0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Do you know in the Bible it says God will reveal mysteries to us? I got a mystery to reveal about the Lord's Prayer in the next More Faith, More Life podcast. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, your voice of revival. We need revival in the land and we tell you ingredients on here and other things from personal revival that you can get today. I want to reflect on something, get a fresh revelation on something.

0:00:27 – (Steve Gray): And kind of the bottom line of it is not just for Bible revelation or just more knowledge for you or for me or us, but it also is a reflection on what's going on in the world. And of course, the Middle east is in the news all the time, and United States is being very supportive and has been, and I'm glad of Israel. And I want you to get a fresh revelation of kind of where we are, maybe in a timetable, a little bit in history, and base it on something that maybe we miss a little bit along the way.

0:01:03 – (Steve Gray): So I want to start off, when I talk about a fresh revelation, I want to start off with what we call the Lord's Prayer. When I was in the Methodist Church, few years really young in the Nazarenes, and we moved to another city and ended up. There was a Methodist church close by and we started going there. Well, the Methodist Church, I guess they still do it, but they had you repeat the Lord's pr. Every service.

0:01:30 – (Steve Gray): Every service. You said it. There were a few other things. You did every service, too. You stood up and sang a certain song, Glory be to the Father, and like, you know, a little thing. And you did it every service at the same time. Every service, the organ would hit the court and everybody stand up and sing it and sit back down. Well, we did the Lord's Prayer, but we didn't really understand, especially as a kid, you know, I didn't understand the Lord's Prayer.

0:01:53 – (Steve Gray): And so maybe you don't either, or maybe it's. It just needs some fresh revelation. Okay, so let's start. Let's look at the Lord's Prayer. This is from Matthew 6. We know it. I can say it without looking at it, can't. You probably can, too, but obviously it starts out, our Father in heaven. Location. Hallowed be your name. Now, I've done a lot of teaching on the word hallowed, which is to be honored, to be praised, to be glorified, because I never say the word hallowed. You know, I never say it, I never pray it, unless I'm saying the Lord's Prayer.

0:02:26 – (Steve Gray): So we need to know what it means. And it can be, you know, honor, praise to be sanctified, which I'm going to talk to you about in a little bit. So that's it. First of all, that starts it out, and then it mentions, as you know, the kingdom comes and the will of God. Two things, kingdom and the will of God. Then bread, give us our bread, forgive us our debts, and free us from the evil one. That's how Matthew did. But deliver us the last line.

0:02:57 – (Steve Gray): And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. So I'm taking these as ingredients and putting them together for your benefit. And then understand what happened with Israel and why this prayer is here and what does it mean, and get a fresh revelation on the prayer that Jesus said. Pray it this way. All right, So I noticed it. Like I said, the ingredients of it, the honor and hallowed and sanctity of God, the kingdom and the will of God. And then three things. Bread, debt, and the evil one. Right? Deliverance from the evil one.

0:03:34 – (Steve Gray): Now, I want you to know why this prayer is so important, okay? And get it in context. Cause it's the one we did. Well, first of all, we need to understand how important Israel is as we look to what's going on in the world. Paul wrote in Romans 11 that, Remember, don't get arrogant about this. He said, because remember the root. So he's talking about an olive tree and the branches and how we've been grafted in.

0:04:01 – (Steve Gray): And he says, remember, you don't support the root. And that's talking about the original olive tree that was Israel, right? And we got grafted in. He says, you don't support the root, the root supports you. That's an amazing statement when you think about it, because the church has generally separated itself completely from Israel, or not from Israel, but from the Jewish religion, right? We don't have those roots.

0:04:32 – (Steve Gray): We don't have. We're not rooted in Judaism like the Jews were when they were the first believers. So the root supports us. So that's why it's important to understand Israel, what's going on, because we're still a part of the same tree, according to Paul. I'm just saying that's what he said. According to Paul, some of the branches were cut off and we were grafted in, but some of the branches were still there, original.

0:04:58 – (Steve Gray): And so now we have this kind of funny tree where it's got the real branches and the grafted in ones, which is us, at least myself. And we now we have this. But the church that Paul is writing to and the people Paul is writing to at the time, he's telling them. But don't get arrogant like now. You're something. You don't support the tree, the root supports you. We have to remember that. Okay, I've said it twice, so I guess that's enough.

0:05:27 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so then we still have this prayer. We have to back up a little bit more, though, and understand that Israel had a covenant with God, right? They were the covenant people of God. That's it. And so they had a covenant agreement. And we can just kind of keep it real basic, you know, love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength, right? And then out of that loving God comes the biggest thing that was on God's heart and mind, and that is don't have any other gods, don't get another God. Don't trade me in for other gods or make me compete with other gods. Okay?

0:06:03 – (Steve Gray): Well, they went into the land, and when they got into the land, they started picking up the gods of that country or that group, and it got in and God didn't like it. And so now they have to deal with it. And what God did, he caused them to be in debt to them. They were now indebted to God because they had other gods, which was big. They didn't love God with their whole heart, and now they're indebted.

0:06:36 – (Steve Gray): And so the punishment for it or the way to pay their debt is God said, here's what's going to happen. You're going to get exiled to another country. You're going to be exiled because of these other gods, and then you're going to owe me, okay? And you're going to pay your debt by being in exile. And while you're in exile, then you're going to be obviously in captivity. But while you're in exile, then you're going to find the lack that you have is you lack bread.

0:07:09 – (Steve Gray): You don't have means of supporting yourself. You're in slavery or a servant in this other country. So you lack bread. You lack means to support yourself. You have this debt that you created by having other gods. And now you started getting interested in their other gods. And instead of you seeing I like serving other gods, he says, you're going to end up serving them. You're going to come under the power of these other gods.

0:07:44 – (Steve Gray): And so that's what it said. And when I read it in Ezekiel or no, in Jeremiah, where Jeremiah mentions that you're going to come under the power of other gods. And so that's what happened to them, okay? And then, though they also have the promise you're Going to be exiled into another country and you're going to have needs, you're going to be servants, you're going to be in slavery, you're going to be under the power of their demonic gods and all this kind of stuff. But then God promises in Ezekiel, that's what I was thinking about a minute ago, Ezekiel 36. He says, but I'm going to let a certain amount of time, kind of like being in jail, I guess a certain amount of time is going to pass and the debt will then be considered paid.

0:08:30 – (Steve Gray): And then I will bring you back to the land and we're going to kind of start over. I'll bring you back to the land and restore what you lost. I'm going to restore you. Okay, now quickly, we have to understand that's the roots of what Jewish people thought before even the ministry of Jesus. So a lot of times when you read the Bible, you read the Gospels particularly, or the words, not just of Paul, but the words of Jesus.

0:09:00 – (Steve Gray): We don't have the roots. We don't have that root system that we talked about of that tree to understand that they're interpreting what God is saying by things that for hundreds of years they believed. And long before the ministry of Jesus, God was saying, yes, you'll go into captivity. Which they did. And then he brought them back. But they still didn't get it. They didn't get the message, because even though they were in Israel, he brought them back. They're in Israel, and that's where Jesus ministry is, right? He's in Jerusalem, et cetera, around Galilee.

0:09:35 – (Steve Gray): But they're still in captivity in their own country because Rome now controls Israel. They're under the thumb of Rome, so they're still in captivity. So therefore the things that were happening when they were in another land are still happening to them. There's lack, there's poverty, there's demonic powers. Where did Jesus go? Everywhere he went, there's demonized people, right? And so they're still in captivity even though they're in their own land. All right, so maybe it sounds like I'm teaching too much. Just hang on and you'll get this in just a second. All right?

0:10:18 – (Steve Gray): And then God says, but I'm going to bring you back and I'm going to restore you. And they believe that hundreds of years before the ministry of Jesus, they believed in restoration. God is going to establish us in the land and restore to us our fortunes and the things that we lost. So they had. So back to the problem. They had debt, they had lack, they had no provision, and they had the power of other Gods, all right?

0:10:45 – (Steve Gray): But God wants to bring them back and restore them. Okay, now let's go back. Let's go back to the Lord's Prayer, all right? And see how it makes such good sense when he taught them to pray this and how their root system would interpret it a lot different than. Than we who don't have that root. Okay, let's go back. So they're still in captivity, but they're in Israel in captivity under Rome, right? And they want to get out of the power under the power of Rome. That's a big deal in Jesus day to the people, okay? So he said, they asked us, teach us how to pray. And he does what we said, hallowed be thy name.

