Session 2: A Prayer of Praise
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It is a natural thing for us to call out to God when we need something. God certainly invites us to come to Him with our prayers and requests. But do we ever consider what God wants? The first request of Jesus’ Model Prayer is a petition for God’s name to be honored as holy. We are to bring our requests to God and seek an answer that brings honor and glory to Him.
Prayer begins with a desire to honor God
Prayer begins with a desire to honor God
Look at b
9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
1 Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
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The concern of this first petition (see note on ) is that God’s name would be hallowed—that God would be treated with the highest honor and set apart as holy.
The verb hallowed means “to sanctify, make holy.”
Hallowed be your name. The verb hallowed means “to sanctify, make holy.” Because the grammatic form here is unknown in English, we tend to take this line in Jesus’ prayer as a statement of fact, when, in fact, it is a request. Jesus was teaching us to make the request, “Lord, may your name be sanctified.” Why should we pray to God that he would sanctify his own name? Probably as a reminder to ourselves to live a life that advertises a holy God. Also, this kind of greeting was a form of blessing on the one addressed.
We tend to take this line in Jesus’ prayer as a statement of fact, when, in fact, it is a request.
In both Old and New Testament thinking, a person’s name was equivalent to his or her very person (thus the careful choice in those days of children’s names for their meaning, not just their sound).
Elijah, God the Lord, the strong Lord
Gabriel, God is my strength
Isaiah, the salvation of the Lord
Jacob, that supplants, undermines;
Jeremiah, exaltation of the Lord
Joshua, a savior; a deliverer
Malachi, my messenger
Christ, anointed
Barnabas, son of the prophet, or of consolation
For this reason, it is not important to know what name of God Jesus may have meant. To say that the word by which God is called is to be holy falls far short of Jesus’ meaning. Jesus was asking that God himself be set apart as holy, and so Jesus also modeled the attitude we should have toward God during prayer.
Hallowed has to do with something or someone being different or set apart. We must come before God with an attitude of reverence for God’s perfection (in contrast to our imperfection), his wisdom (in contrast to our foolishness), his power (in contrast to our impotence), and his love (in contrast to our selfishness).
What are some of the attributes of God?
God’s holiness is everything that sets him apart from us and all the rest of his creation. Addressing such a being should never be done casually or flippantly.
How does relate to this?
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Hallowed is not a call to worship but is an imperative of request or entreaty for God to cause His name (His “fame”) to be revered.
Now go to Psalm 96:1-3
1 Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
96:1–13 is a psalm of Yahweh’s kingship or enthronement (see note on 93:1). In it, the psalmist calls all the earth to declare Yahweh’s excellence (vv. 1–3).
What does the Psalmist call for us to do in the first three verses?
A call to evangelize in v. 3
The psalmist then commands Yahweh’s people, the Israelites, to declare His miraculous actions to the foreign peoples (or nations) around them.
Compare this with David’s Song of Thanks in
David celebrating the return of the Ark of God to Jerusalem from Kiriath-Jearim, having been captured earlier by the Philistines
23 Sing to the Lord, all the earth!
Tell of his salvation from day to day.
24 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
25 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
and he is to be feared above all gods.
26 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
27 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and joy are in his place.
28 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
29 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come before him!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
30 tremble before him, all the earth;
yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
31 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice,
and let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!”
96:1 Sing to Yahweh This command is not exclusive to Israel. See note on vv. 1–3; compare vv. 2; 98:1.
The declaration to the nations anticipates the spread of the gospel (; ; see note on ).
96:2 his name This phrase emphasizes intimate knowledge of God rather than a particular name as multiple names are used for God. See note on 91:14.
his salvation The Hebrew word used here, yeshu'ah, refers in the psalms to Yahweh’s deliverance from whatever hazards the psalmist is experiencing. See 91:16 and note.
day to day Intensifies the personal experience of God’s deliverance.
96:3 among the nations Refers to the geographic territories outside Israel (compare v. 10).
96:3 The declaration to the nations anticipates the spread of the gospel (; ; see note on ).
the peoples Refers to people groups other than the Israelites (vv. 3, 5, 7, 10, 13).
God’s splendor and majesty call us to honor Him
God’s splendor and majesty call us to honor Him
Let’s go to
4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
96:4–5 These verses explain to the Gentiles that there is only one God truly worthy of worship. He is to be feared above all gods (because he made the heavens, while they are powerless, indeed unreal). The words gods (Hb. ’elohim) and worthless idols (Hb. ’elilim) sound alike, providing a play on words; in English this would be close to “these mighty beings are mighty useless!”
What do you think of “other gods”? Do they exist? Go to
96:4 to be feared Fearing God means placing all other potential objects of fear or reverence in proper perspective. See 90:11 and note.
