Your Kingdom Come

A Royal Problem

Today in our message we’re going to continue on in our series on the Lord’s Prayer. So far we’ve talked about the name of God and the concept of the Fatherhood of God. Last week we talked about what it means for God’s name to be sanctified—to be made holy. This week, the petition of the Lord’s prayer that we’re going to focus on is “Your Kingdom Come.”

But here in America, we have a problem when it comes to Kingdom language, don’t we? Our entire country is founded on the idea that no person should be king. We believe in government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We live in a constitutional republic in which we vote for people to represent us at the local, state, and national level. So all of this talk of a king is a bit distant for us.

But not only for us here in the United States. Why, just a few months ago, my father and mother-in-law Arlin and Ruth took a trip to the United Kingdom. They visited England, Wales, and Scotland among other places. And one thing you notice around those countries is a constant reminder of the fact that there is a monarchy in the UK. The Queen and now King’s name is on everything government related. It’s on the letter boxes, it’s on the street names, there are palaces and castles dotted across the landscape. But even in the UK, and other constitutional monarchies like much of Europe, and even places as far-flung as Japan, the ruler doesn’t actually have much say, do they? In other words, in the UK for instance, the King is more of a figurehead. King Charles III as he is now known doesn’t actually influence the day-to-day running of the government in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. He just puts a rubber stamp on what the parliaments of those countries have already approved. He’s more of a PR figure and a nod to tradition than anything else, right?

The Kingdom of God

So, how are we supposed to relate to this whole idea of the Kingdom of God when we don’t live in a kingdom anymore? That’s a really good question. And part of coming to grips with this idea is that we come to some definition of what it means for God and Jesus to be King and what it means to say that the Kingdom of God is a real and present reality.

So first, why is it we say that God is King? And how is it that both God and Jesus can be king at the same time? These are great questions that get us right into the heart of Scripture and Christian Theology at the same time.

How Can We Say that God is King?

How can we say that God is King? Well, first off, the primary reason that we say that God is King is found in the fact that God is the originator, the creator, the maker of all that is. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is how the Bible opens for us. So, because God created the universe, established its boundaries and established the orderly system by which it is governed, thus God is in charge.

Think of it like this. Imagine that you and I have inherited a sum of money. It’s actually quite a lot of money and after we’ve given a great deal of it away to worthy causes, there is still a nice chunk left over to build what to us is our dream house. We hire an architect to design just the perfect home for ourselves and our family to live in. We carefully choose the materials for the exterior for our home, perhaps some brick or stone. And then, after the bones of the house are built, we hire an interior decorator to help us make the interior just as beautiful as the exterior covered in brick and stone.

After the house is built and decorated, we invite guests to come and share in the joy we experience in our new home. As the homeowner, do we allow our guests to do just anything they want to our new home? Do we allow them to wear their muddy shoes into our newly carpeted living room? Do we let them light up a cigarette on our brand new leather sofa? Do we let their children take their markers and write on our freshly painted walls? The answer to all of these questions is of course, no!

In the same way, because God is the builder of this house we call Heaven and Earth, God gets to establish the ground rules. God sets the boundaries. In short, God is King. God is King because God created the universe. God established the decrees for the world to run well.

And all throughout this plane of creation, God did not desire to keep the rule for Godself. Instead, God always wished to share that rule with human beings, those created in the image and likeness of God. God made Adam and Eve the first vice-regents ruling over heaven and earth for God. That’s what all that talk about having dominion is in Genesis 1. God charged Adam and Eve with extending the boundaries of Eden across the globe thereby spreading the very glory of God across the face of the planet. That’s our human task then, to be co-rulers of the planet with God.

How Can We Say that Jesus is King?

So, that is how God can be King. God is King because God is Creator. But how then can we affirm that Jesus is King as well? This takes us to our Scriptures for today and to the discipline of Christian Theology.

Jeremiah and Isaiah

In our Scriptures today, particularly those from the Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Isaiah, we heard talk of a coming figure who would restore righteous rule to Israel. We now need to explore these in a bit more detail. Let’s start with Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 23:5-6

Jeremiah 23:5–6 NASB 2020

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land. “In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will live securely; And this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The Lord Our Righteousness.’

Behold the days are coming declares the Lord. Wait a minute, I thought God was king…why are we waiting for a king to come? That’s a good question. Remember that yes, God is King, but God always wanted to share rule with human beings. And so, starting with Adam and Eve, God always delegated the rule of the world to humans who were in covenant with God. This task was inherited by Noah and his family, by Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, and then by the nation of Israel as a whole. Then, after the period of the Judges, Israel asked for a king of their own to be like the other nations. This was not God’s intent, but God accommodated the request and raised up first Saul, and then David to the throne.

God made promises to David in particular that there would never cease to be an heir from his house over the Kingdom of Israel. But we all know that the monarchy in Israel was not in keeping with God’s will and God’s Law. Despite a few good Kings live David, Solomon, Josiah, and Hezekiah, the majority of the kings of Israel and Judah were wicked. They turned from the proper worship of God to idols. They led the people astray. They were poor shepherds for Israel, their flock. And so the people landed in exile as first the Northern Kingdom was lost to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and then Judah to the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

But amazingly, God was not finished with Israel or with David’s line. God would restore a righteous branch to that line. A righteous branch here means a legitimate offspring. We know that legitimate offspring to be Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and the present passage is one of many that point forwards to the coming of Messiah.

And another important observation about this passage is the name that this one will be called, “The Lord Our Righteousness.” One of the kings that was alive in Jeremiah’s day was Zedekiah. The name Zedekiah means “Yahweh is Righteous.” But there was a problem. Zedekiah was not righteous…not even a little. And so part of what Jeremiah is doing here is both making fun of Zedekiah and pointing to the fact that the coming King, the Messiah would be one who could actually live up to the name “The Lord Our Righteousness.”

And we know that in and through Jesus we receive righteousness. Through King Jesus we are made righteous and holy as we are conformed to the image of Jesus through the process we call sanctification—ever increasing holiness as we allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us.

Isaiah 9:2-7

Isaiah 9:6–7 NASB 2020

For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this.

Our passage from Isaiah is probably very familiar to us. And we have George F. Handel to thank for that. In his Messiah, he set this passage to music. “For unto us a child is born, unto us, a son is given...”

So what is going on in this passage from Isaiah, anyway? Well, here Isaiah is dealing with yet another faithless king of Judah, this time he’s dealing with king Ahaz. Ahaz has been promised a child that would come as a sign act of God’s faithful presence in Judah in Isaiah 7, the child that would called Immanuel. Later on, in chapter 9 Isaiah, speaking under inspiration, tells more about this child.

This child will be a son, a legitimate heir to the throne. He will have four names: He will be the Wonderful Counselor, a wise steward of the world. He will be Mighty God, the fulness of God dwelling in human form, and He will be Everlasting Father, somehow the father of eternity itself, and finally he will be the Prince of Peace, for this king will bring forth a world order in which all is righteous, holy, and orderly.

And to this figure with these awesome titles, the government of the universe will be given. There will be no end to the government of this one and more importantly still this person will sit on David’s throne. The promises to David of an eternal kingdom would be made manifest to this one.

And that person, of course, is ultimately Jesus. Jesus fulfills all the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. Jesus is the human king of Israel that amazingly can live forever. Jesus is the God-made-flesh human and divine Lord who alone can be both God and human, uniting forever in his own flesh heaven and earth. And thus, Jesus is the King and the Kingdom all rolled into one. Here is what the church father Origen said:

The gospel of Jesus is autobasilea, the kingdom himself.

Origen

And now we must turn to what Jesus has to say about the Kingdom in the Gospels.

Life in the Kingdom

So, we’ve established that God is King because God is Creator. We’ve established that Jesus is king for two reasons. First, because God always wished to share God’s rule with image-bearing humans. Jesus IS the image of God in a special way, so it makes sense that he would be chosen to be a human King. But Jesus is also Immanuel, God-with-us. As Anselm of Canterbury put it, he is the God-man the place where heaven and earth meet.

Humility in the Kingdom

Matthew 18:1–5 NASB 2020

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him among them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So whoever will humble himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name, receives Me;

But one thing we must know is that the Kingdom of God is nothing like our human governments whether they be monarchies or democracies. For in all human rulerships, all human government is found the presence of fallen human beings. So, however well-intentioned they are, all human governments are going to have some degree of strife, of corruption, of jockeying for power.

But no so in the Kingdom of God. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells us that we must become like children in the Kingdom in order to be great. One thing to know about children in the ancient world is that they had barely any social status at all. It was very questionable if you, as a child in the first century, would ever make it to adulthood. Your chances might be something like 50/50 of making it to marriageable age, 12-14 for girls, 15-18 for boys. And so, children were simply not valued like we do today.

So, what Jesus is saying here is that we must be humble. Not grasping for status, for honor, for prestige. If we want to be great in the Kingdom, we adopt a posture of humble service. If we humble ourselves, get off our metaphorical high horses about what we deserve and accept all we are given as a gift, then—then we receive the Kingdom of God as a gift. Then we receive Jesus as King, God as King, and we strip off any of our own pretensions to be Lord of our Life and hand that over to God.

The Logic of the Kingdom

Matthew 13:31–32 NASB 2020

He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a person took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all the other seeds, but when it is fully grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and nest in its branches.”

And our final Scripture for the morning shows us something of how the Kingdom grows. You see, the Kingdom of God is not merely thrust upon the world to take it or leave it. It’s not like we cast a ballot for the Kingdom. Instead, the kingdom grows like a plant.

The mustard seed is a proverbially small plant, the smallest seed that was commonly planted in gardens in Israel. It produces a lovely plant in time, but its origins are quite small.

But from that smallest of all the garden seeds grows something capable of giving shelter to the birds of the sky that come to nest in its branches.

In other words, the Kingdom comes unawares, grows and grows until it is capable of sustaining life.

But we need to exercise caution here. It is tempting to say that the church equals the kingdom. This was the dominant idea ever since the Empire of Rome under Constantine made Christianity legal and then tried to control it. The Kingdom of God became united with human empire and an unholy alliance was created that sometimes did really awful things against unbelievers, persecuting them or forcing their conversion at sword-point.

So the church is not equal to the kingdom but it can be PART of the Kingdom. For God’s kingdom is broader and wider than the church, but when the church operates in the Spirit’s power according to the teachings of Jesus, then the Kingdom of God is present.

But the Kingdom of God is also present wherever justice is being done, wherever the love of God is being worked out by loving God and neighbor. And sometimes, even unawares, people who claim no religious faith are operating in the Kingdom without even acknowledging the King…these are the people that Jesus said “are not far from the Kingdom.”

And finally, it is for us to acknowledge a tension in the Kingdom. The Kingdom is already present in some ways. Jesus is on the throne an the Kingdom is growing as people come to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, God as King. But there is also a sense in which the Kingdom is future. The Kingdom will finally come and defeat the Kingdom of the World now ruled by Evil and then God will be all in all.

Siblings, it is for us to live in this tension. To live in the already-not yet of the Kingdom of God. To work for justice acknowledging our King and the fact that the Kingdom is not of this world. But does that mean we throw off the kingdoms of this world, that we withdraw and wait for Jesus to come?

No! We work while Jesus comes to bring the Kingdom to earth. But that also means that our loyalties to ANY earthly kingdom, no matter how just, is only temporary, only provisional. Our highest loyalty must be to God and God’s Kingdom. When the two come into conflict, we must always chose God and the Kingdom.

When we do so, we are co-creators with God. Co-creators of justice, joy, peace, and hope. We are heralds of the King and the Kingdom as we invite people to partake of the reign and rule of God in the here and now. Amen.