Welcome to the Banner of Truth broadcast. This program is brought to you by the Free Reformed Churches of North America. Your host is Pastor Jack Schuman, pastor of the Emmanuel Free Reformed Church of Abbotsford, British Columbia. And now, here is Pastor Jack Schuman. We are continuing our series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer as it is explained for us in the Heidelberg Catechism. To that end, I invite you to turn with me to the prophecy of Daniel, chapter two, as we read the verses 31 to 45, which records Daniel's interpretation of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. Let us hear the word of God. Daniel said, you, O king, were watching, and behold, a great image. This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you as its form was awesome. This image's head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This is the dream. Now we will tell you the interpretation of it before the king. You, O king, are a king of kings, for the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory. And wherever the children of men dwell or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, he has given them into your hand and has made you ruler over them all. You are this head of gold. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours, then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything. And like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain and its interpretation is sure. This ends the reading of the Holy Word of God. May the Lord bless the reading and preaching of his word to our hearts. Dear friends, many kingdoms throughout history have come and gone. We can think of the once mighty dynasties that ruled over China, or the great empires of Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome, or the British Empire during the 19th century, or the Soviet Empire in the 20th century. These were once mighty and powerful kingdoms, but now there's nothing left of them. But there is one kingdom that has existed from the beginning of time and still exists today and will exist to the end of time. This kingdom has always been assaulted from within and from without. At times it was reduced to almost nothing, but it has survived. And at times it even flourished and it will endure to all eternity. This is the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, our Lord mentions this kingdom in the second petition of the Lord's Prayer when he teaches us to pray, your kingdom come. Here in this petition, our Lord teaches us to pray for the advancement of this kingdom in the world until finally it reaches its climax in the world to come. And it's to this petition that we turn our attention with the help of the Lord today. Our theme is the believer prays for the coming of Christ's kingdom. And we'll see that this prayer concerns, first of all, our submission, secondly, the church's well-being, thirdly, the devil's destruction, and fourthly, God's glory. In the second petition, we are taught to pray, your kingdom come. Now we learn here that God has a kingdom of which he himself is the king. But what kind of kingdom is this? Well, first of all, we need to be clear what kind of kingdom it is not. The kingdom of God is most certainly not an earthly political kingdom. This is in fact what the Jews wanted during the time of the Lord Jesus. The Jews wanted the Messiah to lead a revolt against the Romans and establish an independent Jewish state in Palestine. And this is also what the disciples of our Lord wanted, at least at first. But Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. Well, what kind of kingdom is this then? Well, the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom. And as such, it functions according to spiritual principles and uses spiritual weapons. The kingdom of God is present wherever God's will is being done, where his laws are being honored and obeyed, and where God is recognized and worshiped and his glory is promoted both in heaven and on earth. Now, when speaking of the kingdom of God, theologians normally distinguish between the universal kingdom and the special kingdom. The universal kingdom, or kingdom of nature, encompasses the entire created order, both in heaven and on earth. In this kingdom, God is the absolute ruler over everything. He's the ruler over angels and demons, the stars, the moon, the sun, the planets, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the beasts of the field, forces of nature, the times and seasons, nations and empires, and every individual human being. And that means nothing in this kingdom happens by chance. Whatever happens is the result of God's decree and serves in some way to advance his holy purposes. Now the special kingdom is more narrow. It encompasses only the church of God. This kingdom was established with Adam and Eve in paradise, and it continues to the present day. Only now it includes not just Jews, but also Gentiles, people from every tongue and tribe and nation under heaven. This special kingdom can be further distinguished between the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory. The kingdom of grace refers to the kingdom of God in this world, whereas the kingdom of glory refers to the kingdom of God in the world to come. Now when we pray, your kingdom come, we're not praying for the coming of the universal kingdom. That kingdom has already come. The Lord is already now the absolute ruler over his creation. The psalmist says as much in Psalm 103 verse 19. He says, the Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules over all. That's the present tense. That means he's the king right now. Instead, when we're praying, your kingdom come, we're praying for the coming of God's special kingdom, the kingdom of grace, the church here on earth, but then with a view to the kingdom of glory, the church in the world to come. Now, in a sense, this kingdom, too, has already arrived. It reached its climax with the coming of Jesus Christ. This is why both Jesus and John the Baptist preached, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It was at hand because Christ had come. But this kingdom is not fully realized. This kingdom still has a long way to go. And our Lord knows this. And this is why he teaches us to pray this petition, your kingdom come. But what does this mean exactly? What exactly are we praying for when we pray your kingdom come? Well, according to Lord's Day 48 of the Heidelberg Catechism, when we pray your kingdom come, the first thing we're praying for is the coming of the kingdom in ourselves. Let me quote the catechism. It says here, rule us so by thy word and spirit that we may submit ourselves more and more to thee. Now you notice when we pray this petition, we're praying for the grace to submit to God in Christ. Now by nature, we don't do that. By nature, we are rebels against God and his Christ and enemies of his kingdom. In order to submit to him, a miracle needs to happen. We need to be born again. Jesus said to Nicodemus that unless we're born again, we cannot even enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now what does that mean? It means we have to be completely remade from the inside out. We need a new nature, new desires, new affections, new priorities. And this is not something that we can manufacture ourselves. This is something that only God can give us. And he does this, our catechism says, by his word and spirit. These two things, word and spirit, always go together. They can never be separated from each other. If you separate the word from the spirit, you end up with a dry intellectualism. And if you separate the spirit from the word, you end up with a mystic subjectivism. So what does God do? Well, first of all, he causes his word to be preached. And the Word convicts us of our sins, and it drives us to an end in ourselves, and it reveals to us the Lord Jesus Christ and all of His willingness and all of His ability to save. But then with that Word, He sends the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit of God enables us to respond to the Word, because by nature we're dead in trespasses and sins, and therefore we are utterly unwilling and unable to respond to the call of the Gospel as it comes to us in the Word of God. And the Spirit of God then works faith in our hearts, such that we come to trust in Christ and look to Him as the only hope and ground of our salvation. He then sanctifies us and He conforms us to the image of Jesus Christ, and He creates within us a new nature, one that loves God and seeks to do His will and live to His glory. But even after we've been born again, we need to learn to submit to Christ more and more. And here we learn that submitting to Christ is not something that happens all of a sudden. It is a process. And it's a process because every believer has two natures. There's an old man and a new man. Now to be sure, the believer is a new creature in Christ, but his old nature remains with him to the end of his life. The Apostle Paul speaks of that in Romans chapter seven. He speaks there about two natures warring within us. The old nature is constantly trying to get us to rebel against God and to walk in the ways of sin. But the new nature is constantly trying to get us to submit to God and walk in the way of holiness. And at times, this war, this battle, this conflict creates such a struggle and a tension within the believer that he comes to cry with Paul at the end of this chapter, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Point is, there's still so much within the believer that remains at enmity with God, and Jesus knows this. And this is precisely why he teaches us to pray this petition, your kingdom come. In praying this petition, we're asking the Lord to cause us to break down our remaining rebellion and to submit to him more and more. Do you realize that? Perhaps you've never submitted to him at all. You're still living in and for your sins. Oh, beware, my friend, the path that you're on will lead to your everlasting ruin and destruction. And so I say to you today in all solemnity, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ before it's too late and you perish in your sins. But if by the grace of God you have submitted to Christ, let me ask you this, are you submitting to him more and more? Is there development? Is there growth? Is there progress? It's not enough simply to be saved. We must become like Christ. Is that true for you today? Are you becoming more and more like Him, dear believer? Are you more and more conforming your life to His will? Oh, must we not admit that there's still so much within us that rebels against His will? And oh, how we need to pray, therefore, thy kingdom come. Dear friends, are you praying that prayer every day? In the second petition, therefore, we pray for our submission. But secondly, we pray for the church's well-being. And that brings us to our second point. According to the Heidelberg Catechism, when we pray, your kingdom come, we're praying, and I quote, that God would preserve and increase his church. Now, two things are mentioned here. First of all, we're praying that God might preserve his church. And that implies that the church is under attack and how true that is. The church has always been under attack from the very beginning of time right to the present day. The church in the Old Testament was under attack by the Philistines and the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Romans. The church in all ages and still today is under attack from without by false teachers and atheists and persecution. And she's under attack from within as well