Thy Kingdom Come

Meditation May 30, 2020

Matthew 6

9“This, then, is how you should pray:

“ ‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

10your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

11Give us today our daily bread.

12And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one. ’

 

We have examined the first petition; i.e. “hallowed be your name” and come now to the second and third petitions, “your kingdom come; your will be done. A few mark these as the first two petitions and understand “hallowed by your name” as a doxology but I am in agreement with those who understand it not as a doxology but as a petition that God who is our Father in the heavens, infinitely transcendent to all creation, would enable us to glorify, honor and revere His as we ought.

 

Revering Him then, as the awesome God who is the creator and sustainer; who as such has the right to determine all that occurs withing His creation and to dictate the behavior of his moral creatures, our petitions should be “you kingdom come; your will be done and earth as it is in heaven.

 

These petitions, would by no means be a new concept to the Jewish followers of Jesus. Messianic expectations, the coming of God’s King to rule the peoples of the earth had long been looked for by Israel and a similar petition is found in the kaddisch or qaddish, a hymn used in Jewish services (sadly still used for they do not recognize Messiah has come) the words of which are as follows: “May His great name grow exalted and sanctifies (Amen) in the world that He created as He willed. May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your day, and in the life times of the entire Family of Israel, swiftly and soon. Amen” Thus, the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are long familiar to those whom Jesus is teaching.

 

The difference, and no small difference, is that Jesus, their teacher, knows that He Himself is that King, the looked-for consolation for which Israel has in this manner so long prayed and the answer to that prayer is near. Unlike the kingdoms of the world that are ruled, and necessarily so, by force of might, for such is necessary to control fallen man, the Kingdom of Messiah is ruled by the acknowledgement of and hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It is that kingdom of which Daniel spoke when he in a night vision he saw one like the Son of Man and ^“He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” Daniel 7:14

 

It is a kingdom in which God
exercises and makes know his His sovereignty to an extent what he does not so
do in the common course of the unfolding of the history of His creation. Christ
was introducing a kingdom that, until the last day of common history, is to be
ever growing as His subjects advance more and more in their hunger and quest
for righteousness. And we learn that Christ’s kingdom has come for Jesus says, “
if I cast out demons by the
Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you (Matt. 12:28)  and again when questioned by the “Pharisees as
to when the kingdom of god was coming, He answered and said to them, ‘The
kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed nor will they say Look,
here it is! Or There it is!. For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst. (Luke
17:20-21)
As that leaves no doubt as to the coming of the Kingdom, its fullness, its
completeness, the realization of that day when all is righteousness among God’s
people and the whole of creation is set free from its bondage (Ro. 8:22) is yet
to be realized. Variously retarded and advanced by man’s obedience and
disobedience, it is yet that city make without hands which every child of God
seeks thus we are to petition our God, “Your kingdom come” even as John closed
the Revelation with the petition “Come quickly Lord Jesus.”

I
do not agree with those who suppose this to be a prayer for that millennial kingdom
at the end of which the last great rebellion of man against the King is
defeated; rather, it is that Messianic Kingdom in which the last battle has
been won, the last vestige of unrighteous-ness and the last blemish of sin on
the created order removed and all created beings under His reign have brought
their wills, their desires and every behavior into conformity to God’s will.

 

It was therefore ever growing to a completeness, which it has
never yet reached. Its advance to that completeness might be retarded by man’s
self-will, and hastened by man’s fulfilment of its conditions. And therefore,
we pray that it may “come” in its fulness, that all created beings may bring
their wills into harmony with God’s will. Such was the importance of this
petition, the prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom that it was said among the
Jews “every blessing, or prayer, in which there is no mention made of…’the kingdom’,
is no prayer” (Gill et al.)

In consideration of the coming, the advancement, of God’s
kingdom to its fullness, the most consequential prayer we can make is that His
will, His purposes may be brought to fruition among men.

Such prayer is not a prayer of submission, subjection,
resignation to the providence of God in the unfolding of the affairs of history
but a prayer that as subjects of his Kingship, 
to be precise, as citizens of His Kingdom which has come as noted above,
we hunger, thirst and seek the obedience for which we have been equipped as new
creatures in Christ that, by so doing, we may hasten that day when the last
trumpet will sound and we will dwell in the new heavens and the new earth and
God, in the  Person of the Son will reign
among us from the Holy City, the new Jerusalem which has come down from God out
of heaven and there is praise to His glorious name forever and the whole earth
is filled with his glory. (Psalm 7:9)