For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is the Kingdom
Being Satisfied in the Power of God in Prayer
Good Morning!
As you likely already know the Lord’s Prayer is repeated, not verbatim for reasons we’ll get into here in a second, in Luke 11. Most of the content is the same, but the last petition (among other differences) which is in the prayer in Matthew 6 is absent from the latter. One of the things this teaches us is about how Christ intended for us to use the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not a mantra we repeat, but a model for the way in which we are to approach our Heavenly Father so it makes sense that they don’t match up one for one. Each in their own way gives help to our devotional life and grants support for hearts that are seeking to bring troubles to the Lord of peace.
With that being said I rarely, if ever, get into technical stuff in these lessons. It’s not really the place for it and not really why I do these bi-weekly devotionals. Yet, it is important at this point to know something about translations of the Bible and Q.107. If you have an ESV you’ll notice that the words used in Q.107 are completely absent. If you have an NASB you’ll see something like this: [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]. Now, why do I mention it? There are those (like the translators of the ESV/NASB and others) who do not believe that this last clause of the Lord’s Prayer is Christian Scripture. Without getting even further into the weeds here we all know that the English Bibles we use are translations from the Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament. There are two “families” of manuscripts that while agreeing 98% of the time have some differences, and Matt. 6:13 (plus John 7:53-8:11, 1 John 5:7, etc…) is chief among them.
As you also already know I prefer the KJV for private devotions and preach and teach from the NKJV on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings, etc… I do that for a reason, because I believe that the “Received Text” (see our Westminster Confession of Faith Ch. 1, Section 8 for more info) which undergirds the KJV/NKJV is from the more faithful family of Greek manuscripts. I also believe that the word of God is inerrant not just in the autographs (the actual copies that the Bible writers wrote), but in the apographs as well (the copies passed down to us). So the reason I mention all this is not because I want you to dump whatever translation you use and only use translations of the Received Text (or Textus Receptus), but so that when you come to the reading of God’s word in the Lord’s Prayer you can understand why that portion may be missing or present and have confidence in the authority of the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice. We need that and wherever the devil can come in and cause turmoil he will, and the last place we should let him roam is in the pages of the very word of the living God.
To the Shorter Catechism Q/A’s for the last time:
Q. 106. What do we pray for in the sixth petition?
A. In the sixth petition (which is, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil) we pray, that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin, or support and deliver us when we are tempted.
Q. 107. What does the conclusion of the Lord’s prayer teach us?
A. The conclusion of the Lord’s prayer (which is, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen) teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to him.
God in His great mercy to sinners knows that we are sinners. He does not coddle us in our sin, nor does He make excuses for our sin, yet because He is a loving God, He has provided a means by which to deal with our sin, both in the life-giving sacrifice of His Son and in the continuing work of sanctification by our union with Christ and the inward work of the Holy Spirit, that great Comforter. In Q. 106 the Lord is assisting us in knowing how to pray particularly for the fight which is ongoing in the soul between the old man and the redeemed one. It’s the very struggle the Apostle Paul points to in Romans 7, that David describes in Psalm 40, and Moses sees in his own life in Numbers 20.
In our devotional during Wednesday night prayer meeting last night I talked about the way that our spiritual union with Christ, prefigured for us in Jeremiah 32:38ff, always has a sense of a heart who’s bound to the love of God for man. The source of that love is always God Himself, hence what leads us to the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer. When we seek the encouragement of God in prayer we are boldly testifying to our dependence on the power and authority of our Sovereign King. There is nothing that can compare to His majesty and so why should we ever pursue help from any other? To go back to Jeremiah 32:38 it is because of the promise the people have of belonging to something bigger than themselves, “They shall be my people and I will be their God.” That is the source and foundation of all of our hope and peace. We belong body and soul to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we will have our needs met in no other. It is because of this majesty that we see the way the martyrs and the elders bow and shout at the foot of the throne of God. He is more than can be comprehended, and the euphoria we should feel in contemplating the awesomeness of the power and the authority of God should give you goosebumps and bring true humility and thanksgiving.
Here is some more to help:
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/god-is-power
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church