After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
For not unto angels did He subject the world to come, whereof we speak.
But one hath somewhere testified, saying,
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;
Thou crownedst him with glory and honor,
And didst set him over the works of Thy hands:
Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet.
For in that He subjected all things unto him, He left nothing that is not subject to him.
But now we see not yet all things subjected to him.
But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.
For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Dear Lord, our hearts bow low before Thee, acknowledging Thee as the Lord of lords and the King of kings. We praise and thank Thee because Thou art the God who is full of mercy and grace, the God of kingdom, power, and glory.
Dear Lord, as we gather together in Thy presence, may Thy glory descend upon us—not only to enlighten us, but even to subdue us. We pray that Thy glory may not be just something outside, but may be something deep within.
Will You please make Thy glory so work in us that we may be changed and conformed to Thy glory? May Thy glory be not only something outside, but may Thy glory fill our being. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
We thank God for giving us another opportunity to gather together in His presence. I believe everybody here knows the theme of this time:
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.
This is not just something we talk about. This is something that must be a reality in our life. When our Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray, that prayer fills our hearts with worship and praise.
It is not only our heart’s desire that all the things for which we pray may become reality to us, but that prayer may become our testimony to the world. We testify to the world that the name of the Lord Jesus must be sanctified, that His kingdom must come, and that His power will be manifested even today.
As we testify to the truth, not only with our words but even with our very lives, then when the word is spoken, there is testimony and there is power.
We remember Revelation 12:11:
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
And because of the word of their testimony;
And they loved not their life even unto death.
What does “the word of their testimony” mean? It means that they have the reality of that testimony in them. Therefore, when they speak it out, there is power—power to defeat the enemy, the accuser.
So, dear brothers and sisters, when we are fellowshipping on this matter—the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever—it must be a reality in our lives. Otherwise, we will be bearing false witness, and there will be no power behind it.
It is the prayer of our hearts that, as we speak of Thine being the kingdom, the power, and the glory, this will not be something we merely talk about. It must be something wrought into our lives: that His kingdom is a reality in our lives; that He is the supreme Sovereign over us; that His power is manifested in us; and that He has brought us into His glory.
We do not want to talk about these things and yet have them be only an exercise of our minds. As we talk about them, we want them to be something really worked into our lives, something about which we can testify.
My responsibility is on the third part: “Thine is the glory.”
The first time, we considered what glory is. We saw that glory is the manifestation of the character of God. When God’s glory appears, His character is revealed.
When His character is revealed, it is not merely something to be seen objectively. His character must truly characterize each and every one of us. In other words, when the God of glory appears, there must be a change in our lives.
We begin to see who we are and what we are—that we are full of sin and shame. By His grace, we are changed. We are justified, sanctified, and ultimately glorified.
Glory manifests the character of God. Glory is also the manifestation of His acts. Whatever He does is full of glory.
Not only in the old creation, when the heavens declare His glory and the firmament shows His handiwork, but even in the new creation we find that the glory is so rich and full. It is the glory of His grace: that we sinners should not only have our sins forgiven, but that we may be born again and receive a new life.
It is Christ in us, the hope of glory. When we see the acts of God, they are not merely something to be admired. We find that they work in our lives, and we are transformed from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
When glory appears, it often tells us of the satisfaction of God. When the tabernacle was set up according to all the directions of God—nothing out of the mind of man, but all originating in God—the glory filled that place.
The same thing was true of the temple in Jerusalem. When Solomon finished the temple, his wisdom was manifested in following and obeying all the commands of God. Then the glory of the Lord filled the temple. God was satisfied.
How do we know that we have seen His glory? We find that there is change in our lives, that we begin to experience His grace, and that He is satisfied with us.
This morning, we come to the second point: Thine is the glory.
Glory belongs exclusively to God. He is the God of glory. That is His prerogative.
When God created the universe, glory was there. How do we know? If you read Revelation 4, you find that John was in the Spirit and was taken up to see a glorious scene. It is a view of the glory of God in creation.
John saw a throne set in heaven, and One sitting upon the throne. He was surrounded by twenty-four elders, the elders of the universe, appointed to govern the universe for God. He also saw the living creatures crying day and night without ceasing:
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty,
Who was and Who is and Who is to come.
