Well please do take your Bibles in hand and open with me to Matthew chapter 6. Matthew
chapter 6. This morning, we’ll be looking at verses 9 through 13. This is quite a famous passage.
It’s a passage that most of you have memorized. It is a passage that we actually recite quite often
here in worship. The passage, of course, is The Lord’s Prayer. And you’ll remember the context
of this prayer in Matthew 6. It’s actually the Sermon on the Mount. Here, we find Jesus at the
very beginning of His ministry. He’s just been baptized in chapter 3, He was tempted, and then
He called His disciples in chapter 4. And now, we have crowds beginning to follow Him as He
teaches and heals people who are listening to Him within the crowds.
And that brings us to the Sermon on the Mount, which is the context of this teaching on how to
pray. And as we look at this passage, I’ll read the whole prayer, but we’ll actually just be looking
at the second petition or request in this prayer. That second petition is, “Thy kingdom come.”
We’ll look at it under two simple headings. First, the kingdom. And second, the King. Now that
we have some context and we know where we’re headed, let’s turn to God’s Word; before I read
the passage, though, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, how we desire now that in these next moments that we would catch a glimpse
of the glory of Your kingdom, that we would better understand, even slightly, the heart of our
Savior. Lord, we ask that You would send Your Holy Spirit now, that You would cause hearts to
stir as Your Word is read and proclaimed. Lord, without the Holy Spirit, this is a fruitless effort,
and so we ask that You would send Your Spirit now and that You would give us eyes to hear and
ears to hear what it is that Your Word says to us this morning. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray,
amen.
Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 9. Hear now 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. May God add His blessing to this the reading and the hearing of His holy, inerrant and
infallible Word.
Well the first thing we come to this morning is the kingdom. When we pray, “Thy kingdom
come,” what kingdom are we talking about? What is this kingdom? Where is this kingdom?
What does it mean for the kingdom to come? Who does this kingdom belong to? The last of
those questions is probably the easiest to answer. Christ is teaching His disciples to pray and He
teaches them to pray to “Our heaven who is in heaven.” So this kingdom that we are talking
about is the kingdom of God. And that’s simple enough, but the Bible talks about God’s
kingdom in several ways.
First, the Bible talks about God’s kingdom and calls it the kingdom of God’s power. When we
talk about the kingdom of power, we are saying that God always has and always will be on the
throne. He is the Creator of this world. It all belongs to Him. There is nothing outside of His
control. When the spring breeze runs through the fresh green leaves on a tree, He knows and
controls how every one of those leaves will move and how every one will make a rustling sound.
And you can multiply that by an entire forest and He knows it all; He controls it all. There is not
a leaf that He has not caused to sprout. And He knows and controls how every one of those
leaves will turn brown or yellow or red or whatever shade it may be in the fall. He knows when
each one of those leaves will fall. Even now, He upholds, He directs and governs everything. He
is omnipotent. He knows all. He sees all. He hears all. But beyond that, at this very moment, God
is providentially preserving and governing all His creatures and all of their actions – everything
that is outside of our reach, everything that is beyond what we can comprehend, beyond our field
of view. Whether this week your travels took you to Alabama, to Australia, or to the other side of
the moon, all of that, all of that is comfortably within God’s hands. The hands of our Father who
is in heaven. This is the kingdom of God’s power.
You know, the elders and the pastors of this church are praying for and want us to be a church
that sends our own people into missions. It only took me five minutes to get to missions! And if
we are going to do that, if we are going to be such a church, we had better believe in this
kingdom of God’s power and we’d better take great comfort in it. How else will we send our best
friends to people that have never heard the Gospel before? How else will you buy a one-way
plane ticket for your grandchild to serve in some faraway place where they have been called by
the Lord? If we are ever going to send our own people all over the world, we must know and we
must believe that the God who sends, the God who sends us, has power over it all. How can we
even function in a world that seems so unpredictable from our perspective? Wherever He might
call us, He’s sovereign there too. So Scripture talks about the kingdom of God’s power, and
when we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we are praying that God would be pleased to exercise His
power in such a way that all things would work together for His glory and for our good.
That Scripture also talks about the kingdom of God’s grace. This kingdom is a spiritual kingdom.
