Prayer: Hallowed Be Thy Name

SERMON ON THE MOUNT
PRAYER: HALLOWED BE THY NAME
DR. JIM DIXON
OCTOBER 14, 2001
MATTHEW 6:5-14

3,250 years ago, God revealed his name to Moses on a mountain called Sinai. And the name of God is often called the Tetragrammaton because it contains four letters. More precisely, it contains four consonants, because in early Hebrew there were no written vowels. Now these four consonants in the divine name as given to Moses are transliterated into the English as Y-H-W-H. And when you add the vowel sounds, the name of God is pronounced Yahweh. And that name means “I am.” And in the causative sense it means “I cause to be.” So, God told Moses His divine name and He told Moses that name is Yahweh.

I am and I cause to be. Now there was a period in Jewish history where the Jewish people were afraid of saying the divine name. They were afraid of saying Yahweh. And so they took the vowel sounds off of the Hebrew word Adonai, which means Lord, and they added them to the Tetragrammaton, the four consonants of the divine name. And they came up with a hybrid word which was pronounced Jehovah, which has been anglicized as Jehovah. And oftentimes today when we think of the name of God, we think of the name of Jehovah. But when we say the name Jehovah or we think of the name Jehovah, we should think of the Tetragrammaton. We should think of the name Yahweh, the one who is and who causes to be.

Now, Jesus taught us how to pray. He taught us how to pray and He gave us the Lord’s prayer. He did not really mean for the Lord’s prayer to be ritually repeated. He didn’t say, “When you pray, pray this.” He said, “When you pray, pray LIKE this.” And while it’s okay to repeat the Lord’s prayer as we did last week, Jesus really meant for the Lord’s prayer to illustrate the various components that should be part of all of our prayers. And He teaches us through the Lord’s prayer that we should begin in prayer by hallowing God’s name. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” And the Greek word for hallowed is “hagiazo.” It’s the verb form of the word for holy. It means to set apart as sacred. It means to set apart as holy. It means to treat with reverence and awe. And this morning we are going to treat with reverence and awe the name of Yahweh. We’re going to treat with reverence and awe the name of Jehovah. We are going to set apart as sacred the name of God, and we’re going to do this by looking at all of the Jehovah names of God in the Bible.

You have in your bulletin an outline. And I rarely do this, but there are 10 different Jehovah names of God from the Bible that I’ve put here into an outline and I want you to go through this with me. Now, I’ve had a little bit of a late start, so I’m gonna do the best I can to get through these. If we don’t get through all of them, we’re not going to be worried about it. We take a look then at these divine names and we do this in order that in our personal prayer lives we might learn to hallow the name of God. And I think you’ll notice as we go through these divine names that we more fully understand the character and the work of God.

As we go through his divine names, I think you’ll also notice that all the ingredients of the Lord’s prayer are really included within the meaning of the Yahweh names of God. So first of all, if we would hallow His name, we call him Jehovah-Hoseenu. God is Jehovah-Hoseenu and this title means the Lord our maker. It is God who has made us and not we ourselves. And when we come to God in prayer, we acknowledge that He is the one who made us.

Now many of you have heard of Dr. Henry Fall. Dr. Henry Fall was a 19th century medical missionary who traveled to Japan. And in Japan it was Dr. Fall who noticed that the Japanese people oftentimes used fingerprints for signatures when authenticating documents. And he also noticed that no two fingerprints were alike. He brought this information back to continental Europe and through Sir William Herschel and Sir Francis Galton the science of fingerprinting was developed.

Now it is true that no two fingerprints are alike. Some fingerprints are looped, some are spiraled, some are arched. Nobody has your fingerprints. There are 152 million babies that will be born in in the world this year. None of them will have the same fingerprints. There are 6 billion people on the earth. Nobody has your fingerprints. Nobody ever has. Nobody ever will. You are unique, but God knows your uniqueness, for He created you. He knows the uniqueness of your emotions. He knows the uniqueness of your mind. He knows your spiritual uniqueness. He knows your physiological uniqueness. And as you come to Him, you acknowledge He is Jehovah-Hoseenu. He is the Lord God your maker. He knows you intimately.

