The Kingdom, the Power, the Glory Forever

Hey good morning 9 a.m. service on this foggy Aptos Sunday morning. My name is René, another one of the pastors here, and today we wrap up our series in the Lord's Prayer. But before we do that, I want to talk to you about what is coming up next. Next weekend we start a four-week series called The Way Forward. Why? Well, it seems like our culture is so divisive right now. It just keeps polarizing us, even those of us in the church, on issues like coronavirus response, racism, civil unrest, school openings, face masks, politics—everything else becomes this divisive loaded argument. But Jesus prayed for us to be one, so how do we do that? What is the way forward into real unity, real positive change, real justice, real mercy? We're going to talk about that, looking at some of these divisive issues. We're gonna examine what Jesus did when he himself was in controversial, divisive political situations. Man, I can't think of a more important series for us to be studying here right now in the next four weeks than The Way Forward. Hope you can join us for that starting next week.

And now, as we wrap up our series on the Lord's Prayer, let's do some time travel and go back 19 centuries ago. The mid-100s must have felt to Christians in those days that their entire world was just falling apart. A mysterious contagious disease called the Antonine plague was sweeping through the Roman Empire. Eight million people died; it had a 30% fatality rate. Meanwhile, riots against the Roman government were sweeping the Empire, and all of this was taking place right as the Roman government was brutally persecuting the Christians, trying to wipe them out. Finally, as a last resort, the Roman government arrested Polycarp. This was an old man who was the leader of the Christians in the mid-100s. He was nearly 90 years old—86 or 87 years old when this happened—so old that he personally knew the Apostle John. He was the Christians' last living link to the original disciples of Jesus Christ.

So the Roman governor thought, if I can get this icon of the faith to personally deny Christ, all the Christians will be morally devastated, and they will just fall. So Polycarp is arrested, and he's brought into an arena of Romans crazed with hatred against the Christians, shouting for his blood. The Roman governor says, listen old man, I won't kill you if you simply say, "Away with the atheists," because the Romans thought of Christians as atheists. We didn't worship idols, no statues, right? Some invisible gods, so we must be atheists. So Polycarp, 86-year-old man, says okay, and he points to the crowd all around him in the arena and he says, "Away with the atheists." The Roman governor now is just really ticked off, and he says, look old man, just take a pinch of incense and throw it into the fire before this idol of Caesar and worship him, and then you can live.

Polycarp famously replied, "Eighty and six years have I served Christ, and he never did me any injury. How then can I now blaspheme my King and my Savior?" And with that, he was burned at the stake. Yet instead of dismaying the Christians, this galvanized them. Person after person after person were arrested—old men, young women, even children—yet they all said, we cannot deny our King either. And then what happened next was something that absolutely no one expected. Without any army, without shedding any blood of their persecutors, the followers of Jesus became the most influential group in the whole Roman Empire, and they ended up changing their whole world.

So what I want to know is how did they do it? How did they keep going when it looked like their world was just collapsing and everything was against them? Because in some ways, it's easy to feel like that today. An article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal said this: everyone is worried about the future. Worry the virus might turn worse in the fall, crime, protests, the feeling nobody's in charge. Are we going to have school? How will that work? Is my business going to make it? And then when you look toward Washington, that's not solid ground; it's more like shifting sand. The media is distrusted, so where do people find any hope? Well, the same article quoted a man who said religious services where he attends are drawing twice as many as before. In a very insightful statement, he says this: things around us are broken, and we want some certainty—not the certainty that everything will be alright, but the certainty that this is here, this moment, and this will be here in the morning. By this, he specifically means his faith.

This is an amazing benefit, an advantage of being part of an ancient faith tradition. The Judeo-Christian faith has survived through thousands of years, through every kind of plague, calamity, and persecution, yet we are still here this moment, and we'll be here tomorrow. Why? How do I know? Well, because this is true. This line of the Lord's Prayer that we look at this morning contains the DNA of those early believers and the secret for us today. This is the soul of our movement, the source of our courage. If you need courage today, if you're feeling kind of down, you need look no further than this line. As I said, we've been studying the Lord's Prayer for seven weeks. Today, the last line: say it with me, "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."

This morning, I just want to dive into a meditation on this by looking at each of these phrases. But I have to acknowledge something right off the bat: slight problem. These words are not in the text of most modern translations of the Bible and not in the text of the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible. They were in the best manuscripts of the Bible that the old King James Version translators could get their hands on, but since then, many new discoveries have cleared up the fact that early on, this phrase was most likely not in there. So we should just disregard it, right? Hang on, because this was apparently written very, very early. In fact, watch this: an ancient manuscript called the Didache, which was kind of a manual for how to do church and live the Christian life from the early 100s, this is the earliest Christian writing that we have that is not in the Bible. It recommends praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day—morning, lunch, and at dinner—and the author writes out the words of the Lord's Prayer. In the Didache, the ending to the Lord's Prayer is basically the ending that we're all familiar with. In other words, this ending has been prayed by Christians for over 1900 years. It's been part of our tradition; it was part of the tradition back in Polycarp's days, and these words are biblical.