96:6 before him God’s location varies through this psalm; v. 6 and 96:8 place Him in His sanctuary or courts, while v. 13 places Him in a wider environment.
96:6 Splendor and majesty describe royal magnificence (21:5; 45:3), which is suited to the theme of divine kingship (cf. 104:1; 111:3; 145:3; ). These, along with strength and beauty, are attributes of God, into whose presence people come in his sanctuary.
THE WORLDVIEW use
8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the Lord’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
So what happened to the other nations? What does it mean that they were apportioned as an inheritance according to the number of the sons of God?
As odd as it sounds, the rest of the nations were placed under the authority of members of Yahweh’s divine council.7 The other nations were assigned to lesser elohim as a judgment from the Most High, Yahweh.
MISUNDERSTANDING IDOLATRY
are idols The Hebrew word used here, elil—which can be rendered as “insignificant,” “vain,” or “weak”—describes foreign gods in a derogatory sense, portraying them as nonentities.
The biblical prophets love to make fun of idol making. It seems so stupid to carve an idol from wood or stone or make one from clay and then worship it. But ancient people did not believe that their gods were actually images of stone or wood. We misread the biblical writers if we think that.
What ancient idol worshippers believed was that the objects they made were inhabited by their gods. This is why they performed ceremonies to “open the mouth” of the statue.13 The mouth (and nostrils) had to be ritually opened for the spirit of the deity to move in and occupy, a notion inspired by the idea that one needs to breathe to live. The idol first had to be animated with the very real spiritual presence of the deity. Once that was done, the entity was localized for worship and bargaining.
This is easily proven from ancient texts. There are accounts, for example, of idols being destroyed. There is no sense of fear in those accounts that the god was dead.14 Rather, there was only a need to make another idol.
Paul’s warning in , alluded to previously, reflects this thinking. He clarifies that he also knows that sacrifices to idols are actually sacrifices to demons—evil members of the spiritual world.
18 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? 19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Yahweh made the heavens The psalmist argues that other rival deities are worthless because Yahweh made the place where the other gods supposedly live, the heavens. Yahweh is the Creator of all. Compare v. 11.
WHAT ABOUT JESUS?
Readers of often raise a specific question about Jesus. If there are other divine sons of God, what do we make of the description of Jesus as the “only begotten” son of God (, ; , ; )? How could Jesus be the only divine son when there were others?
“Only begotten” is an unfortunately confusing translation, especially to modern ears. Not only does the translation “only begotten” seem to contradict the obvious statements in the Old Testament about other sons of God, it implies that there was a time when the Son did not exist—that he had a beginning.
The Greek word translated by this phrase is monogenes. It doesn’t mean “only begotten” in some sort of “birthing” sense. The confusion extends from an old misunderstanding of the root of the Greek word.
For years monogenes was thought to have derived from two Greek terms, monos (“only”) and gennao (“to beget, bear”). Greek scholars later discovered that the second part of the word monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (“class, kind”).
The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin. Consequently, since Jesus is indeed identified with Yahweh and is therefore, with Yahweh, unique among the elohim that serve God, the term monogenes does not contradict the Old Testament language.
The validity of this understanding is borne out by the New Testament itself. In , Isaac is called Abraham’s monogenes. If you know your Old Testament you know that Isaac was not the “only begotten” son of Abraham. Abraham had earlier fathered Ishmael (cf. ; ). The term must mean that Isaac was Abraham’s unique son, for he was the son of the covenant promises. Isaac’s genealogical line would be the one through which Messiah would come. Just as Yahweh is an elohim, and no other elohim are Yahweh, so Jesus is the unique Son, and no other sons of God are like him.
in his sanctuary Yahweh is set apart from all the foreign gods—He dwells in His holy place. This could be a reference to the heavens or to the Jerusalem temple. Considering that vv. 8–10 envision people coming to Yahweh from around the world, the Jerusalem temple is likely being referenced here. Compare 93:5 and note.
Everything in our lives is to be an offering that honors God—including our prayers
Everything in our lives is to be an offering that honors God—including our prayers
Let’s move to
7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts!
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth!
7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts!
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth!
Who is this last part directed to? Compare to ; Haggai 2:7-9
96:7–9 All Nations, Ascribe Glory to the Lord! These verses develop the thought of v. 7, inviting the Gentiles to worship into his courts, i.e., in the temple precincts. The OT describes the future era, when the Gentiles receive the light, by picturing them coming to the Jerusalem temple (; even the lesser temple after the exile, ). The Gentiles are to bring an offering and to worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness (i.e., the splendid presence of the all-holy one).
2 It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
3 and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
7 And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. 9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.’ ”
1 Awake, awake,
put on your strength, O Zion;
put on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city;
for there shall no more come into you
the uncircumcised and the unclean.