As the living creatures gave glory, honor, and thanksgiving to God, the twenty-four elders fell down before Him and worshipped Him who lives for ever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God,
To receive the glory and the honor and the power:
For Thou didst create all things,
And because of Thy will they were, and were created.
This is the glory of God manifested in creation. After God created all things for His will, the living creatures cried out day and night, “Holy, holy, holy.” They gave glory and honor to God continually, and the elders fell down and worshipped.
Even after this creation had undergone a change, we find in Isaiah 6 that, when King Uzziah died, the prophet Isaiah went into the temple and saw the Lord.
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and His train filled the temple.
Above Him stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
And one cried unto another, and said,
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts:
The whole earth is full of His glory.
Even though the earth has undergone a change, before God His glory never changes. His glory fills all the earth. Glory is God’s exclusive right.
Sometimes, as you read the Bible, you find that the words God and glory are interchangeable. When glory is mentioned, it means God; and when God is mentioned, it means glory. Glory belongs to God. This is an eternal fact that we must remember: God is the God of glory. It is His right; it is His privilege.
But something happened in the universe. We do not know exactly when it happened, but from reading the Word of God, we realize that the earth which God created had undergone a change.
In Genesis 1:1, we read:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That is the beginning of God’s creation. When God creates anything, He never creates it unfinished. When He creates, everything is perfect. But in Genesis 1:2, the earth had become waste and void. Something had happened to our universe.
God does not tell us in plain language what happened, but He uses figures to show us. There are two places in the Old Testament: Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14.
In Ezekiel 28, God speaks in a lamentation upon the king of Tyre:
Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God:
God uses the king of Tyre, and in Isaiah He uses the king of Babylon. But when you read these two passages, the descriptions far surpass anything applicable to human beings. No matter how great the king of Tyre or the king of Babylon may have been, these descriptions do not fit any human being. They refer to angels.
In the first creation there was no man. The highest of God’s created beings were angels. They were called the morning stars because they were created first. When you read these descriptions, you immediately realize that they refer to angels.
Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
This cannot refer to the king of Tyre. It is something beyond him. Actually, God was referring to an archangel, perhaps the first one created. When God created him, he was created with the measure of perfection. He was full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
He was in Eden, the garden of God. This does not refer to the garden of Eden in the second creation, where Adam and Eve were. It refers to the garden of Eden in heaven.
Every precious stone was Thy covering.
He was adorned with precious stones, and the workmanship of his tabrets and pipes was in him. He was not only adorned with beauty, but when he was created he was given musical ability. We wonder whether this archangel was to lead all the angels in worship and praise.
Thou wast the anointed cherub that covereth:
And I set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of God;
Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
When God commanded Moses to build the tabernacle, the ark was placed in the holy place, and the cover of the ark was the mercy seat. God sat upon the mercy seat, and upon it were two cherubim covering the mercy seat.
Here we find the reality in heaven. God sat upon His throne, and there were cherubim covering the throne. They were privileged to be so near to God.
Thou wast perfect in Thy ways from the day that Thou wast created,
Till unrighteousness was found in thee.
When he was created, he was perfect. He was perfect in his ways; in other words, he served God perfectly. Yet something happened. Because he was given so much responsibility, was created in such beauty, and was full of talent, unrighteousness gradually began to be found in him.
He was created perfect, but because of his wisdom, power, and position, something began to change in him. He began to be proud of himself. Because of this change, God cast him out from the mountain of God.
Here we find a hidden description of what happened in the first world. To know what happened in his heart, God uses another figure: Isaiah 14.
In Isaiah 14, while God was describing the king of Babylon, He suddenly changed His tone:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning!
How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the nations!
Here he is called Lucifer, the brilliant star, the son of the morning. In other words, he was created first. But this archangel had fallen. Why? Because in this passage we find the five declarations of “I.”
Instead of being conscious of God his Creator and giving glory to God for all that God had given him, he began to think of himself. He began to think, “I.”
I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.
He was not satisfied with what God had given him. He wanted to exalt his throne above all the other angels. He wanted to sit upon the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north, the secret place of God—the place of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
He wanted to raise himself up to be equal with God. To put it in New Testament terms, he wanted to take the place of the Son of God. This is the beginning of sin. This is why God cast him out from heaven.
