A Greater Righteousness (15)

Greeting

Good morning! My name is Joel Cossins, and I’m the pastor here at Libby COTN. I’d like to welcome all of our guests here today, especially to those of you checking us out online. Hello! If you’ve not yet visited us in person, I look forward to the day we can welcome you to our fellowship. You should know when you visit, you will most likely be invited to stay after, as we have a potluck every Sunday after the service—unless otherwise noted. So, come hungry for an encounter with JESUS and bring your appetite for food, as well!

Announce text: Matthew 6:9-13

Key Text: Matthew 6:9-13

Review

insert BP review video if available

[ME – Orientation]

There’s a small town on the northwest corner of Montana—maybe you’ve heard of it. Population just over 3,200. It sits in a valley carved by the Kootenai River, ringed by mountains so beautiful they take your breath away. Yes, this is our town of Libby.

A friend of ours, Josh Allen—who lives in Missoula, sent me a text recently saying Libby was recognized as the safest town in all of Montana.

When Carly and I were contacted by our D.S., Bob Skinner about the possibility of coming to Libby, we began to research the area, and one of the obvious things we learned about was the tragedy that occurred here many years ago.

For decades, Libby was a working town. Men clocked in before sunrise at the W.R. Grace & Company vermiculite mine up on Zonolite Mountain. They came home dusty and tired, and they built lives—raised families, coached Little League, sat in pews not unlike the ones you’re sitting in right now.

But something invisible was killing them.

The vermiculite they mined was laced with tremolite asbestos. Microscopic fibers. They breathed it in. They carried it home on their clothes. Their wives shook out those clothes. Their children played in the dust. For forty years, an invisible poison was threading itself into the lungs of an entire community—and the company knew, and said nothing.

By the time the EPA declared Libby a public health emergency in 2000—the first such emergency declaration in United States history—hundreds had already died. Thousands were sick. And the mine had long since closed, having taken with it not just the health of the community but its economic backbone.

Then the logging industry collapsed. Environmental regulations, mill closures, market shifts—whatever the cause, the other pillar that held Libby upright was gone too. And a community that had already been poisoned from within was now also hollowed out from without.

Though this took place years ago now, the impact of this tragedy still lingers as a soul-wound that has scarred the community to this day. And while this town might be recognized as the safest place due to the small amount of crime here—or whatever the criteria was—the reality is from a spiritual perspective, this town is perhaps not as safe.

What we have left in Libby today is a town that is oppressed. Depression rates that far exceed the national average. Addiction tearing through families. One of the highest suicide rates in the state of Montana. A people who perhaps feel forgotten—whose suffering was invisible, whose cries went unheard, and who now wonder if anyone is paying attention at all.

[WE – IDENTIFICATION]

Now, maybe like us, some of you weren’t here when all of this occurred—though, most of you were. But I want to ask you something. Have you ever been in another state of being that felt like that?

Not necessarily poisoned by asbestos. But poisoned by something. A marriage where the trust eroded so slowly that by the time you noticed, it was already gone. A friendship betrayed. A family fractured by addiction, by silence, by decades of unspoken wounds. A community—maybe even this one—where something invisible has been doing damage for years and everyone sort of knows it but nobody says it out loud.

Most of us know what it feels like when a place that should be whole—is broken. When people who should be connected—are divided. When a cry for help goes unanswered for so long that people stop crying.

The language we tend to reach for in moments like that is the language of despair: this is just how it is. Things don’t really change. Maybe God is sovereign, but He’s sovereign over some other reality, not this one. Heaven is coming eventually—but Libby is here now, and so is your family, and so is your neighborhood.

But what if that’s not the whole story? What if Jesus was trying to tell us something that completely reframes the question?

What if God’s kingdom isn’t just about heaven later—but about restoration now? What if we aren’t just waiting for God to act, but are being invited to become the agents through whom God’s name is actually sanctified in the world?

That’s what I want to explore with you today. And it starts in the middle of Jesus’s most famous prayer.

Announce text again: Matthew 6:9-13

Scripture Reading

Matthew 6:9-13

Matthew 6:9–13 NASB95

9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10 ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread. 12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’

Prayer for added blessing to the reading of the Word

Message

Heaven on Earth: The Transforming Power of God's Rule

Belinda Carlisle - 80s tune?

Big Idea: As God's kingdom advances through our lives, we become agents of His transformative rule, making heaven manifest on earth through our obedience and activism.

Turn with me to Matthew 6, verse 10. Jesus is teaching his disciples how to pray, and he says this:

Matthew 6:10a NASB95

10 ‘Your kingdom come ...

Now, to hear that verse the way the original audience heard it, you have to understand what was going on in their world because there is a problem here that Jesus is addressing.

The people listening to Jesus were first-century Jews living under Roman occupation. And they had a very specific hope: that God’s kingdom would come—and when it did, it would come with power.

