Luke 11:1-4 • January 26, 2025 • s1405
Pastor John Miller continues our series in the Gospel of Luke with an expository message through Luke 11:1-4 titled “The Lord’s Prayer.”
In Luke 11:1-4, it says, “Now it came to pass, as He…” that is, “Jesus” “…was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.’ So He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”
We find ourselves in Luke 11 in the school of prayer with our Lord. The request was, “Teach us to pray” as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray. So Jesus is instructing His disciples—and us—how to pray. This prayer is not meant to be prayed verbatim; rather it’s a pattern and priority of prayer. But if you do pray it word for word, you should mean it from your heart.
The priority of prayer, in verse 2, is first, God’s Person—“Our Father in heaven, hallowed by Your name.” Second, it is God’s program—“Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And third, it is God’s provision, verse 3—“Give us day by day our daily bread.” Then fourth, in verse 4, it moves to God’s pardon—“Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” And in verse 4, fifth, it wraps us with God’s protection—“And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” So the priority of prayer is God’s name, God’s program, God’s provision, God’s pardon and God’s protection.
The first step in praying is centering our hearts and minds on God. And I want to focus on these three petitions, in verse 2. The first petition is “Hallowed be Your name.” The highest purpose of prayer and the great priority of prayer is the hallowing of God’s name.
What does it mean, “hallowing of God’s name”? We understand that “name” means God’s nature and character. It starts with God. I like what Sodiati said. He said, “‘Hallowed be Thy name’ is placed first because the Lord wanted us to see that the primary thing we are to seek in our prayers is not the satisfaction of our personal needs but the exhibition of God’s holiness.”
The key to understanding this first petition is in the two words “hallowed” and “name.” “Name” here is not what we normally think of as the definition of “name.” The “name” here is not like Elohim, which is used in Genesis 1:1, for the Creator of heaven and earth. And it’s not El Elyon, the name for God, in Genesis 14, for God being the most-high God. And it’s not the name Jehovah in the Bible used for God for the great “I Am,” as He billed Himself to Moses in the burning bush. It’s not Jehovah Jireh, one of a series of compound names for God. And it’s not Adonai, which is used for the Lord God.
But in this prayer, God is known as “Our Father.” This is the Aramaic word “Abba,” which is the word for “Daddy” or “Papa.” It is an intimate word for God. God is “our Father.” So the name of the Lord here is not a proper name like Jehovah, Yahweh or El Elyon. Rather it refers to God’s nature and character.
In the Bible and in the mind of a Jew, when he used the phrase “the name of the Lord,” it’s referring to God’s nature and character or who God is.
A lot of people get hung up on what God’s name is. God has a whole myriad of names. But the important thing is who God is in His nature and character. Proverbs 18:10 says, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” God’s name is not a strong tower, but God is a strong tower. So it’s a metaphorical picture for who God is. So He is like a strong tower we can run into and find safety.
Psalms 9:10 says, “And those who know Your name will put their trust in You; for You, Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.” And Psalm 20:7 says, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.” When Jesus was praying His high priestly prayer, in John 17:6, He said, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.” What He means by that is that Jesus revealed the Father to man; He explained who God is. So when we speak of the name of the Lord, we speak of His nature, His character and His essence.
What do we mean by the word “hallowed”? It’s an old English word we don’t use very often. When I was a baby Christian, I thought the word was “Hollywood be Thy name.” I didn’t quite get that. Then I realized the word was “hallowed.” It comes from the root meaning of “holy.” We also get our words “saint” or “to sanctify” from it. It literally means “to set apart as holy; to treat as holy; to reverence as holy, God’s nature and character.” We are to set our Abba Father apart as holy.
Someone paraphrased it like this: “May You be given that unique reverence that Your character and nature as Father demands.” So this prayer starts with, “God, May You be set apart as holy.” As far as the attributes of God are concerned, the holiness of God is the chief attribute by which God wants to be known. He is a God of love, of mercy, of grace, of kindness, but everything God is, is influenced by His holiness. He is set apart and transcendent from us, yet He is “Our Father,” our Abba, who is in heaven.
When is God’s name to be hallowed? In the future when He comes again and is revealed to be God to all creation and of all creatures. Jesus will come back and establish His kingdom on the throne on earth for 1,000 years, which will flow into the eternal state. God’s name in the future will be totally hallowed. The phrase “Hallowed be Your name” is in the eres tense, which means it is a future experience.
