Matthew 6 and verses 9 through 13, let's give our attention now to the Holy Word of God. After this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word this morning, and we pray that we would put our hope in your word, that our confidence and our expectation would be that your word is true, trustworthy, and faithful. So we come today and open this portion of scripture with that confidence. We pray that your Holy Spirit would build and strengthen that hope that we have in the word of God and may it ever increase. And particularly as we consider this passage of scripture today, cause us to hope in your word. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. We are here considering the Lord's prayer. And for the last couple of weeks, we have started with considering the first portions of the Lord's prayer in verse nine. We began with general thoughts about the Lord's prayer. in considering after this manner therefore pray ye. How should we utilize the Lord's Prayer? What should we think about it? That was where we began. Then last week we talked about the who of prayer. Who are we talking to? Who are we addressing when we pray? And we discussed why it's important to think about that. We need to think about who God is. We need to have a theology of prayer. That is to say, we need to understand who is the God that we are addressing, what is his character, what are his attributes, how should we think about him, and how should that affect and shape our prayer life. So that's what we considered by looking at the Our Father. And when I say that, by the way, that doesn't belong to the Roman Catholic Church. I'm just repeating the opening words of the Lord's Prayer there. which are in heaven. So when we say the Our Father, we're not doing it in the Roman Catholic manner. We are doing it in the biblical manner by thinking about who God is. He is Our Father and He's also in heaven. What does that mean? That means He's the sovereign God who rules all things. God rules and reigns from the heavens. His throne is in the heavens. We heard it in the scripture reading this morning in Revelation Chapter four, where is God's throne room? Where does John have to go to see God on his throne? He goes where? He goes to heaven. And he sees the nerve center, if you will, of the entire universe, the command and control center for the entire universe, and that is heaven. Of course, God is the great king, the sovereign king, who sits on his throne in the heavens. So those are the things that we talked about last time, thinking about, again, the who of prayer. Who are we talking to? Who are we addressing? Now, in the next portion of the Lord's Prayer, we want to think about the main body of the prayer, and that is the petitions, or the requests of the Lord's Prayer. What do we ask of God? Now that we know who He is, what things are we going to ask Him for? Now, that's important, isn't it? It's important not only that we know who God is, but that we know what we're supposed to talk to Him about. What should we be asking Him for? If we are left to our own devices in prayer, Our prayers will be very self-centered. Our prayers will be very focused on ourselves, our needs, our wants, and we'll even justify it and think, well, that's how it ought to be. I need help, I go to God, I ask Him to help me, and He does it. Isn't that how it works? Well, that's part of it, as long as that's not done in a self-centered or selfish kind of way. So what we want to do now in this main body of the prayer, we want to consider the petitions of the Lord's Prayer and what they have to teach us about what we're supposed to pray about. What should the content of our prayers be? So we are here dealing with the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and petitions just simply means requests. What do we ask of God here? Now, there's a little bit of a debate in the history of the church about whether there are six petitions in the Lord's Prayer or whether there are seven petitions in the Lord's Prayer. For example, Augustine, Luther, and some others viewed this prayer as having seven petitions, and they saw that as the number of perfection. And they did that because they broke up the last portion of the prayer into two separate requests. So if you look at verse 13, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, they saw that as being one, or excuse me, two different requests, rather. And so that's where you get seven from someone like Augustine or Luther. However, there are others in the history of the church who have seen it as having six requests or petitions. This goes back to Chrysostom, John Chrysostom, the Greek father of the church, and comes up through the reformed tradition So a document like the Westminster Confession of Faith will say there are six petitions in the Lord's Prayer. Now, ultimately, it doesn't matter a whole lot whether there are six or seven, but just so you know where I'm coming from, I follow the Reformed tradition, and I encourage you to do the same as well, and see this as having six separate and distinct petitions or requests, and that's the structure that we are going to follow as we consider this main body of the prayer. Let's note some general things about these petitions before we dive into the first one today. And the next thing we want to note is not only their number, but the next thing we want to note is their corporate nature or the group nature of the prayer. I'll look at verse nine again. How do we pray? Do we pray my father? No, we pray our father, which art in heaven. Verse 11, give us this day, my daily bread. No, we pray. Give us this day, our daily bread. Verse 13, and lead us, us, not me, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Now, this is not to say that you can't pray the Lord's Prayer on your own, or you shouldn't pray for yourself, or anything like that. Why are we noting this? The reason why we're noting this is because Jesus is teaching us to pray together. He's teaching us to pray as a corporate body, we might say, as a group, and that's what we do. It's one of the things we do when we come together on Sundays and Wednesdays. We pray as a group, and we think not just about me, myself, and I, but we think about each other. And when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we're thinking about one another. I'm thinking not only about my sins that need to be forgiven, I'm thinking about yours as well. I'm thinking not only about my daily bread, I'm thinking about yours as well. So the Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray and think with a corporate, with a church mindset. Cyprian, one of the fathers of the church and an early martyr, puts it this way, we say not my father, But our Father, for the teacher of peace and master of unity, would not have men pray singly and severally, since when any prays, he is not to pray for himself only. Our prayer is general and for all, and when we pray, we pray not for one person, but for us all, because we all are one." Cyprian is there teaching us the importance of a spirit of unity in prayer, of thinking not just about myself, but about you, my brother, and my sister. Next, we want to note the order of the petitions, the order of the requests, where they come in the prayer, because I believe that is significant. It's important. Now, we'll note some of this as we go along, but the first one I want you to note, and perhaps the most important one, is that the petitions are structured in such a way that God comes first. That things that relate to God, His glory, His honor, His kingdom, His will, those all are at the front of the prayer. They are first, and we might say foremost, in the Lord's prayer. Look at it again. Verse 9, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Verse 10, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. It is only after we have prayed that, that we pray, verse 11, give us this day our daily bread. You see where we're starting. We're starting with Him. We're starting with God, thinking about God, talking to God about His glory, His kingdom, and his will. Before we ever get to the our and the us, it is the thy. It's the thine of God. We think about him first. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way, now the ultimate end of all things is God, hence the first thing to be desired is God. That's where we start. That's where we begin here in the Lord's Prayer. You can think about the Lord's Prayer and its structure sort of like the Ten Commandments. You know, we break the Ten Commandments into the first four and the last six, and the structure of the Ten Commandments is God first, right? Thou shalt have no other gods before me, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, and before we ever get to honor thy father and thy mother, thou shalt not steal. We have first started with God, and we have thought about him and his glory and his person, and the Lord's Prayer is like that. The Lord's Prayer begins with God, And it actually ends with God as well. And we'll get to this when we get to the closing doxology of the prayer. But at the end of verse 13, it says, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So you see the prayer begins with God and ends with God. He is first and he is foremost. Now let's move to the very first petition or request of the Lord's prayer, verse nine. After this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Let's think about the order again and the priority of this first request. It comes number one in the list, and I believe that's for a reason. I believe that's theologically important. biblically important, that the first thing Jesus teaches us to ask of God is that God's name would be hallowed, that God's name would be considered sacred, that God's name would be considered holy. We could see this opening petition of the Lord's Prayer as the foundational element, the most important element that filters into all of it. Think about it like this. We begin by praying that God's name would be held sacred, and then we pray, Thy kingdom come. What is the kingdom of God? Among many other things, but a kingdom in which God's name is holy, in which God's name is sacred. The people who are part of that kingdom are those who reverence and esteem the holiness of God. Or the third petition, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. What is the fundamental thing that needs to be done in terms of God's will? God must be glorified, right? Whether therefore you eat, or you drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And so when we pray for God's will to be done, we are praying that His name would be hallowed. Because God's will is that His name would be sanctified, or considered sacred and holy. And we could go on and on in thinking about how hallowed be thy name touches all these other requests, all these other petitions, and they all circle around one another and are intimately connected with one another. But this one comes first, it has a priority, it has an importance, not an importance more than the others per se, but a foundational importance. All right, now that we have established