[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good morning, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's wonderful to be with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you join me in a word of prayer as we prepare to get into the word of God together?
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, thank you for meeting us here this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you to your presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you that you are among us working in power.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are meeting us, you are answering us, you are comforting us, you are challenging us, you are convicting us, you are restoring us, you are renewing us, you are rebuilding us, you are renewing our minds, reap our...
[SPEAKER_00]: Preparing our hearts drawing us into the fullness of life in the kingdom and we want more of that Lord So as we look at your word, I pray that your spirit would be a work among us taking a steeper in further up and deeper in in Jesus name amen So Jesus says this then is how you should pray our Father in heaven Helloed be your name your kingdom come
[SPEAKER_00]: your will be done on earth as in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: So today as we are looking at verse 10, the second and third petitions in the Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're gonna cover just a bit more ground that we have in the previous weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that we are taking these two petitions together is because as I hope to show you this morning, you cannot pray,
[SPEAKER_00]: your kingdom come and mean it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you aren't also willing to pray, your will be done and mean that as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two always have to go together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, no doubt there's not a single person in this room who does not wish, even on their best days, that this world was different from the way it is, that you wish you could have avoided the grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was saying a final farewell to a loved one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not having to experience the trauma that you may have experienced in your life or suffering that mental illness or the experience of addiction or the experience of poverty and of missing out on opportunities that others have had and that has just felt so unfair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or that chronic illness or that diagnosis or losing your job or losing your marriage or failing to buy crypto back in 2017.
[SPEAKER_00]: or just feeling frightened about the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you've studied some history, and you know that the good times whenever everything is always up until the right cannot last.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that as we've already prayed this morning, when we see what's happening in the Middle East, in Ukraine, in Nigeria, and in many other places, the footage of the bombs and the suffering we long for a world where these kinds of things do not take place, where this kind of suffering
[SPEAKER_00]: And whenever we encounter such things, either our own suffering or that of others, it can feel like a gut punch to the soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know deeply, we know deeply, whether we're religious or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: That this is not right, that the world should not be this way, and we feel that because it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: The world should not be this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not meant to be this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is why I give thanks that at the heart of the biblical story is God's desire, God's purpose, God's will, to transform this will from a place of suffering and death to a place of blessing and life.
[SPEAKER_00]: As it was in the beginning, even better, in fact than it was in the beginning, if you read the end of the book of Revelation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when Jesus is teaching us to pray, Father, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as it is in heaven, He's inviting us in the first instance, I think, to imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: to imagine what that could be, what that could look like to dream of a world without pain or sickness or injustice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to long for that with everything that we are, to cultivate in our thinking about the world and our place in it and the father that we worship, a hopeful posture that looks forward to the promise of the return of Christ and the renewal of all things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because surely that is one of the things that Jesus means when he asks us to pray,
[SPEAKER_00]: for the kingdom to come, and for the will of God to be done, and given that we know the end of the story, we Christians should therefore be the most hopeful people on the planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that we don't feel the grief, or the pain, of course we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that we aren't allowed to lament, or feel afraid.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that we don't need to let those things destroy us,
[SPEAKER_00]: to cause us to completely fall apart as those without hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore this prayer, your kingdom come if we're to pray it honestly, also means we cannot, in all good conscience, simply be passive observers of suffering, ringing our hands on the sidelines of history, but moaning the state of the world, we must also pray then, you are will be done because if we understand that Jesus is asking us to pray,
[SPEAKER_00]: for the kingdom to come, then it calls on us to get involved in what God is doing even now to invest our hearts, and our minds, and our actions, and our bodies, and our wealth to participate in what we are praying for, the coming of God's kingdom on earth as in heaven, however incomplete that may be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet we can do this church boldly and courageously because we have a sure and certain hope as an anchor for the soul that Christ has already gone through the curtain of suffering for us and it will be completed when he comes again.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will finally, and fully bring heaven to earth, the kingdom of God, it all of its power and glory, and there will finally be no more morning or crying or pain forever and ever, amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, after all, the hope of our salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Paul says in Romans 824, which you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: The hope of our salvation, even in the midst of our groaning, we have such hope, the hope of our salvation that Christ will return, though we grow now, we will rejoice later.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the meantime, we seek limpses in the presence of God and in the of His people in the church, what it is that is coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the hope of our salvation, friends, is the return of Christ, the resurrection from the dead, and the renewal of all things, as Paul so beautifully put it in.
