Teach Us To Pray Week 7 | For Thine is the Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory. Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, we are thankful for your redeeming love.

Thank you for doing the work upon the cross that we couldn't do for ourselves.

Thank you for just shedding your blood so that we could have life and life eternal.

Lord, I pray today you would speak to us.

You help us to become more like you, Jesus.

You would teach us from your word what it is that you want us to do and you want us to live.

We love you, Lord, and we're grateful for the opportunity to sing praises to your name.

It's in your name that we pray.

Amen and amen.

You may be seated.

Man, it's always such a joy and privilege to be with all of you.

Especially, I love this church family, guys.

I've been here so long now.

Uh, in the context of my life, I love this place as this home.

And so I want to tell you just how much I love you.

I always want to take an opportunity to say that.

I said, look around the room.

I see so many people that mean so much to me.

And uh thank you for the way that you invest and pour into my children and into my family.

I get the opportunity and the privilege to raise my family right here, family church.

I see Beth Bonner over here.

I'm reminded in 1999, that was I started serving in the kids ministry under her leadership, and uh she was an incredible influence.

I quit after the first week, though.

Um she was asking too much, but uh, she should.

And then um, you know, I I think of Marco right over here, and Marco Goren uh used to sing in the choir and the student choir when I led it back.

We went on a mission trip like in 2000.

Dude, I I love it now to see you with your beautiful family serving the Lord.

I I'm just so grateful for this.

Not many people get to have this, and I'm grateful to be a part of this church body.

I'm also very grateful for our pastor and the opportunity that he gives me and his friendship uh that I've had all these years, and the fact that he lets his worship leader preach, guys, that's unheard of in most places.

So I'm really, really grateful uh for the opportunity.

And uh he's been such a kind uh friend all these years, always pointing me in the right direction.

And I will say this also I'm really, really proud of our students, our middle school and high schoolers.

Are you not?

Like, I mean, over 250 of them just going around town, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel.

That's amazing.

Like, I I mean, to have the courage, to have trained for six weeks just to do that.

I can tell you one thing, I was not doing that in middle school.

Anybody else?

All right, yeah, exactly.

Now, when I went to middle school, I still remember I went from elementary to middle, and at this time I lived in Puerto Rico uh with my family, and so I went into middle school and I was excited because that middle school uh shared the campus with the high school.

And so you had different schedules, so you wouldn't see the high schoolers as much.

But I went into middle school and my brother, my older brother, was in high school, and so I felt cool because my brother was well known and everybody liked him, and also I was a good student, but I was an even better troublemaker.

And now that my brother was in high school over there, I knew that I could like mouth off to people.

You know what I'm saying?

I would open my mouth because my brother would come to defend me.

So I was like, all right, I would get in people's faces.

Ah, who do you think you are?

My brother's in high school, okay?

And I was just like, make a big deal, and I would go.

And sometimes I would like to stand up to bullies, you know.

You know, I was like, You, what are you gonna do?

Don't you don't dare do anything because I'm gonna call my brother over there in high school.

And then they were like, back off, you know.

But it was interesting because my brother was so kind, by the way, he would have never had anybody or done anything.

But my brother, I was right there next to me in high school, and it made me live a little bit differently.

You know what I'm saying?

I was willing to take more risks, I lived more confidently.

I was I was walking with a swag, you know, in middle school, like I owned the place because whatever happened, my brother was right there.

I had, I was willing to speak out more and live in a different way, all because my quote-unquote savior was right next door.

You know, I know life is difficult.

And even as of late, it just seems so heavy, doesn't it?

Uh, with everything that's happening around the world, everything that's happening around here, we just have so many concerns.

And it's easy to forget that the Savior is with us, that the Savior is right next to us.

And some of you are here today, you don't even know how you made it here.

Some of you had a really hard time getting off of bed because life has been very difficult.

You've gone through a divorce maybe recently, you notice that your marriage is kind of slipping away, falling apart.

Some of you are here, you got a bad diagnosis recently from the doctor, and you don't even know what to do or where to start thinking about that, and that just overwhelms you.

Some of you are even here and you have buried loved ones in the last several weeks or months.

And I realize and I understand that life is difficult, but as Christians, I want to remind you, as Christians, we live differently.

We live differently because the Savior is near, the Savior will come to our rescue.