that, let's think about what it actually means. Let's take the first part of the petition, hallowed be. What does that mean? Well, this is an old, somewhat archaic English word, hallowed. We don't use it in regular conversation with each other throughout the day or throughout the week. We do use it from time to time in our culture. you might hear someone refer to a particular site, a particular place, maybe a battle took place there, and they'll call that hallowed ground. They'll say that it's sacred, it's important, it has a deep importance, this particular place, because some important event took place there. It's also interesting that the King James uses the word hallowed here, it's only used one other place in the New Testament, in translation, that's in the Gospel of Luke, in the Lord's Prayer, Luke's version of it. So it is a unique word, somewhat, in the Bible, but it carries the idea of something that is sacred, something that is to be considered or regarded as holy. And it's interesting, if you look at the more modern English translations, they retain the same language, they use the same word, hallowed. It's the idea of holy or sacred, deeply sacred. The Greek term behind hallowed is hagiazo. It's the Greek word that means to make holy or to regard something as holy. You might see it translated as to sanctify in the New Testament or in the Greek version of the Old Testament. the Septuagint, but its basic ideal is either to make something holy or to consider something holy. Now here in this case, we don't make God holy, right? God is holy. He doesn't need our help in his holiness. No, we are praying, hallowed be thy name, because we are regarding him. We are considering him as holy, as sacred. That's what we're saying. When we say, hallowed be your name, we're saying, may your name be considered holy and sacred. There's also an important verbal aspect to this in the Greek language. This is a third-person imperative. Normally, in terms of language, an imperative is a command. Do this. Don't do that. So this is an imperative, but we are addressing God with it. Of course, we're not commanding God. Man doesn't command God. But it does give you the sense of an urgent plea that God will do something, that God will act in such a way as to make sure his name is considered sacred or holy. So what are we praying? What are we doing here in this opening petition when we say, hallowed be thy name? Well, I think we can summarize it with the two Rs. We are recognizing God's holiness and we are requesting that God's holiness be respected. That God be honored as sacred in our lives, the lives of those around us, and in the world generally. Let's let the Westminster Larger Catechism give us a good idea for how we ought to think about what's involved in praying, hallowed be thy name. Question number 190, what do we pray for in the first petition? Answer, in the first petition, which is hallowed be thy name, acknowledging the utter inability and indisposition that is in ourselves and all men to honor God aright. We pray that God would by his grace enable and incline us and others to know, to acknowledge, and highly to esteem him. His titles, attributes, ordinances, word, works, and whatsoever he is pleased to make himself known by. And to glorify him in thought, word, and deed, that he would prevent and remove atheism, ignorance, idolatry, profaneness, and whatsoever is dishonorable to him. and by his overruling providence direct and dispose of all things to his own glory." That's a lot, isn't it? There's a lot there. What are we saying when we say, or when we pray, hallowed be thy name? We are saying a lot. We are asking God to do an awesome thing, and there's a number of different things involved in this first petition. Now let's think about some of them. Jesus gives us this opening petition here, and it's similar to other prayers that we find in the Bible. Let me give you an Old Testament counterpart to this prayer that will give you additional flavor on what we're asking for here. Psalm 115.1. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake. What is that? That's hallowed be your name. It's another way of praying the same basic idea of, God, don't give any glory to us. May all the glory go to you and to your name. Or let me give you an example from the life of Jesus in the Gospel of John. John 17. Jesus prays, now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you, Holy Father. See how Jesus takes Father and Holy and puts them together in how he addresses God. Or John 12, Jesus again praying, says, Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. You see, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ praying this prayer, glorify your name, Father. This is what we are doing when we pray, hallowed be thy name, God. May your name be honored. May it be considered holy and sacred. May you be considered sacred and holy. That's what we're praying and that's what we're asking for. Once again, we are confronted with the need for theology. As I've told you before, theology is not just dry, dusty books somewhere. Theology is not just for really smart people or super spiritual kind of Christian people who like to read books. I encourage you to read books. I think you ought to read books. But whether you're a big reader or not, you can still be someone who knows theology. What's theology? It's the study of God. What is He like? What are His attributes? What's His character? Well, we learned last week that God is our Father, that we have this warm, family relationship with Him. We learned that He rules from the heavens. He's the sovereign King over all things. And now we learn, or are reminded, that He's the Holy God. He's the thrice-holy God of the song that we sang this morning. Holy, holy, holy. Now once you understand who God is, it changes how you approach Him. It shapes and molds you to approach Him rightly. If you don't think God is holy, you will come to Him in a certain way in prayer. Flippantly, irreverently, but if you know that God is holy, it changes everything, doesn't it? You come to God reverentially. You come to Him respectfully. You come to him, yes, as your father, but also as the holy God who rules the universe. God's holiness here is at the forefront, is central to this first petition. When we pray hallowed, we are praying about God's holiness. We are praying about this basic attribute of God's character. Think about how much in the Bible God's holiness is spoken of. Over and over again, from start to finish, from Genesis to Revelation, God is spoken of as being holy. What is holiness? Holiness is the fact that God is absolutely different from us in the fact that He is set apart from sin. There's no sin in God. There's nothing evil or wicked of God. There's nothing that taints His character in any way, shape, or form. He is absolutely pure and free from sin. He is on a different plane, we might say, from us. His holiness, God's holiness, is asserted over and over again in the Bible. Joshua tells the people in the book of Joshua, chapter 24, Joshua said unto the people, you cannot serve the Lord, for he's a what? He's a holy God. He's a God who will not put up with sin and iniquity or Hannah in her prayer after the Lord gave her child or answered her prayer for a child. 1 Samuel 2. There is none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside thee, neither is there any rock like our God. God says this of himself in the Bible. Leviticus 19. The Lord tells Moses, speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel and say unto them, you shall be holy For I, the Lord your God, am holy." Now, we could multiply example after example of God or the people of God asserting the fact that God's holy, absolutely and completely pure and set apart from sin. Now, not only is God's holiness a fact to be stated, God is holy. but it's also something to adore him for. It's something to worship him for. We don't just say God is holy and then we go on about our lives. It's something that ought to draw our hearts toward him to worship and to honor him for Psalm 99 that we read this morning. Did you hear it in the Psalm? Over and over again in that Psalm, God's holiness was mentioned, was stated, and look what's connected with it, Psalm 99.5. Exalt ye the Lord our God and worship at his footstool for or because he's holy. God's holiness should cause us to worship him, to exalt and honor him. Revelation chapter four that we read in the scripture reading this morning, or that we read in the call to worship, rather, Revelation 4, what's the song that the four living creatures sing? A song that matches the song sung in the Old Testament. Revelation 4, they rest not day and night saying, holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come. God is holy. So when we pray hallowed be your name, we are recognizing and acknowledging God's holiness and we are worshiping Him for it. We're adoring and honoring Him for being the holy God that He is. Now, how might this change our prayer life? How could we take this, what Jesus teaches us here, and implement or put this into practice in our prayer times? You go into your prayer closet, it's just you and God. What are you gonna talk to Him about? Well, here's one of the things you need to talk to Him about. You need to talk to Him about His holiness. You say, Pastor Nick, why do I need to do that? He already knows. He already knows he's holy. He doesn't need me to remind him of that fact. No, he doesn't need it, but guess who does need it? You. You need it. I need it. We need to go into our prayer time and worship God. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Prayer is not just a time to ask for things. It is that. We'll get to that. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation. We're asking for things. But prayer is also a time to worship. Prayer is a time for you to honor God and adore God for who he is. So, for example, at the start of your prayer time, you could take a little piece of paper and just write down things about God. God is holy. God is loving. God is just. some attribute of God, and then pray over that. Say, Lord, I praise you this morning because you're holy. Lord, I worship you, that you are the holy God. I am unholy, and that's so discouraging, so disappointing sometimes when I see sin in myself. I see even my best actions tainted by wickedness, but I look to you, Lord, and you are absolutely, blindingly pure. I praise you for who you are as God, as the holy God. So prayer is a time for worship. It's a time for you to love God, to adore him and to honor him. You know, when we first fell in love with our spouse, we adored our spouse. We said nice things about our spouse. We wrote poems to our spouse. If we were musical, we wrote a song about the beauty and the loveliness of our spouse. What were we doing? We were adoring them. We saw them as this lovely creature. You say, Pastor Nick, things have changed. I know, but we saw them as this lovely creature that was to be adored and celebrated. Well, if she was that beautiful, and still is, then how much more beautiful is God? How