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 this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Over this Lent season, we've been looking at the Lord's Prayer. We started all the way back in Ash Wednesday, looking at the very beginning. And we have moved through the Lord's Prayer all the way up to the end. And tonight, we just have one little, teeny, tiny, very insignificant Word. Amen. The last word and the word at the end of the prayer. Amen. You notice, we've said on mine a lot. And after every prayer, every blessing, we say it over and over and over again. We say it in church, every Sunday, over and over and over again. You might even say it, when a friend says something you agree with. Amen. Or somebody says something I really, really like I might say, preach it, brother. Right? After a little bit, this word can kind of lose its meaning. Sometimes we use the word Amen. As if it's just sort of a signal. PRAYER OVER. Right? You You say, Oh, Dear Heavenly Father, you talk to God. And then when at the end, what do you do? You just say, Hang up coaching. PRAYER OVER. Amen. I realized not too long ago how old I am. When I taught this to our confirmation students. And they didn't know what this was. Yeah. Amen. For many of us, Amen is just kind of that word, right? The word that you say when the prayer is over, or the thing that the bulletin reads that you're supposed to say after the pastor is done speaking, right. But it's more than that. Amen is a Hebrew word that's been passed down in every single language ever since the Bible was written. And Luther tells us it is something very simple. It means yes, yes, it shall be so. Amen is not just a holy hang up. Or the thing that you say in response to the pastor. Amen. is a word of faith. It says, yeah, absolutely. God's promises will be so when we say it at the end of a prayer, we're saying, I know God listens to me and promises to respond. That's why it's at the end of the Lord's Prayer. Because it's the prayer that God has commanded us to pray. And I think Amen, is perfect, for this night, as we stand vigil outside of Christ's empty tomb, because this night is the night they lay his body in the ground. And people wondered, what next? What will happen? For many people, it was a night of fear and anguish. They looked at the at the stone rolled over the tomb, and they wondered, what now my life has been dedicated to following this man, what do I do?
Men would have been useful to them. Can you imagine? If the disciples had heard the word that Jesus said to them, over and over, and over it, heard it and believed? The Son of Man is going to Jerusalem. It will be delivered up to the hands of sinful men, crucified. And after three days rise What if they had simply said, Amen. Can you imagine what the vigil for them would have been like? Sitting outside the tomb? Waiting? Could have been how could it be now? What is the Sun gonna come up? Come on that's what it was. That's not what it was like for them. The disciples were hiding. They were afraid. They were worried they locked the doors were feared the Jews they had scattered, abandoned Jesus. They were terrified. They were so stressed out, and all they could have done was just say Amen. Yes, it shall be so. After three days, Christ, the rocks lost so much stress. Just trust that promise. So many of your stories were examples of that tonight, right? You've got Pharaoh chasing Israel, they are at the edge of the Red Sea and they look back and they say, we could have been buried in Egypt, Moses. And then we wouldn't have to walk this far. When they could have just said, we heard the promise. We know what's going to happen. Amen. Noah stepped into the ark of frosting. And the door closed behind him and the rain poured and he is like, can you imagine? And he said, Amen. When he built an ark, I carried him safely through the waters. Well, God judged the rest of the sinful world. And the best, of course, was saved for last. The three young men put up against the entire power of the greatest empire of their day, King Nebuchadnezzar away at the top, who says, Who will save you from my power? They knew just said Amen. We know the promise. Maybe our God won't save us right now. But we won't serve that thing that you made. God saved them to the fiery furnace so much that their clothes didn't even smell like smoke. Amen. And what about us? Amen is a word of faith at the end of a prayer that trusts in our Father in heaven, who loves us, as his dear children. Amen. is the word that we say. When we receive the body and blood of the Christ? And we say yep, there it is. For me. Amen is the word that we say. When I forgive your sins in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit and you say, yep, that's what Jesus one for me. Amen is the word that we say, when we are blessed at the end of the service? If you say, Yeah, God's blessing is on me. Amen. And Amen is the word that we can say, when we face the kinds of fears and stresses that are not quite like a king Nebuchadnezzar with a fiery furnace. A huge flood that covers the whole earth, or even a cross or a tomb with a stone roll in front of it. We just say, Amen. To our Savior, Jesus Christ, and trust in His promises. How much stress do we lose? How much anxiety will just roll off our backs? How much joy can we have? Because our dear Savior or broke free from the grave the stone was rolled away. He appeared to Mary Magdalene and the disciples and all the others up as to as many as 500 people, and then he ascended into heaven and he's coming back. And all we have to do is be still awake. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai