Sermon Tone Analysis

Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Would you pray powerfully and effectively full of faith believing you will receive what you ask in prayer, not because you got the words just right or payed really long?

Then says, Jesus make sure you have a prelude to your prayer.

Be more sure of whom you are praying to and His relationships and intention to you, then even that you are sure that you want what you are asking him for.

What it means to have the basis/foundation of your every prayer in the most unique relationship ever - God as your Father, in Jesus Christ the eternal son.

You share the same sonship the beloved - and that puts you in relationship - with a claim on the One who is in heaven - the One who claims you as His precious child!

There is a deep kind of attending to a face -to face - full adoration and thankfulness in invoking God as Father and recollecting that as God is Father to Jesus, so he has become to me in my salvation and it is on this basis that I will cry out to him in prayer!

We ahve seen in Jesus method of prayer

Well then, on that basis what does a Christian pray?

Two weeks go we saw that praying that God’s name be hallowed - isn’t exactly the same thing as the 3rd commandment, though it is implied that we will want God name to be made famous, not used in vain, we are not narrowly praing that we would make God Name and Character, His Works and attributes holy in our lives.

No, we are praying for God to hallow His name in and through us.

If somewhere to spit on your name, defame your character, spread all sorts of false rumours about you, if every time your name is mentioned in conversation people just went hmph and said nothing at all about you, some suggested seek you for job, give you praise, but they just say hmph.

How would you feel?

The exact opposite as if they started to get excited and said Yes I know Joe, he is like .. he would Let’s… Well, nothing is more important in your life and mine, in this church and churches across the planet, in this whole universe than that God's Name is talked about, sought after, valued, set apart.

His name is what conveys not only His grace but Himself.

Great thing of the covenants of Grace, I will be their God and they shall be my people.

It is supremely what Jesus came to reveal His Father’s Name , His Father Glory - It was God the Father says Jesus does among His people - He will glorify His Name! Christian are people who pray for this to happen have the goal of life and of history!

But how does God get His name sanctified, what tool does he use?

That’s the role of Christ bringing a kingdom.

This 2nd petition, is about the tool, ot the goal.

And this petition for Christ’s kingdom is not first of all a prayer for God to bring the End Times upon us, and bring the Kingdom of Glory - It is a prayer for the in Between Times - for Christ’ kingdom his tool for establishing Name of God among us! .

A prayer not for the work of God in the kingdom of glory, but during the Kingdom of grace.

Remember how similar the first part of the prayer was to the Aramiac Kadish - about God’s work in our daily life, in common language of the people, not the Temple!

When this is the biggest deal in our lives, the main business of our lives, it’s like we’ve learned to pray backwards.

Most people pray frontwards - We first rush to asking about themselves and their needs.

And then how do they end it , And we pray this in ________ ________.

Why those words: not a magic incantation, but Jesus said Ask anything in my name be given to you.

To say, I’m asking according to your saving wilin in Jesus for me.

I ask what Jesus wants and represents as best as I can discern it.

Bryan Chapel says, in terms of our requests we should try praying backwards.

God this is what I discern Jesus will about this situation - what Scripture reveals, what my hearts believes - I am longing and aching for this.

I beliver that is the point about Thy name, Thy Kingdom, Thy Will before, OUr Bread, Our sins forgiven, Our not being led into tempatioan and being delivered from the evil one.

We pray first and most intentionally in deliberate prayer the God-requests which is how he gets that goal of hallowing His name on earth and in our homes and church and places of work and land.

Praying for His coming of grace and His will to come more and more.

And then second, we move to our needs We-Requests, those things that keep us fit for His kingdom service.

Also why four positives prayed first, then in this battle the negatives against the sin temptation and Evil one.

Do you pray for God’s purposes as well as your needs?

After that first and all encompassing purpose of His name being hallowed, the only petition that we will never stop praying not even in heaven, what are we to pray?

We come to a petition for God’s purpose about this time in the world and your lives.

Your Kingdom Come.

So used to that phrase and it can seem so disconnected from our needs and our view of our lives and world that.

many agree hardest petition to really pray.

You could flesh out how we are specifically longing and aching and praying for bread, forgiveness, forgive others, temptation, could flesh out how want God’s will, and His Name held high.

But how do we pray for God’s Kingdom to break into our lives this week.

I want to help you pray powerfully and effectively for God’s Kingdom.

So let’s understand what Jesus means here by kingdom and come, and also thy

A. Pray for the KINGDOM of Grace, Not of Glory

We don’t really relate to kings and kingdoms any more do we?

A T Roberston suggests that living in democracies we dislike this idea.

It is politically incorrect, to speak of rule, reign, submission, dominion.

Foreign concepts.

So the accent fell on Christ’ teaching, but you can’t get into Jesus teaching without having the kingdom put right in your face.

What will you do with it?

If sin is the problem and the curse on sin, that destroys the life God intends for us.

Jesus is the answer.

The gospels and the epistles teaches us that Jesus is the remedy.

Two times phrase used in the gospel of John, Jesus says the kingdom of God enters us, and we enter it.

The Kingdom comes with the King.

The King comes when we let Jesus, ruler over us as Saviour and LORD .

The King comes when we let Jesus ruler over us as Saiovur and LORD

So the NT begins with Jesus’s crier, the forerunner, John the Baptist with this announcement:

And Jesus calls the same:

Jesus sends out the 12 preaching announcing the kingdom is at hand, it is near.

Luke records it this way when he sends out the 70 disciples

The gospel is not a good news about individual salvation alone, it is the gospel of God, which is the gospel of the kingdom!

The Old Testament is full of prophesies of this Kingdom coming, as we read in our responsive reading in this everlasting kingdom will be given to the saints.

In the Psalms and to David’s sons in the history books, prophesied and pictured.

Jesus says, the Law and the Prophets the OT idea of kingdom was until John the Baptist, but now the King has come in Jesus, now the Kingdom of heaven is among us, it is coming!

It is not a territory or a country.

Jesus rejected all such attempts to make him a king like that , but the way Jesus uses the word it is always an authority a rule = a reign.

Here we must see one contrast between Jesus kingdom and how we might be tempted to think and even pray for it.

In

What Jesus was talking about in saying to Pilate my kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus just said to his disciples you are to be in the world, but not of it.

In our circles it is in vogue to be all about social justice, and I know the foundation of God’s throne is justice and truth and we should be for this as human being made in his image.

But some have turned Christ’s kingdom into one that is of this world, of one that just is about Justice.

People who make Christ’s kingdom speak of sin, but only of social sins, not total corruption of human nature.

It speaks not of forgiveness - but of victims , it speaks of social righteousness but not of righteousness that is not by law but by faith in Jesus Christ.

It speaks of new kingdom pricniples but not of the Spirit of regeneration in the heart and mind - new birth by the Spirit.

And the problem is that they are not thinking or praying of the kingdom as Christ did.

Of course, God has a kingdom - a universal one rules over all - kingdom of creation.

But since our Fall, God is establishing another reign and it is a spiritual one worked in our hearts and minds, whereby God Himself would rule among them.

The OT promised that God Himself would come and be our King, and that he would bestow an eternal kingdom on His people gathered from every land His kingdom.

In this reign - God Himself would give eternal life - and when someone in repentance and faith - he enters in to this kingdom of grace and salvation and redemption.

This kingdom then is spiritually established in the hearts of God’s people through Jesus, where by He begins to rule them by His grace and truth!

So this is the thing you want established if you are effectively pray for God’s Kingdom to come in your life.

It isn’t His kingdom over all the earth in creation as God Almighty, it is a spiritual kingdom.

So this is the thing you establish if you are effectively pray for God’s Kingdom to come in your life, it isn’t His kingdom over all the earth in creation as God Almighty, it is a spiritual kingdom.

But the 2nd point you must undertand is that it is not primarily for the fulness of this kingdom the consummation that we are praying for.

THough entirlely appropriate for us to pray Maranatha - this longing prayer is not God bring your final kingdom now in my life.

Primary heart cry hear is not for the Kingdom of Glory at the end of the eowlrd, but his is a prayer for the Kingdom of Grace.

The frist stage of the meidatorial kingdom, the kingdom that God sets up with Jesus on earth, and came among all, not fully but invisbley nd nnerwardly and then shone forth in the community of believers as they wre transformed and governed by Christ.

We seek fris HIs kingdom then the righteousness and every thing else follows.

And this is the signifiance of not only praying for the kngdom of God as opspsed to all the kingdoms of the world, but also the kingdom of heaven in contrast to the kngdom of earth.

But the 2nd point you must understand is that it is not primarily for the fulness of this kingdom the consummation that we are praying for.

Though entirely appropriate for us to pray Maranatha - this longing prayer is not, God bring your final kingdom now in my life.

Primary heart cry here is not for the Kingdom of Glory at the end of the world, but his is a prayer for the Kingdom of Grace.

The first stage of the mediatorial kingdom, the spiritual kingdom that God sets up with Jesus on earth, and came among all, not fully but invisible and inwardly, and then shone forth in the community of believers as they were transformed and governed by Christ.

So this is the thing you establish if you are effectively pray for God’s Kingdom to come in your life, it isn’t His kingdom over all the earth in creation as God Almighty,

And this brings us to the second aspect of praying for God’s kingdom in our lives.