On Earth as it is in Heaven: By Tim Kernan
Prayers of Fire by Tim Kernan on the 7th Dec 2008
[audio:WhyWeDoWhatWeDo/TK_QuietTimes_2006-12-07.mp3]
Matthew 6: 9-13 Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
This is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples and one of the most radical pieces of Scripture in the bible. In it, Jesus boldly praises God as the very Father of the faithful and worships His perfect name; his perfect reputation. He goes on to utter one of the most revolutionary statements of all time: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In a single phrase Jesus explains the goal and the method of achieving it. First of all, the mission of Christ is to completely subject the whole earth to the will of God through the coming of His Kingdom (Daniel 2). It was the vision and mission of the first century church… not just to plant churches, but in fact to make the whole world obey God’s word on earth in the same way that it was obeyed in heaven. No wonder they were so mercilessly persecuted! They were directing their prayers at the very centre of the world’s fallen nature; its disobedience to God. He then goes on to warn the disciples of the eternal consequences of a lack of forgiveness and teaches them that God’s power even extends to total dominion over Satan.
This weekend I had the privilege of preaching to the church about the importance of our devotional life. When I read this prayer and explained it verse by verse it broke my own heart and kindled a flame in it. If we really zoom out of any given Scripture and examine it as a whole the beauty of it is more than we can even bear: the words of God as he brought about creation and the terrible events that day When He was walking in the garden. His words to Abram when He started to pull together His plan to save mankind and the power of His commands to Moses. The psalms which record the workings of a heart in communion with God and the staccato warnings and urgency of the prophets. From the courage of Nehemiah, the last man of God before the 400 years of silence to Jesus’ ministry recorded in the Gospels. The explosion of the church after the persecution in connection with Stephen to the account of persecutors and false teachers who tried to destroy it and failed. If that were not enough, then there are the very letters sent between the disciples in the first century! How can you take that in and not be blown away!
The first thing that immediately strikes us as we consider the bible is of course how we received it. We can imagine the look on the faces of the Israelites as Moses entered the tent of meeting to talk with God and learn the full truth about our history. We can imagine those words passed on to Moses and lovingly and faithfully taught generation to generation though the period of the conquest, the judges the kings and the prophets. We can imagine Ezra and the teachers who wrote those words down one by one in Babylon as a time capsule of hope for future generations in case they did not survive the captivity. We imagine the first disciples who sliced up the pages of the big scrolls and bound them on one side so that they could hide them under their cloaks and run from the Romans. We can imagine with a sick feeling in our stomachs how all these generations gave their lives so that we could have the word with us today. We receive the Word of God at great cost. People thought it was worth dying to get it to us. Even if we can’t see the tears and blood on the pages the truth is that they are there.
As Christians who grasp the importance of the contents of the bible to our lives and our world,’ we dont just give it a place of honor in our bookshelf to collect dust. Instead, we add our own sweat and our own blood to its pages so that others can know its truth as well. We search its verses to know the history and teachings of God and our people. We go over it again and again because as disciples its our very family history.
In the church if we are not spreading prayer and the love for God’s Word in the Scriptures, then what are we spreading? The church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” who’s inspired words are in the bible! Our bible study as disciples needs to be motivated by a love for God; we need to consider carefully what it says. We need to apply it earnestly and we need to let it move our hearts. Its message is revolutionary and relevant today! Let’s make sure our foundation is the bible and also that we are part of its amazing future, not just reading once in a while about its past.
With love,
Tim Kernan