0:11:26 – (Steve Gray): I want to add that we don't use this word much in this prayer, but that also means sanctify. Sanctify. Do you know what sanctify means? Set apart. Sanctify means to be set apart. Okay? So when he says pray, hallowed be your name, obviously, honor. I've preached a lot on that. But if he's going to sanctify his name apart and they need to be a part of it, how do you set God's name apart? You set it apart from all the names of the other gods here. Your name is sanctified. Set apart.

0:12:06 – (Steve Gray): We don't have any other God's names now. We got rid of all those gods, okay? The kingdom comes and will be done on earth. Okay? Now it switches from that to what's going to happen, what God's going to give. Now listen to what he says. The three things. What's the three things? Give us today our bread, forgive us our debt, and get us out of the power of the evil one. The three things that was happening to them in captivity and continued to happen because of the captivity of Rome.

0:12:40 – (Steve Gray): He's actually praying a prayer for them to have all these things taken care of. So that means if he says bread debt, and from the evil one, he's talking about being restored, because that's what he said he'd do. When they react to I'm going to restore you, so they're more certain. I mean, he is the bread from heaven. So we can put that there. We do, you know, but the debt, the debt that they got was serving other gods.

0:13:10 – (Steve Gray): And so he said, so they said, forgive us of our debts. The. That means forgive us of that. That we served other gods. And now we're going to sanctify your name. And your name's not going to be on the roll call with other gods. You're it now and then, remember then they came under the power of the gods of the country they were in or the people they served. Then he began to serve their gods. So all of a sudden God, Jesus says, so also pray that you get delivered from that evil one, Satan, and, and those demonic powers. All right, so the reason that's important now is because it brings us to our day. So I want to tell you in my studies and understanding of this, what he was saying, this was not just a prayer for them right there. And it's not just a prayer that we say, I said in the Methodist Church.

0:14:01 – (Steve Gray): He is disclosing, in my opinion. He is disclosing. This is, well, it's called eschatology. But this is an end time prayer of what he is going to do to restore Israel. Right? Because the key words are there. The key words, bread, debt and power over being freed from the power of the devil. Now what do we see today? Look at Israel today. Israel is becoming, with our help, obviously, but, but Israel is becoming its own world power.

0:14:37 – (Steve Gray): Prosperous, right? Prosperous. And they come to Israel not to have other gods, but unfortunately there are some there. But Israel, the Israelites that I've seen and I've worked with, they're not serving the gods of other nations that still live in Israel. So this is a fulfillment. This is like an end time thing that shows God is doing something. So when we get the news and we see what's happening and the bombing and that, and we're trying to figure out what's Israel up to and what we're up to and all that, what is really, really happening.

0:15:15 – (Steve Gray): See, God is fulfilling his promise. Israel came back to the land and became a nation. And in one day, in 19 May, it was 1948, it kind of started in 47, but 48 it was declared and became a nation. And they had nothing. If you just take that. That was just a few years after the World War II with the Holocaust where you saw how terrible the death camps were. And so now, just now, all of a sudden, they're their own nation.

0:15:46 – (Steve Gray): That quick. And since then, in those years, since then, they've grown, grown and grown and more restoration, more restoration, more restoration. It appears that the debt they got for serving other gods has been forgiven. And now when Jesus says this, this is what you ought to pray is get out of that debt, get the promise of bread. Because when you were in captivity, you couldn't provide. And now God going to give us bread, provide us with bread, provide, get us out of this debt that we created. Because we have served other gods and get us out of the power of the evil one, get us free.

0:16:32 – (Steve Gray): And so sometimes when you see that for all these years all these nations have threatened to annihilate Israel, which they threatened in World War II. And it's just continued, right? But now what's happening, nations are changing, armies are being destroyed, missiles are being shot down. All of a sudden they're getting out from underneath the thumb of the evil one that wants to annihilate them. And they're becoming a world power.

0:17:02 – (Steve Gray): So when you hear the Lord's Prayer the next time you realize it's bigger in my thinking now, it's an end time eschatological, right? Fulfillment that we are living in the time of the fulfillment of this prayer. It was important then, but it's being fulfilled in our day. Because it couldn't have been fulfilled when there was no Israel. It couldn't have been fulfilled in 1946. Cause there was no Israel, right?

0:17:30 – (Steve Gray): But then Israel came and this prayer, which is good for us too, because we're grafted in, but we're grafted into what God's doing in Israel. So restoration should be something that all people that love God see happening these things. Bread debt's gone and the power of demonic forces are being broken. And we're being delivered from evil and the, the evil one. Now the interesting thing that's kind of, I think the word would be ironic is while Israel right now is being delivered from the gods that wanted to destroy them and being the power one now, right?

