Lords Prayer Message 2

There was a tik tok trend a while back where women asked their husbands how often they think of the Roman Empire. Often men would answer something like a couple of times a week, other times they would say multiple times a day. And this left their wives stunned. Because women, apparently, never think about the Roman Empire in any capacity.

i'm not going to Ask you how often you think of the Roman Empire. Nor am I going to ask you how often you think of the galactic empire from stars wars, because that number might scare women too. But we are going to talk about empires and kingdoms today.

Our second verse from our series on the Lord’s Prayer is ““Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Much like last week, these few short words are worldview shaping. If you do not understand what Jesus means here by kingdom, you are missing a huge swath of what it means to be a christian and how we are to live. This word kingdom in the Greek is understood as empire or kingdom.

And so in the face of a one world government under the emperor of Caesar, where Caesar is Lord, where Caesar is propagated as the son of God, Jesus, in but a few words of a simple prayer stands up and declares that Christ followers will not be apart of this rival kingdom, or any other kingdom.

Because you can only have allegiance to one kingdom, one king. So when we pray your kingdom come, we are proclaiming we want to serve you and you alone.

When we pray your kingdom come your will be done we are not arguing, God bring me to you. Let me escape this hellscape. Let me reach heaven and sit on clouds and play harp with the angels.

No, in fact its the opposite. We are praying, God let us make earth look more like heaven. Let’s have less worldly empire and a more heavenly one.

To pursue this even further, the closest word to your will be done would be something like rule. (Bible Project podcast on Lords Prayer) let your kingdom rule be done. Let your kingdoms precepts, commands, and laws rule.

and we know someone rules when people do what that person wants. But we are saying for his rule to be done. We will see this throughout the whole prayer, its plural. It's not Jesus praying his father. He’s not praying to let him do God’s rule.

Jesus, right here in this prayer, is proclaiming the kingdom of God on earth, for everyone who believes. It is not a prayer for me. It is not a prayer for you. It is a prayer for us. We can't tell when we read scripture in english because we don’t have an easy way of differentiating you as plural or singular. But the majority of the time when God commands something, when Paul is sharing something in his letters, when Jesus teaches us something, it is usually a plural command. You all do this. You all obey this. You all listen to my words.

We have to understand this is pivotal to our understanding of the life of the Christian. We are not christians with a personal walk with Jesus in order to get to heaven. We are the church, the heavenly empire on earth, and it is our duty to make earth look more like heaven as we faithfully serve Christ while we are here.

Some of Jesus' first recorded words appear in Matthew three chapters before the Lord's prayer where he proclaims “repent, for the kingdom of God is near.” Matthew 3:2 another way of translating that is The kingdom of God is at hand.” its here! The time has arrived, the messiah is here and he is constituting a new order, a new creation, a new invading kingdom, a new way of living. The kingdom is arriving.

And then we can flip to the end of scripture and the last chapter of Revelation reads “

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them and be their God;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for[e] the first things have passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4

Do you see the difference in thought? God's plan since the very beginning was to bring back life to the garden of Eden! God with his people, on earth! Eden wasn’t in heaven. Israel wasn't in heaven. The temple where God lived wasn’t heaven. The plan has never been for us to leave earth, but to restore earth to its proper uncorrupted state, and live WITH US!

so in this simple prayer we take up this kingdom banner and are collectively saying together let’s do as you would have us do so that your kingdom rule can be acted out in our lives.

N.T. Wright explains it this way, God was now unveiling his age-old plan, bringing Justice and mercy to all. And he was doing so, apparently, through Jesus. Jesus was declaring that the clock was standing at ten seconds to midnight, that D-Day had arrived, that Israel’s God was at last becoming king. He was announcing that God’s final campaign had begun, and was already being put into effect. The people had better get ready for it, because it was already beginning.” (N.T. Wright - New testament in its first century world)

there is no other faith, no other religion, Where this is the case. Where God wants to dwell with people. Where God wants to take up residence… with us. From Genesis in the garden, to God in the fire and the smoke in the wilderness, to the ark of the covenant, to the temple in Jerusalem, to Jesus on earth, God has always been about living with his people. Now, through the Holy Spirit, God comes to dwell in… us.

