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[Music] [Singing] Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

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On earth as it is in heaven. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.

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For Thine is the kingdom, And the power, And the glory, For ever.

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Kingdom, Power, Glory. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Let us give reverent attention to the reading of God's word, as it is recorded in the letter to the Corinthians, the 15th chapter,

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beginning with the verse numbered 12. Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.

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If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised.

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For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life we who are in Christ have only hope,

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we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

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For as in Adam all died, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy words. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. The preacher who steps into his pulpit on Easter morning always has at least three feelings. First, he feels tired. He's just completed the busiest week in the year of the church.

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Secondly, he feels thrilled. It is a priceless privilege to be entitled to preach the Easter gospel. But thirdly, he feels troubled. Because he never knows exactly what to say to you folks that show up here only once on the year.

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Now there are a variety of different approaches he can take. For example, he can completely ignore you and make no reference to you whatever. And this disturbs all the regulars a little bit, because they'd like to hear you get the devil for at least a little while.

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And there's a second approach, which is to vigorously chastise and reprimand you. Ministers can do that, you know. I read of a minister who was calling on a home in his congregation. He knocked on the door.

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The lady of the house thought it was her husband. She said, "Is that you, angel?" He said, "No, but I'm from the same department." Well, ministers can be, contrary to that tale, decidedly unangelic.

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But that, of course, that tactic would make you very unhappy. Now there's a third alternative, which is to kind of approach the thing rather obliquely, tell a funny story which has a little barb hidden inside, and then hurry on. For example, I might say something like this.

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"I'd like to take the opportunity to wish many of you a Merry Christmas, since I won't be seeing you again until next Easter." And then there's the fourth possibility. And the fourth possibility is to say that I'm delighted and glad

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to the very depths of my being that you are here. And it's that fourth approach that I choose to use, not because I think it's better than the others, but because it happens to be true. I am absolutely delighted that you are with us,

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not only because it is a joy to see you, but also because you are the perfect illustration of exactly what I want to say. I want to begin with this question. Why are you here on this particular Sunday each year?

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Why, for example, don't we have to have three services on Christmas Sunday? Or why isn't it that All Saints Sunday is the Sunday which has such massive attendance? Or why isn't it the birthday of the church, Pentecost, which finds the church crowded again and again to its door?

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Why is it that it's Easter Sunday which draws the multitude into the houses of God's people? I'll tell you the answer. The answer is this. You come on Easter because, like everybody else,

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you want to know if there's life after death. Pushed right down to its irreducible minimum, that's the root of the thing, you come, like everybody else, to find out if death is the beginning of the end or only the end of the beginning.

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You see, we all watch this great wave of death coming closer and closer to us all the time. We know that there is no possibility of avoiding it. We know further that at some moment, not known by us, that wave is going to break upon the beach of our experience

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and all the little castles that we built will suddenly and irrevocably be washed away. And we shudder to think that that will be the end of it all. Because, you see, written down, scribbled somewhere on the soul of us are the words "to be continued."

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And deep down inside the hoping heart of each and every one of us is a yearning for something beyond this life. If there isn't something beyond this life, then it all seems so pointless and purposeless to us. If the greatest and noblest souls that have ever walked this earth

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end up being nothing more than the dust of the most profane individuals who have ever walked this earth, if regardless of what kind of life is lived, in the end we all end up with an inheritance six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet deep, if that's the end of it for all of us, then Michelangelo might just as well have carved on ice

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the Parthenon be built on quicksand and Raphael to have painted his Madonnas on Kleenex. If that's the end of it all. So we come here on Easter, a kind of a hopeful jury, wanting to hear the evidence for the life that is beyond this life,

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hoping that something will be said, some witness will be born, which will convict us and convince us at the very center of our experience. Oh, we all know the story, how on that first Easter morning so long ago two women came to the tomb. They brought with nothing with them, precious little that you can take to a tomb.