Now, He is not only Jehovah-Hoseenu, he is Jehovah-Sabaoth. And this title is not on your outline, so I want you to add this. We’re really covering 11 names of God, because I want to cover all of them. There are 11 in the Bible. Jehovah-Sabaoth means the Lord of hosts. It is the most common Jehovah title of God in the whole Bible, used 285 times. As we come to God in prayer, we hallow His name. We call Him Jehovah Hoseenu, the Lord our maker. But we also call him Jehovah- Sabaoth, for He’s not only made us but He has made the heavens and He has created the angelic realm. He is the Lord of hosts. He is the Lord of the starry hosts, and He is the Lord of the angelic hosts. He is Lord of all and creator of all Jehovah- Sabaoth.

First of all, see the spiral galaxy called Andromeda. That spiral galaxy is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy in which we reside. The Andromeda Galaxy is larger than our Milky Way galaxy. It is more than a hundred thousand light years across and it is 2.2 million light years away. It takes light moving at the speed of 186,000 miles a second 2.2 million years to travel from earth to the Andromeda Galaxy. And yet, it is the nearest spiral galaxy to us, and it has more than 100 billion stars.

I want you to take a look at the birth of a star. This is the birth of a star as filmed by the Hubble Space Telescope. As you look at the birth of this star, you notice that the stellar jets that come out from the star’s formation are 1 trillion miles long. Can you comprehend that, 1 trillion miles long? These formations are all over the universe and the galactic systems.

I want you to take a look at this shot. This was shot by the Hubble Space Telescope. What’s so amazing about it is it’s just a small, tiny pinpoint in space. It was shot by the Hubble telescope. It was shot through a hole the size of a dime 50 feet from the lens. Imagine that: a hole the size of a dime 50 feet from the lens. It’s just a pinpoint in space. And yet, that represents 1,000 galaxies. There’s 1,000 galaxies just like that Andromeda galaxy right out there in that little section of space, and more than a hundred billion galaxies in the universe.

I want you take a look at one other picture. And this is a shot taken from a small section of a nearby galaxy, a non-spiral galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. This is a small section of that galaxy 166,000 light years away. And you see in this small section a starburst up in the top right hand corner where stars are forming. You also see some of the largest stars in the universe. There are stars in that starburst so large that they are greater in size than half of our entire solar system. A single star.

You see, the heavens declare the glory of God. I wish it was darker in here. I wish you could get a clearer picture. I wish you could see the glory of God through His creation. It is incredible, spanning 15 billion light years. What God has made… He is Jehovah-Sabaoth. He is the Lord of the starry hosts and He is the Lord of the angelic hosts. And as we come to Him, we acknowledge Him as creator of all things, as well as our creator Jehovah-Hoseenu.

Well, He is Jehovah- Ra’ah and that means the Lord our shepherd. And this is the amazing thing, that though He is the creator of all things—the galactic systems and the universe—He cares for us individually. And He is our shepherd. And as we come to Him in prayer and we hallow His name, we call Him Jehovah- Ra’ah, the Lord our shepherd.

In the year 1603, A man was born in England. That man was named Roger. Roger was brilliant. He went to Cambridge University and graduated with highest honors. He entered the clergy and became a priest in the Church of England. He had a falling out with the ecclesiastical leaders because Roger believed in religious freedom, and he really believed in the separation of church and state. He wanted people to come to Jesus Christ, but he wanted them to come freely. He didn’t want anyone to be forced or coerced.

Now Roger left England and came to the American colonies. He was offered the pastorate at the largest church in Boston, and he refused it because it was affiliated with the Church of England. So Roger went to nearby Salem, where he pastored an independent church and he tried to teach people about the love of Jesus Christ. But he soon left that church too because it was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and it was governed by the Puritans. And the Puritans wanted everyone to think like them and be just like them. And they didn’t really believe in religious freedom. And so, Roger had a falling out with the Puritans and he went to live amongst the Indian nations. He went to live amongst the Indian nations and he shared with them the gospel of Jesus Christ. And many, many Indian men and women came to faith in Jesus Christ through Roger.

Many did not believe, and Roger loved them too because he believed that Christ had called him to love all people. Now, in the year 1636, Roger entered into a contract relationship with the Indians where he bought some land. And there he established a colony. And he called it Providence. Soon thereafter, he returned to England where he was given charter to establish the Rhode Island colony. And of course, the state of Rhode Island today considers Roger to be its founder—Roger Williams. And it was Roger Williams who established that town of Providence. And why? I mean, why did he call it Providence? Why did he name that first settlement providence? He called it Providence because he believed that it had all been guided by the hand of God, the good shepherd. He believed that God had guided all of his life, all the events of his life, and that God knew all the days of his life.

