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This sermon was preached for Capital Pres Fairfax on April 14, 2024 as a part of our series “Masterclass: Learning to Pray from Jesus.” A recording of this sermon will be available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. This manuscript includes extended meditations which didn’t make it to Sunday morning, particularly about the ways Christians might resonate with the Jewish Pharisees or the Roman Gentiles.
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Good morning friends, it’s great to be with you today. My name is Patrick, I’m a pastoral intern here. We’re continuing in our sermon series working through the Lord’s Prayer, and today we come to the second petition: “Your kingdom come.” Like many of you, I first memorized the Lord’s Prayer according to the King James Version, so excuse me if I accidentally slip back into saying “Thy kingdom come,” but whether you prefer “Your” or “Thy” that word, that idea—that this is God’s kingdom—is the crucial point for us today. It presents us with the question “Whose kingdom do you serve?”
I recognize how silly a question that sounds to modern ears, particularly modern American ears. We pride ourselves on having no king for almost 250 years and counting. Nothing better encapsulates American pride in not being a kingdom than the wild success of the musical Hamilton. Look, I studied history in college and I consider myself a history nerd, but if you had told me in high school the most popular broadway musical of that decade was going to be about the author of the Federalist papers which denounced kingdom government, I would not have believed you. All that to say, we need to acknowledge how weird a question it is for us to be asked “Whose kingdom do you serve?” and to pray “Your kingdom come.”
I also recognize that not everyone in here this morning is American—but whatever country or culture you come from, we all have cultural baggage when it comes to thinking about kingdom. What is your gut response to the prayer “Your kingdom come?” Positive? Negative? Irrelevant? You might be thinking “Patrick, I truly could not care less about Hamilton or kings or any of this because my life is falling apart. My marriage is a wreck. My parents are dying. My diagnosis just keeps getting worse. What does the kingdom of God have to do with any of that?”
If that’s you this morning, we’re thankful you’re here. We’d love to help you in whatever way we can, and as we’ll see, the kingdom of God has everything to do with your situation. Because when we pray “Your kingdom come” we are asking for the only solution to all our problems. That’s our main point today, the kingdom of God is our only hope. Before we go any further, let’s pray.
As we unpack this message, let’s think through three categories
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- The current kingdom: both in Jesus’ day and in our own
- The coming kingdom: what kingdom are we praying about?
- The kingdom prayer: what are we really asking for in the prayer “Your kingdom come?”
The current kingdom
Whose kingdom do you serve? This would have been on the mind of Jesus’ original audience. Let’s remember, Jesus is about halfway through the Sermon on the mount, which he’s preaching to a huge crowd with both Jews and Gentiles in it. “Kingdom” had very strong political and religious connotations for both groups.
Jesus was preaching in and around 30AD; Rome is right at the start of Pax Romana, the height of its power. When the Gentiles hear “kingdom,” they think about their own rule and doing whatever it takes to protect it. Meanwhile the Jewish audience would have associated “kingdom” with their hopes that a Messiah would come to overthrow Rome. And the Jewish religious leaders were scared this Messiah would mean the end of their power, too. They cared more about appearances than anything and didn’t want an alternative religious leader for the people to follow. So there was a lot of cultural baggage wrapped up in kingdom language for Jesus’ original audience.
What about for us? The Roman Empire is gone, so it’s not Rome, and I don’t think anyone in here is a Jewish Pharisee. But those same categories might resonate with you in some ways.
If you run in predominately Christian circles, you know the temptation to hypocrisy. As a pastor [technically pastoral intern] I feel the pull to make sure I come across as that good Christian guy—to wear a mask and hide all my struggles and shortcomings. If you’re a student at a private Christian school, or you work for a private Christian school or a ministry or another Christian organization, you probably feel the temptation toward the appearance of Godliness even when you’re not sincere, just to keep the ball rolling, just to keep the status quo. Maybe you’re seeking the kingdom of God but as a hypocrite.