much greater is God? Does He deserve to be adored? Does He deserve to be worshiped and honored in your prayer time? Yes, yes, yes, He does. God's holiness is not just a fact, it is that, but it's something to honor Him for, to worship Him for, to love Him for. Now we've considered the first part of the first petition, hallowed be, Holy be sacred, may your name be sacred, sacred be. Now let's look at the second half of the petition. Thy name, hallowed be thy name. Why is it put that way? Why don't we just say, God, you're holy, or God, may you be considered holy. Why is God's name mentioned? Well, you know this already, but let me just remind you, names in the Bible are important. They are so connected to the person that they're virtually interchangeable. For example, to honor God's name is to do what? It's to honor God. To disrespect or blaspheme God's name is to disrespect or blaspheme him. We can't separate the two and say, oh, well, I only spoke about his name. I wasn't talking about him directly. It doesn't work that way because names and identity are connected in the Bible. For example, let me give you some current examples. If I said the name Michael Jordan to you, do you just think about a name? No, you think about the person, right? You think about the person known as Michael Jordan, the famous basketball player. You think about how he played basketball and won championships and all that sort of thing. Or we could come up with any other famous person's name. When their name is mentioned, you think about what? You think about them. You think about their person, who they are as a person. And in the Bible, even more so, names are highly significant. For example, we studied the life of Abraham, right? And Abram went from Abram to Abraham. Was that important? Yes, it was. Abraham means father of many or father of a multitude. He was given that name by God because that's what God had done for him. God had promised him to make him this father of many nations, and God had actually done it. Were Jesus the name of Jesus at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel? Jesus' name is significant. Jesus' name means what? The Lord saves, or salvation. Jesus' person and work as the Savior, as the one who accomplished salvation, is invested in His name. itself. The kids and I in the mornings have been going through the book of Exodus, and we've come to the part of the story in Exodus, in chapter 34, where God summons Moses back up to the mountain. He summons him to Mount Sinai again, and the Lord tells Moses that what he's going to do is proclaim his name. You remember that? And do you know what God does next? He does exactly that. He comes before Moses passes by and says, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. You see how God's name and his person connected, go together very closely. Not only that, but throughout the Bible, God considers his name to be of the utmost importance. How we speak his name, how we use his name, how his name is used in the world and by people generally. In the book of Leviticus, on more than one occasion, God demands that his people not profane his name. That's the opposite of the opposite of hallowed be your name. God is saying, don't sully my name. Don't take my name and drag it through the mud with your sin, so to speak. God's name and God's glory are connected. Listen to what the Lord says in Isaiah 48. For my own sake, I will do it, for how should my name be profaned? To God, this is a great disaster, and it should be to us as well, for God's name to not be considered sacred, holy. I'll give you a human illustration that may help. Let's say you're a loved one, your spouse or your son or daughter, whoever, someone you love deeply, and you hear someone talking bad about them. How does that make you feel? What do you want to do? Maybe you get angry. Maybe you want to defend them and say, wait a second, don't speak ill of my spouse or my son or my daughter. On a similar way, we ought to feel that way about the name of God. His name is holy, sacred. His name is connected with who he is. One more way to think about this. Hallowed be thy name is the positive counterpart to the third commandment. Remember the third commandment of the Ten Commandments. What is it? Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Don't use my name in vain. The Lord tells his people and enshrines that in the Ten Commandments, the ultimate summary of the law of God in the Old Testament. So when we ensure that we are not taking God's name in vain, we are striving on the other hand to hallow God's name, to make sure it's kept sacred and holy and used properly. Now, it's not just today, but it's been this way for a long, long time, ever since the fall of man. But we see it today as well, the irreverent and flippant use of God's name. People speak of God in all sorts of different ways. Some people use God's name as an expletive, as a cuss word, as just a throwaway word that they use when they get angry or what have you. Is that how God's name should be used? Of course not. God's name should be sacred. When it's on our lips, it should be the most sacred name that ever passes these lips. should be something that we consider to be so holy. Why? Because God is holy. Because God is who He is, we ought to use His name reverently. We ought to speak with Him in respectful, or speak of Him in respectful, sacred ways. The whole world may have no reverence for God, but the people of God ought to have a reverence for God. We ought to have a reverence for Him in our everyday conversation, and