Matthew 6.9-13 || Your Kingdom Come Your will be done
Our Father
Readings: Matthew 6:9-15, Micah 6:1-8, Psalm 145, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Matthew 5:1-12
The Lord’s Prayer video
“Your Kingdom come, your will be done”
These are some of Jesus most dangerous words, because of what they meant for Jesus, and for what they mean for us.
8 years ago, the Church of England published a powerful video. (Play video) What I love about this video is the calming speech, the everyday shots of everyday people going about their everyday lives, and the way it communicates the wonder of the Kingdom of God.
Today we’re going to look at these two simple phrases, packed with meaning.
Your Kingdom come…
Now in order to understand what praying ‘Your Kingdom come’ is, we need to understand what it isn’t…
-What it isn’t
1. Firstly God’s Kingdom isn’t on a map. If you look at an atlas (remember those) or Google maps you’ll find the Kingdom of Swaziland, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of Tonga, but you won’t find the Kingdom of God.
Sometimes people like to say that America, or Australia, or Aruba is a Christian country or that the Holy Roman empire was God’s country but Jesus never spoke like this.
In John 18, Jesus is interrogated by a Roman ruler called Pilate who asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews. He responds: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Now Jesus mentions the Kingdom of God more than 100 times in the gospels, it was a major part of his teachings. But unlike Pilate, Jesus never tried to conquer or control a tract of land, because that wasn’t his mission.
2. Second, God’s Kingdom isn’t a race or people group. The idea that the Kingdom of God is a people does have Biblical support. In Exodus 6:7 God calls Moses to bring the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt and says:
“I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God,”
This is why the Jewish race is sometimes called ‘God’s chosen people’ and yet God never chose the people of Israel because they were better or more loved than other people made in God’s image. Instead, the Kingdom of Israel was meant to be a light to the world. A mantle it never quite lived up to.
3. Third the Kingdom of God isn’t a visible organisation or church. I sometimes meet people who are anxious whether they are part of the ‘True Church’. Some feel that the Roman Catholic Church, or the Russian Orthodox, of the Unaffiliated Westboro Baptist Church is the one true visible manifestation of God’s Kingdom on earth, but this isn’t the case.
When Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God he used parables likening the Kingdom to yeast through a batch of dough, or a wheatfield sown with weeds that you can’t tell apart, or a tiny seed growing in the ground. In Luke 17:20 Jesus explicitly says the Kingdom of God isn’t something that can be seen! He didn’t come to set up an organisation with an ABN and a postal address, instead he taught that the Kingdom of God was already within his people.
-What the Kingdom of God is
So let’s briefly think about what the Kingdom of God is.
Pastor Matt Chandler helpfully describes the Kingdom of God in terms of three D’s.
1. The first D is Dwelling. All through scripture God wants to speak, walk, and dwell among his people. The problem is that people keep sinning, which separates us from God.
The Kingdom of God is where God dwells, it’s where he is. This is why as the Hebrew slaves travelled from Egypt to the promised land in Exodus, God camped among his people in a special tent and travelled in a cloud by day and fire by night. When Solomon built the temple right in the heart of Jerusalem, God filled the most holy place with his presence and dwelt there. Finally when Jesus came he breathed on his disciples and the Holy Spirit took up residence in their hearts.
The God we meet in the Bible passionately wants to dwell among his people, that’s where his Kingdom is.
2. The second D is Dominion. The Kingdom of God is wherever God is worshipped as King. While God has created this world and everything in it there are spiritual dominions that do not acknowledge his rule. This is why, at the beginning of his ministry Jesus goes into the wilderness to fast and pray and there he’s tempted by the devil. At one point Jesus is offered all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour and Satan says: “I will give you all their authority and splendour; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you will worship me”
Now the truthfulness of Satan’s words here should be questioned, but to a degree there are powers and dominions (both spiritual and man-made) which are in open rebellion against God. When we pray ‘your kingdom come’ we pray against this.
God’s Kingdom isn’t a church, but it is the church, the diverse worldwide body of people who worship Jesus as King.
3. The third thing the kingdom of God is, is it’s a dynasty. There is a line of faithful people stretching all the way back to Abraham, the father of Faith, who are members of the Kingdom of God.
Through faith we are adopted into the eternal dynasty of Jesus, stretching back through generations of spiritual giants. This dynasty also spans the globe today to every faithful heart currently beating for Jesus, and it looks towards the future into eternity when all God’s faithful people will gather around his royal throne in a world untainted by Satan, sin, and death.
All this has missional applications for us today. It’s why we immerse our children and our families in the faith. God has no grandchildren, so we need to teach our young ones what we believe and why, so they may become citizens of the Kingdom of God.