When he was cast down, evidently our universe was under his control. For this reason, the universe entered into waste and void. Everything became empty, purposeless, and void.
God did not create sin, and God did not create a devil. But the archangel turned himself into the adversary of God. The reason was that he became conscious of himself. His pride became his fall.
It would have been easy for God to destroy Satan. God could have used His breath to finish him. But God did not do that. God has His own strategy.
For His own glory, instead of defeating His enemy by Himself, He adopted another strategy. This is the reason why we human beings were created. God wanted to use man, who is a little lower than the angels, to defeat His enemy.
If God were to destroy the devil by Himself, He would get no glory out of it—just as a grown man beating a little child receives no glory. So God raised one inferior to the angel and used that inferior one to defeat the superior one. By doing that, God receives the glory.
Do you realize what we men were created for? Do you realize why, when God created man, He created him in such a special way? The Bible tells us that when God created man, He created man in His own image and likeness. He had never done this in the first creation.
When He created angels, He created them by His wisdom and power. Only man was created in this special way. Why? Because God has a mission for man to fulfill.
The image here does not refer to outward form. It refers to inward quality. That is why, when God created man, He created man with a spirit—not only a body, not only a soul, but also a spirit. God is Spirit, and only spirit can communicate with God.
God also created man with a free will, because God is the supreme Will. If God gives man a will but gives him no choice, what is free will?
That is why, in the garden of Eden, there were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man could choose the tree of life; that is to say, he could choose to live by the life of God, not by his own life. He could choose to depend upon God, live by God, and live for God.
The other choice was to live for himself, to develop his own knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil concerns ethics and morality. Man could depend upon himself to decide good and evil. He could become free for himself and become his own god.
Two ways were placed before man. He could depend upon God and fulfill God’s purpose, or he could choose his own way, live for himself, and be independent. But the end is death.
When God put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, He put them before these two trees and allowed them to choose what they wanted. You all know the story.
God wanted them to guard the garden. The garden had no wall, because there was an enemy outside. God wanted man not only to cultivate the ground, but also to subdue all things—to bring everything under the feet of God and defeat the enemy’s purpose.
But unfortunately, man was not faithful. They did not guard the garden and allowed the enemy to slip in. Adam and Eve, who should have been together because the two had become one flesh, were separated; and the enemy used that opportunity.
The enemy used suggestion. Eve was admiring the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because the fruit was good for food and beautiful to look upon. While she was thinking, the enemy put a fiery dart into her mind.
The suggestion was that God had forbidden them to eat from every tree. In other words, he suggested that God wanted them to die and had given them no food to eat. Of course, that was not true. God had planted all the fruit trees there as food for their bodies.
Then the enemy suggested that God forbade them to eat of the tree of knowledge because He was envious of them. He does not want you to be like God, he said. If you eat it, you will not die.
In this way, he stirred up the flesh within Eve. Eventually, our forefathers fell into the hand of the enemy.
Can we blame our forefathers? It is true that we have inherited from them the fallen nature. But when we come to our actual life on earth, is it not true that we continually choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
We want to be god to ourselves. We want to be independent of God. We want to live our own life for ourselves. We are proud of ourselves. For that reason, unrighteousness prevails, and death is the result.
Satan tries to tempt man and then use man to defeat the purpose of God.
God says in Isaiah 42:8:
I am the Lord; that is My name;
And My glory will I not give to another,
Neither My praise unto graven images.
In the beginning, before God created man, He had in His mind a glorious idea. We call it the eternal purpose of God concerning man.
He wanted man to receive His life, and by that life to be used by God to defeat the enemy. He wanted that life in man to be the hope of glory.
That is to say, He wanted His life to grow in man until man reached maturity and entered into glory. Whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His beloved Son. He wanted His Son to be not only the only begotten Son, but also the firstborn among many brethren, with many sons brought by Him into glory.
It is the purpose of God that we enter into His glory. He wants to give glory to man, but not by man’s robbing Him of His glory. Rather, it is by God glorifying man into glory.
The enemy uses vainglory to attract us. What he promised man was, “You will be like God by yourself. You do not need God any more. You will have glory.” That is why he uses the world to offer man vainglory.
What is the world? The world is something organized by Satan to oppose God. The Bible tells us that the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Satan uses these three things to deceive man into thinking that he has glory, but it is vainglory.
Whatever the enemy offers to man is vainglory, and it ends in death. The glory which God gives us is real and everlasting.
It does not mean that it is not God’s will to bring us to glory and to share His glory with us. On the contrary, it is the will of God. But this is not something for us to grasp. If we try to grasp it, we will end in vain glory, and the end is death.
If we are willing to submit to God and allow Him to glorify us in His way, then it will be real glory.
Let us use an illustration. When man fell into the hands of the enemy, did that mean that God was defeated? No. God did not change His strategy. He still wanted one lower than the angels to defeat the enemy.
But God never fails. In the fullness of time, God sent His only begotten Son into this world to become a man. Remember this:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
Full of grace and truth.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world, even though He is God, He took the position of a man. He was obedient to God. Throughout His life, His only purpose was to glorify God.
He did not try to grasp glory. Instead, He laid down His glory and stood in the position of a man.
The enemy tried to tempt Him. If you read the temptation of our Lord Jesus, you find that the temptation was along this line: “If You are the Son of God, You can do this; You can do that.” And that was very true.
But our Lord Jesus refused to stand in the position of God. Even though He is God, He never acted from the position of God. He acted only in the position of a man.
Satan said, “If You are the Son of God, You can do this; You can do that.” But the answer of our Lord Jesus was that He is a man. As man, He submitted Himself to God, even to the very last.
You remember John 12. When He entered Jerusalem for the last time, that was the most glorious time of our Lord Jesus on earth. The whole world seemed to be after Him. Not only the Jews, but even some Gentiles wanted to see Him.
The Lord said that the hour of His glory had come:
Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone;
But if it die, it beareth much fruit.
If we lay down our life, we gain it. If we try to gain our soul-life, we lose it. The Lord prayed that the Father would glorify His name, and a voice came from heaven, saying:
I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
Because of this, the Father highly exalted Him and gave Him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Brothers and sisters, this is the way to glory.
In Hebrews 2, we read that we do not yet see all things subjected to man. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.
This is the way by which our Lord Jesus entered into glory. This is God’s way into glory. But it was not only for Himself. He opened the way for us, and as we follow Him, we also shall arrive at glory.
Hebrews 2:10 says:
For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things,
In bringing many sons unto glory,
To make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
When our Lord Jesus went to the cross, that was the way to glory. He did it not only for Himself; He did it for us, because the Bible says that He is our Author, our Leader.
The word Author is a very special word. In the original language, it is used only four times in the New Testament, and it always refers to our Lord Jesus.
We find it in Hebrews 2:10 and Hebrews 12:2. We also find it in Acts 3:15, where Peter and John said, “Ye killed the Prince of life,” and in Acts 5:31. The word means that He is not only the beginning, the One who starts something, but also the One who causes it to be completed.
Our Lord Jesus has opened a new and living way for us. This is what we find in Hebrews 10: He opened a new and living way for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.
Between the holy of holies and the holy place in the temple, there was a heavy veil. It was beautifully made, but it separated the holy of holies from the holy place because no one was fit to see God.
While our Lord Jesus was in the flesh, He was the veil. On the one hand, He faced the Father; on the other hand, He separated all mankind from God.
The more we look at the righteousness of our Lord Jesus, the more it tells us that we cannot see God. He is the only One who has the right to see the Father, but that means we are all excluded, because we are all unrighteous.
But when that veil was broken, when Christ died on the cross, the veil in the temple was rent in two. Not by man—God rent the veil. God put His Son into death, and He tasted death for every man.
Because the veil was broken, the way into the holiest was opened. Our Lord Jesus is leading many sons into glory. We must walk in the same way as He did, because He has already opened it and is there to help us go, because He is our High Priest.
Brothers and sisters, the way that the Lord went to glory is the way by which He leads us to glory.
Dear heavenly Father, our hearts are full of gratitude because it is Thy eternal will to glorify us. Forgive us if we try to grasp glory. Forgive us for being fooled by the enemy into vain glory.
O dear Lord, show us Thy way, and lead us in the way of the cross to the throne. Prepare our hearts for this new and living way.
Sustain us. Thou art our High Priest. May Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.