[SPEAKER_00]: One Corinthians 15 for behold, I tell you a mystery we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the final trumpet for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised in perishable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the saying that his written will come true, death,
[SPEAKER_00]: where is your victory?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, grave, where is your victory?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, death, where is your sting?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, death has been swallowed up in victory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's the victory of our Lord Jesus that we are praying about in the second petition of the Lord's prayer, your kingdom come.
[SPEAKER_00]: The victory of Jesus over all suffering, all death, all evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we are also asking the father to give us courage and faith to live into that victory even now while we wait for Christ's return in the third petition, your will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we all want the victory, don't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: We all want the authority and power and goodness of God to be manifest in the world who
[SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is, we broken sinful human beings, we long for it, just so long as it doesn't cost me anything, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just so long as it doesn't inconvenience me in any way or mess up my plans for my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus is saying that you cannot ask for God's kingdom if you don't also want God's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't pray those two things together if you don't desire both.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, trust me, I know it is hard to surrender ourselves to this, and just like Jesus was praying on the night that he was betrayed before he was crucified, sweating drops of blood in anguish, asking Father, is there any way that this cup can pass from me at finding in the end the strength to say, but not my will, Father, but yours be done, and we, too, all of us must come at some point in our Christian journey,
[SPEAKER_00]: to that same place of surrender.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just as Jesus went through death, in order to experience the power of the resurrection, we know that this invitation to surrender to the will of God is not some loss of our agency and power.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather, it is the gaining of an agency and a power
[SPEAKER_00]: of an almost unimaginable ferocity, because what is God's will?
[SPEAKER_00]: God's will according to Jesus in John 6, and let me tell you there are hundreds of passages in the Bible that talk about God's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's bewildering, but one of the clearest statements we have is in John 6 where Jesus says this, that I have come down from heaven, not to do my will.
[SPEAKER_00]: but to do the will of him who sent me, and this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of those that he has given me, but I will raise them up at the last day for my father's will is that everyone who looks to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up
[SPEAKER_00]: On the last day, did you catch that?
[SPEAKER_00]: That if you look to Christ the Son, in Him the Father's will is that you will have eternal life and you will be raised up on the last day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are a person now in Christ Jesus who has unimaginable hope, can I get an amen?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the promise of God's will for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That He will not lose you, that He will not fail you,
[SPEAKER_00]: that he will never abandon you, and it is that promise to which you are surrendering when you pray, not my will, Father, but yours be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when you understand it in those terms, who would fail to pray this?
[SPEAKER_00]: How could we fail to pray this?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just a future hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: This experience of eternal life, or in the Greek, it kind of translates as to something
[SPEAKER_00]: The life of the eternal one, within us, flowing into us, working through us, transforming us, not just one day, but even now today.
[SPEAKER_00]: The resurrection begins as we believe in Jesus by our work at the Holy Spirit, the moment we believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: So eternal life begins now, and it will be completed on the day of Christ's return.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is something that we are called to step into an experience internally and externally as part of the family of God, the church, the church being not the kingdom of God itself, but a little colony of the kingdom of God in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are praying, all of this when we say, your will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: your will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And none of this has ever forced on us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even Jesus chose his father's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's left to us to decide if we will pray this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God will honor our choice, whichever way we decide to go is see us Lewis said in the Great Divorce.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's been a while since I've had a Lewis quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's about time.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the great divorce, he said that there are only two kinds of people in the end, in the end, there's only two kinds of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those who say to God, they will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those to whom God says, in the end to them, they will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that are in hell, choose it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without that self-choice there would be no hell, no soul that seriously and constantly desires joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll ever miss it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those who seek find, those who knock, the door is opened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here is the amazing thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we're prepared to pray this, then these two petitions, the second and third petitions of the Lord's prayer, and to mean it, it is an invitation to a life of incredible authority and power.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much so that it would be preposterous where it not for the fact that it's Jesus himself who is teaching us to pray like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as Darren mentioned last week, and I think it bears repeating that the verbs in this prayer are simply astonishing in their boldness and audacity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kingdom come and will be done in the original Greek are not merely requests
[SPEAKER_00]: They are imperative.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're imperative verbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are command verbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as Darren also said, they're in the passive voice, so we're not praying do it God as though we're bossing God around, but rather it is, God let it be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it be done according to your words.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're being told by Jesus that we can pray with such
[SPEAKER_00]: authority and boldness that it comes with the force of a command, let it come your kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it be done, your will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now of course, what it is that we're asking, we need to stress very clearly, is for God to do what only God can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only God can do what we are asking to have done here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only God can hellow his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only God can bring his kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only God can do his will.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Jesus is teaching us to pray here.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Darrell Johnson says, the prayer is not what many believers have over the years thought it to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer is not let us hellow your name.
