If you would open in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 21. Revelation 21. We're actually going to talk tonight about the last part of the Lord's prayer, which is, what we've been doing. We've been looking at that at least 1 Sunday a month. But if you notice, I I didn't tell you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 6 for that, because the part we're looking at, thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, if you're having if you have the ESV, you're not gonna find that there, except for in a footnote, because some of the best manuscripts don't have that.
Jeffrey Heine:But the reason I want to preach on that and conclude the the sermon series with for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, As for 1, this benediction was used extremely early in church history. It was used by the apostles themselves. Matthew's account of the Lord's prayer leads you hanging. He actually doesn't conclude the Lord's prayer. And so, the apostles very well might have added that, because that is what they heard Jesus pray.
Jeffrey Heine:At the very least, it's a summary of that prayer, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. It's also very biblical because it actually comes from 1 Chronicles 29. It's a prayer of David. David, as he is on his deathbed, and he has been promised so many things in his life. He's been promised a kingdom that will never end, that somebody would sit on the throne forever.
Jeffrey Heine:He's been promised that, and yet here David is at his deathbed, and he's looking at Solomon. And he he sees in Solomon, yes, he he he might be a great king, but he's also flawed, he's also sinful, he's also going to die. And so He knows He is dying. He knows Solomon's dying. And yet, in David's dying words, he expresses faith in this one thing.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, For thine is the power, thine is the glory, and yours is the kingdom. His his final words are faith, out of faith. The one thing I I can't believe what my eyes are telling me right now, I can't make sense of what is happening around me, but the one thing I know is true. Is that, God, you have the power, and you have the glory, and then he says, you have the kingdom. And that's what I pray would be the one rock that we could build our lives on, that truth, no matter what we see around us.
Jeffrey Heine:And so what I want us to do is go to Revelation 21, which describes this kingdom in which David had put his hope, in which the apostles had put their hope. So Revelation 21 verse 1. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Jeffrey Heine:And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' And He who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Pray with me.
Jeffrey Heine:God, I pray in this moment You would make things new for us. The stories we've heard our whole life, and, Lord, maybe don't penetrate as deeply as they should. Right now through Your Spirit, Work those truths in our heart because they're they're not just truth in the abstract, they're they're the truth of a person. They're the truth of you, Jesus. And they are a powerful truth.
Jeffrey Heine:When when that living word comes inside of us, it transforms us. And we ask that you would do that in this moment. May my words fall to the ground and blow away. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen. As I was thinking about this text this week from Revelation 21, my mind actually kept going back over and over to another story in the Bible. The story of the, the disciples, Peter, James, and John going up to the Mount of Transfiguration. If you remember that story, Jesus, He goes up to this mountain and, He has a conversation with Moses and Elijah. They appear to Him there.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus had brought up, you know, Peter, James, and John were with Him, and and they were sleeping, but then they they woke up and they saw this sight of Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah. And Jesus became transfigured. His face began shining. Basically, the the glory of Jesus was manifest, and He was literally just shining like the sun. And and Peter, he he's looking at this, and he is he's seeing the thing that we all long to see.
Jeffrey Heine:I think every human heart longs to see this. The glory of our Savior, the glory of God. And and to be able to be in front of Him, and to bask in that glory. And He sees this, and and He he's thinking, I I don't want to leave. I I could, Jesus, how about I build some tents here?
Jeffrey Heine:Okay? How about I build 3 tents? And and I don't know how Peter's gonna do that, if he's gonna go around and gather some sticks, you know, some leaves. How do you build a tent on top of a mountain from scratch? Luke says, he wasn't he didn't even know what he was saying.
Jeffrey Heine:But what Peter knew was this, I want this forever. I want this forever. You know, the the thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. I I don't want this to end. But it ended.
Jeffrey Heine:And I find myself identifying with the apostles in this moment in which they go back down the mountain. I mean, they had just been seeing the glory of God shining, and they go back down, and there's there's a desperate father. There's a demonized son. There's powerless apostles. There's just a broken down, fallen world all around them.
Jeffrey Heine:And I had to be thinking, when? When do we get to see the glory forever? That's what I want. I want the glory forever. I think that is written on every human heart.
Jeffrey Heine:And Revelation 21 tells us what that looks like, what we have to look forward to. I I love the way Revelation 21 continually points us forward. Look at it again. Let's read it again. It says, starting in verse verse 3, it says, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
Jeffrey Heine:He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And so John, in this vision, he's he's pointing us forward into what will happen. He's he's saying someday there's an there's gonna be a time in which there will be no more tears. There's going to be no more shattered dreams.
Jeffrey Heine:There's going to be a time where there's no more disappointments, where there's no more ailing bodies. There will be death no more. There, there will be no more fairies overturning, and, and 100 drowning. There will be no more 911s. There will be no more cancer.
Jeffrey Heine:But what about the present? Is there any hope for us now in the present? Yes. We look forward, and we we look forward, and we long for that day. But but what about now?
Jeffrey Heine:When we're living in that fallen world, what about now? And that's why you come to verse 5. That's why 5 is so important. And He who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Now, any English teacher is going to tell you that that's, it's really bad grammar, what's going on here, because you're supposed to keep all your verbs in the same tense.
Jeffrey Heine:And if all the verbs are future, future, future, you shouldn't switch it here unless this is intentional. This, this verse should pop out. When Jesus rose from the dead, He, He conquered the kingdom of Satan, and now Jesus' kingdom is breaking through. Jesus has now ascended. He is seated on the throne of God.
