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The Lord’s Prayer IV
Your Kingdom Come
We continue in our series on the Lord’s Prayer, which we have entitled “Teach Us to Pray.” I would like to read again the passage in the Gospel of Matthew where we find this prayer taught by Jesus, starting in verse 7 of the 6th Chapter.
And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then you Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keen on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. “This is how you should pray: “ ‘ Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
We have learned as we have gone through the Lord’s Prayer thus far that Jesus has given this prayer to us as a pattern. This prayer is not simply words which we recite by rote over and over again, but a pattern which informs us as to what are the sort of things about which we should be praying and what order we should be praying those things. This is the only specific pattern of prayer that we are given by the Lord Jesus. He says things about prayer in other regards, but this is the only particular or specific pattern that we are given. I think it is extremely important for us as we look to Jesus as our Messiah and King, that we honor His teaching even when it comes to this very detailed and private and personal part of our lives, that is, our praying, just as much as we would honor it when it comes to other parts of our lives. We know that we need this instruction, that instinctively we are inclined to pray selfishly, to jump right into praying about that personally urgent situation, that pressing anxiety which is upon our hearts. And, giving us the pattern that He has given us, Jesus is helping us (if we follow the pattern), to become transformed and renewed in our minds. By training us to pray in the pattern and the order which He is calling us to pray He is actually changing the way we think, the way we look at the world, the way that we look at ourselves, and the way that we look at God.
We have come today to the second of these six requests or petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. The first request or petition was that our Father who is in heaven would cause His name to be hallowed or honored or lifted up. Indeed, the first three petitions focus on the Lord Himself, upon His honor, upon His agenda, upon His mission in the world, upon His commandments, and upon His will. It is likely that as we have asked Him to hallow His name that our thoughts and our desires would turn toward Him and His will and His agenda in the world. So to ask Him that His kingdom would come flows forth naturally from a heart desiring to honor His name.
But before we go into the details of what this petition means, let’s remember again Psalm 37:4.
Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
The Lord’s Prayer follows this pattern. We first delight in the Lord by calling out to Him as our Father, by asking Him that He would cause His name to be honored, by asking Him to bring about in our lives and in His world that goal of redeeming and reclaiming His world for Himself for which He has sent the Lord Jesus Christ and sent forth the Gospel, and by asking Him that He would see to it that His will would be done. In all of these petitions we are delighting in Him, just as the Psalm says. And then we get around to the last petitions where we express the desires of our hearts. Of course, when He speaks of “the desires of our hearts,” the Psalmist doesn’t mean our personal or selfish life goals. It is assumed that as we delight ourselves in the Lord that the desires of our heart will be consistent with that delight. Our delight in the Lord and the desires of our hearts will be consistent with each other. And so, as we delight in the Lord, and as our desires are renewed, we are no longer asking things as James would say, “for selfish reasons,” to advance our cause, to get our way, to have this, or to have that. Rather, we are approaching our own legitimate needs with the right frame of mind.
So what is it that we are specifically asking of the Lord in this petition when we say to Him “Your kingdom come?” The words are simple and few. But it takes a while to unpack the meaning of these few simple words. Indeed, it could take weeks and weeks and weeks, but we will try to summarize this rich passage in one message.
First of all, when we pray “Your kingdom come,” we are asking Him simply and forthrightly and literally that His kingdom would, indeed, come, that His kingdom would arrive, would be here, would come about. Whatever His kingdom is, we are asking that He bring it.
But just what is this kingdom of His that we are asking Him to bring about, to bring to pass, to come? We don’t generally think of our faith or even of the Lord’s work in the world in terms of or with language about the kingdom of God. We talk about being saved. We talk about knowing God. We talk about a personal relationship with God. We talk about being or becoming a Christian. We talk about missions and evangelism. But, we hardly ever use the language of the “kingdom of God.” It may be that in the other things that we are talking about, and in the language that we use, that the meaning is the same, but maybe not.