Daniel 2:44 NASB95

44 “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

With visible, undeniable, geopolitical force. They had Daniel’s promise in their bones: that God would establish a kingdom that would crush all other kingdoms and endure forever.

They had read the Son of Man passages in Daniel 7:13–14:

Daniel 7:13–14 NASB95

13 “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. 14 “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and men of every language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.

They were waiting for a warrior-king who would finally—finally—break the yoke of Rome, restore Israel’s independence, and vindicate God’s people before the watching nations.

This wasn’t just a fringe idea. Even Jesus’ own disciples—after three years walking with him, after the resurrection, with the Holy Spirit about to descend—asked him:

Acts 1:6 NASB95

6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

Their categories were still political. Still national. Still future.

So when Jesus teaches them to pray “Your kingdom come,” they assume they know what that prayer means. They’re asking Abba to send the angel armies of heaven. To vindicate Israel. To make the Romans tremble.

That’s the problem Jesus is addressing. Not that they’re praying—but that they’re spiritually blind about where God’s reign actually operates and what its arrival looks like.

Jesus is correcting a waiting posture. The assumption that God’s reign was entirely future, entirely external, and entirely spectacular. And he does it in a way that must have stopped them cold.

In Luke 17:20–21, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God is coming. And he says: it’s not coming with signs you can observe. You can’t point to it and say it’s here or there. “Behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Luke 17:20–21 NASB95

20 Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Elsewhere, when Jesus casts out demons, he says:

Matthew 12:28 NASB95

28 “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

He stands up in the synagogue at Nazareth, reads from Isaiah 61—good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed—and then says:

Luke 4:21 NASB95

21 And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Today. Not someday. Today.

The problem Jesus confronts is spiritual blindness—the inability to see that God’s reign isn’t arriving as a political overthrow but through the transformation of human hearts and communities. The kingdom was already breaking in. They just couldn’t see it because it didn’t look like what they expected.

GRACE IN THE TEXT

And that’s where the grace comes in. Because Jesus isn’t just correcting a misunderstanding—he’s liberating people from an impossible trap.

Think about the options available to a first-century Jew who took God seriously. The Pharisees believed that if the people would just be faithful enough—observe the Torah perfectly—God would fulfill his promises. Performance was the key to unlocking the kingdom. The Sadducees, meanwhile, decided you had to play politics. Stay cozy with Rome. Manage the situation. The Zealots wanted revolution. Armed rebellion. Force God’s hand.

None of it worked. None of it could work. And they all left people either exhausted from trying, cynical from failing, or dead from fighting.

Jesus offers something completely different. He doesn’t demand perfect Torah observance. He doesn’t offer a political strategy. He calls people to repent and to recognize him—shifting the whole focus from law to relationship. The kingdom doesn’t arrive through your performance. It arrives through your surrender to a king.

He tells Nicodemus:

John 3:7 NASB95

7 “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

—a supernatural transformation only God can accomplish. The entry point to the kingdom isn’t achievement. It’s new birth.

And then there’s that stunning moment on the cross. A dying thief says to Jesus: “Remember me when You come in Your kingdom.” He’s still thinking future. Still thinking someday.

Jesus says: “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”

Today.

The kingdom isn’t just coming—it’s here. It’s accessible. It operates like a mustard seed—small, quiet, seemingly insignificant, until suddenly it’s a tree sheltering birds. It’s like leaven hidden in dough—invisible at work, but transforming the whole loaf from within.

The grace Jesus offers is double: you don’t have to achieve political victory or perform your way into God’s favor. And you don’t have to wait passively for some future cosmic event. You can participate in God’s kingdom now—through transformed allegiance to Jesus, through acts of mercy, through justice pursued at personal cost—and know that this quiet, “under the radar” work is exactly how God’s reign advances.

Problem in the World

Now here’s what’s uncomfortable: we make the exact same mistake.

We wear different clothes than first-century Jews, but our blindness is remarkably similar. Just as they expected a warrior-king to vindicate their nation and crush their enemies, we expect Jesus’s kingdom to align with our political preferences, our national interests, and our personal comfort.

We domesticate the vision. We assume Jesus is on our side of the aisle. We baptize our national narratives with Christian language and expect him to endorse our borders, our economic arrangements, our party’s platform. In doing so, we’re asking Jesus to serve our empire rather than recognizing that we must serve his.

We want dramatic, visible triumph. We want Jesus to fix our broken systems through political leverage or cultural force. When that doesn’t happen—when the other side wins, when the culture keeps shifting, when the church keeps losing influence—we despair. Or we double down. Or we quietly give up.

And underneath all of that is the same deeper problem that first-century Jews had: we want a kingdom that costs us nothing. A kingdom that doesn’t require us to reorder our loyalties, redistribute our resources, or love people who make us uncomfortable.