in our prayer life and how we talk to him and in how we talk about him with other people. The Lord's prayer and this opening petition, hallowed be thy name, gets us back focused again. There are all sorts of problems in the world, right? And we hear about them on the news. What are the problems in the news? lack of money, lack of things, lack of government support, or what have you. And people get real excited about it. Don't they? They get real excited about the president's not doing this, the president's doing this, or whatever side they line up on. We don't have enough money, we don't have enough jobs, we don't have the right kind of health care, we don't have this, we don't have that. And this is what everybody's exercised about. This is what everybody's upset about. This is what everybody is focused on. And so that seeps into our prayers, does it not? And suddenly we think that what's really the most important thing is my job, my money, my possessions. my government doing what I want them to do. Is that the most important thing? Is that the most important thing that we can think of to pray about? No, it's not. You see what the Lord's Prayer does? The Lord's Prayer brings us back to the most important thing, and that is hallowing God's name and glorifying Him. So let's say I have a neighbor, and my neighbor has lost his job, He's struggling financially, but he's not a Christian. Let's have a little test here. What's my neighbor's greatest need? Is the greatest problem in my neighbor's life the fact that he doesn't have a job and doesn't know where the money's gonna come from next, or is it the fact that he doesn't reverence God? Is it the fact that God's name is not honored in his life? You say, okay, pastor, I know the answer to that. Of course you do. But many times we lose sight of that, right? How many times do we pray for the man, God give him a job, God give him the money, God do this, God heal him so he's not in the hospital. But somewhere out there or maybe nowhere in our vision is the glory of God in this man's life. Or let's make it personal. Let's bring it home to ourselves. If I get sick, if I get a disease, what's my greatest need? What's the most important thing? You say, well, pastor, it's that you'd get better. It's that you wouldn't have a hard time with it. It's that you wouldn't go to the hospital, or if you did, you'd get out of there quickly. Is that the most important thing? No, it's not. The most important thing is that you glorify God in the midst of that. That's what's important. The important thing is that God's name would be sacred and holy and honored in your life in the midst of that circumstance. You may or may not get better. You may or may not get out of the hospital. The disease may or may not kill you. That's not the important thing. The important thing is, hallowed be thy name. That's the important thing. The important thing is that God is honored in how I deal with this sickness. And how I approach this disease, whatever it may be. This is not only the worship of God here, this first petition, but it's also a request, right? We've noted that already. Hallowed be thy name. We're asking God for something. We are asking him, God, may your name be kept sacred and holy. We're asking him to do it. We're going to him to say, God, make sure your name is honored. Make sure your name is kept sacred and holy. Now, where's the first place for that to happen? Me, in my life, in my own personal life, what am I asking God when I say, hallowed be your name? I'm saying, God, please help me to keep your name holy in my life. In the way I talk, in the way I think, in how I live, may all of it show that you're holy. That you are the thrice holy God and you are to be honored in my life. I also pray that for my neighbor. I pray God, hallowed be your name, not only in my life, but in my neighbor's life too. Because things are amiss there. Things aren't the way they're supposed to be. If this person is unsaved, they need salvation. Lord, why? Not just so they won't go to hell. That's important. We don't want to go to hell and suffer for all eternity. But sometimes we forget about what's most important. The most important thing is not that the person not go to hell. The most important thing is that God be glorified. Is that God's name be considered sacred in the salvation of this man or this woman. And the Lord's prayer, this first petition teaches us that. It reminds us that what is important is the glory of God. It's the sacredness and the honor of God's name. Is that what's important to you? Is that the most important thing in your life? Now, if you're like me, you'll probably have to say, sometimes yes and sometimes no. God help me. Forgive me my debts, Lord, in terms of not glorifying you and honoring you as I should. And so may the Lord help all of us, not only to live all of life to the glory of God, but to pray to the glory of God, to petition him to request him to cause his name to be honored, worshiped, and glorified. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come together today and we thank you for this petition, this opening petition. We are reminded of the holiness of your name. We pray, Lord, with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ here as he taught us, hallowed be your name. May your name be sacred and holy in our lives and in the lives of others and the world around us. And now we join together and we pray as a church body. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. As you leave today, may grace be with you. Amen.