing you say that I don’t hear. There’s nothing you think that I don’t hear. I’m everywhere. I’m Jehovah-Shammah.”
Of course, for us as Christians He’s present with us in a special way as He’s tabernacled within us through the Spirit of Christ and so we hallow His name and call Him Jehovah-Shammah. He’s Jehovah-Shalom, The Lord our Peace. Jehovah-Shalom. One day Jesus will come again and He will bring peace on earth and He will “beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift us sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ and He shall reign forever.” Jehovah-Shalom, The Lord of Peace.
But even now Jesus offers personal peace and Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled and neither let it be afraid.” So there’s peace even in the midst of the storm, peace in the midst of the trial, peace in the midst of tribulation. It’s peace the world can never understand. Jehovah-Shalom. So we hallow His name.