“Your Kingdom Come, Part 1”

(Matthew 6:10)

I. Introduction.
A. Orientation.
1. As you know, prayer is one of the most gracious things the Lord has given us.
a. Everything He gives is gracious:
(i) He has given us life/ brought us into existence.
(ii) He has given and continues to give us everything we need.
(iii) He has forgiven us of our sins in Christ and given us eternal life, though we
deserved damnation.
(iv) He has brought us into His family, made us His sons and daughters.
(v) He continually provides us with everything we need regarding life and
godliness.
(vi) We are have been heirs with Christ, heirs of the kingdom.
(vii) And He has promised to keep us with Him forever in the new heavens and
new earth.

b. But in addition to all this, He allows us to ask Him for whatever our heart desires
in Christ.
c. If we really considered our situation apart from Christ – even what we’re like in
Christ – we would be more than overwhelmed.
d. But such is the grace of God: in Christ, He has given us “exceedingly abundantly
beyond all we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20).

2. But as we’ve seen, there are some things we need to bear in mind when we pray:
a. We need to pray according to His will, in the name of His Son and in faith.
b. Our prayers need to include praise, thanksgiving, and confession.
c. We need to persist in our prayers until He answers.
d. We need to use few words, not assuming that the more words we use the more
likely He is to hear.
e. We need to make sure we are speaking to be heard by Him with a truly humble
heart and not by others.
f. And we need to pray sincerely, delighting in God, and with a forgiven and
forgiving spirit.

3. Understanding this, we began to look at the Lord’s Prayer:

a. Jesus began by telling us that we can pray with confidence: God is our Father and
will hear us.
b. When we pray, we should pray for and with each other (corporate prayer).
c. And when we pray, we should seek God’s glory first, before we seek for our own
needs, and even God’s glory in meeting our needs.

B. Preview.
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1. Tonight, we’ll look at the second petition that again focuses on God’s glory.
a. It’s one thing to know we should pray so that God may be honored and
worshiped.
b. It’s another to know exactly how God wants to be glorified.
(i) Last week, we learned that we should be praying that God’s glory would
continue to be revealed through His Creation.
(ii) We should pray that His glory would be seen through His plan as it unfolds
(History/Providence).
(iii) That His glory would continue to shine through the Gospel as it is preached
and witnessed.
(iv) That it would be seen by all men.
(v) And that all would acknowledge Him, either through awakening or
conversion.

c. The second petition is also pointed towards God’s glory and has to do with what
we should all be striving towards in our service to Him: the advancement of His
kingdom.

2. In this second petition – “Your kingdom come” – we are really asking God for three
things:
a. That Christ’s kingdom would advance, and as it does, that it would destroy
Satan’s kingdom.
b. That others and ourselves would be brought into it and kept in it.
c. And that God would hurry the day when He brings His eternal kingdom.
d. Tonight, we’ll just look at the first point.

II. Sermon.
A. In this petition, we are first asking that Christ’s kingdom would advance and Satan’s
kingdom would decline: Since there are only two kingdoms, the growth of one means
the weakening of the other.
1. First, we are to pray that Christ’s kingdom would advance. Literally, “Your
kingdom must come.”
a. What is this kingdom?
(i) The present form of the kingdom is the meditorial kingdom of Christ.
(a) It is the kingdom that was announced by John the Baptist, “Now in those
days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying,
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matt. 3:1-2).
(b) It is the kingdom that Christ announced after John was arrested, “And after
John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the
gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14-15).
(c) It is the kingdom that was coming in Christ’s own person as king. The one
predicted by the Old Testament prophets that Messiah would bring.
(d) It is the redemptive kingdom of Christ.

(ii) It is the kingdom that Christ is now ruling over.

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(a) It is the kingdom that is under His sovereign rule. Christ said after His
resurrection and just before His ascension, “All authority has been given to
Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with
you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).
(b) It is the kingdom He rules over from the highest seat of honor. In
Hebrews, we read, “When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at
the right hand of the Majesty on high” (1:3).
(c) It is the time when His enemies will be subdued under His feet, “But He,
having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand
of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a
footstool for His feet” (Heb. 10:12-13).
(d) The very last enemy is death, which means He will continue to reign over
this kingdom until He comes again at the resurrection: “For He must reign
until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be
abolished is death” (1 Cor. 15:25-26).
(e) “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the
trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall
be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this
mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on
the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will
come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O
death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’” (1 Cor. 15:51-
55).
(f) After this, Christ – as the Mediator, as the God-man – will deliver the
kingdom up to the rule of His Father, “And when all things are subjected to
Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected
all things to Him, that God may be all in all” (v. 28).

b. The implications of these passages is that the kingdom will advance, but there are
many more both in the Old Testament that predict its coming and in the New:
(i) Daniel tells us when this kingdom would be founded and how great its extent
would be, “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a
kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for
another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will
itself endure forever” (Dan. 2:44).
(a) It is in the days of the kings represented by the several metals of the statue,
the final feet of iron mixed with clay being the last brittle form of the
Roman Empire.
(b) The kingdom is the stone not cut with hands becomes a great mountain
that fills the whole earth (v. 35).