They were taken from other verses already in the Bible, like David's Prayer in 1 Chronicles 29, when he says, "Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our Father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting." Now watch this: "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." This kind of prayer is all throughout the Bible. Here's another example from the end of the Bible, Revelation 5:13, where the Apostle John has this vision of heaven, and he says, "Then I heard—I love this—every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and all that's in them saying, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praised and honor and glory and power forever and ever.'" So what the very early Christians did was they took all these similar prayers and kind of paraphrased them into this ending: "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." So what I'm saying is this is a very biblical prayer. You can pray this with confidence. In fact, this became the phrase, as I'm about to show you, that saw those first Christians through all that trouble, all that disease, all that persecution.

Now why did it hold such power for them, and how can it hold power for us today? Well, let's go through this line by line. Alright, for yours is the kingdom. This phrase is radical. This right here—this is why they burned Polycarp at the stake. You know, the Romans didn't arrest Polycarp because he was a nice old man. You're being too nice; we have to kill you. No, to the Romans, this phrase meant insurrection. Let me show you something: this is a coin of Caesar Augustus, the Caesar who was on the throne when Jesus Christ was born. On these coins, he is called Son of God. On other coins, he's also called Lord; he's also called Savior. The people back in the Roman Empire in those days were told, whatever else your identity may be, wherever else you may have come from, whatever else you may believe religiously, you are first and foremost a Roman subject of this Emperor, and you need to give him your ultimate allegiance, like to the death.

And that's why this phrase is so radical, because this is really a declaration of my identity. It's saying this is where I get my identity—not from Caesar. It's kind of like this: you know, the state of California has a law that every one of us has to get a new ID card, and do you know what they call it? Real ID, as in real identity. And so, you know, I want to be a good citizen; I went down to the DMV to get my card, and here it is. I don't know what super technology these cameras have to always snap the worst possible photograph you've ever had taken of you in your life, but there's some secret tech that they've got, or perhaps we all just look as bad as our driver's license photos, which is too terrible to contemplate. But I have some news for the state of California: they call this my real ID card, but this is not my real ID. My real ID card gives my identity as a resident of the state of California, but that is not my real ID. My real ID card says I was born once on March 31st, 1961, but that is not my real ID. My real ID card says I'm of the family of Schlepfer, but even that is not my real ID. My real ID is that I'm a citizen of the kingdom of God. My real ID is that I've been born again into God's family. My real ID is that I've been called and chosen and adopted and given a new name, given a new purpose.

And at times when everything feels like it's being turned upside down, in times when it feels like every certainty is uncertain and every foundation is crumbling and every kingdom is falling, you need to stand firm on your real ID. I think maybe we as Christians today have forgotten that—forgotten it, forgotten that our core identity is not as a member of this or that political party, is not as an employee of that company or a member of that community organization or even a member of that family. Our real identity is this: we follow one King named Jesus. And this is so important right now. Elections are coming up; can you believe that? By the way, this has not already been a divisive year. Here come the fall elections; God have mercy on us. And let me be clear here: please vote. I believe in democracy; I believe in the principles this country was founded on, so vote. But do not let any political party or candidate or cause tell you something along these lines: you owe us your support because you are a Christian, and this candidate or this party or this cause is the cause of the candidate or the party of Christians. Don't let any political party, political candidate, or political theory convince you that their cause or their candidate is somehow infallibly just on the left or the right. There's only one cause that's infallible and only one King you owe your ultimate allegiance to, and that is King Jesus.

Now listen carefully. By this, I do not mean to imply that we should just disobey the government every time it does something we don't like. For instance, lately some pastors have been getting a lot of PR for saying something along these lines: we must obey Christ rather than Caesar, and therefore our church is gonna break all the rules—meet shoulder to shoulder, no face masks, no health protocols. No, the Bible says unless the government is asking us to deny Christ, essentially we are to be model citizens and seek the prosperity of the city and the state that we live in. When we say, "For yours is the kingdom," though, what we are saying is this: my king is not Caesar. My king is not this administration or that administration. My king is not a Roman eagle. My king is not an elephant, and my king is not a donkey. My real, real ID says I am a citizen of God's kingdom, and that is the basis on which I make all of my decisions. So do you know your identity as unshakably as Polycarp did?

