992. Hallowed Be Thy Name

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. We're continuing our study series on the Lord's Prayer, and today we'll hear from Seminary Professor, Dr. Randy Yeagli. Today we're going to look at the second aspect of our Lord's Prayer. We're going to look at Hallowed Be Thy Name. Our thesis for the message this morning is this, we must have a zeal for God's holy character. I suppose that there's no coincidence here that whoever picks the speakers picked an Old Testament guy today, because basically the Old Testament is so rich in its presentation to us of what God's holiness really is. The Lord's Prayer is one section of our Savior's overall teaching on the subject of what He expects for believers. In Matthew 5, 48, which I would suggest is the beginning of everything that includes the Sermon on the Mount, the command is, be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. Now, let the magnitude of that just impact your soul for a little bit. Be perfect?

Well, you might as well tell me to jump over the moon. And by the way, this is not the first time God has told somebody to be perfect. Consider the life of Abraham. When he was ninety and nine years old, the Lord appeared to him. And he said, I am the Almighty God.

Walk before me and be thou perfect. Now, of course, we want to nuance that term perfect, right? We want to say, oh, well, in the Old Testament, the concept of perfect shalem is whole, complete, mature. It doesn't really mean perfect in the sense that we think of perfection.

Oh, really? Well, you can nuance this all you want. But this is a very high goal that the Lord is setting for Abram.

At this point, his name is Abram. And a very high goal our Savior is setting for us. You know, we generally don't like the bar set high. You know, you watch those pole vaulters in the Olympics.

There was a young lady from Greenville, the Greenville area, who got a silver medal in pole vaulting. And they start out with it, well, way higher than anything any of us could jump. And then when they get a few that successfully jump that, then they raise the bar higher.

And we'll see how many can meet that goal. And then they raise it higher. And pretty soon it's getting to the point where you say, nobody's going to be able to jump that. And then somebody does.

And they get the gold medal. But we don't like the bar getting raised, at least for us personally. Raise the bar for somebody else.

Not me. Well, no, the Lord has raised the bar quite, quite high for us. Now let's talk here about what kind or how our zeal for God's holiness is manifested.

First of all, we must have a zeal for conformity to God's holy character. Hallowed be is for those Greek bodies out there, an aorist passive imperative, third person singular. You know, in English we have second person imperatives.

You do this or y'all do this, singular and plural. Hebrew is the same way. Hebrew has second person imperative.

But neither English nor Hebrew has a third person imperative. So how in the world do we translate this? Well, I would suggest that syntax communicates the idea of a humble petition for God to manifest his holiness to the supplicant, the person who is going to be praying this. Lord, please, this is a fond, zealous desire of the believer who prays this way. Lord, please manifest your holiness to me. I have a desire for this. This is this is deep down inside of me what I really want.

And by the way, you cannot fake that. That's going to be something that is going to have to result from your personal walk with the redeemer who has saved you. There has to be grace involved for you to want this this way. This is the kind of thing where the love of Christ constrains us. Our love for the one who redeemed us goes deep within our hearts and we want to know him better.

We're not going to be satisfied with anything less than a vibrant, deep relationship with this one who has been so gracious to us. Now we have to ask ourselves, what is God's name? Hallowed be thy name.

I have now this desire to know God's holiness, but the text tells us that this is something related to God's name. We usually use the concept of the name simply to refer to a moniker that you go by. My name is actually my first name is John. My middle name is Randolph. And so I go by Randy. Don't ask me why it's a long story, but I do know what the word John means.

OK, I have no idea what what the word Randolph means. And I don't care because we don't intend to communicate something about ourselves in the use of the name. I was significantly different in Old Testament times. For instance, consider just as an example, the birth of Esau. Now, in Hebrew, his name sounds a bit different than it does in English. It's actually Esau, and you know, anybody know what that name means? It means Harry.

H-A-I-R-Y, not H-A-R-R-Y. OK, why did his parents give him this name? Because the text says when he was born, he was hairy all over like a hairy garment. And so just think they call him for dinner.

Hey, Harry, time for dinner. And he spent his whole life being just as hairy as anybody you probably would have ever known. So that was characteristic of him as a person. And so we ask ourselves a question when it comes to God's character or God's attributes. Really, what is holiness? Holiness is one of those kind of names where are words that you say, boy, it has a really good religious ring to it, doesn't it? Holiness. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like the sound of that. Must refer something to God's, like God's awesomeness. But if you ask typical people in the typical church to find what God's holiness is, you might get a few blank stares.

So let's take a look at two key aspects of what it certainly is, and then the third aspect of what I think it probably is. Certainly it refers to God's majestic greatness. And what better text to turn to than a text from which our song that we sang this morning, Holy, Holy, Holy, comes from. And that is Isaiah chapter six. In the year the king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord, the master, the sovereign, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. And his train filled the temple. That is his royal robes.

There's no choo choo in heaven. Above it stood the seraphim. By the way, seraphim is plural.

It does not need an S on the end. Each one had six wings. With twain he covered his face, with twain he covered his feet.

