Intro…
Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 48 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 122.
Transition…
This week we continue working through the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and we are going to focus on one phrase right at the start of this prayer.
Your Kingdom Come…
Lord’s Day Focus...
Question 122: What does the second request mean?
Answer: “Your kingdom come” means, rule us by Your Word and Spirit in such a way that more and more we submit to You. Keep Your church strong and add to it. Destroy the devil’s work: destroy every force which revolts against You and every conspiracy against Your Word. Do this until Your kingdom is so complete and perfect that in it You are all in all.
The word kingdom is a massive word and it is rich with meaning. A kingdom implies three things: A King, a people and a land. In order for a kingdom to be all three of these must be in place. You can’t have a kingdom without a king, and you can’t have a kingdom without people and you can’t have a kingdom without a defined space of land for those people to dwell upon.
When it comes to the Kingdom of God those same three things must be in place. When we talk about the Kingdom of God, we think it terms of God’s rule over God’s people in God’s place.
Another bit of language that you may have heard along the way is that the Kingdom of God exists in an already and a not yet kind of way. The kingdom of God has already been established by the coming of Jesus but it has not yet come in its fullness. IOW, Christ has been enthroned as King (Matt 28:18) and those who believe have already been set apart as His people; but we are not yet united in the New Heavens and New Earth that are to come.
So, when we pray, “Your kingdom come” we are asking God to extend His rule over our hearts and lives. We are also asking Him to come, or to come again and more fully establish His Kingdom on earth as He has promised.
But the catechism focuses more on the fact that we are asking God to work in the here and now by His Spirit and Word. When we ask God to let His Kingdom come, we are asking Him to work in us to make us more like Jesus. We are asking Him to grow us in faith and obedience, in faithfulness and sanctification. We are praying that Christ would extend His rule in our hearts.
We are also praying that Christ would extend His rule in the Church, not just our own local church but in the Church throughout the world. This is a big prayer, but this is how Jesus teaches us to pray and we could stand to meditate on this a little bit more. It’s easy for us to get in the rut of thinking only about our individual needs, or about the needs in our own individual church; but this prayer causes us to look up and cry out for the spread of Christ’s rule throughout the world.
Finally, the catechism teaches us to think about this prayer (Your Kingdom come) in the sense of spiritual warfare between the kingdom of God and the work of the enemy. To pray for the spread/coming of Christ’s kingdom is necessarily to be praying for the complete overthrow of every kingdom that would oppose Him, and that means the Devil.
Don’t let the spiritual warfare aspect of this frighten you away, because later on in this prayer Jesus is going to instruct us to pray for protection from the Devil. But in this part we are praying that God would tear down and overthrow every rebel kingdom that seeks to stand in the way of God’s kingdom being established in the hearts of God’s people all over the world.
So this is a pretty big prayer and now that we have a clearer understanding of what it means, we should be motivated all the more to pray as Jesus instructs us. “Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come…”
Thank you for joining me today to discuss this aspect of Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer to learn what it means for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 49 and question 123.
Conclusion…
If you want to learn more about Cornerstone Baptist church, you can find us online at Cornerstonewylie.org. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @cbcwylie. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/cornerstonewylie. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or google play to stay up to date on all the new content.
Thanks for listening.