They were all in God’s hand. He had complete trust in God’s providence in his daily life. And if you have that, you come to God and, as you hallow His name, you call Him Jehovah-Ra’ah, the Lord my shepherd, because you trust His providence and His providential care in your life.

He is also Jehovah-Jireh. And this means the Lord who provides. And when we come to Him in prayer, it is right that we ask Him to provide for us, to “give us this day our daily bread.” He is Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who provides.

I know that you’ve all heard of the distress signal, S-O-S, and there are a lot of people who think that S-O-S is an acronym that, it represents save our souls or save our ship or stop other signals. But S-O-S is not an acronym. The truth is that these three letters represent nothing, absolutely nothing. They were chosen as the distress signal because they represent the easiest letters to communicate in Morse code. And S-O-S is simply three dots, three dashes and three dots. In morse code it doesn’t get any easier than that. They want distress signals to be simple.

Now, God wants prayer to be simple. You don’t have to heap up empty phrases, as Jesus said the Gentiles do. You don’t have to bundle up many words. You don’t need to be able to pray in a public place, although corporate prayer is sometimes appropriate. You can just go into your closet and you can close the door and pray in secret to your Father who sees in secret. It is simple. And if you’re kind of feeling the need for a distress signal, a little S-O-S, He’s there. And you can call upon Him because He is Jehovah-Jireh. He is the Lord who provides and he wants to provide for you. Jehovah Jireh.

He’s Jehovah Rophe. And this means the Lord who heals. He is the Lord who heals. And I know many of you are familiar with that passage in Matthew’s gospel, the eighth chapter, starting with the second verse, where we’re told that a man came up to Jesus Christ and fell down before Him in a posture that represented begging, desperate pleading. And he said, “Lord, if you will, you can make me whole.” Now this man had been banished from the fellowship of men and we’re told in Matthew’s gospel that his body was full of leprosy. His body would have been ulcerating, just sores all over his body. And there would’ve been a stench. His nervous system, his muscular system, were degenerating. Even the tendons of his body were contracting so that his hands were becoming like claws. His destiny was coma and death. He had been forced to leave his family and his home and his community and he was living in a leper colony, dwelling in dens and caves of the earth. He was not allowed by Jewish law to come within a hundred feet of a normal human being. And if he came that close, he had to shout out “Unclean, unclean!” But here he was, desperate.

He didn’t just come within a hundred feet, he came up to the feet of Jesus Christ. He probably held the feet of Christ as he cried out, “Lord, if You will, You can make me whole.” And the Bible tells us that Jesus reached down and touched him. He touched the untouchable and He said, “I will. Be healed. Be whole.” And by the power of the Son of God, in an instant that man was made whole. Because you see, Jesus is, with His Father, Jehovah-Rophe, the Lord who heals.

I don’t claim to understand the mystery of why God’s healing power is sometimes poured out and sometimes withheld, but I know this: it’s right to pray for healing. And when you come to the Lord in prayer and you hallow His name, call Him Jehovah-Rophe. If you have cancer or some serious illness, come in desperation, fall down before Him and say, “Lord, if You will, You can make me whole.”

He is Jehovah-Rophe and He is Jehovah-Shammah, which means the Lord who is there. It means the Lord who is present. And as you come to the Lord in prayer and you hallow His name, you acknowledge that He’s there. Whether you feel His presence, whether you sense His presence or not, He is there He is with you as you pray. Jehovah-Shammah.

You know, the Jewish people in Old Testament times did not understand the presence of God. I mean, they believed in His omnipresence theologically, but practically they didn’t think that He was present with them individually. I mean, they believed that He would appear occasionally through a theophany—in the glory cloud on the Holy Mountain or through the pillar of fire. They believed that His Shekinah, His divine presence, was in the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle (and later in the Holy of Holies of the temple). They believe that His divine presence in Shekinah hovered over the Mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

And when the Ark of the Covenant was stolen by the Philistines, they cried, “Ichabod! The glory has departed, God has gone.” And they looked forward to the millennium when there would be a new Jerusalem. And the prophet Ezekiel wrote that new Jerusalem would be called Jehovah-Shammah. The Lord is there. The Lord is present. But you see, as Christians we know we don’t have to wait for the millennium. He’s present now. And the Bible says when you come to Christ and you receive Him as Savior and Lord, He comes to dwell within you by His Holy Spirit. And your body becomes a temple of the living God. And you come to prayer and you say, “Jehovah-Shammah.” He is there whether you feel it or not. He is there. Jehovah-Shammah.

