Your Kingdom Come (Matthew 6:10)

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I love the old catechism answer to the question, what do we pray for in the petition, your kingdom come, from what we sometimes call the

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Lord's Prayer, the prayer that he taught his disciples to pray, that beautiful pattern of our concern and our expectation for the kingdom of God.

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And the answer is that there are three elements to that request. The first is that the kingdom of Satan might be destroyed, that the kingdom of darkness of slavery and misery, that rival but not equal kingdom to the kingdom of God might be brought down over time, in time, and at the end of time, might be entirely taken away, might receive all the punishments which it deserves, that all its power would be once and for all broken.

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And then alongside of that, there is a prayer in this desire that God's kingdom would come, that as the rival kingdom is brought down, so God's kingdom of grace would be advanced.

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And that means that there would be sinners brought into it, and saints established and kept in it.

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So it's a prayer on the one hand for the extensive progress of the gospel, that as the word of God is preached in all the earth, so sinners would be humbled on account of their sins, would acknowledge

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God's diagnosis, would embrace God's salvation, would bow the knee to the

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Lord Jesus Christ, would trust into him in order that they might be delivered from their sins, and having done that, would then go on in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, walking in righteousness and faithfulness, growing in faith and hope and love, showing more and more of the fruit of the

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Spirit. So as well as the downfall of Satan and his kingdom, there's this pleading with God that the kingdom of grace,

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God's saving work in the world now would be advancing, not just seen to be advancing, but actually be advancing, that there really would be genuine conversions.

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And we ought to pray, I think, not just for the ones or the twos, or even for the tens or the twenties, but that we would see

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God working in mighty power to convince and convert sinners. But there's also the intensive work, there's the growing up in all things into him who is the head,

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Jesus Christ, the strengthening, the invigorating of the church, of the

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Lord Jesus, that those of us who are believers wouldn't just go on living a sort of a half -life as it were, going through the motions, drifting along in kingdom life, but that we ourselves would be stirred up in love and to love and good works by one another under the influences of the preaching of God's word in the power of the

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Holy Spirit. But there's also a third element to that petition, and it is that the kingdom of glory would be hastened, because those who love

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God are looking forward to the blessed appearing, the hope that we have of the return of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. It's a way of expressing the come

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Lord Jesus desire that is the note that is sounded right at the end of our

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Bibles. It's a desire then to see the final fall of the kingdom of Satan and the final consummation of the kingdom of grace, a desire that what was blossoming in grace will bloom in glory, the establishment of that eternal kingdom in all its fullness.

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Not now just the present experience, but the final glorious reality of a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells and where with the risen

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Christ all the risen people of God, both those who have fallen asleep in Christ before his return and those who are alive and waiting at his coming will be together forever in the presence of their dearest Lord.

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This is a sweet, full and rich petition for God's people to pray, and I trust that you will pray it, that you will use this language and all the other rich scriptural expression at your disposal to lay hold upon God and to plead with the

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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that he might grant that his kingdom would come, that as we see it so we might see more of it, that the kingdom of Satan would be destroyed, that the kingdom of grace would be advanced as sinners are brought into it and saints are kept and built up in it, and then that the kingdom of glory would be hastened.