[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer is not let us bring in your kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer is not let us do your will.
[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer is, Father, you do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You huller your name on earth as it is in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: You bring your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: You make your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see the difference?
[SPEAKER_00]: It changes the whole tone of the prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are asking God to do what only God can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, we're commanding that God do what only God can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, I'm sure, like many of you, as I looked at this, my first thought was, why are we being asked to pray this way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would God need me to pray this way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he need me to pray like this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, if it weren't for the fact that it's Jesus,
[SPEAKER_00]: teaching us this prayer, then it would make no sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be bordering on blasphemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to make matters more confusing, since we know that God's kingdom has already come in Christ, at least in part, as we've looked at over the last few weeks, Jesus begins his preaching with the announcement in Mark 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does anyone remember what it is?
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of God has come among you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is here, so repent.
[SPEAKER_00]: and enter it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then why would we need to pray for something to come?
[SPEAKER_00]: That has already come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps Jesus only means his second coming here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, why would Jesus ask us to pray for that?
[SPEAKER_00]: When he's already promised that that's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: How is it that we add something to his determination to come again and restore all things?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would we need to pray for something that is already guaranteed to happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the other next few petitions, I think, make perfect sense, daily bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daily provision, of course, we all want to pray for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Forgiveness of for me and for those who have sinned against me, absolutely, we understand that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deliverance from the work of the enemy, we understand that, amen, and amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that seems perfectly clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need all of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why would God need us to add our tiny and insignificant voices
[SPEAKER_00]: to the call for him to bring his kingdom and do his will, which are again, number one, things that only God can do a number two that he's already doing or has done or has promised to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we make sense of this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, to get our minds around this, we're going to need to do a little bit of biblical theology.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all good.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll turn to the person next to you through our love biblical theology.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get up
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so, track along with me here, if you can, first of all, let's ask, what do we mean when we pray your kingdom come?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this kingdom we're praying about?
[SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned, we spent several weeks at the beginning of this year looking at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is, we barely scratch the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of the reasons that this is such a difficult concept to get our minds around is that if you were to examine every passage in the New Testament that references the word kingdom and there are well over 100 of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there's 100 of them in Jesus teaching alone, let alone the rest of the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were to read each one and try to summarize each passage, you would discover a bewildering diversity of teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, however, there are three overarching themes.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, the kingdom of God is sometimes described as an inner spiritual reality, something we experience in the presence of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul writes in Romans 14, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are gifts of the Spirit experience in the presence of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: and inner reality of the work of the Spirit in our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, the kingdom is also described as a future inheritance.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about this, the second coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Jesus says in Matthew 25, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a kingdom prepared for us that we will inherit when Christ returns.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the kingdom is both.
[SPEAKER_00]: a present inner experience of life in the Spirit, and also a future inheritance we receive when Christ returns.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, the Scriptures tell us that the kingdom is a dimension, a reality, that we've already entered into.
[SPEAKER_00]: That if you believe in Christ, you're in the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mark 1, or Colossians 1, Paul writes, God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son that He loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've already in Christ being transferred into his kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we make sense of all of this?
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdoms and inner experience of future inheritance and a present reality that we're existing in now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's how do you summarize that?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you come up with a simple definition?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the reasons we struggle to get our minds around this is that when we hear the word kingdom, we aren't, I think, often hearing or thinking about that word from a biblical point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I mean is that in modern usage a kingdom is usually understood as a kind of a territory or a realm ruled over by a king, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you think the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom is a collection of lands of territories that are ruled over constitutionally anyway under the authority of a monarch in this case, King Charles III.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now dictionaries reflect this understanding by
[SPEAKER_00]: usually defining a kingdom as a state or a realm or a nation or an empire ruled over by a king.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that actually doesn't work when you try to apply that definition to the way the Bible talks about kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a theologian George Elden lad has suggested, what we need is an older definition of kingdom when we think about what the Bible means.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to think of kingdom, not as a territory over which a king rules, but rather the rank, the authority, or the reign of the king ship itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, in the Bible, a kingdom is not a realm or a nation or a lander of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why we don't say that the church is the kingdom of God,
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of God is the exercise of God's royal authority itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So right through the Scriptures, old and New Testament, references to the kingdom, earthly rulers, don't refer to the land or territory, but to their rule, their reign, the authority they have to rule and reign.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when Scripture says that God's kingdom rules over all, some hundred and three,
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that God's sovereign authority extends over everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus illustrates this meaning in the parable of the nobleman.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Luke 19s, the nobleman goes off to a distant country to receive a kingdom and then he returns, he doesn't travel to acquire a territory or a land because that already exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: What he's seeking for is the right to rule, the right to rule over it, the authority to exercise kingship.
