Amen. The first Noel is a long song. I was like, whoa, there's six verses. I was like, we're going to get to the last Noel by the time we finish. Thank you, Alex, for leading us, brother. Those were good, good songs. We appreciate you. And I know that Gunnar wishes he could be here, but it's good that we have brothers like Alex, where in Matthew chapter six, we're walking through the model prayer. You know, this morning I said that today, of course, is December 7th. And it was on this day, 1941, 84 years ago, Pearl Harbor. And it's quite amazing how there are so little people today that can even remember Pearl Harbor. But I think about language and I think about the way that language evolves and how different words enter into our vernacular. And one of the words that I think about that's entered into our vernacular that that generation from the 1940s would not know what you're talking about is if you said, will you take a selfie? Selfie. No idea what that means, right? That's something that's entered into our language when we have had the advance of technology and iPhones, but really it's, by the way, if you take a picture of yourself, I'm not saying you're wrong, all right? You may be, but this idea of selfie, I'm getting to a point, this idea of selfie really flows from the me-centeredness of our world today. We really are a world that is so wrapped up in me. In fact, churches have split over this very thing. You hurt my feelings. It's all about me. But as we begin the message tonight, as we come upon the portion of the prayer that says, thy kingdom come, I want to set the tone. I want you to be reminded. I'm going to say this gently and lovingly, but I am going to say it firmly. It's not about you. It's not. It's not about me. The Lord Jesus teaches us to pray, thy kingdom come. And so this is where we're at. For sake of context, we'll read a little bit more, but we're only going to focus on verse 10. Would you stand with me? We'll start in verse 9, and I'll read through verse 13. Our Lord Jesus teaches His disciples this, pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Let us pray. Father, would you help us to understand this text? We pray that your name would be hallowed in this place. We pray, oh God, that your kingdom would come. Lord, help us to understand what it means to pray and help us to understand what it means to live out, not just verbalizing this prayer, but to live out the theology that this prayer teaches us. Lord, let us live not me-centered. Forgive us, God. Forgive us, because we all struggle with selfishness at times. Help us to crucify that in our hearts and not make it about ourselves. We pray that Providence Baptist Church would seek always to make it about King Jesus. Lord, if there is an unbeliever among us tonight, will the gospel pierce their heart? Will they stop living for themselves, stop making everything about their kingdom, and surrender to yours? We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, I have at least, I'm giving myself an out next week, I have at least four points. And we're going to cover two of them tonight. So the first is, I want to talk about the kingdom arranged. Number one, the kingdom arranged. So the text says, Jesus says that we pray like this. And in verse 10, your kingdom come. Now let me just start there for just a second with that word, your, or in your King James, thy. It's probably how some of you have it memorized. Thy kingdom, your kingdom. Just to start for just a second, the kingdom is God's kingdom. Right? It's God's kingdom. The prayer is not for your kingdom, not for the expansion of your fame or fortunes or notoriety. It's not for the kingdoms of this world. It's God's kingdom. Thy kingdom come. Now, there is a sense, what we're talking about here, the kingdom of reigns. We're trying to understand what this kingdom is for just a moment. So, there is a sense, of course, that God's reign is absolutely over the whole universe. Amen. Psalm 103, 19 says, The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all. Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. His kingdom is above and over everything. God rules over all things, the things that you see and the things that you don't see. God rules over all things, the things that you know and the things that you don't know. There is nowhere in any dimension, in any square inch, any square millimeter of the known or unknown universe that our sovereign triune God does not reign over. He's king. And there's a sense that the entire created order is under his reign. I mean, it's absolutely true. Amen. Nevertheless, we need to understand that Jesus is teaching us a narrower aspect of the kingdom. which we're going to get to this next week when the kingdom is consummated, the narrower aspect and the broader aspect, they become one. Um, but anyway, more on that next time, just note something in verse 10. If Jesus is teaching us your kingdom to come, if we're to pray your kingdom come. If you say, well, the kingdom is the whole universe, well, then you can't