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And when they got there they discovered that the stone is rolled away and an angel says, "He is not here, he is risen." And they run and tell others and a few minutes later we hear the slap of the sandals of two disciples as they come running through the dawn streets of Jerusalem

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and their breath comes short, they're running so fast and their speech is staccato. They're protesting against the hysterical rumors of these women and then they arrive at the garden and there is the angel, he is not here, he is risen, and from that day until this day nothing has been the same.

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And that's precisely the point where we should pick up the Easter evidence. The fact that from the Easter day of 20 centuries ago until this Easter day in 1970, nothing has ever been the same. Look at the church for example.

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On Good Friday afternoon they ran and hid in the hills, defeated, masterless, Christless, lordless. And on Easter afternoon they're shouting the Easter gospel from the housetop. What happened? What happened to change Friday into Sunday?

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What happened to change tragedy into triumph? What happened to change what was a deceit into a declaration of faith? Easter happened. The resurrection happened. The resurrection you see is not something which is explained by the church.

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Rather the resurrection is the only thing which can explain the church. Without the resurrection there would be no church. Those early disciples, they marched into all the barbarity of Nero's claim and came out singing hymns.

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Those early Christians marched into all the cruelty of Diocletian's persecution and came out proclaiming Christ as Lord. They were different. And they were different because of Easter. And one of the ways in which they expressed their difference

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was to add a phrase to the end of the prayer which the master had taught them. To the prayer we commonly call the Lord's Prayer they added these words, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever." Amen. If you look in your Revised Standard Version or your New English Bible

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or any of the modern translations you will not find those words. For they do not appear in the prayer as it's presented there. Only the King James Version includes these words and the King James Version is in error here.

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For these words were unquestionably not a part of the prayer which Jesus taught to his disciples. But there's nothing wrong with the early church having added them for Jesus' words were these, "After this manner therefore pray ye."

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He did not prohibit the addition of any other word. He did not suggest we could not eliminate portions at one time or another as we saw need. This was the model prayer, the pattern prayer. And so the church responding to his guidance and wishing to assert its Easter faith

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put at the end of that prayer some words they picked up from the early pages of the Old Testament. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory." Easter did that. That's part of the Easter evidence. And what does it mean to say that Christ is the kingdom?

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Well, it means more than one mind can begin to master. It means the reason why you're here this morning. It means you see that he has asserted his risen regency over countless millions down through all of history.

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It means that he has asserted himself once and forever to be the master of life. That's the reason we add this doxology. Arnold Toynbee says, "Nineteen civilizations have come and gone upon the face of the earth." And historically that is true.

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But there is one kingdom, there is one empire that has come and never gone. And it's the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Match his lordship up against the lordship of the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. Alexander the Great.

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Alexander was a young man. Christ was a young man. Alexander died when he was 33. Christ died when he was 33. Alexander was born in a mansion. Christ was born in a manger. Alexander was reared a king. Christ was reared a carpenter.

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Alexander died on a throne. Christ died on a cross. Alexander was worshipped as he died. Christ was mocked as he died. Alexander was called by the world a success. Christ was called by the world a failure. Alexander died amidst all the splendors of Babylon.

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Christ dies amidst all the poverties of Golgotha. Alexander conquered every throne. Aye, but Christ conquered every grave. And no man marches today for Alexander. And millions march today for Jesus Christ. He enslaved, but he freed. Alexander made history, but Jesus Christ transformed history.

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Alexander's kingdom's gone, but his kingdom is forever and forever. And we know that in our heart of hearts, and that's what brings us here. And we not only cry out to him, "Thine is the kingdom," we say, "Thine is the power." It's not power in terms of brute force. We all remember Lord Acton's admonition,

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"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Well, the power of Christ is absolute, and yet there's nothing corrupt about it, for his is the power of goodness. Did you never notice how goodness was to him natural?

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How goodness flowed out of him seemingly without effort, and with none of the labor that is so common to us in our moments of goodness? There have been people down through history who have led splendid lives, lives which shame our lives, lives which reduce us to apology and humility in their presence.

