“God, Your Kingdom Come”
Matthew 6:10a
Dr.
Matthew 6:9-10
"This, then, 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 look today at the second petition in what we call “The Lord’s Prayer: Father, your kingdom come!
This morning I want you to see that this is not a prayer for the end to come but a prayer for God to change the world.
Over and over again through the centuries, leaders have called their followers to alter history by their actions.
In a multitude of variations the call is the same, “Come, help change the world!”
· By it, Alexander the Great called an army together to conquer the world.
·
By it Islam pushed from the deserts of the
·
By it the Crusaders called the masses to march
to
· By it Lenin roused a nation to overthrow a tyrant.
·
By it John Kennedy called many of
“Come, help change the world!”
Why is this appeal so effective in every culture and every generation?
Ask any, except the morally blind, and you will get the same answer: “Because the world needs radical change!”
Unless they are sidetracked by apathy, hopelessness, or greed, people want to see the world changed.
We can’t be aware of what is happening in our world without wanting to do something about it.
Almost any week you will
hear of a parent abusing his or her child. Not that long ago there was the
report of a parent who nearly killed her 2- year-old because he wet his pants.
I
felt sadness, anger, rage, and a desire to punish.
I felt a desire to defend, to keep it from ever happening again – to him
or any other child.
Somebody do something!
Something has to change!
Some time back I saw the
picture of a young Palestinian man’s dead and bloodied body hanging upside down
like a battered piñata – executed by his own people for collaborating with the
Israelis.
That
young man was somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, and somebody’s friend.
Day after day we are shown the tragic results of this intractable,
impossible cycle of revenge in the
Something has to change!
Like
some of you, I get up close to a lot of pain every week, if not every day.
I hear it in the voices of those who speak of
what is happening in their lives.
I see it in the faces of children who are so
often the victims of the evil choices of their parents.
Something has to change!
How do we
respond?
Two responses seem to
dominate: Flight or Fight.
The “flight” response is
a refusal to think about it, a turning away from it in pain or apathy, or a
sense of helplessness in being able to do anything about it.
We are tempted
to take a “head in the sand” approach; “as long as it doesn’t touch me or
mine.”
Another response is
“fight” – a determination to change the world.
This is a “roll
up the sleeves”, “get our hands dirty”, “change the system” method.
Most every ideology of
the centuries has been an attempt to “fight,” to bring about change – to
introduce peace, prosperity and happiness into the human experience.
I think Marx,
Engles, Lenin, Mao and a host of others adopted forms of communism to bring
about a change.
And the utopian enterprises of the past were attempts to reduce the
suffering of humanity and bring about a lasting difference.
In our desire to address
suffering directly there is:
·
Amnesty
International,
·
Doctors
without Borders,
·
The United
Nations Security Council,
·
UNICEF
·
World
Vision,
·
Food for the
Hungry,
·
World
Relief,
·
Samaritan’s
Purse,
·
And the
Mennonite Central Committee,
We’ve even tried power
and negotiation to make the world better:
·
There was
World War I (“the war to end all wars”),
·
The Treaty
of
·
World War
II,
·
The Korean
and Vietnam Wars to keep us safe from Communism.
·
The “Cold
War”, détente, and “mutually-assured-destruction”,
·
The
·
The Gulf
War,
·
The Bosnian,
·
the present
war against terrorism in
So much, for so long -
to what end?
Wars
still erupt with ever-increasing frequency.
The resulting human suffering continues unabated.
For all of our
laws, our prisons, and social programs it seems that pain and despair are
deeper and more pervasive with each passing year.
Billions of dollars, millions of lives, untold hours of effort, for what?
In a recent editorial,
Charles Colson, commented on the changes the liberals attempted in the 60s; the
program dubbed “The Great Society” was to fix society but “welfare soared and
so did crime.”
Then
in the 80s conservatives had their chance with law and order policies. “Today
there are 2.1 million people behind bars… and crime remains high stubbornly
high.” (Colson in Christianity Today August 2005, p80)
Why can’t we change
things?
Prior to WWII, even many Christians thought everything would gradually get better and better until finally peace and prosperity would be ushered in fully – the kingdom of God on earth would arrive.
