The Lord's Prayer - Ep 3

2026.06.22 Lord's Prayer Monday

Welcome to the Lord's Prayer podcast by Bridgeway Christian Church. The Lord's Prayer has been recited by Christians around the globe for centuries, but more than a beloved tradition, this prayer invites us to live the way of Jesus, to be shaped by His priorities, to partner with His Spirit in bringing the kingdom of God to bear on our world. Every Monday during our summer devotional series, we will read the Lord's Prayer and then members of our pastoral team will offer some devotional thoughts based on the text.

I'm Pastor Anthony, and today I'm joined by Pastor Heather and Pastor Brian, and after I read the prayer, we'll discuss the line, Hallowed be your name. Let's pray. Matthew 6, 9 through 13.

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 you also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Well, pastors, how you guys doing? Good, good to be here. Yeah.

Awesome. So yeah, we have our next line in the Lord's Prayer that we're going to talk about today, and so here's the question, a basic question. What do we make of the phrase, hallowed be thy name? Nobody uses the word hallowed anymore.

No one talks like that. What does that even mean? Well, Jesus teaches us to begin prayer, like we talked about last week, with our Father in heaven, which is deeply personal, and it's that relational image of God. But the very next words are, as you said, Anthony Hallowed be your name.

I always said hallowed, but we can argue over pronunciations later. But this is just really reminding us that this loving Father is also, He's holy. He's set apart.

He's unlike anyone else. And to hallow something is to really treat it as holy, to honor it, to revere it. And in Scripture, holiness carries that idea of being separate, unique, distinct, and even set apart for a sacred purpose.

I just really love the Bible project uses that image when it's kind of trying to describe holiness as the sun. And it says that there is nothing else like it in our solar system. It's utterly unique and immensely powerful.

But it's also life-giving. It's a life-giving source that sustains all that is good on our planet. So such helpful imagery for me to kind of understand that idea of holiness or hallowed.

Yeah, the idea, I love that image of the sun as well. I mean, it's dangerous. Like, if you get too close to it, it's gonna burn you.

But we need it as well, you know. And what a great description to describe the holiness of our God. Yeah.

So what other images, stories, kind of encounters in Scripture come to mind for you when you think about God's holiness? You know, I love the image of Leviathan in Psalm 104. Psalm 104 is like a Genesis 1 creation account, but put into song. And the Leviathan tradition in the Hebrew Bible is part of a wider ancient Near Eastern tradition of a threatening sea monster that embodies chaos.

And so in the ancient times, the traditions would have a supreme God who is powerful enough to vanquish this great sea dragon and thereby rule the cosmos. And so this motif shows up everywhere in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. But Psalm 104 offers a surprising twist on this tradition.

And instead of depicting the menacing Leviathan as Yahweh's foe, it essentially defangs Leviathan and portrays it as this, like, playful creature that Yahweh created. And he's like, there goes Leviathan along with the sea, he's just swimming around. But, you know, by doing this, the psalmist elevates Yahweh's power over the cosmos, like, to the nth degree, and setting him apart as completely matchless, incomparable, unapproachable by any potential rival, and therefore as the ultimate of holiness.

I think it's so interesting to have that context, to know that in the ancient world the Leviathan was such a big deal. And here in Psalm 104, like you said, he's defanged and presented as this really, like, not threatening creature relative to Yahweh. And I don't know, again, as Western readers we can just kind of read that and go, okay, well, I guess the Leviathan is not a big deal.

But to realize in the ancient world, Leviathan was a huge deal. And it really is this testament to the greatness of God that by comparison, well, there is no comparison. I think about, when I think about the holiness of God, passages that always come to mind for me are, first of all, Isaiah chapter 6, which is this famous chapter where Isaiah has this vision, this experience of seeing God.

It says, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. And there are seraphim, and they have wings, and they're covering their faces, and this and that. And they're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. And I think it's Isaiah's response to all of this that is notable to me. Because as much as God desires intimacy with us, as much as God is near to us, it is also crucial that we recognize God is separate from us.

