Introduction
This evening we’ve reached the end of the Lord’s Prayer. And we’ve also reached the end of the Catechism. What I intend to do next Sunday is to review the Catechism and all that we’ve learned. And this evening, we’ll spend our time thinking about the conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer which is:
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever, Amen.
But before we get to that, let me summarise what we’re learned already from the Lord’s Prayer.
From the opening to the Lord’s Prayer which is ‘Our Father in heaven’, we learn that we should pray with others and for others. And we should direct our prayers to our loving, heavenly Father. Since he’s our Father who loves us, we should be confident that he’s willing to help us. And since he’s the mighty God who rules and reigns in heaven, we should be confident that he can help us.
Then, the first three requests are concerned with God and the glory of his name, and the advancement of his kingdom, and the doing of his will. And so, we learn to pray that he will enable us and all others to give him the glory and the honour and the praise that he deserves. We learn to pray that Satan’s kingdom will be destroyed and that the Lord’s kingdom of grace will advance through the world through the preaching of the gospel until the Lord our King comes again. And we learn to pray that he will help us and all others to know and to obey his revealed will and to submit ourselves to his secret will.
The second three requests are concerned with us and what we need. We need daily food and so we learn that we can ask our loving, heavenly Father to provide us and all others with all the food and other provisions we need each day for life. And then, we need forgiveness from God every day. Every day we disobey our loving, heavenly Father. And so, every day we should turn to him to confess our sins and to ask his forgiveness for all the ways we have offended him. And not only do we need food and forgiveness, but we also need protection. Every day, we face temptation from the Devil, and from the world around us, and from our own sinful, fallen nature. And so we need to pray to our loving, heavenly Father and to ask him to keep us from being tempted and to support and deliver us whenever we are tempted so that we do not give in to it and sin against our Father in heaven.
That’s what we’re to pray for. And we noticed that the order of the Lord’s Prayer is important. Just as we’re to put God first in our lives, so we should put him first in our prayers. When we pray, we should pray first for his name to be glorified, and for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be done. We ought to put him first and ourselves second. But, having put him first, we’re still encouraged to cast all our cares on the Lord and to seek his help for ourselves and others. We’re encouraged to pray for ourselves and for daily provision, pardon and protection.
But I should also add that’s there’s a progression through the Lord’s Prayer, or a connection between each request. First of all, we pray for God’s name to be glorified. How does that happen? Well, it happens through the advancement of Christ’s kingdom. Men and women and boys and girls are delivered from Satan’s tyranny and they’re brought into the kingdom of grace where we learn to glorify him and to give thanks to him for his kindness towards us. And the members of Christ’s kingdom must learn to obey their King and to do his will. And since he’s our King, we look to him to provide us with all that we need every day. And since we inevitably disobey our King, we need to ask for forgiveness for all the ways we fall short of doing his will. And then, of course, we look to our King to protect us from his enemies. And so, there’s this progression, or this flow, through the Lord’s Prayer with one request following naturally from the previous one.
And then, the last thing to say by way of introduction is that whoever prays the Lord’s Prayer with understanding becomes a theologian. You see, we’ve learnt over the weeks the distinction between the kingdom of power, the kingdom of grace, and the kingdom of glory. By the kingdom of power we mean the way the Lord rules over all things, including all the nations of the world and all their leaders. He rules over all things, in order to help his church. And by the kingdom of grace we mean the the Lord rules and reigns over his believing people. He calls us to himself and adds us to the church. In the church, he gives us elders to oversee us and he gives us his law to guide us and his Spirit to help us. And he strengthens our faith through the reading and preaching of his gospel. The Lord Jesus rules over and protects the members of his church. And by the kingdom of glory we mean the way the Lord governs the saints in heaven right now and we also mean that he will come again at the end of the age to punish all his enemies and to bring his people in body and soul into our eternal and glorious, heavenly home. The church militant here on earth, fighting against sin and temptation, will become the church triumphant in heaven and we will be with the Lord for ever in the kingdom of glory.
So, we learned to make that distinction between the kingdom of power, and of grace, and of glory. We also learned the distinction between God’s revealed will and his secret will. God’s revealed will refers to his law which he has revealed to us in the pages of the Bible. He has made known to us how he wants us to live as his people and his revealed will is summarised by the Ten Commandments. So, when we pray for God’s will to be done, we’re praying that he will help us and others to keep his commandments. This is God’s revealed will which he has made known to us in the Bible. However, there’s also God’s secret will, the things he has not yet made known to us and which none of us can know until they happen. For instance, he has not revealed to any of us what will happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. And we will not know what will happen tomorrow until it happens. And so, when we pray for God’s will to be done, we’re also asking that he will help us to submit to his will and to accept all that he has planned for us, trusting that his will for us — whatever it is — is good and pleasing and perfect.
