Series > The Lord's Prayer
For Yours is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory Forever. Amen.
July 14, 2023
•
1 Chronicles 29:11
Revelation 7:11-12
Psalm 24:1
1 Corinthians 1:20
Matthew 6:9-13
• Posted in:
Basics of Christianity,
Lord’s Prayer,
Jesus Christ
Let's discuss the importance of these words, what we mean when we say them, and why we end the Lord’s Prayer this way.
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Darrell Delaney
As a child, I was taught to pray by my mother. She often told me the structure of how to begin a prayer, what to add in the middle, and what to say at the end. Her prayers always started with: Father God, in the name of Jesus; and ended with: In Jesus’ name, amen. This format has been very important to me, and one I still use to this day. On this episode of Groundwork, we will conclude the series on the Lord’s Prayer by looking at the importance of the words at the end of the prayer: For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever, amen. Stay tuned.
Scott Hoezee
Welcome to Groundwork, where we dig into scripture to lay the foundation for our lives. I am Scott Hoezee.
Darrell Delaney
And I am Darrell Delaney; and Scott, we have been going through the Lord’s Prayer series. This is the final and sixth episode of our series. Actually, we covered a lot of ground.
Scott Hoezee
Yes.
Darrell Delaney
We talked about the Father and how we put him in his place. He is in a class by himself; and we hallow his name; and we want his agenda, his kingdom to come, his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; and then we turn to our daily provisions.
Scott Hoezee
We learn to trust God for our daily sustenance…our daily bread. We have asked him to forgive our sins even as we forgive others; to have mercy on others the same way God has had mercy on us; and then, you know, most recently, we talked about being delivered from both temptation and evil, and how only God, through Jesus, can help us when we feel prone to walk back into the darkness, give in to temptation. But now, we want to conclude the prayer with the ending phrase…and it has a very interesting origin. In fact, although we sometimes miss this, the last line is not in the Bible. It is not in the two places where Jesus teaches the Lord’s Prayer. The last line in both Matthew and Luke, where this is taught, is: Deliver us from evil. That is the last line.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; so, when I was a kid, I was taught this prayer in Christian school, and it had this ending: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever…for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever—King James Version, right? And what I realized when I got to Bible college is that we looked and there was a little letter by the end of that passage where temptation is the last word, and there is a footnote that says: Earliest manuscripts do not have this. And manuscripts, you know, is where we get our scriptures from. We get the translations that we currently have from the earliest translations of manuscripts, and they are not there…this phrase is not there. So then, how did we get it?
Scott Hoezee
Right; the rule of biblical interpretation is that the older the manuscript, the more likely it is the original, right? If anything, over time, as manuscripts got copied and copied and copied, people tended to add things. So, earlier is better; and the earliest versions of both the Matthew version and the Luke version of the Lord’s Prayer ends with deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever is not in there. That got added as some point, as a way to round out the prayer. We still, to this day, everywhere where the Lord’s Prayer gets recited, does conclude with those words, even though they are not in Matthew or Luke, but the gist of these words, Darrell, is in some other places in the Bible.
Darrell Delaney
Well, definitely it is an echo of words that we have heard in scripture, like in 1 Chronicles 29:11. It says: 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; you are exalted as head over all.
So, we see that example going on there in the Old Testament.
Scott Hoezee
Yes; I mean, it is all right there: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. That is all right there in 1 Chronicles 29, but we read something very similar also in Revelation 7:11, 12: 11All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”
So again, Darrell, just like in Chronicles, so here in Revelation, you can see when whoever first put together that last line of what we now use as the last line of the Lord’s Prayer, they got it right out of the Bible…they took it right from these prayers and these doxologies.
