PT-2 "God's Priority"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/7/2020 8:31 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                             Focus:  PT-2 “God’s Priority”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                      Reference:  Matthew 6:9c

 

            Message of the verse:  “hallowed be Thy name.”

 

            In our last SD we have been talking about the names of God and what the names of God mean.  As we begin today we want to look at what Jesus Himself gives as God’s name as He gives the clearest teaching about what God’s name means, and the reason that He can do this is because Jesus Christ is God’s greatest name.  Let us look at John 17:6 “"I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”  Everything that Jesus Christ, the Son of God did on earth manifested God’s name.  Jesus Christ was the perfect manifestation of God’s nature and His glory as seen in John 1:14 (“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”)  Jesus was the perfect manifestation of God’s name.

 

            John MacArthur writes “Hallowed’ is an archaic English word used to translate a form of hagiazo, which means to make holy.  Words from the same root are translated ‘holy, saint, sanctify, sanctification,’ etc.  God’s people are commanded to be holy (1 Pet. 1:16), but God is acknowledged as ‘being’ holy.  That is the meaning of praying ‘hallowed be Thy name’:  to attribute to God the holiness that already is, and always has been supremely and uniquely His.  To hallow God’s name is to revere, honor, glorify, and obey Him as singularly perfect.  As John Calvin observed, that God’s name should be hallowed was nothing other than to say that God should have His own honor, of which He was so worthy, that men should never think or speak of Him without the greatest reverence.

 

            Hallowing God’s name, like every other manifestation of righteousness, begins in the heart, ‘Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts’ Peter tells us (1 Pet. 3:15), using a form of the word that ‘hallowed’ translates.”

 

            When we do as Peter speaks of in sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts, then we will also sanctify Him in our lives too.  It all begins in our hearts, and I think that perhaps it would be wise to give the definition of the word heart as found in my Online Bible Dictionary:

“1) the heart

1a) that organ in the animal body which is the centre of the circulation of the blood, and hence was regarded as the seat of physical life

1b) denotes the centre of all physical and spiritual life

2a) the vigour and sense of physical life

2b) the centre and seat of spiritual life

2b1) the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours

2b2) of the understanding, the faculty and seat of the intelligence

2b3) of the will and character

2b4) of the soul so far as it is affected and stirred in a bad way or good, or of the soul as the seat of the sensibilities, affections, emotions, desires, appetites, passions

1c) of the middle or central or inmost part of anything, even though inanimate”

 

            I hope that this will help us better understand what the heart is, both the physical, but mostly the spiritual meaning of the heart, and so we can understand what Peter wrote “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.”  We can also understand why if we do this that in our lives we will sanctify Christ too. 

 

            When we acknowledge that Jesus Christ exists then we hallow His name.  “He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6) which comes from the great faith chapter.  If a person is honest and has an open mind, then God is self-evident.  MacArthur writes “Immanuel Kant had many strange ideas about God, but he was absolutely right when he said, ‘The law within us and the starry heavens above us drive us to God.’”  This quote from Kant comes from William Barclay’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.

 

            I want to quote from Psalm 36:1 to show what happens to mankind when they don’t find that God is self-evident, and suppress the wonderful truth about God.  I also want to mention that Paul quotes this verse in Romans 3:18.  “An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes” (Ps. 36:1).  “Warren Wiersbe states “In Scripture, an oracle is usually an authoritative pronouncement from the Lord; but here it is sin that is speaking an oracle deep in the heart of the sinner.”  I write this to demonstrate how far our world has come in a downward spiral from what was observed by Immanuel Kant in the quote above.

 

            Lord willing we will continue looking at what it means to hallow God’s name in our next SD.

 

11/7/2020 8:59 AM