The Lord’s Prayer, Part 1 | How to Pray Well

Luke 11:2

We are back to our study of Luke’s Gospel. So, we want to ask you to turn to that section on the Lord’s prayer that’s found in Luke 11:1-4. Luke 11:1-4. We’ve been taking our time to understand the privilege that we have of coming to God in prayer, and we have spent a good portion of time to clarify the greatness of the one that we call, father. The one that we are to hallow his name. So, we want to understand, what is his name all about, and what is it to call him, father. So, we’ve tried to clarify that. And in light of his greatness, in light of his holy name, we have pondered this right of access, that we now have. As his children, we can come to God, and we can call him father. The one we call, father. The one to whom we belong. The one to whom we are related, because we have been joined in spiritual union, by the Holy Spirit, to his beloved son, Jesus Christ.

Our father is sovereign over the coronavirus. He is sovereign over every other health scare, as well; every outbreak, every epidemic, every pandemic. He controls viruses, bacteria, microbes, cells, atoms, sub-atomic particles, protons, neutrons, and electrons and he has ordained that, in Christ, all those particles hold together. The energy that holds the atom together is God.

 Our father is sovereign over the planets of the heavens, including the weather on the earth. David considered God’s heavens, the work of his fingers; the moon and the stars which God ordained. Our father is sovereign over them all. Which means he is sovereign over the climate. He is sovereign over the oceans, the ecosystems, the rain forests. He controls the present health and the future viability of this planet, including every other planet and solar system and galaxy in the entire universe.

 Our father is sovereign over all the nations. Over all the governments that vie for control and the powers that wrestle and strive back and forth on the earth. All democracies and dictatorships and monarchies and socialist governments and any other form of tribal government or rule or power. He is sovereign over all. He’s sovereign over all their armies and weapons of war. Weapons of mass destruction are under his control, including more precise weapons. All of it. All their means of projecting power. God is sovereign over it all.

Our father owns it all. He’s sovereign over all the world’s resources, and all the corporations that make use out of the fathers’ resources. They that seem so mighty and influential, God is ruler over all. His power and his wisdom make use of whatever resources that he pleases and whenever he pleases. There are no EPA regulations that hinder his plans and purposes. He does what he wants. And his resources, his treasury, is the universe and all it contains, as well as, unseen, immaterial resources that also do his bidding, that also come to his command and do whatever he wants. All things are his servants, including mighty angels and small human beings.

 Our fathers’ economy is stable and unchanging. Built on sounder principles than the American Stock Market or the Tokyo Exchange or whatever other London Market, whatever financial market in the world. His economy is never shaken by turbulent times. He always gets full return on his investments, too.

 His will is eternal, perfect, unchanging, and permanent, and the unfolding of his righteous plan is unstoppable. And we know, without any doubt whatsoever. We know because his word has told us so and his word is perfect, that our fathers’ heart is kind and good, and his character is righteous, and his power is able to bring justice and mercy to his perfect ends.

 He has established the earth, and by his appointment, it stands fast, and his faithfulness endures to all generations. All things exist and remain according to his good pleasure, to perform his bidding. For all things are his servants and he does whatever he pleases. So, if you’re here today, and you are one of those who is accepted in the beloved, by the will of the father, by the regenerating, saving work of the Spirit of God, then the God, that I just described from Scripture, is your God, and you’re to call him father.

 If you don’t know this God as your father, by faith. If you don’t know Jesus Christ, his son, as your savior and your lord, oh, well my friend, what are you waiting for? Do you not want to be rightly related to the lord of all? If you’ve been, you have, you have received the privilege of calling God father. If you are a Christian, you can come to him in prayer. You can seek his help. You can find his comfort. You can receive his power and his grace.

 And, as we learned last time, we have immense privileges as God’s children. Since God is our father, we benefit from his lovingkindness. We benefit from his infinite provision. We’re under his strong protection, and we grow under his loving discipline and care. God has lovingly surrounded us with every reason for confidence, for assurance and trust. He’s sent us his one and only son, Jesus Christ, who is telling us, here, “Come and pray. Ask and seek and knock.” He commands us for our good to pray, to come near, that we might draw near to the father, in close communion with him in prayer.