But as the evils of Hitler’s concentration camps were being discovered one German pastor wrote,
“(Who today) can utter the words
“human progress” without getting a flat taste in his mouth? Who can still
believe today that we are developing toward a state in which the kingdom of God
reigns in the world of nations, in culture, and in the life of the individual? The earth has been plowed too deeply by the
curse of war, the streams of blood and tears have swollen all to terribly,
injustice and bestiality have become all to cruel and obvious for us to
consider such dreams to be anything but bubbles and froth.” (Thielicke 62)
What’s to be done?
Jesus came in the midst of just such times.
In
the Sermon on the Mount, which includes The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus was speaking
to a broken people – oppressed politically and economically (they were a
subjugated people), they were sick, crippled, and many were driven to despair.
They lived at a subsistence level,
dependent each new day even for their bread.
Jan
Lochman wrote, “These were the poor, the failures, both in the economic sense –
the hungry and unemployed – and also in the moral and religious sense – the
despised and ignored whom the official church and society excluded… There were
also the blind, the physically and mentally handicapped, the sick, with their
reduced potentialities. There were also the defeated, those who had suffered
shipwreck through outer blows or inner failure and collapse. They were all
there, the whole human race, all of us with our own special needs.” (Lochman 62)
And what did Jesus claim?
What was he promising in their and our messy, painful world?
Jesus came preaching the good news of the kingdom.
Matthew
4:23-25 “Jesus went throughout Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom…”
He said the “good news” was that God’s presence and power had invaded our world and was available to us, individually and corporately – life could be different.
Not only was he preaching “good news” but the Scripture says, he went everywhere “healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them.”
And all the time, the
clear implication was that what Jesus was doing was just the tip of the
iceberg – that this was, in part, what it means when the “world” of God – “the
kingdom of heaven”, “the kingdom of God” - invades our “world.”
Jesus said in Luke 4:18,19, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has
anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom
for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the
oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Jesus
had come to change the world!
Jesus said the Kingdom of God had come!
And in The Lord’s Prayer he prays, “Father, in heaven,
your kingdom come.”
What
are we to understand about the “kingdom?”
To Jesus the “kingdom” is not simply the place where you go when you die.
In Webster’s dictionary “kingdom” is defined as a place over which a king rules – e.g. “The United Kingdom”
But more to the point, it is also defined as the position or rank or power of a king.
Or as I would say it, “The king’s reign and authority.”
So the “Kingdom” Jesus prays for is not first of all a place but is God’s authority, his right to rule.
And, as I said earlier, when he prays, “your kingdom come,” he is not just asking for the end to come.
Here’s another way of understanding it:
The Bible refers to “this age” and “the age to come”.
We understand “this age” to mean the one in which we presently live and “the age to come” as the one ushered in when Jesus comes again.
We also think of “this age” as being ruled by sin and death (the kingdom of this world) and “the age to come” as being ruled by God (the “kingdom of heaven”).
But what Jesus came announcing was the good news that God’s future kingdom rule and benefits have reached back into this age.
If we are in the kingdom of God or the kingdom of God is in us, it means that we are in God’s loving presence and under his sovereign rule now.
It is true that a day is coming, at the return of Jesus, when God’s kingdom will reign in all places and over all people but now he has reached down to us and offered his presence and rule to those who will receive Jesus.
Rutgers wrote, “The kingdom of God
in this sense may then be defined as the rule or will of God established in the
hearts of (his) people, which rule… is, and progressively increases to be, the
operative principle that motivates the Christian’s life, gives direction to and
determines the purpose of living.” (Rutgers in Kuiper’s Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer 66)
It is God’s loving authority in our lives.
Think with me briefly about God’s kingdom rule historically:
If we look at Genesis 1 and 2 we see God’s kingdom, God’s rule exercised fully not only in heaven but on earth.
All earthly creation, the stars and sun to plant life, animals and humans (Adam and Eve) lived in the sphere of God’s gracious rule.
God was king and his creatures were his willing subjects.
Then in rebellion against God’s authority, humanity, in our first parents Adam and Eve, threw off God’s grace and went its own way.
Karl Barth wrote that the tragic results of the Fall have a paradoxical aspect:
“Parallel to the history of man’s emancipation from God there runs that of the emancipation of his own possibilities of life from himself: the history of the overpowering of (man’s) desires,… by the power…of (man’s) ability” (Barth Christian Life 214)
We were given the ability to reject God, to be “emancipated” from him, and we did, and in so doing we lost, we were “emancipated” from the possibilities of life as God intended.