by dead orthodoxy and traditionalism and lovelessness and worldliness and presumption and materialism and complacency. All these and more are tools that Satan uses to try to destroy the church of Jesus Christ. And so when we pray your kingdom come, we're praying that God might preserve his church against these attacks. But secondly, when we pray your kingdom come, we're praying that God would increase his church. And by that we mean two things. We mean, first of all, that he would increase his church in breadth. In other words, that he would increase his church in numbers, both here at home and around the world. In other words, we're praying that God would bring many people from every tongue and tribe and nation to conversion in Jesus Christ. And that means also locally in our own local church. Now there are some members in local churches who really don't want this. They would never say that in so many words, but deep down inside, they don't want this. They're fine with people coming to conversion in Christ, but they're not fine with them coming to their church because they're afraid of change. Others are just racist. They think that new converts from other countries should go and worship with people of their own kind and leave us alone. And this is not what's meant by this petition. When we pray this petition, we're not just asking that the church might increase in numbers in other countries. We're asking that the church might increase in numbers here at home as well, even in our own local context. Secondly, when we ask God to increase his church, we're also asking that he might increase his church, not just in breadth, but also in depth. In other words, in piety and holiness, in love for God and fear of the Lord. That implies that the church is not and never will be what she should be, at least not in this life. There will always be weaknesses and shortcomings and deficiencies in so many areas, also in this area of piety and holiness. Well, that doesn't mean we should simply sit back and do nothing and simply mourn or complain about the spiritual state of the church. And there are people that do that. Just always complaining about the state of the church. No, we need to do something about it. We must pray thy kingdom come. Because when we pray this petition, we're asking the Lord to revive his church, to cause her to grow in grace and holiness and faithfulness, to be the kind of church that Christ would have us to be. A bride adorned for her husband, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Oh, my friend, what about you today? Is the well-being of the church close to your heart? Do you pray that the Lord would preserve and increase her until he comes again? You know, every true believer loves the church because Christ loves the church. He gave his life for the church. But because Christ loves the church, the believer loves the church, in Psalm 122, the psalmist writes, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls, prosperity within your palaces. For the sake of my brethren and companions, I will now say, peace be within you. Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good. The psalmist here prays for the blessing of the Lord to rest upon the church. My friend, is that also your prayer today? This is what we're praying for in the second petition. We're praying for the church's well-being, but we're also praying in the third place for the devil's destruction. Catechism says this, and I quote, destroy the works of the devil and all violence which would exalt itself against thee and also all wicked counsels devised against thy holy word. Now here we confess that next to the kingdom of God is the kingdom of Satan, and these two kingdoms are constantly at war with each other. At times, the kingdom of Satan seems to gain the upper hand, and at times, the kingdom of God gains the upper hand. And when we pray, your kingdom come, we're praying that the kingdom of Satan might be destroyed. Yes, destroyed. We pray that the kingdom of Satan might not simply suffer a setback or two, but we're praying that it might be utterly obliterated. We're praying for its complete destruction. Specifically, according to the Heidelberg Catechism, we're praying here for two things. We're praying, first of all, that the Lord would destroy the works of the devil and all violence which would exalt itself against God. Now, that includes a whole wide range of things. It includes all open and flagrant transgressions of the law of God, It includes all anti-Christian political systems and philosophies and social movements and organizations. It includes the destruction of all false religions. Whatever stands opposed to God, both within ourselves and in others, we ask God to destroy it. We're also praying that the Lord would destroy all wicked counsels devised against His holy word. Now, there have always been such attacks on the word of God. In the early church, there were heresies surrounding the nature of the Trinity and especially the person of Jesus Christ. In the Middle Ages, there were all kinds of heresies that entered the church. The doctrine of salvation by works, the doctrine of purgatory, the worship of saints and of Mary and sacramentalism and clericalism and monasticism. The modern period There was higher criticism and neo-orthodoxy, the social gospel, liberation theology, the charismatic movement, the emergent church movement, the denial of a literal six-day creation, the opening up of church offices to women, and the toleration and even promotion of homosexual marriage and federal vision theology, and I could go on and on. Each of these is in their own way an attack on the Word of God. And when we pray your kingdom come, we're praying that the Lord would destroy all of these things so that his church may increase and expand to