Darrell Delaney
So, first of all, we say it because scripture says it. The second reason we say it is because it puts the glory where it belongs. So, when Jesus ends the prayer with talking about temptation, we are talking about being delivered from evil and the evil one, but we don’t want to end the prayer there; we want to end the prayer where we started. We talked about God, we talked about our Father, and to him be all the glory, the majesty, the wisdom, the power, the honor, the power, the strength. When we get that back to him, we take the glory away from Satan and put it on God, because that is exactly where it goes.
Scott Hoezee
One little thing here…a little bit of a pet peeve of mine…you know, sometimes when we are taught how to say something well known, we are taught certain rhythms; and we noted earlier in this series that when we say your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, sometimes the way we say the prayer, it sounds like the on earth as it is in heaven only applies to the will; but it is actually both. Your kingdom come, your will be done…both of them…
Darrell Delaney
Both.
Scott Hoezee
On earth as it is in heaven; and so, also, at the end of the prayer, we tend to make glory forever, as if only the glory is the forever part. We could better pause so that we know that kingdom, power and glory…all three are to be forever. So, for yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory…forever. Amen. That is how I say it, which means whenever we are in church and we say the prayer, my forever is always a half-beat off everybody else’s, but I will not relent. I want us to get this right. All three are forever: the kingdom, the power, and the glory…all three forever.
Darrell Delaney
And that brings me to another point, Scott. This actual ending is doxological. It is a form of worship. You know, we sing the doxology at church a lot: Praise God from whom all blessings flow… But this actual phrase is a form of worship. It puts God in his place, and exalts him; and the phrase itself…actually, they have been using in church since probably the Fourth Century, some scholars say, but other scholars say it goes back even further, to the Second Century…as early as the Second Century there was a collection of teachings called the Didache, which means twelve. The teachings of the apostles that started circulating, and in that they had this phrase: For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen. Then, that stuck; needless to say, we are still saying it today.
Scott Hoezee
Right; it is always good to put in a good word for the Didache. One of the most significant, earliest writings of the Christian community reflecting the twelve…didache…twelve apostles, right; and it is in there already then, this idea of kingdom, power, glory forever. So, this, indeed, that line; no, it doesn’t appear that Jesus spoke it in Matthew and Luke when he taught the Lord’s Prayer, but the fact that the Apostles…maybe it goes all the way back to the Apostles themselves; that they tacked it on as a way to round out the prayer and to get the amen in there, as we always conclude; and we will be thinking about that in this program, yet, too.
So, what we are saying when we say that final line is ancient, and it goes all the way back; and you are right. I like what you said a minute ago, Darrell. Ending this prayer kind of bookends to the beginning of the prayer, you know: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. All the focus on God. You know, one of the psalms says: Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name alone be the glory. So, when we conclude the prayer with yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, it puts God in his place, but that means it puts us in our place…
Darrell Delaney
Right.
Scott Hoezee
We know who we are in the pecking order of things. We are not the glorious ones, God alone is. So, it is a nice way to round out the prayer because it ends where it begins.
Darrell Delaney
And it is a beautiful thing to have it end where it begins; and we remember who he is, but we haven’t talked about the actual meaning behind it. So, we want to do that next segment. Stay tuned.
Segment 2
Scott Hoezee
You are listening to Groundwork, where we dig into scripture to lay the foundation for our lives. I am Scott Hoezee.
Darrell Delaney
And I am Darrell Delaney; and Scott, we have been talking about the Lord’s Prayer, particularly the end of the phrase: For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen. And you know that it has been a uniting thing to be able to pray that with people who have been praying it over the years. Many people in different generations and even in different languages, they do this together as a corporate worship, and also devotionally. When we look at the significance of the phrase, we look no further than the Heidelberg Catechism for that.
