Will you take your Bibles with me and turn to Matthew chapter six? And as you do so, please also turn to First Chronicles 29. First Chronicles 29. Matthew chapter six and First Chronicles 29. I have greatly enjoyed our study through the Lord's Prayer. And as far as I know, today will be the last message in our series on the Lord's Prayer. We have already given seven Sundays to our study of the Lord's Prayer given to us in Matthew chapter six. And one of the things that I've learned through this study is that many people feel hesitant to use the Lord's Prayer in their personal prayers or in their public prayers. And that's Despite the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ gives this prayer, as we'll say, a master class on how we're supposed to pray as his followers. But this prayer often goes unprayed. And I'm guessing that's because either the prayer has not been taught. That might be because we come from a non-traditional catechism background. Or it might be because the prayer has been taught, but you've had perhaps a bad experience in the past with it, and therefore you shy away from it. I kind of imagine it might be like some who think back to a dish that your mother made that you didn't like. Let's say Brussels sprouts, for example. To this day, you might not eat Brussels sprouts because a memory of what you have when it comes to Brussels sprouts from growing up. But today is different. You can do the cooking and now you love Brussels sprouts because you're cooking them. The point is, while the Lord's Prayer might leave some with a bad taste in their mouths because of a past association with it, because they were compelled to pray it again and again and again out of some ritual, it is crucial for us to recognize that Christ gave us this prayer. So we should see its value. Jesus taught us to pray directly to God the Father. He didn't teach us to pray to himself. He didn't teach us to pray to the Spirit. He didn't teach us to pray to any other person like Mary or any other saint. He directed us to call upon our Heavenly Father. So we should lean into what Jesus taught us to do rather than shy away from that. Furthermore, we also saw that Jesus taught us what we should pray for. And we saw at the beginning of his prayer an emphasis on divine matters. The initial focus of the prayer has to do with what God is concerned about, his name, his kingdom, his will. Only then does he turn our attention to our own needs, to our daily bread, to the forgiveness of our sin, to our protection. So we're told what we are to pray for, and that's a wonderful thing. And it's remarkable that Jesus taught us to pray for things that were so mundane as daily bread. He encourages us to articulate the things that we think would be far beneath his pay scale, the things that sustain us through every day. We ought to bring those things up to God. But then he goes on to give two more requests for us, and it tells us and it teaches us that we should not focus on mere survival. We're not animals. We don't have a basic instinct to survive. We have something far greater than survival. We have a higher purpose. We strive to have spiritual significance in the world, not mere sustenance in the world. We want a satisfying relationship with God. And if we're going to have a relationship with our creator, it takes the daily confession of sin and divine protection from sin. We don't want to live a life full of guilt. We don't want regrets. We want freedom from that. We don't want to be spiritually stranded like the family van on the shoulder of I-75 near Cincinnati. We've been broken down so many times before, spiritually speaking, more than we want to remember. So we pray that God would help us resist temptation. We pray that God would help us advance in our spiritual journey to glory, to be with him forever. Those are some of the things that we've learned together in the Lord's Prayer. And today, brothers and sisters in the Lord, today we come to the end of our Lord's Prayer, or to another passage that we understand is the basis for what we've studied and learned for so many years growing up. Let's consider this morning, brothers and sisters in the Lord, doxology. This would be adoring God for who he is. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the series that you've allowed us to enjoy together. Thank you that Jesus Christ, through it, has taught us how to pray, even as he, in person, taught his disciples how to pray. Lord, we ask that our talking to you would be strengthened and energized and confident because we've been taught by the best teacher of all, Jesus Christ, how to relate to you, our Father. And Lord, we ask that you would strengthen us yet again as we close in our series, as we are challenged, Lord, by your word. Help us to align with it in Jesus' name, amen. My chiropractor craps, crap, excuse me. My chiropractor cracks me up in a good way. You see, I try to be funny and I can't even be funny when I want to be funny. Those of you who know me think this is really funny. All right. There are times that, you know, you've done it, I've done it. You turn the wrong way, you lift the wrong thing, you sleep the wrong way, and all of a sudden your back is out. and you are one hurting puppy. It is not fun. And you really wish that you could get to the chiropractor as fast as you can because when they put you back in