Mother’s Day 2020 and Thine Is The Kingdom
(This sermon is a shorter sermon due to being delivered via Facebook/Live during the Covid-19 shutdown)
Today we will be reading from 1 Chronicles 29:10-13
If you would like to turn to that passage in your Bibles …
Over the past couple of months we have been going through a series on The Lord’s Prayer. And, today, we arrive at the second half of Matthew 6:13 that says, “For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.”
Also, today is Mother’s Day, so, I tried to integrate the last phrase of the Lord’s prayer and Mother’s Day and no matter how hard I tried it seemed to come out like a sermon version of Frankenstein’s monster.
(Guarding Sunday worship)
I have always tried to guard Sunday morning Worship services against overlapping holidays honoring a person or a nationalistic holiday. That is not to say that I do not honor Mothers or Fathers or Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day. The truth is that I am just jealous for the one day a week where we set aside one measly little hour to gather together to worship the King of kings and Lord of lords.
In truth my desire is that every second of every worship service be focused on God and God alone. And in that hour we would only worship His great name and we would allow the Holy Spirit to do the transformational work that He most certainly needs to do in each and every one of our lives.
If we DO allow the Lord to transform us into His Holy Image then what we do as mothers, fathers and citizens will honor the Lord and be a vast improvement over what we would be without His transformation of our lives.
(Prayer for help in today’s message)
(The Last Phrase in The Lord’s Prayer)
This is a phrase that you will find in about half of the translations of the Bible.
In a few minutes we’ll get to why it is only found in about half of the translations of the Bible but first let’s see if we can find that truth anywhere else in the Bible.
Is there anywhere else that speaks of God’s majesty and His power and His glory and His eternal Kingdom???
Please read along with Pastor Karenle from 1 Chronicles 29:10-13
Amen! And if you read through the Bible you will find that this truth is contained from cover to cover.
(Only in about half the Translations)
Well, why isn’t this phrase that is sometimes found in Matthew 6:13 in ALL of the Bible translations?
Do you realize that there are no complete, original transcripts left of any of the books in the Bible? If that is true, how can we have any confidence in what we read in various translations of the Bible?
As of 2008 there were more than 5,600 Greek New Testament manuscripts that had been compiled. In addition, there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000.
A Greek translation called the Textus Receptus was used for Bibles around the time of the Reformation – KJV – Matthew’s Bible – Geneva Bible, The Bishop’s Bible, etc.
Since then many other, more ancient manuscripts have been discovered
By taking these fragments and comparing the common parts it was possible to “back into” the original text to a certainty of 99.5% accuracy and many of those differences are minor spelling or grammatical differences.
For instance, one “error” might be “Jesus Christ” being copied as “Christ Jesus”.
So, why are we talking about this? It is to explain why the second half of Matthew 6:13 only appears in some Bibles. It is a phrase that seems to have been added in a few of the most recent manuscripts and is not found in the most ancient manuscripts.
Think of it this way. When you have many manuscripts and they are dated and you only find this phrase in the most recent ones you know that somewhere along the line someone added them in.
Why was it added? We don’t know.
Is it in harmony with other Scriptures? Yes, it is.
Should it have been added? No it should not have been added.
But is it acceptable because it IS in harmony with the rest of the Bible?
Suppose a mother is rocking her infants’ cradle while quoting the Lord’s Prayer with the ending of, “For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever, Amen.”
Will that harm the child? No, because it is in harmony with the rest of the Bible.
So, the question that is uppermost in most minds is this, “Where is this sermon going, anyway????”
1) We CAN and SHOULD have full and utmost confidence in the Word of God, the Bible.
- For those of you who have been around Crossroads for a few years you may remember Brent Seales, the son of Jimmy and Janet Seales. Without going into any type of details that I wouldn’t understand anyway, Brent developed a program that was able to read inside the oldest known manuscript that looked like a lump of coal and was unable to be opened without destroying it. Guess what it was? It was the first two chapters of Leviticus just like we have them today!
https://mymodernmet.com/herculaneum-papyri-brent-seales/
2) The fact that we CAN and SHOULD have full and utmost confidence in the Word of God, the Bible, will be of NO HELP to us if we do not know what is in the Word of God, the Bible.
3) Without knowing WHAT is in the Bible we will be easily led astray.
- Many pseudo-Christian cults use phrases similar to what Biblical Based Christians use but many times they have a totally different meaning …
4) Knowing WHAT is in the Bible will be totally useless to us UNLESS we have a personal relationship with “Our Father Who is in Heaven, hallowed by Thy Name”! OR … unless we are SEEKING to have a personal relationship with “Our Father who is in heaven”.
The human body is a massively complexes creation.
Let’s observe it as just two components; the heart and the lungs.
If the heart it beating but the lungs are not breathing it will soon die.
If the lungs are breathing but the heart is not beating it will soon die.
We must have the new life in Jesus Christ and the Word of God if we are to be healthy, productive Christians in the Kingdom of God.
So, how does Mother’s Day intersect with “Thine is the Kingdom…”
There is an old poem called, “Who Rules The World” and it goes like this …
They say that man is mighty - He governs land and sea,
He wields a mighty scepter - Over lesser powers than he;
But mightier power and stronger - Man from his throne has hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle - Is the hand that rules the world.
We all know whose hand rocks the cradle, right?
What is the very most important thing that that one could be teaching to the baby in the cradle?
The very most important thing is this; that there is a Father in heaven who has a kingdom and in that kingdom all power and glory belongs to Him forever and ever. Amen! And He died on a cross so that we could be a part of His eternal kingdom as well! Hallelujah!!
Now, mothers aren’t the only ones who should be teaching that to infants. Dads should be teaching as well.
And, we shouldn’t be only teaching infants we need to be teaching children and teens and young adults and our peers and older adults as well. We need to be telling this good news to anyone who does not know Jesus as their Savior. We need to be telling this good news to anyone who will listen!
And, any time a person of whatever age comes to know Jesus as their Savior they become a spiritual infant who needs to know the wonders of God and His great love for those who seek Him.
Let’s not just be readers of the Word for our own benefit, let’s be teachers of the Word to all who will listen!
Final thoughts and prayer.
