Well now do please take your Bibles in hand once again and turn with me to Matthew chapter 6 as we continue to sit at Jesus’ feet and receive instruction in the duty and discipline of prayer. We are with Christ in the school of prayer asking, “Lord, teach us to pray.” This morning, we are continuing our meditations on The Lord’s Prayer, verses 9 through 13, focusing particularly on the words of the second petition of The Lord’s Prayer, the second request of The Lord’s Prayer, which you will see in verse 10 – “Your kingdom come.” Your kingdom come. We are going to look at the teaching here under three simple headings. First, this petition reminds us that God is King. That may seem a rather obvious point, but it is a rather vital truth I suspect. You all would acknowledge with me that we conveniently forget on a regular basis. We are not King. God is King and our hearts need the reminder – the Lord is King. First, the King. Secondly, this petition addresses the subject of the kingdom. The King, now the kingdom – a kingdom that is coming. And that raises some important questions we’ll need to answer with care. What is the nature of the kingdom? And what does it mean that this kingdom is coming? So the King, the kingdom, and then finally, we’ll try and tease out some of the implications of all of this, and so we’ll think about the call that these truths and this petition places upon us for our attitudes and especially for our prayer lives. The King, the kingdom, and the call of the second petition.
Before we unpack all of that, let’s bow our heads and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit as we listen to the Word of God together. Let us all pray.
Our Father, the Lord Jesus promised that You will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask You. And so now in humility, acknowledging our sin, confessing our need and dependence upon You, with Your Word spread before us, we make that prayer of You. Give us, even now, the Holy Spirit that we may behold the face of our Savior, that we might receive and be shaped by His instruction and tutelage, that we might become more like Him, shining out into the world something of the beauty of His holiness. So give us the Holy Spirit we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Matthew 6 at the ninth verse. This is the Word of God:
“Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy and inerrant Word.
Let’s think first about the reminder Jesus gives us in this second petition, “Your kingdom come,” the reminder that God is King. That’s the clear implication of the prayer. “Your kingdom come. You are a King, Father, and You rule Your kingdom.” We are not asking that God might become King one day; we are confessing that already, right now, today and forever, He reigns. He is King. He is the sovereign governor of all His creatures and all their actions.
You may remember that back in January we studied the book of Daniel together here at First Church, and at one point in the narrative of the story of Daniel, God humbles King Nubuchadnezzar in a dramatic way. And when Nebuchadnezzar finally repented, Daniel recorded that the king blessed – quote – “blessed the Most High, praised and honored Him who lives forever, for His dominion is an everlasting dominion; His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing and He does according to His will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” He is and always has been and must necessarily be King. He is sovereign. He reigns over all things – over every creature, over every human heart, over all nations. He is Lord. The Lord reigns. He sits between the cherubim. Let the earth quake. God already rules your life, whether you are a Christian or not; He is your King. And one day, you will know it. One day, you will see it. We, all of us, every person everywhere, owes to Him total allegiance and complete obedience. There is an authoritative summons here to confess, “God is the great King.”
But as we hear that authoritative summons, let’s not forget that the great King whom Jesus invites us to address in the second petition, if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are to address Him as our Father. Isn’t that striking? Think about it. The prayer is, “Our Father, Your kingdom come.” When I was a wee boy growing up in Scotland, we didn’t have a lot as a family, and I would regularly ask for things, as little boys are want to do, for my birthday or for Christmas – toys my friends were talking about, something I’d seen on TV. But when the big day came and I tore into the presents in hopes of that one great thing that I was longing for, as often as not, as often as not it just wasn’t there. It wasn’t a lack of willingness or a failure of love on my parents’ part; it was a lack of resources. They simply couldn’t afford what I had asked for. It was beyond their capacity and ability to supply.
But if you are a Christian today, know – and the implication of this second petition is – that that can never be the case with your Father in heaven. He is the great King who rules all things. All things are His to do with as He wills. The Lord reigns and He does whatever He pleases. And Jesus says He loves to give good gifts to His children when they ask Him. Listen, brothers and sisters in Christ, your prayers will never exceed God’s resources, the King’s resources. You cannot ask for more than God your Father is able and willing to give you. So the King, first – a vital reminder to us.
