"Petition 2"
[Matthew 13:44-50]
March 19, 2008 Second Reformed Church
"Thy Kingdom Come." "Your Kingdom Come."
We continue our look at prayer and the model of the Lord's Prayer, and we come today to the second petition. Remember that the model of prayer that Jesus gives us opens with an address to the God of all of those who believe in Jesus Alone for salvation. This God is our Father. He is trustworthy, and He is always here for us, and He loves us.
Last week, we saw that in the first petition, the first thing we should pray for, the first category of thing that we should prayer for, is that God, in His Whole Being, in His Name, would be known, respected, honored, and seen as holy.
The second petition, the second category of request, is that the Kingdom of the Father would come. And that tells us, first of all, that God, our Father, is King. God is the Sovereign Ruler of the whole creation. He is the Lord and Master of all. He has the last word in all matters.
This petition also tells us, that there is at least one other kingdom than God's Kingdom. In sweeping terms, we can say that there is the Kingdom of Satan -- the Kingdom of the Devil -- and there is the Kingdom of God. Now, let us not get confused -- the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God are not equals. They do not meet on the same playing field to fight, like we might see two sports teams fighting. The Kingdom of God is far greater, far mightier, far more glorious than the Kingdom of the Devil. In fact, the Devil only has a kingdom, because God has given it to him, for a time.
Right now, all humans beings are born dead, in slavery to sin and the devil. We are born totally depraved, infected and affected in every part of our being by sin, seeking only evil and the ways of the Devil. But the day will come when the Devil and his angels and all those who follow him will be thrown into the lake of fire and suffer eternally in their bodies and souls in Hell. When Jesus throws them into their torment, Satan will not even have the little power he has now -- the Devil does not rule Hell -- he will be one more suffering soul in that horrible place.
When we pray, "thy kingdom come," we are recognizing that God, our Father, has delivered us from the Kingdom of Satan through Jesus. As Paul wrote, "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:13-14, ESV). We are part of His Kingdom now.
But, a third thing we see is that the Kingdom of God has not fully come. Even if we say it has come in part because we have been transferred into it, if we are to pray for it to come, it cannot yet have fully come.
Matthew tells us that after Jesus' time of testing, "From that time Jesus began to preach saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'" (Matthew 4:17). When Jesus began His Ministry, He said that the Kingdom was right here, very close. What does that mean?
Jesus was talking with His disciples, "And they asked him, 'Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come [before the Savior]?' And he said to them, 'Elijah does come to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him'" (Mark 9:11-13, ESV).
The prophets said that Elijah would come again, and he would restore all things, and then the Savior would come. This has confused people, because some have looked for a resurrection of the prophet Elijah who served in the days of Ahab and Jezebel, but that's not what the prophets meant. The angel Gabriel explained about John the Baptist, "And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared" (Luke 1:16-18, ESV).
John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, and the inbreaking of the Kingdom, by turning the hearts of the people of the Lord back to Him. It was nothing short of a reformation. We read how people from all over Israel were coming to the Jordan, to repent of their sins and receive John's baptism for forgiveness. (Cf. Mark 1:1-8). They were turning to the Word of God, and God Himself, as they had not for years. And then Jesus came, also preaching repentance, but proclaiming that the Kingdom was now at hand.
What is the Kingdom? What does it consist of? We already seen it, in a round-about way. The Kingdom of God consists in the Grace that comes through preaching, and it's results by the Holy Spirit. And it consists in the Glory that comes in the restoration of the Creation.
The Kingdom of God consists, first, in the Grace that we receive from God when God's Word in preached. This Grace leads, according to God's Sovereign Good Pleasure, in the coming to belief in Jesus Alone for salvation. It's the becoming of new creation: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (II Corinthians 5:17, ESV). It is a recognition that Christ is better, more valuable, that the Kingdom of God is better, than anything and everything else in the world. It is the growing realization that death is not to be feared, but, in the sense that we will be with Jesus, it is to be looked forward to. This is what Jesus was talking about in the first two parables that were read this morning.
In the first parable, Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like this: it is like a man who found a treasure in a field. Now, the field did not belong to the man; it belonged to someone else. So, if he took the treasure, it would be stealing, so, he sold everything he had to raise enough money to buy the field, so the treasure would legitimately be his. And Jesus said that the man sold everything he had in joy -- he's not sorry to give up anything and everything from his life up to this point, because the treasure he had found was that wonderful, that valuable!
In the second parable, Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant who had gone out to buy pearls -- perhaps he made jewelry and he was looking for good pearls for a piece he was making. But he came across the penultimate pearl -- the greatest, most perfect pearl there would ever be. And he was so excited, he went home and sold everything he had that he might buy that one amazing pearl.
Paul wrote, "It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account" (Philippians 1:20-24, ESV).
Notice, Paul said that his first goal was that Christ will be honored -- that the Name of God will be honored -- whether he lives or dies. (Because Paul was thrown in prison many times and his life was threatened many times as well.) And he said that his preference was to die, but not because he was sick of the world and the suffering he has endured, but because he was so excited, so drawn, so filled with Grace, that he knew and longed to be with Jesus.
The Grace that we receive, that we would repent and believe in Jesus Alone for our salvation, that we would be transferred from the Kingdom of Hell into the Kingdom of our Loving Father, that God the Holy Spirit would live in us and cause us to be able to follow the whole Word of God and be matured and changed into the image of Jesus, God the Son, is worth more than everything else together. It is the Kingdom coming near, being at hand, it is the beginning of the Promise that God made in the Garden, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15, ESV).
When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come," we are praying for the Grace to believe, to follow after the Word of God, and to be transformed into the image of Jesus, such that we desire to be with Him more than everything else that the world can offer.
Second, the Kingdom of God consists in that Glory that we have begun to glimpse and will fully see in the restoration of the Creation and in the sanctification of God's people. We've noted this before, as Paul wrote, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved" (Romans 8:18-24a, ESV).
We're waiting for glory; we're waiting for the restoration. We're waiting for the Kingdom to fully come. "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 from 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, He will 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 their be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away'" (Revelation 21:1-4, ESV).
That's the Glory that the Kingdom brings with it: the Creation is restored, we who have believed become without sin -- we are made holy. We and the Creation will be returned to a state like the Garden, but it will be Paradise, because it will no longer be possible for us to sin.
Jesus said in the third parable we read this morning, that God has thrown out a net, like a fisherman, and He is collecting humanity, and when the end of the age comes, when He has gathered all of humanity in His net, the angels will separate us: those who have believed will enter the Glory of the Kingdom in all its fullness. Those who do not will be "thrown into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come," we are asking two things: we are asking that God's Grace would continue to come upon us and change us and make us holy, that we would know Jesus as worth more than everything else. And we're asking that God would glorify Himself and bring us into His Glory, by finally conquering sin, restoring the Creation, and bringing us into His everlasting Kingdom.
Let us pray:
Almighty God and Father, Creator of the Creation, we ask that the hope of Grace and Glory would grow in our lives and sustain us until You Return. Help us to see and believe in the Grace and the Glory You have and will give to us. Amen.
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