And with twain he did fly. And one cried onto another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. Now, what is completely, well, nearly completely unprecedented in the scripture, in the Old Testament, is a three-fold repetition of something. Now, Hebrew routinely uses a single repetition of terms to denote a superlative character or quality. For instance, in Isaiah 26, the prophet says, you will keep the one whose mind is propped up in shalom, shalom.

And how do the English versions handle that? Perfect piece. That's a superlative idea.

But wait a minute. How about this three-fold repetition? How do you translate that?

What's the significance of that? A superlative beyond a superlative. There is nobody like this so great in holiness. And here now is Isaiah.

He's in the Lord's throne room. And he sees, well, the one that we know from John chapter 12 is Christ himself, seated on a throne. And Isaiah gets a magnificent glory, a view of his glory. Glory is a very closely related concept to holiness. Basically, holiness is everything God is in the perfections of his infinite character. Glory is what God wants us to see and know about his infinite holiness. So glory is technically, in my view, a subset of holiness.

But they are very close terms. Here are the seraphs. These burning ones. They could have said anything they jolly well, well, no, jolly well, please. They could have said anything they wanted to, to describe this majestic sovereign sitting on his universal throne.

But they repeat three times. Holy, holy, holy is the one who controls all the heavenly armies. All the armies on earth. All the celestial beings. All the starry host. This one who has complete and utter sovereign control over everything.

The one who is majestic beyond words to describe it. And the one who is supremely holy. They don't say loving, loving, loving is the Lord of hosts. They don't say righteous, righteous, righteous is the Lord of hosts. They say holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

Now, not only does his holiness involve the greatness and majesty of his incomparable character, it also certainly refers to his uniqueness. For instance, in Exodus chapter 15, verse 11, we have sort of like, I suppose you could say, the center point of a psalm of praise that Moses composes that essentially summarizes the first 14 chapters of the book of Exodus. This is the theological center of what God wants to teach his people through the Exodus, the deliverance through the Red Sea. And so, what is the centerpiece of Moses' psalm of praise? He says, who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? A rhetorical question that demands the answer, no one. Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing miracles.

Word wonders there. Supernatural acts that only God can do. And so, what is it that this verse is communicating to us? No one. No earthly person, certainly. No false gods. No pretenders to be a god. There is no one in the universe who is glorious in holiness.

No other person in the universe who is fearful in praises, doing wonders. Now, the third thing I would suggest to you that we need to understand about holiness is that most likely, holiness describes the totality of God's being. In other words, technically what I'm arguing here is that holiness is not just simply one of God's attributes. Holiness is the sum of his attributes. In other words, that means that God's righteousness is a holy righteousness.

In what sense? It's infinite and unique in his righteousness. God's love is a holy love. No other love like that.

It's unique. There are no bounds to it. Not like our love that's finite and easily turned from what it ought to be, directed back on ourselves so that we become those who love themselves.

No, no, no. God's love is far, far beyond what we can even ask or think or comprehend. Every aspect of God's character is a holy character. Now, most likely, I think we should see from this that there are a couple of indicators of this in the scripture.

Well, there are many more, but we only have time to hit two of the main ones. First of all, look at these two verses from the book of Amos. First of all, Amos 4, 2.

The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness that lo, the day shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks and your posterity with fish hooks. In other words, judgment is coming. What does Amos say about the certainty of this? God has taken an oath. And when God takes an oath, he can't take it on anything less than himself. So he says, I've taken this oath according to my holiness. Now let's look at a parallel passage, not very far from Amos 4, 2.

It's Amos 6, 8. The Lord hath sworn by himself. And then, of course, follows judgment once again. These parallel passages are not an airtight proof that God's holiness is equal to himself.

But I think they're an indicator that way. And by the way, what does this term himself translate? Literally it says God has sworn by his nefesh. Those of you who have taken Dr. Casillas' class in OT theology, you've done a word study on nefesh, and you know that on a taxonomy of personhood, nefesh is right up there at the very top.

Nefesh is everything you are as a person. So when the text says God has sworn by his nefesh, it's equivalent to he's sworn by himself. And that is directly parallel to the concept of holiness. As well, when we consider what the OT says about God's name, we learn that 23 times the Bible tells us that God's name is holy. And then, kind of a synonym to this, since holiness is the greatness and uniqueness of God's incomparable character, he's also said to be great 13 times.

And then he's said to be glorious, his name is said to be glorious 11 times. But remember, I've already said glory is very closely related to holiness. So all the times the OT tells us that God's name, his character, is something, it's always related to the concept of holiness. What God wants us to realize through this is that when he says my name is holy, he's describing everything he is in the totality of his being.

And of course, what this means is when we pray, hallowed be thy name, we are foundationally praying, God, I want to know you as you really are. As you have manifested to me in the scripture, I want to know you so that I might allow you to transform my very fallen character. Now we all come into the Christian life with different varying types of character. Some of you were saved very young in life before you had a chance to develop crummy character. And your parents worked hard at making sure you were in church, hearing the gospel, hearing the word of God. You got you into Christian school, and you learned from a very young age good character from the scripture.