Or maybe your situation is more like the Gentiles. We live in DC, we all know people who have moved here to hitch themselves to power. Coming back to Hamilton, you might want to be “in the room where it happens.” If you’re in a company where that mindset is common, or you work on the hill and you have aspirations of having political power, you know the temptation to sacrifice all for that kingdom: sacrifice your social life, your time, your marriage, your health. Maybe that’s the kingdom you’re seeking.
Please don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying it’s wrong to work for the government or have a career in politics. I’m not saying it’s wrong to attend a private Christian school or work for a ministry. We’ll loop back to see what the kingdom of God means for both of these situations. I just want to help you think about what your answer is to the question “Whose kingdom do you serve?”
Maybe those categories resonate with you, but for most of us, the real kingdom we’re concerned with is our own little life. “Sure, church is important and politics and work is important, but those things take a backseat to my own wants and needs.” Let me give you a few pictures of what this might look like.
If you’re a young adult, the kingdom you’re trying to build looks like buying a condo or a townhome, finding a significant other, getting a few dogs, working a job that doesn’t suck your soul and pays the bills, and spending as much time as possible on your hobbies and relationships. If you’re a parent, your kingdom is making sure your kids get a good education and get playtime in their sport and get into the right college, so that one day they can build their own little kingdom. If you’re an empty nester, your kingdom looks like finally reaching retirement with enough money to move closer to grandkids so you can enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to build.
That’s the American dream: be your own king or queen, build your own kingdom, serve yourself and let everyone else worry about themselves. Whose kingdom do you serve? Religious hypocrisy? Worldly power? Self interest?
There’s an uncomfortable truth we have to face, one that Jesus makes clear in the gospels that we normally close our eyes to. Jesus tells us that ultimately, we all have a king; we all serve one of two kingdom. You either serve the kingdom of God, or kingdom of Satan.
Now I can imagine you might be thinking, “Patrick, that’s nuts. Sure, maybe some kingdoms serve Satan—Rome was pretty evil. But you can’t possibly believe I’m a servant of Satan by trying to build my own kingdom? How is me wanting to buy a house or wanting to raise my kids well in service to the devil?” Think about it this way. In Matthew 4, the devil takes Jesus to the top of a mountain to behold all the kingdoms of the world and tells him “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Satan can only make that offer if he really reigns over the world, and the Bible affirms that he does. Ephesians 2 calls him the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2), that is, the prince or the ruler over this world. Revelation depicts Satan, the dragon, as the power behind every evil empire and corrupt institution. And Jesus tells us that unless you call himself Lord, you remain under the rule of Satan. Again, Ephesians 2 says that outside of Christ we are all children of the devil. And we prove it in the way we ruthlessly defend our kingdoms.
What does Rome have in common with every powerful empire in human history? What do the pharisees share with all other religious hypocrites? The same long trail of casualties for anyone who dared oppose them. Even we polite, modern Americans follow this pattern. Look at the way people talk about their political opponents, or their coworkers who get the promotion over them, or the coach that benches their child. Think about how you feel when someone cuts you off in traffic or when your landlord raises your rent, or when a friend calls you out on a sin. Rage. Hostility. Resentment. Defensiveness. Fear. Desperation. Cursing our enemies in our hearts, if not our actions. You might be a very friendly and charitable person, but when someone starts challenging your kingdom, search your heart—see how quickly you become devilish.
Friends, this is the inclination of every human heart under the power of sin. This is the way of the world under Satan rule. That’s why there’s corrupt kingdoms, that’s why there’s sickness and death, that’s why we struggle with hatred and selfishness and all other vices. And that’s why the world hasn’t changed since the Roman Empire, or since the time of Cain and Abel. That’s the current kingdom.
What does this mean for us? Very simply, if you are waiting for your own kingdom to fix all the problems we face, don’t hold your breath. Any kingdom under the sun is ultimately a part of the problem. What we need is a new kingdom to break in and free us from Satan. That’s the reason Jesus Christ came.
The coming kingdom
Jesus came with the message “The kingdom of God is at hand.” His ministry marks the start of his great counter-offensive. What does this counter-offensive look like? If we skip ahead six chapters from the Lord’s Prayer to Matt 12, we’ll see.
