PRAYER
PRAYERS OF PRAISE
DR. JIM DIXON
JULY 21, 2013
MATTHEW 6:9-13
The Lord’s Prayer has a controversial ending. In most of your Bibles, the Lord’s Prayer ends with verse 13. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Or perhaps it is rendered, “Deliver us from the evil one,” and then that’s the end of the Lord’s Prayer. But you’ll notice in most of your Bibles there are footnotes because there’s conflicted manuscript evidence. And the ending of the Lord’s Prayer depends on the codex you consult. So some of the early manuscripts add the word, “amen.” “Deliver us from evil. Amen.” Other ancient manuscripts add a Trinitarian formula, “to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be glory forever. Amen.” Many early manuscripts add the more normative words that we had when we said the Lord’s Prayer this morning: “To thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
But most scholars agree that the original Lord’s Prayer probably ended at verse 13. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” So why were those other endings added on? Why do we have this conflicted manuscript evidence? And why, particularly, was this, “to thine be the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever,” added on? And why was that in so many early manuscripts?
The answer is the early church loved prayers of praise. They loved prayers of praise, and they thought that in the Lord’s Prayer there wasn’t sufficient praise. So they added this closing. “To thine be the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” Now, praise is already in the Lord’s Prayer, and we’re looking at prayers of praise today. And as we look at prayers of praise today, I have three simple teachings that are all so important.
But before we look at them, I want to ask you a question. Do you like to be praised? Do you like to have people praise you? And how does that make you feel? Have you ever had somebody praise you and it just kind of felt gushy? Have you ever had that happen? See, I think that happens in the ministry. It’s hard to give everyday people a glimpse into what it’s like to be a pastor, but you get a lot of criticism and you get a lot of praise. And neither are justified. I mean, maybe some of the criticism are, but you do get a lot of criticism as a pastor. And some of it comes in the email. Some people write letters. Some people talk to you on the phone. Some people just grab you in the hallway. They got stuff to say. I understand that.
But every once in a while, as a pastor, there’s just somebody who has you on this pedestal and they just come up and say stuff and it feels gushy (at least to me). And so occasionally I’ll have somebody come up to me and it just kind of feels a little over the top. They’re just like, “Oh, you are so intelligent,” like I’m Albert Einstein or something. Or, “You’re such a good leader,” like I’m Abraham Lincoln or something. Or, “You’re holy like Jesus, so holy.”
And see, I know within my heart that I’m, as I’ve often said, a bozo on the bus and I am none of those other things. And so the reality is it feels kind of gushy. And sometimes I just walk away feeling sort of slimed. And I think praise can do that to us. So I would ask you this: why does God like praise? Why does God want praise? Have you ever thought about that? Has it ever bothered you just a little bit that God wants praise? Does that bother you at all, since most of us want small doses of praise? The fact that God wants praise every week and every day, does that bother you at all?
I would acknowledge a couple of things. First of all, God deserves praise and no one else does. So God alone—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—deserves praise. I would also say it’s impossible for us to get into the mind of God into its depths. His thoughts, the Bible tells us, are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, His thoughts are higher than ours. And to comprehend the mind of God impossible for us. But I do believe that, with regard to praise, we find an answer in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where the Bible says, “We all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed.” The Greek word is “metamorphosis.” We’re being transformed from one degree of glory to another. And all this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. So as we behold His glory, we are being changed.
This thought occurs to me, that God wants us to behold His glory, to praise His glory, in order that we might be changed. And it is also true that as I behold the glory of God and as I look at His greatness it somehow changes me. And God greatly desires that we would be changed. So prayers of praise transform us. They transform us as pleases God. We need to pray prayers of praise more often.
So today we have three words regarding prayers of praise. The first is this: “Hallow His name.” If we would pray prayers of praise, we must hallow His name. It’s what Jesus taught us to do. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” And this word “hallowed” is “hagiastheto.” Hagiastheto is a Greek word found only two places in the entire Bible, Matthew six and Luke 11. And those are the two places where we have the Lord’s Prayer. We only find this word in the Lord’s prayer. And it is related to another word, “hagiasmos,” which is found frequently in the Bible. But the meaning of it is “to make holy, to set apart.” “Set apart the name of God.” His name is above all names. It’s above every name, Before that name, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. Set it apart, make it holy. Praise it.