Jesus and the writers of the four Gospels understood Jesus’ own ministry and life in the context of the kingdom which God had promised to bring about through Israel in the world. And to the extent that we have lost this proper sense of the kingdom of God in our mindset as Christians, we actually have misunderstood the gospel itself. When Jesus broke onto the scene, when He began going from place to place preaching the good news, just what was the good news that He was preaching? Did He march into the villages of Galilee and say “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” No. He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything remotely like that. Jesus came forth into the scene preaching and announcing the good news of the kingdom of God. Jesus called everyone to repent, to turn around, to change their life orientation. Why? Because the kingdom of God was at hand. It had come, and people better get their act together because the kingdom was upon them! That is what He was saying. That is why He said “repent.”
Jesus said that it was good news that this kingdom was coming. Israel had long been in exile and in bondage. They weren’t really a kingdom at all. Their God was not honored among the nations. They were nothing. They were just a minor ethnic group and subject nation with an odd religion sitting over in one corner of the Roman Empire. The people of God yearned for His coming in the way that the prophets promised. They yearned that God would return to His people, that He would come again to His temple. They longed that God would again, and reign, not only over Israel but over the whole world. They longed for the consolation of Israel. We remember old Simeon at the temple when Jesus was taken up for His circumcision, delighting and rejoicing that the consolation and the restoration of Israel was at hand. God was at work. God was acting. His kingdom was now coming once and for all, and that was great news. Jesus was proclaiming that news. The news He proclaimed was something about God and what God was up to in the world. Jesus and the writers of the Gospels understood His coming in light of these very important promises of their Scriptures, promises which had to do with YHWH, their God, coming finally to His people, defeating their enemies, releasing them from captivity, causing life to flourish again even in the desert, restoring His kingdom and its bounty. John the Baptist came forth preaching, “make way for the Lord,” quoting from Isaiah and from Malachi. John shouted out that there was a highway that was being built even in the desert, and coming down that highway was the victorious King who was coming finally again back to His people.
Jesus understood His ministry this way as He began going from village to village, rubbing shoulders with people who were in need and were sick and oppressed. He understood His ministry in terms of the life and the power of the kingdom of God breaking into the scene through Himself. He understood Himself to be the long promised “Anointed One.” “Anointed One” means “Messiah. It means the promised king, the one who is coming who will rule over Israel. Jesus knew the promise from Isaiah 61 that the Lord’s anointed would come and preach good news to the poor and open the eyes of the blind. He understood that prophecy in terms of Himself. This was a passage that spoke of the day when God would send His special, selected anointed king back to His people. And as Jesus went about healing and preaching knowing that He was the fulfillment of these promises.
Jesus taught about the characteristics of those people who would be His people. This is what we find in the beatitudes, starting with “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who would enter into this kingdom that God was bringing about through the person and the ministry of Jesus would be those who were themselves oppressed, who knew themselves to be poor and needy of heart, who knew themselves to be sinners, who knew themselves to need forgiveness, and who called out to God for help. He said that we had to become like children if we would enter the kingdom of God. He said the kingdom of God was like a sower who went out and scattered seeds. And the seeds that flourished and that bore fruit did so in soil that was well prepared, that is, in hearts that were ready and able to receive the Word of the kingdom. Jesus taught about ways of life that excluded us from life in the kingdom. He said “Don’t even think about coming up to me at the end of time, when I come back, and say ‘Lord, Lord we did all of this stuff in your name’ if you have not been submitting yourself to the will of the king.”
Jesus taught a whole lot about the kingdom of God through His parables, parables which taught us about the growth, the spread of the kingdom of God in the world. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which the man took and planted in His field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree.” This is parable about the Kingdom.
When Jesus came preaching the good news of the kingdom the people of course expected a certain sort of king, a mighty warrior who would fight against the Romans, whom they thought to be the enemy. But the real enemy is different. A military king who would come and defeat and kick out those Gentiles who oppose the reign of the king of Israel would not ultimately be defeating the really big enemies – sin, death, and the devil. Jesus knew Himself to bringing in the kingdom in a different way. So He was quiet about it. He told parables. He spoke of the “secret of the kingdom.” The kingdom had indeed come, said Jesus, in Himself, in his ministry and his life, and ultimately in his work upon the cross and in his resurrection. But, it was going to be like a tiny little seed that is first planted and makes a very tiny little plant that you can hardly see. But over time, and Jesus is talking about that period of time as the gospel of the Kingdom goes forth into the world, the seed grows up and it becomes larger and larger until it is the largest of the plants of the garden and birds are coming and nesting in it. It has a small beginning. But it has a great and glorious ending.