Now let’s think about the kingdom. We need to do a bit more spade work here to understand all the nuances of Jesus’ teaching. We are praying, “Your kingdom come.” What does Jesus mean by the kingdom? Well, as you may know, in the Bible the kingdom of God is not a geographical term. I am a subject of King Charles III and I am a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is the geographical realm over which Charles rules as king. Everyone born there within those borders is a citizen of that kingdom and subject to that king. That’s how earthly kingdoms work – by geography. But the kingdom of God has no reference to a particular place, but rather it refers to the personal reign of the King Himself. The kingdom of God is the rule of God exercised in the world. We are praying here, “Father, may Your sovereign reign hold sway in all places and at all times, and may Your personal authority be acknowledged by every creature in heaven and on earth.” That’s what we mean when we say, “Your kingdom come.”
Now there is an important sense, as we have already seen and stated very clearly, that God already rules all things. Isn’t there? “The providence of God” – question 11 of The Shorter Catechism – “is His most holy, wise and powerful, preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions.” He’s already governor of all His creatures and all their actions. He rules over seas and sunsets and seasons, doesn’t He? “He numbers the stars and calls them all by name,” Psalm 137 verse 4. “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in seas and in all deeps. He it is who made the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain, and brings forth wind from His storehouses,” Psalm 135:5-7. He is King over every sparrow that falls to the ground, “numbers every hair on your head,” Matthew 10:17. “The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He wills,” Daniel 4:17. God is already, always, necessarily King in creation and in providence, in politics, in economics, in agriculture, in art, and family life. He rules all things by His immutable, sovereign decree.
Now that means when we pray here, “Your kingdom come,” we are not praying about this kingdom of creation and providence. We’re not praying about politics and art and science over which God already, presently, perfectly rules by His sovereign decree – Ephesians 1:11 – working all things according to the counsel of His will. Of course, let me be clear. First Timothy 2:2, we are commanded to pray for Kings and all who are in authority. We should pray for every human institution of the common realm in which we all live every day. But I want us to be clear, when we pray for them – for kings and authorities, for human institutions – we are not really praying the second petition of The Lord’s Prayer. We are praying, rather, for common grace blessings that flow alike to all people everywhere, for the rule of justice and equity, for the preservation and maintenance of society, that the general good might flourish and advance. And we absolutely should pray and work for those things as Christian citizens of this common realm that we share with believer and unbeliever alike.
But when we pray the second petition of The Lord’s Prayer, that’s not really our focus. Jesus asks us, notice carefully, to pray for a kingdom that is coming. And so clearly He is talking about something additional, something that is breaking into this common realm of the world of creation and providence, something overlaid, as it were, on top of this kingdom of creation and providence, over which God already perfectly reigns. The second petition of The Lord’s Prayer is calling us to have a particular concern as disciples of Jesus Christ for the advancement of the kingdom – not of creation and providence, but of the kingdom of grace and redemption. We enter this common kingdom, the realm of creation and providence, by natural birth, as mere creatures. Every human being is a citizen of it. But we enter the kingdom of grace and redemption by second birth, by being born again as new creatures in Christ.
It was this kingdom that John the Baptist announced was about to dawn in the age of Messiah, Matthew chapter 3 verse 2, when he preached – do you remember – in the wilderness of the Jordan, that people must repent, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it’s coming.” It was the same kingdom Jesus preached. Mark 1:14, “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” When Jesus’ opponents alleged that He really performed miracles by the power of the devil, Jesus replied, Matthew 12:28, “If by the Spirit of God I cast our demons, the kingdom of God has come upon you.” In Luke 17:20, when the Pharisees asked Him about this kingdom that He was preaching, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There,’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst. It’s in your midst, right now already as I speak to you,’” He said to them. “The saving reign of God has erupted into the world with My arrival. It has come upon you.”
