Hallowed Be Thy Name

God's will is not done by people who do not regard God with reverence and with adoration, and so that the very beginning of godliness, the very beginning of transformation in our lives begins with our attitude and our posture before the very character of God. A renewed mind and heart, by God's grace, leads to a transformed life.

It was true for R.C. Sproul, as you'll hear today, and perhaps it was true for you, that one of the first transformative changes in your life as a new Christian was how you used your tongue, a transformation of your speech. Welcome to the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Hallowed be thy name, to quote an older translation. That is what R.C. Sproul will consider today as we continue to explore elements of the Lord's Prayer. So what does it mean? Is it part of our address to God in prayer, or is it a request, a petition?

Here's Dr. Sproul to explain. As we continue now with our study of the Lord's Prayer, we remember that when Jesus answered the question of the disciples, teach us to pray, that he gave a model prayer saying, when you pray, pray like this. So let me begin today by asking you this question. What are the priorities of your prayer life? Look for a moment into your own mind and ask yourself the question, what are the things that you tend to pray about repeatedly, the recurring themes of your prayer? What is most important to you when you come before God in prayer? And I'll hold that thought for a second as we look now again to the teaching of Christ regarding prayer. He said, when you pray, pray like this. And in that model that he gave, he suggested that we pray saying, our Father who art in heaven.

And we've looked at the significance of that personal form of address that Jesus gives to his disciples. But after we move beyond the form of address, we then look at the structure of the Lord's Prayer and see what we call the petitions. Now, everybody knows what a petition is. It's that little piece of paper that people pass around for you to put your signature on when you want to get the government or the ruling body of some association to change the rules of the game, and so you get up a petition and you sign your name to it. Well, a petition is a request, and when Jesus gives us the structure of the Lord's Prayer, he gives specific petitions to be used as models for our prayer life.

Now, the question today is this. What is the first petition of the Lord's Prayer? The very first thing that Jesus says we should pray for.

In other words, what are the priorities that Jesus lists in this sample prayer? Well, this is a question that often is missed because we have a tendency to confuse this particular line of the Lord's Prayer and consider it to be part of the form of address and not a petition. But in reality, it's a petition, and the petition is this, hallowed be thy name.

That's the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, and I can't emphasize too much how important that is for us to grasp if we are to understand what Jesus is teaching us here about prayer. Again, as I say, we have a tendency to think that this phrase, hallowed be thy name, is part of the personal form of address, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That is to say, holy is your name, or you are the holy Father who is in heaven. But that's not the format of the prayer. It is not simply an assertion that God's name is holy. Rather, it's a petition, and Jesus is saying, oh Father, I am praying that your name will be hallowed. That is, that your name will be regarded as sacred, that your name will be treated with reverence, that it will be seen as being holy, because that which is hallowed is that which has been consecrated, that which has been set apart, that which has been designated as being holy or sacred. Now, back when we began the teaching program of Renewing Your Mind, we started this radio ministry with a series on the holiness of God. And we started there for a reason, because we're convinced that Ligonier, in fact, our purpose statement of Ligonier is to communicate to as many people as possible the holiness of God and all of its ramifications, because we see this as a central theme and central motif of all of Scripture. And I find it striking that when Jesus teaches the church how to pray, the first thing that he tells us to pray about is the name of God, that it may be regarded as sacred. Now, that may seem strange to us in our culture today.

There would be very few people, I would imagine, who would list the hallowing of the name of God as a top priority for the supplication of the people of God, for the petitions of the church. It seems almost foreign to our environment that so much attention would be associated with a name. I don't know how you are, but I sort of am graded when people mispronounce my name. I get embarrassed about it, that I think that I would be that vain and that proud that it bothers me when people call me Sproul or Sproul, you know, instead of Sproul. And I say to them, when they call me Sproul, you call me Sproul, and I growl. My name is Sproul. It rhymes with soul.

It's soul with PR. But you know how you feel when people mispronounce your name. Doesn't it bother you? Why does it bother you?

It's because we say, well, they're not taking me seriously. They don't even have enough concern for me as a person to get my name right. And we somehow feel slighted if our name is forgotten or if our name is mispronounced, and we become sensitive to that.

