It is recited in churches across the country in our day, it is recited as though it is a prayer for today, it is recited like vain repetition as people stand up and uttering together what is commonly called: The Lord’s Prayer.
At the time this prayer was given to the disciples of the earthly kingdom program, Gentiles did not have a father-child relationship with God the Father. Israel was God’s people at the time this prayer was being taught to the disciples of Israel, and God was Israel’s God.
At the time this prayer was being taught to pray “our Father” meant that you recognized, if you were an Israelite, that you had a covenant relationship with God. During the time of Jacob’s trouble, the Israelites will be under tremendous persecution from the anti-Christ.
The anti-Christ will be putting Israelites to death for their faith, and do you know what they will be praying at that time? Thy kingdom come! The promised earthly kingdom to be set up right here on planet earth, because the only hope of deliverance for the believing Israelite at that time, will be the coming of the King and the setting up of the earthly kingdom.
Are we looking forward to the next event on Israel’s prophetic calendar-Christ coming to establish Israel’s promised earthly kingdom on the earth? Or, are we looking forward to the next secret event-Christ’s coming in the air to catch the Body of Christ up off of this planet?
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, why is that a significant part of this prayer for the Israelites? Because the Israelites have an earthly hope, they were promised the earth forever! Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven, but the Israelites will be praying that God’s will to be carried out on the earth to the same degree that it will already be being carried out in heavenly realm.
As faith gives way to feeling, people begin to base their faith on feeling. They want a God they can move to, and they want teachers who can make them feel good in the process. They find themselves on an endless quest for emotional satisfaction, because they relate their closeness to God upon feeling.
How is it that God is able to declare a believer to be perfectly righteous, when in practical experience that believer obviously falls short of perfect righteousness? Paul says, “Know you not” we should already know this and not because it is something we feel.
People oftentimes base their salvation and their relationship to God on their emotions, thinking that their relationship with God is based upon either the feelings of their flesh (emotions) or the capacity of their flesh to produce righteousness through their performance.
Paul says that people will be seeking after and devoting themselves to a God they can feel. That is what the emergent church is all about. That is why miracles for money has been selling so well over the past several decades, feeling related, emotion related!
It is not an outward demonstration of an inward manifestation, as some would have us believe. When we trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of our sensation, outside the realm of our feeling. Paul wants us to recognize that Justification and Sanctification are not based upon feelings at all, we walk by faith, not by sight.
Jesus Christ’s death is historical fact, but what does his death by itself have to with you? In order to be saved, a person must believe that Christ’s death accomplished something on that person’s behalf, where that person’s sin debt is concerned.
To believe in Christ’s death and nothing more would be profitless belief, unless Christ died for your sin debt, Christ’s death would not be good news for you at all. It is now a son issue, not a sin issue, will people accept or reject the payment Christ made for their redemption?
When you accept your redeemer and the ransom he paid, then you are joined to Christ and you have his righteousness attributed to your account. Grace is Grace. Salvation is a Gift. God in his sovereignty offers that Gift and allows the human race to accept or reject the Gift.
It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make Jesus Christ their redeemer. Those who reject the Gift, are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price, that price for their redemption. Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection, the second death.
God accepted the payment for the sin debt his son paid for, if he had not accepted the payment, where would his son be? He would still be in the ground!
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