SUNDAY SCHOOL: "Thy Kingdom Come"

Welcome back to the Shepherd's Church podcast. Just like our Lord's Day Sermon, we hope that this Sunday School message blesses you and strengthens you in your faith. Yeah, I think it's like 10 million.

Okay. Yeah.

Thank you. I thought about that this morning. I was like, should I even wear this? So Easter, Easter-y. Well, let's pray and let's jump in. Lord, thank you so much for today and for all of the wonderful things that you've done for us in Christ.

Lord, help us today to magnify your great name. Help us to glorify you with singing and with preaching and with reading, with all sorts of ways. And Lord, let us leave here joyful to follow you to the ends of the earth.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

All right, so, is this too loud? Feels like I'm blasting.

All right.

The First and Second Petitions of the Lord's Prayer

Last week, we examined the second petition of the Lord's Prayer, Hallowed Be Your Name. The first petition, as you will remember, was our Father who art in heaven. And by beginning the prayer in this way, Jesus established our pattern for prayer, our rhythm of prayer.

That prayer should always begin with who God is relationally and governmentally to us before we even begin to think about our petitions and those things that we think are most important to us. It is funny.

The things that we think are most important to us, the Lord is saying, are not the most important things to us. He's saying that the most important thing to us is that we must acknowledge that God is, that He is our Father, that He is our Sovereign.

That is the first petition in the Lord's Prayer. And our prayers ought to increasingly reflect this pattern. Now, the second petition, last week, we talked about that Jesus' name would be glorified across the face of the earth, that it would be hallowed.

Remember, we talked about that it was a third-person imperative, not you hallow the name of God, but let the name of God be hallowed all across the earth, that it would be magnified, which is nothing short of saying that after we've acknowledged who God is in prayer, that we must acknowledge what His mission is in prayer.

And His mission is to have His name magnified all over the world. And that is what we will continue talking about today, because our third petition actually puts flesh on what it means to hallow the name of God.

For instance, if we wanna see the name of God hallowed everywhere, what will that look like? What kind of a world will that be? Well, today, in our third petition, we will see what kind of a world that will be, and that will be a world where His kingdom has come on earth as it is in heaven.

This is what the text says. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Quite simply, Jesus is telling us that we must be praying for God's kingdom to come more and more, increasingly more and more.

We must be praying that the earth would obey the will of God, just as joyfully and as faithfully as all the hosts of heaven. And as we will see, we are to be praying for the total reunification of the earth with heaven.

A Post-Millennial Prayer for the Kingdom to Come

But before we do that, I wanna first at least begin some discussion. What kind of a world is Jesus asking us to pray for when He says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?

A righteous world, yeah.

A holy world, yeah. Right, a world ruled by God. Yeah, what I think is so fascinating about this, if you really think about it, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Well, you ask yourself the question, how is God's will obeyed in heaven?

Totally. So if we're to pray that God's kingdom will come on earth in just the same way that it is in heaven, we're saying that His kingdom would come in total to where He would not be disobeyed at all.

Pretty post-millennial prayer.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, yes it is. Okay, what kind of things must die in our world in order for this to happen?

Sin.

Sin, yeah. Yeah.

All sinful flesh.

Yeah, all sinful flesh. It's not just personal, to humans as well, what else?

Yeah. Yeah.

Let me ask you this. Adam mentioned that this is a very post-millennial prayer before that term was even coined. Jesus gave us this prayer, right? Do we have good confidence to say that the Lord is not going to return until this prayer is answered?

I think so. I think it would be silly if the Lord asked us to pray for a world that was totally under His kingdom if He had no intention of accomplishing it. It's not quite a slam-dunk case, but it does point us to the fact that He asked us to pray for this.

His word tells us that He's going to do this, so if He stopped short of that, it would be strange.

Well, that, His kingdom is coming now.

Right.

He is ruling until all of His enemies are being put under His feet.

Right.

That's what is happening.

Right, and that's the point is, why would He stop short of putting all of His enemies under His feet?

All of His attributes, confession of faith,.

Would be null and void.

Right.

He will return it to the bride and grave.

Right.

Amen.

Unity, Reconciliation, and the Church's Role in the Kingdom

What are some things that need to become greater in this world for this to happen?

Yes?

Across the world.

I would say like unity.

That's what I was thinking. That's what I was thinking. I think a lot about the church's lack of unity today and how it's not a picture at all of God's kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven and how we really as a big C church need to remember that unity is an attribute of God and His triunity and that if His kingdom is going to come on earth, it needs to begin with the house of God.

