If you would take your Bibles and turn to Luke, Chapter 11, Dr. Luke chapter 11, we begin today, study the Lord's Prayer, which is, as we have said, on the slide, the heart of Christianity. I usually want to come before you on Sundays in some way of a confident and upbeat manner, but I have to confess today, I come before you kind of with a heavy heart, and I hope that won't be reflected in a morbid sermon. But I am burdened about all that's going on in our world mainly because, Jane and I welcomed into our family, Saturday morning, our sixth grandchild, Little Louise was born. And while we were celebrating, I was thinking, what kind of world is my little granddaughter coming into? I know these things, they happen all the time around the world, people shoot groups of people and ethnic cleansing and violence is happening and immorality is nothing new to us, but it does seem to me, my friends, that this summer it seems to have been concentrated and great measure in the very streets we live in. My daughter and my three middle grandchildren live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, so that struck home, close to home, these things that happened this past weekend. I'm wondering, how did this happen? How did we come to this point? Him we sang to begin the service, holy God, we praise your name, is probably my favorite hymn. It's the oldest one that I remember as a little boy at five years old beginning to go to church and that was the hymn we sang as the opening hymn to the service almost every Sunday. And yet we've gone from holy God, we praise your name to same sex marriages and violence in our streets and to evangelical pastors falling into immorality and adultery and apparently without much repentance. How do these things happen? And I would suggest to you that the answer is that we have come as a people, even perhaps as Christians, to have a very low view of God and a very high view of ourselves. I blame for these things, primarily the pastors of our country, the clergymen, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish. I blame them. I blame them because I believe that they are more concerned about their popularity and their reputations, their name than they are about the name of God and His Son, Jesus Christ. They lack piety towards God and humility towards themselves. How else could a nation turn in one generation in my lifetime to embrace as normal, same sex marriage? How else could one young man go off to visit relatives in the Middle East and through some radical mom come back and kill five people in one afternoon? Who is the blame for that? That clergymen have put those ideas in his mind. How else can you explain that racism and violence still prevails in our culture, except that clergymen for the life of our nations, history, have been afraid to attack that great evil? And why would the people in the world live any different than pedophile priest and lesbian bishops and adulterous pastors? Why? The heart of America is desperately sick. What Jeremiah said of mankind now applies to us in particular. The heart is deceitful above all of the things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart and I test the mind to give to every man according to his ways according to the fruit of his deeds. How does God test the heart and search the mind? He does so through prayer. That's why David would pray, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto you, O Lord, my rock and redeemer. That's why he would pray in Psalm 139, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me, then lead me in the way of everlasting life. He would say in Psalm 26, prove me, O Lord God, and try me. Test both my heart and my mind. Andrew Murray is right. The man is alone on his knees in prayer before God is what he is, that and no more. It is our prayer lives that get to the heart of what we are. And that is because nowhere except in prayer are we unabashedly honest about what our heart goes after. That is the mystery and the wonder of prayer. It is heart-to-heart conversation with God. You and I pretend all the time. You think you know me and you do as humans know human beings, but God knows me. God knows me in the way he knows me is because of how I pray to him. He can see through what I really want by what I really ask. He can see through what I am when my heart is open before him in prayer. That I think is the glory of the Lord's prayer. It is a conversation heart-to-heart between God the Son and God the Father between Jesus Christ and the Father in heaven. I have often heard people say, Pastor, wouldn't you love to be around on a mountain top hiding behind some tree or rocker bush and hear Jesus Christ who was alone in prayer? You don't have to. What he prays in the Lord's prayer was his pattern of prayer. You'll see that in this passage that we've turned to in Luke chapter 11, where the disciples come to him and they say, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say this, Father, howlod be your name. Your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins for we ourselves, forgive every woman who's indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. That's obviously not the same version of the Lord's prayer that he gives us in Matthew chapter 6, if you'll turn there, because later on, almost a year later in the life of Jesus Christ, after he had taught his disciples to pray, as all rabbis did, as he gave them a pattern for prayer, an outline of how to speak heart to heart to God. He was teaching them again about prayer in Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 5, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the sin of dogs and in the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they receive their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who was in secret, and your Father who sees and secret reward you, and when you pray, do not keep up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words, do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him, and then He gives us a very simple, streamlined, phrase thrifty prayer, pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. One grand prayer, six great petitions, the heart of Jesus Christ, expressed to the heart of God, our Father in heaven. It is amazing that when He begins to pray, His chief concern, number one request, is that the name of God be honored. Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. I want you to turn now to the text we'll be in for the rest of the morning, Psalm 115, where the Psalmist David says, not to us or Lord, but to your name, give glory. For as we begin to look at the Lord's prayer, we have to understand what it means to hallow the name of God. If we don't understand that, then the rest of the prayer is skewed and leads in the wrong way. Not to us or Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory. For the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Why should the nations say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens. He does all the depletes. Their idols are silver and gold. The work of human hands, they have mouths, but do not speak, they have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear. Noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel feet, but do not walk, and they do not make a sound in their throat, those who make them become like them. And so do all who trust in them. O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and salvation. O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great. May the Lord give you increased you and your children. May you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. The dead do not praise the Lord nor do any who go down into silence, but we will bless the Lord. From this time forth and forever more praise the Lord. Here in this wonderful prayer, the Psalmist, whoever he is, explains to us what it means to hallow the name of God. Now, hallow is an old word. It simply means holy, to make holy or to set apart or to honor, to consider sacred. Halloween is literally the only place for a holy evening, the evening before all saints day. And so when Jesus said, pray like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. He was telling us something profoundly important in both prayer and life. And that is that the chief, the summa on him, the chief good of life, is that God be glorified, that his name be honored.
