Sermon Tone Analysis

Setting

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

Look at b

p

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?

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

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

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

Let’s go to

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

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.

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?