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Teach Us To Pray - Kingdom Come
Matthew 6:5-13 • Matthew 18:19-20
Last week, we started talking about the Lord’s Prayer … and his prayer begins with adoring God, proclaiming his name hallowed, highly respected, and revered!
The next line of this familiar prayer moves right to God’s kingdom!
It may look like these are two statements, but they really are two sentences making one statement!
The statement is … God bring about your kingdom and help me submit to your kingdom principles!
There are two main theories of this “Kingdom mandate”
Kingdom Mandate Theories
Evangelism Mandate
Cultural Mandate
Before we jump in there … what’s a mandate?
Not an option!
Expected, demanded, an order!
Okay, so God has a mandate for us to allow and even participate in bringing about his kingdom here on earth.
What’s that look like?
Now back to the two Kingdom Mandate Theories
Matthew 28:19–20 (NASB 2020)
19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The Evangelism Theory wants every man, woman, and child to come to saving faith in Jesus Christ!
The evangelistic mandate, then is God’s call to His people to participate with Him in this redemptive activity.
-- Arthur Glasser
Billy Graham was known worldwide for his unswerving focus on evangelism.
The Cultural Theory wants worldly issues dealt with.
The cultural mandate theory sees homelessness and poverty and wants to do something about it other than just tut and say what a shame it is.
The cultural mandate sees racism as a real problem that must be engaged, not just decried or talked about in hushed tones.
The cultural mandate isn’t satisfied with throwing hands in the air and saying, “It’s too bad there’s nothing I can really do to help strengthen the world’s ecosystems and environment.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of quipping that ‘eleven o’clock Sunday morning was the most segregated hour’ in America.
In 2001, Michael Fuquay observed...
Forty years later, Jim Crow segregation is a memory, and racism has become America's most popular metaphor for evil.
Yet King's description of Sunday services remains largely unaltered.
--- Michael Fuquay (2001)
We’ll sing Jesus Loves the Little Children, but there’s still a stripe in most of us that loves certain little children less than others.
Kingdom Mandate Theories
These two theories both offer extreme approaches that are sinful and dead wrong!
And truth-be-told, every one of us leans more heavily on one than the other in some form or another.
The unhealthy extreme of the Evangelism Theory leans toward focusing on the eternal to the exclusion of the temporal.
Such unhealthy extremes births many versions of the heresy that salvation is more important than the person being saved:
curse of Ham - used to advance racist theories of a Black heaven and a White heaven to support segregation in the Old South
lack of concern for social issues - a single focus on salvation permits us to ignore the temporal needs around us - like homelessness, poverty, and other social issues
I’ve heard the excuse: “If people would just get saved, this would fix itself!”
I couldn’t find who first said this, but some of us may be familiar with the old proverb: “a hungry belly has no ears”.
Ever try to have a conversation about something serious before supper with young kids?
They can’t listen.
The rumbling belly quickly becomes the only subject they can pay attention.
A “hungry belly” is not always hunger … it can be any number of physical and temporal needs that have become primary to someone’s survival.
The unhealthy extreme of the Cultural Theory is just the opposite - focusing on the temporal to the exclusion of the eternal.
Most Relief and Social agencies relieve many of these temporal needs and nothing more.
In recent years, The Church has become more like these secular social agencies and we’ve dropped the desire to see others come to saving faith in Christ.
We have flood buckets still straggling in, and I’ll tell you I chose to not make UMCOR flood buckets.
One reason is that they’re more stringent on the items included.
But, the real reason I chose to not have us compile UMCOR buckets is this from their website:
Advertisements on the outside (of buckets) acceptable
Do not include any personal notes, money or additional material in the kits.
Contents of kits or the containers of kits should not be imprinted with cartoon characters, advertisements, religious, patriotic, military or camouflage symbols.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief is handing out flood buckets, and they’re okay if we advertise Lowe’s or Home Depot or Menards, but they’re NOT okay if we tell the recipients that they have value to the God who tells us to help relieve their suffering.
They’re okay with a Wal-Mart logo, but not okay with a cross!
If someone receives help from a Christian organization and they’re offended by Christianity being a part of our service to them … they’re nuts.
Our Preschool director told me in our first meeting that a parent complained two years ago that we were teaching their kids about Jesus!
Think about how insane that is!
They bring their child to a Christian church building every day, and they’re shocked to think we would dare teach their child about Christ in addition to teaching them letters, shapes, and numbers.
Our world has gone crazy!
We don’t have to go with them!
We must do our best to balance these two portions of bringing about God’s Kingdom.
We can’t do just one or the other.
We work to relieve suffering and oppression because our God cares about those being oppressed and wants to see them liberated.
But their oppression is not just temporal - earthly oppression.
Human beings are oppressed by their own sin and the weight of the guilt that comes with it.
So, we also work to relieve suffering and oppression at the hands of the ultimate Oppressor.
Salvation is the greatest liberation we have to offer, and withholding the invitation to join God’s family is sinful!
God’s Kingdom Mandate includes both cultural and evangelism mandates because our God is an AND God, not an either/or god.
Teach Us To Pray - Kingdom Come
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
May God drive you and me to make a difference in people’s lives AND their eternities … every day … and every person.
Amen?
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