And today we're gonna finish this whole series on the Lord's Prayer, how we are to call on God in our times of difficulty, how we are to call on Him to use His power in our lives in ways that we can never do for ourselves.

And I think that's an important thing for us to be reminded every single day.

And as we finish this series, I want you to be encouraged.

I want you to think about the fact that your Savior is not far away, your savior is near, your savior is near.

So I want us to read the Lord's Prayer out loud like we've been doing every week.

Is that cool?

It'll be on the screens.

This is from Matthew chapter 6, uh, verses 9 through 13.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Let's read this out loud together.

Ready?

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.

Amen.

You know, I actually went to um school for classical singing, and so there was, you know, the Lord's prayer song.

This last part, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for.

I'm not gonna sing it because I can't reach it.

But yeah, well, thank you.

That's so kind of you.

I think my mom started that one.

She's over here.

Thank you so much.

Um, you know, I I'm reminded that we many of us memorize this growing up.

Any of you remember memorizing this?

Yeah, we memorize the Lord's Prayer.

But did you notice, um, did you notice all the thines and thou's we were reading?

Right?

Right?

So actually, the version that we just read is the King James Version of the Bible.

But I uh we usually hear study out of another translation called the English Standard Version or the ESV.

And I want to put the Lord's Prayer side by side for you to see it.

And I want you to look towards the end and tell me what you see.

Do you see something missing there?

Right?

This segment we just read at the end, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen, is not there on the English Standard Version that we study.

Hold on, Pastor Christian, hold on, hold on, hold on.

I memorized this thing my whole life, and you're telling me that now it's not in the Bible?

How come?

That's a great question.

And actually, I think it's a question that we all need to wrestle with.

And I want to give you a little bit of the history and the explanation why.

Is that cool?

So, ready?

Because I geek out over all these things, this dates and like information, but hang on with me.

So in 1604, King James assembled the most brilliant minds of the time, historians, linguists, archaeologists, and commissioned the King James Bible, an English translation that will use the best manuscripts they had at the time to create the very best and most accurate and most beautiful version of the Bible in English possible at the time.

They based their translation on two major texts.

One was the Masoretic Hebrew text for the Old Testament, which was from the 900 AD, and the Greek text Receptus for the New Testament, which is compiled in the 16th century, but the writing writings were from the 12th century.

Alright, these men put together the best version possible with what they had and published it in 1611.

So 1611, we get in the king, we get the King James Version of the Bible.

Actually, many of us grew up reading the King James Bible, right?

It was uh it was the one the English translation for many, many years.

But a lot of archaeology has happened since then.

Uh and uh at the beginning of the 20th century, right in the middle of the 20th century, actually, in 1947 through 1956, a collection of ancient scrolls was found.

Uh, these are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Any of you have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Yeah.

And uh guess what?

They were found on the shores of the Dead Sea, okay?

So pretty simple there.

Uh these scrolls actually date back to 250 BC through 68 AD, with some manuscripts potentially even dating back to the 4th century BC, making them the earliest copies of the biblical text available today.

And our current versions of the Bible, like the ESV, the English Standard Version, are based on these older texts.

All right.

What these older manuscripts, though, have shown us is that there is a 95% similarity in content from the older manuscripts to the newer manuscripts.

95%.

So you're talking about a thousand years of this being passed down, and 95% is accurate from the older text to the newer text, which is pretty impressive.

While the main difference is the 5% are mainly minor spelling variations, and some of the more substantive differences, like the one we read today from the Lord's Prayer, are minor and are just a few and far between, and they have no impact on the doctrinal or theological stances that we have and that the Bible has.

So the more recent discoveries of ancient texts have really served to confirm the reliability and the trustworthiness of the canon of scripture.

We can be confident that what we're reading today is the word of God is originally given to us by the Holy Spirit through the scripture writers.

You know, while most books, as they get further away from their origin, lose kind of, you know, who they are and kind of lose the context, the Lord has done this miracle where as we get further away from the origin, we are actually more certain of what was originally written.

So we can have confidence in what we're reading today and have know that the word of God is trustworthy.

Now, this specific passage for Dinus of the Kingdom, the power, the glory forever, while not found in the more ancient uh Dead Sea scrolls, it is actually first seen in the Didic.

And the Didic is a work compiled towards the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century, and it was an early Christian manual on how to live and practice the Christian life.

