The Journey- The Lord's Prayer - The Power And The Glory

William Pritchard14 January, 2015THE JOURNEYThe Lord’s Prayer Deliver us from EvilOur Father What did it mean for Jesusto call God, Father? What does it mean for youto call God, Father?Thy Kingdom Come The Kingdom of God is thecentral message of the ministryand life of Jesus. What does the Kingdom ofGod mean to you?Your Will Be Done The Father’s will for Jesus wasto usher in the Kingdom of Godon earth. What does the Father’s willmean to you?Give Us This Day Give us today our daily bread,means both physical andspiritual food. Jesus said, “I am the bread oflife,” what does this mean foryou?The Lord’s PrayerMatthew 6:9-13For thine is the power and the glory.IntroductionWe come to the end of our Lord’s Prayer Sermon series. Westarted with;Forgive Us Our Sins The forgiveness of sin is ameans of freeing us frombondage of sin, and tying us tothe King and his message.Deliver Us From Evil The final Exodus is that the Kingwill return and we will becompletely free and deliveredfrom evil.1

William Pritchard14 January, 2015 Our Father in heaven, His kingdom and his will to be done on earth, His provision as the bread of life to our souls, His forgiveness of our sins and the sins of city, Delivering us and our city from the power of the evil one, and finally today we end with His Power and Glory.Let me put this petition of the Lord’s Prayer, For yours is theKingdom, the Power and the Glory,” into its contexts. This willhelp us to fully appreciated Jesus’ mind and heart in what Hemeant this line of the Lord’s prayer.The Lord’s Prayer: Aninvitation to share inthe divine life ofChrist.The Lord’s Prayer according toN. T. Wright is; “Seen withChristian hindsight — morespecifically, with trinitarianperspective — the Lord’s Prayerbecomes an invitation to sharein the divine life itself. Itbecomes one of the highroads into the central mysteryof Christian salvation andChristian existence: that thebaptized and believingChristian is (1) incorporatedinto the inner life of the triuneGod and (2) intended not justto believe that this is the case,but actually to experienceit” (N. T. Wright, The Lord’s PrayerOften we skim over this part of the prayer, because it doesnot relate to reality for us here on earth. So, we at times, putthis on the back burner of what God is doing in the heavilyrealms, which has no direct effect with our lives here on earth.If we really do pray this prayer with meaning, passion andconviction, we are as saying that we believe in a Theocracyand we want to override Democracy with Theocracy. That initself will prevent us from praying the Lord’s Prayer.Let’s keep in mind that the Lord’s Prayer is about the missionof Jesus Christ. He did not just taught his disciples to praythis prayer, He also commission His disciples to live out thisPrayer as their only purpose here on earth.Two questions; What is the context of this part of the Lord’sprayer? How can we pray this prayer today?as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer).2

William Pritchard14 January, 2015Setting the SceneLuke chapter 2:1-14 gives us somewhat of the setting of this petition of the prayer. Luke writes; “Inthose days, there went out a decree from the Emperor Augustus that all the world should beregistered.” Due to the fact that we only read Luke 2 during Christmas, we don’t have the time toreflect on what Luke is trying to tell us, here and throughout his work.In one short paragraph (2:1-14) he moves from the great Emperor in Rome to the new King who wasto rule the world. Let’s explore this very familiar passage, that it’s meaning has been swallowed up bythe emotions and commotion of Christmas. This will help us fully understand; Thine is the Kingdom, thePower and the Glory, petition of the Lord’s Prayer.By the time Jesus was born, Augustus had already been a ruler of the known world for a quarter of acentury. He was known through the known world as the ‘King of kings,’ ruling a territory thatstretched from Gibraltar to Jerusalem, from Britain to the Black Sea. Augustus has done what no-onehad done for two hundred years before him had achieved: he had brought peace to the whole widerRoman world. This peace, came at a price, that price was paid in cash.One of the greatest ancient historians ever, Arnaldo Momigliano once wrote; “[Augustus] gave peace,as long as it was consistent with the interests of the Empire and the myth of his own glory.”Luke then brings in to the scene of the history of mankind the story of the birth of a different type ofKing, with a different type of authority. The reason why the ‘decree’ when out for the world to beregistered, because of taxation purpose to pay for this peace. Census, in the Middle East, really meanswho is in charge, and King over you.So, this is the context of this prayer. The whole ambiguous structure of human empire, a kingdom ofabsolute power, bringing glory to the man at the top, and peace to those on whom his favor rested.MicahHowever, for Luke’s Jewish audience, when they read chapter 2 of Luke, it would have awaken in theirminds the words of the prophet Micah 5. Micah prophesy; “But you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, littleamong the clans of Judah - from you shall come forth the one who is to rule in Israel” (Micah 5:2). Weoften cut of what Micah is trying to tell us when we read this passage in Christmas. Micah goes on inverse 4 proclaiming; “He [that is, the coming King] shall stand and feed his flock in the strength ofYHWH, in the majesty of the name of YHWH his God; and they shall live secure, for now he shallbe great to the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:4). Then comes the next verse; “And he shall be the man ofpeace” (Micah 5:5).How is this peace to be secured? The following verses describe how this coming King, born inBethlehem of Judea, will rescue his people from the hand of the foreign emperors.3