(ii) We read that it would be granted to Christ after His ascension and would be
universal, “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of
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heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of
Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory
and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might
serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass
away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:13-14).
(iii) All the nations will serve Him, “Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the
greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the
people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting
kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.” (Dan. 7:27).
(iv) Eventually, it will grow in influence to the point that all the nations would
come to Him desiring to learn His ways. Isaiah writes, “Now it will come
about that in the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord will be
established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills;
and all the nations will stream to it. And many peoples will come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of
Jacob; that He may teach us concerning His ways, and that we may walk in His
paths.’ For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem” (2:2-3).
(v) This is in fulfillment of the prophecy in Psalm 2, “‘Ask of Me, and I will
surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as
Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter
them like earthenware.’ Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take
warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence, and rejoice
with trembling. Do homage to the Son, lest He become angry, and you perish
in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take
refuge in Him” (8-12).
(vi) In the kingdom parables, Christ tells us that the kingdom will begin small,
but it will eventually encompass the whole earth and permeate it with its
influence. He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a
man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds; but
when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants, and becomes a tree, so
that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.’ He spoke another
parable to them, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took,
and hid in three pecks of meal, until it was all leavened’” (Matt. 13:31-33).
(vii) Jesus sent His disciples out to make disciples of the nations in the Great
Commission. These passages remind us that they will be discipled (Matt.
28:19).

c. Jesus is teaching us that we are to pray that this kingdom would advance as God
said it would.
(i) Remember that even though God said it would, this doesn’t mean we
shouldn’t pray that it would.
(ii) God has ordained who will be saved and who not, but we must still pray and
evangelize for them to be saved.
(iii) God’s plan moves forward by different means: one of which is prayer.
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2. And, of course, as His kingdom advances, Satan’s is subdued.

a. All of Christ’s enemies are headed by Satan.
b. As they are subdued, his kingdom weakens.
(i) His kingdom is just the opposite of Christ’s.
(ii) It is the kingdom of darkness, sin, evil, everything that is exalted against the
knowledge of God.
(iii) It is everything that God hates and has called us to fight against.

c. As Christ’s kingdom advances:

(i) It reclaims men from that kingdom: all His elect.
(ii) It destroys Satan’s strongholds and power over the souls of men.
(iii) It puts an end to absolutely everything He hates: pornography, immorality,
adultery, homosexuality, bigotry, drunkenness, drug abuse, abortion, hatred,
division, strife, malice, poverty, pestilence and disease, war, etc.
(iv) Consider a world free from these things, a world in which all of Christ’s
enemies are placed under His feet.
(v) We read of what this will be like in Isaiah 65, “‘For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem for
rejoicing, and her people for gladness. I will also rejoice in Jerusalem, and be
glad in My people; and there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping
and the sound of crying. No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few
days, or an old man who does not live out his days; for the youth will die at the
age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred shall
be thought accursed. And they shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall
also plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build, and another inhabit,
they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the lifetime of a tree, so shall be the
days of My people, and My chosen ones shall wear out the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they are the
offspring of those blessed by the Lord, and their descendants with them. It will
also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still
speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall graze together, and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall do no
evil or harm in all My holy mountain,’ says the Lord” (vv. 17-25).
(vi) There is disagreement on this passage:
(a) Some believe it refers to the eternal state, but if so, what does it mean there
are planting, building, infants, old age, death, those accursed?
(b) Others believe it refers to a better time in history when Christ’s kingdom will
be much more powerful.
(c) Whatever your conviction, we can all pray – we are all commanded to pray,
that Christ’s kingdom would come, that it would advance, fill the world and
that God and Christ would be glorified.
(d) Next week, we’ll consider that this petition is also a prayer that the Lord
would gather all His elect into His redemptive kingdom and keep them in it,
and that He would hurry the time of His eternal kingdom, the eternal state.
(e) But let’s close for now, in prayer.