And on a total, much like with Leviathan, on a totally different level. And Isaiah's response to this vision isn't, wow, that's really cool. Wow, God is here.

Like, it's not an expression of delight. It's an expression of complete awe. Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

This sense of reverence in the presence of God is this beautiful picture of, when we encounter God, we are encountering a being who is on a totally different level than we are. Or I think about Revelation chapter 4, kind of the image of the throne room of heaven, and just worship going on day and night. These are images that, again, remind us of a greatness that goes beyond our comprehension when it comes to God.

So next question, Jesus invites us to approach God with the confidence of children and the reverence of worshipers, as we've kind of alluded to. How have you seen people drift either toward over-familiarity or towards maybe over-fear when it comes to how we view God? And what happens to our prayer life when we lose either intimacy or reverence? So I think our present cultural context habituates us to cater to the self. I mean, that's not breaking news, right? But you know, at times that can actually be a good thing, but I think often it's just really unhealthy.

So for example, like, drawing a relational boundary can be vitally important for one's mental and emotional health so that we can show up well in the relationships that we're entrusted with now. Yet, boundary-making can also become a sort of a coping mechanism that's unhealthy. It could evolve into a pattern of self-isolation when what we really need is healthy community around us, right? So the way we sort of maneuver the world around us, we can really get into the trap of applying even that to God, drawing boundaries with God, when what we need is we need God's holiness to really impact our lives in a way that will cleanse us.

Like, have that feeling of being undone the way Isaiah felt in that throne room in Isaiah 6. So when we keep God at a distance or we feel that utter fear that I can't be in God's presence, you know, that just like sucks the power out of our prayer because we're not coming to God with the confidence as his children, and so that'll just impact how we pray, what we ask for, what we can expect God to do. And there's a lot more we can unpack with that. I think you're absolutely right.

I think that if we emphasize God's power, and to the extent that we are unable to understand his intimacy and his closeness, something is lost. If our relationship with God is solely based on, not even reverent fear, but just like fear, because God is so great and God is so powerful, I think we lose that sense of intimacy and closeness and fatherhood that God desires us to have. On the flip side, if we are so overly familiar with God and think of him as our buddy or, you know, hey God, like talk to him in that sort of a way, then I think we can lose the sense of his power.

Because ultimately when we're going to God in prayer, what we need is not a buddy or a human counselor, what we need is divine power and authority. So I think that in sort of the self-orientation that you alluded to, Anthony, I suspect that for most of us we tend to be a little bit more casual than maybe is healthy, and a little corrective towards reverence might be beneficial. But that's not to say that's everyone.

I think certainly there are plenty of us who, for whatever reason, maybe overemphasize the power and lose that sense of intimacy. Yeah, yeah. And I think that it's really interesting, too, to remember in this, you know, when Jesus is teaching us to pray, hallowed be your name, he's not only reminding us who God is, that he's worthy of awe and reverence and worship, but he's also teaching us to pray that as a request.

When we pray, hallowed be your name, we're not simply saying, God, you are holy, we're also praying, Father, may your name be treated as holy, may you receive the honor you deserve, may all the people recognize you for who you truly are. So on one level, this part of the prayer helps us align our own heart, you know, kind of like you're saying, kind of to have that right approach, that right relationship with a God who is both intimate and, you know, totally other. But where it also allows us to ask that question, am I treating God as holy? Have I become too casual or so focused in my relationship with him? But then am I praying that God's holiness would also be reflected through my life? Am I living holy and set apart like the God that I follow? And when I pray, hallowed be thy name, I'm also praying for the world, because I want God's name to be honored and recognized everywhere.

I want people to see his goodness, his power, his love, and his beauty. You know, I just love this imagery of it's like, it's bigger than just me and my relationship with God and his holiness. I want heaven and earth to collide in such a way that God's character becomes visible, and his name is just revered throughout all the world.

It's like this big, huge prayer request around God's holiness. Yeah, no, that's really well said. All right, well, thanks for joining us for our Monday conversation.

Check out more resources in the show notes and be sure to join us on Thursday as we participate in more prayer through this prayer that Jesus gave us to pray. We'll see you then.