Jesus said that the kingdom was like yeast in bread. In this parable yeast is good. In other parables the yeast is bad. The kingdom is like a little yeast you put into the bread and the yeast multiples and grows and it spreads throughout the bread until the whole bread is impacted by the yeast, meaning that eventually the entire earth will be impacted and affected by the coming kingdom of God.
Jesus also said that the kingdom of God was like a net. You throw it out into the water. You reel it in. You get a lot of great fish, but guess what? You get a lot of old stinky things too. And you can’t really sort them out perfectly. You just have to let them all sit there in the bin, all together. As the kingdom goes forth in the world and as the people are gathered as the visible church, there are wheat and there are tares. In fact He taught a parable about this aspect of the Kingdom too, the parable of the weeds. A man goes out and he plants his seeds in the field and he comes back later and finds that there are all these weeds growing up. What is he to do? Is he do get down on his hands and knees and pick out this little stem and that little stem? No. He is to let it all grow up. Then, we comes back later, he will come with his scythe, and cut down the wheat and the tares, throwing the tares into the fire.
Jesus presented the kingdom of God as the most important thing in the world that one could have. He said it was like a pearl. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he finds one of great value he goes away and sells everything to buy it. He knows that it is the most valuable thing that he could ever have. So he goes and he sells his house and his land and his car. He sells everything so that he can have the pearl of great price.
The kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field. A treasure that is worth more than anything else in life. You would happily sell everything you own to buy the field so that you can have the treasure that is buried in it. God says that we are to seek the kingdom of God as the very first thing in our life. He says that the kingdom should be of first concern -- getting into it, living in it, and seeing it come to its final destiny and fruition. This is to be our number one concern in life.
I would guess that the Kingdom of God is not our number one concern in our life most of the time. But Jesus spoke in parables about the king who is going to come back to His people. When He comes they will be surprised. Many will not be ready. He will not find faith everywhere on the earth. His coming will be darkness for many. But, He is coming, nonetheless. And, when He comes He will restore ultimately, and finally, and totally, the kingdom of God.
Jesus understood His death and resurrection in terms of the kingdom of God. When we think of a king coming back to His people, a people who had been long in subjection, we think of this king coming and defeating the enemies of the people, bringing the people out of their bondage and out of their exile. And, though the people of Israel saw Rome as their enemy, and the way out of their bondage being getting rid of Rome, Jesus knew that from the beginning of time it wasn’t Rome and nations like Rome that were the enemy. The real enemy was sin, which was like a cancer within the human heart. The real enemy was human rebellion against God. Yes, Satan was out there doing his work, but he could only succeed by using that tendency towards evil within us, and then by power of accusation keep us in bondage to guilt. Jesus knew that that enemy of sin and guilt had to be defeated once for all, because otherwise, in our rebellion against God, the only prospect that we had as human beings was condemnation. And Jesus knew that He had to disarm Satan’s power of accusation. He had to do something about the weight of guilt and condemnation hanging over rebellious human beings. He knew that there could be no restoration of the world back into harmony with its God unless sin and guilt were dealt with. And so Jesus came and He bore our sins. And He became the covenant curse in our place. And Jesus defeated the power of Satan to accuse our consciences.
And then Jesus defeated the second great enemy. The second great enemy which was death itself. Ever since the disobedience of Adam God had brought judgment and curse upon humankind and upon the world. God had brought death to these creatures that had been created for an eternal fellowship with Himself. And now, not only was that fellowship broken, but these creatures made in His glorious image were going to go right back to the dust from which they came. And their life in the mean time was going to be difficult and sorrowful. They were to suffer in childbirth. They were to suffer in relationships. They were to suffer in their work, because they would now have to work so hard to bring forth plants, yet thorns and thistles would come up instead. Death and that tendency toward decay and degeneration had taken over, and had to be defeated. And Jesus did just that as He rose in victory from the grave. And so Jesus in His death and resurrection defeated sin in His death and defeated death in His resurrection.