It is an internal kingdom. This kingdom is found in the hearts of everyone who has called upon
Christ alone for their salvation. And we want the rule of this kingdom to expand to hearts all
over our city, all over Jackson, and to hearts from every tribe and tongue and nation. And so
when Jesus teaches His disciples and us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” it is very much a
missionary prayer that He is praying and that we are praying. Our Larger Catechism, answer 191,
addresses this when it says, “In this petition, we are praying for the Gospel to be propagated
throughout the world and that the ordinances of Christ may be purely dispensed and made
effectual to the converting of those that are yet in their sins.” Do you realize that that is what you
are praying for when you pray, “Thy kingdom come”?
It is impossible to overstate how important these prayers are and how much your missionaries
depend on your prayer support. When they stand in this pulpit and say thank you to First Pres
and thank you especially for your prayers, it’s not because it would be immodest just to thank
you for your finances and so we’d better mention the prayers too. No, they rely on your prayers.
They rely on your prayers. Samuel Zwemer, the great missionary to the Muslims and professor at
Princeton in the late 19th century said that, “The history of missions is the history of answered
prayer.” If you’re not sure about that, just cast your mind back to the reports during the Mission
Conference. Think of any of those reports that you heard from our missionaries. Any success,
any encouragement, any conversions that they’ve seen, they would consider all of that the work
of your answered prayers. In Romans 15, Paul appeals to the Romans to “strive together with
me,” he writes, “in your prayers on my behalf.” So when you pray for our missionaries, it is not
just some distant thing that’s happening that they’re not aware of. Paul says that those who pray
to God on his behalf are actually striving together with him, they’re working alongside him as
they pray.
So Scripture talks about the kingdom of God’s power and it talks about the kingdom of God’s
grace, but it also talks about the kingdom of God’s glory. This is the kingdom that will come into
fullness at Christ’s return. This is the kingdom that is the final goal, the final target of all of
human history. It’s the kingdom that the missionary endeavor is seeking to fill. The kingdom of
God’s power has many rebels still within it. The kingdom of God’s grace still faces many
enemies and is at war with the kingdom of the devil. But none of that exists in the kingdom of
glory. The kingdom of glory is filled with perpetual praise. There as Thomas Boston puts it,
“Faith is swallowed up in vision and hope in fruition.” No sin, no death, no war, no persecution,
no missions – only the perfect rule and perfect obedience and perfect harmony in the perfect
presence of our perfect King. Forever. That’s the kingdom of God’s glory.
Now I don’t need to warn you that I have some strong opinions about music. One of those
opinions I have is an opinion about what the very best combination of words to music is in all of
history. You’ve probably all heard it; I know you’ve all sung it – a single line from Handel’s
Messiah, the “Hallelujah Chorus.” After the onslaught of “hallelujahs” and the barrage of “the
Lord God omnipotent reigneths,” you get to the very center, the very center of the piece. Not by
accident; it’s right in the middle, about measure 100 of 200. And everything suddenly gets quiet
and the choir sings words from Revelation that they only sing once throughout the entire piece –
“The kingdom of this world is become” – and then in full voice, bursting forth much like I
imagine the angels, the heavenly host over the fields of Bethlehem, they come back in – “The
kingdom of our Lord and of our Christ!” That line with the accompanying music is in my very
humble musical opinion the best matching of words and music in all of history, and it might be
the closest we’ll get to the kingdom of glory this side of the second coming.
So when we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we are also praying for the coming of that kingdom of
glory. Yes, we want the kingdom of grace to march on and to make progress in the hearts of
people from every tribe, tongue and nation, but we also wait with earnest expectation for the
kingdom of glory to come as well. Our Shorter Catechism summarizes this well, all of it. “What
do we pray for in the second petition?” it asks. In the second petition, which is, “Thy kingdom
come,” we pray, “that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed and that the kingdom of grace may be
advanced, ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it, and the kingdom of glory may be
hastened.” Oh that we would take this responsibility seriously. Do you desire the kingdom of
God to come? This prayer, these three words, “Thy kingdom come,” should ignite within us
individually and as a church the desire to see the lost saved.
And if we desire something, would we actually do something to make it happen? What can we
do to be part of the answer to our own prayers of, “Thy kingdom come”? Well, God’s kingdom
comes even as we pray for our missionaries and as we pray for our children to become
missionaries and as we pray for our interns and our seminarians to become missionaries. God’s
kingdom comes when we stop thinking about our missions giving goal of $1.2 million as the cap
that we’re hoping to reach, but the minimum that we hope to blow past so that we can support
even more. Do you know how wonderful that would be?