Now, the Greek word for name is “onoma.” And it can refer to the literal names of God. “Praise His names.” But sometimes the word onoma refers to one’s character. Your name is your character. “A good name is better to be had than riches.” So your name is your character. So people ask the question, well, are we to praise the names of God or are we to praise the character of God? The answer is it doesn’t matter because they’re both the same. As you look at the names of God, you’ll see the character of God. His names reveal His character.
So we have had times in the past where we have looked at the names of God. We’ve looked at the Jehovah names of God. There’s the El names of God and there are the Jehovah names of God. The El names of God are E-Elyon, Elohim, El Shaddai El Gibbor. There are so many El names of God. And we’ve kind of gone through those through the years, too. And then there’s the Jehovah names of God, including the name Jehovah itself. God is Jehovah. I want you to understand that this name is not found in the Bible, although the two names that this name is derived from are found in the Bible. So what this is is a hybrid name. It comes from Yahweh, which is the name that God revealed to Moses in Exodus chapter three. “Who shall I say has sent me?” And God reveals His holy name, Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton, the four letters which could be transliterated, Y H W H or J H V H. But this is the divine name, and it’s based on the Hebrew verb “to be.” God is the great I Am. He simply is. He has life in himself. The rest of us have derivative life. His life belongs to Him and always has been.
So the divine name can mean I Am Who I Am. It can mean I Am That I Am. It can mean I Am He Who Is, or it can even mean I Am He Who Causes To Be. But this is the name Yahweh. And what the early church did is they took the name Yahweh and they combined it with the Hebrew Adonai. Adonai is the Hebrew for Lord. They took the vowels off Adonai put them onto the four consonants of the Tetragrammaton and created this hybrid word Jehovah. It’s what combines these two—Yahweh, Adonai, Jehovah.
Now, you probably don’t care about that. And yet you may have used the name Jehovah many times. And we find in the divine names this word Jehovah at the beginning. So really in the Bible it’s Yahweh at the beginning. But as we look at these divine names, you’ll keep that in mind.
So the first divine name is Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts. So when you’re going to praise His name, if you’re going to hallow His name, you call him Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts. And sometimes in the Bible He’s given this title in reference to the stars, the galactic systems, the universe itself. He is the Lord of Hosts. Other times He’s given this name in conjunction with the angelic realm, the supernatural realm. He is the Lord of Hosts. Other times He’s given this title with regard to His own people, the people of God. He is the Lord of Hosts. So we acknowledge His lordship overall.
He is Jehovah Hoseenu, another name of God found in Psalms 95. He is the Lord Our Maker. Jehovah Hoseenu means He is the Lord Our Maker. There was a time where you could go into public school systems and find this declared that He is the Lord Our Maker. There was a time you could go into public education and even secular higher education and find this declared and acknowledged that God is our Maker. And of course, we live in apostate times when people are departing from the faith. And there’s just a crazy understanding of church state separation. God is being scripted out of the public square and children are being raised in a godless society. But He is Jehovah Hoseenu. He is the Lord Our Maker, and He has made us in His image and in His likeness. And this is what gives us dignity.
He is Jehovah Rohi. He is the Lord Our Shepherd. The 23rd Psalm says, “The Lord is our shepherd. I have everything I need.” Jehovah Rohi.
He is Jehovah Jireh. He’s the Lord Who Provides. And of course, as a church, we are in the midst of transition and we are conducting and have been conducting a national search for a new pastor who will lead this ministry into the future. And we’re not worried because of Jehovah Jireh. He’s the Lord who provides and He will provide for us. And He has said, “I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” So He will build His church. He is Jehovah Jireh.