Well, God is not sensitive in that sense that He is upset or loses His dignity if somebody doesn't regard Him properly with the pronunciation of His name. But Jesus gives this petition within the context of a broader prayer of supplication. The rest of it goes like this, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, we're going to look at those other petitions later on, the thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

But Jesus doesn't say this, and if you'll just give me a few moments of license here, liberty to speculate, I've often wondered if in Jesus' mind when He set forth the priorities of prayer that there was a reason for His listing the petitions in the order that He gives them. First of all, hallowed be thy name. Second of all, thy kingdom come. Third of all, thy will be done.

Those things may be distinguished one from another, but they're so interconnected, so closely related that we dare not divorce them from each other. And I'm convinced that though we pray for the manifestation and the victory of the kingdom of God, and that we pray that the will of God be done in this world, I think that it is a futile prayer to hope for the victory of God's kingdom on this planet until or unless the name of God is regarded as sacred, because God's kingdom does not come to people who have no respect for Him. God's will is not done by people who do not regard God with reverence and with adoration, and so that the very beginning of godliness, the very beginning of transformation in our lives and in our society begins with our attitude and our posture before the very character of God. I remember when I first became a Christian, and that summer I was working in a boys' camp, and one of the first things that happened to me after I became a Christian in terms of outward external change in behavior was before my conversion, I thought nothing of using the name of God in a blasphemous manner as a mode of cursing and of using the name of Jesus in a similar fashion. But after my conversion, perhaps the quickest change I noticed was in my speech patterns at that point, because I just couldn't find it within myself to blaspheme the name of Jesus.

Why not? Because I was in love, and I had now a profound affection for Christ and a profound sense of gratitude for God, and suddenly those things that rolled off my lips so easily prior to my conversion just simply would no longer come forth from my mouth. And the second thing I noticed was that I had a kind of sensitivity to hearing that kind of language from my friends. And I realized that when my friends would use the name of God in a blasphemous manner or the name of Jesus in this way, as my fellow counselors did at this camp every day, I realized that they weren't thinking about what they were saying.

I know that they didn't just intend as they started out their day to say, well, today I'm going to blaspheme God's name every time I open my mouth. It was a pattern. It was a habit. It was an unconscious mode of expression, just as had it been in my life up until that point.

And so, I could hardly feel judgmental towards my friends, because I'd been as guilty as they had for years speaking in this manner. But the more I studied this question, the more terrified I became about this commonplace practice in our culture. On television, we have seen a radical change in the standards of what is permitted in terms of linguistic expression on national broadcast television. We've seen it in the movie theaters, where any form of expression is legitimate.

Now, I mean, this is legal. But there are still standards on broadcast television, certain words and phrases that are not allowed to be used. Certainly, graphic, erotic language is now still forbidden on television. I can remember that 25 years ago, you were not allowed to use the word virgin on national television, because the word virgin was too sexually suggestive for broadcast speech.

We've come a long way, baby, haven't we, in the last 25 years. But the thing that I've noticed significantly here is that what is permitted with respect to the name of God is anything goes. We will still not allow explicit erotic language on television, but we will allow blasphemy with regard to the name of God. I listened to one program once, a half-an-hour program and counted 58 times on that program where the name of God was treated with anything but reverence.

But we don't see it as a big deal. Again, several years ago, I read an article in the paper where a truck driver in Maryland had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. And because he was verbally abusive to the arresting officers, by the time the police got him to the magistrate to arrest him for this misdemeanor, they were furious and they wanted the magistrate to throw the book at him.

And so, this magistrate saw that on the statutes of the state of Maryland, the maximum penalty that he could impose upon this truck driver for drunk and disorderly conduct was a fine of $100 and 30 days in jail. But he also noticed on the law books a prohibition against public blasphemy. And so, he assigned another 30 days in jail and another $100 fine because in the verbal abuse during the time of the arrest, the truck driver had blasphemed the name of God. Well, this was reported not in the newspaper as I thought a moment ago, but I remember now it was in Time magazine, and they had an editorial about this incident screaming bloody murder about these outdated, arcane, puritanical laws that were still on the books and still being enforced in our modern, sophisticated culture. And they were just furious and enraged that anybody in America in this day and age would be penalized by the law for publicly blaspheming God. And as I read that, I thought, boy, that truck driver better be glad he didn't live in ancient Israel because what he did here that cost him 30 days in jail and $100 could have cost him his life a couple of thousand years ago. And what it also revealed is that we live in a topsy-turvy world where the values of our culture are radically different from the values of the biblical worldview.