[SPEAKER_00]: So according to George Ladd, understanding the kingdom in this way that the kingdom of God is his kingship, his rule, his authority, clarifies many New Testament passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when Jesus says we must receive the kingdom like a little child, what we receive is not the church or heaven, but it is God's rule over us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not receiving heaven, when we enter the kingdom like a little child, we're entering into the domain of God's authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're saying, God, I place you as my king over my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wherever I am, you are my king.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever I'm doing, you are my king.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever I'm dealing with in my life, you are my king and you will be my king for the whole of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I submit to your authority to rule over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it means when we talk about the kingdom of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So likewise, when Jesus commands us to seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, what are we seeking for?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it heaven?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it kind of moral perfection?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's, it means what we're seeking is God's rule and reign over our lives and that we would submit to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we pray, friends, your kingdom come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we praying for heaven to come to earth?
[SPEAKER_00]: In a sense, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But apart from the reign of God, heaven is meaningless.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Lord says, and I think this is powerful, this prayer, then, is a petition for God to reign, to manifest His kingly sovereignty and power, and therefore to put to flight every enemy of righteousness and of His divine rule that God alone may be king over all the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the reason we're praying this is because we know that one day God will be king over all the world when Christ returns, and he already is in part.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now we, as the people of God, as the members of His household, as citizens of heaven, as children of God, need to take His kingly authority into every sphere of life that we enter into.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our responsibility and call as disciples of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what's the point of having the authority to rule if you don't have anywhere to exercise it?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of being a king?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have nowhere to use your authority, and this was the whole reason that Jesus came.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole reason Jesus came to reclaim God's kingship over the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: if you think about Genesis 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was something that was originally given to who, who was given authority to rule on the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody?
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam Eve, we were.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was given to us, so I make, you've crowned us with glory and honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've made us the rulers of the works of your hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Scripture says about human beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Originally, we were given the right to rule over creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But through our rebellion, we gave that right to rule over to the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Christ has come as the second atom to reclaim for God and crucially then for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: what was originally meant to be ours in the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: By defeating the devil in the wilderness, and then ultimately undoing the curse of sin on the cross, Christ has, as Paul says, in Colossians 2, disarmed or disempowered or de-frowned the demonic powers and authorities, and he has triumphed over them by the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me say it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason Christ came was to dethrone the demonic powers that have ravaged this world since the fall and to reclaim the right to rule for himself and now in him by the power of the spirit we are being invited by Christ who is the head of the church to take up our right to rule again.
[SPEAKER_00]: but not in our name this time, but only now in the name of Jesus, because he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the one who has gained authority to rule over all things, because he was obedient to death.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has been raised up to the highest place, and given the name that is above every other name, and so then when we live our lives for the glory of his name, and for the doing of his will, under the authority of his power, we will change the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means, while God does not technically need us to pray for His kingdom to come, or His will to be done, He grants us the dignity.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the authority and power of the name of His Son, to be instrumental through our prayers, in the unfolding of history, in the ongoing coming or unveiling of God's kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: and in the exercise and triumph of the will of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on this point, Darrell Johnson asks, we, near human beings, can we ask?
[SPEAKER_00]: We can ask for the unveiling of the kingdom of God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the Church of Jesus Christ has been given this privilege, then why haven't we exercised this authority more intentionally?
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps it's because we've not wanted to submit our lives to the King.
[SPEAKER_00]: We may have wanted the benefits and blessings of the kingdom, but we've not been willing to align our lives with his will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps it's that we know that the coming of God's rule means the end of our rule.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps the church is not fervently prayed for the kingdom because we know it's dangerous to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of Jesus, because He has reclaimed the authority to rule, we can now pray in His name, and because of Him, our prayers are powerful, our prayers can shake history, our prayers can move mountains.
[SPEAKER_00]: The German theologian Calbot who lived through the horrors of the Nazi regime and was part of a movement of resistance among Christians against Hitler.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote this, that to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And along those same lines, I recently read in one of Bonhoeffers letters from prison, just
[SPEAKER_00]: But he believed that one of the reasons that the German church fell so easily under the spell of the Third Reich was because they had forgotten what it means to truly pray the second petition of the Lord's prayer that to pray thy kingdom come means we must also then remember who our true Lord actually is and it is never an earthly ruler.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we must remember whose kingdom we have ultimately put our hope in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means if we believe what the second petition teachers us to pray, we must also then submit to what the third petition your will be done is asking of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: To put it bluntly, if you want the reign of God, if you want God's rule over the world and over your life,
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want God to exercise as authority to heal what is broken in the world, then you must also be prepared to submit to his will to desire, his will.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't have one without the other, but here's the thing that I have learned over the years, often times the hard way, and I wish it were not so.
[SPEAKER_00]: The will of God is not some horrible in position that's intended to ruin our joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it is, I think, what we discover as we submit to it, the most beautiful and liberating thing in the whole world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think here lies the secret of the mystery, Paul says in many of his letters, the secret of the mystery of God's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something that we can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't do God's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: How could I do God's will?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: How could I bring in God's kingdom?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's preposterous.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing I can do is surrender myself to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: surrender myself to his kingdom and his will, and when I surrender, then I'm making space in my life for God to do in me and through me what only God can do in and through me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any other path just leads to exhaustion to burn out to moralism.
[SPEAKER_00]: to a life of drudgery and joylessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here is the secret of joy in the Holy Spirit as we submit to the will of our Father, just as Christ did.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it say in Hebrews, that it was for the joy set before Him, that He submitted to the will of His Father?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is the same for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What your Father most deeply desires for you above all things is that you would experience fullness of joy in His presence and in His love
[SPEAKER_00]: to that joy and that experience of love with him is by submitting yourselves to his will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm sure anyone is walk with Jesus for any length of time in this room this morning can say.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't participate in God's will by trying really hard to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We participate by surrender.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we do,
[SPEAKER_00]: We will experience the power of the Spirit to move in us, to will and to act as Paul says and Ephesians 1 to will and to act according to God's good pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's his pleasure in you that he most desires when he invites you to submit to his will.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is God who works in us, it is God who does this in us, what only God can do, you can't do the will of God, but if you surrender, he will give you a power in the spirit to do it to participate in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is the secret to all growth in the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am must decrease.
[SPEAKER_00]: so that he can increase.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you stand with me and I'm going to ask you to just join me in a moment of prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Jesus in the garden, if we were pray, not my will, but yours be done, then God will
[SPEAKER_00]: Just close your eyes with me for a minute, and I want you to hear the words of Ephesians 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 8 to 10, Paul writes, For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is not from yourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a gift of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not by works, so that anyone can boast.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we are God's handy work.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's craftsmanship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Created in Christ Jesus, to do good works, to do the will of God, which God's prepared in advance for us to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I have a great burden this morning in my heart, just to pray for anyone here who
[SPEAKER_00]: a follow Christ that just seems too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's too demanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's too difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's too costly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's too painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we walk with you Lord with that frame of mind,
[SPEAKER_00]: If those burdens on our back breaks your heart, it grieves the Spirit, because it was never meant to be this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there's a cost to following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a cost that Christ paid on our behalf.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you said Jesus, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest, when my yolk is easy, and my burden is light.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's been times in my life, Lord, I'm honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've read that, and I've thought that is just not being my experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it means to be a disciple.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is felt like a heavy burden.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is felt like a heavy yoke.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you said, in John 15, that I have come that you might have joy and life,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, Lord, I pray that you would fill us all with your Holy Spirit right now, come Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just work in the deepest places in our souls where we are feeling these things and just help us to surrender again to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because with you, there is joy, everlasting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because with you, there is peace, hope, and faith, and love, and healing, and forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's take a moment, guys, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pray to seek the Lord, and if you need to, just say again, Jesus, I submit my life to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I submit my life to your kingship, not my will but yours be done, calm Holy Spirit, refresh me, renew me, restore me, help me to see you as you are, help me to see what it means to be a disciple as it was intended to be calm Holy Spirit, calm Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, not my will, but yours be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your kingdom come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your will be done on earth in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: As it is in heaven, come Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, friends, as I finish and we sing together, there's nothing that Hallows God's name more, that honors his name more than when his children know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: That he is good, that he can be trusted, that he's with you, that he will never abandon you, that he will never fail you, he'll get you through to the end, and he'll lead you every step of the way, day by day.
[SPEAKER_00]: with all that you need because in his presence as the Psalm says is fullness of joy and Jesus name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[UNKNOWN]: Amen.