He’s Jehovah Rophe, the Lord Who Heals. I mean, as we hallow His name, we say Jehovah Rophe, the Lord Who Heals. And through the years I’ve sought to share with you that His healing takes many forms. It’s not just physical. He heals our souls. He heals our spirits, my ur emotions. He is Jehovah Rophe. He is the Lord Who Heals. Of course, sometimes he heals us physically and we marvel. Some of you have emailed me and asked me about our granddaughter Kinzie. And some of you have called and asked about our granddaughter Kenzie. And, and God has healed her. She is totally normal. She was paralyzed in her limbs and she began to move and now she’s back completely to normal. She had some kind of myelitis, perhaps transverse myelitis, but it’s gone. And we thank God for that.
But I’m hesitant. I’m hesitant not to praise God, but to tell you, because I know what some of you have gone through and I know some of you have longed to see someone healed that it didn’t happen the way you want it. So I know that God is sovereign and I know that there’s a great mystery to how and when and where He works. But remember, He has power to heal anything. And His greatest healing is given at the level of the soul, where He can secure our soul for all eternity and for heaven itself. He is Jehovah Rophe, the Lord Who Heals.
He is Jehovah. Shammah, the Lord Who is Present, the Lord Who is There. Go to Ezekiel in the Old Testament. Look at the very end of the very last chapter, Ezekiel 48. And in that last verse, they long for the city which is to come, the new Jerusalem. And it will be given a name Jehovah Shammah, “The Lord is there. The Lord is present.” Jehovah Shammah. You Come to Revelation chapter 21 and you see the words of John, “Behold, I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of the heavens from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her bridegroom. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He shall be with them. They shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them.” Jehovah Shammah.
And of course, we have a very personal experience of Jehovah Shammah, as when we accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior He sent His Spirit to dwell within us, to tabernacle within us. He is even within us as followers of Christ. He is in every way Jehovah Shammah.
He is Jehovah Shalom, and one day He will bring His peace to this world and He’ll beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. And nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. He is Jehovah Shalom and His Son is Sar Shalom, the Prince of Peace.
He is Jehovah Tsidkenu, and I love this name of God. I love to hallow His name in prayer and acknowledge that he is Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord Our Righteousness. He alone is righteous and we are not. Before Him, all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. But He is righteous and we are saved by His righteousness. And His righteousness covers us when we embrace His Son. His righteousness is vested upon us, imputed to us, and we are declared righteous in the courtrooms of heaven because of His holiness, not because of ours. What a great name. He is the Lord Our Righteousness, Jehovah Tsidkenu.
He is Jehovah M’Kaddesh. He is the Lord Who Sanctifies. And I mentioned this last week, how there is in the Bible this process called sanctification. And the word “hagiasmos” is sometimes in the aorist and it’s something that’s already been accomplished. Sometimes it’s present continuous and it’s in a process of being accomplished. Sometimes it’s in the future, meaning that there’s going to come a day when we are sanctified. But there’s also this sense in which we are even now being sanctified. And it’s that process of becoming more and more like Jesus as the years go by, becoming more and more like Christ. He oversees that process. He is Jehovah M’Kaddesh, the Lord Who Sanctifies.
He is Jehovah Makkeh, which is the Lord Who Smites. You don’t hear a lot of sermons on this. My guess would be a lot of you in your prayer life never mentioned this. “Praise you for your ability to smite.” But He is Jehovah Makkeh, and He does smite. And one day He will judge the nations and He will rule them with a rod of iron. And even now, acknowledging that many shall be saved but only as through fire, there’s a little smiting going on even in the body of Christ.
He is Jehovah Nissi, the Lord Our Banner. And we unite under His cause. And of course, tomorrow, as I’ve mentioned, many on our staff are joining with many on the staff of St. Thomas More. And there’s one banner we’re doing this under, as Protestants and Catholics hold hands. It’s under the banner of Christ, because He is Jehovah Nissi.