Actually, the Didache encouraged believers uh to memorize and to recite the Lord's Prayer three times per day.

Remember that during this time there was no real access to Bibles.

Okay, so um they would memorize it and they would recite the Lord's Prayer three times per day.

And this passage was actually is believed that it was used as a doxology or a hymn of praise to the Lord at the end of the Lord's Prayer in several liturgies and places of worship.

So when we use it, right, we unite with Christians throughout the centuries in the praise and exaltation of God.

I mean, um, so what are some of the things?

Now we know that this is not in the original text, but what are some of the things that it points us to in the actual text as truths that we can find out in the Bible?

So why don't we go ahead and bring out our writing utensils?

Let's get ready to take some notes as we look and we finish the Lord's Prayer this morning.

The first thing that we see is that the Lord's prayer teaches us to live for the kingdom.

The Lord's prayer teaches us to live for the kingdom.

Now, what's interesting is that this passage, for thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever, amen, actually comes from another passage in the Bible uh found in 1 Chronicles 29, 10 through 11.

And let me read this.

This is uh King David and it says this.

Therefore, David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly, and David said, Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever.

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.

Does that sound familiar?

You see the similarities there?

So here in this prayer, we see the a king of this world, okay, bowing his knee to the king of the universe.

Okay, that is exactly the call for each and every one of us as Christians.

We must admit and understand that we're not the ones in charge, right?

God is the one who rules our lives.

We bow and submit to the one true king who's alive and reigning and will one day return.

You know, the if we are gonna bow to this king and if we're gonna live for the kingdom, then that means we need to do the work of the king, right?

We need to do the things that the king tells us to do.

And look what Matthew 28, Jesus gives us the great commission in Matthew 20 and it says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

That's what the king wants us to do: to make disciples and to tell others about the goodness of God.

Okay, this is why we plant churches here at Family Church.

We believe that's the best way to do this, to make disciples of all nations.

And you're like, Pastor Christian, you guys talk about planting churches all the time.

No kidding.

Yes, because we want to live for the kingdom and we want to do what the king has told us to do.

So we plant churches all throughout South Florida, and we we feel that's so powerful to have outposts for the kingdom everywhere.

You know what's the another thing?

Uh, these 250 students that went out knocking on doors.

I mean, who knocks on doors anymore?

It's like the most old school thing that we do, and I love it.

My kids actually had two that went on this trip and they loved it.

They came back exhausted, but they loved it.

And I want to show you a little bit of the impact that they made across the county.

Look, these students reached 495 streets across this area, okay?

They visited 9,894 homes, okay.

They had 818 gospel conversations, they prayed with 1,082 people, and 21 people prayed to receive Jesus as their savior for the first time.

Amen.

Wow.

I mean, the impact that our students are having because they have chosen to live for the kingdom, to bow their knee to the king.

Man, that's powerful.

This is what that means.

His is the kingdom.

It means that we do what the king has asked us to do.

And you might be sitting here today and you're going, Pastor Christian, I'm not a student.

I can't go in advance.

I don't really know how I could do this.

Well, actually, that's a great question that we all need to wrestle with.

What is living for God or living for the king means as someone that's retired?

Maybe you're retired, or as a grandparent, or as a parent, or as a single person, maybe a married couple.

What does it look like to live for the kingdom in your specific situation?

I think all of us need to wrestle with that because God demands our allegiance and we need to bow our knee to the king, which leads me to number two.

The Lord's prayer teaches us to rely on God's power.

To rely on God's power.

Here's where we must trust the Lord to do what we cannot do.

Look, he's the only one who can forgive our sins, right?

We talked about this in the past few weeks.

He keeps us from temptation, he delivers us from evil and promises to return for us one day.

We cannot do that work.

Jesus did the work of redemption himself.

It was a price that we could not pay.

Jesus took on flesh, went to the cross, took the penalty for your sin and my sin.

Okay, a price too high for us to pay, and so he paid it all.

That's why the song says, Jesus paid it.

Thank you.

All to him I owe.

Sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow.

It's powerful, man.

Jesus did.

When we trust in his power, we're trusting in the work that only Jesus can do.

Ephesians 2, verses 8 through 9 says this for by grace you have been saved through faith.

Ephesians 2:8–9

And this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

It is not what we can do that matters, it's what he has done that matters.

And we must rely on his power because he has the control over it all.

