Matthew 6:5-16
Beginning Prayer:
Our heavenly Father, we come to You in Jesus' name asking for peace in the church. Bless our Church leaders to honor You in all that they do. Bless the Holy Spirit to be allowed to lead the leaders of all Churches. Your Word says, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." II Chronicles 7:14. We humble ourselves under Your almighty hands as we pray seeking Your face for answers in the Church today. Bless us to continue to turn from all ways that is not pleased to You in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord, for hearing our prayers as You have promised in Your Word. We do ask for You to forgive our wrong doings, our unbelief, and all that is sin in Your sight. Please help us the Church to obey You in all we do; Your Word says, obedient is better than sacrifice. Please help the Church of Christ to stand up for righteousness, and not give into to what men think is right. Help us to become serious in our watching and praying. Help us to love one another with a pure heart, and help us to sit our minds on things above, and not on things here on earth. We give You glory, honor, and praise because You are worthy, everything is Your, You have all the power, and we will always give You all the glory, We pray this prayer in Jesus' name, amen.
Subject: "The Lord's Prayer" For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever.
We are now going to look at something that is included in the Lord's Prayer but which probably should be excluded. You see, the words, "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever" are actually not in the Lord's Prayer. I would like to give you the Lord's Prayer from the new Revised Standard Version, but before doing so I would like to make clear that I do not recommend this version as a substitute for the Authorized. It is helpful in several places and constitutes a reference book that is useful for any well-grounded Bible student. The prayer is given as follows:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:9-13, RSV)
It stops there and does not go any further. The statement, "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever" is not included. Now the question naturally arises, why is it that this petition is not included? The reason is that when the King James Version was translated, the translation was made from the best manuscripts in existence at the time. Since then, better manuscripts have been discovered, and we find this petition omitted from these better manuscripts. Now immediately someone is going to ask, "But how does this fit into the theory of plenary verbal inspiration?" And by plenary verbal inspiration we mean that the words of the Bible are inspired. As I see it, that is the only logical explanation of inspiration. Either this is the Word of God or it is not the Word of God. Either it is reliable or it is not reliable. It is not the thoughts that are inspired; it is the words that are inspired. Thoughts can be misunderstood; words cannot. There is the story of a young lady who had been studying voice, and the time came for her to give her recital. In her dressing room after the concert, she asked about the reaction of her very famous teacher to her performance. A friend, with difficulty, finally brought forth the statement, "He said that you sang heavenly." The young lady, quite thrilled, asked if those were his exact words. The friend said, "Well, those were not his exact words, but that is what he meant." The young singer, still not satisfied, demanded his exact words, which were, "That was an unearthly noise." You see, it is the words of Scripture, and not the thoughts, that are important. We believe in plenary verbal inspiration, but we also believe it applies only to the original documents, most of which have since been lost. But we also believe that the manuscripts we have today are reliable and can be trusted. Many of the manuscripts found have been brought together and all tell the same story. There are some discrepancies, to be sure, but none of these pertain to any of the important doctrines of the Scripture. Let us look at the matter of inspiration a little further. There is a striking similarity between the written Word and the living Word, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. Both are human and divine. The Lord Jesus Christ is both of God and man. One of the oldest creeds of the church states it accurately: "very man of very man, and very God of very God." Therefore, you would expect to find the Word of God made flesh growing weary on a dusty road in Samaria and sitting down to rest. You expect to find Him shedding tears of sorrow at the tomb of Lazarus. Neither is it surprising to hear Him claim to be the Messiah as He talked with the woman of Samaria; nor is it strange to hear Him command Lazarus to come forth from the tomb. He was both God and man. The Bible is a God-book and it is a man-book. The Word of God has become incarnate in the alphabet of man. The Word of God becomes a book with a binding, printed with printer's ink, and made into words that men can understand. Men transcribed it by hand even before Gutenberg printed it. It has been translated from one language into another. Scribes have made errors in transcribing the text, and printers have made typographical errors. The limitations imposed upon the Lord Jesus Christ as a man are likewise imposed upon the Bible. As a human book it requires an knowledge of the language in which it is studied to comprehend its meaning. There is no magic method by which to memorize the fine passages of Scripture. It requires real study as it does to gain a knowledge of any subject—geography, history, literature, or philosophy. The lazy and careless student cannot come at its meaning by any superstitious method. In Proverbs 25:2 we read: "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter." God has hidden rich treasures in His Word, but it requires a great deal of searching to discover them. Diamonds are not on the surface. The injunction is: "…Search the Scriptures…" (John 5:39), "Be diligent to present yourself approved…" (2 Timothy 2:15), and "…Give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine" (1 Timothy 4:13). As a human book, the Bible was written by about forty-five human authors who expressed their thoughts, projected their personalities, and stated their ideas. Nevertheless, they were moved by the Holy Spirit, "for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). The Greek word for move is phero and it indicates a sailing vessel borne along by the wind. The Spirit of God worked in these men in a way to secure an inerrant Word of God. This is exactly the claim of Scripture:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)
That word "inspiration" is the Greek theopneustos, meaning "God-breathed." Nothing less than the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture will satisfy the language of Scripture and the need of man.
