Thy Kingdom Come
Message #2 in the series: the Lord's Prayer
Matthew 6:5-13 (look it up here)
What do you do when you don’t understand something? What do you do when someone uses a word you don’t understand? Admit it; you either figure it out from context, you smile and nod and back away slowly, or you incorporate that word into your daily vocabulary. Nobody asks “what do you mean by that?” Thus we end up as an ignorant generation, all because we didn’t want to look stupid by asking a question.
Ironic, isn’t it?
I believe that when it comes to talking about the Kingdom of God, we have ranged from smiling and nodding to incorporating kingdom language into our conversation without having a really good handle on what it means.
Last fall we studied Matthew 5:3-12, the Beatitudes. Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, those who recognize their absolute need for God and their inability to succeed on their own. The Beatitudes are part of a larger sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, which is, in fact, the longest recorded of Jesus’ sermons. In this sermon, Jesus reorganized life and priorities. Our current series is a later part of the Sermon on the Mount, so Jesus has the same things in mind about the Kingdom of heaven.
The Kingdom of God is a wonderfully Jewish concept that Matthew loves, which is fitting, because Matthew wrote to a primarily Jewish audience. Last week I introduced you to the Qaddish, an ancient Jewish prayer. It starts “Exalted and hallowed be his great Name in the world which He created According to His will.” It continues: "May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days, and in the days of the lifetime of the whole household of Israel, speedily and at a near time.”
The people of God have been eagerly awaiting the establishment of God’s Kingdom for years. But I wonder how many have missed out on it. Maybe we don’t understand the concept. The meaning is pretty straightforward: it is God’s sovereignty or rule.
Although the Old Testament does not specifically use the term “Kingdom of God”, it is full of the concept. God is called “Sovereign Lord” nearly 300 times, a kingly term. Psalm 24:10 affirms Who is he, this king of glory? The Lord Almighty – he is the king of glory. Psalm 10:16a: The Lord is king forever and ever; Psalm 146:10 The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations.
These and the plethora of prophecies regarding the Messianic King in the line of David have given Kingdom of God such a Jewish nationalistic connotation that many have shied away from this language altogether. Thus, when speaking to Gentile audiences, instead of using Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven language, they turned to terms like “salvation” and “eternity” to describe the same concept.
In God’s original plan for the Jews, he chose Abraham and gave him plentiful descendants. He promised them the nation of Israel, God’s people, led by God as their king. When they were enslaved in Egypt, the demand to Pharaoh to let Israel go is the demand of the lawful king over against the usurper. God led them out of captivity, miraculously provided for them, led them in battle, and brought them into the Promised Land.
But by the time of 1 Samuel 8, they were fed up. All of the lands around them had kings, so they wanted one for themselves. God responded to their request by telling them, essentially, “your will be done.” In 1 Samuel 8:7, God told Samuel, “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”
They rejected God’s kingship over them. This has continually been the story of God’s people: rejecting His leadership time and again. Now, Jesus is instructing us to reverse that trend, and since he knows we can’t do it on our own, we must turn to God to do it for us. We plead for His Kingdom; to make Him King once again, that His will would be carried out here on earth, just like it is in heaven.
So, what does this look like? Jesus had a lot to say about the Kingdom and what it looked like. He used Kingdom of heaven and Kingdom of God terminology some 35 times in Matthew alone. Jesus took God’s promise to Abraham and gave them one better: He promised not just the kingdom of Israel, but the Kingdom of Heaven. This kingdom, instead of being geographical in nature, is dynamic. Instead of being limited to Jews, its entrance was opened to all. Only in this Kingdom could humanity find the fulfillment of its ultimate desires for righteousness, justice, peace, happiness, freedom from sin and guilt, and a restored relationship to God – an order in which God was king.
The Kingdom does come with some requirements, however. First, God’s Kingdom is not America! It isn’t a 21st century American representative republic. It is an absolute monarchy, with God as King. It doesn’t allow for elections to decide the course of action: it’s not even God’s way or the highway: there is no highway! Thus there are some solid requirements for participation in the Kingdom.
We must have a childlike faith. In Matthew 18, Jesus’ disciples asked who would be greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ response was clear (18:3): Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Innocence, trust, and dependence are characteristics of little children. To be part of the Kingdom, we have to completely trust God for everything, just like a little child trusts her parents.
