The Lord's Prayer: The Kingdom of God as Challenge (Matthew 6.10)

This sermon was preached on July 21st, 2024.

A few years ago a mentor told me this story: He was talking to a man who is a doctor, who had gone on a medical mission trip to China, a country widely known to be opposed to Christian churches. You’ve probably heard the stories, and when you think “China” you think “people don’t have freedom to worship.”

The doctor was surprised when he got back, and told my mentor: "I couldn’t believe it! We weren’t really restricted at all! Not only could we do all of our medical work, we could talk about Jesus being a Savior, and forgiveness of sins.”

“Well, they did have one thing they said we couldn’t talk about. We couldn't talk about the kingdom of God and Jesus as King. But that’s okay—we could still preach the gospel!”

The truth is, though, that a gospel that is not rooted in the kingdom of God is only a partial gospel. The Chinese Community Party realized that well enough. It's why they were perfectly fine with people talking about the individual things of the gospel, which I’m sure they saw as just some things that have an emotional benefit to people.

But they saw the danger to their power that would come if these missionaries started to speak of the kingdom of God with Jesus as King. They knew what so many of us Christians in places like America have forgotten—that to speak of Jesus as Lord is a direct challenge to the way our world is set up and the way things work.

Last week we talked about how the kingdom of God is a fulfillment: of the promises of God throughout the Scripture, and of our longings and desires. This morning we’re going to talk about the kingdom of God as a challenge. What happens when the kingdom of God—a kingdom without borders that transcends nationalities and the dividing lines that we tend to draw—what happens when the place that values what God values enters in a world that doesn’t value what God values and love what He loves?

The Challenge of the Kingdom of God in the World of Jesus

When Jesus taught his followers to pray to God “your kingdom come, your will be done” it would have hit their ears this way: look around you, where you are. You live in a kingdom that is not the kingdom of God. And you are praying for something different.

They lived in the Roman Empire, who in the first century AD was seemingly capturing every region it went to. Powerful and unstoppable. For Jesus to speak of the kingdom of God and himself as King was a challenge. The Romans saw it as treason. It was the biggest conflict between the earliest Christians and the ruling powers.

They wouldn’t do the stuff that they, as good Romans, were supposed to do. The times the earliest Christians faced the hardest persecution, it was almost always because they were seen to be bad Romans. Christians wouldn’t pledge allegiance to Rome or the Caesar.

It doesn’t mean that the earliest Christians saw themselves as a “political” group, especially not in the way that Christians are seen now. In our world today, world leaders try to get in the good graces of religious leaders, thinking they can get an endorsement or maybe get some votes or support from that religious leaders followers. Early Christian leaders did none of that. They weren’t trying to angle to get their favorite legislation passed.

No, the earliest Christians were in action making their beliefs a lived reality. The sharing of goods. The care for the poor. The care for babies, the sick, the disabled, and the dead. They did it because it was the right thing to do. Because they believed 1) they lived in an empire that created all these disparities and 2) their actions were a witness to a different kingdom. A better kingdom. To quote Martin Luther King Jr about this very thing:

“We must recapture the spirit of the early church. Wherever the early Christians went, they made a triumphant witness for Christ. Whether on the village streets or in the city jails, they daringly proclaimed the good news of the Gospel. The reward for this audacious witness was often the excruciating agony of the lion’s den or the poignant pain of the chopping block, but they continued in the faith that they had discovered a cause so great and had been transformed by a savior so divine that even death was not too great a sacrifice…When the rulers objected, these strange people, intoxicated with the wine of God’s grace, continued to proclaim the Gospel until even men and women in Caesar’s household were convinced, until jailers dropped their keys, and until kings trembled on their thrones.”

I don’t need to tell you that we live in a divided society. You know that. There was an attempt on Donald Trump’s life just over a week ago. 3 years ago a group of people were setting up gallows and nooses outside the Capitol Building and threatening to execute leaders of the Democratic Party. I’ve heard people in the last few days, in private conversations here in town, openly wish for a new civil war, and talking about making sure they have enough guns to answer the call when it comes. To shoot whom? I guess their neighbors that disagree with them.

We live in a moment where there are people trying to draw lines in the sand and demand you make a decision—are you with me or against me? But what does it mean for us to find our first allegiance not to a political party, a candidate, or even a country—but our first allegiance to the kingdom of God and our King Jesus? It means that we testify that something else is possible. We don't have to fight fire with fire and everyone be burned in the process.

What does Jesus lead us in? Facing enemies with love. Facing darkness with light. Facing those who wish to condemn with the grace of forgiveness.

He leads us in rejecting the calls to take up arms, to take up words and rhetoric—and to rather love. It’s the most powerful thing we can do. The most counter-cultural and rebellious thing we can do. And it's exactly what our King leads us in. To be about the peace and prosperity of where he has put us.

It will seem foolish here—as foolish as the earliest Christians seemed in the middle of the Roman Empire declaring that Jesus, not Caesar, was Lord. But here we pledge allegiance, first and foremost, to Jesus and his kingdom—and every other allegiance has to reckon with it and fit under that. It’s what it means for us to live in this Kingdom in the here-and-now.