Verse 6 listed God’s attributes, and the Gentiles are called to “ascribe” (or acknowledge) these attributes. The glory due his name is the respect and honor God’s character deserves.
How does relate?
22 “Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
23 By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.’
his name Emphasizes intimate knowledge of God rather than a particular label. See note on 91:14.
1 The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
96:7–10 The psalmist issues a series of commands about what should be ascribed to Yahweh—what belongs to Him (vv. 7–8, compare vv. 1–3). In doing so, he asserts Yahweh’s superiority over all the earth and that all should worship Him. The psalmist seems to envision people from other nations coming to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh.
96:7 Ascribe to Yahweh Reflects the commands in vv. 1–2. See note on vv. 7–10.
96:8 his name Emphasizes intimate knowledge of God rather than a particular label. See note on 91:14.
into his courts Contributes to the image of God as king. See and note.
96:9 Worship The Hebrew verb chawah used here literally means “to bow down.” It demonstrates the humility required in worship. See 95:6 and note.
holy array See 93:5 and note.
| Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!
| Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him! Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness;
People in the ancient Near East believed that the gods lived in lush gardens or mountains, as both settings reflected luxury and remoteness—qualities associated with the gods. Gardens and mountains also contrasted with typical living conditions. Most people in the ancient Near East lived in arid climates and relied on what they grew or gathered for food. But, in their view, gardens—where the gods lived—had an abundance of water and a wide range of fresh vegetation for food, shade, and beauty.
People in the ancient Near East thought of mountains as divine abodes because they were extremely remote.
Mountains were also associated with creation. For example, Egyptians believed that the creator god, Atum, lived in a watery abyss—“the Nun”—prior to creation. At creation, Atum rose from the abyss on a primeval mound. The pyramids commemorate the rise of the first mound out of the watery abyss. The single-story temples that replaced pyramids maintained this mound concept: they were built with a slight incline. As worshipers moved toward the holy place at the heart of the temple, they would pass through columned halls decorated with various plants found in the Nile. In effect, worshipers imitated traveling up a mound that rose from the waters as they moved through the temple. The high point of the mound-incline was believed to be the home of the deity.
In addition to places of residence, the temples were also understood to be places where worshipers offered sacrifices and made petitions—and where deities issued cosmic decrees. People in the ancient Near East believed that temples were the headquarters where the gods maintained cosmic order and dispensed their will. Since ancient Semitic people believed their gods lived in tents on sacred mountains, mountains were also considered temples that marked the center of the cosmos.
The cosmic garden and mountain imagery of the Old Testament reflects wider beliefs of the ancient Near East. A close parallel can be found in ancient texts from Ugarit, a city-state of ancient Syria. In the text, Ugarit’s high god, El, lives on a mountain with a lush garden. The mountain is situated at the “source of the two rivers,” amid “the fountains of the double-deep.” El and his divine council (or “heavenly host”) assemble on the cosmic mountain—the place where heaven and earth meet—and issue divine decrees from the “tents of El” or “tabernacle” (KTU 1.1.III:23; 1.2.III:5). El’s coregent, Baal, has his own divine mountain abode and temple-house. His meeting place is the “heights of Tsaphanu,” and his palace is “a house of the clearness of lapis lazuli” with a courtyard of “paved bricks.”
Old Testament Usage of Cosmic Garden and Mountain Imagery
The Old Testament uses all of these descriptive terms for the dwelling place and temple of Yahweh, the God of Israel: Yahweh dwells on mountains (Sinai or Zion; e.g., ; ; ); the Jerusalem temple is located in the “mount of assembly” (; ); Mount Zion is described as a watery habitation (; ; ; ; compare Heb 4:18). In Ezekiel, Eden is referred to as both a garden and a mountain: equates the “holy mountain of God” with Eden, the “garden of God”; Eden appears in as the “seat of the gods,” the place where Yahweh runs the cosmos with His heavenly host (compare ). In Genesis, Eden—a lush, well-watered garden ()—is where Yahweh first announces His will for humans, likely to the heavenly host (; , ).
These motifs also appear in descriptions of Mount Sinai and the wilderness wanderings of Israel. God dispenses His laws for Israel from Mount Sinai—the “mountain of God.” These laws are then dispersed by angels—the heavenly host (, ; ; ; compare ). When Moses, Aaron, and 70 of the elders ascend Mount Sinai at God’s command, they see Yahweh and feast with Him (). Later, Yahweh moves from Sinai to dwell with His people in the tabernacle tent (). He also meets with Moses in the tent of meeting (e.g., ). The internal tabernacle tent structure is later moved to the temple, leading to the description of the temple on Mount Zion as Yahweh’s tent (; ; ; ).