0:18:10 – (Steve Gray): They're the power one. God is sanctifying his name through them as they're raising them up. And it's not necessarily them, it's the work of God, right? He gave them bread, he can, he forgave the debt and he's delivering them from the evil one, right? And raising them up. The irony of it is, is the gods that they're being delivered of right now are gods that people are trying to spread in our country and our government right now.

0:18:40 – (Steve Gray): So while they're being delivered and breaking the power of those gods and those enemies, we're seeing people bring and import. You know what it means to import something? Importation, right? Not impartation, but import. The teachings and the ideas of other gods now are trying to get in and the religion of other countries. We didn't go there like Israel went into captivity, but they're trying to put us into captivity to those gods that Israel is breaking the power of over them.

0:19:12 – (Steve Gray): And. And we're in and there's not all Americans obviously, but there are people here trying to bring those gods. And now what happens? What's going to happen if we fall for it? What's going to happen if we allow it in our government and in our countries and in our cities? What's going to happen if we allow these other gods? See, that's the one thing God said. No, no, you know, we say in God we trust then and liberty and justice for all. We say, oh, this thing then. And these are godly things, they're not other God principles.

0:19:45 – (Steve Gray): The other god principles will take your freedom away. And so we have to stay within God. We trust the God we've been trusting. Rather, if we start falling for other gods, what's going to happen? Well, we won't necessarily go into exile in another country, but you can be in captivity in your own country under the power of another country. Other gods lack, lack of bread, indebted to God because we served other gods. Right, all this, the same thing could happen in America then the last thing I want to say is we personally, just us as people, we need to be careful that we have not wandered away, if we ever had it, from a really true love and care for God. And we've allowed the gods of this world the ideas the church has opened its door to. The gods of this world, you say, what's that like I'm going to go to a Christian church and maybe they'll have a Buddha there. No, no, no, no, not like that. It's the gods of this world.

0:20:49 – (Steve Gray): Selfishness, self-centered, humanistic, right? Love of self, serving self, all this, it's a self-gospel and we make now we've made ourselves, the God that we serve is us, we serve ourselves. And so we have to be careful of that because it could open up exile to you. And then all of a sudden things are not going how you want. Money's not going how you want. The finances, the relationships, moving ahead just in your job.

0:21:21 – (Steve Gray): And the church is dull. It doesn't see the power of God, where all these symptoms are going off and all of a sudden we don't know why. Well, we can learn from Israel, right? We have to be careful that we don't go into captivity under demonic power or under just the demons of other gods that we're allowing to come into our country right now. So there's practical side, but there's the beauty side. As we see what God is doing with Israel, that means he is the God of restoration.

0:21:51 – (Steve Gray): So we need to grab that because that means what being Restored. And that means we could have revival. Revival. God says, I will restore to you and have a revival of the kingdom of God. A revival of plenty of bread, debt free, right? And the powers of the darkness that try to put their thumb on us, the evil powers, they're gone. We've been delivered. We've been delivered from the evil one. It's called revival. It's a revival of God. It's a revival of the love of God. It's. It's the revival of making God the center. It's a revival of getting rid of all other gods, whether they're actual statues or teachings or just the love of self, making ourselves God, whatever, getting rid of those and all of a sudden focusing on loving God with all our hearts. Have no other gods before him. And then we can begin to look to the promise of God will protect us, God will restore us, God will revive us.

0:22:55 – (Steve Gray): And we see this in the actual looking at Israel, but we can see it in the spiritual. We want to see it here in the church and across our nation. So the next time you say or read or talk about the Lord's Prayer, it's not just what he said, pray. Then he is declaring prophetically, it's a prophetic prayer that the day is coming when all this is going to happen to Israel. And since we're in the same tree, it'll also happen to us.

0:23:25 – (Steve Gray): Is that too much Bible teaching today? I just, I don't know, just got in the mood to teach a little bit and I hope it was helpful to you. Go to https://stevegrayministries.com. There's a whole lot of teaching there. A new book will be coming out. I should probably have told you today, but I'll tell you soon about this new book that's really exciting and so necessary with what's going on in the world and in our country today.

0:23:46 – (Steve Gray): So subscribe, tell your friends, and be sure and catch us next week. Till next time, bye-bye.