Thy Kingdom Come
Download MP3And if you would, open your bibles to Matthew chapter 6. It's the last Sunday of the month, and so we will be looking once again at the Lord's prayer. And tonight, we'll be looking at the words, thy kingdom come. So Matthew chapter 6, and we'll begin reading in verse 9. Pray like this then.
Joel Brooks: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. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Our father, we are so grateful to be here in this moment. We can gather freely, and we can hear from your word, we can collectively raise our voices and adoration of you. And now in this moment, I pray that you would open up our our ears, open up our minds to receive from you. Lord, may no one walk away from here impressed with any other thing other than you. So, god, in this moment may my words fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. On July 29th 1981, I was 8 years old. My mom woke me up somewhere between the hours of 3 4, and she got her whole family up to gather around the television to watch Prince Charles get married to Lady Diana. We were one of 750,000,000 people across the world who watched that wedding live.
Joel Brooks:There was another 300 +1000000 who actually listened to it on the radio. And so you had over one out of every 5 humans alive at the time listening or watching this wedding as it took place. And and it was it was kind of cool to watch. Granted my mom, my sister were a lot more into it than I was, But I found myself being drawn into it. I really loved, you know, all the uniforms, all the pageantry, the carriages as they came in, as they were introducing, you know, all the earls and all the the dukes and, and all the lords and all these important people there gathering for this moment and, and seeing lady Diana in this ridiculous dress with, I think it was a 25 foot train that went down and, the tiara on her.
Joel Brooks:And I just remember just I should not be fascinated by this, but I was really actually being fascinated by this. Now, I live in a country that has rejected the monarchy. I mean, that's a democracy, and I love my country, and I love democracy. And yet for some reason, I'm really drawn to things like that, and so was the rest of the world. And what I found is that I really wanted to see royalty.
Joel Brooks:There's just something about royalty that that resonated with me. Even though I rejected the monarchy, our country has, and I agree with that, there's there's a part of me that really longs for that, and I think the whole world longs for that. But but not just to have a kingdom, to to have a king that will reign in righteousness and in truth and set everything right. I think that's a longing of every human heart. And God tells us that this will happen.
Joel Brooks:It's the storyline of the bible that that he will come and he will reign physically as our king. When Jesus came preaching, the first thing that he said, the first words out of his mouth were, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then he went about, you know, healing lepers, healing the blind, healing the deaf, and basically, everywhere he went, the kingdom of God was present. And every time he would preach the kingdom of heaven is at hand, well, you can't have a kingdom without having a king. He was saying, the king is at hand.
Joel Brooks:The king is here. As he would go about doing those things. When he preached his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount that is here in Matthew chapter 56, he taught about the kingdom of heaven. He said, when you pray, pray thy kingdom come. And these are the words that I want us to look at closely tonight.
Joel Brooks:He started off his sermon on the mount by saying these words, blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God. So so even he starts off the sermon by praying about the kingdom of God. He in the middle of his sermon, he says, we need to pray that kingdom come. Later, he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. So, really, the sermon on the mount is a lot about the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:And what I wanna do, I wanna look at this prayer, in particular, those words, thy kingdom come. I want to look at it, from a bird's eyes view. I want to look at it in this grand, the grand story in light of the grand scheme of the entire bible. And then I want us to zoom in and take a really close look at it in context of this Sermon on the Mount. So, first, I want us to back up, and and I mean back back up to before creation.
Joel Brooks:Long before we were created, long before there is the world, there was humans, God had he had created angels. These angels joyfully served him. They worshiped him. There was one kingdom. Until a certain angel that we know as Satan rebelled against God.
Joel Brooks:He wanted to sit on God's throne. And so so he went to war with God. He rebelled, and he set up his own kingdom, if you will. And he began recruiting other angels to come and join him in his rebellion, be part of his kingdom. And so from early on, you had this kingdom of Satan battling with the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:And at some point, and we don't know when, God created earth, And he confined Satan to it. And after he had made the earth, he made Adam and Eve, and he placed them there, and he said, you are to have dominion over the earth. Now this, of course, led to Satan hating man from the start because what Satan wants is dominion. What Satan wants is to rule, and he's he wants to rule the earth. And now God's put these these people, this man and the woman, has given them rule over the earth.