He is also Jehovah-Shalom, the Lord of peace. And He offers a peace no one else can offer. I love a story that’s told by William Henry Drummond. William Henry Drummond was a famous Canadian poet and physician in the 19th century. Drummond told the story of a king who summoned two of his artists. And he said, I want you to paint a picture of Christian peace. And the first artist returned to him with a painting of a mountain lake—a tranquil, beautiful mountain lake with trees behind it. It had snow covered peaks behind a beautiful mountain meadow in front of the lake where there were deer grazing by the side of the lake. There was a cabin and clearly a fire in the cabin because smoke was coming out of the chimney. It was like a Thomas Kincaid painting. And the king looked at the painting and he said, this is beautiful. He said, this is peaceful, but it’s not Christian peace. It’s not Christian peace, not in this age of the world.

But the second artist returned to him and he brought a very different picture, a picture of a thunderous waterfall, the water cascading violently down this cliff and crashing into jagged rocks. And you could just hear the sound, the torrential sound of the descent of that cascading water and its pounding on the rocks. And there was a barren landscape, devoid of trees except for one solitary tree by the bank below the waterfall and a barren branch with no leaves going out over the water in the midst of the spray and the foam. And on the end of the branch a little bird was sound asleep. And the king said, yes, that’s Christian peace. That’s Christian peace. It’s the peace that passes understanding. It’s this peace that’s not based on circumstances but is given in spite of circumstances.

In these troubled times and all that we’ve gone through in the past few weeks and we’ll go through in the weeks ahead, how we need the peace of Christ. He 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, neither let it be afraid.” He offers the peace that passes understanding. He is Jehovah-Shalom. And as we come to Him in prayer and we hallow His name, we call Him the Lord of peace.

He is Jehovah-Tsidkenu. Jehovah-Tsidkenu means the Lord our righteousness, and He alone can make you righteous. In the 19th century in the American West there lived a man named Charles E Boles. Charles E Bowles decided one day to rob a stagecoach. He didn’t really want to rob it, he just wanted to play a practical joke because one of his best friends was driving the stagecoach. And he figured out where the stagecoach would come by on the road and he put on a mask and he disguised his voice. And to his amazement, his friend totally bought it. And when he demanded that the strong box be thrown down, his friend threw down the Wells Fargo strong box and just rode off. Charles didn’t even get a chance to explain that it was a joke and that it was all a lark. So, there he was with the Wells Fargo strong box and he thought, well, I might as well open it.

He opened it, and inside there were gold coins and gold bullion. And he thought, you know, this wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living. The hours are good, the pay is great. So he took all the gold and deposited it in a bank in San Francisco. He decided to move to San Francisco and he began to rob stage coaches. And every time he robbed a stagecoach, he would write a poem and he’d give the poem to the driver and he would sign it “Black Bart.” And it got to where the people in the American West were looking forward to his next robbery because the newspapers printed all of his poetry. Every time he robbed a stage, they printed all of Black Bart’s poetry and everyone kind of viewed him as a colorful character. But of course, the Wells Fargo company didn’t feel that way.

Black Bart, Charles Boles, robbed 28 stagecoaches. His gun was never loaded. He realized that people were so afraid of his mask and voice and reputation that he didn’t need a loaded gun. And he became famous, or infamous, in the American West. Finally, the Wells Fargo company was able to apprehend him because he made the mistake of leaving a handkerchief at the robbery site that had his initials and they arrested him. They convicted him and they incarcerated him in San Quentin for four years. It would’ve been longer, but they weren’t entirely sure he was the one. And after four years he was released, he began to rob stagecoaches again, except this time he didn’t write poetry. He didn’t sign Black Bart.

But the Wells Fargo company knew he was doing it because the rest of the MO was the same. And so, they went to him and said, we can’t prove you’re doing this, but here’s the deal. We’ll give you $200 a month for the rest of your life if you don’t rob another stage coach. And he agreed. And for the rest of his life, his retirement was paid by the Wells Fargo company. That’s a true story. That’s a true story. But the amazing thing is, before he died, the newspaper interviewed him in San Francisco and they said, how do you view your life? He said, I’m a righteous man. I never hurt anybody. I didn’t take anything from anyone who couldn’t afford to lose it. And if I’m guilty of anything, it’s bad poetry.