In Israel, it was a big deal how one used the name of God. One of the games I play with my students in the seminary is that I say, okay, if you had the opportunity to write a new constitution for the United States of America, start all over again, and you're going to have ten laws that will govern the nation. There will be the bedrock foundation, the bill of rights, the new bill of rights. What would be those ten foundational precepts that you would incorporate into this charter to start a new government? Maybe you would have a law safeguarding the sanctity of human life that prohibited murder. And maybe you would have a law that protected private property, and so it would prohibit stealing or theft.

But how many of you would waste one of your top ten with a law about honoring your parents or a law against coveting? But what would perhaps be most astonishing would be for somebody today to build a legal document to found a government that included in its top ten laws a law protecting the use of the name of God. And yet when God did it, when God took a people and formed them into a nation and created the foundation for a godly society, he included in his top ten commandments a law that regulated the use of his name. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Now our purpose today is not to give an exposition of that particular commandment because it means a whole lot more than an abuse of the name of God with regard to cursing and blasphemy and that sort of thing. It also had to do with using the name of God in appealing to God to bear witness to covenants and the swearing of oaths and all the rest. But certainly within the context of that prohibition was this enormous concern that the name of God be regarded as holy. And so we see it as a priority in Israel, so much so that even today I've had Jewish students attend my classes and when they're writing their essay exams, when they come to the English word God, they'll write G-D. They won't even write the full name of God out in English. So ingrained is it in them, in their culture and in their history not to misuse the name of God. But it was not only a priority for Israel, it was a top priority for Jesus, so much so that when he teaches his church how to pray, he said, when you pray, the first thing I want you to pray for is that the name of my Father be regarded as holy, because that's at the basis of everything, because how we live before God is determined by our attitude towards God and our view of who he is. There is no worship, no adoration, no obedience that can flow from a heart that has no regard for the name of God.

Why? Because there's a psychological truism here. How is it possible for somebody to have a high regard for God, an authentic reverence for God, a genuine fear of God, and at the same time have a frivolous use of the name of God? This isn't a prohibition against magic incantations or the power of words, but really what Jesus is saying here is that how we regard the name of God is the deepest revelation of the state of our hearts with respect to our attitude toward the God of that name. And if we have no regard for his name, that reveals more clearly than anything else that we have no regard for him. So when he says that we should pray that God's name be regarded as holy, he is saying that we should regard him as holy, and that that posture of reverence and awe and respect for God should define everything in our lives. I was going to start this Coram Deo by saying to you, I don't want to frighten you, and I thought, but that wouldn't really be true.

I'd be telling a fib because sometimes we need to be frightened, and so let me frighten you. Let me ask you in the privacy of your own mind to ask yourself how you use the name of God in your everyday speech patterns. Ask that for yourself, and then ask the big question. What does that tell you about the state of your soul? What does it tell you about the inclination of your heart and the attitude of your soul to the majesty of God? I mean, I can't think of any better barometer by which we test and measure our own inner feelings about God. We may deceive ourselves saying we go to church, we give to the church, we participate in the activities of the church, but nevertheless our lips betray us, our mouths spew forth our deepest attitude toward God.

I want you to ask yourself that question and see if it is that you have a real reverence for Him. A convicting message today and important reminder, how words matter. As Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart, His mouth speaks. This is Renewing Your Mind, and you heard a message today from R.C. Sproul's ten-part series on the Lord's Prayer. We'd love for you to have this entire series, plus Dr. Sproul's book, The Prayer of the Lord. You can have both when you make a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind by calling us at 800-435-4343 or by visiting renewingyourmind.org. Once your donation is processed, we'll unlock the series in the free Ligonier app and we'll put the book in the mail for you. This is a popular series and book on a topic that most Christians desire to grow in, so I'd encourage you to take the time to read the book and listen to the messages or give the book to a friend who would appreciate it.

But don't delay. Visit renewingyourmind.org today or use the link in the podcast show notes as this offer ends tomorrow. I would also like to remind you that Ligonier Ministries is traveling this week to Canada for Saturday's Always Ready Youth Apologetics event in Calgary. We would so appreciate if you would pray for me and Stephen Nichols and for the hundreds of teenagers who will be there.

We'll be discussing issues surrounding identity, our union with Christ, the reality of forgiveness, sexuality, and some of the rising questions related to artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. And please know that your regular support of Renewing Your Mind helps make these events possible as well. So thank you. R.C. Sproul will conclude our time in the Lord's Prayer considering the petition, Thy Kingdom Come. That's tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.