This past week, Stephen mentioned that the Twin Lakes Fellowship met at Twin Lakes Camp
and Conference Center. And we heard, as we do every year, reports from church planters all over
the United States and from missionaries all over the world. And they’re all great candidates, and
some of them we already support, but if they all reached out and asked us to support them as
well, we couldn’t support them without cutting other missionaries that we currently support.
How wonderful would it be if the elders who serve on our missions teams, if those elders were
more overwhelmed by the money that they had to give away than by the applications that they
have to reject? God’s kingdom comes when we send and when we go to Thailand or to Peru or
when we are doing prison ministry or when we open the Bible with our families and our
neighbors and we teach our children and we talk about Jesus with them. And surely God’s
kingdom comes when we go in the long term to use God’s gifts that He has given us in places
that have yet to hear the Gospel. If we’ll pray, “Thy kingdom come,” let us also desire that His
kingdom would indeed come. And if we desire that it would come, let us use the gifts that God
has given us to make it happen.”
Now hopefully we have some clarity on the kingdom and what it is that we are praying for when
we pray, “Thy kingdom come.” But let’s take a few moments in our second point to think about
the King and what it tells us, in fact, about our King that He has taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom
come.” Surely it is not insignificant that Jesus gives one model prayer in Scripture. And He
includes this line, “Thy kingdom come,” in that model prayer. Not only that, but where does this
petition fall within the prayer? “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy
kingdom come.” The only petition that comes before the kingdom is the hallowing of God’s
name. Before we get to daily bread, before we even get to forgiveness, “Thy kingdom come.”
Think about what that means when it comes to the work of missions and the heart of our Savior.
From this very first sermon of His, the Sermon on the Mount that we find here in Matthew, He’s
teaching His disciples and He’s teaching us that mission holds a special place of prominence in
His prayers and certainly also in His heart. And so if the goal of our sanctification is for each of
us to be wholly renewed in the image of God, to become more and more like Christ, having a
heart for mission ought to be growing in all believers as part of that sanctification. We often talk
about how you can’t claim to love Jesus and hate the Church. That’s His Bride! You can’t hate
the man’s Bride and say that you love Him! But I would add that you can’t claim to love Jesus
and be indifferent to the mission that He has given to His Church. If you have no interest this
morning in the coming of God’s kingdom, you may not even be in the kingdom. And if that’s the
case, we are praying, “Thy kingdom come” on your behalf this morning. We pray that even this
morning your citizenship would be transferred into this eternal kingdom that cannot be shaken
and that you would begin to know the true joy that comes from being in this kingdom.
Now you might be wondering if I am overstating the case here and making way too big of a deal
out of three words in a prayer. Does this really reflect the heart of our Savior? Absolutely. We
can see it not only in this model prayer but in the things that Jesus taught. Matthew chapter 4, if
you look back, talks about how Jesus began to preach. And the summary of His teaching is found
there in verse 17. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And this petition, “Thy
kingdom come,” can be heard as an echo of that preaching. But we also see two verses later, as
Jesus calls His first disciples, saying, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Even
from His disciples’ very calling, the very beginning of what He was calling them to, He was
commissioning these disciples to be fishers of men.
We find also in this same Sermon on the Mount that Jesus has already called His disciples “the
salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” who must “Let their light shine before others so
that they may see your good works and give glory to your heavenly Father who is in heaven.”
And if we move ahead to chapter 9, Jesus had compassion on the crowds because “they were like
sheep without a shepherd.” And what does He say? “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are
few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” In
chapter 16, Christ speaks of building His church and that “the gates of hell will not prevail
against it.” And in chapter 24, Jesus proclaims that “the gospel of the kingdom will be
proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will
come.” And then of course after the resurrection, we find the Great Commission in Matthew 28,
His very last words before the ascension. A commission to His apostles and to us to go into all
the world. So even just in Matthew, in just a very brief survey of Matthew, the theme of missions
comes up in Jesus’ teaching an incredible number of times.
Okay so we see it in His teaching, but if this prayer is such a big deal, do we see evidence of it in
Jesus’ own prayers? Well there are many times throughout the gospels that we read that Jesus
prayed. But there are actually precious few times that we actually have the words that Jesus
spoke as He prayed. We have this morning’s passage, The Lord’s Prayer, and there are a total of
eight other recorded prayers in the gospels. Some of those eight are recorded in multiple gospel
accounts, and it’s interesting to note that most of those prayers are related to or in the context of
missions, evangelism and salvation. Think of Jesus standing before Lazarus’ tomb. Lazarus has
been dead, His friend has been dead for four days. And the text tells us that Jesus has been
deeply moved by Mary’s weeping and that famously He has wept Himself. But what does He do
after they have rolled the stone away but before calling Lazarus out of the tomb and back from
the dead? He prays. And He prays a prayer concerned with the salvation of the people around
Him. He says, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I know that You always hear Me,
but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that You sent
Me.” This is a mission minded, an evangelistic prayer that Jesus is praying. He wants those who
hear Him and see this miracle to believe.