So, there’s the distinction between the kingdom of power, and of grace, and of glory. And there’s the distinction between God’s revealed will and his secret will. There’s also the distinction between God’s common grace and his special grace. God’s common grace refers to his kindness to all that he has made. He is good to all. And therefore we’re taught to pray to him and to ask him to give us and all others every good thing we need each day. We pray this for ourselves and for other believers, but we also pray on behalf of those who don’t believe and we ask God to help them each day. And we know that we ought to pray for them, because God is good to all. But then God’s special grace is his kindness which leads to salvation. And because of God’s special grace, his kindness to his believing people, he’s willing to pardon our sins and to forgive us. So, we pray for daily food on the basis of God’s common grace to all. And we pray for his forgiveness on the basis of his special grace to his believing people.
And the final distinction is what we learned last week about the various enemies who tempt us. There’s the Devil with all his wicked schemes. There’s the world: those who hate the church and attack it; and those whose counsel and customs will lead us away from the narrow road leading to life. And there’s our own sinful flesh with all its sinful desires which stand opposed to the good and godly influence of the Holy Spirit. Every day we must stand firm against the Devil, and the world, and the flesh.
Whoever prays the Lord’s Prayer with understanding becomes a theologian, because we learn to make these important distinctions which help us to understand God’s word.
The text
Having said all that by way of introduction, we come now to the conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer:
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever, Amen.
You may have noticed that those words don’t appear in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer which ends with the words, ‘deliver us from the evil one’. And you won’t find these words in Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer which ends with ‘lead us not into temptation’. Anyone who has ever learned to say the Lord’s Prayer is taught the ending ‘For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever, Amen’, but those words don’t appear in the Bible — at least in modern translations of the Bible. But in Matthew’s version, there’s a little letter at the end of the prayer. And if you look down to the footnote at the bottom of the page which corresponds to the little letter, you’ll see a note which says that some late manuscripts include the words ‘For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever, Amen.’ In other words, it’s believed that someone who was given the job of copying Matthew’s gospel many hundreds of years ago added this extra phrase to the end of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew didn’t write this phrase; someone else did afterwards.
Now, we find the same sort of thing at the end of Mark’s gospel. The oldest and most reliable copies of Mark’s gospel end at verse 8 of chapter 15. However, other, later copies, go on to verse 20. Or then there’s the story of the woman caught in adultery in John’s gospel. The most reliable copies of the gospel don’t have that story, so we think that John didn’t write it, but that it was added afterwards.
And so, it’s the same perhaps with the ending of the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t think Matthew included the conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer when he first wrote his gospel. Someone else added it afterwards. However, having said that, the conclusion is entirely fitting and is similar to what we find elsewhere in the Bible. For instance, listen to how David addressed God in 1 Chronicles 29. He prayed:
11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. 12 Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. 13 And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.
That’s very similar to the traditional conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer. And so, it’s not surprising that Christians down through the ages felt it appropriate to conclude the Lord’s Prayer with this ascription of praise and honour to the Lord. And our church’s Catechism includes the conclusion and teaches us that it is useful for two reasons. 1. It’s useful because it teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God alone and not from ourselves. 2. And it’s useful because it teaches us to praise God when we pray.
Encouragement to pray
First of all, it’s useful because it teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God alone and not from ourselves. In other words, why are we hopeful that God will hear and answer us when we pray? Why will God listen to me? Will he listen to me because I’m a minister? I’ve met people in the past who think that my prayers will be more effective than their prayers, because I’m a minister and therefore, presumably, I’m closer to God than they are. So, will he listen to me because I’m a minister? Or will he listen to my prayers because of my good deeds? Or because of my commitment to him? Or because of my earnestness? Will he listen to me because I really, really, really mean what I pray? Or because I really, really, really believe that he’ll hear me?
Or I wonder, when we pray to God and ask him to hear us, do we come with the attitude that he ought to hear us and answer us because we’re so much better than those other people whose prayers were answered? Do we come with the attitude that he ought to answer us because look at all that we’ve done for him. He ought to answer us because we deserve it!
Well, no. We deserve nothing from God except condemnation for our sins and the only reason we receive salvation from him and any other good thing is because of his kindness towards us.
So, why then are we hopeful that he will hear and answer us? Well, because to him belongs the kingdom and the power and the glory. He is the gracious king who has bound himself to his people to save us from our sins and to defend us from his enemies and to help us every day. And he’s the one who is powerful and who can do all things. Nothing is impossible to him. And he’s the one who is glorious and he will not let his name be dishonoured in any way. We’re hopeful that he will hear us and answer us because he’s our king, and he’s powerful and he will do whatever brings him glory and praise.