I remember um growing up, I was a very um strong-willed child, okay?

And um I remember my mom is nodding her head right over there.

But I remember uh one time I went to my uncle Edwin's house to stay.

And uh, you know, I took my little, I wanted to spend time with my cousins.

I was probably five or six, and we're over there and we're playing a game at night, and uh, you know, I lose the game and I go nuts.

I'm like, no, I'm supposed to win because this is and my uncle goes, no, you're not.

We're done with this.

And I was like, you know what?

Then I'm leaving.

And he goes, Good.

So he called my bluff, so I was like, okay.

Um, so I'm gonna go and I started packing my things.

Now I grew up in Puerto Rico watching uh a show for kids called El Chavo del Ocho.

And El Chavo would do this thing uh where he would put all his belongings in a little bag like that and put a pole through it, and then he when he was sad or upset, he would just walk a walk away.

So I decided to take one of my t-shirts and put all my belongings that I could fit and put a pole through it and walk away.

And uh, when I walked out the door and I walk out to the sidewalk, my uncle comes out and he says, Wait, you forgot your luggage.

I was like, Whoa, whoa.

Okay, well, I doubled down because at this point I'm like, I got the power in this situation, and I start walking away, and I look back, and nobody's coming out of the house.

I go, I just need to walk a little bit more, so I just walked a little bit more with my paw.

I look back, the house is getting smaller and uh further away, and nobody's out.

Um, and then I kind of go around the corner and I come back and look, nobody's out, and I said, I'm going back.

And when I go back, my uncle sees me.

I walk in the door and I look at him and I said, I decided to stay.

Okay, it's so funny because as a kid, I thought I had the power and I was in control of the situation when all along it was my uncle who was providing a house for me, it was my uncle who was giving me a bed, it was my uncle who was giving me food, it was my uncle who was giving me a ride in his car.

I had zero power, zero control, and yet in my mind, I thought I did.

And you see, a lot of us that's how we think.

We think that if we just do all these great things in our own strength and our own power, that God is gonna respond.

God, why don't you just jump in on my good behavior and my good things and then give me what I need?

That's not how God works.

The things that God is giving you are things that you can never work for, He's giving you salvation and He's giving you redemption, then they're a gift, not of works.

So that's No one may boast.

So we must rely on God's power.

He's the only one that can do the work that we can never do for ourselves.

Which leads me to number three.

The Lord's prayer teaches us to give God the glory.

Give God the glory.

Look, if we're relying on Him to do the work that we can never do, then how come we think we can take God's glory?

Like it makes no sense.

But unfortunately, that's the way our hearts are.

Right?

Man, that's how we are.

But we don't realize that God is serious about his glory.

The Bible is full of examples where people tried to touch God's glory and they ended up dead.

Dead.

I mean, look at what God tells his people in Isaiah 42, 8 when they're trying to take his glory away and give it to idols.

He says, I am the Lord, that is my name, my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

Man, we must carefully assess our hearts and make sure that we're giving God the glory in every situation.

Because as the hymn says, I'm gonna sing, guys, so many times today because there's so many hymns that speak to this.

It says, prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, Lord.

Take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

That's what our hearts constantly desire.

Prone to wonder, prone to take the glory, prone to put God aside and say it was me.

But if there's anything that the Lord's prayer teaches us, is that we gotta give, we must give God the glory.

So when your promotion at work happens, it's God's glory.

When your business is booming, it's God's glory.

When your family is thriving, it's God's glory.

And giving God the glory means that we recognize He is the owner of it all.

We are simply managers.

So with that in mind, every resource we have, every talent we have, every dollar we have, every minute we have of our lives, we give to him as he pleases.

That's how we give him the glory because he is the only one that deserves it.

That leads me to point number four.

The Lord's prayer teaches us to look forward to forever.

Look forward to forever.

Man, and aren't we all just looking for forever?

Much of our dissatisfaction or disappointment in life comes from the fact that the best things about this life just don't last.

I was um I was with my wife the other night.

We we went out for my birthday, and uh she looks so beautiful like she always does.

And we went to a great restaurant and we ate a great meal, and we brought questions to ask each other, and we were laughing, having a blast, thinking about our kids and all the things that we've been through, and thinking about the future and dreams and hopes that we have.

Man, I was sitting there enjoying that moment so much, and I was thinking, I wish this could last forever.