Jesus frees a man from demon possession and the religious leaders feel threatened, so they claim that Jesus can drive out demons because he is an arch-demon. Jesus responds by saying this: “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul [or the prince of demons], by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Mt 12:25-28)
You see, where the kingdom of Satan is marked by oppression and harm, the kingdom of God is marked by freedom and healing. Jesus isn’t fighting fire with fire, he’s not meeting power with power, he’s not returning evil for evil. Jesus never gathers an army; he gathers the weak and needy to feed and heal them. He never seeks political power; he seeks disciples who will join him in his homeless wanders. He doesn’t ride a warhorse into Jerusalem; he rides a donkey as a sign of peace. He never wages war against Rome or the corrupt religious elite; he wages war against disease and demons. And Jesus doesn’t conquer by killing his enemies, he conquers by being conquered.
Let’s go back a few weeks to Good Friday. The devil would have thought this was his ultimate triumph: “At last! I have defeated the King of heaven; Christ is dead!” Look at how he pulls the strings. Two worldly kingdoms otherwise opposed to each other—Rome and the Jewish religious leaders—team up to eliminate their common enemy. And who is the agent of their union? Judas Iscariot. The gospels tell us that Satan himself had entered into Judas to orchestrate the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus.
Have you ever noticed there’s something insidious behind Jesus’ death? There’s something uniquely dark about it. The Romans crucified a lot of people, but this one in particular had theatrics. It wasn’t necessary to drape Jesus in a purple robe or to place a crown of thorns on his head. And when Pilate presents Jesus before the angry mob, do you know what he says? “Behold the man” in Latin “ecce homo” that’s what Caesar’s herald would shout when he entered a room.
Satan is going out of his way to mock Jesus as the weak, fallen king of heaven. Little did he know, the death of Christ was not his great victory—it was in fact his ultimate defeat. Jesus died not as a victim, but as a sacrifice to rescue us sinners from the guilt of our sin, the power of death, and the tyranny of the devil. By turning from God in our hearts we aligned ourself with the devil and made ourselves enemies of God. But just as he had taught the disciples, Jesus chose to love his enemies by dying in their place. Romans tells us that the “wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), but “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).
It wasn’t enough for Jesus to defeat the power of sin and free us sinners; three days after he died, Jesus defeated death. The Bible says “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God” (Rom 6:9-10).
This is our reason for hope! Friends, it’s not easter, but we still have every reason to rejoice—Hallelujah, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! The battle is over, he has won!
Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:54-55)
This is the kingdom Jesus brings! This is the kingdom we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer—a kingdom of everlasting life, a kingdom won by love, a kingdom that overthrows the evil of Satan.
The kingdom prayer
And so now we finally return to the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus instructs us to pray “Your kingdom come.” You can see now why the Kingdom of God is worth asking for, but we need to make sure we understand exactly what it is we’re asking here.
First and foremost, we need to remember that we are asking God to do something. Jesus doesn’t teach us to pray, “Heavenly Father, help us to build your kingdom.” No, we’re asking him, “Lord, bring your kingdom down! We need you to do it!” That doesn’t mean we’re totally passive here, there are important implications. But we need to make sure we get the order right.
Ok, so what would it look like for God to bring the kingdom down? That’s a non-rhetorical question; seriously, I want you to think about and imagine “What would it look like for God to answer this prayer?” Scripture tells us we can look to at least three places.
First, we can look to the risen Christ. Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of the coming kingdom. His restored body is free from death and sickness. He is no longer subjected to weakness; the Devil has no power over him. We get glimpses of his new-creation glory throughout the New Testament. Perhaps the most vivid are in Revelation.
Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. (Re 1:12-16)
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. (Re 19:11-16)
This imagery helps us imagine the brilliance of the risen Lord. The coming kingdom looks like our conquering king in all his glory. So look to Christ in his power, that’s what it looks like for his kingdom to come.
Second, we can look to the church. That might sound underwhelming, especially when our church meets in a high school auditorium. How can we see the answer to “your kingdom come” here? By looking at one another. Here’s the really beautiful thing, friends: When we pray “Your kingdom come” Jesus has answered that prayer in you! If you are a Christian, the reign and rule of Christ has been established in your heart. You have been freed from the tyranny of the devil and you no longer serve him. And the way we live is a product of God’s kingdom having come in our hearts and in our church community.
So when people look at us and see how we love one another, they see how we spend our money, they see how we seek forgiveness, they see how we do our jobs with integrity, they see how we worship with joy—that is how we see God answer “your kingdom come” in the church. Consider this: before the start of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist went forth proclaiming “The kingdom is coming!” In Luke 3, huge crowds, including Jewish Pharisees and Roman loyalists, come to John asking “What should we do?”
To the Pharisees, John calls them out on their hypocrisy in harsh terms—he calls them a brood of vipers. But rather than consigning them to destruction, he warns them: “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Lk 3:8). In other words, religious hypocrites need to be honest about their sin with God and others. Their good works aren’t just to save face, they are a product of their repentance before God. As Christians, we display God’s kingdom come only because we confess our sins and receive God’s pardon.
To the Roman tax collectors and soldiers, you might expect one of two responses from John. He doesn’t say “How dare you keep company with the enemy! Abandon your post, leave your tax collecting booth, and cut all ties with Rome.” Nor does he say “Stay where you are, but act as an agent of Israel! Break down Rome from the inside and turn it into a Jewish state; our hope is to make the Messiah Caesar.” In reality, John’s instruction is humble. He more or less says “Stay in your jobs, just do them with integrity. Don’t steal money, don’t exploit the weak.” Friends, if you work for the government, you are not an enemy of the church. You can display Christ’s coming kingdom whether you’re a pastor or a soldier, a public or private school student.
And for the rest of us, John also addresses the crowds. He tells them simply “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise” (Lk 3:11). In other words, practice charity. Don’t hoard your wealth to build your own kingdom; you’re already a prince or princess in a better one. Use the gifts you have been given to bless those with less as a picture of the immeasurable riches we have in Christ.
In all these ways we can look to the church and see the coming kingdom. Are we perfect? No. As Pastor Rob loves to say “We are not a perfect church, but we are perfectly loved.” You and I still struggle with sin, but the Bible reassures us that’s only the vestiges of the flesh which will pass away at death. You and I still experience the weakness of broken bodies and the tragedy of broken relationships, but by God’s grace the peace of Christ can dwell in our hearts through all our trials.
We also pray that God’s rule be established in the hearts of our friends and family who do not yet know Jesus as king, who are still under the tyranny of the devil. We pray, “Lord free them! Bring them into your kingdom with us!”
So let me ask you: How are you displaying God’s coming kingdom in your life? How are you loving your fellow church members? How are you spending your money? How do you seek forgiveness? How are you seeking to do your job with integrity? How can you worship with joy on Sunday? I’d encourage you to pray through these things this week as we ask God’s kingdom to come in our hearts.
But lastly, friends, we see the answer to this prayer in Christ’s return. This is the most important point for us because I fear when we pray “your kingdom come” our vision is far too small. We tend to think in terms of cultural engagement, or evangelism, or mercy ministry—and those are good things, but our greatest hope is much greater than that. If your vision is anything less than the eradication of every disease, your vision of God’s kingdom is too small. If your vision is anything less than the reconciliation of all God’s people with no more conflict, your vision is too small. If your vision is anything less than the destruction of Satan and all his kingdom, including death, your vision is too small. Even if your vision included all of those things, if that was it, your vision is too small
When we pray “Your kingdom come,” we are praying for nothing less than Christ to return in all his glory, to establish the New Heavens and the New Earth, to make God’s dwelling place with man, to eliminate all pain and evil forever, to draw you near as his precious child, hold your face, and wipe every tear from your eye. That’s what we ask for when we pray “Your kingdom come.” That is our great hope. And so we join with the church in all times and places in saying “Come quickly, Lord.”
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