Hollowed be Thy Name

Isaiah 6:1-13

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
January 14, 2024
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes

I invite you to join me in your copy of God’s word, Isaiah 6. Broadcasting worship from home feels like the Covid season in its stronger furor three years ago.

It is always a good time to talk about the fame, glory and goodness of Christ. I’m wondering, have you ever met someone famous? Were you prepared to meet them? Did you meet them suddenly? I wonder how I would have reacted if I met the late queen of England. I definitely would not call her Beth or high-five her. There is a certain decorum and protocol when you meet famous dignitaries as such. There are certain people that cause us to act differently.

It begs the question as we come to this portion of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be thy name.” How do you approach a holy God?

Can we approach him with reverence and joy, with awareness and nearness? How do we live in that tension? Additionally, is reverence deeper than the Lord’s Prayer, for instance coming to worship?

I’m wondering if you’ve been aware this morning of God’s holiness and who you are in light of that. Let’s talk about him, the one that separates him from every famous person who ever lived. We see this in context in the Lord’s Prayer. We’re memorizing the Lord’s Prayer in the ESV, very close to the king James:

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.

We’ve noted the doxology at the end, one that we sing so beautifully, is not in the oldest manuscripts, historians and archeology have helped a little bit on this.

What is the meaning of the word “Hallow?” We don’t use this often. We use the word hallow in “Hallow Eve,” where we get our word Halloween. The word in Greek, noun form is hageon which means saint or saints. Saints are holiness, made holy by Jesus, not by anything that we have ever done.

The word “hallow” is synonymous with the word “sanctus” which means holy. Holy means to be set apart, literally cut off, like separated from everything else, certainly us.

Albert Haase who wrote Living the Lord’s Prayer: The Way of the Disciple says,

“To hallow God’s name is to walk the way of humility as we adore God’s presence with the awareness of our sinfulness. Praying the name of Jesus has the power to open us to the experience of unceasing prayer.”

The Lord’s Prayer becomes a guide for life. Jesus said, when you pray, pray this way: Our Father.

We talked about how crazy it is to call God “Father.” It was scandalous to call him the name that Jesus would have called his own father Joseph.

Every Hebrew knew the name of God: “I am who I am, the one to come,” Exodus three, “that will always be my name, I will always be the great I am.”

So how do we reconcile Jesus calling “Abba.” What does it mean to say that God is holy and how do we respond?

In Isaiah 6 we see the revelation, the recognition and the response of his holiness.

First the revelation of his holiness, Isaiah 6:1-7. What do I mean by revelation of God? The only thing that we know about God is what he has chosen to reveal to us.

Isaiah 6:1

In the year that King Uzziah died (739BC) I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Putting things in context. Judah enjoys a prosperous time during the reign of King Uzziah, but he became very prideful, this happens to leaders. So prideful that he went into the temple to burn incense, a practice only permitted to priests. Uzziah ends up with leprosy, spends the last years of his life isolated. The nation is in disarray. Now the king dies, but God is on his throne.

Good reminder to us. Leaders come and go, nations rise and fall, and God will always be on his throne. This truth alone should drive us to prayer. With all the craziness in our lives, we have every week our ups and down, depressed, happy, anxious, we can come to God who never changes! He’s the anchor of the soul, therefore, why do we not pray more?

John 1:18

No one has ever seen God.

So what does Isaiah see? He sees a vision, but God himself is hidden. We see thrones, and robes, and smoke, but he doesn’t actually see God. He sees God’s majesty on display. He is in his temple and the presence of God fills this place up. The temple was the center of life for the Hebrew. Why? because worship was the center of their lives. Is it central for you? We can approach God anytime, but when we worship God, every week, when we gather, is it central for you?

Look at verse two:

Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings (these crazy creatures): with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

These literally mean “burning ones,” these are not Precious Moments cherubs. These are seraphim. They are not angelic creatures, because they don’t have a message. They are burning flames. Literally ball of fires, pointing to the holiness of God. They cover their eyes and their feet, like Moses when he meets God in Exodus 3 and God says, “Take off your feet, you’re on holy ground.”

They cover their feet as to say, “My feet have gone places where they should not go” or Moses where God tells him, “I’m going to tell you the places where you need to go.”

Verse three:

And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Even as I see the sun shine through the window this morning, the whole earth is full of his glory. Like a call and response, an ongoing song, that never ends, there is a chorus here, Holy, Holy, Holy. In the Hebrew, doubling words like this speaks of superlatives, category beyond categories, holy, holier, holiest. God occupies a space in a moral space that none of us can occupy. We worship him in his transcendence, in his holiness. His holiness is central but it is central of his many other traits. His power, his omniscience, his infinitude, his wisdom, his love, his grace, his justice, his righteousness, all of those are instruments and his holiness is central. Holiness is not one of his traits, it is in all of his traits.