This also means that we get to be part of God’s redeeming work, by sharing the gospel with our neighbours. Every time you share something God has been doing in your life, something you’ve learned in your Bible, or communicate Christ to someone who doesn’t yet acknowledge Jesus as Lord, you are ushering the Kingdom of God into that person’s life.
Finally praying ‘your kingdom come’ should spur us into global mission. CMS, one of our mission partners is all about spreading God’s Kingdom throughout the world. It strives for a world that knows Jesus. If we’re going to pray your Kingdom come, we’d better be ready to play our part in supporting missionaries to take the gospel global so that more people around the world might become citizens of the kingdom of God.
Your will be done, on earth as in heaven
The request that God’s kingdom would come, dovetails beautifully with the next God-ward request:
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”
Now again before we reflect on what God’s will is, let’s think about what it isn’t.
1. Firstly, it isn’t the boy at youth group telling the girl he likes that it’s God’s will that they should be together. Now this is a trivial example but too often people take things further.
The things people say and do in God’s name, claiming with certainty that it’s ‘God’s will’ that what they want should happen is shameful. Yes, God gives us revelations, words of knowledge, and visions, and it’s good and right for us to share these things with one another.
And yet 1 John 4:1 urges us to ‘test the spirits’ because not every person claiming to know the will of God can be trusted. Instead, we line up everything with God’s will revealed in Scripture and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us as a church, praying sincerely to our Father, ‘your will be done’.
2. Second, we should also be weary of times when instead of praying ‘thy will be done’, we pray ‘my will be done’! Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure”.
We live in world that tells us to listen to our hearts, give into our desires, and follow our dreams. And yet Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane gives us a powerful example of what it means to surrender my will to God’s will. There as he sweats bullets of blood and spends a sleepless night in agonising prayer, he surrenders his human instincts to God’s will:
“Father if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” This is an incredibly countercultural prayer, but it brings about the salvation of the world.
-What it is
Jesus trusts the Father for his future, and this is what praying ‘thy will be done’ is all about.
1. It’s about trusting God’s will for my life. Now this is easier said than done because how do I know what God’s will is? Well, this is where we need to be intentional about growing our relationship with God to understand his character, his ways, and his will.
God’s will isn’t a dot on the map or a life plan dropped from the sky. Instead God’s will is that everyone might obey his Word. Sometimes it’s tempting to agonise over God’s plan for my life, but doing so just robs us of our joy and distracts us from following his Word.
2. This is why regular deliberate Bible study is so important. In Psalm 143:10 David prays: “(Lord) teach me to do your will”. Sadly sometimes people pray for God to reveal his will but never open the Bible.
If we’re ignorant of God’s Word, we’ll always be ignorant of his will. This is why we have regular Bible studies during the week, and if you’re not yet part of a Bible study I want to encourage you to join one, or if the times don’t work for you, start one. God’s Word is a lamp for our feet, and a light for our path.
3. The Bible helps us to know God’s will, and the Holy Spirit helps us understand, and apply it to our lives. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us and helps us become more Christlike. He is called the Spirit of Truth and by praying ‘thy will be done’ he will lead us into all truth.
And this is where the on earth as in heaven part comes in. As we let the Spirit lead our lives, God will use us to bring a foretaste of heaven on earth. One day Jesus will return and heaven and earth will become one, but until that day, as disciples of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can be part of bringing heaven to earth.
And this is where we can learn so much from the Sermon on the Mount which we’ll look at in detail later in the year but for now let’s sample the beatitudes in Matthew 5. As Jesus begins his public ministry, he takes his disciples up a mountain and teaches:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for there is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.”
As we embody these attitudes, heaven and earth become one. By living on earth, as if we were in heaven already, we will see communities that embody kingdom values.
During the Welsh revival from 1904 to 1905, 100,000 people became Christians. Such was the power of the Holy Spirit that the policemen were out of work. They had nothing to do because crime went down to zero, so the policemen formed a band and played at the prayer meetings that started in pubs during the revival. Wales suddenly began looking a lot more like heaven!
And friends this is what we should want for where we live. In the coming year, we hope to begin vision planning for our church and set some goals for our future under God.
During this time we should pray that God’s will would be done among us and that heaven would invade our region. We should pray along with Micah 6:8 that we would: ‘Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.’
Let’s set small goals and big goals. Personal goals and corporate goals. Let’s ask God to guide us and help us follow his will for our lives and for our church.
Jesus our King is strong and kind, let’s make it our prayer that more people in our community would come to know him, and would be equipped to make him known. Let’s pray for God’s Kingdom to come, and God will to be done, on earth as in heaven.
Amen.