Although the human authors expressed the full feeling of their hearts and the complete thought of their minds, they nevertheless expressed the exact words of God to men. These men were not pens with which the Spirit of God wrote. Any dictator can make men automatons to express the dictator's thought and totally submerge the writer's real intention. The supernatural element in Scripture is that God did not arbitrarily destroy the personality of the writers, but instead used them to express His complete, adequate, and inerrant will. The words are God's. Having completed the canon of Scripture, God has no afterthought to submit as an addendum to the Bible. God perfectly expressed Himself through imperfect men. There is a dual authorship of the Bible that attests to the supernatural. Only God could give a book like the Bible; only God could send a person like Jesus. We have a God-book. It does not yield merely to human intellect. The ordinary avenues of knowledge are not sufficient to comprehend its meaning. We get most of our knowledge through the eye gate and the ear gate, but Scripture warns us that these are not adequate to give us divine understanding:
But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9, 10) What the eye gate and ear gate cannot supply, the Spirit of God will compensate. He alone can take divine truths and apply them to our hearts. The facts of Scripture must be learned by human effort, but the spiritual truths must be revealed by the Holy Spirit.
The natural man does not have sufficient spiritual IQ to understand the Bible. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
REVELATION:
means that God has communicated with man.
INSPIRATION:
guarantees the accuracy of that revelation.
PRESERVATION:
infers that God maintains that revelation in the world.
ILLUMINATION:
insists that only the Holy Spirit has the interpretation for man.
TRANSLATION:
means the transference of the text of Scripture from one language into another.
Now that we have examined the solidarity of the setting in which rests this gem—the Lord's Prayer—let us look again at the phrase that has been omitted in these later translations. "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." It is a most scriptural statement, and for that reason I should like to have it remain as part of the Lord's Prayer. After the people brought their wonderful offerings for the construction of the temple, David lifted his heart to God in prayer:
Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, the power and the glory, the victory and the majesty; for all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and You are exalted as head over all. (1 Chronicles 29:11)
While David elaborated a great deal, it is a prayer of rare beauty and is basically the same petition that we are considering now. It is worth noting that in Luke's record we find that the Lord‟s Prayer, as given there, breaks off at a different point from that given in the Matthew account. I have a notion that the Lord broke off at a different place on each occasion of repeating the prayer. And the reason is obvious, for I feel He is attempting to teach something. Since the prayer as recorded in Luke 11:2-4 carries no "amen," it is thus open to added petitions. It was given to babes in Christ that they might know how to pray. It is the same as how we today teach our little folk to say, "Now I lay me down to sleep…." Before long they have added, "And bless Mommy and Daddy," and later, other petitions. I must confess that several times I have had to get up off my knees and tiptoe out of the room because of some of the things for which my little girl prayed. I know that the Lord understood her prayers, but I have never discovered why she prays for the little boys and girls in China and then for the boys and girls in Michigan. I do not know why Michigan should be chosen out of the fifty states. These little ones just launch out into the deep, and in this lies our illustration of the absence of the "amen."
Week # 13
Weekly Pattern: Praise Again
Prayers from the Bible:
Questions:
1). What do this statement means to you personally?
2). Read this scripture in these versions (KJV, NKJV, NASB, RSV, NIV).
3). What is your perspective on the statement stopping at "but deliver us from the evil one?"
4). After reading the lesson read all the scriptures for a better understanding.
5). Who moved men to write the Scripture?
6). What do the word theopneustos means?
7). What do addendum means?
8). Where do we get our divine understanding from?
9). What do revelation means?
10). What do inspiration means?
11). What do preservation means?
12). What do illumination means?
13). What do translation means?
14). Who said this and why (I Chronicles 29:11)?
15). Read Matthew 6:13 and I Chronicles 29:11).
16). What do Proverbs 25:2 says?
Weekly Reading Assignment: (Acts 25-26)
Weekly Song: (Matthew 26:30)
Weekly Praise: Praise be to Your Name
Let's Hallow His name by rehearsing Who He is:
Ending Prayer:
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