And so there is an important sense in which not just the common kingdom of creation and providence, but also even the saving kingdom of God in Jesus Christ is also already present with us, already here. It began to break into the world with the first coming of Jesus Christ. The decisive victory of God over the kingdom of Satan was secured, has been won already at the cross. There are still battles to fight with the powers of darkness, to be sure, but the devil is now a defeated enemy. By Jesus’ resurrection from the grave, death’s vice grip was broken and Christ has brought life and immortality to light. At His ascension into heaven, God gave Him the name that is above every name, and crowned Him King of kings and Lord of lords. And Christ has taken His seat at the Father’s right hand until the Father makes His enemies a footstool for His feet. And so right now, today, Shorter Catechism 15, “Christ executes the office of King in subduing us to Himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all His and our enemies.” The saving kingdom of God has come upon us, Jesus says. It is in our midst, already here in an important sense, having come in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. Right now, by His Word and Spirit, the kingdom advances and His Gospel is proclaimed.
That means, by the way, there is an intimate connection between the redeeming kingdom that is coming, about which we are praying in this second petition, and the church. The church is the instrument ordained in holy Scripture by which the Gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed to all the world. The great commission in Matthew 28:19 and following is given to the church. The church is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe everything that Jesus has commanded us. The church makes the saving kingdom of Jesus Christ visible in the world. It’s often said that the church is an embassy of the kingdom. I think that’s a helpful image and metaphor. Think about it – at an embassy is a little piece of the country it represents, planted on foreign soil. Within those embassy walls, it is not the culture and laws of the surrounding nation but the constitution and customs of the homeland that prevail.
And that is the church in the midst of a fallen world. It is to be an outpost of heaven where the values and the worship and the convictions and the culture and the mission of the kingdom of God prevail. Stepping into the church is like stepping into a foreign embassy. You may be in Washington, D.C., but the moment you enter the embassy of Spain or Thailand or Germany, you leave America behind you. You are now subject to the rules of the land whose embassy it is, almost as if you had been transported suddenly across oceans to a new country.
And that is what’s happening, you know, every single Lord’s Day as we gather as a church for worship. As we step across the threshold of the church, we step into another country. Here, the culture of the kingdom prevails. Here, we hear the voice of King Jesus Himself speaking to us in His Word. Here, the citizens of the kingdom of heaven are to live together, not according to the dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest rules of the world all around us, but rather in sacrificial love and mutual service. Here, we who trust in Jesus Christ are really at home. Here, you breathe the air of your homeland – the kingdom of heaven. I wonder if that’s how you view the church – an outpost of your true home, where you breathe the air of heaven. I can’t help think that if we grasped that reality more firmly than we do, we would begin to see the church with new eyes and learn to love her and invest in here and mourn, every single Sabbath day that we are not present in her courts, and rejoice and long for every opportunity to be among her people.
Now there’s one more thing about the kingdom that I want to mention before we move on to tease out some of the implications of all of this. We’ve said that the saving, redeeming kingdom of grace is already here, operative in the world through the church, by the Word and Spirit of Jesus Christ in one very important sense. It erupted into the middle of history with the life, death, resurrection and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. The kingdom is in our midst. It has come upon us. It has been inaugurated. But I’m sure I don’t have to prove to you – look at your own heart, look at your neighbors, look at your community, look at the empty spaces around you, look at how dark our world continues to be. I don’t have to prove to you that though the kingdom has been inaugurated, it has not yet been consummated. The kingdom in its fullness is not yet here, is it? It’s still coming. There are still places where there are no churches. There are still many, many people who have never heard the good news. The work isn’t done. It’s not finished. There are neighbors, friends, colleagues, people you know that the Lord intends to call to saving faith through the Gospel, who are right now, today, languishing in spiritual darkness and bondage and death. The world is not yet the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. The earth is not yet full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Jesus has not yet returned to execute final justice and bring rest and peace and joy and relief to the suffering church who have been longing for Him to come. The new creation, the home of righteousness, is not yet. We live now in the kingdom of grace, but we are longing for the kingdom of glory. Aren’t we?