But he was kidding himself. We’re all a little like Black Bart. We feel relatively righteous. But the holy God says that in His sight, all of our righteousness is as filthy rags. All of my righteousness is like filthy rags. There is none righteous, no, not one. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But when you come to Christ the righteous one who lived perfectly the will of the Father, the one who shares the holiness of God, and you embrace Him as Savior and Lord, His righteousness is imputed to you. In the courtroom of heaven, you are declared righteous, God the Father viewing you through the the lens of His Son.

He is Jehovah-Tsidkenu. He is the Lord of righteousness, and He offers righteousness to you. And we venerate His name, for He is Jehovah-Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness.

He is Jehovah-M’Kaddesh, the Lord who sanctifies. Because though we have declarative righteousness, we are still sinners. Though we are Christians, we are still sinners and all we like sheep have gone astray. And that is why in the Lord’s prayer we pray, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Christians should be people of humility, knowing that they have declarative righteousness but realizing that they are sinners still and that God who is Jehovah- Tsidkenu is also Jehovah-M’Kaddesh and He is the one who sanctifies us. And He is at work in our lives, seeking to sanctify you now, seeking to make me holy.

We acknowledge this as we come to Him in prayer. He’s seeking to make us holy. Jehovah-M’Kaddesh. And I know that maybe some of you have heard of Agostino de Duccio. He was an Italian sculptor who lived decades before Michelangelo. We’re told that one day he took a great marble block and from this block his plan was to sculpt a masterpiece. But he was frustrated, and he could not work with the marble. He didn’t like the grain of the marble. He didn’t like the shape of the marble. Finally, he just discarded it. Other sculptors came along, and they tried to work with this huge marble block and they too could not work with it and they discarded it. For 40 years it was just in an area where discarded marble was. And then Michelangelo came along.

Michelangelo came along and he took that discarded marble, and from that huge block of marble that others had rejected he sculpted his masterpiece called David. Michelangelo’s David was sculpted from discarded marble. He had those gifts, he had that ability. He could look at a crude block of stone and see something wonderful just waiting to be released. And you see, God is like that. Christ is like that. He is Jehovah-M’Kaddesh, the Lord who sanctifies. And He is sculpting you. He chisels and He shapes us, seeking to make us like Himself by His power. And we acknowledge this as we come to Him in prayer and we hallow His name.

He is Jehovah-M’Kaddesh and He is Jehovah-Makkeh. Jehovah-Makkeh, which means the Lord who smites. You don’t hear a lot of sermons on this. Not a lot of people hallow his name by calling Him Jehovah-Makkeh, the Lord who smites.

Oh, we acknowledge that in the Old Testament God at times did smite and His wrath was poured out from heaven. But we think that the God of the New Testament is somehow different, as though we have a schizophrenic God. And it is not true. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. There’s one God with one nature and God does smite and even our Lord Jesus Christ did smite. He pronounced judgment upon the town of Capernaum and He pronounced judgment upon Bethsaid and He pronounced judgment upon the town of Chorazin because of their hardness of heart and their unbelief and their rejection of the kingdom of heaven. And He said that their cities would be destroyed and never built again. And sure enough, archeologists have discovered they were destroyed and they have never been built again. He does smite. And as we come to Him in prayer, we humbly acknowledge that. And we also pray as we saw last week that He would deliver us from evil and that His smiting would come in such a way as to remove evil in our land and evil on the earth.

Well finally, He is Jehovah-Nissi, the 11th Yahweh title of God in the Bible. And as we hallow His name, we call Him the Lord our banner. The Lord our banner Jehovah-Nissi. And I know that in the last few weeks many of us have brought new emotion to the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, our national anthem. The words have new meaning, and our hearts have new emotion. I know that’s true of me as I sing the national anthem now. And sometimes tears come to my eyes and I realize how much I love my country. And I know you’ve had those same feelings as you realize how much you love this country. And as you sing the Star-Spangled Banner, we also realize as Christians, however, that we are citizens of a higher kingdom, and that in the truest sense, though we love this country, this world is not our home.

We’re just passing through and our commonwealth is in heaven, from which we await a savior. The Lord Jesus Christ will change our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subject all things unto Himself. And we who believe are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, children of God, brothers and sisters. And we have a higher banner. And the Lord Himself is our banner, Jehovah-Nissi. And it is the Lord who unites us. And to Him we pledge allegiance, and He is our cause and we live for Him. So we hallow the name of the Lord. We encourage you as you pray to go through these Jehovah names of God as you hallow His name and as you come to Him in prayer every day and as you bend the knee before Him. Let’s close with a word of prayer.