Lochman wrote, “Like Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice, man becomes the victim of the lordless powers that he conjures up but can no longer control, which have come to lord it over him.” (Lochman 59)
“There is nothing more terrible
than the man who is left to himself” (Thielicke Our Heavenly Father 58)
We have not created a world that brings greater peace and joy but a world that increasingly threatens our very existence.
Since the Fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, God’s perfect rule, God’s “kingdom,” has been exercised only in heaven.
Throughout the OT period from Abraham to John the Baptist – the promise was that the King himself would come to our world and reestablish his kingdom rule.
And though the King would come through the lineage of one family – namely through Abraham and Israel, the kingdom would be available to all people.
The gestation period was over 2000 years but the king finally came – at exactly the right time, “the fullness of time,” God said.
And in Jesus, God’s kingdom rule even more fully invaded earth.
· That’s why John the Baptist was called a “forerunner” (one who runs before the coming king and announces his arrival) and said the kingdom of heaven was at hand.
·
That is why Jesus
said he came preaching good news of
the kingdom.
· That’s why Jesus did the signs and wonders he did to prove to those who would listen and watch that the kingdom had come and was coming in even greater influence.
· That’s why he died and rose again so that the power of sin to blind and control would be broken, releasing those who trust in Jesus to enter that kingdom and serve the risen king.
The King had come bringing his kingdom.
But there are two misconceptions about the kingdom of God:
The first, I have already described, is to understand the kingdom of God as only future – the coming “kingdom” when Jesus comes again.
In such thinking we are tempted to think that the Kingdom of God has nothing to do with the real world in which we live now.
In such thinking we relegate the “kingdom” only to the future.
We think of it is “pie in the sky bye and bye” and we live life just hanging on or getting by until then.
The second misconception is to reduce the kingdom of God to only here and now.
More specifically, to reduce it to the Christianizing of secular institutions in modern society – to attempt to make the institutions of school, state and commerce Christian.
(Was this also the shortsightedness of
Cromwell’s rule in England and is it the shortsightedness of the
Reconstructionists and the religious right of today?
Are we trying to force God’s “kingdom” on the
world?)
One author wrote, “(This) method of bringing about the kingdom is one of social reformation; they approach humanity from the outside; the agency is machinery;”
Believing that the machinery of social reform will make the world better by our programs. (Rutgers in Kuipers Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer 72)
NO, the kingdom of God is not only future, though at the end of the age God’s gracious rule will be universally embraced.
But neither is the kingdom of God simply our
best efforts at making life on earth better through political or social
programs or even by force.
Jesus said to the ruler and
military leader, Pilate, in John 18:36 "My kingdom is not of (or
like) this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by
the Jews. But my kingdom is from another place."
Jesus said his kingdom was not about swords and programs.
His kingdom is unseen but every bit as real.
It is one of regeneration, of conversion, of sanctification.
This approach is from the inside;
the agency is not human social programs but the effective work of the Holy
Spirit in the individual hearts of people shaping us to be like Jesus. (Rutgers in Kuipers Sermons
on the Lord’s Prayer 72)
By God’s Spirit we are
increasingly convinced of the gracious will of God for our lives and we yield
to his love.
God doesn’t take us by force but woos us to himself.
And one life at a time – the kingdom of God comes.
Jesus
told us his kingdom works a wholly different way from the kingdoms and methods
of the world:
Matthew 13:31-33 “He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a 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, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches. He told them still another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."
It appears so insignificant but it is so powerful and will be pervasive.
And it changes individuals, families, churches, communities and even countries.
And one person at a time, with God’s love, we love people into the Kingdom.
Acts 1:8 “And you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Witnesses
to what?
Witnesses
not to a program but to a person – the King and his love for us and for them.
That’s God’s “social” program.
That’s God’s plan to change the world.
Not just to “save” us but also to transform us, to have us become kingdom people, valuing what God values, loving as God loves, changing our world by who we are and what we do.
Please notice that in this prayer Jesus was not talking to his followers, he was talking to his Father and ours.
He was not telling us to do something, he is petitioning God to do something.
Leon Morris wrote, “This prayer looks for God to take
action, not for us worshipers to bring the kingdom into being – the
establishment of the kingdom of God is by God for us, not by us for God.” (Leon Morris The Gospel According to Matthew 145)
God, you do it.
God, make your
kingdom come.