alignment, oh, that's what does the trick. It's so nice to come home to feel like you can move again, like you don't have to gingerly walk from place to place. Because until you see the chiropractor, you're just miserable, just miserable. That's how you can feel if you live a life that is out of alignment. Spiritually speaking, it's miserable. But sometimes we don't know that we're out. We don't realize that our problem is our thinking about God. Now, as we are looking at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, for many of us, the Lord's Prayer does not end with this sixth request for deliverance from evil. It's followed by a doxology, which is a short statement of praise to God, it's adoration. We're used to this closing line, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen. You see, we who grew up in church, that's how we know the Lord's prayer to end. So we wonder, as we look at our Bible today, why is it removed? Where did it go? Why is it in the footnote? You look at verse 13, you see the one there, and you see in the footnote, some manuscripts add, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen. And there's the short answer to why it's not in our text today. Manuscript evidence. It's not included in the earliest manuscripts. Now that sounds really academic. Like why did we come to church for this? So let me illustrate for a second. Imagine Betty Crocker had a recipe for apple pie. And she made copies of her recipe for all of her children. who made copies for their children, and for their children, and for their children, and for their children, and you know how it goes. And generations and generations go by. The recipe is passed along, but all the copies, it seems, are lost, except for the copy of one great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson who has a copy of Betty Crocker's recipe. He makes some more copies himself and passes them out. And in his copy and in his edition of his grandmother's, Gregory's grandmother's apple pie, it includes a splash of lemon juice. Hmm, okay. So as he distributes this copy, lots of people begin to make their apple pies with a splash of lemon juice. And for hundreds of years, this goes on. Everyone makes their apple pie with a secret ingredient. A splash of lemon juice. That's how everyone thinks apple pie should be made. But then, a few old copies of Betty Cracker's recipe come to light. These are the copies that were given to her children. Handwritten copies. And in those copies that have been found, there's no mention of lemon juice at all. So which is it? Did Betty Crocker's recipe have lemon juice or not? Well, the scholars would tell us, and anyone here who's ever played the game telephone, anyone who's ever played that game knows that there wasn't any lemon juice in that recipe because things get confused the more that they're passed along. Things get confused the more they're passed along. Lemon juice was added later. Even so, the doxology of the Lord's Prayer seems to have been added later. And it was absorbed by so many of us who grew up reading the Bible. So to us, it seems like something has been cut out in our modern translations. But the truth of the matter is, simply, well, it was never there in the first place. It seems that someone who had copied This prayer, in years gone by, thought someone had mistakenly left something out. There should be a doxology at the end of this prayer, they thought, and they put one in. So it seems very, very likely, given the most reliable sources we have, that Jesus did not include a doxology at the end of his prayer when he taught it to his disciples. Now that said, as we read our Bibles, we see doxologies all the place, all over the place, in prayer after prayer after prayer. So it's not really surprising to us why a copyist might have thought, hey, they left something out, I better put it in. That's not a surprise to us. Whatever the case may be, I'd like us to turn back now to 1st Chronicles 29, which is the most likely source of what we know to be the end of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, the ending which was added. So go back to 1st Chronicles chapter 29. 1st Chronicles 29, after 1st and 2nd Samuel, we have 1st and 2nd Chronicles. This is the last chapter of this book. And I want you to read with me these words of David's prayer and notice how similar they are to what we're quite familiar with. First Chronicles 29, verse 11. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord. And you're exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. Now that's a lot longer than the Lord's Prayer's ending that was added, but you can see where it comes from. We can see where, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen, that sounds just like what David prayed. So it's easy to see how that could have been added. David talks about kingdom, power, glory, connects all those things to God. Thine is, if we memorized it that way, or yours is. He even talks about the fact of forever or amen. That's a common feature in the Psalms and at the end of each book of the Psalms. So we can be quite confident that even though it doesn't seem there's a doxology at the end of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, to have such a doxology is very biblically based. There's a reason for those words. We're not in, let's say, theological danger danger