Joel Brooks:And so Satan not only hates them because they are God's good creation, his very good creation. He hates them because God has given them dominion. And so satan, very early on, begins trying to recruit them to make them join his kingdom and leave God's. We don't know how long it took. Satan could have been tempting Adam and Eve for years.
Joel Brooks:We we really have no idea how long it took, but at some point, Adam and Eve fell. They they disobeyed god's one command to not eat the fruit of this tree. This one command, they disobeyed. God. They joined his kingdom.
Joel Brooks:And when Adam and Eve fell, that's this where what we call the fall. When when they fell, all of humanity fell with them. The Earth fell with them as well because if Adam and Eve were to have dominion over the Earth and all of a sudden, they fall in there, well, of course of course, the earth will be affected, and so thorns and thistles grow from the ground. Pain, suffering, evil enter in. But it wasn't just the earth, it was Adam and Eve's children were greatly affected.
Joel Brooks:All of humanity was now born into this kingdom of Satan. We inherited that sin nature. Now, we don't know we're born into this kingdom. I mean, we we really don't even think of Satan as king, even though, you know, Jesus in John chapter 14, and in 16, he says, Satan is the ruler of this world. Paul calls him the prince of the air.
Joel Brooks:That that he is the one currently reigning here, but but we don't feel it. Just like a fish doesn't know it's in water. We don't know we're born into that kingdom because it's all we've ever known. And so we think suffering, death, pain, all of these things are just normal. Because we've never known what it was like to walk with God in the cool of the evening in the garden.
Joel Brooks:We've we've never known what it was like to be a part of his kingdom. Well, throughout the bible, God would send people to remind people that there's 2 kingdoms here. And so he he would send people like Abraham, people like Moses, people like the prophets, and he would say, repent. Leave the kingdom of Satan. Come to the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:Trust in me. And this happened throughout all the Old Testament. And so finally, when we get to the new testament and to the gospels, we see that god sends his own son to do battle with Satan. We see this happening earlier in Matthew chapter 4. One of the very first things Jesus does is he battles Satan in the wilderness.
Joel Brooks:That's what it is. It's a battle. They go out in the wilderness, and just like Satan tried to recruit Adam and Eve, he's trying to recruit Jesus, if you will, and he tempts them 3 ways, and each time Jesus rebuffs him and says, no. And the last of these temptations really reveal what Satan was after. He said, look, all of the kingdoms of the world, I will give to you.
Joel Brooks:Implying he has them. He's the ruler of them. All of them, I will give to you if you'll just join my side. Worship me. Satan is defeated when Jesus says, be gone.
Joel Brooks:I will worship the lord god in him only. And so Jesus leaves from there, and he immediately goes, and he begins preaching to the people, the kingdom of god is at hand. He begins healing people. He begins preaching good news to people, and he begins gathering a few recruits, if you will, to to join him in this fight against Satan. You could call those recruits his disciples.
Joel Brooks:And it's when he gathers them together. In this context, he teaches them to pray, Thy kingdom come, thy kingdom come. So this is what I would say that cosmic context of Jesus's words. What what what's happening throughout the universe here? These words were uttered in the midst of the battle between God's kingdom and Satan's kingdom.
Joel Brooks:And and after teaching his disciples this prayer, Jesus goes off and he does more battle. He begins undoing Satan's works. We read about that in the Heidelberg Catechism. It's what he does, and he he does that through his healings and through his teaching. But this is really on a small scale, because if you think of our rebellion extends all the way around the globe, that that the whole earth is under the the domain of Satan, healing one little person here, healing a person here, healing an entire village doesn't really make a dent.