As part of the kingdom, we do not merely pay lip service to God. Jesus says (Mt 7:21) Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
In fact, Jesus says that whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:19-20). This is a key to understanding today’s section of the Lord’s Prayer; when we ask God for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are asking God to empower us to do his will. We can’t do it on our own. Thus receiving the Kingdom can never be misconstrued as a human achievement; it’s always an act of God. The Pharisees and teachers of the law added law upon law in order to try to make sure they didn’t break a law. The righteousness that Jesus talks about is a right relationship with God.
In his research, George Barna found that 80% of believers don’t sense they’ve entered into God’s presence during a typical worship service. ½ of all believers don’t believe they’ve entered into God’s presence/connected with him in an intimate way during the past year. If you haven’t even been in His presence, how can you believe that you are doing God’s will?
Another requirement of the Kingdom is for it to be our primary focus. When Jesus talks about worrying about food, drink, and clothes, and he finishes up saying (Mt. 6:33), “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” The awesome thing about it is that when we do seek His Kingdom first, we receive it… and other rewards as well. In fact, he promises (Mk 10:29-30) that no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father of children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields – and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.
God does not force us to spend time with him or to obey him. We’ve seen what happens when that’s the plan; we are still mopping up the damages caused by the Crusades, when Christianity was spread with a sword. God does the opposite: he spreads the Good News with a cross. Therefore the kingdom must always be identified with Jesus.
The Kingdom of God is an already/not yet concept. Jesus ushered in the Kingdom, but we have not yet experienced its fullness. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking of the Kingdom in only future terms.
Brian McLaren, a very visible figurehead for the Emergent church movement, has a lot to say about the Kingdom. Though I don’t always agree with everything he has to say, he makes a very valid point about our request to God about His Kingdom.
He comments that Jesus didn’t primarily come to take us to heaven. If he had, we’d have to amend the Lord’s Prayer to say something along the lines of “Thy Kingdom come, and take us to heaven when we die.” Since he didn’t say that, we’ve got to take seriously what he did say, and it will absolutely change the way we deal with people (especially those who are different than us). When we give a cup of cold water to someone, when we visit someone in prison, when we welcome a child… we embody Kingdom principles. Earthly kingdoms can be fine with bombing nations and locking people up and throwing away the key, but as Kingdom people, we aren’t OK with that. It changes everything.
When we limit God’s rule to heaven, we are guilty of not listening to Jesus. While McLaren says Jesus didn’t primarily come to save people for Heaven, I agree; Jesus’ mission was to bring reconciliation between God and humanity, which will culminate beautifully in heaven, face-to-face. But while we are here, we ask God for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done here on earth, just like it is in heaven. While we are here, we take seriously the implications of Kingdom living, that it radically reorganizes our priorities, that, as it says in Colossians 1:20, that through Jesus, God reconciles all things to Himself. All things. All things on earth as well as in heaven. That’s why we care, not only about all humans, but about taking care of the planet.
The Kingdom honors God’s name. The ethics of the Kingdom are the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. The Apostle Paul calls us “Christ’s ambassadors” as though God were making his appeal through us (2 Cor. 5:20). As such, we have an obligation to know all that we can about Him and about His will. We don’t have the option to just have a “simple faith” that doesn’t really know anything about the God who we serve. We also need to know about the culture around us, as well. If you were president, what qualities would you want in a potential ambassador?
Wherever the Kingdom is preached, there’s a lot more that goes on as well. Repentance, for example. John the Baptist came, preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Mt 3:2). When Jesus went out preaching the Good news of the Kingdom of Heaven, scripture says he also spent time healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and driving out demons (Mt 4:23). His mission wasn’t simply to heal. His mission was to prepare people to receive a right relationship with God.
Then when he sent out his disciples, his instructions were to “preach this message: ‘the kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons (Mt. 10:7-8). He is telling his disciples to behave like him. Of course, it’s natural for him to tell us to behave like him, because "Jesus’ actions always flow from his life of dependence on the Spirit, doing what he saw the Father doing, and providing a human model of what we should be doing" (J. P. Moreland). That’s what living life as an ambassador of the Kingdom. And that’s what we’re to do as well.
In 2005, University of Colorado Law School professor Paul Campos wrote:
The true meaning of life is Kingdom living. Dallas Willard said this:
When we ask God for his kingdom to come and his will be done, we ask him to empower us to live that out, to be his ambassadors, to prepare ourselves and others to one day see him face-to-face, but to also experience him in the here and now.
Matthew 6:5-13 (look it up here)
What do you do when you don’t understand something? What do you do when someone uses a word you don’t understand? Admit it; you either figure it out from context, you smile and nod and back away slowly, or you incorporate that word into your daily vocabulary. Nobody asks “what do you mean by that?” Thus we end up as an ignorant generation, all because we didn’t want to look stupid by asking a question.