Why should the nation say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens. It is all that he pleases. It is believed by scholars, and I believe it too, that it's these verses that opened up Psalm 115 that motivate Jesus Christ to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. The Psalmist is agreeing with Jesus Christ, Jesus is agreeing with the Psalmist, that God's name is to be glorified for two reasons. One, because God is a faithful covenant keeping God. Look at verse one, not to us or Lord, but to your name, give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Now, we've looked at this phrase before, steadfast love. It's a little Hebrew word, cast said. We don't have a word in English for it. We have a phrase, steadfast love or loving kindness or mercy and compassion or better yet covenant, love and loyalty. God, your name is to be glorified because you are faithful to the covenant you made with Abraham, and to his descendants, including us, to a thousand generations, to us and to our children to the end of time, that you would be a God to us and that we would be your people. God is a covenant keeping God. Our Father has that connotation. This is an amazing thing that Jesus does. For all through the Old Testament, and up to this point in his life, Jesus Christ will refer to God as the Father. But never in the Scripture until this point that Jesus Christ say to believers, Jews or Christians, you may say, our Father, who is in heaven. My Father is your Father. Your Father is a covenant keeping God. What Father does not love and is not loyal to his children. It's the essence of Fatherhood, to be loving and sacrificial, even if necessary, to die for one's children, which Jesus Christ did. But not only do we hollow the name of God because He is our covenant keeping in loyal Father, but He is in heaven. Our Father, who art in heaven. That's what the Psalmist says here. Why should the nation say where is their God? Our God is into heavens. He does what He pleases, and then He contrasts us. Our God in heaven, who hears us, sees us, acts on our behalf, to their gods who have eyes, but do not see, and ears that cannot hear, and mouths that cannot speak, and hands and feet that cannot act, they cannot answer the prayers of those who worship them. In fact, He says all those who make these idols end up being like them, those who make them become like them, so to all who trust in them. Jesus is saying that our confidence in life is our confidence and prayer, that when we come and say, oh God in heaven, our Father in heaven, we're praying to one who is above and beyond the earth and one who is our loving Father, both a sovereign God over the whole universe and a Father of His children. Seek the Lord while He may be found, Isaiah says, call upon Him while He is near, let the wicked forsake His ways and the unrighteous man, His thoughts, let them return to the Lord that He may have compassion on Him and our God for He will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways declares the Lord, but as the heavens are above the earth higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, you do not return there but water the earth making it spring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word that goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish all that I purpose and shall succeed in everything for which I send that word forth. Only one who sits in heaven, only the Lord who sits in the heaven as the psalmist says, and laughs at rebellious men. This sovereign God in control of everything can answer our prayers in the owner reason he would want to is because he is our dad, our Abba, Papa. He is our father in heaven. For these two reasons, for none other, the name of God is to be honored. That's really what this request means. Today's English version says may your name be honored. The contemporary English version help us to honor your name. The Jerusalem Bible may your name be held in honor. This is always the starting point of prayer. The glory of God and the honor of his name. When we are concerned about our honor, our glory and our name, there are only three things that can happen and they are all bad. Our own sinful dishonor will surprise us and overcome us. The shame of our egocentric life will bring great embarrassment upon us and the ruin of our own reputations will be the result of putting ourselves before God. How else can you explain what is happening in our streets? Why do people go into a church and gun down other people of a different race? Except they do not honor God or those made in the image of God. As James said, with our mouths, we bless God and prayer and curse our brothers made in his own image, brethren, these things ought not to be. Why do people kill other people because they do not honor God? So how could they honor others made in the image of God? Why would a nation make it a constitutional right to live in Saddamay? Why? Except that the desires of men mean more to our government than the word and desire of God? Why would people want to live that way? Except that they have a low view of God. Why would anyone, and I'm not picking on the homosexuals, why do heterosexuals live in such intentional and relentless immorality in our country except that they don't think that God cares or can do much about it? Why would a person go and gun down soldiers in