The Lord's Prayer-Part 4-Your Kingdom Come

Kingdom

Good morning! Today is Sunday May 24! Welcome to day’s episode. We are continuing to examine the LP in light of how it connected to the concept of the Exodus. Both from the OT and how Jesus through the LP was communicating the idea of a new kind of Exodus. Today we look at the next phrase in the LP. And that is “your Kingdom Come”. As is always important. We need to define what we are talking when we use the word “kingdom”. In our modern understanding. The word kingdom brings up all kinds of images. But are those images consistent or different from what the original audience would have understood.

The IVP Bible Background Commentary has this to say in the entry for the word kingdom:

*Kingdom. This term means “rule,” “reign” or “authority” (not a king’s people or land, as connotations of the English term could imply). Jewish people recognized that God rules the universe now, but they prayed for the day when he would rule the world unchallenged by idolatry and disobedience. The coming of this future aspect of God’s reign was generally associated with the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. Because Jesus came and will come again, Christians believe that the kingdom has been inaugurated but awaits consummation or completion. “Kingdom of heaven” is another way (Matthew’s usual way) of saying “kingdom of God.” “Heaven” was a standard Jewish way of saying “God” (as in Lk 15:21).[1]

Politcal

The idea of a kingdom is actually somewhat foreign to us. When we think of a kingdom. We tend to think purely in material terms. Like people or land. But for the ancient audience it was quite different. Nijay Gupta in his book on the LP writes this:

Praying “Let your kingdom come” is unnatural to many modern people simply because we are not familiar politically with living in “kingdoms” under ruling “kings.” In monarchal rule, the people at large don’t really have a “say” in the next king. Kings tend to come into power by birthright, or perhaps by dint of force through an uprising. In either case, no one “votes” for a monarch via free elections.

Christians….., then, are confronted with a political system in the LP that is quite foreign to our democratic cultural experiences and sensibilities. To acknowledge a “kingdom of God” is to recognize God as “King.” To pray “Let your kingdom come” is to hope and petition for the pervasive dominion of this King across the globe. Again, to most modern Westerners, this idea sounds archaic, even oppressive. We might be more comfortable praying “Let your guidance come” or “Let your wisdom come.”

But to pray “Let your kingdom come” makes certain important theological assumptions about God and also about the world and its inhabitants as creatures. While on the level of human politics we can (rightly, I think) say that the will of the adult, educated people at large ought to be heard and a “leader” should follow such a will, we Christians believe that God alone is the Sovereign and needs no consensus, no quorum, no ruling council, no vote. Conversely, humans, as creatures, were never meant to live purely according to self-will; and this is all the more true in a world besieged by sin. To pray “Let your kingdom come” is a bold acknowledgment that we know the folly of following our own way, a way that can only lead to destruction when we are left to our own wills (Prov 14:12).[2]

If you recall we are referencing N.T. Wright on this subject. Gupta speaks about Write on this matter. He writes:

N. T. Wright is correct, then, to explain the “kingdom of God” as “simply a Jewish way of talking about Israel’s god becoming king. And when this god became king, the whole world, the world of space and time, would at last be put to right.” “The kingdom of God,” then, can be simply interpreted as the “rule of God.” Thus, as Graham Stanton aptly explains, when the Evangelists refer to the “kingdom of God” it is a way of “speaking about the reality of God,” and such a comprehensive reality that “human response is expected.”[3]

N.T Write in his own works also writes this on the LP.

The coming of God’s kingdom, however, as expressed by the petition “your kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10//Luke 11:2), is a major theme throughout the entire Gospel tradition. And though its interpretation has sometimes been controversial, there is no doubt (1) that Jesus made this the central theme of his proclamation and (2) that he meant by it that the long-awaited kingdom or rule of God, which involved the salvation of Israel, the defeat of evil, and the return of YHWH himself to Zion, was now at last happening (see my Jesus and the Victory of God, chs. 6–10).[4]

He goes to say:

The presence of the kingdom meant that God’s anointed Messiah was here and was at work—that he was, in fact, accomplishing, as events soon to take place would show, the sovereign and saving rule of God. The future of the kingdom was the time when justice and peace would embrace one another and the whole world—the time from which perspective one could look back and see that the work had, indeed, begun with the presence and work of the anointed leader (see Jesus and the Victory of God, ch. 10).

To pray “your kingdom come” at Jesus’ bidding, therefore, meant to align oneself with his kingdom movement and to seek God’s power in furthering its ultimate fulfillment. It meant adding one’s own prayer to the total performance of Jesus’ agenda. It meant celebrating in the presence of God the fact that the kingdom was already breaking in, and looking eagerly for its consummation. From the centrality of the kingdom in his public proclamation and the centrality of prayer in his private practice, we must conclude that this kingdom prayer grew directly out of and echoed Jesus’ own regular praying.[5]

With that as a backdrop then. How does this then connect to the idea of New Exodus with Jesus?

New Exodus

Write continues:

The sovereign rule of the one true God is, of course, the main subtext of the battle between Moses and Pharaoh. As with Elijah and the prophets of Baal, the story of the Exodus is a story about which God is the stronger. It is in deliberate evocation of the Exodus theme that Isa. 52:7–10 writes of the great return:

How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace;

who brings good news, who announces salvation,

who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,

together they sing for joy;

for in plain sight they see YHWH returning to Zion.…

YHWH has made bare his holy arm before all the nations;

all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

The Exodus is the background; the great return the foreground; the kingdom of YHWH the main theme. This is the context of Jesus’ own kingdom announcement, the setting that gives meaning to the kingdom clause in the Lord’s Prayer.[6]

So, what does this mean for me? And my place in all of this? In a world of private, I would say sometimes often self-centered prayer. The idea of God’s kingdom coming can easily be lost. Lost in the litany of requests we hurriedly bring before God for Him to grant or put His stamp of approval on. But if we stop. And think about what the “coming of His kingdom” means. It should help to shift our focus outward. Outside to those who are not in the Kingdom. This is the essence of the phrase. If you recall at the beginning I mentioned that the kingdom did not referred to a people or a land. There is a sense in which the people are connected to the kingdom. If we ask the question. How is a Kingdom said to be coming? If you think about it. This is an awkward phrase. But if the kingdom is made up of a special people (the scattered Children of God.) Then it makes sense. Especially if those people are in exile. Then the kingdom of God which Jesus is mentioning as “coming” means the gathering of the nations for a new Exodus. An exodus from slavery to sin.

[1] Keener, C. S. (1993). The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[2] Gupta, N. K. (2017). The Lord’s Prayer. (L. Andres, Ed.) (p. 71). Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Incorporated.

[3] Gupta, N. K. (2017). The Lord’s Prayer. (L. Andres, Ed.) (p. 75). Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Incorporated.

[4] Wright, N. T. (2002). The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer. In R. N. Longenecker (Ed.), Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (pp. 134–135). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[5] Wright, N. T. (2002). The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer. In R. N. Longenecker (Ed.), Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (p. 135). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[6] Wright, N. T. (2002). The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer. In R. N. Longenecker (Ed.), Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (p. 141). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.