Ironic, isn’t it?
I believe that when it comes to talking about the Kingdom of God, we have ranged from smiling and nodding to incorporating kingdom language into our conversation without having a really good handle on what it means.
Last fall we studied Matthew 5:3-12, the Beatitudes. Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, those who recognize their absolute need for God and their inability to succeed on their own. The Beatitudes are part of a larger sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, which is, in fact, the longest recorded of Jesus’ sermons. In this sermon, Jesus reorganized life and priorities. Our current series is a later part of the Sermon on the Mount, so Jesus has the same things in mind about the Kingdom of heaven.
The Kingdom of God is a wonderfully Jewish concept that Matthew loves, which is fitting, because Matthew wrote to a primarily Jewish audience. Last week I introduced you to the Qaddish, an ancient Jewish prayer. It starts “Exalted and hallowed be his great Name in the world which He created According to His will.” It continues: "May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days, and in the days of the lifetime of the whole household of Israel, speedily and at a near time.”
The people of God have been eagerly awaiting the establishment of God’s Kingdom for years. But I wonder how many have missed out on it. Maybe we don’t understand the concept. The meaning is pretty straightforward: it is God’s sovereignty or rule.
Although the Old Testament does not specifically use the term “Kingdom of God”, it is full of the concept. God is called “Sovereign Lord” nearly 300 times, a kingly term. Psalm 24:10 affirms Who is he, this king of glory? The Lord Almighty – he is the king of glory. Psalm 10:16a: The Lord is king forever and ever; Psalm 146:10 The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations.
These and the plethora of prophecies regarding the Messianic King in the line of David have given Kingdom of God such a Jewish nationalistic connotation that many have shied away from this language altogether. Thus, when speaking to Gentile audiences, instead of using Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven language, they turned to terms like “salvation” and “eternity” to describe the same concept.
In God’s original plan for the Jews, he chose Abraham and gave him plentiful descendants. He promised them the nation of Israel, God’s people, led by God as their king. When they were enslaved in Egypt, the demand to Pharaoh to let Israel go is the demand of the lawful king over against the usurper. God led them out of captivity, miraculously provided for them, led them in battle, and brought them into the Promised Land.
But by the time of 1 Samuel 8, they were fed up. All of the lands around them had kings, so they wanted one for themselves. God responded to their request by telling them, essentially, “your will be done.” In 1 Samuel 8:7, God told Samuel, “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”
They rejected God’s kingship over them. This has continually been the story of God’s people: rejecting His leadership time and again. Now, Jesus is instructing us to reverse that trend, and since he knows we can’t do it on our own, we must turn to God to do it for us. We plead for His Kingdom; to make Him King once again, that His will would be carried out here on earth, just like it is in heaven.
So, what does this look like? Jesus had a lot to say about the Kingdom and what it looked like. He used Kingdom of heaven and Kingdom of God terminology some 35 times in Matthew alone. Jesus took God’s promise to Abraham and gave them one better: He promised not just the kingdom of Israel, but the Kingdom of Heaven. This kingdom, instead of being geographical in nature, is dynamic. Instead of being limited to Jews, its entrance was opened to all. Only in this Kingdom could humanity find the fulfillment of its ultimate desires for righteousness, justice, peace, happiness, freedom from sin and guilt, and a restored relationship to God – an order in which God was king.
The Kingdom does come with some requirements, however. First, God’s Kingdom is not America! It isn’t a 21st century American representative republic. It is an absolute monarchy, with God as King. It doesn’t allow for elections to decide the course of action: it’s not even God’s way or the highway: there is no highway! Thus there are some solid requirements for participation in the Kingdom.
We must have a childlike faith. In Matthew 18, Jesus’ disciples asked who would be greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ response was clear (18:3): Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Innocence, trust, and dependence are characteristics of little children. To be part of the Kingdom, we have to completely trust God for everything, just like a little child trusts her parents.
As part of the kingdom, we do not merely pay lip service to God. Jesus says (Mt 7:21) Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
In fact, Jesus says that whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:19-20). This is a key to understanding today’s section of the Lord’s Prayer; when we ask God for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are asking God to empower us to do his will. We can’t do it on our own. Thus receiving the Kingdom can never be misconstrued as a human achievement; it’s always an act of God. The Pharisees and teachers of the law added law upon law in order to try to make sure they didn’t break a law. The righteousness that Jesus talks about is a right relationship with God.
