THE POWER AND THE GLORY Sermon preached by Pastor C. John Steer Autumn Ridge Church March 17-18, 2018

Transcription

1 1 THE POWER AND THE GLORY Sermon preached by Pastor C. John Steer Autumn Ridge Church March 17-18, 2018 No. 5: The Jesus Prayer Scripture: 1 Chronicles 29:10-13 Today we look at one of the greatest statements of faith ever written. We find it in a rather surprising place. For it comes at the conclusion of the Lord s Prayer. Here it is. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. We have been examining the Lord s Prayer together with the longing that we may deepen our prayer life and come to know God better. We have perhaps thought this was a simple prayer but we have been amazed at its depth. We see what the church father Tertullian meant when he said, The Lord s prayer is a compendium of the whole gospel. One of the wonderful things about this prayer is that it unites all Christians because Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox believers all say it. Yet the original Lord s Prayer was shorter than the one we use today. On the screen you see the two biblical versions of the Lord s Prayer side by side. One from Matthew. The other from Luke. You will notice that both of them omit Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So we have to ask where this final burst of praise came from. The answer is it appeared within the first hundred years of the church. We know this because in the second century a book was written called The Didache, which means the teaching. A version of this doxology is found in the Didache along with the instructions to pray the Lord s Prayer three times every day. This additional ending found its way into some of the later biblical manuscripts and that s why it appears in the King James Version of the Bible. However, since the King James was published in 1611 archaeologists have discovered older and better manuscripts. That s why you won t find this doxology in the New International Version or the English Standard Version. This is the reason why the Bible constantly needs to be translated because of changes in the meanings of words and discoveries of older and more reliable manuscripts. Now why was this ending tagged on? It appears that the early Christians were in the habit of adding their own petitions to the Lord s Prayer. That s appropriate because Jesus gave us the Lord s Prayer as a model for our own. So they would add different requests that related to their own circumstances.

2 2 Another possibility is that the first Christians didn t like finishing their prayer with the devil. Matthew s version concludes with, deliver us from the evil one." (Matthew 6:13) Rather than end with Satan, these early believers wanted to conclude with God. So where did they find the wording? Well, it wasn t put together by a committee who wanted to spice up the church services. Rather it comes from the only scripture the early Christians had which was the Old Testament. It is drawn from the chapter we read earlier in 1 Chronicles 29. David is praying with his people. Inspired by the Holy Spirit King David declares, Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. 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. (1 Chronicles 29:10-11) So it seems when the first Christians were reading this prayer of David they thought it made a perfect ending. So they tagged it onto the Lord s Prayer and it has been said ever since by Christians all over the world. I think this closing statement of the Lord s Prayer is appropriate for two reasons. First of all, it is a great shout of praise. When we have remembered that God is our Father in heaven, whose name is holy, whose kingdom is coming, and whose will is being done. Who provides our daily bread and forgives our sin and delivers us from the devil, we want to shout Thank you! and tell our Father, For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. A second reason this ending is appropriate is because this is a magnificent announcement of belief. It really is a creed in miniature. We are familiar with the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, but here in two lines is the Christian creed. This is your creed and mine. It is a daily proclamation of our faith. That s how I want to approach it today. So let s take it phrase by phrase. The first phrase of our creed is YOURS IS THE KINGDOM. Now the fundamental meaning of Yours is the kingdom is that God is King. It is a joyful affirmation of the sovereignty of God. So this is a declaration of belonging. It is acknowledging that God is our King. That he is our boss. That he is in charge. That he is sitting at the control room of the universe. That s why I can ask him to provide my daily bread, forgive my sins and deliver me from the evil one. You can see why this is a profound statement of faith. When we look at the world it does not always appear that God is in control. We can t always see God s hand in history. For many of the events that happen appear to be contrary to his character.

