Easter
27 March 2016
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the
Glory forever
Matthew 6:13
We trust, O Lord, in Your great mercy to hear and
answer us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. [1]
The kingdom remains forever with
Jesus! We come now to the conclusion of this much loved prayer: “For
Thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever and ever Amen”
Yes! The kingdom remains forever with
Jesus! It is a powerful kingdom. It is a glorious kingdom. It is an
eternal kingdom. Why do we pray? Jesus has given us plenty of reasons why
we should pray. In the conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer we find three good
reasons for asking all these things from Jesus.
1.
Jesus alone is King, from whom we seek
help. On this Easter let us remember that there is no such thing as a dead
Christ. The German philosopher Nietzsche declared that God is dead.
Unfortunately for Nietzsche he died and met a living Christ! Because of Easter
you and I can come to Christ with our faults and our fears, with our cares and
our concerns with our triumphs and our trials, with our disasters and our
dreams and know that He will hear every single one of them.
This
not so with the false gods of this present age. They are only the cheap
imitation of man’s own imagination. They are utterly worthless. David reminds
us in Psalm 115: “Why do the nations say, where is their God? But our God is in
the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the
work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak; they have eyes,
but they cannot see; They have ears, but they cannot hear; they have noses, but
they cannot smell; They have hands, but they cannot feel; they have feet, but
they cannot walk; they cannot make a sound with their throat Those who make
them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them. O Israel, trust in the
LORD; He is their help and their shield.” (vv.2-9) Man left to his own devices
is powerless and ineffectual.
But because of Easter
Christ is alive and hears every prayer. That’s why we can say with David in
Psalm 110: “You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; You encourage them,
and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in
order that man, who is of the earth, may be terrified no more” (vv.17-18).
2. Because of Easter
Jesus alone has the power to grant us our petitions.
Jeremiah the prophet
of old reminds us “Like a scarecrow in a melon patch their idols cannot speak;
they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no
harm nor can they do any good” (v.15)
Dumb idols remain
silent. They cannot help. They cannot hurt. A prayer offered to a false god is
like speaking to the wind. Not so with Jesus.
He has the power to
grant our petitions because He is alive. As the child once put it “He can’t be
dead…I spoke to Him this morning!” Every petition, every request is answered by
Him because he is alive forevermore.
3.
Because of Easter Jesus
alone shall have all glory and praise for all that he has done for us.
He is the
eternal God deserving of our prayers and our praise. The writer to the Hebrews
put it this way: “May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal
covenant who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great
Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will. And
may He work in us what is pleasing to Him through Jesus Christ to whom be glory
forever and ever Amen (13:20-21)
So what else is there to
say other than the word, Amen! What is meant by the word Amen? ‘That I should be
certain that these petitions are acceptable to our Father in heaven, and are
heard by Him; for He Himself has commanded us so to pray, and has promised to
hear us. Amen, Amen, that is, yea, yea it shall be so. A blessed Easter! Amen.
[1]
Lutheran Service Book, Divine Service, Setting Five © 2006 Concordia Publishing
House, St. Louis
No comments:
Post a Comment