The entirety of John 17 is a prayer known as The High Priestly Prayer. This is the longest prayer
of Jesus’ recorded in Scripture. And it comes just as He is about to be betrayed and arrested. And
here are a few representative lines. “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son that the Son
may glorify You since You have given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all
whom You have given Him. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me
through their word that they may all be one just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You that they
also may be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.” This is a missionary
prayer. And then finally, we find Jesus praying even from the very cross for the forgiveness of
His torturers and murderers. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
So not only is His teaching but Christ’s own prayers are filled with concern for the lost. And if
Jesus Himself felt the need so often to pray this theme of “Thy kingdom come” in His prayers,
how much more should we be occupied by that same theme in our own prayers? Hudson Taylor,
the great missionary to China, said, “When we work, we work. When we pray, God works.” As
believers who have bowed our knee to King Jesus and confessed that He is Lord, this petition
ought to be the deepest desire of our hearts. The person who is truly converted will earnestly
pour out their heart to the Lord saying, “Thy kingdom come.” Is that your prayer? Is your prayer,
“Thy kingdom come” or does it seem like your prayer is more like, “My kingdom come”? Have
you so effectively made your kingdom come and so prioritized your own interests, your own
comfort, your own entertainment that no one would believe you when you pray, “Thy kingdom
come”?
So where do we look for an example of self-sacrificial service for the kingdom? Well it turns out
for Jesus that “Thy kingdom come” is not just His teaching, it’s not just His prayers; it was the
very mission He came to accomplish. Luke records Jesus’ own words, “I must preach the good
news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose.” In John
3, we find that “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the
world might be saved through Him.” This is the mission and work of the coming of the kingdom.
There are actually more chapters in the book of John that talk about Jesus being sent on mission
from the Father than there are chapters that don’t mention it. It was the purpose of His life. His
life was full of self-sacrificial service because He was sent on mission.
And of course we see the ultimate act and fulfillment of this purpose at the cross. Christ sent on
mission for us and for our salvation. He was crushing the head of the serpent there, sounding the
deathnail to the kingdom of this world there, conquering sin and death there, and in turn, making
possible the existence of the kingdoms of grace and glory. What I hope that you’ll see here this
morning more than anything else is the heart of your Savior, the gloriousness of the heart of your
Savior. He gave up all the riches of heaven to be sent by the Father on a rescue mission for you.
Can you hear His voice this morning? Can you hear your Savior’s voice this morning? Can you
hear the one who sacrificed all, even Himself, for you? From the heart that was moved by
compassion for the lost, He said to His disciples after His resurrection and He says this morning
to you, “As the Father has sent Me, even so, I am sending you.”
How will you respond to Christ’s words to you? Will you say, “No, Savior, not me”? But as one
preacher asked, “Can you stand there at the foot of the cross and can you look up there and see a
suffering servant, His blood flowing down, a crown of thorns upon His head? Can you hear His
struggles, His cries of pain? Can you feel the earth shaking and the sky going dark? And will you
tell Christ there of all the sacrifices that you have made for the coming of His kingdom?” We
serve a glorious King who loves us and has rescued us from sin and death and has given us
everything. What could we possibly hold back from such a Savior?
But how? This task is impossible. How can we even begin to take up such a task? Well we serve
a King whose kingdom of glory is guaranteed, whose kingdom of grace marches forward, and
we know the gates of hell will not prevail against it, and whose kingdom of power extends to
every inch of this world. It is that King who is with us always, even to the end of the age. And it
is that power that He gives us by His Spirit to equip us for every good work that He calls us to.
Let’s go to Him now in prayer.
Heavenly Father, how we pray that Your kingdom would come. Lord, how we pray that our
hearts would be stirred as we look upon our Savior who so loved us that He gave up everything.
Lord, how we pray that our hearts and our minds and our actions would reflect the love of that
Savior towards each one of us. Lord, we pray that You would send the power of Your Holy Spirit
now and that as we go from here we would not rest until we are praying and desiring and doing
what we can that Your kingdom may come. We pray all of this in the name of our Savior, Jesus
Christ. Amen.