There’s a clear and present danger in an enveloping darkness in our society. So we hallow the name of God. We’ll put on the church website all these names and their meanings, and you can just access them. Because you’re thinking, well, I would like to mention those names in prayer and hallow His name and that that would help me focus on His glory. And perhaps it would change me to do that and would please Him. But I don’t know that I could remember all those names. Well have them there for you on the website and it can hopefully assist you in your prayers as you hallow His name and you set it apart and keep His name holy.
Well, a second teaching this morning regarding prayers of praise is that the Bible tells us to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. This is Colossians 3:16. You’ve all heard of John 3:16. Remember, in Colossians 3:16 we’re admonished to praise God through psalms, through hymns, and through spiritual songs. So prayer is not just the words we speak, it’s the hymns we sing. So we pray prayers of praise, not only when we hallow His name but when we sing these hymns to God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is a great verse, Colossians 3:16. And the word for psalms is “psalmos,” from which we get the word psalm. The word for hymn in the Greek is “humnos,” from which we get the word hymn. And the word for song is the word “ode,” from which we get the English word ode. The English word ode can refer to a poem or a song, oftentimes a poem or a song of praise.
All three of these words—psalmos, humnos, and ode—can be synonymous. They were sometimes used in the Hellenized Jewish world to describe the Hallel. As the Jews came up to Jerusalem and they sang the Hallel, these were called psalmos, humnos, and odes as they sang the Hallel. And they would do this on Passover as the Jews came up to the Holy City and they made their pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. On Passover, they would go up the hill of Jerusalem, 2,000 feet high—Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean is 2,000 feet lower. So you rise as you come up to the great Holy City and you get chills. I know every tour group… as we go up those hills and we rise to the Holy City of Jerusalem… it’s an amazing thing to realize the Jews did this singing the Hallel, which is the 113th, 114th, 115th 116th, 117th and 118th psalm. The Hallel.
All the people of God are meant to be a singing people. And of course, they would sing the Hallel again as they would go to temple and at the great feasts and festivals. So at the Festival of Tabernacles, they would sing the Hallel and at the Festival of Weeks, better known as Pentecost, they would sing the Hallel. At the Festival of dedication, better known as Hanukkah, they would sing the Hallel. So they would sing it again and again and again.
And of course, in Mark chapter 14 and Matthew 26 and Mark 14 we’re told that on Maundy Thursday of Easter week Jesus and the disciples after the Lord’s Supper sang a song and went out into the night. They sang the Hallel. Jesus and the disciples sang the Hallel. These are prayers of praise, and the word Hallel is the equivalent of the word, “Hallelujah.” It means, “Praise be the Lord. Hallelujah!”
And so we sing songs of praise. today, this word “ode” from which we get the word ode, is related to the word “hodos.” Jesus. This is kind of an interesting thing. You know, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “Ego eimi he hodos, he aletheia kai he zoe.” So this word hodos is used in that famous statement of Christ. And it can mean “I am the way.” It can also be rendered, “I am the song, I am the poem.” And there’s a sense in which everything we sing is about Him, because He is the way, He is the truth, and He is the life.
So what an amazing, amazing deal. And of course, through church history, strangely enough, music has been controversial. I don’t think anything has more divided churches than music. And this has been true all through church history. It’s so tragic because it’s through music we’re meant to praise God and we should view singing of praises as prayers. And yet this has always been so controversial. And there was a time when churches basically only sang chants. And sometimes they were called Gregorian Chants, after Gregory, but Gregorian chance had a particular sound. Aren’t you glad that that’s not all we sing today?
Barb and I were just out in California and we were at that Alliance Defending Freedom conference and we had this break one day where we took a walk. And we were in Dana Point. We took a walk along the waterfront, and as we took a walk, we went a couple of miles and the path turned under the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway one), and there was this long tunnel. It was a long tunnel. And Barb and I got into the tunnel, and we noticed it had incredible echo in there. And being very mature, we began to try to get an echo going.
We kind of get that going, and that’s kind of like chanting, but, if you can imagine, a whole cathedral of people doing that, except they’re glorifying Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s pretty amazing stuff. But it was controversial when they began to go beyond chanting to more obvious singing. And they began to sing the psalms without instrumentation, but then later they added instrumentation. And that was controversial.