For yours is the kingdom and the power. This is really a declaration of ability. Here's what I mean: listen, does the virus crisis and everything else going on right now make you feel powerless? Why is that? You know, there's a classic book by a Bible translator named J.B. Phillips called Your God is Too Small. Is your God too small? Are you kind of shrinking him down to human size? Let's remember to stay in awe. I want you to see this verse: David, King David writes, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set into place, O Lord, what is man that you are mindful of him?" You know, I think David was empowered by his faith through a lot of tough times, partly because he spent time in nature looking at spectacular aspects of creation like the heavens and realizing the God who made all that has said that he'll empower me.

Now think of this: David could only look at the heavens and the moon and the stars from afar. Now we can get a little bit closer, and we know a little bit more. For example, the hundreds of billions of stars just in our galaxy alone are so far apart that it would take a spaceship traveling at the speed of light a hundred thousand years to get from one end to the other, and that's just our galaxy. Astronomers say there are two trillion galaxies containing more stars than all the grains of sand on planet Earth. The Bible says God began all that with a word: in the beginning, God spoke, "Let there be light," and bang, there it was. Even better, he has the power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead. And guess what? This is gonna blow your mind: the Bible says by his mighty power—that kind of power at work within us—he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or even hope. Man, in a world where we can feel so powerless, remembering "yours is the power"—all power, all energy, all ability, all capability in the world ultimately stems from God, and that power is within us. Man, that'll change your life.

I'll tell you the story: Charles Spurgeon was a famous pastor in London in the late 1800s. He preached every weekend to thousands at his church; it was called Metropolitan Tabernacle. But one Sunday, while he was preaching, a fire broke out in the balcony. There was a stampede; the building was burned, some were killed. It was such a tragedy; it took a year to rebuild and get ready to reopen. On the first Sunday back, Charles Spurgeon just felt consumed with anxiety. He thought to himself, like, I can't do it; I can't get up there to preach. What if it happened again? And then it came time for him to preach, and with each step up the platform, he said to himself, "I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit." People who were there that day said he preached with new power, and that church went on to new heights after being shut down for over a year. Man, since I've heard that story, I gotta tell you, I have often said when I'm getting ready to come up here—in fact, I prayed this this morning and last night before I got ready to preach—I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So where do you feel like Charles Spurgeon felt on that first morning back? Where are you experiencing anxiety? What are you feeling anxious about today? Praying "for yours is the kingdom and the power" is a reminder that with God, you can face anything. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Man, I love that word glory—such a fun word to say. Glory! Say it with me: glory! Love it. But what does it mean? Well, I'll tell you what it feels like. One day last summer, after church, kind of a last-minute thing, I heard kind of through the grapevine that the San Francisco Symphony and symphonic choir was performing live outdoors at the Stanford amphitheater. This is a multiple Grammy award-winning orchestra; they're a very big deal in the world of classical music, and they were going to be performing outside at Stanford. They were going to be performing Beethoven's 9th, which is probably the best work by Beethoven. So spur of the moment, I just drive up by myself, get a ticket, lay down on a blanket on the lawn at Stanford in front of this huge orchestra. The music starts to wash over me, and it's so beautiful. I'm outdoors, staring up at the sky, a beautiful day, and then the choir begins to sing the end of the symphony known as the Ode to Joy, and it's about faith in God. Here's the English translation: "Be embraced, you many millions; his kiss is for the whole." Brothers, over the star canopy lives a father. Aren't you brought to your knees by his glory? Do you sense your God? Oh world, seek him above the star canopy, the one who dwells beyond it all. And I have to tell you something: I was just weeping in that moment. I mean literally just like tears coming down from my face, full of love and full of longing for everyone who is there to know this glorious father. True story: the people right next to me saw me crying, and they were not in that moment at all, and they looked over at me and said, "Pardon me, would you like some Chardonnay?" Classic Stanford moment.

But I was just praying, God, let people experience what these words are talking about. What I experienced in that moment was a sense of God's glory—how small I am and how big and majestic God is. You see, this is really a declaration of humility, saying, "God, wow, to you be the glory and not me." Now, you want us to know something absolutely amazing: as glorious as creation and music and beautiful poetry is, don't miss this—the way God says his glory is seen best is through his salvation of us. This is God's perspective. Look at this verse: as God's grace brings more and more people to Christ, God will receive more and more glory. How is God glorified? Through us, you know, coming to know him, coming to Christ.

A couple stories quickly: I read this week about Leroy E. Leroy was a black man fed up with oppression in the rural South who joined the Black Panther Party in Oakland in the late 1960s. He believed in a violent overthrow of the government, got into a shootout with Oakland police, fled the country, and one night in exile in France, totally unexpected, he says he was looking up at the night sky and he began to have a vision. He said it was a vision of every notorious revolutionary in history passing up into the sky and then down over the horizon. He says it was like one fallen hero after another, and then the image of Jesus rose up in his vision in the sky and it stayed there as the King of Kings and the revolutionary of revolutionaries. Leroy E. says he fell to his knees and just began weeping, and he found his wife's Bible and he started to read, and he said that night he experienced the most peaceful sleep he had ever known because he had found Jesus, and it changed his life.