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And these lives have had about them many times a dimension of asceticism, a dimension of sacrifice. They were painful lives. They were lives in which goodness came forth out of constant labor and struggle. Christ's life wasn't like that. His life just radiated goodness.

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The goodness flowed from him. You never discover in Jesus Christ any effort to live up to his words. He lived naturally his words. There is no sweat or perspiration of labor about his goodness.

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It is simply part of him. He said that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these lilies. Now Solomon could cover himself with splendid robes. Solomon could get his chamberlains to hang about his neck precious stones.

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He could cover himself with all kinds of magnificence. And yet in the moment of test, if we're to measure the glory of Solomon against the glory of the lily, the lily will always win. Why? Because the lily does not deck itself.

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The lily does not tangle jewels amongst its leaves. The lily does not call upon chamberlains to make it lovelier than it is. The lily is lovely by its very nature. Just so there is a loveliness, a beauty, a goodness, a power which flows from the person of Christ

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to such a degree that the poet who's having trouble writing poetry would never think to cry out, "Oh William Shakespeare, help me." Or the sailor lacking courage would never think to cry out, "Oh John Paul Jones, help me." But that poet of his Christian, and that sailor of his Christian,

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and anyone who knows and loves Jesus Christ can cry out of the midst of any circumstance, "Oh Jesus Christ, help me." And the power of that Christ will flow into his life. And the same resurrection of the body known on the first Easter will be experienced in that human spirit. So that last Thursday night a young high school student in our church

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could come to one of our ministers and say, and mean it, say it from the very depths of his heart, "This has been the most powerful evening of my life." Because in that moment he came face to face, hand to hand, and heart to heart, with a risen, regnant Lord. His is the power, and His is also the glory.

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Let's give God all the credit that is due Him. It's God who with His fingers spangles the night with stars. It's God who ignites those star whips when the sun goes down. It's God who ladles out the sun in the morning. It's God who pens the thunderheads rolling down the valleys of the winds.

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It's God who hangs the sheets of snow on the wash line of the night. It's God who fluffs the blossoms on the bough. God does all of these things, and yet in the moment of darkness, when we're afraid, or lonely, or overcome by circumstances that seem to be utterly beyond us,

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we gain no comfort from a star. We gain no comfort from the roar of the wind. He sings something close and intimate. And in that moment we experience Christ. And He comes not as that which lights a star, but that which sets a flame to flickering in our hearts. And He comes not as the roar of mighty winds, but as a still, small voice speaking within the heart.

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Stand in the mountains and watch the dawn, and you notice that the sun when it rises illumines first the peaks, and then only gradually does the light sink down into the valleys. But it is not so with His light, for Christ comes into the valley of the shadow first, and brings His light there into the cellar of every human experience,

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into the basement of every human difficulty. Right there He brings His light. When did the light first shine? When He was born. And it was shining for poor shepherds in the field, when the glory of the Lord shone round about them. And the crowds that pressed in to see Him felt the light in the compassion which He had for them.

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Wherever He is in life, He brings light. And He brought light into the experience of the church two thousand years ago, and He brings light into the life of the church today. You know the grandest word in all of Scripture? The grandest sentence in all of Scripture is this.

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"The angel rolled back the stone and sat on it." There's a kind of a magnificent contempt about that. The angel confronts the worst the world can do, death, pushes the stone out of the way and uses it as a stool, sits on it, just so.

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Out of the darkness of the grave comes the light of resurrection, and with that light comes glory. And that's the reason we say to Him, "Thine is the glory." And you see in the light of this, in the light of the fact that the kingdom is His, and the power is His, and the glory is His,

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in the light that twenty centuries after the event we are so captured by it that we find our way like millions of others to the house of God to praise Him in the glow of Easter. In the light of that, we suddenly discover, don't we, that we're not a jury here to assess the evidence for Easter.