And that is really what we are praying for supremely in the second petition of The Lord’s Prayer. Not just small advances here and there, but for the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, when He shall bring the kingdom that He inaugurated at His first coming to its full consummation at His glorious return to judge the quick and the dead. When you pray, “Your kingdom come,” you are praying with an eye to eternity. You are longing for, praying for your heavenly home. So the King. Then the kingdom.
Now finally, the call. The second petition calls us to give attention both to the manner and the matter of our prayers. The manner of our prayers first. How you go about it. “Your kingdom come” should always make us pray with both optimism and urgency. Optimism and urgency. Optimism because the kingdom shall come; it is the promise of God, guaranteed in the blood and the reign of Jesus Christ. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea one day. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. One day, one day soon, everyone whom the Father has given to Jesus Christ will come to Him. “All that the Father has given Me will come to Me,” Jesus said. These are the promises of God. And so when you pray, “Your kingdom come,” you are praying for what God has guaranteed. So pray with optimism, with boldness and encouragement, believing that God will hear this prayer. It is an infallible prayer, “Your kingdom come.” It cannot fail to be answered.
But also pray with great urgency because the kingdom has not yet come in all its fullness, and every believing heart ought to break as it sees friends, loved ones, colleagues, neighbors, children, fathers, mothers, siblings perishing because they are rebelling and rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. Our hearts ought to break, and so we should pray, “Your kingdom come” with urgency and fervor, longing that Christ’s reign might be established here and now in unbelieving hearts before the time is too late and His kingdom descends in ultimate justice at His final appearing. So the manner of our prayers – optimism and urgency.
What about the matter, the content of our prayers? First of all, this second petition teaches us to pray for the truths we preach. John preached, “The kingdom is at hand.” Jesus preached, “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand.” And then having preached, “The kingdom is coming,” He told His disciples, “Pray that the kingdom would come.” Preaching the saving rule of God in Christ must be accompanied by prayer for the saving rule of God in Christ. If few people respond when the preacher pleads with them to turn from their sin and bend their knees to King Jesus, if very few people repent and believe at the sound of the Gospel, might part of the reason be that very few Christians are praying intelligently, fervently from the heart, “Your kingdom come.” Today, as the Word of God is proclaimed, as the offers of the Gospel are extended to the lost, today, in some unbelieving heart, O God, may Your kingdom come! Save the lost, O God! Do you pray for the kingdom to come in the hearts of those who do not know Jesus Christ? Pray for the truths we proclaim.
Secondly, we are praying in the second petition for the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan. To pray for the coming of the kingdom of Christ is to pray for the end of every false kingdom that stands in opposition to it. Pray for the downfall of all counterfeit religion, for the end of idolatry, for the destruction of the cults, for the toppling of superficial piety, for the end of nominal Christianity. Pray for the truths we preach. Pray for the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan.
Thirdly, pray for the peace, purity and progress of the church. Pray that First Presbyterian Church would indeed be and live like an embassy, an outpost of heaven on earth, that all might know that we are Christ’s disciples, citizens of another world, by our love for one another. Pray that all our efforts in the service of King Jesus – think about the local mission team, reaching out into our neighborhood with the Gospel in this coming week. Pray that our efforts in the service of King Jesus would meet with Gospel success. Pray especially for churches to be planted. Think about Nate Stephenson and our own church plant on the Old Canton corridor. Pray for our forthcoming general assembly and the work of the church around the country and around the world. Pray for Gospel ministers and missionaries to be raised up from within the ranks of our own congregation. Pray for our seminary, that it would produce not just good scholars who can explain their learning to a long suffering congregation. Pray that it would produce holy ministers who will be useful in the hand of God. Pray for the truths we preach. Pray for the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan. Pray for the church.
Pray, fourthly, that God would pour out the Holy Spirit in revival and in spiritual awakening. Pray for conversions. Pray for backsliders to be restored under the preaching of the Word. Pray for covenant children to fulfill their baptismal obligation and repent of their sin and cling to Christ for mercy alone. Pray for the fruit of the Spirit to ripen in the lives of His people. Pray down heaven till the Word of God falls like rain and makes the deserts bloom with new life like a garden. Pray for the truths we preach. Pray for the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan. Pray for the church. Pray for revival.