Scott Hoezee
The Heidelberg Catechism, one of the major Reformation confessional documents, concludes with a line-by-line analysis of the Lord’s Prayer. We looked at that in an earlier program in this series. So, let’s look at question-and-answer 128 of the Heidelberg Catechism: What does your conclusion to this prayer mean? Answer: For the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever means we have made all these petitions of you because, as our all-powerful king, you are both willing and able to give us all that is good; and because your holy name, and not we ourselves, should receive all the praise forever. So, that is the Heidelberg Catechism’s explication and explanation of kingdom, power, glory forever. As we said in the previous segment, it reminds us who God is; it reminds us of who we are; and it reminds us, too, that God is the proper target. I learned this Latin phrase from Neal Plantinga when I was in seminary: The scopus fidei. What is the target of faith? It is always Christ. The target of our faith is Christ. What is the target of our prayers? It is always God, because, as the Catechism says: He is the source of all good; and therefore, he is the only one who can give us all good. So, that is why we pray to him.
Darrell Delaney
Say that again…scopus fidei?
Scott Hoezee
Scopus fidei.
Darrell Delaney
I love that; that is really powerful. So, I love the fact that the Heidelberg Catechism was originally designed to teach or catechize young people. The goal behind it was to help us understand in this question that we have a good Father who loves us, and we have a wise king who is there to provide for us; and not only does he provide for our daily provisions and things of that nature, but this prayer itself is a gift from that good Father to give us a format and a structure on how we can focus our point on who gets the glory and all those things; but the other thing, too is, not only has God provided for our needs, he also has done it so well that we have more than enough to share with those who are less fortunate than us. So, now we get to be an answer to prayer, where God can use us and work through us to be a blessing to someone else. I can share my bread with someone else. I can share my resources with someone else, and be part of the answer of that prayer.
Scott Hoezee
Yes; God works through us to answer other people’s requests. God is the ultimate source, but often we are the proximate source that God uses. People pray: Lord, give us daily bread, and he uses us sometimes to help people who cannot get bread on their own to get bread. God alone can do all that. Nicholas Wolterstorff, the philosopher, years ago wrote an article on worship that he titled: Trumpets, Ashes, and Tears. He uses that to say that when people gather for worship, we all come off of different weeks, right? Some of us go into worship blowing the trumpets of praise because we had a great week. Some of us go into worship bearing the ashes of repentance because we feel really guilty about our sins. Some of us go into worship with tears, if not in our eyes, tears in our hearts because it has been a bad week and we are in a bad patch…trumpets, ashes, and tears. I have turned that into a congregational prayer I sometimes use when I am asked to do the congregational prayer, reminding people that if you are blowing the trumpets of praise this morning, you blow them to God because he is the one who gave you that good… If you are feeling guilty and bearing the ashes of repentance, confess it to God. He is the one who can blow the ashes away and anoint you with oil and give you a spirit of gladness instead. If you are crying tears, cry them to the Lord in lament, because he gathers all our tears as in a bottle, so precious are they to him. God is the proper target for all of our praying; and ending the prayer this way: Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, reminds us of that.
Darrell Delaney
I am glad that you brought up the fact that God is the focus and the central point of why we even pray. When I was a kid…or when I was younger, actually…when I was learning to pray, I used to say: God, we pray to you because you are the only one who can do something about it. If my mom could do it, if my dad could do it, if my pastor could do it, I might pray to them; but the fact that they cannot be the source of my strength, my hope, my answer, my faith. Only you are the source of all of those things; and therefore, I pray to you because I have seen and I have testified to the fact that you have been faithful, you have been consistent, and you have been the God of gods in my life; and therefore, you deserve all the prayer, all the praise, all the honor, all the glory in my life. I look to you as the only help I know, even though you have sent people to help me, you are the source of all help; so, I pray to you. And that is the focus that we should have; and this is the focus of the entire prayer, and not just the end of it, that God would be the center.
Scott Hoezee
Scripture often refers to God as the Lord of heaven and earth; and we have said before, Darrell, that is a merismos. You use the highest and the lowest to stand for everything in between…everything A to Z. Psalm 24 reflects that: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. So, of course, we pray to God because he is the one who holds all things in heaven and on earth. Jesus is, again, kind of a merismos, the alpha and the omega. Jesus is the beginning and the end. Jesus is our everything is what that means; and so, we bring everything to God in prayer through the mediation of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our prayers are always trinitarian like that, right? We pray to the Father through the mediation and in the name of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. All three members of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are involved when we pray, because all three of them together make up the one God who alone provides.