This simple understanding, this simple sentence, is life changing. It should completely change the way you live. Because no longer do we just live a good moral passive life in order to get to heaven. That is not the call for Christians. Now we are active participants in helping constitute the kingdom of God here on earth in our churches and in our lives.

This is why the theologian and pastor Dallas Willard writes “So when Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence” (Divine Conspiracy)

I told you last week that when you grasp Jesus' message about being children of God it is an amazing feeling. But with this amazing feeling comes a great more responsibility and it's the same here.

God values us enough to want to live and dwell with us. That is an amazing thing. But there's also more responsibility.

If I believe being a christian is just loving God, loving people when I encounter them, and being a good person until I get to meet Jesus in the sky, there's no real responsibility. There’s very little temptation. You don’t have to go to church, just read your Bible and listen to worship music. You don’t have to mentor, disciple, evangelize, or partake in community.

When we become a servant in the kingdom, when you become an heir to the kingdom of God, well now you have expectations placed upon you. God is not just doing work in the world and we can just sit back, observe, and give a round of worship and applause. The work God is doing.. Is through you. And through me. And through all of us. He chooses to work through his people. Through his church.

God, in his Sovereignty, has chosen to use us to bring about his will on earth. Do you get it? There are two big reasons God sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us.

Sanctification, which is simply understood as making you holy and more like Jesus. And anointing and commissioning. Which is to send you out into the world with a purpose and a mission.

So God sends the Spirit to prepare you and send you. If you have the active spirit of God resting on your life it is a sign that you have a purpose, you have work to do!

If i could share with you just one more quote to help you understand this it would be from the australian Theologian Michael Bird writes this

“We act in faith, hope and love in the present, offering our lives as a living sacrifice to our exalted Lord. Then, in the power of the spirit, we prepare this sin-cursed and war-torn earth to receive the reign of God on the day when heaven and earth are married together. We really do want, as best as we can, to make God’s kingdom ‘come’ so that it may be ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6.10). We are, by our kingdom-labours, preparing the bride to meet the groom, setting the table for the wedding supper of the Lamb, and curating creation for the day when God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15.28), (Michael Bird Substack - from his book Jesus and the powers!)

If you aren’t convinced it is OUR job, our calling, our duty, to make earth look more like heaven, then hear directly from Paul himself in Ephesians 4:10 God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. NLT

1st Peter 2:9 declares that we are a holy priesthood. A holy nation. And what do priests do but work for God? You are advocates, through your prayers you intercede, through your prayers you heal, through your actions you create peace, you shine light in the darkness. You are justice seekers. You help rid this world of its sin and corruption by replacing it with the love of God. God is using you.. as his hands and feet.

God has nominated every person who has come to believe as people who he will use to bring his will down to earth.

So here’s everything put together. If we are active, Bible believing Christians, we are a part of God's kingdom. His empire. And when we pray this prayer we, in the presence of our church and our community, proclaim together, to work to bring God's rule down. Let me clear on this point, it is not to create God's law for the whole world, That would be impossible. we can not control what the world will do. The world will always be the world. The kingdoms of earth will always rule through heavy handed power and manipulation existing through a constant state of sin.

Every country, every culture, every part of this world that is not a part of the kingdom of God is a false kingdom that stands opposed to God's kingdom in some way or fashion.

No, we are to help bring God's rule down for ourselves, and for our churches.

I proclaim in this prayer that I want to live like Jesus and create a holy community that follows Jesus and makes my sphere of influence a little bit more like the kingdom of Heaven.

When you pray this prayer you tell the world, and God, that you want to be a part of what God is doing in the world. That you want to be sent out every week to do the good work set before you. That you want to seek this church to grow and prosper. That you want to be a part of seeing life change in your neighbor.

So as we submit both our will and our time to Christ and his kingdom. We Pray Come Lord Jesus, come.

Now we are going to end with a benediction. For anyone who is new to the faith or didn't grow up in a liturgical church, a benediction is simply a way of ending a service to send you out. To remind you of your calling, to persuade you to follow Christ, and to bless you in the name of God. Your only job is to hear it, and respond with an affirmative AMEN after its finished.