So we need to demonstrate to the world first and foremost what it means to be in union with Christ.

And the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth. I think we can have a lot of encouragement when we see what's happening, especially with this post-mill movement, how it's brought a lot of Christians together where we weren't together before.

I think we were very fractured and still is, but for the most part, the Lord seems to be doing a new work, drawing His people together. Great focus on Him and His work and accomplishing in this earth.

Paradise restored.

Right.

Amen.

All right, well, let's jump in to try to understand more of what this means. In order to understand what Jesus means by your kingdom coming or will be done on earth as in heaven, we need to know something about earth and heaven.

Because when Jesus taught His disciples to pray, heaven and earth were actually separate spaces divided by a very large chasm because of the terrible effects of sin. So you think about heaven and earth as being completely separate spaces in the Old Testament.

But in the beginning, it wasn't this way. In the Garden of Eden, it was not this way. Heaven and earth before sin and before the fall were not distant realms that didn't touch each other and they weren't even a Venn diagram that had some overlap.

Heaven and earth were in perfect harmony. Heaven was spiritual. Earth was physical. And before sin separated these two distinct realities, they were in perfect union and harmony as overlapping spaces.

And this is evidence in the Garden of Eden, which is not merely a tropical paradise on earth that just didn't have mosquitoes and had nice, what is a good, martini? Yeah, it's not just that. The Bible calls heaven a mountain vista, a garden temple, a sacred space where God's presence and man's flesh dwelled together in endless harmony.

And as such, whenever Adam obeyed God, the will of God was done on earth as it was in heaven. So this passage where Jesus is telling us to pray is a past reality that actually was true when Adam obeyed God.

When Adam obeyed God, the will of God was done on earth as it was in heaven. But then came the fall. With one act of defiance, the universe was shattered. Sin drove a wedge between heaven and earth, severing the once peaceful and whole union between these two realms.

And when you realize, I think this is fascinating, that the word for spirit in Hebrew is ruach, and you realize that when heaven and earth separated, the spirit separated from the material. So one aspect of the fall is that the world itself is actually suffocating because the word spirit means breath.

So God took away his breath, his life, the life that filled the lungs of this earth was choked out when man sinned, and earth was fractured into an overlapping space with heaven, no longer touching, no longer overlapping.

But God didn't abandon his plan because the rest of the biblical story is the story of how God is going to weave together heaven and earth back together again, how he's going to unite these two separate spaces.

After a thousand years, a global flood, and the nations being divided in their confusion, God came down and he chose a family, and he chose the head of that family named Abraham. And to that family, God promised that he was going to reunite heaven and earth.

He said, to you, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed. You can't be blessed unless heaven and earth are coming back together again. So God is promising that to Abraham. 400 years later, after slavery in Egypt, God brought them, his people, his ancestors, which now had been fruitful and multiplied, brought them out of the land of Egypt to the wilderness where God began the most clear act of weaving together heaven and earth again, and that was in the building of the tabernacle.

The tabernacle was decorated like the Garden of Eden. The tabernacle represented the fundamental hope of the world that God would reunite heaven and earth back together again. The tabernacle, and later the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, was the one place on earth where heaven and earth touched.

Inside of the Holy of Holies, God and man reenacting God and Adam would reunite together again on one day a year celebrating the hope of the Garden of Eden, the hope before Adam sinned. Every year in that temple, the high priest and God would participate in the reunification of heaven and earth, and it would be the only place on earth where one man and his God would come back together again in union, but only for a moment.

Now, this was certainly a start, but it wasn't everything. God had more in mind because when Jesus comes, you fast forward now through the first temple, the second temple, and you get to the New Testament.

Christ as the New Tabernacle and the Holy of Holies

Now, John tells us something very fascinating about Jesus. John tells us that the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The word in your English Bible probably say the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

That word skene underneath the word dwelt means tabernacled. It means he came and he pitched his tent. He came and he became the tabernacle, which means that Jesus is now the singular human being who is living perpetually in the presence of God like a high priest on the day of atonement.

Every day, Jesus is in the presence of God just like a high priest was in the day of atonement, and yet, it's even more beautiful than that because that's what he was born into. When the spirit fertilized his mother's egg, heaven and earth reunited again, spirit immaterial.

For the first time since Edom, in the womb of a poor Jewish woman, her birth canal became the spring from which the new Eden flowed, and her son was the point on earth where the spiritual and the material were woven back together again.

But it's even better than that because not only is Jesus greater than the high priest, high priest had one day, once a year, in the presence of God, Jesus lived in the presence of God, so therefore, you already have a magnification.