Same day last week, I read in Christianity Today magazine an article written by a man named Terrence Thomas. Terrence, here's the headline: "I was a violent Klansman who deserved to die." He had led Mississippi's KKK, which was America's most violent right-wing terrorist organization. He personally bombed the homes of Jewish and black leaders, was eventually caught, sent to prison. While there, he picks up his old Bible—the same Bible he'd been using to justify racism—but this time he says all he could find were verses about love and brotherhood and forgiveness, which was frustrating to him at first. But he says, I kept reading and found Jesus, and in the article he says that today he denounces all of his former activities as a Klansman as "diametrically opposed to true Christianity," and he is now a Christian committed to anti-racism.

Now, human beings have a very hard time even believing that conversions like that are possible, but God keeps holding the door to his kingdom wide open because to save people like Leroy and Thomas, that is his glory. I picture the two of them up in heaven singing side by side in that heavenly multitude that John saw—the two of them together, a former Black Panther and a former Klansman, singing, "To you alone, God, is the glory." And that's God's glory, and it's his glory to save you. As Beethoven wrote, "Be embraced, you many millions; his kiss is for the whole." That is his glory forever.

Now, before we close, one more thought on glory: the Bible says that God works everything out for good for his glory—not your glory, his glory. And sometimes the way God is best glorified is through a crisis that he eventually redeems. Now, we have a very hard time getting our heads around that, so we tend to fight bad times, to resist suffering, because we are not usually thinking, you know what? I'm willing to go through this tough time because I know that God is going to be really glorified through this. I heard an old saying the other day: you can't push a river; you've got to let it flow. Do you get that? You can't push a river. Sometimes—and this takes wisdom to discern this—but sometimes when life happens, we find that we're in the river, in a current, in current events that are beyond our capability to fight or to swim upstream against. And those are the times when all we can do is trust that God will work even this out toward his glory. And you can have that confidence when you pray, "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory." And then we add, "Forever. Amen." Forever! Say that with me: forever. This is a very important reminder that God's kingdom is the only kingdom that lasts.

You know, I've been blessed to travel to some very cool parts of the world, and it always strikes something deep inside me whenever I see ruins, like the great Roman ruins signifying that amazing Roman Empire. It rose and it fell, and all the great empires of India—they rose and they fell. All the great kings of Hawaii and of Easter Island—these were all kingdoms that once had the power of life and death over everyone in sight. Now, nothing left but ruins, because God's kingdom is the only kingdom that lasts. If it ever feels like everything you ever thought was secure in your life is changing, like it must have felt at those very first Christians, knowing this is so stabilizing. Remembering verses like, "Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock." Everything about our world may change, but God never changes. Everything about your job may change; God never changes. Everything about your family may change; everything about your reputation may change; everything about your health may change. But God never changes. This is what we affirm when we say, "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."

I'll close with this very personal thought. This past Monday morning, I was feeling so stressed thinking of all we have ahead of us as a church to plan for, and all the regulations seem to change all the time, and all that we're facing as a nation. I went out on our back porch and I prayed, and as I was praying, my eyes were open. I saw the wind moving the branches of the trees, and I saw hummingbirds and chickadees darting around and the brilliance of the sun filtering through the leaves. I was suddenly reminded of the truth in this prayer. You know, the creation that I was seeing all around me and the God who made all of that is much, much bigger than all of our problems and all of our politics put together. In other words, COVID-19 is not your entire world; civil unrest is not your entire world; racism is not your entire world; the presidential election is not your entire world. They're a part of your world—a part of your world that you shouldn't hide from, a part of your world that you should engage with. But even those things, as big as they are, that's ultimately just a part. Whatever crisis you're facing, it's just a part. God is much bigger than that. God has much bigger plans than that. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. And of course, God wants us to be part of the change that the world needs. But see, if we do not have this big perspective, we're gonna just burn out and fall into despair trying to make the world a better place, because you will think that the whole burden of change is on your shoulders. No, he is in charge; he has all the power, and it will all be worked out to his glory forever. Amen.

Now, as we close with a prayer for the series, what do you think would be an appropriate prayer to close a series on the Lord's Prayer with? I know—how about the Lord's Prayer? In fact, let's pray together with those fellow believers from Twin Lakes Church that we saw at the start of this message, and let's listen as they pray and let your spirit pray with these your brothers and sisters as the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.