The model prayer

by J. D. Jones

“Hallowed be Thy Name.”—Matt. vi. 9; Luke xi. 2.

Last Sunday morning we talked together of the new and beautiful name by which Jesus taught us to address God when we draw near to Him in prayer. “When we pray, say Father.” This morning we pass on to the consideration of the first petition in the prayer itself. Between this first petition and the invocation there is the closest and most intimate connection. In the invocation Jesus gave us a new name for God. In the first petition He teaches us to pray for grace, to honour that new name of “Father” by thought and life.

This “Pearl of Prayer” divides itself naturally into two parts, and it is a fact worth noticing that the petitions in the first half of the prayer are all concerned with God’s honour and glory. Our first thoughts when we kneel in prayer must be of God. Our first petitions must concern themselves not with our own personal advantage but with God’s glory and praise. This petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” stands first, because it is the first in natural order. For there is an order, “an order of precedence” shall I say, in prayer. I have seen a volume of sermons by Mr. Jackson, of Edinburgh, which bears the title “First things first.” “First things first” is a rule we may well remember in our prayers. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” said our Lord, and that precept is one for prayer as well as for life. Have you noticed how faithfully Jesus Himself observed the rule He here laid down for others? Examine His prayers, and you will find that with Him first things always came first. The glory of God was always the master petition in the prayers of Christ. He had to pass through times of sore distress and pain and agony—and Christ was not above asking for relief, deliverance, escape from the pain. But His own wishes were always kept in a subordinate place, it was ever “God first” with Him. “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” “Father, glorify Thy name.” That is the true order in prayer—God first. But we oftentimes reverse the order. Instead of “first things being first,” first things are often last and last things often first. Our prayers are occupied mainly with our own wants and needs and desires. It is a case oftentimes of “self first.” When we pray even this prayer, the petitions that we utter with the deepest fervour and earnestness are petitions for personal blessing. “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses. Deliver us from evil.” But the true order is the one observed here, “God first.” The King of all the petitions is the one that stands in the forefront. The Westminster Confession says that the chief end of man’s life is “to glorify God.” The old divines who drew up that confession had gained a clear glimpse into the true relation of things. Above all personal interest, above all selfish advantage, stands the glory of God. In the soldier’s thought, far above any consideration of personal comfort or safety, or even of life, stands the thought of the honour of the flag and his country’s weal. And so in the Christian’s mind far above the thought of self must stand the thought of God. “First things first.” Before the prayer for daily bread, for forgiveness, for deliverance, comes the prayer that God may have the glory due unto His name. My object this morning is to point out, if I can, the sweep and grandeur of this petition, so that we may understand what it is we pray for when we say, “Hallowed be Thy name.” Let me first of all try to explain what is meant by the name of God. As Bishop Westcott points out in his “Revelation of the Father” no thoughtful person can read the Bible without being struck by the importance which is attached to the Divine names in the different books. And the names of God are important because they are revelations of God’s nature. You remember that when Jacob wrestled with the angel till break of day by the side of the brook Jabbok his last request to his antagonist was this, “Tell me I pray Thee, Thy name.” What was it Jacob really wanted to know? I will tell you. He wanted to know the nature, the character of the mighty Wrestler. He wanted to know whether it was love or wrath that had constrained him to pass through that terrible agony. “Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name,” tell me Thy character, reveal to me Thy heart, “to me Thy name, Thy nature show,” that was the real meaning of Jacob’s cry. Well, the Bible is a great book of “names.” If you will turn up your concordances, you will find in them a long list of “names” for God. And the point to notice is that every name applied to God means something; every name tells us something about Him; every name is a light upon His nature. When you hear a man’s name, it tells you nothing about his character. You are not a whit nearer knowing what a man is really like for hearing that his name is John, or David, or Thomas, or Joseph. The names of men mean nothing, or perhaps it would be truer to say, their meaning has absolutely no relation to character. They are mere labels. But it is different in the case of God. Every name applied to Him is significant. It expresses some aspect of His character. Men caught fresh glimpses into the depths of the Divine nature, and their new knowledge they expressed by a new name. So that the names of God are all of them keys to God’s character. They help us to spell out the secret of His nature. When then, you read of a man crying out, “Tell me Thy name,” you understand that what Jacob really wanted to know was what God was. And when you read of the Psalmist saying, “They that know Thy name, will put their trust in Thee,” you know that what the Psalmist means is this—that those who really know God, who know His heart, will, cannot help trusting Him. That, then, is the meaning of “God’s name,” it means the character of God, as that character has been revealed to us.

When, where and how has that name been revealed to us? Well, it has been revealed, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, “by divers portions, and in divers manners.”

(1) It has been revealed to us in Nature. The Psalmist watching his sheep in the still and starry night saw God in the arching sky, and sang, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.” And one of our own great poets, John Ruskin, has said, “It is but the outer hem of God’s great mantle, our poor stars do gem.” The Arabs speak of tracing God’s footsteps in the world; Kepler, in studying the planets, said he was thinking God’s thoughts after Him; Mrs. Barrett-Browning cries, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.” Yes! God reveals His name to us through nature. I have been shown rocks which bear upon them indentations that have some resemblance to a cloven foot, and I have been told of legends that connect those marks with the devil. The devil, so the legends say, made those particular rocks a momentary resting-place, and in the cloven foot he has left his mark upon them for ever. But, brethren, it is not the devil’s mark, but God’s mark that the great world bears. I can see God’s mark on the sky and the sea, on mountain and flood, on flower and tree. When I look at the great mountains I cannot help remembering that it was God who planted them there. “He weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.” When I look at the great and wide sea, at the sunny, sleepy sea, at the angry, restless sea, I remember it was God who placed it there. “He measured the waters in the hollow of His hand. He has placed bounds for it which it cannot pass.” When I see the lightning flash, I remember that the lightning is His messenger. When I hear the thunder roll, I remember that the thunder is His voice. When I see the birds of the air, I remember that not one of them falls to the ground without God. When I see the lilies of the field, I remember that God clothes them. Oh, yes, the world speaks of God. It is true, as Coleridge sings in his magnificent “Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni”—

“Earth with her thousand voices praises God.”

But Nature does not tell all the secret. If we knew only what Nature tells we should be compelled to cry with the old Hebrew prophet, “Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.” After all Nature has to say, our entreaty is still, “Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.”

(2) God’s name has been revealed to us more plainly in the Bible. In this book you have one name for God following another, and with every fresh name came new light. Westcott says that “the three chief stages in the history of the Old Testament are characterised in broad outline by the names under which God was pleased to make Himself known in each!” First He is El-Shaddai, the God of might. Then He is Jehovah, the Great I AM, the God of the covenant. Then He is Lord of Hosts, the King of the Universe, the Disposer of Events, the Ruler of the world. It was a great event in the history of men when God announced by His servants and prophets a new name for Himself: We talk about great discoveries—the discovery of a new mountain range, or river, or lake in the Dark Continent, the discovery of some new facts in the realm of science, the discovery of some new method of applying Nature’s forces to do men’s work. I am not saying these are not great discoveries, but I do say the greatest discovery that ever happens in this world of ours is the discovery of a new name for God. You have the history of those names, those discoveries in the Bible. To trace the giving of these names is to trace the history of men as they were being led out of darkness into His most marvellous light.

But who would not feel that, if the Bible stopped short at the book of Malachi, the light at best was only the dim and uncertain twilight. If the old book finished there, our cry would be still, “Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.” Well, thanks be to Him, He has told us His name. He has kept nothing from us.

(3) God has revealed Himself fully to us in Jesus Christ. He had given glimpses of Himself to seers and prophets before. But God was greater and better than the best word even Isaiah had said about Him. And at last, when the fulness of time was come, God told the final truth about Himself by sending Jesus Christ into the world. He is the effulgence of His glory and the express image of His person. There are likenesses between human beings. We talk about “family likenesses.” There are striking resemblances between father and son, mother and daughter, brother and sister. But with the resemblances there are also differences. You can always distinguish between one and another. But between God and Jesus Christ the likeness is absolute. There are no differences. Jesus is the Word of God. He is what God is, expressed in terms of human thought and speech. God has kept nothing back from us. He has reserved no secret. You may enter into the holiest place by the blood of Jesus. What is God’s name? God’s name is Jesus Christ. In Jesus you get the full and final revelation of God’s character. God could not fully reveal Himself through nature. He could not have been pictured for us in a book. It was only in a life that God could fully reveal Himself, and that full revelation He gave in the life of His Son. When Philip said to Jesus, “Shew us the Father,” Jesus answered, “I and my Father are one. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Jesus was God’s answer to the cry of man—“Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.” It is by looking at Jesus, then, that we discover the character of God. And if you ask me, after studying Christ’s life, what I find God’s character to be and what His best name is, I answer that His nature is love, and that the best name that describes Him is the name “Father.” When, then, Jesus tells us to pray, “Hallowed be Thy name,” He is telling us to honour God’s character as revealed in Himself. He is telling us to honour God as Father both in thought and life.