another country except that he worships an idol, as this Psalmist says, and he has become just like him, merciless, violent, evil. And why would pastors who get up and preach such marvellous messages about grace continue to live in adultery while they do so, only confessing once they're caught except that they have a low view of God and an exceedingly high view of themselves. This is what is wrong with America. This is the first thing. The heart of our lives are concerned more about our success than our sanctification, about our reputations and images than a godly name, about our glory and fame than the honor of Christ, about being popular with people than being approved by God. How do we correct this? We begin each day by quieting our souls and we begin to say, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Because Psalm 115 says that forces us to look at the idols in our lives, our children, and their academic success. Our career is in its advancement. Our churches and their size. We have dozens of these idols and each one of them seeks the glory that belongs to God alone. There's only so much spiritual energy and a human soul for only an extended time of one life. We cannot love many things preeminently. In fact, we can love only one. And if that is not God, our Father, and his honor, then life will become very ugly, very soon. This, I think, and I mean this, brothers. I'm not just using preacher, hyperblier. I think this has been the hardest thing for me to learn as a Christian because it is the hardest thing for human being to learn that the chief good in life is always God's glory and not yours. When God is glorified, things go well with us when he is not life falls apart. So this little hymn here, this little Psalm about the hollowing of God's name, its first stanza tells us that we pray because our prayers show forth the honor of God. But there's a second reason we pray. It's in the second stanza because our prayers show forth our trust in God. Oh, Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help in their shield. Oh, house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help in their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord, he is their help in their shield. Three times he talks to the church, Israel, to Aaron, the priest, the clergyman, and to all those listening to the other God-fearing men of the world who may or may not be believers that they aren't a trust in the Lord. Why? Because he is their help in their shield three times that refrain comes back. He is their easer, their helper, the one who comes alongside them. We know him as the parrot cleat, the Holy Spirit, to lift them up and give them made and he is their shield. He's literally in the in the old English abuckler, a leather strapped on shield that went around the soldier to retard the fiery darts and the blows of the enemy. That God both aids us and protects us, and that is called blessing. Five times he says, trusting in the Lord yields blessing. The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord those small and great. May the Lord give you increase you and your children. May you be blessed by the Lord who made the heaven and the earth. Five times he calls upon God to bless people, the same people who are trusting in him. Israel, Aaron, and the fear of the Lord because that's what blessing is. It's the putting him God's name upon a people. Listen to this. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, speak to your brother, Aaron, and to his sons, the priest. And say to them, thus you shall bless the people of Israel. You will say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance, his face upon you all and give you his peace so you shall put my name upon the people of Israel. And I will bless them. What a connection between the name of God upon his people and the blessing of God for his people. So shall my name be put upon the people and I will bless them. God is glorified and his name is honored when he blesses us because we become grateful for who he is and all he's done for us. The world takes notice of God then and show an interest in his blessings. They who fear the Lord are interested in entering into the fullness of this blessed life. And sinners are converted to God when they see that others are blessed and they are not. It's no surprise then that after Jesus Christ prays about God's holy name, his kingdom and his will, he says, give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us of our sins, deliver us from evil. Honor God first. God bless the people second. That is the order of life. Is this selfish or self-seeking to ask for blessings? No. People ask me that all the time. It's a legitimate question but think of it folks. We are creatures and creatures by nature live in dependence on the Creator. We don't have trouble admitting that about animals. Your dog only survives because the master feeds him. Psalm 45 says the Lord opens his hand and gives to every living creature their food for every day. He sustains them all. They all look to him and he saves them. We are no different. We are creatures. The reason we pray is because we cannot get those things for ourselves. I don't know about you but I don't ask the Lord for things I can get myself. I don't say, oh Lord God, I want a Klondike bar. I just don't tell my wife or my doctor and I go to the freezer and get one.