his glory. My friends, is this what you desire to see? You know, anyone who claims to be a Christian must want to see the works of the devil destroyed in every sphere of life. Why? Because the works of the devil are diametrically opposed to the works of God. And what is more, the purpose and intention of the devil is to destroy the kingdom of God. And he's very powerful. And our only defense is prayer. And that's why Jesus teaches us, pray, your kingdom come. When we pray that petition, we're praying for the destruction of the kingdom of Satan. And maybe you say, I've been praying that prayer for a long time, but it doesn't seem to do any good. The kingdom of Satan only seems to be progressing, and the kingdom of Christ only seems to be regressing. Someone once made up a limerick, a kind of a poem expressing what many believers feel at times. It goes like this. God's plan made a hopeful beginning, but man spoiled his chances by sinning. We trust that the story will end in God's glory, but at present, the other side's winning. Now that may be so from our point of view, but it is certainly not so from God's point of view. The truth is the victory belongs to the Lord and we who believe on his name shall share in that victory. And that brings us to our fourth and final point. The child of God is not satisfied with seeing the kingdom advance. He also desires to see it fulfilled. He desires to see it realized. And again, the Heidelberg Catechism expresses that in the last sentence of this Lord's Day. It says there that when we pray this petition, we look forward to the day when, and I quote, the full perfection of God's kingdom shall take place wherein he shall be all and in all. Now here we confess that the day is coming when the kingdom of God shall be fully realized. Now this isn't just wishful thinking. This is an absolute certainty. The kingdom of Christ for which we pray shall be fully realized. Now, when's that going to happen? It's going to happen when our Lord comes again. When that day will be, we don't know, nor do we need to know. All we need to know is that he's coming again. And when he does, the entire kingdom of darkness will be destroyed once and for all. Satan and his angels will be cast into the bottomless pit Now all those who oppose Christ and his kingdom and his people will be cast into the lake of fire and there they will remain to all eternity and the kingdom of Christ will remain. Now we read about that in the passage of scripture that we read in Daniel chapter 2. One night Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had a strange dream. In this dream, he saw a giant statue. It was unlike any statue he had ever seen before. It was magnificent. It was bright and dazzling. It was a wonder to behold. The head of the statue was made of gold. Its breast and arms were of silver. Its belly and thighs were of brass. Its legs were of iron and his feet of iron and clay. And as he stood there looking at this statue, a stone dislodged without hands came rolling down the side of a mountain and smashed that statue to pieces. And the material from which the statue was made was ground to powder and the wind blew it all away. But the stone that smashed it grew larger and larger until it became a great mountain that eventually covered the whole earth. And when Nebuchadnezzar woke up from this dream, immediately he summoned his wise men and astrologers to explain the meaning of the dream, but they couldn't. And so Nebuchadnezzar ordered them all to be put to death. And when Daniel heard about what had happened, he got together with his three friends and he prayed to God to reveal to him the meaning of the dream. And that night the Lord did as Daniel and his three friends requested. He revealed to Daniel the dream and the interpretation. Well, the next day, Daniel appeared before the king. He told him that the statue that he saw represented four kingdoms, the kingdom of Babylon, Media Persia, Greece, and Rome. The stone represented the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The point of the dream was that the day was coming when Christ would come and establish his kingdom. And when he did, none of the nations of the earth would be able to stand against it. They would all be smashed to pieces. And in their place, the kingdom of Christ would grow and expand until it covered the entire earth. And isn't that exactly what happened? Where is the great kingdom of Babylon today? Where is the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians? Where is the kingdom of Greece and mighty Rome? They're all destroyed. And all that remains of these once invincible kingdoms are the ruins of old buildings, broken pottery, coins, and other items that long ago were buried beneath the sands of time. But the kingdom of Christ remains. Now, to be sure, it is retreating in North America and Western Europe and has been for some time now. But it's advancing in Africa, and in India, and especially in China. And one day when Christ returns, it will triumph. It will grow into a great mountain, like Daniel says, that will cover the whole earth. And then every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Christ Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father, for He has won the victory. and he will reign forever and ever. Oh, do you desire to see that, my friend? Then pray this petition. Your kingdom come. Amen. Dear friends, it's our great joy and privilege to be able to preach to you the Word of God every Sunday on this station. If you were blessed by or if you have a comment on the message you've heard today, we'd very much appreciate hearing from you. Won't you please take the time to write us a short note just to let us know that you're listening to this broadcast. 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