And when you went on a trip, your parents played you Patch the Pirate tapes. Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. That's the way I raised my kids. But that's not the way I was raised. I didn't come to know the Lord until later on in life. And although my dad tried his best to beat some character into me, you know, from his perspective as an unsaved guy. I shouldn't say that. He was a good disciplinarian. He did not beat me. All right.

Let's just make that clear. I did learn something growing up, but not from a scriptural perspective. I was actually the first one in my family to come to know the Lord. So anyway, basically when Leviticus 19 verse 2 and then 1 Peter chapter 3, about verses 13 through 16, tell us that we are to be holy for our God is holy. This is essentially a call for us to, as much as a finite creature can, manifest the holy character of the God we've come to know in salvation. Only then will our lifestyle be what it ought to be. Because you see, holiness starts with internal transformation and then manifests itself in external lifestyle.

And if it's not in that order, then what happens? We end up being nasty Pharisees who think they're holy because of what they do and don't do. No, no, you're not holy because of what you don't do. Now, what you don't do is important as you grow in God's holy character, because there are lots of things that we need to condemn as well as commend when we know our God. The goal is perfection, even though we'll not reach the goal until death or until the return of Christ or the church.

But folks, by God's grace, we can make progress towards the goal. That is called progressive sanctification. These days, there are those within what I call the super grace movement. They have a very odd definition of grace. These are people who make such a point out of reveling in their justification that they conflate justification and sanctification.

And they now basically have consigned progressive sanctification to the realm of what they call legalism. Watch out for this teaching. You know, in the blogosphere, this is rampant.

It used to be before the advent of any, I have to be careful here, any neo-fight being able to establish a web page, and his stuff doesn't have to pass any sort of peer review. He just gets on the internet and spews his misunderstanding of theology. And then he gets a following.

Uh-oh, now the misunderstanding is developing a life of its own. And it spreads. And people on Facebook like it and they share it. Some people that I am friends with share some of the most unbelievable stuff on Facebook. I look at it and I go, ah!

No, no, no. Don't you see the problem with that? That happens politically, too, as in every other way on Facebook. We have to be very careful that we go to the scripture. Let the scripture communicate to us the knowledge of our dear savior.

Let it communicate to us what the goal is. Because we don't know anything about God other than its eternal power and sovereignty by looking at nature. Actually, we don't even know about his sovereignty. But we do understand his power. We need the revelation of scripture. Now, folks, that means if we're going to grow in holiness, then we're going to avail ourselves daily of the scripture. We are going to allow, we're going to plead with the Holy Spirit of God who indwells us to use his word in transforming power. And we will never, ever be satisfied with where we are spiritually. Ever.

The day we become complacent, I've arrived! We're not worth shooting. All right. Next, not only must we have a zeal for conformity to God's character, but we must also have a zeal for proclaiming God's holy character.

Why? Because our natural tendency, the old man within us still, is to profane God's holy name. Just as Israel did throughout its long history of spiritual apostasy.

And I say long history, same thing over and over again. So if you read Ezekiel chapter 36 verses 16 through 27, what you're going to find here is a repeated use of this concept of profane. What does it mean to profane God's holy name? Well, it means to take what is holy and treat it as common and ordinary. So when, for instance, Israel began worshiping other gods, and they tried to make an eclectic religion by mixing the worship of Yahweh with the worship of these false gods, then they began to treat the Lord's character as if it were no different from the false gods.

That's called profaning his character. Not realizing the majestic, unique, incomparable greatness of God. If anything creeps into our lives and begins to dethrone the Lord from his rightful place as sovereign, that's a thing now we have allowed a profaning of God's holy name. But, as New Testament believers, we need to realize the truth of Romans 12 too. We need to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. And then, when that renewal process is taking place, we've yielded ourselves a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Our lifestyle, by our lifestyle itself, becomes a proclamation of the work of grace that God is doing in our lives to transform us so that we are not the same persons we were when we first came to know Christ.

Rather, our lifestyle begins to take on a quality about it that is supernatural in its manifestation. Has anybody ever looked at you and said, I don't get you. What makes you tick? Why in the world do you think so differently from the way I think? How come you come to work on Monday morning and you're so stinking happy?

Why? I've never known anything like you. All right, that's at a point when you get to say, Look, it is the grace of God that is in the process of transforming me.

You're going to find out once you get to know me well enough. I'm not perfect yet. And not only this, but this is the testimony. We ought to be letters written on tables of fleshy heart. Not chiseled in stone, but letters of revelation to people who know us, especially unsaved people, of what the grace of God is doing in our lives, in progressive sanctification, as we make progress toward the goal of manifesting God's holy character. Hallowed be thy name. That is a total life commitment to growth. You've been listening to Seminary Professor Dr. Randy Yeagley, which is part of the series on The Lord's Prayer. We hope you'll join us next time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.