Jeffrey Heine:He's ruling. And currently, now, this very moment, Jesus is making all things new. We don't have to look to the future. Someday, He will make things new. Currently, right now, the risen and ascended Jesus is ruling and making things new.
Jeffrey Heine:So right now, if you are in Christ, Paul says, you are a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come. The resurrected life of Jesus has come in sign of you, and it has wreaked havoc in your life, and it's discarded old sinful habits, and it's it's bringing in a spirit of holiness, it's transforming you. It's giving you new life. You once were dead, but now you're alive.
Jeffrey Heine:You once were a slave to sin, but now you have been set free from sin. You once had no hope, but now Christ in you is the hope of glory. These are things He is doing presently. And we just heard that when we heard the testimonies of Madeleine and David about how God is working presently in their life. Yes, we look towards the future, but we recognize that in this moment He is making all things new.
Jeffrey Heine:He's not done making things new yet. He's he's not done, but when Christ rose from the grave, His kingdom began breaking through. Those things began being real in our lives. And I was talking with, just some friends today, and and the story came about. One one of the ways that I remember experiencing this, coincidentally, David, is when my father died.
Jeffrey Heine:I was in college, a junior, in college at the time, and my dad was 54 years old. He was he was in great health, but I got a call. I was at school, and I just got a call said, hey, your dad had a heart attack. You need to come home. And, and they didn't say how he was doing or anything, just said he had a heart attack, which shocked me, and Lauren and I were dating at the time, and we went to my car, and before we got in to to race home, I just stopped and I prayed.
Jeffrey Heine:And in that moment, the Lord clear as day just said, your dad's with me. You don't have to rush home. There's no need for you to rush home. Your dad's with me. And I told more than that, God just he just said, my dad's with him, and and I just started singing.
Jeffrey Heine:For 2 hours, I just I just started singing hymns. And what I remember about that time, and I I for the longest time I kept trying to pinpoint this this feeling, because it was a it was a hard feeling to describe. When God said, I've taken your dad, and I felt that, I had this kind of fluttering in my stomach. This fluttering that I hadn't had before. And this is gonna sound so strange, but I had the same fluttering years later in New York City, When Lauren and I went to go see a Broadway play and I heard the orchestra warming up, and it it had this little fluttering, and I realized, this is a this is an excitement.
Jeffrey Heine:There's it's actually anticipation. It's the same feeling I've been able to think about it more later, like when I'm going on a long journey, and I get this kind of feeling in my stomach, like something epic is about to begin. Something in my life is about to change, or is it gonna be new experiences? Lauren, we were talking, she said she had the same thing, at one point in Haiti, when she was able to help this mother, and she realized her life had changed at this moment. That Haiti was always going to be a part of her life, and she had this sensation.
Jeffrey Heine:And what it what it was it's not that I wasn't sad, I was grieving. My father was my best friend, and there was sorrow. But the sting was gone. And and in its place was actually kind of an excitement anticipation, knowing the journey my dad was on. And that he would worship his father in the land of the living, and that he was not dead.
Jeffrey Heine:And it excited me. It set my heart on fire, and I couldn't stop singing. And what I realized at that moment is all those things I've been I've been studying, and and I knew, and I believed, all of a sudden, they became real. It's no longer resurrection in theory. And a lot of us, we we have this resurrection in theory, but but now all of a sudden, this journey began, and now, do you really believe this?
Jeffrey Heine:And if you do, this should set your bones on fire. There was a joyful anticipation from my father knowing he was now in the land of the living. The Lord was in my heart at that moment making things new. Even when it looked like the disciples who were coming down there seeing everything around them just just going to to chaos and everything fallen. God's always working things new.
Jeffrey Heine:The Lord is making things new in this world. This last chapter to Revelation, it's second to last chapter in Revelation, is one of the most pivotal passages of scripture in my life. Listen, if our hope was only in the future, and not in the present that Jesus is presently making all things new, presently doing changes. If our hope was only in the future, then let's just close shop. Let's just who cares about the world?
Jeffrey Heine:Let it fall away. Let's just go and wait for a sweet by and by. But Jesus says, don't you dare. You look, and you you pray, and you hope, and you long for that future resurrection. But now I'm working.
Jeffrey Heine:Now I'm reigning through my church. Now you are to be doing my work, with great anticipation of that day. Paul makes that argument. Listen to this from 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says, Behold, I tell you a mystery.
Jeffrey Heine:We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and the mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory?
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore I said, so he paints all of this. We look to the future, we look to future.
Jeffrey Heine:We're gonna get new bodies. Everything's gonna be great. Therefore, do we do nothing and just wait for that day? He says, no. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Jeffrey Heine:Currently now, Jesus is building His kingdom. He is doing a new thing, and we get to be a part of that now. The things that we labor for are not in vain. They will be consummated on that last day. And the gates of hell will not prevail against what the Lord has built.
Jeffrey Heine:We're gonna celebrate that, the kingdom of God through the taking of this bread and this wine. Because without the broken body and blood of Jesus, there is no everlasting kingdom. Because it was on the cross that Jesus defeated the kingdom of Satan and establishes the kingdom of God. It was at the cross that Jesus defeats the power of Satan and establishes his power. It was at the cross that Jesus defeats any glory going to Satan, and he receives all glory at the cross and through His resurrection.
Jeffrey Heine:Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, and He establishes it here forever.