And this is the kind of thing we find in the Bible when others are praying to God. For instance, listen to how Moses appealed to the Lord for help. After the Israelites turned from the Lord and worshipped the Golden Calf, Moses prayed for them. And one of the argument Moses made to the Lord was that the Israelites were his people. In other words: You chose them as your people. You promised to be their God and to take them as your people. You’ve bound yourself to them. Therefore forgive them and do not abandon them even though they have sinned against you.
And then in Numbers 14, after the people refused to go into the Promised Land, the Lord was angry with them and he said he would strike them down. So, Moses prayed and said:
15 Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say, 16 ‘It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give to them that he has killed them in the wilderness.’
Do you see? He argued that the nations who heard what happened would say that God was not able to bring them in. And so, God’s name among the nations would be dishonoured. So, because God is concerned with his own glory, and since he has bound himself to his people, and since he is powerful, then Moses knew that they could rely on him to help them.
Then there’s Daniel great prayer on behalf of the Israelites, asking God to forgive them for their sins and to bring them back from exile to the Promised Land. And listen to how he prayed:
17 Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. 18 O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. 19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.
Do you see what he’s saying? He’s saying to God: Rescue your people for your own sake. In other words, for the glory of your name.
He’s saying to God: We’re appealing to you, not because we’re righteous, or because we deserve it, but because you’re a merciful God. That’s how Daniel prayed.
And so, when we pray to God and appeal to him for his help, we can be hopeful that he will hear and answer us, not because we deserve it, not because we’re righteous. We don’t rely on anything we have done; but we rely on the fact that the Lord is our king who has bound himself to us to save us and to help us; and he is mighty and powerful and able to help; and he will not let his name be dishonoured, but will do all things for his glory.
Praise
The conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer is useful because it teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God alone and not from ourselves. And then, secondly, it’s useful because it teaches us to praise God when we pray. We ought to praise him because he is our King. Because of the kingdom of power, he rules over all things in heaven and on earth. He rules over the nations, exalting one and bringing down another. The heart of the king is in his hands and he directs him however he wishes. With a word he made the world and he rules over it every day. And therefore we ought to praise him, because there is none like him.
Because of his kingdom of grace, he calls sinners like us into his kingdom. He delivers us from our sin and misery and he gives us one good thing after another: justification and adoption and sanctification and peace of conscience and joy and growth in grace and he strengthens us and enables us to persevere so that not one of those for whom he died will be lost. He gives us elders to oversee us. He gives us his law to direct us. He give us his Spirit to help us. In his kingdom of grace, he graciously gives us one good thing after another.
And because of his kingdom of glory, we know that Christ our King will come again and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord. And so, we have learned to praise him in our prayers and to do today what we will do for ever and ever in glory.
We praise God because he is our King who rules over all. And we praise him because is is powerful. Nothing is too hard for him. No one is able to thwart his plans. He will do all that he has planned. With a word he made the world. By his mighty word he sustains all thing. He was able to raise his Son from the dead. He is able to convince and convert sinners like us to faith in Christ and gives us new life. He is able to raise our mortal bodies and make us immortal. Because he is powerful, all that he has planned he will do and he will ensure that his plans for the world are fulfilled and that in due course, just as he has planned, Jesus Christ will return to destroy all his enemies. And so, we ought to praise him, because there is none so mighty and powerful as the Lord.
And we praise him because he is glorious. The angels in heaven cannot look at him because he is so glorious. Whenever Isaiah saw him, he fell down before him. Whenever the Lord Jesus was transfigured, his face and clothes shone brighter than the sun at noon. When the Apostle John saw the Risen and Ascended Lord Jesus he was overwhelmed and fell down as though dead. The nations in the Bible bowed down before blocks of wood and metal which could not speak or see or do anything at all. Or the nations worshipped the sun and the moon. But our God made all these things and he’s enthroned in heaven, surrounding by worshipping angels. He is a great and glorious God, worthy of all our worship. He reveals the glory of his justice by punishing those who have disobeyed him and broken his laws. But he reveals the glory of his grace by saving his people from our sins. He reveals the glory of his love by sending his one and only Son to die for us. He reveals his patience in waiting for us to repent. He reveals his wisdom in his great plan of salvation. He reveals his power in doing all that he has planned. He is great and glorious and we ought to praise him in our prayers.
Conclusion
When the Lord Jesus taught us to pray, he taught us to praise our God. We praise him because he is a great king. And he is mighty and powerful. And he is glorious. And when we have prayed to him, we close our prayers by saying ‘Amen’ which means ‘truly’. And by saying ‘Amen’ we show that we are sincere and we truly mean these things we have said and we want these things we have asked for and we believe that God will hear and answer us according to his will.
If we believe that God really is our king, then we will want to obey him. And if we believe that God really is powerful, then we will trust in him and in him alone as the only one to help us. And if we believe that God really is glorious, then we will worship him alone and will seek to honour him in all we say and do.
Sermons and Stuff 