Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Matthew 6:9 | Date: November 2, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Open your Bibles, if you will, to Matthew chapter 6. We’re slowly working our way through the Lord’s Prayer. To find instruction on prayer, we had a broad overview of it two months ago. Last time we looked at the address, “Our Father in heaven.” And now this evening we take up the first petition.

Matthew 6, beginning with verse 9: “Pray then like this: ‘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 we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.'”

You may remember then, last time, we saw a broad overview of this prayer. Basically, there are two parts. There’s an address and then there are the petitions. But then the petitions are in two parts as well. The first three petitions pertain to God’s glory, God’s reign, God’s will. They pertain to God’s concerns, if you will. And then the last three petitions pertain to us. And that is: give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation.

The Order of the Petitions

First thing to notice here is the order. First of all, there are petitions pertaining to what we might say are God’s interests in the world. And after that are petitions that pertain to our interests in the world and our needs. I think this is, most likely, what all of us would say is the weakest point of our prayer life: that our prayers are very self-centered and not enough God-centered, and this prayer is given to correct that and to help us in that regard.

And so we start with the first petition. We have three here that are pertaining to God and His interests. The first one is, “Hallowed be Your name.” This word “hallowed” is the same word that’s translated elsewhere in our English version as “sanctified.” Sanctified be Your name. It’s a petition. This is not an exclamation. This is not saying, “Lord, Your name is sanctified,” or, “Lord, Your name is hallowed.” It is a petition: “Lord, let Your name be sanctified. May it be hallowed.” So it is asking that God be made holy—that His name would be made holy.

Now, God’s name is already holy. There’s nothing we can do to make it more holy. God’s holiness has to do with His otherness, His transcendence, His glory. One aspect of His otherness is His purity, and that’s usually the sense in which we speak of holiness. But it has to do with His greatness and His majesty, His transcendence and His glory. And so this is a request asking that God would make His name glorified, make His name exalted, sanctify His name, and set it apart as recognizably holy.

So he’s praying that—obviously we cannot make His name holy—but he’s praying that it would be recognized as holy, treated as holy, that people would see God for who He is, reverence Him accordingly, obey Him accordingly, and fear Him accordingly. It is a prayer that the triune God would be duly reverenced in the world. And so the Christian Standard Bible translates this, “Your name be honored as holy.”

God Promote Your Own Glory in the World

The first petition is that the world would recognize God’s greatness, His transcendence, His rule, His purity, and that they would respond to Him accordingly. So when we come to pray, Jesus says, first of all, atop all other concerns, is this request, this petition: God, promote Your own glory in the world. Advance the cause of God in the earth so that in human society and in all of the created order, God would be recognized as the glorious, great God that He is.

Now, what this petition is, and what we find often in the prayers of the Bible, is that the prayers often run along with God’s purpose. He has said He would do something, and so the prayers follow along: “God, do what You have said You would do.” And that’s the case here with this one. It is praying that God would promote His own glory in the world, and in fact, He says in Ezekiel 36, “I will sanctify my great name which has been profaned among the nations.”

This is what God is doing in history. He is moving toward the ultimate promotion of His own glory in the earth so that in the end His name will be recognized as great and He will be duly honored and reverenced accordingly. The world as it is today does not give God the honor and the glory that is due Him. Typically in the world today, God’s name is blasphemed.

What this is praying for is that all that would be reversed from the cultural centers of our society—education, the media, the government. Too often, God is not feared, and not only is He not feared, but He’s blasphemed. And this is a prayer that it would be reversed. In fact, we as God’s people don’t honor God as we ought to either.

So this first petition then is kind of prospective. It looks forward longingly to a world that no longer blasphemes God, but in fact fears God, honors Him, reverences Him, obeys Him: “Lord, promote Your glory in this world.” That’s a big request. It reflects then a heart that’s jealous for God. It reflects a heart that wants, above all things, to see God’s glory promoted in the world. Before my own interests, I want to see God honored in the world.

Could there be any more urgent prayer request than that? We bow to pray. Typically, we are self-centered—I understand, and I’m not accusing you of anything I’m not saying about myself. We are self-centered, and typically when we go to pray, our prayers are rather self-centered. But could there be a more urgent prayer request than this? What is important first in this world is not your bank account. What is important in this world is not your health. What is important in this world first is not your family. What is important in this world first is what God is doing. God is doing as He has set out to promote His own glory. And this prayer recognizes that and asks that God would do that in the world.

By Way of Application

And so, by way of application, how do we pray that then? We are to pray then, “God, work in this world in such a way that You are reverenced, that Your name is praised, that honor is given to You throughout our culture.” That is, that God would give the gospel success, that He would save sinners, that He would work in our society in such a way that hearts are turned to Him, that nations would become worshipers, that the cause of Christ in missions would be advanced, and that leaders in our culture would turn to Christ and repent of their sin.

And for that matter, it’s a prayer for us as well in the church. This is a prayer that says, in effect, “Lord, strengthen Your church. Make us worshipers. Help us to honor You as You deserve to be honored. Make us a people who praise You and make us a people who promote Your praise in the world with others as well.”

I’ve long been fascinated with the prayer of the early church in Acts chapter 4. You remember the context: the apostles have been brought in before the Jewish authorities and warned, “Don’t preach more in the name of Jesus.” Finally, they’re whipped. They walk out rejoicing that they’re privileged and worthy to suffer for Christ. And the first thing they do is return to their people—or return to their, what we would say now, the local church—gather the people together, and they pray.

Acts chapter four. And what they pray is fascinating. They’ve just been whipped, they’ve been threatened with more, and they go together and they pray. And they don’t say, “Lord, You’ve got to relieve this pressure. You’ve got to take away the suffering.” What they pray is, “Lord, keep us faithful to this mission that Christ has called us to.” They give an eye to the glory of God, promoting His glory through the gospel.

And when we read through Paul’s prayers—we’ve been noticing this in our Wednesday night groups as we work through some of Paul’s prayers, and I think we’ll do that here as well—Paul regularly prays along these kinds of lines. It’s not the words, “hallowed be Your name,” but it’s to that end. He’ll pray that God’s people will be strengthened. He’ll pray that God’s people will be strengthened in love, that they’ll love one another more and more. He prays that God’s people would trust Him more, that they would grow spiritually. And then there’s always the end: to the honor and glory of God. To the honor and glory of Christ. Promote Your cause; promote Your name in this world.

Ultimately, when we pray, “Hallowed be Your name, promote Your glory in the world,” ultimately, what we’re praying for is the return of Christ and the consummation of the kingdom of God in the earth. And that’s the next petition: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” And that is—you can’t get away from that in this prayer. It’s a big one. It’s comprehensive in all of these others as well. And in fact, all of these other prayer requests that come, even the ones pertaining to us later on—”give us this day our daily bread” and so on—all of that is subjected to this overarching concern: Lord, promote Your glory in this world.

Now that is first, and that’s where prayer begins, and I suspect that’s where each of us needs most to work at praying in the way that Jesus has instructed us to pray. Pray first of all with that which concerns God first, and that is the promotion of His glory in the world. That’s what He has set out to do. And so that sets the order of priorities in our thinking and in our praying. What is most urgently needed in the world, what’s most urgently needed in our own prayers then, is that God will promote His glory.

Let me finish up with a quote from J.I. Packer. He has this remark with regard to the Lord’s Prayer:

“Were we left to ourselves, any praying we did would both start and end with ourselves, for our natural self-centeredness knows no bounds. Indeed, much pagan praying of this kind goes on among supposedly Christian people. But Jesus’ patterned prayer, which is both crutch, road, and walking lesson for the spiritually lame like ourselves, tells us to start with God. Lesson one is to grasp that God matters infinitely more than we do. And so, ‘Your’ is the key word here in the opening three petitions. And the first request of all is, ‘hallowed be Your name,’ which is the biggest and the most basic request of the whole prayer. Understand it, make it your own, and you have unlocked the secret of both prayer and life.”

Learning to pray, “Lord, sanctify Your name, promote Your glory, exalt Your name in the earth.”