Darrell Delaney
I love the fact that that is brought up, that the Father, Son and Spirit are all involved in that prayer as our God whom we pray to; and that should be a great encouragement to us that when we see things that we look at the world and we think that the enemy is winning because we get all the bad news and we see these things happening, disasters and racism and pain and frustration and conflict and war, we can remember that God is addressing those things, and that he is actually in the process of redeeming it day by day, moment by moment; and because Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith, he also sustains us in it; and he is continuing to conform us to the image of his Son, and he uses things like this prayer to help us to remind ourselves who is in control, who is on the throne, and who gets the glory.
Scott Hoezee
It is the kingdom of God—the kingdom of heaven—that Jesus has brought us into through his death and resurrection. He had the power to do that; to die for us; to be raised in power by the Father from the dead; and because of that, as the book of Revelation shows us, his is the glory forever and ever. But there is one little word left: Amen. And as we wrap up this episode and also this entire Lord’s Prayer series, we are going to look at the word amen. So, stay tuned.
Segment 3
Darrell Delaney
I am Darrell Delaney, with Scott Hoezee, and you are listening to Groundwork; and it has been really great to dig into this section of scripture, the Lord’s Prayer; and if we zoom out, Scott, we will see that this is one excerpt of the Sermon collection series called the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus did in Matthew 5-7; and this is one section of that prayer. To help people understand, this is what the kingdom of God is about. This is the Father to whom we are praying, and this is how we live in light of the Father and the kingdom that he has called us to be a part of.
Scott Hoezee
Jesus was, in most conventional senses, seen as a rabbi in his day. A teacher and a rabbi would have disciples, and it was traditional that the rabbi would instruct his disciples in all kinds of things, including on how to pray. Now, in Matthew 6, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus just gives this prayer without any preamble. In Luke, at Luke 11, the disciples say: Lord, teach us to pray; how should we pray, Jesus? They saw Jesus praying all the time…
Darrell Delaney
All the time.
Scott Hoezee
So, they had seen him praying, now they wanted to know: What do you say, Lord? When you do that, how do you do that? Can you teach us? Of course, then Jesus does, and gives us this model prayer, which centers us on God, on the kingdom, on God as the source of all good things; but again, we conclude all of that with that little word: Amen.
Darrell Delaney
Amen; for that, we turn again to the Heidelberg Catechism, and question 129. It comes right after the one we just read earlier. The question is: What does that little word amen express? Answer: Amen means this shall truly and surely be. It is even more sure that God listens to my prayer than that I really desire what I pray for. In essence, it is us coming into agreement and alignment with everything that is said before; and if it is pertaining to focusing on God, like we said, then his will…his agenda…we want to align ourselves with that; we want to come under that; we want to agree with that; and amen is our agreement with that.
Scott Hoezee
Exactly; it is a great line from the Catechism there. It is even more sure that God hears me than I actually want what I prayed for. It is like, WOW, it is even more sure than the strength of my desire? That is a great line.
The little word amen is a derivative of a Hebrew word, emet, and emet means truth. So, amen, in a sense, means truth; and that is sort of what we say: Amen means this is the truth. You know, I have gone to you, O God, because you alone are the source of all good; and it is absolute truth that you have heard me and it is absolute truth that you can provide for me and for all of us. Amen means truth. It is absolutely certain. It is reality, and that is all that is packed into that little word amen.