And finally, of course, pray for the return of Jesus Christ. “Your kingdom come.” “O Lord, come.” That’s the concluding prayer of 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 16:22. “O Lord, come.” “Come, Lord Jesus,” is actually the last prayer in the whole Bible. Revelation 22:20 might be a fitting final prayer, surely it ought to be the first desire of every Christian heart – “O Lord, come. I want to see You and be with You face to face forever.” When last did you pray for the return of Christ? Come, Lord Jesus. Let the trumpet sound and the sky roll back like a scroll, and the archangel shout and the dead be raised and the books opened and justice done and a marriage supper of the Lamb arrive at last. Let death die and the devil and his angels be cast into the lake of fire. Let the righteous enter into the joy of their LOrd and the “holy, holy, holy” of the heavenly choir swell with many millions and millions of new voices as the suffering church at last enters its great reward. And we take up our endless, joyous, final great work – adoring You, Lord Jesus, forever and ever. Your kingdom come. Our Lord, come. Come, Lord Jesus, come. When last did you pray for the coming of Christ? That is, I’m sure, the great longing of every earnest Christian heart.
But maybe it’s not your prayer this morning. Maybe you are quietly saying to yourself as you listen, “Don’t come yet. Not yet. I’m not ready. May Your kingdom be delayed. May Your return be postponed because the truth is, I’ve wandered off. I’ve turned my back. I have abused Your name, trampled on Your day, neglected Your praise. I have worshiped and served every idol my fevered imagination can invent, but You, I have neither worshiped nor served. I have dishonored my family. I have hated my neighbor. I am a liar, a cheater and a thief. My heart is gripped with greed, the lure of materialism. My Bible is closed. My conscience assails me. And the thought of Your kingdom coming now fills me with dread.”
And listen, if that is the voice of your conscience, you are right to be filled with dread. One day, the kingdom will come at a time when you least expect it, and the Lord will return as a thief in the hight. Or perhaps, your life may be demanded of you as you leave the church today. None of us know how long we have before we must stand to give an account before the living God. And then it will be too late. It will be too late and you will be forced to bend your knee and confess that Jesus is King, not in joy and rest but in shame and regret and horror as you hear the King pass sentence over you – “Get away from Me. I never knew you, you worker of iniquity.” And you will be dispatched to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But it’s not too late yet. The kingdom has not come yet. Jesus has not returned yet. There is time now, now, to bend your knee. Do you know that the King Himself has paid in full for sinners like you and me all the price necessary to remove our guilt and grant us full citizenship in His kingdom so that you, you might be welcome, today, as an heir of the kingdom of heaven. Stop running from Him, the King of kings, and run to Him. He is inviting you to come. He is a great King, ready with mercy and grace for you. And then, on that day, when you finally claim Him as Lord, submit to Him as your King, turn from your sin, topple the mastery of self from the throne of your heart, and acknowledge that Jesus reigns, on that day, you will be able to say with joy and longing, “O come, Lord Jesus. You have rescued me, You rule me, and I so long to see You and to be with You forever. Your kingdom come.”
Let’s pray together. Our God and Father, we do now bow before You longing, those of us who know the Lord Jesus, we are longing for an end to sin, an end to suffering, an end to injustice. We are longing for the new creation. We groan inwardly, with all creation itself, eagerly awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. And so we cry, “O Lord Jesus come, let Your kingdom come. Come, our Lord, come.” And we pray for those in our midst who cannot make that prayer but who in shame in and dismay are saying quietly in their conscience, “Not yet. Please, not yet. Don’t come yet. Make the kingdom be delayed. I’m not ready. I’m not ready.” O, have mercy on them. Take hold of them and show them there is nothing for them to do to get ready but to turn from self and sin and submit now, today, to the kingship of Jesus Christ. Make it so, in all our hearts we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.