God, we need you to act.
God, revive your people, save us from ourselves.
God, bring in the full
authority, power and presence of your kingdom rule and let it begin with me!
Change me God!
Make your glory my highest goal!
Make my purpose in life to see that others experience your love and will
in their lives:
One person loved by me as God loves,
One person forgiven by me as God forgives,
One person helped by me as Jesus helps.
When Jesus prayed that prayer and when he invites us to pray it, he invites us to faith – faith in God.
In that prayer we are saying, “God I know that you and you alone can change this world.
“I know that all our political and social efforts, altruistic as they may be, are weak and fruitless attempts at changing what only you can change.
And in that prayer we are also laying claim to God’s
promise.
God you can and you will make it happen.
I believe you God.
Make your kingdom come.
Change this world God!
What did Jesus expect as a result of that prayer?
What did he mean when he asked that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven?
Did he think only of that day when he, Jesus, would come again?
No! He expected the world to change by the power of God.
He expected it to change, by his power, through his people, through us.
Do you realize what we are praying when we pray, “Father, your kingdom come?”
Do you realize we may be contradicting ourselves?
Truth be told, many of us don’t want God’s kingdom authority to rule in our lives.
We like the kingdoms we have built.
Charles Colson in his new book, The Good Life, which I highly recommend, writes of being invited to speak at a gathering of wealthy people in Hobe Sound, Florida.
The setting on the ocean was gorgeous, the house was palatial, and the attire was extravagant.
After Colson shared his story of a life that included being a White House attorney to going to prison to beginning a ministry, the hostess asked if there were any questions.
One man “leaning casually against a tent pole in the back, a cocktail in hand, gestured toward the water (filled with yachts) and said, ‘Mr. Colson, as you can see, all of us here live a very good life… What would you say to people like us…?” (p49)
Who needs the kingdom of God when we’ve built our own kingdoms?
Who needs God’s rule in our lives when we have our own plans for the future?
But when we think that way, it reveals how little we understand the Kingdom of God.
I remember a friend telling me a year or so ago that instead of telling his children that he was taking them to Disney World, he told them he was taking them to this fantastic (albeit make-believe) place in Missouri.
He described the make-believe place in such exciting detail that when they got to Missouri and he told them it didn’t exist and told them where they were really going – to Disney World – they didn’t want to go.
They had no idea what Disney World was like and they wanted the make-believe place.
We think our vision of the future is superior to God’s vision.
We don’t trust God’s plan for our lives and for the world, so we settle for something so much less than what he wants for us.
On our own, at our worst, we have settled on little islands of distraction in our recreation, and of security in our investment portfolios and insurance policies, but deep inside we know the islands are situated in an ocean of uncertainty.
On our own and even at our best, in spite of all our
social programs, we have created a world, not of greater peace and joy
but a world that increasingly threatens our very existence.
Jesus
came offering so much more.
·
We’ll settle for mind-numbing entertainment when Jesus wants people to
have joy.
·
We’ll settle for a 401k and a condo on the golf course when Jesus wants
us to have purpose.
·
We’ll settle for humanitarian aid when Jesus wants people to thrive.
·
We’ll settle for giving homeless people a place to sleep and a meal to
eat when Jesus wants them to have a life.
·
We’ll settle for more welfare, child-care, and counseling for kids when
Jesus wants strong marriages and families.
It isn’t that we want too much when, at our
best, we dream of raising the literacy rate, reducing poverty and increasing
the life-expectancy of children, it is that we want too little.
We don’t dare to dream as large as God’s vision.
“Come, change the world” is not a slogan, it is a reality in God’s mind and plan.
What vision does God have for your life, for your family, for this church, for this city and world?
What’s God’s picture of the future, his vision of this next year?
Do I want his kingdom to come or just mine?
Our Father in heaven, make your kingdom come!
Not my kingdom, or even my puny vision of your kingdom, but your kingdom, God.
O God, rule in my heart and life and the life of every other person in this room and in this world.
God, nothing less than your kingdom rule can change this man and this world.
Do it God; do it in and through me!
Father, Your kingdom Come!
What do
I do?
1.
Pray for God to act – “Father, your kingdom come.”
2.
Repent of my own shallow, temporary, insignificant kingdom plans and
embrace God’s plans.
3.
Seek God’s rule in my own life.
4.
Live his kingdom values in my relationships with others.