A Challenge to Spiritual Darkness
There’s a deeper challenge at work, though. Scripture speaks of another type of kingdom—the kingdom of darkness. Scripture doesn’t mince words—the world we are in is broken, the time we live in is “this present evil age,” under the power of The Evil One.

It looks a whole lot less like the horror movie ideas of demons. That would be easier—because it would all be much easier to spot. But to say that there is a kingdom of darkness means that we recognize there are spiritual powers intent on blocking and perverting the will of God. That the violence, deception, and evil we see in the world isn't just a matter of human beings making errors or being selfish. There’s a spiritual component that permeates our world. And that God has declared war against this darkness, intent to shine his light to set his creation free.

Jesus declaring the arrival of the kingdom of God was a direct challenge to kingdom of darkness, an announcement that they were put on notice and their unravelling was at hand. I think that's why we see so many encounters with demon possessed people in Jesus' life. It wasn’t because the Gospels were saying this is what we should expect. They were showing that the unique arrival of Jesus drew out a uniquely heightened response from the powers of darkness, attempting to challenge and discourage Jesus from his mission.

But they could not. And as the New Testament explains, at the cross of Jesus, God destroyed the power of that spiritual darkness for us. Those false powers have been exposed, because they poured out their all on Jesus, heaping shame, alienation, betrayal. And after all of that was poured out, Jesus rose from the dead victorious. All of that spiritual power that holds humanity bound has been gutted, and in Jesus we can find what all humanity longs for—freedom. Freedom to not be defined and dominated by our worst desires.

And now we can be turned out to wage peace in this world of war. We live in the middle of God’s great rescue mission, which is still ongoing. Jesus has won a definitive victory and, by his Holy Spirit, he is applying that victory throughout this world. I’ve compared it before to D-Day and the end of WW2 in Europe. D-Day, June 6th, 1944, when the Allied forces landed at Normandy beach in France was the death blow to the Nazi power. When the Allies were able to establish a beachhead there, 779 miles from the capital of Germany in Berlin, it was over.

But there were still 779 miles to cross. Cities occupied along the way to liberate. People in concentration camps to free. The victory was sure, but it had to be applied all throughout Europe, where the Nazis had conquered and ruled. It took almost an entire year, but eventually that victory arrived in Berlin and the false power of the Nazis was destroyed at its roots.

We live in this in-between time. The victory blow has landed and it is sure. The kingdom of darkness’s days are numbered, because God will answer this prayer of his kingdom coming and his will being done on this earth. But there are still people to liberate. And God’s kingdom goes forth with this love, this peace—calling people, like Jesus, to repent and believe the good news. And as we go, we pray this prayer, declaring to ourselves and others that what seems most powerful now is just temporary and will, in time, be exposed and justice will be done.

That’s not to say that it’s easy to live in the kingdom of God as this direct challenge to spiritual darkness. It’s not. Sometimes we can look around and it doesn’t feel like there’s victory at all. There are temptations all over the place that lead us to discouragement. What are we to do in the face of this?

I just re-read the LOTR trilogy for probably the 15th time, and there was a moment in the last book that struck me deeply when I was preparing for this sermon. One of the main characters, Sam, is a regular, ordinary guy. He’s a gardener who has never travelled far from home. He unexpectedly finds himself wrapped up in this mission to overcome the greatest evil the world knows. Something far beyond his ability and expertise.

But things seem to have fallen apart, and there’s a point where he thinks everything is over.

“At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step…and bowed his head in his hands. It was quiet, horribly quiet…He felt the darkness cover him like a tide. And then softly, to his own surprised, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing.

His voice sounded thin and quavering. He murmured old childish tunes…rhymes that came into his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

“…Though here at journey’s end I lie

In darkness buried deep,

Beyond all towers strong and high,

Beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

And Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

Nor bid the Stars farewell.”

It’s a tiring thing to value what God values in this world. And sometimes it’s hard to believe that the light will overcome the darkness. It’s hard to live generously when that’s mostly seen as foolish or wasteful. It’s hard to care for others when it means caring sacrificially. Sometimes it feels like we’re alone.

When it does, I invite you to open your mouth like Sam and sing. Songs like the ones we’ve sung this morning—songs that remind you that God “makes all things new, in places we don’t choose.” Songs that tells us that Jesus waits for us in the valley, and until he earth is filled with this victory he has one, Jesus is lower still—meaning that there is no depth to which we can descend that we will not find him with us. Songs that remind you that you are chosen, not forsaken—that you are who God says you are.

Songs that tell you the truths of Scripture and lead you to prayer. And there, speaking to your Father in heaven, you will find again your hope and your purpose. You’ll find again your strength. Because it’s not your strength, at least not in the sense that it comes from you. It is his strength that will carry you on. It’s his intentions that will carry us through. And it is him and his intentions that will answer this prayer: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”