Joel Brooks:It's not it's not much of a battle here. These are small battles when you look at the grand scheme of this war. But what Jesus is doing, he's he is preparing. Jesus is scheming, if you will. He's got a plan that Satan has not thought about.
Joel Brooks:A matter of fact, Satan could not comprehend the strategy that Jesus was about to take when going to the cross because Satan is all about power, all about pride, and he could not imagine that he would ever be defeated by somebody humbling themself and suffering and coming as weak. But that's what Jesus was gonna do. Jesus goes to the cross, and it's on the cross that he overthrows the work that Satan had been building up for millennia. He he over throws it in an afternoon through his work on the cross. That's that's that's the battle.
Joel Brooks:That's the big battle happens at Calvary, and it's there that Jesus removes all of our sin because he takes them there on the cross and he defeats Satan. When when when Jesus rose from the dead 3 days later, that is the victory. That is when Satan's defeat was secured. And now by trusting in Jesus' work on the cross and in his resurrection, what happens is we are now transferred from this domain of Satan into the domain of God. Paul actually writes about that.
Joel Brooks:He he says it this way in Colossians 113. God has delivered us from the domain of darkness, and he has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son and whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. That's how our victory was secured. And so now by faith, we are living in the kingdom of God. Now this I'm realizing this is this is a lot we're throwing out, and this can be a little confusing because you're thinking this is the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:I mean, there there's still so much sin. There's still so much evil and and suffering going on. It's it's hard to believe that Satan has really been defeated and that Jesus is victorious when all this is going on. But we need to see what's happening for what it really is. We live in the age of what my old, theology professor he called.
Joel Brooks:We live in the age of mop up duty of mop up duty, in which the main battle is over. Jesus has won. He has ascended. He is seated on his throne. He has given up his given us his spirit, assuring us that one day he will physically come, and he will reign forever.
Joel Brooks:But until that happens, there's some mop up duty that the church is doing and that he is doing until he comes. Let me give a analogy, and and with every analogy, it's gonna be flawed. So don't run up to me afterwards and go, there's a problem with your analogy. I know it's an analogy. Okay?
Joel Brooks:It's flawed, but but maybe it will help. Think of Jesus as the medical genius who found penicillin. And with the penicillin, he he recruited some doctors, and he healed them, and then he gave them the penicillin to go and to cure the disease throughout the world. And when the when the penicillin was found, the battle's over. Alright?
Joel Brooks:I mean, the victory is secured in that moment. The disease can't fight against that, but now this needs to filter out throughout the world. That's similar to the mop up duty that we have now. Satan is defeated. His power is broken, but yet there still is some evil.
Joel Brooks:There's still a sin. There still is some suffering in the world until Christ comes and reigns physically. So this is the age in which we live. This is the grand cosmic context, I would say, in which Jesus teaches us to pray, thy kingdom come. Now what I want us to do is look at the immediate context.
Joel Brooks:So, so we were way, way back. Now I want us to look really close at this, and I want us to do this by looking at just a few verses later in chapter 6 where he fleshes us out. Look at verse chapter 6 verse 25. We'll read about 10 verses. Therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about your life.
Joel Brooks:What you will eat or what you will drink nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Joel Brooks:And what you view by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Joel Brooks:But if god so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
Joel Brooks:Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. One of the results of believing that God's kingdom is coming, and that in a way, it's already broken in and come, and that we are by faith living in that. One of the the results of that is that we will cease to become an anxious people. I I find it when I'm reading this somewhat humorous, because Jesus over and over again is saying, don't be anxious.
Joel Brooks:Okay? Don't be anxious, but who in the world wants to be anxious? I mean, it's not like, I really would like to be anxious. You're you're not telling anybody something that they already don't want to do, and just telling a person not to be anxious doesn't really help. I I mean, have you ever told somebody to not be anxious?
Joel Brooks:Ever told your spouse that those who are married? You know, honey, just don't be anxious. How did that work out? And did did it work? You know, thank you.
Joel Brooks:All of a sudden, all anxiety is gone. This is not how it works yet. Jesus is commanding this. Don't be anxious. Don't worry about these things.
