Matthew 6:13-15

THE GRAND DOXOLOGY

‘For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen.’

Matthew 6:13

As the Lord’s Prayer began by asking three things concerning God,—that His name, that His empire, that His will, might be magnified,—so it ends with a lofty ascription of God’s praise in these threefold attributes,—‘the kingdom, the power, and the glory.’

I. The Doxology.—We may regard these words as a doxology, and it teaches us not only the beauty and necessity of praise, but it shows us what the nature of that praise should be,—not for gifts only, not for graces only, but for what God is in Himself,—His being, His name, His greatness. Surely this is the highest attainment in devotion,—to go up and down in God, and to adore God for what He does, for what He has, for what He is.

II. The reason for it.—The expression is evidently not merely a doxology, but it is an argumentative doxology:—‘ For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.’ It establishes a plea to every petition which has gone before it, and lays a groundwork for the believer’s claim. And you will observe that this groundwork lies in nothing whatever that can possibly be in the creature. It is not in faith, it is not in want, it is not in goodness, it is not in sin; but it is in God:—‘For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.’ The whole strength of the Lord’s Prayer rests itself upon God.

III. The virtue and sufficiency of prayer lie in a threefold recognition of God.

(a) First, His ‘kingdom.’ Whoever would pray, must first take care that he really admits the sovereignty of Almighty God.

(b) Secondly, true prayer never stops to ask how. It leaves it here,—‘Thine is the power,’—Thou knowest how. The way may seem, to our mind, stopped up,—the desired issue may be, to sense and reason, impossible. What then? It is, then, the very point for ‘Jehovah-Jireh, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.’

(c) Thirdly, true prayer fixes its eagle eye above the gifts, above the thrones, above the angels and the saints, on the ‘glory’ of God.

IV. The Grand Amen.—No one could perhaps say, concerning the whole of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘So it is with my soul.’ But to every part of that prayer, his conscience will bear him witness, that his heart leaps to it. Therefore, he loves to throw it back upon God’s faithfulness, and say, ‘Amen.’ And ‘Amen’ will never be the word it ought to be to you, till you see in your ‘Amen’ the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,—‘the Amen, the True and Faithful witness in heaven.’

—The Rev. James Vaughan.