A couple of weeks ago, I'm in my bed sleeping, and all of a sudden, boom, my young kid, my youngest son, Lucas, seven years old, comes in through the door.

He goes, Dad, dad, check this out.

And he has two plastic swords in his back, and he has a shield, and he takes one out, he goes, Here, take it.

And he gives me one, and he wants me to fight with him, and we're like doing all this sword fight, you know, with his plastic swords.

And I'm looking at him, so little, so innocent, wanting to play with his daddy, having a heck of a time with me, and I'm thinking, gosh, if I could just like save this moment forever and keep it forever.

But that's the problem in life.

The best things about this life just don't last, and yet Jesus promises forever.

He promises forever.

He promises that the joy, the fulfillment, the satisfaction you seek will be permanent.

He came to give us forever.

So in a world where all things are fleeting, health is fleeting.

Many of you are dealing with that.

Friendships are fleeting, relationships are fleeting, youth and beauty are fleeting, happiness is fleeting, importance and influence are fleeting.

Christ offers his salvation forever.

Heaven forever.

Health forever.

Good knees forever.

A good back forever.

Anybody?

Any amens?

Man, he promises that there will be one day where there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more crying, no more sorrow.

Everything about this life is fleeting, but when we know that our Savior is right there, offering us forever, man, that should change the way that we live.

That should change the way that we live as Christians.

Which leads me to the last point, which is the Lord's prayer teaches us to say amen.

Say amen.

And amen is a word that means so be it.

Or we agree on these things.

To be a Christian, you must believe these things.

That his kingdom, that his is the kingdom, and his is the power, and his is the glory forever.

Amen.

Do you believe it?

You know, you remember the story with my brother?

Right?

I lived differently, I lived more confidently, because my brother was right there, ready to go.

You know the key for me to be able to experience the benefit of having my brother there?

You know what I had to do?

I had to call on him.

I had to call on him for help.

In the Lord's Prayer, that's what Jesus is telling you.

He's teaching you to pray so that you can call on him.

He wants to come to your rescue, he wants to meet your needs.

He suffered and he shed his blood and died on the cross, not so that you wouldn't call on him, but the opposite, so that anyone who will call upon his name would be saved.

And that's what we see in Romans 10:13.

Romans 10:13

It says, For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Man, some of you are in this room, you don't even know why you made it here.

You're like, I don't know, I feel maybe God is calling to himself, or maybe I don't even know why I accepted the invitation today.

God is calling you.

And now it's your turn to call on him.

To call on him for salvation, to give him your life, to submit to him.

And maybe, look, we maybe you can you want it, we you can do that at the end of the services.

We're gonna have some people up here that'll be more than happy to pray with you and to help you through that spiritual step.

But honestly, you can do it right there where you're seated.

You can say, Lord, I realize I'm a sinner.

Would you come into my life and save me?

Make me more like you, Jesus, and that's it.

I believe in you, I believe in your sacrifice.

And you know what God promises is that He's gonna come and save you.

You can do that right there where you're seated.

And some of you are here and you're saying, Well, Pastor Christian, I've been calling upon the Lord, but I don't know, I just don't see it working.

My kids are still going crazy and things are not working out.

I just got these news from the doctor, and I don't really know what to do.

What I mean, what am I supposed to do?

You continue to do what God has asked you to do.

To call on him, to call on him for help.

He wants to rescue you.

And look, knowing that he's right there and that he's just a call away should help you live differently, should help you live differently.

We agree that he is God, that his is the kingdom, that his is the power, that his is the glory forever.

Amen.

Then call on him today.

You know, when we take the Lord's Supper, we actually agree.

We're saying together, we're basically saying, Amen.

We believe, God, that you are alive and that you're coming again.

The Lord's Supper is a big amen as believers, that we agree on all these things.

So we're gonna take the Lord's Supper now together here at Family Church.

We believe that the Lord's Supper is for believers.

Those who have been baptized uh by immersion and are the are a member of a church.

And uh look, if that's not you, we ask you to refrain from taking it today.

But if you would normally take the Lord's Supper at the church that you're a part of, uh, then we invite you to come and take the Lord's Supper with us today as our guest.

So as we listen to the music, let's reflect, let's confess our sins to the Lord, and then let's call on Him, the Savior, who's ready to come to our rescue.

Let's give them this time.

You are