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Rather we find ourselves being assessed by the Easter reality. Have you ever noticed, for example, how this room is very much like a courtroom? Out here the spectators sit, here's the jury in their box, here's the judges' bench. At least it seems so in my mind's eye.

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As I felt myself standing before the presence of God, and in the company of a great cloud of witnesses, and first there came to testify against me, for I was in the prisoner's dock, all of my assertions of kingliness.

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And they came and stood before me and before God, and to God they said, "This man has claimed sovereignty for himself. This man has claimed royalty for himself, has shaken a rebel fist in your face,

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and has asserted himself in his life. And because of his self-assertions, he crucified your son. And then other of my sins came to testify against me. And one stood and said, "This man has claimed power for himself.

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He has erected his own little petty principalities, and over those principalities he has asserted himself, his will, and in the assertion of his will he has denied your will and murdered your son." And then again my sins marshaled their forces against me,

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and said, "This man takes glory to himself. He covers himself with the rags of pomp and circumstance. He bows down before a mirror and builds a cathedral out of the commonplace. He sings 'Te Deum Laudamus' to himself,

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and with this act denies the sovereignty of the state." And then everything became very quiet, and I had no word of defense to offer, for the accusations were true.

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And then there came the sound of the voice of God. You know what it's like when the sky is filled with clouds, when they're bumper to bumper from horizon to horizon. You know what it's like when the sky takes time to clear its throat with a roar of thunder.

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That's the way the voice of God was, and the voice of God said, "You say this child of mine has killed his elder brother? My only begotten, bring forth the body. Bring forth the evidence.

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Show writ of habeas corpus." And there was silence, and no body was presented. And then I was aware of a presence beside me, and I turned, and it was Him, the Christ, the risen reigning Christ.

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And now I was twice guilty, for He was the one to whom I had done these things, and He Himself could bear testimony against me. But what did He say?

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He said, "Because I live, He too shall live. And even as I know the mansions of eternity, He too shall know the mansions of eternity. For everything that is ugly in Him,

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everything that has made Him less father than thou wouldst have Him be, I have taken upon myself, and because I live, He too shall live." And again the voice of God spoke, and the house was filled with smoke, and this time the voice was like the murmur of many, many waters.

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And God said, "There is no body. My son is not dead. He is alive forevermore. And because He is alive, life is yours.

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Enter into the courts of the Lord." And in that moment my imaginary picture dissolved, and I remembered that I had a sermon to preach to my people on Easter morning. I'd been speaking to them about the Lord's Prayer for some weeks,

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and so I came into my pulpit, and this is what I said to my beloved people. "Every petition of that prayer which Jesus has taught us will pass away save one. There will come a time when we will not pray, 'Hallowed be thy name,' for His name will be hallowed.

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There will come a time when we will not pray, 'Thy kingdom come,' for His kingdom will have come. When we will not ask, 'Thy will be done,' for His will will be done. There will come a time when we do not plead for bread, for we will have everything our hearts can desire. There will come a time when we will not ask to be forgiven or to forgive,

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for there will be no sin to be forgiven or to forgive. There will come a time when we will not ask to be delivered from temptation, for there will be no temptation. When we will not ask for the defeat of evil, for evil will have once and for all been defeated. But there will never come a time when we will not pray,

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'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, Thine is the kingdom, Thine is the power, Thine is the glory, forever and forever.' And on Easter every candle flame flickers that faith. And on Easter every lily trumpets that truth. And on Easter every bell sings that doxology, and every organ thunders that glory in excelsis.

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And the church here, and the church around the world, and the church in heaven, cries out in clustered glories, 'Thine is the kingdom, Amen, Thine is the power, Amen, and Thine is the glory, forever and forever, Amen, and Amen!' That's the Easter evidence, and that's the glory of this day.

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O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou who art infinite and eternal and unchangeable, Thou who rulest the sovereign of everything that is, send Thy kingdom, send Thy power, send Thy glory into every heart, that we may know the benediction of Thy peace. Amen.