If you could encapsulate the entirety of Scripture and the theology of Christ Jesus into one place, that this is it. I mean, this prayer covers from Genesis all the way to Revelation. So I'm going to read it again. We've now sung it. We've declared it. I'm going to read it in Matthew 6. And then it's really verse 13 that we're going to focus on this morning. So here we go. This then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed or holy is your name. Your kingdom come, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:02:42]
Whether Jesus actually said these words, whether they were exactly part of this initial thing, the essence of what Christ Jesus is communicating here, I think, is absolutely plain. And it is, yours is the kingdom, yours is the power, yours is the glory forever and ever. Amen. So, is it, was it an addition by the early church that they would repeat it back at the end of the prayer? Perhaps. Did Jesus have it in the original prayer? Perhaps. I don't think it changes the essence. No doubt that is what Jesus is communicating in, in this whole text.
[00:07:01]
When someone nears home, okay, let me back up the train a minute. Where is home? If you're in Jesus and Jesus is in you, I assure you, you're 50 or 70 or 90 or 105 or whatever years that you are allotted or given, this is not your home, okay? We are citizens of heaven. We are citizens of eternity. And every one of us, whether you like it or not, are nearing home. Billy Graham, I think, wrote a book called Nearing Home. He's talking about the finish of his journey.
[00:09:08]
All of the sudden, like all the stuff that we spend most of our lives worrying about does not matter. It doesn't matter. The things you carried in here, the anxieties, the frustrations, the worries, oh my roommate, oh my professor, oh my spouse, oh my kids, oh my job, oh these finances. You fill in the blank. Whatever it is, as you begin to near home, and if you sit with someone who is, I'm making this kind of like this shroud, but with someone who is approaching eternity, all of the sudden there is a reverence of the glory of God and the eternity of God.
[00:10:16]
Jesus, in the words of the Lord's prayer here, is inviting us to step out or separate ourselves from this, like, infatuation with the here and now so that we can become infatuated with eternity. Make sense? So let's, like, go here one step further. Jesus is, he's inviting you to step from what matters into what matters. He's inviting you to step out in faith. So this little tiny prayer, we just said it. It's like a few little sentences ending with, yours is the kingdom, yours is the power, yours is the glory forever. Amen.
[00:11:45]
What Jesus is now inviting you into, and when he goes, for yours is the kingdom, and yours is the power, and yours is the glory, is he's bringing you to this doorstep of eternity. It's the crossroads of where the here and now meets the crossroads of eternity, and he's inviting you to step across it, and begin to live with kingdom eyes, recognizing what matters, acknowledging who he is, and forsaking the world, if you will. Does that make sense? So let's just take this a little bit deeper.
[00:13:37]
I am beginning to even recognize that I have to discipline myself, declutter my mind, declutter my heart and emotions, declutter my schedule, so that I can do what's most valuable, which is engage with the King of Kings, first and foremost, my wife and my children and a few people around me, because life is going so fast. Make sense? Okay, so let's open this up before we fully unpack 1 Chronicles 29 and look at the last prayer and the last words of King David as he's about to die.
[00:15:17]
When in this text, when Jesus says yours is the kingdom, he's actually talking about the rule or the extent of God's royal power. It is God's right to exercise his power and his authority as the king. So the part of the prayer where you say, your kingdom, for yours is the kingdom, for yours is the power, and for yours is the glory forever and ever. Amen. That part is both an act of surrender. It's a pledging of obedience and it's a pledging of allegiance. Does that make sense? Like that's what makes this prayer so powerful.
[00:16:17]
The power in this like statement that Jesus loves little me. It's the same thing that Jesus is saying in this prayer when he says, for yours, Yahweh is the kingdom and yours, Yahweh is the glory and yours, Yahweh is the power forever and ever. Amen. In other words, the power is not Michael's or yours. The glory is not mine or yours. The kingdom is not mine or yours. And you are recognizing and acknowledging your own futility, if you will. And you're throwing yourself into his loving arms. Make sense? That's why this is so powerful.
[00:17:55]
If you can begin to let the things of this world and you're even infatuation with this world, grow dim and begin to see with kingdom eyes, there is transformative revelation available to you and me. Okay. Yours is the kingdom. Yours is the power. Just quickly, this is from a Greek word, dunamis, from which the English words, there's two words, dynamic and dynamite come. Yours is the power. Dynamite explodes. Powerful, right? It's reminding ourselves of the dynamic power of God.
[00:18:38]
It's reminding us of the kindness and the love of God to know us, to listen to us, to listen to you. It's the power of God to intervene and act on our behalf. It's the power of God at points to call us from this life into eternity. It's the power of God that he created. He stands outside of time. He loves us. And then you're declaring that in his sort of goodness, he's going to be true to his character. He will answer you, even if you don't like the way he answers, and he will call you deeper and further into the kingdom. Make sense?
[00:19:15]
Properly, glory belongs to God alone. Properly, glory is his alone. It's divine glory. It's the presence of the divine God. And we're reminding ourselves that we're called to live our lives in the reverence of his divine splendor, his glory. Make sense? So there's this invitation to step out of where we're currently living and grasp the larger kingdom reality that is happening here.
[00:20:09]
So Jesus, and when Jesus resurrects from death, you can go cross-reference all this if you want, but the curtain in the Holy of Holies tears. This big, thick, huge curtain, like 60 feet high, it tears. And the tear is symbolic of the presence of God, departing buildings made by human hands. In other words, God no longer dwells in buildings made by human hands. Jesus is the new temple. Now, when you and I come to Christ, Jesus comes and dwells where? In us. So you and I become the temple of the Holy Spirit or the temple of the Holy God.
[00:21:09]
What I am saying is that God is not primarily dwelling in any building anywhere and you've become the temple and I've become the temple and we now have the ability to access the person in the presence of God. Does that make sense? Okay. Now, let's just think geographically for just a second. If I was able to take you to the old temple mount, where, we're about to read in 1 Chronicles 29, where David commissioned Solomon or God commissioned Solomon to build this temple. Do you know what there is there right now? A mosque.
[00:22:10]
We become, we are the body of Christ. The body of Christ ascended, the presence or spirit of Jesus called the Holy Spirit descended to fill us, and we then become his hands and his feet and his face on the earth. It's amazing, actually. Okay. I think that was now fourthly, the curtain is now torn. We are all, not just is the presence of Yahweh God departed from the temple or departed from the Holy of Holies. You are now welcomed to have the Holy of Holies inside of you.
[00:24:15]
What I love about David is as he's nearing home, he is recognizing. It isn't about his kingdom. It isn't about his legacy. It isn't about who knows his name. It isn't about what he's done. He is giving everything for the construction of the temple where the presence of the holy God will dwell. Make sense? You and I, New Testament believers, same thing. Jesus became the temple. Jesus lives, dies, resurrects to life, ascends back to heaven. He now is offering to all of us as humans. He wants to live inside of you, and if he lives inside of you, the temple is now in you.
[00:27:14]
That's why I even started with the Lent thing, because it's like Lent is this time where you could give up sweets or chocolate or meat, or you can give up any number of things, but it's this tiny little outward demonstration of something that God is doing inside of you. Okay, so verse six. The leaders of families, the offices and tribes of Israel, the commanders of the thousands, and the commanders of hundreds, and the officials in charge of the king's work gave willingly. So what did the people do? They gave.
[00:28:16]
It is imperative that we not think of ourselves more highly than we ought. It is imperative that when we stand before a holy God, both now and in eternity, we grasp that we are little. I say things all the time, like our little church and I offend people. I'm not trying to offend anyone. I'm just saying the body of Christ is those who have already gone on and been with him. Those who are still alive. There's billions of people in the body of Christ. I assure you that if we're the biggest church on the planet, we're still, you hear it? I mean, it's beautiful.
[00:31:42]
It's an invitation into the reverence, awe, and fear of God where you go, God, yours is the kingdom and yours is the glory and yours is the power, which means it's not my kingdom. It's not my glory. It's not my power. I am a humble little me. And now the king of glory comes and dwells inside of me and Yahweh God departs the temple built by human hands and enters into those of us young or old or anywhere in between who welcome him. That's the power of the gospel.
[00:32:16]
God tests the heart and God is pleased with integrity. Is he pleased with what you amass? Is he pleased with whether you followed all the rules? I mean, we could go on and on down the line. What he is pleased with is integrity of heart. We can even look at the life of King David who made more egregious and ugly, sinful mistakes than a lot of the Old Testament kings. Not all of them, but certainly he made a lot. And still what he has is integrity of heart where at the end of it, he's coming back and bowing before the king going, yours is the kingdom.
[00:33:42]
Who keeps your heart loyal to God? It actually says he keeps. Verse 19. And give my son Solomon the wholehearted devotion to keep your commands, statutes, and decrees to do everything to build the palatial structure for which I have provided. David is prophetically talking about not just the temple in Jerusalem that used to be on the Temple Mount. You can go see the Western Wall, which is part of the Davidic or Solomon's Temple. You can actually touch it. It's amazing. I recommend it.
[00:34:59]
He's not just talking about that. He's prophetically looking into the future. He doesn't even fully know it. But he's foretelling about the unseen kingdom power and glory of King Jesus that is going to come and establish his kingdom on the earth. And it's this unseen kingdom that is so much bigger than Rome or Herod or America or any country, any place, because all of us are nearing home and all of us are going to come closer and closer to that place where we cross over the shroud into eternity, just like King David, just like Bob Johnson.
[00:35:27]
And we have David who four miles from the town of Bethlehem is dedicating this piece of land on which Solomon is going to build the temple. And some multiple hundreds of years later, you have King Jesus coming into the scene and he is establishing that the new temple, the kingdom of God is not a beautiful palace made of gold or silver, but it's rather a person, him, Jesus. And he goes to a cross, he's crucified, he's resurrected, he ascends back to the Father, he sends his Holy Spirit to come and fill us.
[00:39:15]
And then the invitation is that you and I would experience the fullness of him that even as we pray this prayer, we would pledge our obedience, our surrender, and our allegiance to him. Remembering his dynamic power, trusting in his goodness, believing that he will answer our prayers, remembering his divine glory, that we would be a people on our knees before him. Yours, oh Lord, is the kingdom. Yours, oh Lord, is the power. Yours, oh Lord, is the glory forever and ever. Amen.
[00:39:48]