3 3 Is God in control in Syria where a civil war has been raging for eight years, taking the lives of 465,000 people and displacing 12 million more? And it does not stop with Syria. The World Watch List from Open Doors lists the 50 countries where it is most dangerous to follow Jesus. The top eleven countries experiencing extreme persecution are listed on the screen. Countries facing extreme persecution in 2018: 1. North Korea 7. Libya 2. Afghanistan 8. Iraq 3. Somalia 9. Yemen 4. Sudan 10. Iran 5. Pakistan 11. India 6. Eritrea You see that India is number eleven. That has implications for us as a church. For many years we have sponsored a Pastors Conference in South India. Normally I would have been there last month with about 150 pastors. But we were told, Don t come this year. It would be too dangerous for you and the Indian pastors. It is too risky right now. I am desperately disappointed. I have known some of those pastors since they were in Bible college. The Indian constitution guarantees freedom of religion but that law is being ignored. It is not just Christians who are suffering. It is Muslims, and Sikhs and Jains. Is God in charge of that persecution? It takes a lot of faith to answer yes. And it took a lot of faith for the first Christians to say to God Yours is the kingdom. They were just a handful of believers living in the most powerful kingdom the world had ever known. They seemed to be making almost no impact on Roman society. The world around them either ignored them or sought to crush them by vicious persecution. It was almost ludicrous to say Yours is the kingdom and yet here they are at the end of their prayers affirming their faith and saying that in spite of everything we believe that our God is on the throne. He is our Father and we belong to him. That s what Indian Christians are saying when they are beaten up in their homes and churches are burned down. They declare in faith Yours is the kingdom. They look beyond to a future kingdom where all injustice and violence and persecution is removed. Now if we can t see Christ as King it is probably because we are standing in the wrong place. It is like the stained glass windows of a church. If you go outside a church building you can see nothing but gray glass. But the moment you go inside the church on a sunny day the windows begin to shine and you see the biblical story in vivid color. The truth is that the mystery of God s kingdom can only be seen only from the inside.

4 4 So the important question this statement asks is are we in the kingdom? Is God our King? Do we belong to him? Can we say Jesus is my Lord? The next statement in our creed is YOURS IS THE POWER. Last week Stephen Hawking died. He was one of the great geniuses of our age. He expressed his goal in life by saying, I want to understand the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. It was said that Dr. Hawking had a greater grasp of the power of the universe than anybody else. He applied a new model to Einstein s theory of relativity. He showed that space and time are infinite. He concluded that the universe has no edge or boundary. He was almost certain that alien life existed in other parts of the universe. Yet there were two puzzles that eluded his great mind. Asked what he thought about most during the day Hawking replied, Women. They are a complete mystery. To which we men say Amen. Although Professor Hawking understood so much of the power of the universe he did not understand the power of God. He dismissed faith, saying I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers. That s a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. What a contrast to the first Christians. When they looked into the sky and saw the heavens they said, Yours is the power. We live in a world of power imbalances. That is behind the national outrage over sexual harassment. Some have enormous power and others have none. Last Wednesday from Maine to Hawaii students walked out of school to protest gun violence. This was in response to last month s massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. There were about 3000 protests nationwide of students from elementary to college lobbying for new gun regulations. Some were here in Rochester. The students left class at 10:00am for 17 minutes, one minute for each victim in the Florida shooting. One historian called it the largest event of its kind in American history. Now why were these students protesting? One of their leaders explained it well when she said, We feel powerless. They feel their schools are no longer safe. And that is a frightening situation for both students and teachers. Even with these demonstrations some will still feel powerless. So where do we get our power to face the challenges of life? We turn to God for he has the power and wants to share it with us so we can face life without fear.

5 5 So Yours is the power is a declaration of ability because the grand truth is that God shares his power with us. That word power is dunamis from which we get our word dynamite. That s why Paul can say, I can do all this through Jesus who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13) This means that whatever crisis we are facing right now it does not have to defeat us. We can be victorious over it. We can look at that huge tragedy or disaster and we say in faith to our Father, Yours is the power. And because I belong to you and you share your power with me I can meet all the obstacles of this day in your strength. The third statement of our creed is YOURS IS THE GLORY. Now glory is a word we don t use very much. So let s put it another way. When we give someone the glory we put them in the spotlight. We give them the credit. We make sure they get plenty of publicity. So when we pray Yours is the glory we are saying, Give God the spotlight. Put his name in lights. Roll the credits of his deeds. There is a peculiar tombstone in Westminster Abbey in London that honors a famous soldier. It gives the name of the famous man and commemorates him in just three lines at the top of the tombstone. But the rest of the space is given to describing the man who paid to have the tombstone erected. He was unknown and insignificant but he was climbing on the bandwagon of this famous individual. He was stealing the glory of this great soldier. We can do this as Christians. We can try and take the glory for ourselves. But God is a jealous God who will not share his glory with another. There are two examples in the Bible of men who took glory for themselves to the point where they began to think that they were gods. One is Nebuchadnezzar. He decided to build a palace that would be the best ever. So he did and it became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world with its hanging gardens. One day as Nebuchadnezzar was walking around the gardens and looking at his magnificent palace he said, Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty? (Daniel 4:30) A few days later he lost his reason and he became insane. He went to live in the woods like an animal and his nails grew long like claws. This picture from the Minneapolis Institute of Art depicts what he became. His hair grew long and matted. He ate grass and was mad for a period of time. Then Nebuchadnezzar came to his senses. He realized what he had done and why he had gone mad. He understood that he must give glory to God and from then on he did. So God restored him and allowed him to go back to the hanging gardens of Babylon.

6 6 For the rest of his life Nebuchadnezzar gave God the credit for his achievements. It is a wonderful story because it finishes happily. But there is another story in the New Testament that doesn t. It is about a man called Herod. One day Herod sat down on his throne. He was dressed in a shining silver robe that caught the light and dazzled the people. He addressed the crowd with great oratory and people began to shout, This is the voice of a god, not of a man. (Acts 12:22) Herod accepted the compliment. He liked the idea very much. He thought to himself Yes, I am a god. The Bible says that because he did not give the glory to God he was eaten by worms. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us Herod died five days later, all because he did not give God the glory. So yours is the glory is a declaration of purpose. We are invited to live for the glory of God. This weekend we commemorate the life of St. Patrick, the apostle to Ireland. Patrick went back to the very country that had enslaved him to tell the good news of Jesus. How could he do that? Because Patrick was living for the glory of God. When we live for God s glory he promises that one day he will share his glory with us. So Paul writes, Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4:16-17) If you are a Christian you are destined for glory. Your troubles are the raw material that God uses to proclaim his glory and to prepare you for yours. But notice it is Yours is the glory forever. There is no other kingdom, power and glory that we can add that word forever to. People used to say The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it did. Hitler said his Third Reich would last a thousand years. It collapsed in less than 20 because Hitler too was a man who thought he was God. There is only one kingdom that will last forever and that belongs to Jesus. All other kingdoms will rise and fall. All other powers will be exhausted. One day oil will run out. One day the sun will eventually burn out. But God s power is forever. All other glories will fade away. But God s glory will never end. Then we come to that final word Amen. This is not just a convenient way of letting people know you have finished your prayer. For amen is one of the strongest words in the Hebrew language. It means certainly, surely, inevitably, definitely, absolutely. Martin Luther explained Amen means Yes, yes. It is going to come about just like this.

7 7 Amen means we are absolutely certain that God s kingdom will never collapse, his power will never be exhausted and his glory will never grow dim. Amen is a word that belongs to you as a Christian. It is what the angels are shouting in heaven for they declare, Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen! (Revelation 7:12) Amen is one of the names given to Christ. To the church at Laodicea Jesus said, These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God s creation. (Revelation 3:14) That is why the Psalmist tells us Let all the people say, Amen! (Psalm 106:48) So Amen is a declaration of certainty. We believe that the kingdom, the power and the glory are God s now and forever. When I was growing up in London in the 1960 s I noticed a verbal stutter enter the English language. It was two words you know. People threw it into every sentence. It was rather irritating. When I came to America in 1974 I was thrilled to discover people weren t saying you know all the time. But then something terribly sad happened. At the beginning of the 21 st century the virus crossed the Atlantic and everybody in America started saying you know. We all do it. We can t help it. When I listen to celebrities and sports heroes being asked a question I count the number of times they say you know. My record is 24. You know is a meaningless expression because the whole point is we don t know. The interviewer asks What was it like to win the world series? Well, you know. No, we don t. That s why we are asking. There is one place where you know is wonderfully appropriate. It is when we say Amen. For Amen is like saying you know. You know that the kingdom and the power and the glory belong to God because he has told us and we have seen evidence of it and in faith we believe it. You know. And in this context you know makes perfect sense. For we do know. We can t help saying so. So, you know, yours is the kingdom, you know, and the power, you know, and the glory, you know, forever, you know. Amen.