The Lord's Prayer: Your Kingdom Come Part One (Matthew 6.10)
This sermon was preached on July 14th, 2024.
“Kingdom.” I don’t know about you, but I hear “kingdom” and my mind does two things.
Lord of the Rings. I’m a huge fan and Aragorn, the king-in-exile, is one of my favorite characters. So I hear “kingdom” and I think of all these images of swords and armor—this long-haired handsome guy leading a group of people into war against evil.
Ew, Kings. It’s part of being an American, I think. It’s only been 10 days since July 4th. And there’s something in us that makes us bristle at the idea of a king.
So I both love the idea of a king and hate the idea of a king. My guess is I’m not alone in this room.
This morning we’re hearing what it means for Jesus to teach us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And the danger for us when we hear these words is to let our preconceived notions fill in the blanks of what that means, rather than Scripture shaping our imaginations and deciding our definitions. This morning we’re going to look at the concept of the kingdom of God and how we, as Americans in the 21st century, can live as people of his kingdom.
God as King
When Jesus first began his public ministry, he led with this: “The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” What exactly did Jesus mean?
I think it’s best to think of it in terms of challenge and fulfillment. What I want to do is look at both of those individually the next two weeks. This week we’ll look at fulfillment. Next week, challenge.
Fulfillment. When Jesus said “the kingdom of God has come near,” he was summarizing and drawing on the promises of God that had birthed and sustained God’s people for millennia.
They traced their history back to a man named Abraham and a woman named Sarah. God had called them, announcing that through their family he was going to address the darkness and sin of our world by showing profound grace—bringing blessing, not curse, to all the families of the earth.
400 years later this family had grown from those just 2 people to become a nation of people, who found themselves emerging in Egypt, the most powerful kingdom the world had ever known. The Egyptians had enslaved them, but God intervened by putting his power to work to free them. Then after freeing them he constituted them as his kingdom.
That’s what God giving the Ten Commandments and the Law under Moses was—establishing a different kind kingdom on earth. A kingdom that would value what God values and love what He loves. With God as their king, they as his people, he would continue to work to bring his plan to fruition—to defeat all the power of sin and shine God’s light in the darkness.
The rest of the Old Testament are the hopes and frustrations of generations of people—some who take this seriously and live with God as their King, but most who turn away from this. And at the end of the Old Testament, it seems like this ends in frustration, with only the finest glimmer of hope still burning, like a candle flickering in the darkness.
This is what Jesus is calling upon when he announces “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near.” It is Jesus saying that the long-awaited day has arrived. God is on the move. He is going to fulfill what He promised.
Not simply by sending a good king to rule for a few years over a piece of land in the Middle East. But by sending of himself—the eternal Son of God becoming one of us—which is what the physical kingdom of Israel in the OT pointed to all along. A greater kingdom with no borders, without physical swords or weapons, but armed with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness a kingdom that brings life and grace ruled over a King whose reign will never end.
The Kingdom of God and Fulfillment in the 21st Century
To speak of the kingdom of God in 2024 carries with it the same power, even though we live in a very different place. To pray “your kingdom come…” is to turn our hearts on what God is doing and find our deepest longings fulfilled there.
Scripture and the promises of God found their point in the arrival of Jesus. Jesus declaring that the kingdom of God was the beginning of something that continues to unfold—to wash over the earth and over the years to bring cleansing and renewal. No, we’re not Israelites in the first century, but we are people with the same basic yearnings and needs. And the Kingdom of God answers this.
We need and long for forgiveness—to know that we can face the ugliness of what we’ve done and our failures and not be eat up in the process. The kingdom of God brings this to us. Jesus pays the penalty for our sin at his cross.
We need and long for a love doesn't depend on our performance to earn it or to keep it. The kingdom of God brings this to us.
We need and long for a community that is being formed around this love.
For transformation in our hearts.
God’s kingdom is one with a King who lays his life down for his people, but then rises in victory, so has the power to give them life. To give us life.
We need direction and wisdom in our lives. We see that in places like Matthew 5, our call to worship this morning. Where Jesus as our King pronounces to us the good life, the kind of life that God is leading us into.
And we need purpose. Something to commit our lives to that matters—and not just a purpose that we make up. We long to feel that our actions and our lives are connected to something bigger. And the kingdom of God brings this to us as well.
After the great fire of 1666 that leveled London, the world’s most famous architect, Christopher Wren, was commissioned to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral.
One day in 1671, Christopher Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold, one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, working very hard and fast. To the first bricklayer, Christopher Wren asked the question, “What are you doing?” to which the bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family.” The second bricklayer, responded, “I’m a builder. I’m building a wall.” But the third brick layer, the most productive of the three and the future leader of the group, when asked the question, “What are you doing?” replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral to The Almighty.”
The third man had the bigger vision of the purpose of his work. He wasn't just doing a job for a paycheck, though that’s important enough. He wasn’t just doing a job to do it. He was playing his part in a greater work to the worship of God.
That’s not just true of bricklayers building cathedrals. Here’s the life-changing thing about this prayer and what Jesus leads us to understand about our individual prayers—our individual prayers about our lives are intimately tied up with this work that God is doing. Our prayers about our needs and concerns are a whole lot more than just making a list of things we want him to do, but they are the way for us to join up with God’s work of redemption.
Here’s what I mean: you pray for a new job. You want to be better employed, to make more money and be more financially secure. And of course you want to be happier. But to pray that God's kingdom will come and to join your individual prayers to this is to pray something more like this: ‘God, open up this door of opportunity. Place me where you want me so that I will build relationships that point to you. That I will do my job in a way that honors you. That I will be paid and channel those monies into things that glorify you—so that I may walk in generosity. Give me a job that will set me on mission to see you glorified and others loved.”
The stuff that makes up your life: your job, your relationships, the place you live, your talents, your desires—they are not accidents. They are meant to serve a bigger purpose, one that is big enough to satisfy your heart’s desire to be a part of something that matters.
This isn't just true of me or people who are “professional Christians.” This is true of all of us, no matter our age or stage of life. It’s true whether we are construction workers or cooks or bankers or teachers or social workers or stay at home parents or artists. It’s true if we’re students or retired. It’s true if we aren't able to work.
You are an essential part of God’s working out this plan of redemption, and your life has meaning and purpose far beyond what you can explain or what you can feel. Through you God is witnessing to this coming kingdom. In how you live, in how you treat people, in how you treat yourself. Through ordinary, insignificant you.
Let's learn to pray and pray deeply: your kingdom come, your will be done and find in God's kingdom the fulfillment of our longings and desires. Let’s direct our hearts to this great reality—to look upon the majesty and glory of what God has done and is doing in Jesus and have our hearts captured and our lives swept into this.
May God’s kingdom come—with this forgiveness, this community, this transformation, this renewal, this guidance, this purpose. May his kingdom come and his will done on earth as it is in heaven.