In his research, George Barna found that 80% of believers don’t sense they’ve entered into God’s presence during a typical worship service. ½ of all believers don’t believe they’ve entered into God’s presence/connected with him in an intimate way during the past year. If you haven’t even been in His presence, how can you believe that you are doing God’s will?
Another requirement of the Kingdom is for it to be our primary focus. When Jesus talks about worrying about food, drink, and clothes, and he finishes up saying (Mt. 6:33), “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” The awesome thing about it is that when we do seek His Kingdom first, we receive it… and other rewards as well. In fact, he promises (Mk 10:29-30) that no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father of children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields – and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.
God does not force us to spend time with him or to obey him. We’ve seen what happens when that’s the plan; we are still mopping up the damages caused by the Crusades, when Christianity was spread with a sword. God does the opposite: he spreads the Good News with a cross. Therefore the kingdom must always be identified with Jesus.
The Kingdom of God is an already/not yet concept. Jesus ushered in the Kingdom, but we have not yet experienced its fullness. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking of the Kingdom in only future terms.
Brian McLaren, a very visible figurehead for the Emergent church movement, has a lot to say about the Kingdom. Though I don’t always agree with everything he has to say, he makes a very valid point about our request to God about His Kingdom.
He comments that Jesus didn’t primarily come to take us to heaven. If he had, we’d have to amend the Lord’s Prayer to say something along the lines of “Thy Kingdom come, and take us to heaven when we die.” Since he didn’t say that, we’ve got to take seriously what he did say, and it will absolutely change the way we deal with people (especially those who are different than us). When we give a cup of cold water to someone, when we visit someone in prison, when we welcome a child… we embody Kingdom principles. Earthly kingdoms can be fine with bombing nations and locking people up and throwing away the key, but as Kingdom people, we aren’t OK with that. It changes everything.
When we limit God’s rule to heaven, we are guilty of not listening to Jesus. While McLaren says Jesus didn’t primarily come to save people for Heaven, I agree; Jesus’ mission was to bring reconciliation between God and humanity, which will culminate beautifully in heaven, face-to-face. But while we are here, we ask God for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done here on earth, just like it is in heaven. While we are here, we take seriously the implications of Kingdom living, that it radically reorganizes our priorities, that, as it says in Colossians 1:20, that through Jesus, God reconciles all things to Himself. All things. All things on earth as well as in heaven. That’s why we care, not only about all humans, but about taking care of the planet.
The Kingdom honors God’s name. The ethics of the Kingdom are the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. The Apostle Paul calls us “Christ’s ambassadors” as though God were making his appeal through us (2 Cor. 5:20). As such, we have an obligation to know all that we can about Him and about His will. We don’t have the option to just have a “simple faith” that doesn’t really know anything about the God who we serve. We also need to know about the culture around us, as well. If you were president, what qualities would you want in a potential ambassador?
Wherever the Kingdom is preached, there’s a lot more that goes on as well. Repentance, for example. John the Baptist came, preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Mt 3:2). When Jesus went out preaching the Good news of the Kingdom of Heaven, scripture says he also spent time healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and driving out demons (Mt 4:23). His mission wasn’t simply to heal. His mission was to prepare people to receive a right relationship with God.
Then when he sent out his disciples, his instructions were to “preach this message: ‘the kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons (Mt. 10:7-8). He is telling his disciples to behave like him. Of course, it’s natural for him to tell us to behave like him, because "Jesus’ actions always flow from his life of dependence on the Spirit, doing what he saw the Father doing, and providing a human model of what we should be doing" (J. P. Moreland). That’s what living life as an ambassador of the Kingdom. And that’s what we’re to do as well.
In 2005, University of Colorado Law School professor Paul Campos wrote:
Americans today are on average twice as rich, and far healthier, more youthful and safer than our predecessors were a half century ago… In other words, what is conventionally thought of as the American dream – that you will be better off than your parents, and that your children will in turn be better off than yourself – seems to be coming true. There’s just one problem with this rosy scenario… all this “progress” doesn’t seem to have made Americans any happier. American life is organized around a completely false principle – that ever-increasing levels of wealth, health, and liberty will produce ever-increasing levels of happiness. What people really need instead, he notes, is to acquire meaning in life.
The true meaning of life is Kingdom living. Dallas Willard said this:
Kingdom living is about stepping experientially into the practices of spiritual transformation and the “with God” life of power beyond yourself so that all the truths about God and his Kingdom become truths about your actual existence. This is reality. This is what we live for.
When we ask God for his kingdom to come and his will be done, we ask him to empower us to live that out, to be his ambassadors, to prepare ourselves and others to one day see him face-to-face, but to also experience him in the here and now.
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