And so here in our model prayer and in our pattern of prayer which Jesus has given us, we find Jesus teaching us to pray once again as His people for the kingdom to come. Jesus wants this to be the passion of our hearts, second only perhaps to our desire that He, the Lord God Almighty, be honored and be hallowed.
We ask ourselves, do our prayers reveal that the kingdom of God is the priority and passion of our lives? The answer for most of us, if we are truthful, is “no.” We are very busy building our lives. We are very busy putting all the pieces together for lives which we would hope in the end will have been well lived. We may even be trying to do so in a pious and spiritual way, but not necessarily in a way that reveals hearts consumed first and foremost by what is on God’s heart for God’s world. Ultimately we are not only just to pray for the kingdom of God, but we are to understand our very lives, ourselves, our existence in light of the kingdom of God. Where in this time in history do we stand when it comes to God’s purpose and plan to bring His kingdom? Where are we in our private and personal lives as we think and order our lives, as we plan for our future, as we think about the things that are most important to us? How much do God’s agenda and goal and plan for His world impact our plans? We ask the same thing about our church fellowship. We ask the same thing about the churches of our city who so often seem more occupied with competing with each other than in advancing the kingdom of God. Jesus gives us this pattern of prayer, I think, because He wants us to follow it, showing us what our priorities should be, knowing how it is that these priorities can get rooted within us, that is, through our prayers.
OK, all that being said, when we actually pray that the kingdom of God should come what is it that we praying for exactly? There are four things that come to mind.
First, as we pray to Him “your kingdom come,” we are praying that King Jesus would return and claim His rightful place over the world. We are praying that Jesus would come back. We are praying, “Come, Lord Jesus.” These past few weeks as we read the news and look out into the world how easy it is to be thoroughly disgusted with this creature called the human being. We know there is some good news about us out there. But sometimes the bad news seems to dominate. We see five children murdered by their mother. Even if there were circumstances which weakened her, nevertheless, it happened. It is incredibly tragic. Our hearts are broken. There are ethnic groups all over the world fighting one another. It seems like the main thing going in the world is how much money can all the companies make and how can we get in on all of that. We see that the weak and the poor and the oppressed get left behind. We see the environment despoiled, the water and air dirty and unhealthy. We see us human beings doing whatever we want or need to do to God’s world in order that we could make money. We see innocent young lives put to death for selfish reasons. We see increasingly old people carted away. It won’t be long before they are carted into a little chamber and they look at a nice video screen with nice music while a little bit of odorless gas silently filters into the room. Of course, we’ll say, it’s for their own good. We don’t want them to suffer.
If we have any heart for God and His kingdom we just want Him to come back and clean this mess up. Come now, Jesus. Fix this mess. Make things right again. Come back not just for your people but for your world, so that, that as the hymn says, heaven and earth can be one again and that your will and your kingdom can be united together, that the kingdoms of this earth can become the kingdoms of our God. Just come and wrap things up and fix this mess Lord. Come back. Restore your creation finally, Lord. We should yearn for that and pray for that.
Why doesn’t He come? Why didn’t He do two thousand years ago what we are praying for Him to do now? The reason is that He wants the word of the kingdom to go forth into the world. He is not conquering people by the power of the sword. He is conquering hearts by the word of the kingdom as applied to those hearts by the Spirit of God and by those individuals coming into relationship to Him and submitting to Him as king and their lives being transformed. And this can only happen over time. It can only happen gradually as the Word of God goes forth into the world. This gets us to the second thing for which we pray when we pray, “Your kingdom come.” We are praying for the success of the gospel as it goes forth into the world. Peter tells us that the Lord is patient. He doesn’t want anyone to perish. Every minute that the world remains in its present state is another minute that another person can repent and enjoy the benefits of the blessings of the kingdom of God when He returns again. An so, when we pray “Your kingdom come” we are also praying “Oh Lord, may the good news of King Jesus, who He is and what He has done, go forth into the world.” And we are to be passionate about that – more passionate about that than we are about so many things in our lives. We are to be passionate to see the Word of the Kingdom go forth in far away places. We are to be passionate to see that Word go forth right here in our own backyard. There are so many people in GuilfordCounty and the Triad of North Carolina, USA that are without hope in the world. That are many more people separated from God in their sin and guilt and rebellion than there are people who aren’t. The harvest is plentiful. We are the laborers, not only possibly to go to faraway fields but to go out into this field here all around us. We are to yearn and to pray that the good news of the kingdom would spread, that God by the power of His spirit would cause hearts to yield to Him, to believe on Him, to see the truth of Him. We can pray that He would bring this about through ourselves personally, through our families, through our church, in our city, through missionaries. There are so many ways that God can bring about that result.