Isaiah understands we should consider this when we worship God and this is what Jesus says, “Be reminded who he is (a Holy God), now go on with your prayer, but not until then.”

God’s holiness is like the sun in our little galaxy, it’s central, it’s unique, it’s a source, it gives life, it can bless and sustain, but it can kill you, if you get close enough.

I’m reminded of that great dialogue between Susan and Lucy and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver in The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. She discovers that Aslan, the Christ figure, is a lion and Susan says, “Oooh, I thought he was a man, is he quite safe? I should feel rather nervous if his is a lion.” Mrs. Beaver says, “That you will be, dear, and make no mistake, if there is anyone that can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just silly.” “Then he isn’t safe,” says Lucy. “Safe,” says Mr. Beaver, “Don’t hear what Mrs. beaver tells you, who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe, but he is good, Kings will tell you, he’s holy good. He’s the king. He’s holy love.”

Look at this verse: And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

The weight of his presence shakes the place. It shakes the foundation of our lives when we come into his presence.

So we have the revelation of his holiness.

Then we move to recognition of his holiness: Isaiah, 6:5-10. This is our problem, he’s holy, but we don’t recognize it.

It reveals the depth of our depravity. Maybe we as believers, the more we think of his holiness, the more we confess sin in our lives. I know I want to turn to him and obey him. His holiness turns to obedience. If we humble before him, we confess our sin. When we recognize his holiness we come face to face with our sin.

As we go on each day, people don’t recognize the holiness of God. The holiness is on display in his creation and in one another. People don’t acknowledge the holiness of God and yet it is our sin that reveals his holiness. Often people get to their lowest point in life and they turn to God.

We run to other aversions and ways to medicate our pain. CS Lewis says, “God even in pleasure, the pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks to us in our conscious, but shouts in our pain, it is his megaphone in a deaf world. And most often those pains are brought on by our own doing and should draw us to God.”

Look at what happens in verse 5, his response is spot on. He says,

And I said: “Woe (for a prophet to say “Woe” that a curse, he’s curing himself) is me! For I am lost (I’m done, he thinks he’s going to die); for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Sometimes we should be silenced before God in worship, in prayer, before we don’t know what to say, because that is appropriate. That kind of silence that follows a person in death or disaster. The same word used in Job when he loses everything: I’m done, I have no words.

Look at this response: he confesses his sin. Yes, he is our father, but he is holy. Do you come to worship as the premier meeting you have in your entire week and do you come prepared? Do you pray that God will be exalted and people will draw near to God?

The dilemma in prayer is that we cannot clean ourselves up. Isaiah 64:6 says,

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Even our righteous deeds. Our best efforts are mixed with sin and they are just garbage.

Some of us say, I want to bring something to the table: No, we can’t.

Romans 3:10 “None is righteous, no, not one;

It should terrify us that God knows all about us. A pastor suggested, “If you are not the most sinful person you know, you don’t know yourself very well.”

Hebrews 4:13

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

God must come to us. And look at what happens, God comes to him:

Isaiah 6:6

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

God stops the order of worship. All attention is on him and he brings his attention to Isaiah. What a loving God he is!

Isaiah 6:7

And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

The crazy thing is not the coal or that it is burning, but where it comes from. It comes from the altar where sacrifices of atonement are made.

Instead of killing him, God’s holiness purifies him.

When we come before God’s presence and confess our sin to him, it is that response that shows you’re ready. That purifying fire is that holiness of God coming together on the cross with the sinfulness of human. Atonement for you, at one with God because of Christ.

God came to Isiah because he fell before God and said “I am done.”

Then there is the response to his holiness: It is not what we come to worship with but what we go out with.

Isaiah 6:8-13

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

What is it that he is sent to do?

Look at verse 9:

And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Verse 10:

Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

God encouraged Isaiah to not give up pointing people toward him.

Verse 11-13

Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said:

“Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned[f] again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump. (a reference to the Messiah to come).

How long until the plan is fulfilled? Until the kingdom come. Injustice, racism, unrighteousness is gone.

In 1965, Dr. King How long will justice be crucified and truth buried?

Dear friends, we have a wonderful and divine assignment: to declare the goodness of the Lord. God’s metric of success is faithfulness. After worship comes proclamation; we can share God’s goodness with those within our circle of influence.