A call to Prayer (2)

For the Love of Kings

As A child I was always enamoured with stories of knights and kings and adventure. It seemed to me all the great fables and stories had some account of a great king, wise advisors, brave warriors and unfortunately some mushy love interest so the girls would listen to. Of course one of the most famous of these fictional literary works is that of King Arthur and his knights of the round table. This story has been told, retold, changed and adapted over the years. In fact I recently took my oldest son to see The boy who would be king in theatre which was yet another modern retelling of the old fable. Of course depending on the version you have heard the story varies a bit. The one I am most familiar with is the old Disney classic animated movie.

Of course no one better takes an already existing story and making it seem like their own like Disney. And I trust you probably all know some version of the story, if not I encourage you to watch the Disney version. It’s clean and funny.

These stories originated in poetry that came about during the dark ages where few historical documents were kept or survived. But a poem did. In this poem it mentioned a great warrior, not Arther but a warrior of a different name Gwawrddur who had great victory in battle but was no Arther. And there is was the beginnings of a legend.

The thing with legends is over time their story changes. With each retelling something gets forgotten or added. For example it wasn’t until a french poet Chretien de Troyes added the love interest to the Legend of King Arther by writing a series of love stories adding specific characters like Lance-a-lot and Gwenivier and the love triangle between these two and King Arther. By now the story had already gone through many transformations and changes, each telling of the stories very different from the last.

In the 15th century Sir Thomas Mallory put together a collection of all these stories and adventures of one King Arthur in a book called Le Morte D’Arther. And the Legend to this day continues to be modified.

Why do I tell you all of this. Because this morning I want to tell you the story of a King. This King has existed since the beginning of time and historical documents have existed since possibly over 3000 years ago. Since that time other historical books have surfaced and corroborated the earliest known documents which were found and dated back to 408 BC(The dead sea scrolls) so about 2700 years ago. To this day stories of this King are told, retold yet nothing has changed and despite the fact that the Bible itself is a collection of books from many different human authors, who we believe to inspired by the King Himself. This collection of books tell one story, the same story of a Holy and Righteous King who is constantly dealing with rebellious and wicked subjects, so in a pursuit to have a close relationship with those subjects He sent His Son to Die on a cross so that anyone who wishes cold no longer be a subject destined for death but could be made His child and welcomed into the Palace where they would each receive a room made specially for them metaphorically speaking. What each believer will receive is admittance into heaven as a child of the King and a mansion prepared for them.

I tell you all of this because I want you to know that what I am telling you about this King is no fable. It is not just a legend passed down from generation to generation. If this were the case the story we have today would look nothing like the original, but in His sovereignty the King of kings and Lord of lords, the One and only God, the creator of all that is has preserved the sanctity of His story.

We are not talking about a King Arther today. Today we tell the story of a greater King the one who is known as Yahweh!

You see we are in week two of a series where we are working our way through the Lord’s prayer. Last week we looked at the first statement and how God is so holy even His name deserves special reverence and how acknowledging that ought to help us refocus from us and our needs to Him and His holiness.

This week the statement in the Lords Prayer we will look at is

Matthew

Matthew 6:10a NLT

May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Of course the predominant word in this statement is Kingdom. This statement may be small, but when we pray this short simple statement we are not praying a small thing. What this portion of the prayer is about is, it is referring to when Christ shall return and every person will stand trial before God those who already belong to the Kingdom will be welcomed in and those who do not well the bible says they stand condemned already and so they will be destroyed in the fires of hell. When we pray this we asking for God to make it so there is one Kingdom. His Kingdom and His reign.

What Jesus is teaching us here is to pray for the final judgment. This is not a small thing. This is the main thing, yet all too often when we pray the Lords prayer we breeze over this as if it is noting at all.

And in our regular prayers if we pray for this at all it is all too often without realizing the weight of such prayers.

A Day is coming

So the question I would like to pose this morning is...

What can we expect on that day?

There is a passage that often gets quoted yet I wonder if we fully understand the ramifications of this passage .

Romans 14:

Romans 14:11 NLT

For the Scriptures say, “ ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will declare allegiance praise to God.’ ”

In this passage Paul is referring to a passage in the Old testament. Now to fully understand what we can expect on the day when His Kingdom comes, we need to understand we need to understand what Paul is saying here. To do this one would be wise to look back at the passage Paul is referring to.

Does anyone know what passage that might be? I’ll give you a hint. It is the only passage remaining on the title screen we have not looked at yet.