One theologian puts it bluntly: the real prayer of many people isn’t “Your kingdom come.” It’s “My kingdom come.” Career advancement. Financial security. Status. Comfort. We construct personal empires—and then ask God to bless them.

Our culture makes this worse. We live in a world that worships autonomy. Submit to no one. Answer to no authority. Be your own king. And the fruit of that is everywhere—in crumbling marriages, fractured communities, and churches that look more like political caucuses than the body of Christ.

We are, in short, not so different from the people standing in front of Jesus two thousand years ago. Waiting for the wrong thing. In the wrong way. And missing the kingdom that’s already breaking in all around us.

Grace in the World

But here’s the good news. The grace Jesus extended then is the same grace he’s extending now.

He’s not demanding that you achieve spiritual perfection before the kingdom arrives. He’s not asking you to figure out the right political strategy. He’s offering you a third way—the grace of dependence. Of surrender. Of bending your will to his.

The word “basileia”—the Greek word for kingdom—doesn’t primarily mean a place. It means a reign. A dynamic, active rule. When Jesus teaches us to pray “Your kingdom come,” he’s asking God to enact his rule—to bring his will into effect here, now, through us.

You cannot enjoy a kingdom you’ve never submitted to its king. That’s not a hard rule—it’s just how kingdoms work. And the transforming power of God’s reign isn’t available to those who are still building their own.

But when we stop. When we actually mean it—“Your kingdom come”, not mine—something shifts. God’s reign is not just absolute sovereignty; it is a redemptive reign that transforms hearts and creates obedience from within. We don’t muster willpower to overcome our self-centeredness. We surrender to a king who’s already working in us, and the transformation follows.

And we become agents. Disciples aren’t just beneficiaries of God’s kingdom—they’re its visible expression in the world. When you forgive someone who wronged you, you are making God’s kingdom visible. When you show mercy to someone who can’t repay you, you are making God’s kingdom visible. When you pursue justice for the forgotten—for the Libbys of the world—you are making God’s kingdom visible.

The hallowing of God’s name happens through us. When God’s people live in alignment with his reign, the world catches a glimpse of heaven.

So, pj … What’s the point?

Conclusion

[YOU – APPLICATION]

So here’s what I want to ask you to do this week. Just this week. Not a life-altering decision—just one small act of kingdom.

Think of one person in your life—or one situation in your community—where something has been broken for a long time. Maybe it’s a relationship you’ve been avoiding. A neighbor you don’t know. A family member you’ve written off. A need in our community that you’ve noticed but kept walking past.

And this week, take one step toward it. One act of mercy. One conversation you’ve been putting off. One small, quiet, inauspicious act of justice or grace.

Don’t try to fix everything. Don’t wait until you have a plan or a program or the perfect words. Just pray the prayer—and mean it—and then do the next thing that God puts in front of you. Let it cost you something small. Let it be the mustard seed.

Because that’s what it looks like to pray “Your kingdom come” and actually mean it.

[WE – VISION]

I keep thinking about Libby.

Our community doesn’t just need legislation. Doesn’t just need EPA funding or economic development grants—though those things matter. What Libby needed, at its deepest level, was what every broken community needs: the Power and the Presence of Jesus. And we are carriers of that presence. We need to be a people who refuse to look away. People who show up. People who absorb the suffering of others rather than protect ourselves from it.

People who pray “Your kingdom come” and then live it out as we respond to His leading and become the answer to our own prayer.

Here’s what I want you to imagine. What would happen if this church—this congregation of people in this city, in this neighborhood—actually prayed that prayer and meant it? What if we stopped asking Jesus to validate our comfort zones and started asking him to send us into the places where his kingdom needs to be visible?

What if the invisible poisons in our community—the addiction, the loneliness, the quiet despair—started to encounter a people who couldn’t be stopped? Not because we had resources or programs or political influence, but because we’d submitted ourselves to a king whose reign transforms everything it touches?

The prayer Jesus taught us is not a passive hope. It is a declaration. It is an enlistment. When you pray “Your kingdom come,” you are saying: I’m available. Use me. Send me. Let your reign be visible through my life.

Heaven on earth doesn’t arrive in a single dramatic moment. It advances like leaven—one act of mercy, one restored relationship, one moment of justice at a time. And it advances through people like us, in communities like this, when we finally stop building our own kingdoms and surrender to his.

Let’s pray together right now:

First, The Shema.

Hear, O Libby! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Next, The Lord’s Prayer.

Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’

Closing prayer & benediction

Numbers 6:24–26 NASB95

The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.’

Scripture records the following words in v.27:

Numbers 6:27 GW

“So whenever they use my name to bless the Israelites, I will bless them.” 

So, receive and go with the blessings of YAHWEH!