Darrell Delaney
And amen is really powerful, because when we are taught to pray, like I was saying, when I was a child, my mother taught me to pray, and the form is in Jesus’ name, amen. And in John 17, Jesus talks about when they will use his name to pray, this will happen. There will come a day that you will use my name and pray. We use his name because we want to make sure that we are in alignment with his will. I love that you brought out the point in the Catechism where it says it is even more sure that God listens to my prayer, because it reminds me of 1 John Chapter 5, where he says: verses 14, 15 paraphrased This is the confidence we have in him that when we pray according to his will, he hears us; and when we know he hears us, we know we have what we ask. But this prayer itself is how we align with the will, and amen is the agreement to that will; and I appreciate when people in church say amen when I am preaching; I appreciate when amen comes after some truism has been spoken, but it is centered around God.
Scott Hoezee
Not as much in my experience, did I get lots of amens, but when, particularly in the Black church, in the tradition, you know, when people say amen or if the preacher says: Can I get an amen? What they are saying is: Can somebody affirm I am speaking truth, right? Amen—emet—from Hebrew for truth. Can I get an affirmation that you are with me that I am speaking the truth.
That is part of it when we say amen; but moving to a slightly different thing. There is something even more powerful about amen when we read this from 2 Corinthians 1:20*:
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.
Jesus is the amen.
Darrell Delaney
Oh, yes.
Scott Hoezee
That is powerful.
Darrell Delaney
It gets even better. So, it is not just that amen is the word that affirms the truth, but Jesus himself becomes the amen that is the truth. I love that. So, in Revelation 3:14, when they are writing the letter to the Church, it says: To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, (and it is capital A there) the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.
And that is talking about Jesus. So, not only is amen a word that you affirm the truism that has been spoken through God’s Word, but amen is a person now. It is Jesus. He is the faithful witness. I have never seen that before in the scriptures, that he is the final revelation; he is the final word. That is really powerful.
Scott Hoezee
Just four little letters in English; the original emet in Hebrew, just four little letters in Hebrew…actually probably just three letters in Hebrew with the vowel inserted; but wow, it packs a wallop, right? It means all those things as is sure to be God is listening, but when you see Jesus as the ultimate Amen, that he is the faithful and true witness, as the church at Laodicea was told there in Revelation 3; he is the creator, the provider, the restorer, the recreator; he is the Amen. So, we are invoking that entire universe of meaning when we conclude all of our prayers…the Lord’s Prayer or all of our prayers with amen, that is what we are tapping into, which is really quite amazing.
Darrell Delaney
Jesus knows that his will is to come here and do the Father’s will; and the Father’s will is for him to go to the cross and die and pay the price of our sin. So, Jesus knows that is coming, so that is down the road for him in a couple of years from this actual message in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, but Jesus knows that when he teaches them to pray, he is going to become the Amen to that prayer, because he is literally going to go and pay the price for the answer of that prayer to happen so that God’s kingdom can come here. He is the one who is making it happen.
Scott Hoezee
So, since he is the one who taught us to pray this way, we know he knows what he is talking about; we know he knows what he is doing. He is himself the embodiment, in many ways, of the whole prayer. He is himself the fulfillment of that whole prayer. Again, that is quite amazing.
So, you know, Darrell, it has been great to look at the whole Lord’s Prayer to see where it begins with Our Father in heaven; to see where it ends now with all that gets poured into that little word amen. When we pray this prayer, we not only join together with the saints who have already gone home to glory and who have prayed this way; we are joining with people who are praying in so many languages right now around the world; and we are able to focus on our loving Father, who is able to bless us and help us and keep us and protect us. Indeed, to God be the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.
Darrell Delaney
Well, thanks for listening and digging deeply into scripture with Groundwork. We are your hosts, Darrell Delaney with Scott Hoezee, and we hope you will join us again next time as we continue to dig deeply into scripture to lay the foundation for our lives.
Come connect with us at groundworkonline.com to share what Groundwork means to you, or to tell us what you would like to hear discussed next on Groundwork.
Scott Hoezee
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*Correction: The audio of this program misstates the reference for this passage as 1 Corinthians 1:20. The correct reference is 2 Corinthians 1:20.