Both the tabernacle and the temple preserved the garden and mountain imagery. If God dwelled in the holy of holies, the area outside the holy of holies represented the garden of Eden. The curtains of this internal structure were decorated with cherubim (; compare ), as was the veil separating the holy of holies (most holy place) from the rest of the holy place (). The cherubim guarded the way to the divine presence as they did in Eden (). Outside the veil stood the golden lampstand—the menorah—which represented the tree of life (see ). The lampstand—composed of a central shaft or “trunk” with six branches on either side—resembled a tree, and was covered with almond blossoms, a symbol of life and its renewal (see ; ; ; ; compare ). The temple in Jerusalem also had numerous carvings of lush plant life and cherubim ().
Old Testament Quotations and Allusions in the New Testament
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. If enthusiastic repetition is the mark of joyous, exuberant worship, this psalm, shared by the congregation, must have been a thrilling anthem, a spiritual experience.
Almost every form of worship is mentioned: song, praise, credal recital, ascription of glory and honor, offering, worship, “holy array,” reverent fear, and declaration.
Equally comprehensive are the reasons offered: God’s “salvation,” glory, deeds, greatness, creative power, splendor, majesty, strength, holiness, sovereignty, and (most of all) for an unjust, often oppressive world, the promise of his righteous judgment and equity.
THE WORLDVIEW use
So what happened to the other nations? What does it mean that they were apportioned as an inheritance according to the number of the sons of God?
As odd as it sounds, the rest of the nations were placed under the authority of members of Yahweh’s divine council.7 The other nations were assigned to lesser elohim as a judgment from the Most High, Yahweh.
MISUNDERSTANDING IDOLATRY
The biblical prophets love to make fun of idol making. It seems so stupid to carve an idol from wood or stone or make one from clay and then worship it. But ancient people did not believe that their gods were actually images of stone or wood. We misread the biblical writers if we think that.
What ancient idol worshippers believed was that the objects they made were inhabited by their gods. This is why they performed ceremonies to “open the mouth” of the statue.13 The mouth (and nostrils) had to be ritually opened for the spirit of the deity to move in and occupy, a notion inspired by the idea that one needs to breathe to live. The idol first had to be animated with the very real spiritual presence of the deity. Once that was done, the entity was localized for worship and bargaining.
This is easily proven from ancient texts. There are accounts, for example, of idols being destroyed. There is no sense of fear in those accounts that the god was dead.14 Rather, there was only a need to make another idol.
Paul’s warning in , alluded to previously, reflects this thinking. Earlier in the letter, he told the Corinthians that an idol had no power and was, in and of itself, nothing (). While Gentiles had other lords and gods, for believers there was only one true God. But in chapter 10, he clarifies that he also knows that sacrifices to idols are actually sacrifices to demons—evil members of the spiritual world.
WHAT ABOUT JESUS?
Readers of often raise a specific question about Jesus. If there are other divine sons of God, what do we make of the description of Jesus as the “only begotten” son of God (, ; , ; )? How could Jesus be the only divine son when there were others?
“Only begotten” is an unfortunately confusing translation, especially to modern ears. Not only does the translation “only begotten” seem to contradict the obvious statements in the Old Testament about other sons of God, it implies that there was a time when the Son did not exist—that he had a beginning.
The Greek word translated by this phrase is monogenes. It doesn’t mean “only begotten” in some sort of “birthing” sense. The confusion extends from an old misunderstanding of the root of the Greek word. For years monogenes was thought to have derived from two Greek terms, monos (“only”) and gennao (“to beget, bear”). Greek scholars later discovered that the second part of the word monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (“class, kind”). The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin. Consequently, since Jesus is indeed identified with Yahweh and is therefore, with Yahweh, unique among the elohim that serve God, the term monogenes does not contradict the Old Testament language.
The validity of this understanding is borne out by the New Testament itself. In , Isaac is called Abraham’s monogenes. If you know your Old Testament you know that Isaac was not the “only begotten” son of Abraham. Abraham had earlier fathered Ishmael (cf. ; ). The term must mean that Isaac was Abraham’s unique son, for he was the son of the covenant promises. Isaac’s genealogical line would be the one through which Messiah would come. Just as Yahweh is an elohim, and no other elohim are Yahweh, so Jesus is the unique Son, and no other sons of God are like him.
Self-Reflection
Self-Reflection
What are you offering to God as your worship to Him, and what are you holding back?
Takeaways
Takeaways
1. We honor God when we praise Him for who He is, proclaim good news about Him, and pronounce His glory and wonderful works to everyone.
2. The Lord is superior to anything and anyone; there is none like him and never will be.
3. Our worship is to be marked by praise, honor, giving, and reverence.