Third, when we pray this simple prayer, we also pray that those who claim to be subjects of the king will live lives submitted to His reign, submitted to His will, and thus will honor and glorify Him as the king. That includes of course ourselves as we pray this prayer. When we say, “Lord, your kingdom come” we’re saying “Lord change my heart, renew me, impact me that I would bow before you and be obedient to you.” One of the problems about sin, about those things we are thinking and doing and saying that we ought not to be thinking and doing and saying, is that all of that time and energy is not being spent on things we ought to be thinking and doing and saying as we bow before Him, things like loving others, seeking their good, praying for them, being hospitable, speaking of Christ to them. Sin is not only bad in itself; it wastes the time and opportunity and energy we otherwise could expend for the Kingdom of Jesus.. So, as we pray this simple prayer, we pray for ourselves and for our church, and for our neighbors, and for our children, and for our workmates, and for our city – for all who call upon the name of the Lord – that we would be submitted to His reign in every way. And where we are in rebellion we pray that He would act decisively and do what it takes to bring us into joyful subjection. The kingdom of God is not what we eat or drink, but His righteousness and His peace and His joy in the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit lives in us as we submit to His reign.
Fourth, we pray that until Jesus returns that even the structures of the world would more fully reflect His heart for His world. We are not praying for Him to give victory to this political party or that political party. We are not praying for Him to come so that we can win some election. We are not praying to Him that the United States would be dominant and victorious in the world as the only superpower and have the biggest economy, and all of that stuff. That’s not what we are praying for. We are praying for His kingdom to come. That’s a different kingdom. Yet, we also work through our vocation and through our work in the community and through even our political involvement, through the issues we are passionate about, to see the structures of our communities more reflect His will and look more compatible with His kingdom. We pray that God would hold back sin, and that there would be a salt that we bring to the earth that makes its structures and its government even more godly than they otherwise would be. And so we are asking Him, when we pray, to make us to be agents of good in the places where we live.
Jesus adds the phrase at the end of the third petition the words, “on earth as it is in heaven.” I think, given the grammar and structure of the prayer, that this phrase is meant to include both the second and third petitions, that both His kingdom coming and will being done would be here on earth. So, we must remember that we are praying for the kingdom to come into the real world in which we find ourselves. We are not praying for pie in the sky stuff. We are not praying for something “over yonder.” I know that we have sung “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” many times, and I love that hymn, but we are not praying in the Lord’s Prayer for some far away unseen place. We are praying that His kingdom would come and that His will would be done right here on this earth. Because guess what? When Jesus comes back we are going to receive a “New Heaven and a New Earth.” These two, heaven and earth, will be joined in a way that is hard now to comprehend. And we don’t know exactly what that is going to look like, but I think there will be trees and grass and animals and rivers and mountains. It is going to be beautiful. It will be real, more real and more tangible than what seems so real right now. It will be a truly physical reality. So it is the earth where His kingdom needs to come and His will needs to be done. His will is already being done in heaven. His kingdom doesn’t need to come up there. It’s there already. He reigns in powers and everyone submits to Him there in joy and worship. It is here that needs the transforming work of God. And so we pray for this earth, for the flesh and blood, real life stuff of earth to be transformed, and for Him to come back and make it all new again.
I wonder, did you know that you were praying for so much when you prayed these few words, “your kingdom come?” Can you imagine, as you grow in praying this prayer, that you could find yourselves spending five, ten, fifteen, even thirty minutes just on this one petition? I can. Can you imagine how transformative it would be for your walk with Jesus to pray this simple short petition earnestly and passionately? Our living tends to follow our praying, and as we pray this simple petition we find that we are living more for His kingdom, and less for ourselves. Wow! May it be so today!
Amen
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