Let’s start by reading the text again before we look more closely at some of the individual petitions. Luke 11:1-4, “Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ And he said to them, ‘When you pray, say, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”’”

As we’ve said before, the first two petitions, in verse two, are about God’s interests. The final three petitions, in verses three to four, are about our interests and the logic is plain. Jesus wants us to align our interests with God’s interests first, and in that frame of mind, we come with the rest of our petitions. That’s a wise plan. It is a good pattern for all of our thinking. Not just our praying, but all of our thinking. Align our minds, our perspective, with God’s first, and then bring all of our petitions, because they make sense in the light of who God is.

So, five petitions, here, give us five points to cover. Five petitions. We pray for God’s exaltation, his dominion, his provision, his absolution, which is forgiveness, and his protection. We pray for God’s exaltation, dominion, provision, absolution, and protection.

Here’s the first, pray for God’s exaltation. Pray for God’s exaltation. Jesus said, “When you pray, pray, ‘Father, hallowed be your name.’” Hallowed, it’s not a, not a word we use often anymore. We hear it every year, though, in, when we talk, when we talk about Halloween, right? So, we think about the word, hallowed, in terms of strange costumes and kids getting candy.

 But that’s not how we’re supposed to think of the word, hallowed. Hallowed is the word holy. May your name be regarded as holy, that’s what we’re praying. The word hallowed is hagiazo and, in context, it means to sanctify, to set apart as holy. And the way this petition is stated, let your name be sanctified, we’re asking God to do what God fully intends to do, namely, to allow his name to be venerated, to let his name be treated as holy, to let it be exalted and lifted up, glorified. Now is there any doubt about that whatsoever? Do we think that God will not cause his name, somehow, to be exalted? And, thus, we need to pray.

Do we think that we need to pray so that his name will be treated with reverence, to be regarded as holy? Do we believe that he might possibly fail in his attempts to sanctify his own name, and that is why we must pray this? Well, absolutely not; of course not. If we had any doubts about that, we need only to read the same petition made by our lord and hear the fathers’ reply to Jesus’ prayer.

 Later in our lord’s ministry, John 12:28, Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify your name.” “Glorify your name.” That’s what he taught us to pray. Let your name be glorified. Jesus prayed this same prayer, little bit of a different verb tense, but in reply, the fathers’ voice thundered out of heaven, saying, “I have glorified it. I will glorify it again.”

So, God is not wringing his almighty hands, hanging on, looking for someone to take up his cause that brings honor and glory to his name. He will take care of that, just fine. Jesus told those who heard and did not understand that, that voice, that came from heaven. He said, “This voice”, has not, “has come for your sake, not mine.” It’s come for your sake. We’re not praying, “hallowed be your name,” as if we have any doubt. God will accomplish that. We have God’s own testimony that he’s not only glorified his name, but that he will glorify his name. He will perfect his own glory. There is no doubt about that whatsoever.

 The Lord is fully capable of handling the promotion and propagation of his own glory. He’s been doing that ever since the creation of the world, and he’s been doing it all along, in everything he has done. In fact, he is the only one who is capable of such a task. That’s why we pray. That’s why we ask him, let your name be glorified. We appeal to him to do what only he can do, and what he has every intention of doing.

When Habakkuk worried over the Babylonian invasion, God told him, Habakkuk 2:14, he said, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Look, it’s not the power or might or the glory of Babylon that will prevail. It’s not any earthly kingdom. It’s not any empire. The Lord will be glorified. Yahweh will be renown, and he himself will do it.

Turn over to Isaiah’s prophecy, chapter 59. Isaiah 59, where Isaiah paints a picture that has, sadly, become all too familiar to us, in our own time. He’s talking about sinful Judah and we can read along with Isaiah, indicting his own time, his own culture, his own generation, and we, sadly, must fall under the same indictment. He begins the chapter with the hopeless condition of the sinful world, that he sees around him, as the glory of the lord seems to be completely obscured by the dark shadow of iniquity and injustice in the land.

 Pick it up at Isaiah 59 verse 9, “justice is far from us, righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind; we, we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men. We all growl like bears; we moan and moan like doves; we hope for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities; transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.”

 AAhh! “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth, truth has stumbled in the public squares, uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and” if any, “he who departs from evil”, any of those, he “makes himself a prey.” That is, he becomes food for the predators around him, because he stands for righteousness. He stands for truth. And when he stands that way, he makes himself a target for all the unrighteous. Wow! When we look at our own country. We look across the land. When we see the media. When we see our government and the in-fighting of political parties, does this not ring true? Is that not the scene that’s set before us in our own land?

 Oh, we long for glory, don’t we? We moan for righteousness and justice to prevail. We, we look for salvation, but it’s as if we have, Ichabod, no glory, written over our land. It’s really what we deserve. Isn’t it? We have, in our country, sown to the wind, and we have been reaping the whirlwind. All is not lost, though. There is still hope to be found because God is God, and God is by nature a savior. Look at verse 15, end of verse 15, “The Lord saw all this and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man.” No man to accomplish his will.

 “He wondered that there was no one to intercede; and then his own arm brought him salvation, and his up righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies, to the coastlands he will render repayment. So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of the Lord drives. ‘And a redeemer will come from Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,’ declares the Lord.”

Isn’t that what we long to see, fellow believer? Christian, isn’t this what we long to see? We want to see the fear of the Lord grip all the people around us. We want to see the glory of the Lord prevail. To wash over us like floodwaters covering the land. Cover over all of our jagged terrain features, atoning for all of our sins and our iniquities, our injustices. We want to see the glory of the Lord and the holy name of God, high and lifted up. And everybody fearing him. Turning to him for salvation. Listening to his word. Worshiping and praising him because he is most glorious. Listen, that will happen. It will happen. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess.

 We do not pray in any doubt whatsoever. We pray in faith. We pray in great confidence, knowing that our father is the biggest and toughest Dad on the block. We pray as God’s beloved children, boasting in the name of the lord.

So, what about us personally, for you and me? How do we personally, as God’s people, hallow his name? I mean, if we’re praying, “hallowed be thy name,” ought we not to like live that out? Should we not live consistently with how we’re praying? Absolutely. That’s what we long to do. Let me, let me give you just a few thoughts on that. Just a rapid-fire succession.

First, we glorify God’s name. We hallow his name, when we profess his name and when we profess his name openly, loudly, proudly, without being ashamed of the name. We stand as Christians, and we say, God is our God because he is worthy to be everyone’s God and by his grace we belong to him. So, our boast is not in ourselves. Our boast is in him. So, we confess his name. We proclaim his name. We even boast in his name and call others to do the same thing to join us in praising and worshiping him.

Second, we glorify God’s name, when we listen to him. We glorify God’s name, when we read and memorize and study and meditate on his word. For as David wrote, Psalm 138 verse 2, God has exalted above all things his name and his word. His name and his word are on the same level of concern for God. If we are going to glorify God and hallow his name, we’re going to hallow his word. And where does that start? It starts with us. It starts with our minds. What we think about. What we ponder.

Thirdly. This follows. We glorify God’s name, when we obey his word. We don’t just listen and disregard. We listen with a view to obedience. We listen and hear with a view to doing what he says. We’re hearers and obeyers of his word. To do what God says is to demonstrate our loyalty, our trust, our fidelity, our love for him and that brings glory to his name. When people see the wisdom of God worked out in our lives, and they say: Where did you get such wisdom? Why do you make such decisions? Why are your priorities thus and such and not like the rest of the world? Because we glorify his name.

Fourthly, we glorify God’s name, when we sing praises to his name, like we did this morning. What a contradictory thing, a wholly dishonoring thing, to confess God as great, as the majestic king, and then to mumble through his praises, to stifle our singing, as if we’re embarrassed of our own voice being heard. Didn’t God make your mouth? Yes, he did. What did he make it for? To bring praise and glory to his name. Did he give you the ability to project? He did. Notice how I’m answering all the questions for you? I don’t want any argument, here. Doctor Merry, when we sing, should we sing loudly? Should we sing vibrantly? Absolutely. That’s been his proclamation to us ever since he’s come to this church. We’re so grateful for that ministry. We sing. We sing joyfully. We sing vibrantly. We sing powerfully. Men, use your manly voice! Do not limp through singing. Is God not a great God? Let’s sing with great enthusiasm, unbridled joy, because he is worthy.