land by praying doxologies. So let's explore the doxology that David gives us in First Chronicles 29. Like the Lord's Prayer, David adores the Lord at the beginning. Here he puts, by doing so, he puts things into perspective. How David begins the prayer helps with theological It puts us into the right mindset as we go to God in prayer. David's prayer is very similar to other prayers that we've considered. He begins in verses 10 through 13 with adoration. In verses 14 through 16, he continues with confession. And in verses 17 through 19, he has requests. So, adoring God, confessing to God, admitting to God, and asking of God. That's what we did today in the service. The first prayer was adoring God. The second prayer was admitting to God. The third was asking of God. The same format of what David did. Our focus is going to be on the first verses, his prayer of adoration. There's three simple parts. We're going to spend most of our time in the last one, and it's this. First, we see in David's prayer an example of how we should praise God in public prayer. Praise God in public prayer. Like the Lord's Prayer, this is a corporate prayer. Look at verse 10, where it says that David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly. This is to be a public prayer, just like the Lord's Prayer is public in nature. And that's why when we are together as the church, it is a good and wonderful thing for us to praise God together. when we pray. That should be a regular practice that we as a Christian church take time to in a united fashion, in a public fashion, praise God. This has happened for thousands of years and it's meant to be a part of us week in and week out. That's why it is a, it has its own space in our order of service every single week. that we take time specifically to adore God. And Brother Jared led us in that this morning. That's on purpose. That's by example. That's by the command of God that we adore him. So, point number one, praise God in public prayer. Point number two, praise God with familiar prayer. Praise God with familiar prayer. Like the Lord's Prayer, this prayer is confident. I say it's confident because you look at what David says in verse 13. He says, now we thank you, our God. Our God. Remember how the Lord's Prayer begins? Our Father in heaven. You see, this is a familiar prayer. When we are praising God in prayer in this way, we're reminded that we're all part of God's family. Jesus told us that to all who received him, to all who received Jesus Christ, who believe in his name, to everyone who believes in the name of Jesus, and the name of Jesus means that he will save his people from their sins, to everyone who believes that Jesus Christ has saved you from your sins, Jesus says he has the right to become the children of God. you become a child of God at some point in your life when you call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to save you from your sin. You remember when that was. And so, because you have now become a part of the family of God, we, in a corporate way, in a public way, but in a familiar way, together say, this is our God, this is our Father. We have this similarity. that we're in the same family by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. We praise God in public prayer. We praise God with familiar prayer. Lastly this morning, but this is the long point, we praise God with thankful prayer. Verse 13, now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. Now this is in part how David's prayer is different than the Lord's prayer. Unlike the Lord's prayer, this prayer acknowledges God directly in all things. David uses the word all in this prayer a whole bunch. Do you see it in verses 11 and 12? How many times does he use the word all in verses 11 and 12, kids? Four. And he's gonna use it some more as it goes on. How many times is the word all used in the Lord's Prayer? I'm just noting differences here. And what David is doing is saying this about God, that God is involved in all of life. It's plain to see that God is more involved in life than we might recognize or acknowledge. And I want us to sit on this point for a moment. Most people in the world pay no mind to God. They don't care about God, they don't think about God. They went through the Christmas season not thinking about Christ at all. But we can feel quite strongly when we look at a family picture and then we realize that this year there's someone who's missing from that family picture. And that can really hit us hard. Or let's say that we ourselves have been omitted from something. We've been omitted from the team picture. We've been omitted wrongly from the dean's list. And we might get angry because we're not part of the picture. We're not part of the list. What's wrong? This shouldn't be this way. That person's been left out. I've been left out. But what about God? He's involved and connected in everything, but so often he's left out. You see, it's our responsibility to be mindful of him. Solomon said in the proverb that we all know so well, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lead not unto your own understandings. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. You know, it's possible for us to acknowledge him in all our ways because he's acquainted with all our ways? Because he is connected with everything in life? So that can actually happen because he's not unaware of anything. He knows about everything. He's connected to everything. So through all of our life, We ought to seek his wisdom and his will. We need to be more mindful of him. And what we see in David as he prayed is that David was very mindful of God and that God was connected in all these things. In this prayer, David is saying something true about God. Later, he'll talk about the needs that he has. But for now, he's saying the things that are true about God. And as you look at verses 11, 12, and 13, David piles up 10 traits about God. You can underline them. He says that God is great. He's powerful, glorious, victorious, majestic, exalted, king, mighty, makes great, and gives strength. That's two weeks in a row now. We've had a wreath drop, and now we have a front door run open. There it is. It only comes when I'm talking about God for some reason. Anyway, David is just going on and on about God. He's excited as he adores God. He's like a young man who's counting all the ways that he loves his dear one. You know how young people can be in their young love? They go on and on and on talking about the person that they love. And here it is David who's leading people, the people of God, in accolade after accolade after accolade about God, because he adores God. What you can plainly see is that when we adore God for who he is, this is just like David adores God for who he is. We do this kind of thing. There are times that we too get lost in praising God when we're praying to God. We just can spout out thing after thing after thing that we're so thankful to God for. How wonderful he is, how great he is, how glorious he is, how mighty he is, how gracious he is. We do this same sort of thing because we have been rescued by God and therefore we have this kind of praise. We can identify with what David is doing and with what David is saying because we've said this kind of thing too. Because we're God's child. That said, this was not a normal experience in Israel and it's also not a normal experience for us as well. Stick with me on this. In the context of 1 Chronicles 29, this is a extremely important day in the people of Israel. They are offering to God for the preparation of the building of the temple. You go back in the verses before this, and you see that they made great sacrifices, financial sacrifices for God. And after this prayer, they will make a huge amount of sacrifices of animals in celebration and eating and drinking. This is a great and joyous time. This was a very special service for them. This was not a normal kind of thing. And we have special services too. Thanksgiving services, or we'll say Christmas carol sings. We have special services where we devote a day, a time, a service to just praising God. So I don't want anyone to be discouraged. If for a moment you thought, you know, when I listen to David praise God for thing after thing after thing after thing, you know, that's not how my every day is. That's not what my prayer looks like. I don't want you to be discouraged about that. Because this was not a normal thing in Israel. And it's not a normal thing for us either. But I do want you to think about the Psalms that David wrote. We love the Psalms, and we love them because we can identify with them so easily. And we can remember how verse after verse after verse, David pours out his struggles to God. But in the end of his Psalm, his heart is settled because he fixes on one truth about God that makes all the difference. So you could think about Psalm 13 where David says, will you forget me, God? How long, how long, how long, Lord? But then his heart is settled in the end when he says, but I have trusted in the steadfast love of the Lord. It was just one thing that anchored his soul, and we know about that. That's normal for me and you. We go through seasons, we go through storms, and then we quiet ourselves before God. God reminds us of something true about him that settles everything, and our hearts are calm again. And we praise God for that. It's just one thing, but that's often how God's works. He reminds us of just what we need at the right moment. David knew that, and you and I know that. That is what's normal for us. We aren't always like the young man saying all the thousands of things he loves about his dear one. We're not always the kind of folks who are piling up accolades about God. That's not always what's happening, but it is normal for us to do it from day to day, often one trait, one truth at a time. This is a good thing for God's people to do. David here acknowledges that God is directly involved in everything in life. And also, in this prayer, David admits that everything in life is God's. It's all God's. You can summarize these verses in three short lines. It all belongs to you. It all is from you. It all is under you. It all belongs to you. It's yours. It all is from you. It comes from your hand. All is under you. You rule. Let's read it together, verse 11. It all belongs to you, God, where it says, yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for or because of this, because all that's in the heavens and in the earth is yours. It all belongs to you. It's all from you, verse 12. Both riches and honor come from you. Going down, in your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. It is all from God. Thirdly, it is all under God. Verse 11 and 12, yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Verse 12, you rule over all. You see, that kind of mindset, all belongs to you, all is from you, all is under you, that is a unique mindset to the people of God alone. Only God's people know that reality. They see straight. It's all God's. I love what David said in Psalm 24. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it on the rivers. It's all God's. And it's all at God's disposal, to whom he wills, when he wills, because he rules over all. That is David's theology. It is spot on. That theology is in perfect alignment with reality. That's what we learned from David's prayer, from his doxology, from his adoration of God. It's all God's. It's all from God. It's all under God. Now why should that matter? Well, let's think about the context and how his theology impacts that. The context of 1 Corinthians, or 1 Chronicles 29, is that David had planned to build a temple for God all the way back in 2 Samuel 7. But you know that God decided that David wasn't going to do that. David had great dreams to build a house for God. God said, nope, not for you, but for your son Solomon. So David submits to the will of God, and he adjusts his desire. And he decides, you know what? I may not be the one to build it, but I'm going to prepare for it. I'm going to sacrifice for it. And he makes all the necessary preparations for building the temple. And we're talking massive, massive construction preparation, massive quantities of resources. You see, he dreamed big for God, and he worked hard for God. He made great personal sacrifices for God. Look at chapter 29, verse 2 through 5. Besides great quantities of onyx and stones for setting. Anati, colored stones, all sorts of precious stones and marble. And he goes through the numbers there. He gave a fortune to the house of God. And the people of Israel followed suit in verses six through nine. So here's a man of God who made and executed great things for God. And when it comes to the celebration service, this is what David prays. All is yours. Verse 14, and who am I? For all things come from you and of your own we have given to you. There's a massive theology lesson. In the moment where you would have thought, David, it's your chance to take center stage. It's your time to be seen for all that you've done and the great things you've done. David says, but who am I? Yes, he'd made, he'd had dreams, he'd made preparations, he'd made great sacrifices, he'd led the people wonderfully, but in the end he says this, we're but the recipients of God's blessing. That's it. We don't have a thing of our own. Verse 16, oh Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your Own. That is really, really spot on theological alignment. And that's the kind of theology that we need for every day, the kind of theology we need for every time we go to pray. We owe absolutely everything to God because he owns everything. He gives anything that's ever given and anything that anyone ever has as he pleases for his purpose and for his glory because he rules over everything. And if we are gonna have a proper approach to God in prayer, we must never come to God thinking that he owes us a thing. He doesn't owe us anything. We don't have anything. We should never think that we could Do it on our own, as if we have all we need. We don't have anything, except what we've received from Him. And if we act like God will just give us what we want, or we can go it alone, we are so far out of theological alignment. We must be miserable, and that's how most of the people in the world are, absolutely miserable, because they try something, and it fails. They try it, and it fails. and they're miserable because they're way out. So this doxology, this adoration that David gives shows that he is aligned with God. He's not going to take credit for the massive offerings that have been brought or for all the sacrifices that Israel has made. Instead, God is going to get the glory. This kind of spiritual thinking is essential when we go to God in prayer. It makes it so You don't have to go to the chiropractor, spiritually speaking. We're aligned with the truth of God. Even as we pray the Lord's Prayer, where Jesus teaches us to make requests of him, this helps us realize when we make all these requests, we do so because God owns it all. Anything we have is given by him, and he'll decide how it's given out. It's all up to him, and that's the best place for it. Lord, we ask that you will help you use this in our lives, that we might be theologically straight and not bent over because our theology is so miserable. Lord, we pray that you will help us in our moments that we bend ourselves before you in prayer to remember who it is we're praying to, and remember that we owe absolutely everything to you, and we are nothing to speak about. Everything we have is received. We are all dependent on you for everything and even for the next breath, the ability to stand from our seats in a moment and to walk out of this place. Everything is from you. So Lord, may we come to you with that kind of thought that is fixed within our soul and that makes us so thankful to you and to think even that you ask us to ask of you. Lord, you are so gracious to us, you're so kind, and we praise your name today, even as David did so many years ago. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen.