[ For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. ]
-- Matthew 6:13b
It is fascinating how some people like to name things after themselves. We have
universities named after people. There are bridges named after people. Schools are named
after people. Buildings are named after people. Even people are named after people.
Now, most of the time, these names are given after the person is deceased and by others
in honor of the individual's accomplishments. But sometimes the person who built the
building or bridge, or started the college, boldly names it after himself.
I find this interesting. I wonder what kind of attitude causes this. Perhaps it is an
underlying insecurity or lack of self-confidence. Perhaps it is a desire to show others
that you have really accomplished something, or to even convince yourself of that fact.
Perhaps it is a need to feed our egos, to have someone praise us and say how wonderful are
our accomplishments.
Whatever the reasons, it points up the common human desire to be recognized and
honored, praised and highly esteemed by others. I remember hearing of a pastor called on
to do the funeral of a notoriously sinful man. His brother spoke to the minister before
the service and offered the pastor one-thousand dollars if he would say during the service
that his brother was a saint. He was somewhat surprised when the pastor readily agreed to
do so. During the service, the pastor said, "The man who is before us was a dirty,
filthy, rotten scoundrel. He was a liar, a cheat, a womanizer, and was utterly without
virtue. But for all of this, next to his brother, he was a saint!" Some people will
go to great lengths to be well thought of.
While we have an ego that needs to be stroked by praise, God does not. Yet He calls us
to praise Him. He even commands it. Why? Not because He needs praise, but because we need
to praise Him is why. Praise does something for us. It reminds us of God's greatness and
of His glory. It alters our perspective. It changes our attitude. Praise should be where
we begin and end with God.
And this is where the Pattern Prayer begins and ends. It opens with praise and ends
with praise. Now, you may notice that the last part of verse thirteen [For Thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.] is either not in your Bible, or
is in brackets. The reason for this is that it is not found in the earliest Greek
manuscripts. It is thought that it found its way into the text as a doxology. It was
common practice to end prayers and the reading of Scripture with a doxology, and if this
prayer is indeed a pattern for prayer, it seems fitting that it would end with such a
doxology of praise to God. As such it reminds us of the importance of exalting and
glorifying the God to whom we pray and from whom must come the answers to our prayers.
This doxology reminds us of 1 Chronicles 29:11, "Thine, O LORD, is the
greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything
that is in the heavens and the earth; Thine is the dominion, O LORD, and Thou dost exalt
Thyself as head over all." Here David extols the greatness of God. David
loved to praise the Lord.
We should love to do so as well. Indeed, we are exhorted to praise Him. Hebrews 13:15
reads, "Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to
God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name." As we praise
the Lord, we will have both our hearts and minds adjusted to comprehend the significance
of His rule, power and greatness.
For Thine is the kingdom . . . . We praise Him because we know He is the King
over His Kingdom. And we need to recognize that His is King and we are not, even though we
sometimes like to think we are.
In the jungle one day, the Lion was feeling somewhat cocky. So he decided to remind all
the other animals of his importance. He came up to a Giraffe and asked with a roar,
"Who is the king of the jungle?" The Giraffe replied meekly, "You are O
Lion." Bolstered by this response, the Lion went up to a Zebra and roared, "Who
is the king of the jungle?" The Zebra replied in fear, "Why, you are O
Lion." Feeling really good by now, the Lion came to an Elephant and roared, "Who
is the king of the jungle?" The Elephant reached out with his trunk and grabbed the
Lion and slammed him repeatedly on the ground, finally picking him up and throwing him
against a tree. The Lion, dazed and groggy, looked up at the Elephant and said,
"Well, you don't have to take it so personally!"
Many of us need to learn the lesson of the lion when dealing with God. It is His
Kingdom, not ours. We are here for Him. He is not here for us. We serve Him because He is
worthy - because He is the Lord God our King.
We are also reminded, however, that we have been made partakers of this Kingdom. Jesus
said in Luke 12:32, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen
gladly to give you the kingdom." By the sovereign choice and grace of God, we
have been "delivered . . . from the domain of darkness, and
transferred . . . to the kingdom of His beloved Son"
(Colossians 1:13). So while we acknowledge and glorify the Lord as King, we affirm our
place as servants and citizens of His Kingdom.
For Thine is . . . the power . . . . We also affirm in praise that all power
belongs to our Lord. It is His Kingdom, not ours, in which we serve, and it is His power,
not ours, which we so desperately need. We cannot succeed as Christians in our own
strength. We simply do not have enough strength or the right kind of strength. The problem
is that we do not draw on the power of God. We do not really understand that power. As a
result, we settle for so much less than God has for us.
We are like the old Indian who bought himself a brand new Cadillac convertible and was
seen a few days later proudly riding into town, top down, being drawn by a team of horses.
Someone should have told him that there was horsepower under the hood. All the power to
move the car was already there - indeed, more power than the Indian could have ever
imagined. Like him, we are sometimes guilty of hitching our Christianity up to the power
of flesh and blood instead of drawing on the power of God. Why do we continue to do this?
We are like the ant riding in the elephant's ear who said to the elephant, "Boy,
we sure are shaking the ground." We think we are doing something! Or we think that we
have more power than we really do. Just before takeoff on an airplane, the Stewardess
reminded Muhammud Ali to fasten his seat-belt. "Superman don't need no
seatbelt," replied Ali. The Stewardess looked down and said, "Superman don't
need no plane, either."
Sometimes we are just too proud to admit we need God's power. A man walked into a
friend's home, bleeding, covered with black and blue bruises all over his body. His
startled friend exclaimed, "What in the world happened to you?" The wounded
friend answered, "Well, I was walking down the street and was accosted by two thugs
who told me to give them all of my money. But, I didn't want to give them my money so I
fought them and fought them and fought them!" His friend then asked, "Well, just
how much money did you have?" The answer he received shocked him, "35
Cents." His friend exclaimed, "What! You fought for just 35 Cents?"
"That's right," the man answered. "I didn't want to disclose my financial
situation." Don't be too proud to ask for the power of God. He will give it to you.
For Thine is . . . the glory . . . . Just as it is His Kingdom, not ours, in
which we serve; and just as it is His power, not ours, we so desperately need; so also it
is His glory, not ours, we seek to exalt and reflect by our lives.
As servants of Christ, we should never seek to exalt ourselves, rather, we should
always point to Christ. We should exalt the Lord. We should glory in Him.
The story goes that, one time football coach Vince Lombardi climbed into bed and his
wife, Marie, said, "God, your feet are cold!" The coach answered, "Dear, in
the privacy of the house, you may call me Vince." While that is humorous, and none of
you would actually say that, far too many times we can act as though we are the ones who
deserve the credit. We should be careful to point people to Jesus. He alone is worthy of
our praise.
We are called to seek God's Kingdom, to pray for His power, and to desire His glory to
be made known. As we declare in praise that these things are true about God, we not only
speak the truth, but we also reinforce that truth to our minds and hearts. And we may find
that we experience his power and presence in a very real and tangible way.
Jonathan Edwards, the great New England preacher who was used so mightily of God in the
Great Awakening in America wrote of one such time of prayer:
"Once as I rode out in the woods for my health, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner has been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God as Mediator between God and man, and of His wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love, and His meek and gentle condescension. This grace that seemed so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour. It kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust; to be full of Christ alone, to love Him with my whole heart."
Only as we give ourselves to times of prayer will we experience the powerful presence
of the Lord. As we bow before Him in humble worship and praise, as we exalt His name, as
we glorify Him, then He will touch us with the realization of His presence and the
manifestation of His power. His glory will fall upon us and we will never be the same.
As we come to the end of the section in the Sermon on the Mount commonly known as the
Lord's Prayer, we must struggle with a decision we all must make. It is the decision to
develop a significant prayer life. One of the reasons people do not develop a life of
prayer is that they do not know how to pray. Jesus' disciples asked Him to teach them how,
and we have the Lord's prayer as a result. As we have said many times now, it was not
given to simply be a prayer repeated as some sort of Christian mantra. It is a pattern for
prayer, a model prayer. Jesus said, "Pray, then, in this way." Taken as a
model, it can give us a pattern to follow in our praying so that we can spend significant
time in prayer.
We begin in praise to God, acknowledging Him as Father and honoring His
holy name - Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. We then affirm
God's priorities as our own - Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as
it is in heaven. We then appropriate God's provision for our lives here and now -
Give us this day our daily bread. We then ask for God's pardon and commit ourselves to
forgive others - And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. We
then seek God's protection from temptation and Satanic attack and engage in spiritual
warfare ourselves - And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
And finally, we return to praise as we extol the authority, power and glory of God - For
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
We can have the model prayer, however, and still fail to pray. Jesus gave us the model,
but He also modeled prayer for us. The Scriptures indicate just how much of a priority
Jesus gave to prayer. Mark 1:35: And in the early morning, while it was still dark,
He arose and went out and departed to a lonely place, and was praying there. Luke
5:16: But He Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. Luke
6:12: And it was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent
the whole night in prayer to God.
If Jesus, the sinless Son of God needed to spend long hours in prayer to God, how much
more do we? This is our challenge. This is the decision with which you must struggle. What
will your decision be?
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.Idylls of the King - The Passing of Arthur,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Copyright (C) 1995 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property
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