Isaiah 45:14–25 NIV

This is what the Lord says: “The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, and those tall Sabeans— they will come over to you and will be yours; they will trudge behind you, coming over to you in chains. They will bow down before you and plead with you, saying, ‘Surely God is with you, and there is no other; there is no other god.’ ” Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself, the God and Savior of Israel. All the makers of idols will be put to shame and disgraced; they will go off into disgrace together. But Israel will be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation; you will never be put to shame or disgraced, to ages everlasting. For this is what the Lord says— he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited— he says: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right. “Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save. Declare what is to be, present it— let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me. “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone are deliverance and strength.’ ” All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame. But all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the Lord and will make their boast in him.

Is

What can we expect on that day?

Salvation and Condemnation

Me: When I was a teen living at home with my mother our house was cold. It did not help that we had the blower fan on backwards for 6 years. So our wood furnace went through a pile of wood. Literally and figuratively. We would burn anywhere from 11 to 15 chords of wood depending on the winter. Let’s just say by the time I moved out I was not a fan of wood. Don’t get me wrong. I like the heat, it is a very unique heat that can not be reproduced by any other means but it is also a ton of work.

You have to acquire it some how. If you didn’t go to the woods to get it your self, you had to pay someone to do that. To save money on occasion we would get our wood in tree length. Have you ever tried stuffing a 12 foot tree down a basement window hole. Yeah me neither, which meant we had to cut it. By we I mean my uncle John mostly. Then we had to split it and stack it outside to finish drying. then move it to the basement where you get to stack it again. Then you tend the fire by unstacking the wood. Then you clean out the ashes and put them on the driveway so you can get out. Then you track those ashes back into the house where you get to clean them up again.

Like I said it is a ton of work, but of all the work I liked splitting it the best. Of course we still used axes at our house, and back in the day I was ok at it. Not as good as John but still pretty good. We had two axes one was a normal ax and the other had a double edge head on it. Using the double edge ax is very interesting because as an added benefit you could keep one edge sharp for cutting and the other dull for splitting. On the other had when you are splitting the shape edge is back towards you so if the ax happens to bounce back off the block you get to play a pretty intense game of dodge ball only it is not a ball.

We: See often in life we come across all these things that have pros and cons. Like burning wood or owning a double edge ax.

God: This is also true of the day when His Kingdom comes. For many and I would hope all in this room that day is going to bring such joy and overwhelming emotion as we stand before the King and He says something along the lines of My child welcome home. But for those who are angry with Him as the book of Isaiah puts it, for those who have rejected and mocked Him and worshiped false Gods, this will not be a good day because although they might finally bow and acknowledge Him as King for them it will be too late. See not only will they feel ashamed or put to shame as the NIV puts it they will not receive deliverance from their sins.

This passage is a great word of hope for us because in verse 22

Isaiah

Isaiah 45:22 NIV

“Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.

we learn that if we come to God we are counted amoung His people to be saved and verse 25 tells us

Isaiah 45:

Isaiah 45:25 NIV

But all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the Lord and will make their boast in him.

Only those who belong to Him will be saved.

See there is no other God. Only one And on the day His Kingdom comes well it will be a double edged sword for the redeemed the last of their human limitations will be surgically removed because of the blood of the lamb, but for the rest they will be cut off from the presence of God completely and eternally.

Matthew 6:10a NLT

May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Matthew

So what does all this have to do with prayer. Speciffically the portion of prayer that states

Matthew 6:10a NLT

May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Well praying this portion of the prayer should do 2 things.

1. Remind us that this day is comming

2. Cause the question. If this day were to come soon who do I know that wouldn’t be ready.

You: So what does this mean for you. Let’s start by saying if you are here today and you are not ready for the Kingdom of God to come. You best get ready. This passage tells you you are welcome to come to Him. Turn to Him and be saved. Admit you have sinned, Believe Jesus died for all, and confess Him as your Lord and saviour. Now for the rest of you. What does this mean for you. Well I hope it means for you that when you pray this portion of the prayer as you should Jesus told us to, but that you would pray it with great reverence and let it remind you of those who are not ready. Let it motivate you to tell the world about Jesus.

We: We don’t have forever His Kingdom will come and may we be praying it come soon, for this world is getting more and more evil, but if it were to come soon, have we had every conversation we want to have had.

Next Step: Like last week we will pray. Then end with the Lords prayer. This week as we pray think about what we have talked about so far.

Remember just how Holy God is and how amazing it is for us to be given an audience with the King, and remember as we pray for His Kingdom to come soon what that would mean for every unsaved person who ever lived and allow that to motivate you to tell as many as you can about Jesus.