But it's even better than that because wherever Jesus was, wherever Jesus went, he was bringing the holy of holies with him. He was the walking, talking holy of holies. He was the point on earth where heaven and earth collided, which is a massive improvement from the Old Testament types and shadows.

Whenever he healed someone, he was bringing heaven to earth. He was bringing the power of God into the material existence of man. And when he promised his disciples to send the spirit of God into them, the same spirit that fertilized the egg, the same spirit who illuminated the holy of holies, the same spirit that led Israel out of Egypt by cloud and by fire, he promised to send them the spirit of God that would turn them into walking, talking little temples so that they now would be places on earth that were reunited with heaven.

When they were saved, and when we are saved by the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit comes in us and regenerates us, you become a temple of the living God. Every moment of every day, you are living in the presence of God in a way that the high priest of the Old Testament would have only dreamed.

But it's more interesting than that, I think, because when Jesus poured out his spirit onto his disciples, the moment before that happened, there was one place on earth where heaven and earth were connected again.

And then after he pours out his spirit onto his 11 disciples, remember Judas is gone at this point, now there's 12 places on earth where heaven and earth are connected again. Then you go to Pentecost, and there's 3 ,000 places where heaven and earth are connected again.

Now, the visible church is 2 .5 billion, I don't know how many people are regenerate, but we have a world that is being increasingly woven back together again with heaven through the regeneration of God's people.

So when Jesus tells us to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth is in heaven, he's telling us to pray that heaven will invade earth again, that heaven and earth will be reunited again, and that one salvation at a time, one soul filled with the spirit of God at a time, the earth and heaven will come back together again, but it's even more incredible than that.

Because we're not just pietist that believe that the only thing that's going to be reunited is soul, is the soul of man. When Jesus tells us to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth is in heaven, he's not only saying that the whole world will be filled with Christians as a demonstration of heaven invading earth, as a demonstration of Eden coming back to earth, he is saying also that all of earth, every part of earth will be conformed to the will of God.

That humans will obey the will of God just like the angels do in heaven. That oceans will obey the will of God instead of revolting in tidal waves. That the winds would obey the will of God instead of devolving into tornadoes and cyclones and hurricanes.

That cells will obey the will of God instead of producing cancer. Jesus is praying for the total overhaul of the earth, the total invasion of heaven so that there is nothing left on earth that does not bow in joyful obedience to Yahweh.

He is praying that the same unrivaled rule that characterizes the heavens would invade and fill the earth so that we would proclaim in joyful unison every atom of this earth in joyful unison with heaven, our Lord reigns.

That every stronghold would be demolished. That every false religion would collapse. That every rogue government that hates God would be obliterated. That every philosophy would be ground to dust that is not proclaiming Christ.

We're praying for righteousness to flood every home, every city and every government, every nation. We're praying for families to flourish under the blessing of Yahweh. For justice to reign, for wisdom to govern, for peace to triumph.

We're praying for the restoration of Eden not as a mere garden but as a global kingdom. See the difference between Eden and what God is bringing is that Eden was empty and Eden had potential. What God is bringing is Eden completed, Eden filled.

The prophet saw this day coming, Isaiah foresaw the day when all of the nations of the world would stream to the mountain of the Lord. They would be hungry and they would be taught in his ways, Isaiah 22, four, or sorry, two, two through four.

Zechariah prophesied of a king who would rule from sea to sea, who would banish war and who would establish peace, Zechariah 9, 10. Daniel envisioned a stone cut out that no human hand would be able to cut out.

It was cut out by God himself that would crush all rival kingdoms and fill the earth with God's rule, Daniel 2, 35. The psalmist envisions a day that all the families of the nations of the world will worship before you, Psalm 22, 27.

When the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, we say this one a lot because it's a good one, will fill the earth as the water covers the sea, Habakkuk 2, 14. The vision of the world is not one that is sinking into despair but a world that is increasingly and will increasingly bow before Jesus Christ.

And that's what we pray. We pray that as Philippians 2, 10 through 11 says that every knee would bow in heaven and on earth and even under the earth at Jesus Christ as Lord, we pray that that would happen on earth as it is in heaven.

That Christ's reign will expand, that his government will continue to increase until the entire world is filled with his peace, Isaiah 9, 7. We pray that the gates of hell will continue to fall down as the church advances, Matthew 16, 18.

We pray that the trajectory of history, even in our lifetime, will not tend towards chaos but towards consummation. One day, the gap between heaven and earth will no longer exist. And the final enemy, Jesus will come and defeat personally himself, which is death.