But it is also applicable to the present age. It is exactly what Jesus did when He came. In John 17:26, Jesus said, “And I have declared to them Your name.” Jesus came to reveal the name of the Lord.
How do we hallow God’s name? First, in a negative sense, it is when we are careful not to profane God’s name with our mouths; when we avoid swearing, taking oaths or using God’s name in vain. In Exodus 20:7, the third of the Ten Commandments says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” That can refer to swearing.
I don’t know why, but sometimes when people hit their thumb with a hammer, they’ll so, “Jesus Christ!” They’ll use the name of the Lord in vain. I don’t know why they don’t say, “Buddha!” or “Confucius!” But we are not to use carelessly or flippantly or sinfully the name of the Lord. If we do, we break the Third Commandment of the Decalogue.
Second, we reverence Him when we worship publicly and privately. And there are many different ways to worship God. We worship God in song. So when we are singing and praising God, it’s so beautiful to see you come to this house of worship to sing songs, to lift your voices. And when you are here, I encourage you not to just sit and listen or to get distracted. Set aside the cares of yesterday and tomorrow and of the day and hallow God’s name with your voices.
You say, “Well, I can’t sing very well.” Then “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” (Psalm 100:1-KJV). Bark if you have to. Groan if you have to. But just do it.
The other day I was in church sitting behind someone, and during the whole worship set, they were on their phone scrolling through social media. You’re in the house of the Lord, and you’re to be worshipping God. But you’re fiddling with your phone and looking at the news.
How important it is that when we gather together here, we should worship God by setting Him apart with our voices in praise and worship. That is hallowing God’s name.
Third, when our beliefs concerning Him are worthy of Him, we are hallowing God’s name. When our beliefs about God—who He is and who He has revealed Himself to be—are truly Biblical and sound, then we are hallowing God’s name.
So how do we learn about God’s name? We learn about God in the Bible. We study His nature and His character. And when we believe that and proclaim that, we are hallowing God’s name.
Fourth, it is when we live in holy obedience to Him and to His Word. In other words, when my life is lived in holiness, then and only then, can I hallow God’s name. Martin Luther said, “God’s name is hallowed when our life and our doctrine are truly Christian.” I like that. When my life and my beliefs are truly Christian, I am hallowing God’s name. We need to live life that brings glory and honor to God.
Phillip Keller paraphrased this by saying, “May You be honored, reverenced and respected because of who You are. May Your reputation, Your name, Your Person and character be kept untarnished and uncontaminated. May nothing be done to debase or defame Your record.” Everything we do should be done in a way that honors, magnifies and glorifies God. And I like it that every petition in The Lord’s Prayer is to be governed and controlled by the desire for God’s name to be glorified.
Just before He went to the Cross, Jesus said, “Father, I have glorified Your name.” He was on His way to be crucified on the Cross, but paramount on His mind was that He was here to glorify God’s name.
So in every one of His petitions—His name, His kingdom, His will, His provision, His pardon, His protection, all of it—should be governed by the glory of God. The most important part of prayer is that God gets praise and glory. We don’t want to think anything, say anything or do anything that dishonors the name of the Lord.
The second petition is “Your kingdom come.” God’s name, God’s nature and character is to be honored, and “Your kingdom come.”
Notice whose kingdom it is: it is God’s kingdom; not ours. And there are no personal pronouns in The Lord’s Prayer. It’s not “My kingdom,” “My will.” It’s God’s kingdom and God’s will. So we are here to seek to glorify God and His kingdom.
What is the kingdom of God? We make it more complex than it needs to be. It’s God’s rules. It comes in three categories. It’s God’s reign and rules in the past, in the present and which will be in the future. He has reigned in the past, He reigns in the present and He will reign in His future kingdom. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein.” So God sits on the throne. Every time you read about the throne in the book of Revelation, God is on the throne. Aren’t you glad? Every time the throne is seen in the heavenly scene, God is on the throne. He hasn’t vacated His throne.
Right now in this world, God reigns. God is in control. We need to remind ourselves when we think the world has gone crazy, that this is a God-forsaken world and “Where is God?” that He is on the throne ruling and reigning and in control.
