HoHum:
I love sports. Lately, I have been unable to watch sports so instead I go to ESPN and look at the stats for my favorite teams. Chicago Cubs (this year they are pathetic), North Carolina Tarheels basketball, Indiana Pacers NBA and now the Indiana Fever (Love Caitlin Clark). Been to several of the games. If at the game or watching on TV I talk throughout the game. To the players. The umpires. To the fans. Why do I place so much importance on my favorites team’s performance. Why do their wins make me happy? Why do their losses make me sad? Why do I get angry when they make mistakes? Why do I feel proud when they make the playoffs? They are my hometown team, sure. But what does that mean? As Jerry Seinfeld once said, “Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify. Because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You’re actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it. You know what I mean? You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city.” What’s that all about? Why do we invest such effort and emotion into sports teams and their performance? I think it has something to do with the universal human need to worship, to identify with someone or something greater than ourselves. In Rick Warren’s book, the Purpose Driven Life, he wrote: “Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge, hard wired by God into the very fiber of our being- an inbuilt need to connect with God. Worship is as natural as eating or breathing. If we fail to worship God, we always find a substitute, even if it ends up being ourselves.”
WBTU:
Christians from the earliest days until now have added a biblical doxology to this prayer: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” These words echo a prayer of King David when he was receiving the gifts of God’s people for the building of a temple in Jerusalem in 1 Chronicles 29:11: Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.” How fitting that this has been applied to the Model prayer of Jesus, the Son of David. N. T. Wright explains: “This concluding doxology doesn’t appear in the best manuscripts of either Matthew or Luke. But it was already well established within a century of so of Jesus’ day; and it is actually inconceivable, within the Jewish praying styles of his day, that Jesus would have intended the prayer to stop at ‘deliver us from evil.’ Something like this must have been intended from the beginning. In any case, it chimes in exactly with the message of the prayer as a whole: God’s kingdom, God’s power, and God’s glory are what it’s all about.” The Didache, a church manual composed around 100 AD had this doxology on the Lord’s Prayer. This ending seems understandable. As we begin to pray the Model Prayer, the petitions proceed from abstract to the more specific and personal. We pray for His glory “May your name be kept holy” and then for His kingdom to come on this earth, and for His will to be done not only outside of us but in us as well. Then, having prayed for bread “Give us this day our daily bread,” and grace “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” and leadership, “Lead us not into temptation,” and deliverance “deliver us from evil,” it seems logical to end as we began. To praise God for His kingship (authority), through which He exercises His power (ability), thus bringing about His glory (acclaim). These are more than mere phrases. Each phrase in this doxology helps those who pray it to respond to the praise of the One who is bigger and better and greater than us, who meets our needs, focuses our minds and changes our lives.
Thesis: Last 3 doxology statements of the prayer
For instances:
1. Pray, “Yours is the Kingdom”; I bow
We need to surrender to God in worship. Interesting that the Lord’s Prayer concludes in absolute submission to God. Makes me think that one of the reasons that we do not see more prayers answered is because we are not submissive to God. We are holding out for our will, our own plans and our own satisfaction.
I fear that in our hearts we say, “My kingdom come!’ We want our time to be used the way we want to use it. We want our money to be used the way we want to use it. We want our children to succeed in the way we want them to succeed. We want our plans to be approved by God so we will have what we want. We want our church to be comfortable, and not necessarily as aggressive as Jesus would have us to be. Jesus has authority as the King. Matthew 28:18-20: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Philippians 2:10-11 says, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” We are recognizing God’s right to rule. We are recognizing God’s rule in our lives. We are submitting to God’s will, in every part of the prayer which we have been studying. If it’s God’s kingdom, He is King! We are saying that He is the king over our bodies. We are saying that He is king over our behavior. We are saying that He is king over our plans. We are saying that He is king in the church and in our families.
Picture ourselves in God’s throne room. See Him high and lifted up. Envision His smile and His scepter extended in our direction. Bow to the King. Bend the knee. Throw ourselves at His feet. Also remember that He is our Father, our Abba, Our Daddy. The King on the throne, like the father in Jesus’ story of the prodigal son, will run to meet us as we stumble toward Him. He will lift us up and kiss our face. And because the kingdom is His, we have no reason to doubt that He will grant our requests that match up to His will for our lives. 1 John 5:14-15: This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
2. Pray, “Yours is the power”; I obey
Go to Matthew 8:5-13. Vs. 10- Astonished, amazed, marveled. This is a Gentile and Jesus spent most of his time with the Jews. When we come like this centurion and say, “Thine is the power,” we are saying that nothing is too difficult for God. Often we try to do things in our own strength and we end up falling flat on our face, need to ask for God’s help. To pray, “Yours is the power,” is to say not only, “You can,” but “I will in your strength.” This echos back to “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is the punctuation of that sentence. It is not only a recognition of God’s power but a submission to it. By saying, “Yours is the power,” we say, “Not ours.” “Yours is the power” means “Not mine.” We often pray as though the power is- or should be- ours. We want God to agree to our wishes. We want God to do it our way. We want deliverance but not if it involves more than we are willing to do. So when we pray, “Yours is the power,” say it like the centurion saying, “Only say the word.” Pray, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Pray, “Not as I will, but as you will.” Pray, “I desire to do your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:8). Philip Keller says in his book of the Lord’s Prayer: “For most of us, our God is far, far too feeble. We simply do not see our Father all resplendent in His majesty and power and glory. Few of us have more than a flickering comprehension of His might. At our best we seem to catch only fleeting, passing glimpses of His true greatness.” Faith is not believing that God can, it is knowing that God will.
3. Pray, “Yours is the Glory”; I worship
When good things happen, we want the glory. We want too much of the attention for ourselves. We want too much of the credit for ourselves. We want to have glory for what is accomplished. I want that person to know that I was praying for them. I was a big part of their success. Good to tell others that praying for them but if unable, still keep praying. Romans 11:36: “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”
If I pray communally, in unity with Jesus, the Spirit and the church, that will bring glory to God. If I pray cooperatively- aligning myself with God’s reputation, kingdom, and will in everything I ask and do- that will bring glory to God. If I trust God to provide my needs- and He does- the glory is His! If I walk in forgiveness and holiness- the glory is His! If I relay that same grace to others, forgiving them as I’ve been forgiven- the glory is His! If I let Him lead me, day by day, step by step- the glory is His! If I experience deliverance from evil- the glory is His! Because the kingdom is His, the power is His. And because the kingdom and power are His, all the glory is His. So pray, “Yours is the glory, I worship.” Pour out our love, our hopes, dreams, needs and wants to God, expressing them all to Him in submission, obedience, and worship.
Conclusion: “Forever”
Philip Keller says in his book on the Lord’s Prayer: “God being God, there is neither beginning nor end to the benefits our Father bestows upon His children. They are new every day. They come without interruption or intermission. They come from the inexhaustible supply of His own being. What an assurance, what a consolation, what a strength to those of us, who, in simple, yet sincere and implicit trust, have put our complete confidence in Him. It is no wonder the psalmist says in Psalm 118:24: This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it (KJV). Today, tomorrow, and every day given to us is a day direct from the hand of our Father. It is a day in which we can fully appreciate all the advantages and benefits He brings to us as His children. It is a day during which we can turn our hearts and minds back toward Him in sincere gratitude and praise.” I don’t know of a better way to start our worship today.