Then Isaac Watts came along—Isaac Watts, who died at the age of 74 in the year 1748. But he was a dissenter. And dissenters were killed by the church. And what were they doing that was so wrong? Well, Isaac Watts was saying, hey, we can sing songs to God that aren’t from the Psalms. They don’t need to be from the Hallel. They don’t need to be from the Psalms. That’s good, but we can write our own words to express our heart’s love for God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We can write hymns of our own.
That was so controversial. So he wrote Joy to the World. How controversial. And he wrote, O God, Our Help in Ages Past, which Winston Churchill had performed at his funeral. And he wrote When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. He wrote great hymns. And these are all prayers—prayers of praise—and yet somehow controversial. And I would encourage you though, in your devotional life to not just pray words, but to sing songs, because it’s all prayer. So in your devotional life, starting today, maybe, or certainly tomorrow, find a place apart where you can hallow His name and where you can make your petition and your confession but also sing praises. Sing praises to His name. Find some song you love to sing.
One of my favorite old songs is Fairest Lord Jesus. I read the words to that song, “Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature…” when I read the words, it’s just so majestic. It enables me to praise His name. This a prayer of praise. So I want to encourage you to, in your devotional time, pray songs and hymns in that fashion. I think you’ll be very pleased with that.
Then we have just a final teaching, just a final thought, this morning. And that is that our life needs to be a prayer of praise. It’s not just something we do in a room for a few minutes of the day. Our very life needs to be an offering of prayer, an offering of praise to God.
One of the primary words for worship in the Bible, is “proskuneo.” And proskuneo means “to kiss up, to kiss godward.” And this is what prayers of praise are. This is what worship is. We kiss up towards God. And that should be the nature of our days, the way we live out our life, that we kiss up towards God—not towards men, and certainly not towards ourselves.
I had a phone call this last week from my grandson, Dixon, and he’s only three so he didn’t make the call. His mom did, my daughter Heather. And she immediately gave Dixon the phone. He says, “Papa, I have a question.” I said, “Well, what is a Dixon?” He says, “Are you smitten with me?” And I said, “Oh, Dixon, I’m so smitten with you.” And he was so happy that I’m smitten with him. But you see, I don’t go through my days without a far greater smittenness, if I can make up a word. Because it’s God I’m smitten with. I’m smitten with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I want to live for Him. I want to die for Him.
We live in a world where I think we’re smitten too often with ourselves. Some people just go through their days kind of looking in the mirror and they’re smitten. And we should be smitten with Him. We’re kissing up and our life is a prayer and it’s an offering of praise to Him.
I’m always mindful of a funeral service which took place many years ago. It was September 1st, 1st, 1715. My guess is there were a lot of funerals that day because there’s a lot of funerals every day. As we’ve often said, the death rate is a hundred percent. So there are funerals all the time. But this funeral this September 1st, 1715, was for the King of France, King Louis the XIV—Louis the Great, the Sun King, the one who persecuted Protestants and who drove the Huguenots out of France, the one who built the Palace of Versailles. What a majestic structure. And yet he, too, died. In the midst of his greatness, he died.
There was a pastor who gave the funeral message, and that pastor’s name was Jean Baptiste Massillon. He was a French bishop who loved Christ, and he gave the funeral message for King Louis the XIV. I’ve heard it said through the years that he gave a four word sermon and sat down. I’ve heard that said many times. I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool. I’ve never done that. It’s not true. It didn’t really happen that way. He actually preached quite a long time. But the first four words were the four words everybody remembered. And those first four words were these: “God alone is great.”
God alone is great. The first four words of the funeral message at King Louis the XIV’s funeral. “God alone is great.” You should live every day of your life and I should live every day of my life with those words on the tip of our tongue and constantly in our mind and heart. God alone is great. If we live that way, we will offer prayers of praise. We will hallow His name. We will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to Him and our life itself will be a song. Our life itself will be a prayer of praise. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.