And there will be a future consummation of God’s kingdom. So in this prayer where it says, “Your kingdom come,” it not only means that God’s kingdom is here now universally, but God’s kingdom will come personally and intimately to the earth.
God has always sought to have a perfect kingdom reign on earth. He made Adam and Eve and put them in the garden, He gave them dominion over the earth, but they sinned and fell and Satan became the god of this world, the god of this age. We live in a fallen world. But God is going to reverse the curse. God will come back and set the earth right. Then in the eternal state, heaven and earth will be made brand new. There will be “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). That will be the eternal state.
So there will be a future consummation of God’s kingdom. The time of the verb “come,” refers to a decisive time in the future. This is where we understand that there is a future when Christ will come again. Christians believe in the Second Advent or Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
There are good Christians who believe differently about the rapture and the Second Coming and when they will happen in relationship to the millennium. I happen to be a premillennialist; I believe that Jesus Christ comes back before the 1,000-year, millennial reign upon the earth. You can’t have the kingdom on earth unless the king returns.
I also believe that before that there is what’s called “the rapture of the church.” The rapture is not the Second Coming. The Second Coming is mentioned in Matthew 24-25 and in Revelation 19. When Jesus comes back physically and bodily with “His head and hair…white like wool” and “His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet…like fine brass” and “out of His mouth…a sharp two-edged sword” (Revelation 1:14, 16), He will come back to judge the world. He’ll come back as “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16). He’s coming back to set up His kingdom. I believe that Jesus will return, and there will be 1,000 years of Christ’s reign upon the earth. And it will be a time of peace on earth. That will then introduce the new heaven and the new earth.
But before all this happens, the church will be raptured or “caught up,” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). A lot of people don’t understand the rapture. It’s basically that Christ is going to come for His church, the bride.
If you are born again, you are part of the church and will be “caught up…to meet the Lord in the air.” And Paul says that “We shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). So the church is caught up to meet the Lord and then be in heaven. Then the church comes back with Christ in the Second Coming (Revelation 19).
So the rapture takes place, the Antichrist is revealed and he makes a covenant with Israel for seven years. In the middle of the seven years, he breaks the covenant with what is called “the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Matthew 24:15). The Antichrist erects an image of himself in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, commands everyone to worship him, so the Jewish people then realize he is not their Messiah, not their Savior.
Then in the next three-and-a-half years, God will pour out His wrath upon the Christ-rejecting world. And at the culmination of the seven years of tribulation the battle of Armageddon will take place. In the middle of that battle, at which all the armies of the world are gathered together in World War III, Jesus Christ will come again as “King of kings and Lord of lords.”
So I believe in a pretribulation rapture and a premillennial return of Christ; that He will reign on the earth for 1,000 years and that will usher in the new heaven and the new earth.
Listen to what the angel Gabriel said to Mary, in Luke 1:32-33, when he announced the Savior’s coming. “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.” This is the fulfillment of God’s promise to David, of God’s covenant made to Israel. It’s called “the Davidic covenant.”
And the full manifestation of this can be seen, in Romans 8:19, by the sons of God bringing glory to Christ. “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”
Then He will reverse the curse, restore earth to its rightful place and the kingdom will come upon the earth. So when you pray, “Your kingdom come,” you’re praying for the Lord to return in His Second Advent and establish His kingdom.
There is a third aspect of the kingdom. He sovereignly will reign on the throne of David, but you can be converted and enter into the kingdom of God right now. If you are a Christian, “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). If you are a Christian, you’ve been taken out of Satan’s kingdom the minute you were saved and transferred into God’s kingdom. You were taken out of darkness and transferred into God’s kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13).
In John 3:3, Jesus told Nicodemus that “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” You must be born of the Spirit, you must be regenerated by the Spirit, and if so, as a Christian, you are living in the kingdom of God. And living in the kingdom of God involves Matthew 6:33, which says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
So the kingdom is entered by conversion, and the kingdom is pursued by commitment and consecration. Allen Redpath said, “Before we can pray, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray, ‘My kingdom go.’” Jesus said, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus started with what’s called “the Beatitudes” before He gave us The Lord’s Prayer. And He described the character of those who live in the kingdom of God: the poor in spirit, those who mourn over their sin; the meek before God; those who are hungry and thirsting after righteousness; the merciful; the pure in heart; the peacemakers; and those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, as a result of living in the kingdom.