really make sense of this text, right? You understand? If the kingdom is already the whole universe and the kingdom, and some people would kind of argue this, the kingdom's the whole world or something like that, well then, in what sense is the kingdom to come? And so I think this is why we interpret this rightly. So in the first point then, what we're going to do is consider the kingdom arranged. So God rules over everything, but there is a specific focus of a kingdom that God has planned to establish through His people. This arrangement of God's kingdom did not begin in the New Testament. Rather, it begins in the Garden of Eden. This is very important. Adam, in a sense, we already know he's a type of Christ, but he is a king, in a sense. In the Garden of Eden, there lived a king. His name was Adam. God gave Adam, the first man, a mission in the garden to further this kingdom over all the earth. And he would reign as God's vice-regent. God would reign through the man he had appointed as federal head of the human race. The key to this paradise was that Adam would serve as a king under authority. And he was to live gladly under God's kingship over him, and to love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love his neighbor as his self. This is how the Bible opens. This is our understanding of the Scriptures. This is how Genesis begins. A perfect garden. Now there are people to work the garden. We have the man and then the woman, and then they have fellowship with God. And if you just didn't know anything else, if you're just in a vacuum and you're just reading, it seems like, well, this is just going to waltz into happily ever after. But you've got to get all the way to Genesis 3, and you see that Adam and Eve decided to reject God's goodness. And you're prone to do that too, to reject God's goodness, to reject His provision, to follow the lie of the evil one, to believe that the things out there in the world that God's holding back, and if you just put these things in your body, or you do these things, or you live this way, that you're going to experience fullness of life. But instead, they don't experience fullness of life, they eat death. The king now has fallen. The kingdom now is in shambles. Satan himself seems to be sitting upon the very throne that God has designed for man. All of this is in Genesis 3. But immediately a promise is given. There's a light that is going to shine in the darkness. Another king would come. He is going to be born of woman, the seed of a woman. He is going to crush the serpent's head. And somehow, he is going to set back right all the things that went wrong. But for him, for him, Genesis 3, for him, we must wait. And we could spend weeks, months, years on an Old Testament overview, but let me just give you a few minutes of that. As the Old Testament unfolds, we're talking about, remember, the kingdom arranged. There's a kingdom in the garden. The kingdom seems to be in shambles. It seems to be shattered. And so as the Old Testament unfolds, we see the promise of the kingdom to come. There's a promise to Noah that the world is never going to be destroyed. Why did God give that promise? Well, there are reasons, but the world's not going to be destroyed by floodwaters again, I should say that. Why? So that the kingdom could come, and God's promises would come to fruition, and God's plan would be enacted. Then there's the covenant, you remember, with Abraham. We're still in Genesis, where we see the king to come will be of this ethnic line. He will be of the line and lineage of Abraham. And he will keep the law, which was required by the covenant of circumcision, by the way, with Abraham. Then there's the covenant with Moses, which is typologically pointing us to the kingdom to come. It summarizes the moral law with the Ten Commandments, and then there are 613-some-odd positive laws, giving fencing to the promised line of Christ, giving shadows and types in sacrifice and ceremony, all pointing to the coming King and His kingdom. And then you have people during the time of judges. You remember that they ask for a king, and God gives them a king in Saul, but we see that goes badly. Then he raises up David, and he makes a covenant with David. Now, this is in 2 Samuel 7. But basically, it's an unconditional oath that there will be an eternal throne through David's seed that is going to be conditional on obedience for temporal kings, promising an everlasting kingdom. Now, our confession says this in chapter 26, paragraph 3, Christ always has had and will have in the world to the very end a kingdom of those who believe in Him and profess His name. So all this Old Testament history, and I know there's so much, we just barely scratched the surface, but in all this Old Testament history, don't miss that the believers of the Old Testament, in a sense, they're understood as part of the kingdom. Absolutely. And they are in that by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. However, the Bible also says things like this, Hebrews 11, 39 and 40. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised. Remember, Hebrews 11 is that hall of faith. So we go through some of the Old Testament saints, and he says, These, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised. Since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. That's interesting. What the author of Hebrews is saying is this. The Old Testament saints, though we recognize them as part of the kingdom, they did not get to experience the coming of the kingdom. They did not get to experience the arrival of the kingdom. They did not get to receive what was promised. What was promised was a kingdom, and Christ would be the king and reign. That was promised, but they didn't receive it. That's a really quick overview of the 39 books of the Old Testament. But that is the kingdom. The kingdom arranged, and then lost, and then promised, and then prophesied, and then foreshadowed. And that gets us now to the second point. So you need to understand in the background here of Jesus teaching his disciples to pray, thy kingdom come. We have the kingdom arranged. There's this plan of God. We see it unfolding in the Old Testament. If you could just kind of understand that overview I gave you, I think it would really help us as you're reading through the Old Testament. We're coming upon a new year in just a few weeks, and you're going to begin reading through the Bible again and reading the Old Testament. So keep that in mind. But now secondly, the kingdom arrived. Jesus says, your kingdom come. Now I want to look at some verses in Matthew. So have your Bibles ready and let's do this. Because we're in Matthew 6, and so contextually, I want us to consider some things that Matthew had to say about the kingdom. So let's go back all the way to Matthew 1. Matthew 1, and it only takes a few verses for Matthew to mention this. Matthew 1, verse 6. It's interesting, isn't it? Why would he say this? It's not necessary. There's no Jewish audience that Matthew would be writing to would need to know this information. But he says it. And Jesse, the father of David, the king. That's interesting, isn't it? Matthew puts a little reminder here in his genealogy of Jesus that Jesus is of royal blood. There's an emphasis here. David the king is in his line. Then you get to the next chapter, Matthew chapter two. And if that's a little fuzzy and you say, well, I don't know what to make of all that. Well, now you know it very clearly because of Matthew chapter one or chapter two, verse one, it says, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea and the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem. He's saying about that in several verses in the first Noel. saying, where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him." Now, you can think about the wise men and think about their origin, and some people, I think rightly so, surmise that it's Daniel's influence, and so maybe they even have access to some of the scrolls of Daniel, and they're reading and they're studying. and they're thinking about it, and they understand when they see the star in the east, this star signifies the birth of the king. And so Matthew reminds us. There's specificity here. If you're not sure what to make of Matthew 1, it's specific in Matthew 2. Jesus has not been merely born, humanly speaking, in the lineage of a king, but He Himself is, in fact, king. I mean, some of us, you know, we like ancestry.com and stuff. I don't know, some of you get on there. I used to get on there, but I'm not gonna pay for that. But you can trace your ancestry and you're like, hey, look at that, look, that's cool. I'm in the line of a king. I mean, I don't know, I don't think I am, but you know, if you are, that's cool. But I mean, that's not really gonna change anything about our relationship. You know, if Monty comes up to me and says, you know, I'm in the line of a king, I'll be like, well, yeah, that's great. But if he comes up to me and says, not only am I in the line of a king, I am a king. Well, that's going to change some things, isn't it? So that's what Matthew's showing. Not only is Jesus in the line of a king, but he is king. Okay, but we're not done. Now we get to Matthew chapter 3, and we have the preaching of John the Baptist. Chapter 3, verse 1. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Now what would he preach? Of all things, verse 2. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is He who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. That's John the Baptist. He's preaching for the arrival of Jesus, and he's saying, here is the kingdom. John the Baptist sees himself as the forerunner to the king. And the kingdom that God had promised now has arrived, and therefore the only proper response to this kingdom arrival is repentance. That's just on the Baptist, right? I mean, come on, maybe he's wrong. No, of course not, he's wrong. But Matthew couldn't make it any plainer. I mean, let's just walk through here. Chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. Matthew makes it even more plain in Jesus' preaching. So go to chapter four, verse 17. Chapter four, verse 17, here's Jesus preaching. From that time, Jesus began to preach saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Go down to verse 23. And he went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So just listen to me. Whatever you think about Jesus' ministry, you know, Jesus was just nice to people, Jesus healed people, stuff like that. No, no, listen to me. Matthew is showing us that one of the very focal points of the ministry of Christ is preaching the gospel. In particular here, Matthew calls it the gospel of the kingdom. Now here's something to note. In between Jesus' preaching in chapter four and John the Baptist preaching in chapter three, you have this very pivotal event that you all are aware of where Jesus is tempted by the devil. Is this significant? Yes, it is. But not just because Jesus overcomes temptation, it is significant in terms of the kingdom. The only thing about this, think about the theology of the Bible. What happens in the garden? You have this pristine, perfect garden, you have Adam and Eve, you have Satan coming, and you see that Eve falls, or Eve gives in to the temptation, and she gives to her husband, and he falls. Satan came to Adam, tempted, Adam falls. But now the new king has arrived, and he's taken to not a well-suited garden, but to the barren wilderness. And now there is a rematch, if you will, Satan versus God's King. Satan's already won battle number one, so here's battle number two. Satan even does this in chapter 4, verse 8. Listen to this. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Essentially, this is what's happening here. Satan is saying to Jesus, You are here for the world. So, just take it now. Say no to the cross. Say no to any kind of suffering or pain or sorrow. Take the kingdoms now. They're mine. I'll give them to you." But our Lord sees through it all and He says, absolutely not. He will establish His kingdom in His way. And how will He establish His kingdom? It will be by His own blood. Because first, this is just a biblical theology. First, he has to undo what Adam did. Adam failed to obey God as all mankind has, as you have, as I have, but Jesus reverses that, if you will, in a sense, by obeying God, by fulfilling all righteousness. Next, we see this ushering. Why did Jesus do all this stuff about healing and raising people from the dead and casting out demons? Why does He do all those things? It's not just about being nice or trying to win a crowd or show off tricks or whatever. He's doing those things because He's showing this is what it looks like when the kingdom of God comes to bear. All that has gone wrong in the garden, I've come to set right. There's a new king. King Jesus has entered the chat, if you will. That's not too irreverent to put it that way. Jesus Christ has arrived. And all the bad things that sin and death and separation from God have created, Jesus is going to set right. Now, we have to wait for the fullness of that kingdom, for all of that. to happen, and we'll talk about that next week, but you better not miss this. The kingdom has come now. It's here now in Christ. And so having the pedigree of being God in the flesh and being of the house and lineage of David and perfectly aligned with every jot and tittle of the prophecies of the scriptures, the king rides into Jerusalem on a donkey for this purpose. to lay down his life as a ransom for many. You might say it this way, he paid a king's ransom, shedding his own blood for his bride. He paid for the sins of his people by burying the wrath of God in their place that was justly due to them. He died, he was buried, he was laid as a king in a borrowed tomb, but on the third day he rose again from the dead to justify his people. to impute his own righteousness to them, to credit them, as our confession says rightly, with his own active and passive obedience. And how is this received? It's one way. Faith alone. This is the way the kingdom arrives. This is how the Lord Jesus establishes kingdom. Now, remember chapter 4 verse 17 again. This is after the temptation in the wilderness. This is what it says. I'll read chapter 4 verse 17. From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So let me just be clear about something. When Jesus teaches us to pray, thy kingdom come, He's not teaching us to pray merely for something that is thousands of years away. He's not teaching His disciples to say, well, you know, one day there'll be the millennial reign and there'll be the thousand years and you should just pray for that. And so generation after generation after generation after generation prays for that and they never see it. That's not what He's talking about. His kingdom has arrived in His gospel. Now, I do think there's an element of praying for the consummation of the kingdom. We'll address that next week, Lord willing. But for tonight, just know that the kingdom has arrived in Christ and His work and is in the hearts of those that He rules, who recognize and rejoice in His reign. I haven't even mentioned all the times that Jesus mentioned the kingdom. For example, we did chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4. It's mentioned in chapter 5, too. For example, go to chapter 5, verse 3. You know the verse, we covered it at some point, I remember. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now listen to that. The poor in spirit have ownership in the kingdom of heaven. They are members of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is theirs. Why? Because they're born again. So, the thing that the Old Testament saints didn't fully have that we have in the New Testament? The things that Hebrews 11 talked about, they didn't receive what was promised? They had regeneration. You can't be a Christian, you can't be a follower of God without being born again. They were born again. They had the Gospel at least in part, probably understood more than we give them credit for at times. They had these things. They had the Holy Spirit. I know there's some disagreements on that, but you can't say they didn't have the Holy Spirit at all. They have these things. So what do we have in the New Testament that they didn't have? What is Hebrews talking about? They didn't receive what was promised. I'll tell you what they didn't receive, what was promised, the arrival of the kingdom. The visible kingdom has arrived in Christ. What am I talking about? It's the church. Now, I'll just give you some quotes, not that we want to be biblical, but I think I'm not standing on my own here. John Owen says, the church is the house of Christ, His family, His kingdom. John Gill says, the church of Christ is His kingdom on earth. Benjamin Keech says, the church, which is the kingdom of the Messiah, shall be gloriously triumphant. Thomas Goodwin says, an instituted church is called His kingdom. Robert Purnell says, the church is Christ's kingdom. So what has Jesus come to do and establish and build? It is His kingdom. He is a king. He's recognized as king from His birth. That's why people from His birth worshipped Him. Worshiped Him. Why? Because He's God in the flesh, and He's King of kings, and He's Lord of lords, and He's come to bring His kingdom. As the song says, we love Joy to the World, should sing it more. You know, Joy to the World actually wasn't even written as a Christmas song. That's okay. Because we've commandeered it now, because it points to us the result of what Christmas is doing. He comes to make His blessings known, far as the curse is found. That is, He's undoing all the evil. He's undoing all that went wrong in the garden. He's going to do that. And we see Him reigning in the hearts of His people, the church. So when Jesus says that we're to pray, Thy kingdom come, He is teaching us to pray for the establishment of and growth of the church. because his church consists of those born again who have received Christ by faith, who recognize and rejoice in his sovereign reign. I'm not saying Jesus doesn't rule over all. Amen. Praise God. Is there any place in the universe that Jesus Christ is not king over? No. But his kingdom has a specific focus. It's in the hearts of his people who recognize and rejoice in his rule. Again, Matthew 16, 18, remember, Jesus said He came to build His church. He could have easily said there, He came to build His kingdom, because this is what the gospel has done. It is the gospel, remember, it is the gospel of the kingdom. We've lost that language a little bit. We're not just preaching the gospel. We are preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Maybe we should be careful with that a little bit because we can so individualize the gospel. We can make, hey, here's what the gospel is about. It's just about me and my individual relationship with Jesus. No, that's important. That's vital, actually. You have to have, as it were, a personal relationship with Jesus. You have to confess your sins, turn from them, repent, put your faith in Christ, and be declared righteous individually. There's no such thing as group imputation, right? of righteousness upon us. No, it's individually. We have to have the righteousness of Christ in future account. Yes and amen. But don't miss what God is doing in the gospel. He's building a kingdom. Wherever the church is gathered rightly under the Word, there is a visible manifestation of the kingdom. And as the church scatters each week, we remain citizens of the kingdom. And we even seek to have the kingdom come to bear in the hearts and lives of those around us. That will be more next week. For tonight, here's the question. Here's the question you can ask. Sunday night, I understand, smaller group, ordinarily. But here's a question. Jesus teaches us to pray, your kingdom come. The question is, are you in or are you out? That's one of the questions. Are you in the kingdom of Christ? I could knock on a thousand doors in Perry County, and I'm sure that 999 of them, if I asked a question that way, hey, are you in the kingdom of Christ? They'd say, oh yeah, sure. Friends, do you understand what it means to be in the kingdom of Christ? We'll talk about it more next week, but you know what John 3, 3 says, right? Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you're born again, you cannot even see the kingdom. If you are not born again, if your heart has not been transformed by the power of God in the gospel, If God has not removed your heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh. If He has not given you new desires now to follow His ways, to trust His promises, to be with His people, to worship His name. If this is not true of you, you're not born again. If you're not born again, you're not in the kingdom. So when I say, are you in or you're out, one question I can say this way, are you born again? If you're not born again, you're outside the kingdom. Now, when Jesus Christ returns and the kingdom and heaven and earth, as it were, are one, and we have the new heavens and new earth, and the kingdom expanded, or the kingdom of the universe, if you will, is one with the kingdom of the church and spread over all the earth as water covers the sea, as all that has happened in the consummation. If you're not in the kingdom, then you're in the lake of fire. That's the only options. Are you in the kingdom? Are you trusting the gospel you heard tonight? I'm not saying have you checked off boxes and say, well, I believe Jesus is Lord. Who cares if you believe Jesus is Lord if it has no tangible effect on your life? If you don't care about the things of Christ, if you don't care about the word, if you don't care about the church, if you just live in your own way, and you say, yeah, well, at least that'll count for something, right? I'll live my own way. I'll live under sin, under the slavery and shackles, as it were, of sin. I'll go my own way. I'll be selfie, selfie, selfie, selfie, selfie. But when I stand before God one day, I'll say to him, well, at least I knew you were Lord. That's not going to do anything for you. You must bow the knee to Christ, trust the gospel, repent of your sins, and look to the King in faith. That goes to the children, that goes to the adults. Trust Christ. But church, here's another application, and we'll kind of wind down with this one. It's interesting, later in Matthew 6, Jesus will mention the kingdom again. And so the question I have for us is, are you busy about the kingdom's work? and priorities. Look what Jesus says in Matthew chapter six, verse 33. I need this for my own life and you do too, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. So many little busy bodies. We gotta, and these things are not unimportant, we gotta sweep, we gotta mop, we gotta clean, we gotta go to work, we gotta do this, we gotta get my kids to here and there, and all that, what am I gonna do? It's like, my bank account, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, and a lot of times, I'm preaching to myself, a lot of times the problem is, our priorities are out of line. We're seeking first my kingdom. You're seeking first the kingdom that you want, and your plans, and your dreams. And in those instances, church, you need to back up, you need to stop, and you need to say, oh God, I've done it again. Forgive me. I'm so out of sorts today. I'm nervous, I'm anxious, I'm fearful, I'm prideful, because I failed to seek your kingdom first. Matthew 6.33, seek first the kingdom. of God and His righteousness. And Jesus says, and all these things will be added to you. I'm guilty of this, my wife can bear witness, my children can bear witness. Listen, God's gonna take care of you. He's gonna take care of you. Trust Him. And while you're trusting Him, you have the obligation to seek first the kingdom. So when we pray thy kingdom come, We're not praying that God would be more sovereign. He already is. We're praying that His plan would come to full fruition. We're praying for the conversion of sinners. We're praying for the growth of the church. We're praying for the purity of the church. We're praying that the church would be multiplied. And we're praying that the kingdom of Christ would continue to expand until He returns. Is this your prayer tonight? Church, are we a kingdom-focused church? May it be so. Father, help us to understand the teaching of your word. Help us to understand your kingdom arranged, your kingdom arrived. Lord, a twofold prayer right now. I pray first, if there's those who have not been born again, that even tonight that would happen by the sovereign work of the spirit, would prick hearts, convict sinners, lift their eyes to Jesus, and they would repent and believe the gospel. Lord, I pray for myself and for our church family. Lord, help us to seek first the kingdom. A lot of noise out there in the world today. A lot of noise that we can get sucked into. A lot of things, even important things, that we can get distracted by. But, oh God, there can't be two firsts in our lives. And so may the first thing be in our hearts and our minds. to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.