We pray for things. We can't get ourselves. And God will ever be the all-sufficient source of every good thing in life. Every good gift and every perfect thing is from above coming down from the Father of lights, our Father in heaven. For there is in him no variation or shifting of shadow. God will ever be the gracious source of all of our needs. God will ever be loving and gracious and prone to bless us. We will ever be creatures created to be dependent upon God and always needing of His aid. And we will always glorify God if we are honest about who He is and what we are and prone to pray for the things that we cannot get ourselves. It's right after this prayer that Jesus Christ in chapter 6 and 7 has an extended part of the sermon on the Mount about not being anxious about things, but praying. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks will be opened. For which one of you if his son would ask him for bread would give him a stone or if he would ask him for a fish will give him a serpent. If then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him. It's just that simple that we trust God and we ask God for these good things. You know an educator said to me recently. He said the young parents today are the first generation of Americans to rear their children by a committee of their peers rather than the help of their parents in the advice of their grandparents and that is why parenting skills are at an all-time low in our American culture. I thought about that a lot and I think folks that that's how we are with God. I mean when one 35-year-old lady calls up another 35-year-old lady and says is your daughter going to the dance this Friday. One man in a men's group says is your son struggling with pornography like my son is. If they ask the girls at their Bible study are you allowing your kids to have a smartphone at the age of 12. The question becomes why are you asking each other? Why don't you go say mom? When did you allow me to start dating and go to dances? Dad, when you were a teenager and you struggled with lust, how did you handle it? Grandpa, you think it's wise that Hannah get a smartphone at the age of 11. You know why we don't ask them? Two reasons. Either we don't trust them or we don't want their answer. We'd rather ask our peers to give us the answer we want so we can give them the answer they want and I think that's how we treat God. Rather than go and ask him, Father, what should I do? We are like the practical atheists. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. Doesn't say that out loud. He just is prayerless. He turns to the experts, to the government, to his own self-sufficiency, to his friends to answer the questions and give him the advice that only his father in heaven has the wisdom to do. When we trust God enough to ask him, we honor him. Finally, in this third and last answer, very quickly, we pray because our prayers give praise to God. The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. The dead do not praise the Lord, no do any who go down in decidence, but we will bless the Lord from this time, forth and forevermore, praise the Lord. Prayer honors God. Prayer is the highest form of praise because prayer is rooted in gratitude. It is rooted in dependence and it yields things to God. When we pray, we put things into the hands of Jesus Christ and say, now they're under your Lordship. I've given them to you. You do with them as you please and that honors him. That is an act of worship. When we ask Lord for things and he gives them our hearts echo back to him in gratitude, that is the highest form of praise Thanksgiving. And when we show our dependence on God, when we are humble and said, Lord, into your hands, I commit my spirit. Into your life, I merge mine. I give you my children, my grandmabies. If you do not care for them, all is lost. That act of praise is very honoring to God. I have observed in my short time in life and in the past, that there are three kinds of people who always have a lousy prayer life. The ungrateful, the proud, and the control freak. They cannot thank God. They cannot yield to God. They cannot put things in God's hands. And as Luther said, let God be God. But those who pray do that. And they end up grateful people who are blessed by God, who honor God, and their lives of prayer are soon lives filled with praise. Praise the Lord. As how they end, their prayers praise the Lord. As how they end their life. So we begin this Lord's prayer by looking at a pattern, not necessarily something that should be recited, but a pattern that points us to a heart to heart conversation with God. The heart of a Christian and Christianity echoing back the heart of God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.
When we say, hallowed be thy name, D.A. Carson says, we remove man from the center of things, and we place God at the very center. And we acknowledge that this is the highest good of life that God be honored above everything else. Soly, Dale Gloria, to God alone be the glory was not the model of Lutheran Calvin in the Reformers for no reason. They had seen what man-centered religion had brought to medieval Europe, and they wanted something better. They wanted God-centered and Christ-honored spirit-filled faith to make a difference in their lives, and all it did, and all of Western civilization. And so it can do for us again if we are willing to say that our chief good is always God's glory. We will be praying, as I said, each Sunday, some of the prayers of Martin Luther, but 1770 years later, in 1712, another man wrote a book on prayer using the Lord's prayer as his paradigm, and that was Matthew Henry called a method of prayer. And I want to in this series, as we end each section of the Lord's Prayer, to close my prayer by using Matthew Henry's prayer for that section. And so I ask you to pray with me now. O Lord, God, our Father in heaven, you have commanded us to pray always and with all prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to watch their undo with all perseverance and prayer for all the saints. To continue in prayer and in everything with prayer and supplications to our request known to you. You have directed us to ask and seek and knock, and you have promised that we shall receive and find and find it open to us. You have appointed us a great high priest, in whose name we may come boldly to the throne of grace that we may find both mercy and grace to help in this time of need. You have assured us that while the sacrifices of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord, the prayer of the upright is a delight to your heart. And that the praise that we offer you glorifies you. And the sacrifice of thanksgiving is better to you than the blood of many oxen bowls. You are the one who hears our prayers. And therefore to you, all flesh shall come. You have said seek my face, and our hearts have answered back your face, O Lord, we will seek. For we should not of people seek unto their God. And where shall we go besides thee? For you have the words of your eternal life. Whom have we in heaven but you? And besides you, there is nothing on earth that we desire. For there is nothing in comparison to you. With our flesh and our hearts have failed, you will be the strength of our heart and our portion forever. The nearness of you will be our good and our inheritance in the other world as our couple blessing in this life. Then we will say that the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places and that we have known a good heritage. For we have made honorable your name. And this prayer we humbly make to the howling of that sacred name. As we pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord, amen.