So prayer starts with God, His name being hallowed and His kingdom coming. We’re praying for God’s kingdom.
The third petition is “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” verse 2. So the purpose of prayer is God’s glory, God’s kingdom and God’s will. We have not properly learned to pray until every request in our prayers is made subject to the will of God. If you are praying and demanding God answer your prayer the way you want, you need to submit to God’s will. If you are afraid to say, “Not my will but Thine be done,” you’re not praying properly. If you are insisting that God do this and do it now—“Lord, I want you to heal, and I want you to heal now. I want you to do this miracle and do it right now!”—you’re not praying properly.
I turn the TV on and see the health, wealth and prosperity preachers telling people that if they just speak out, they’ll get what they speak; that there’s power in their positive confessions. Claim your miracle. Believe God and that “By faith, all things are possible” (Matthew 17:20), but they don’t bring into it the Biblical truth that God’s will is to be paramount. They believe it is God’s will, but they are imposing their own ideas on the text; it is always God’s will to heal, and it is always God’s will to prosper. We just need more faith, and we would be healed and prosperous. Not so.
Three times Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He said, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup…” the cup of suffering “…away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Three times He asked His Father for the cup to pass, but not His will but His Father’s will to be done. So we learn to pray when we surrender our will to God’s will. If we want God’s name to be hallowed and His kingdom to come, we must submit our prayers to the will of God.
Some people are fearful, because they don’t see Him as their Abba Father, verse 2. Isn’t it interesting that when you pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name”—when you understand that God is your Abba—His name will be hallowed. When you understand that God is your Abba, your Father in heaven, then His will is paramount; His kingdom is what you want.
That’s what Jesus is trying to convey to us in The Lord’s Prayer. Andrew Murray says, “Wherever faith has accepted the Father’s love, obedience accepts the Father’s will.” I like that. If you know that God is your Abba, you know that God loves you and then you know that His will and His way is perfect.
You may be single and you’re looking for a husband or a wife, and you see someone who looks like a good prospect. So you’re praying, “Lord, that one! He’s good looking, Lord. In the name of Jesus, I claim him!” You do a little Jericho march around his house. Sprinkle some Jerusalem holy water on him. You had better pray for God’s will!
Walter Martin said years ago that there was a girl who he wanted to marry, so he prayed fervently, “God, I want her; she’s cute. I want her, in Jesus’ name!” But God said “No.” Then Walter Martin saw her 50 years later, and he immediately got on his knees and thanked God for saying, “No.”
It made me think of something that I think is true. God gives the best to those who leave the choice to Him. Do you believe that? So you can pray, you can ask God, but you had better want God’s will, because God’s will is perfect and exceptional, Romans 12:1.
How can I know God’s will? God’s will is found in God’s Word.
Notice in our text, it says, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” How is God’s will done in heaven? I’ll give you three suggestions. Number one, it is done promptly. Angels obey promptly what God commands. Number two, His commands are carried out completely, not half-heartedly. And number three, God’s will is done joyfully.
So if we’re going to do God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven,” we need to do it promptly, completely and joyfully. Sometimes when people pray they say, “Okay; I know it’s not Your will. Whatever! ‘Thy will be done!’ I’m not happy about it, but okay!”
This is why when we align ourselves with God at the beginning of prayer—the purpose of prayer is not to get God’s will done in my way on earth; it’s to get His will done in heaven and in my life. The purpose of prayer is not to overcome God’s reluctance; it’s to lay hold of God’s willingness. It is to align my will with the will of God.
Someone put it like this: “I cannot say ‘our’ if I live only for myself. I cannot say ‘Father,’ if I do not endeavor to each day act like His child. I cannot say, ‘who art in heaven,’ if I’m laying up treasures here on earth. I cannot say, ‘Hallowed be Thy name,’ if I’m not striving for His holiness. I cannot say, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ if I’m not doing all in my power to hasten that wonderful event. I cannot say, ‘Thy will be done,’ if I’m disobedient to His Word.”
Pastor John Miller continues our series in the Gospel of Luke with an expository message through Luke 11:1-4 titled “The Lord’s Prayer.”