Joel Brooks:Now, I'm not a very anxious person, but I have had 2 panic attacks in my life. Now, one, I was visiting my brother who was living in Australia at the time, and he had taken us driving along a road that went along a cliff, and and he kept going, look at that. Or I should say, look at that. Look at that. And we were swerving all over the road, and I mean, I could see the ocean as we were just curving all these things.
Joel Brooks:I felt like I was in this Bond film, and and I was about to go plunging to my death, and and as he kept doing this, I found it very hard to breathe. It's like and then I my my vision started constricting, and I was having a panic attack. The second time I had a panic attack was when I was doing college ministry, and I was the director of ministry called University Christian Fellowship, and I always wanted a very small ministry. I did not like lots of people. I wanted like 10 people, and it would grew.
Joel Brooks:And at one point, we're we're averaging around a 1000 people, you know, every week just for our bible study. And, and I I never really liked that, but I was trying to deal with it. But after I preached one time, I'm talking with somebody after the sermon, and we're just talking, and I happened to look up, and I saw a line of people wanting to talk to me about something. And I remember this person who was speaking to me, also in his voice just went, it just it just died away. And and I and I couldn't hear anything, and I was like, I I'm having a hard time breathing, and so I just walked away.
Joel Brooks:I was like, I just walked. I just I I got out of the building. I was like, I if I can make it to my office, and my office was the student center across the parking lot. And so I'm walking to the office and I look and there are 100 students spilling out of the office. And I was like, I just stopped, and I was like, it was hard to stand.
Joel Brooks:I was like, and I couldn't breathe. So so so I've had 2 panic attacks. Now, both of these were caused because of something I couldn't control. It's like I wanted desperately to be in control of the car. I wanted desperately to be in control of how many people came, who came, all this.
Joel Brooks:I wanted I wanted control, and control was ripped from me. And when it was ripped from me, and I saw there was absolutely no way I could regain control of what was happening because I never really had it in the first place. And when I saw that, I began to just have this incredible anxiety. That's what anxiety is. It's when you realize you're not in control, but you really think you should be, but it's spiraling out of control.
Joel Brooks:When Jesus says that we are not to be anxious, but we are to seek God's kingdom, he is simply saying this. Remember God is in control of your life. God is reigning as king, and he is sovereign overall. There's no need to worry. We're to remind ourselves that God is reigning.
Joel Brooks:He's in control. Satan's not control of our lives. We're not control of our lives. Jesus is in control of our lives. He he's taken the reins of our life, and he is leading us with a purpose.
Joel Brooks:He is leading us to a fixed and certain future that's glorious. We don't have to worry about that. Our future is secure. So for God's kingdom to become a reality in our lives, what needs to happen is we have to to cease trying to control our own life, trying to rule our own life and recognize that no, we have a king who controls this. Think of it this way, every time you pray, thy kingdom come, you need to be praying, may my kingdom go.
Joel Brooks:God, your kingdom come, and may may my kingdom go. May may all the things I try to control, may all the things that I think I actually have any else of power over, may may I see that for what it really is. I have no power. I have no control, but god, you control my life. May your kingdom come, may my kingdom go.
Joel Brooks:Philip Melanchthon, he was one of Martin Luther's friends during the reformation. He was also a very gifted theologian, but he also struggled with anxiety a lot. One of the main things he was anxious about was actually Martin Luther's health because he was constantly sick, and Luther's safety because people were always trying to kill him. And, one time, he was just especially anxious about this, and Martin Luther looked at me and said, Philip, let Philip cease to rule the world. Let Philip cease to rule the world.
Joel Brooks:Our anxieties are caused when we believe that we're supposed to rule the world and that somehow we have this illusion of control, but we're not the ones in charge. We have been transferred out of Satan's kingdom into God's glorious kingdom where he is sovereignly reigning and in control of our lives. And what this means is that as God is our king, whatever he gives us, whether it's poverty or riches or whether it's comfort or pain, we know that all those things are for our good. They're for our good. And whatever god asks us to do, no matter how crazy it seems or just radical it seems, we understand what's from our our king and and we know it's for our good.
Joel Brooks:So now no matter what state of life we find ourselves in or no matter how crazy the things god, you know, seems to ask us to do how they seem, realize that God's in control and he's working out all these things for our good. Our future is certain, so we don't need to be anxious over. Now, I know that there's a number of people out here who are anxious over a lot of things. Some of you are anxious as to whether or not you're ever going to get married, whether you're gonna find a spouse, and it's at times you have great fits of anxiety. Some of you are anxious as to whether or not you'll have children.
Joel Brooks:Maybe you've been trying for a long time and this is a consuming anxiety that you really want children. Lauren and I went through that for years before we were able to have our first. I understand that, but I want you to know that, you know, having getting a spouse or having a child or getting a job or whatever that they're anxious about, that's not the end of anxiety. Do you really think that if you have a child, now I have a baby, now there's nothing to be anxious about? No.
Joel Brooks:No. Your your anxiety goes, well, now I gotta somehow protect them from all things. Now I gotta get them in the right nursery early on. I heard there's a waiting list, you know, and just you'll be anxious about that. Where's he gonna go to school?
Joel Brooks:Is she gonna go to school? Are people gonna like my child? Alright. The anxiety is just gonna keep going and going that the problem isn't I don't have a child, or I don't have a husband, or I don't have a job. The problem is you don't see Jesus as reigning, and that he is a control of your life, and that you have a glorious future in his kingdom.
Joel Brooks:There's a reason, that we're asked to pray this. Let me, let me make a very simple observation too, alright, about this. When we're asked to pray thy kingdom come, it's interesting that we're asking God to do something that he wants to do more than us. God wants his kingdom to come even more than we do. It's one interesting thing, but the second is this.
Joel Brooks:God's kingdom is going to come no matter what. So he's praying, he's asking us to pray for something that he's already said will happen. Have you ever thought about that? His kingdom is coming. He's already promised it's gonna happen.
Joel Brooks:We're gonna read in just a second about it coming, the prophecy about that. So he's asking us to pray for something he's already promised and assured us that we're gonna have. Why would he do that? So you need to begin looking at the lord's prayer and thy kingdom come. It's not about changing God.
Joel Brooks:He's already passionate about his kingdom coming. He's already promised his kingdom is gonna come. It's not about changing him. What is it about? It's about bringing us on board with that.
Joel Brooks:It's about changing our hearts to where we long for his kingdom to come, and we begin to act in faith as a child living in his kingdom. And we don't worry, we receive freely whatever God gives from his hands to us. We we do whatever God asks us to do. I wanna be careful about this, the language I use. When we are praying these things, it it then frees us up and it enables us to really live the life that we're supposed to live, but we in no way expand the kingdom of god, build the kingdom of god, usher in the kingdom of god.
Joel Brooks:There's there's a lot of language, especially Nowhere does Jesus ever say that. Nowhere in scripture does he ever say that. He says this, you are to receive the kingdom of God, you are to pray for the kingdom of God, and you are to seek the kingdom of God. But all the work is his. You're to pray for it, you're to seek it, You're to receive it, but God is assuredly bringing his kingdom.
Joel Brooks:But when you do those things, your heart is changed. When you know the certainty of that, it frees you up to really live the life that you're supposed to live, a life out of faith and trust that God is in control. Now I want to to end by reading what this kingdom looks like. I could go and turn if you want to Revelation 21. I wish I had time to really unpack this more.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna settle with just reading this. Look at Revelation 21 and 25, 21 and 22, sorry. 21 verse 1, 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, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven for God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
Joel Brooks:He would dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new.
Joel Brooks:Look at chapter 22 verse 1. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brightest crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. Through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit in each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him.
Joel Brooks:They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more. They will need no light or lamp or sun, for the lord god will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. If you all would pray with me the Lord's prayer. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Joel Brooks:Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