William Pritchard14 January, 2015In Micah’s day, this was Assyria; but Luke’s readers would have had no difficulty in transferring themeaning to Rome, and Luke would have hoped that subsequent generations would have been equallyadept at contemporary applications, such as ours.Herod was worried by what the Wise Men told him. If someone had told Augustus what the angelshad said to the shepherds, he’d have been worried too.What Luke then is really saying to us in chapter 2 is that there are two types of kingdoms, kingdomsthat are destined to compete, kingdoms that offer radically different definitions of what peace andpower and glory are all about.So, Luke points out that on the one hand, the Roman king, Augustus, turning sixty in the year Jesuswas born. He represents perhaps the best that pagan kingdoms can do. At least he knows that peaceand stability are good things.Unfortunately he has had to kill a lot of people to bring them about, and to kill a lot more, on aregular basis, to preserve them. Unfortunately, too, his real interest is in his own glory. Already, beforehis death, many of his subjects have begun to regard him as divine.On the other hand, by contrast, is the young king in Bethlehem, born with a price on his head. Hepresents the dangerous alternative, the possibility of a different empire, a different power, a differentglory, a different peace.It is within these two kingdoms and reality that Jesus and the disciples invoke in their minds whenthey conclude the Lord’s Prayer; ‘For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.’The prayer had little to do with our individual spirituality, instead it had to do with whom, or whichkingdom, or which King you give your pledge of allegiance to. Once you make that choice, of whichKing and kingdom you pledge your allegiance to, then you take on that King or Kingdom’s way of life.Thus the Lord’s prayer encapsulates the whole life and work of Jesus. John, in his Gospel, sums it upin his own way: the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, glory as of theonly-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.John rightly redefines glory within the life of Jesus. This glory is a family likeness of God himself inJesus’ life. God’s glory - Jesus’ glory - is full of grace and truth. Contrast that to Augustus Caesar’s gloryof brute force of fear and control.We see these two empires squared off against each other towards the end of John’s gospel, when Pilateconfronts Jesus with two questions: don’t you know that I have the power to have you killed? And what is truth?Here Pilate thinks that he is in power and control, yet Jesus quietly reminding Pilate that all powercomes from on high, and by getting on with the job of being the truth - living out truly the love ofGod for the salvation of the world.4

William Pritchard14 January, 2015Pilate did not know, what Jesus knew, that in Daniel chapter 2, he foretold the raise and down fall ofthe kings and their kingdom beginning with Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and finally Rome. YetDaniel spoke about one final kingdom (Daniel 2:44);“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never bedestroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all thesekingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.”The birth of Christ and the ministry or work of Christ ushered in our world the Kingdom of God.The death and resurrection of Christ brought about the destruction of the kingdom of this world andfinally evil in itself.Luke’s message of the baby in the manger stands over against even the best pagan empires, inviting usto contemplate the radical and total redefinition of truth, of peace, and above all of kingdom, powerand glory.Tying the Strings TogetherAs we put the whole package together, what can we say about Jesus himself ? Jesus revealed himselfthrough his stories, namely parables. Jesus repeatedly told stories about a master, a king or a fathergoing away and coming back again. He would return at last, to see what his servants had been up to inhis absence.From early on, the church replace the contexts of these stories, in regards to the history and vocationof Israel, to mean the second coming. Jesus had gone away in the Ascension, and would return on thelast day as Savior and Judge.But when we put these stories into its historical contexts within the history of First-Century Jews, andthe narrative of the Kingdom of God, we come to understand their original meanings.Jesus hearers were eagerly awaiting the Kingdom of God; and one part of that package, ever sinceIsaiah’s Advent message, was the theme of YHWH’s return to Zion. Israel’s God had abandoned hissinful people for over four hundred years into exile, but he would return at last, to be their king overall the earth.This is where the glory of the Lord is reveal in Jesus and in Jesus’ time. God through Jesus, the Kingwith all his power and glory, or grace, love, and forgiveness, was returning back to Israel as King, andto reclaim is lordship over His creation, the world.However, as the King, God through Jesus, returns His people did not understood the times, norrecognize their King. Sadly, Jesus pronounce the final destruction of the nation of Israel in that theRomans will destroy Israel and put an end to temple and temple worship known at the time.5