And in that day, death will be swallowed up in victory, sin will be no more, curse will be no more, and we will enter into eternity with our king. Until then, this is what we pray. We pray our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And may our prayers reflect that. Any questions? Slightly optimistic view of the way things are going. But yeah, it's informed by scripture. It's right there in the text.

It's a glorious hope.

Joy, Patience, and Hope in God's Providence

What do you think praying like this or believing that this is the direction that the world is going, what do you think it actually does to us as Christians?

It brings us joy.

Yeah.

It's kind of a big deal. Joy's one of the biggies.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, because if you know for a fact that you're gonna lose, you're gonna give up. Right, right. But if you know for a fact that your God is going to win, then you can say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 that our labor for the Lord is not in vain.

I think it also, and one that we have to wrestle with, it's good to be optimistic. It's good to know the direction that the world is heading, but it's also good not to be so cage-stagey about it that if anything bad happens, you start to question, well, is this really true?

I think it teaches us to be patient. We've had 2 ,000 years of church history right now and we look around and we say, gosh, there's a lot of work left to do. So we can work hard, we can work faithfully, we can work joyfully, we can know that our labor's not in vain, and we can also be patient with incremental and maybe sometimes even small gains knowing that the Lord will continue to do this over centuries.

I'd say even in fact, because we, yeah, right. That doesn't mean, it's what can be perceived as a small loss, but at the end of the day, it's the Lord's doing, advancing.

Right.

One thing doesn't necessitate the other.

Right.

And so we have to be, I think, vigilant as people to make sure we don't succumb to that type of thing.

Right, and I think what you're pointing out, which is such a good point, is our faith and our hope and our joy and our optimism are rooted in what God says and not what our circumstances reveal. Our circumstances might be pretty terrible.

We're not promised that they won't be, but our hope is rooted in what God says, not in what our circumstances are.

Right, God's providence today doesn't change what we have to ultimately do.

Amen.

And that brings to mind that great verse, it's all things work together for good, in the name of God and according to his purpose. So when we look at what's happening in our government, it does give us hope, especially the way things were the last four years.

And now this great move of the Lord upon Trump and so many that have come behind him. That's affecting not just our country, but the whole world, you know?

Yeah.

Yet in reality, this great work could turn into a terrible dictatorship of the future, you know?

Yeah.

Because this guy's got a huge, narcissistic personality. So while we can all pray that the world will be good.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, I've long thought that America could be on the verge of collapse over the next 100 to 150 years, or maybe even quicker, because of just where we're at as a country. But I'm still optimistic that his kingdom will come and his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Because my hope's not rooted in America, or in my circumstances. My hope's rooted in what the Lord says.

Yeah, there's some sense of, like, we look forward to the hope that is to come, and people sort of tend to over-spiritualize that. Like, when you die, you'll be with the Lord. And yes, and that's great.

That is absolutely a hope to come. But I feel like this is really the true, the true hope to come is heaven meeting earth, and the new earth and the new creation.

Right.

And the post-millennial hope is the true hope. And so, like, that's what charges your, that's what gives you energy to continue to work in this life, is towards the ultimate hope. Which, obviously, yeah, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

But even beyond that, to know that in 2 ,000 years, you're not, like, just because the work you do here is so incremental and minuscule, or maybe doesn't have a large impact on what happens 3 ,000 years from now, you'll be back in 3 ,000 years when that day comes.

Yeah.

When you're raised, so.

Yeah.

I think that's really the hope that we have, is for that.

And it's such an interesting point, Adam. We carry, in our body, the hope of the gospel. Because, in our body, when Jesus is finished with his work, heaven and earth will come back together again in our body.

The spiritual and the material will come back together. We'll have a perfect body again, to live with God forever in a physical space. So, even in that, I think that's a very interesting thing, that just our human body looks forward to the reunification of heaven and earth.

Yes, sir.

And I'm reading in Paradise, the story talks about, we have to look at history, not just our time period.

Yeah.

Because history shows you the incremental improvement. And one of the great examples he gave was, earlier we had the Apostles' Creed, and what was the great improvement of that? The Westminster Confession of Faith.

And that continues to go on, and will continue.

Right.

Yeah, amen. Amen.

Closing Prayer and Benediction

Well, let's pray, and we'll close out. Lord, thank you so much for today, and for all that you've done for us. And Lord, thank you for this great vision of what you are going to do. Lord, help us, as people, to work, and put our hand to the plow in faithful ways, and help us to serve you well, and to obey you where we're at.

Help us, Lord, to be faithful slaves, who you will find working when you return. Lord, we thank you, and we praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, let's go get some coffee, and come back here in a little bit.