2006-04-28
Good Morning Treasured Readers,
At last, we have arrived at the place where the Holy Spirit directs me to write about the second index sentence of the Lord's Prayer [MT 6: 9-13]. The first index sentence was, "Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name..." The second index sentence is, "Thy Kingdom Come..." It's all about pledging our allegiance to our God, Who deserves it every day of our lives. Christ, Who was raised in Judaism and knew well His Father's writing in the OT, recalls DT 6: 4-5 here. "Here O Israel, the Lord our God; the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might." If you ever visit an observant Jewish home, you will see a small item called a mezuzah hanging on the door post or gate. It's hollowed out and contains a piece of parchment paper rolled up that has this and some other key passages written in Hebrew on it. My own mezuzah has the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet, shin, on the outside, which is the first letter of God's name and the letter which God added on to the name, Abram, to make it Abraham. Getting back to the passage cited above, it is acknowledgment that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is the one and only true God, and the person saying it believes only in Him.
Our Lord Jesus is saying even more in this second index sentence. He is recalling PS 145:13, "Your Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations." Those who have studied the Bible know how this evokes thoughts of Daniel's interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar's giant statue dream in DN 2: 25-45. This is particularly true of DN 2: 34-35, "While you were looking at it, a great Stone [Jesus Christ] broke loose from a cliff without the help of human hands, struck the iron and clay feet of the statue [which represented human empires], and shattered them. At once the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold crumbled and became like the dust on a threshing place in summer. The wind carried it always, leaving not a trace. But the Stone grew to be a Mountain that covered the whole earth." Even more lessons are learned about allegiance in the recollection of PS 93: 1-2, "The Lord is King, He is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, He is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved; Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting." What a picture of the power and strength of God this is! Christ knew it all and wanted everyone saying the Lord's Prayer to have thoughts and belief in this in uttering it the way He did. The Father was in on every bit of this to be sure. LAM 3: 40 and PS 139: 23-24 shouldn't be forgotten either at this time. "Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord...Examine me, O God, and know my mind; test me, and discover my thoughts. Find out if there is any evil in me and guide me in the everlasting way." Our Lord Jesus wanted those saying this prayer to evaluate the status of their faith and to make God-pleasing adjustments, if it is found wanting. By saying the Lord's Prayer every day, the individual is not only reminding God that he is acknowledging allegiance to Him, but he is also giving himself the chance to take his own "faith temperature" and to act on it if adjustment is needed. We've yet to hear of anyone, other than Christ Himself, who didn't need to strengthen his faithful obedience to God.
The second index sentence also gives us an opportunity through praying to expedite the coming of His literal Kingdom on earth. There is an essential difference between traditionally Jewish thinking on the coming of the Messiah and the Christian idea. Jews believe that the Great Shepard won't come until all the sheep are in the fold. This is another way of saying that the prophet Elijah, for whom a place is always left set at the Passover seder table, won't come with the announcement of the coming of the Messiah until there is peace and obedience to God on earth. Mankind must bring about this peace. As a Messianic Jew, I agree with Christians that we don't know the time of the coming of Messiah, but it behooves us to get our spiritual houses in order without delay. As far as peace on earth is concerned, it is He Who will eventually bring it in the course of ending evil through the events of the Tribulation [REV 19: 20-21; REV 20: 10]. In the Lord's Prayer, Christ is teaching us that we have a chance through prayer to help things along. LK 17: 20-21 really brings this truth home to me. "Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. His answer was, 'The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. No one will say, 'Look, here it is!" or, 'There it is!'; because the Kingdom of God is within you.'" Wow! It's in the hearts of those who believe right now! That's the beginning, and we must live out our faith in such a way as to help the Holy Spirit spread it. And yes, Christ is teaching this and more in the second index sentence of His Lord's Prayer.
PRAYER: O Lord, repeatedly You have made statements like those found in JER 31: 33b-34, "I will put My law within [My people] and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. None of them will have to teach his fellow countryman to know the Lord, because all will know Me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins, and I will no longer remember their wrongs. I, the Lord, have spoken." Your reasons are like You, always-righteous, always with our best eternal interests in mind. In view of our sinfulness, You are revealing Yourself to be enormously compassionate and loving. We don't deserve the grace You extend to us, but we are very grateful for it [EPH 2: 8-10]. We open our hearts willingly to Your Spirit and Your guidance. We believe You are our one and only God and in Your Son, Who died on the cross for our chance to be saved. Our will is to reject any other god or teacher of falsehoods that tries to bedevil us. We offer ourselves to Your service and to making Your will our own. We acknowledge that we are sinners, who cannot lead lives of righteousness, purity, and holiness without Your intervention. We also acknowledge Your matchless wisdom, just as You said to Jeremiah in JER 33: 3, "Call to Me, and I will answer you; I will tell you wonderful and marvelous things about which you know nothing." Dearest Abba, we also have petitions, ones which matter to us very much. Today, we ask You to help us reach out to lost souls who might potentially be saved by being given faith by the Holy Spirit. We ask You to take away anger, resentment, jealously, greed, and other forms of immorality from as many people as will listen to Your prompting. The devil is crafty and reaches people in their most vulnerable places, often through their children [1 PET 5: 8]. We ask You to come against him and those who are his agents with the power we know You have to do this. And yes, Dear Father, we know that Christ has given us the same power You used to raise Him from death to life [EPH 1: 18-20] to do spiritual warfare. We ask that You awaken more believers to use this power that we have been given. We ask You to come against the devil's work in causing diseases and suffering, just as Christ did in AC 10: 38. You are the Doer of marvelous deeds and the Possessor of unparalleled attributes. Your Son is our Paradigm, and we worship, adore, thank, and praise You and Him. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.
There is more to say about the second index sentence, and this will be the subject of next week's message. In the meanwhile, we need to do what PS 107: 43 reminds us to do. "Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord." Yes Dear Ones, we will see deliverance! We were never promised that there would be no pain, suffering, or loss, but we must look for the deliverance our Lord gives us. We can look at these two passages to better understand. PS 68: 19-20, "Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, Who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God Who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death." We know that many people in our lives suffer from cancer and other horrible diseases. And yet, if those people should lose their physical lives in the battle but have come to faith in Jesus, they are saved! They are fully healed after their physical deaths and enjoy a blissful eternity in close fellowship with the Father. Is it any wonder that we can sing PS 32: 7? You are my Hiding Place; You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance." In his beloved series, The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis comments on the sweet breath of Aslan, the lion who is the Christ figure from time to time. We can understand that better if it's put in the context of the story. Each time the children smell the sweet breath of Aslan, they are delivered from whatever danger they are in. I believe that God wants us to detect His sweet breath through our prayers, and that Christ is teaching us how to do this in the Lord's Prayer.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn