Thy Kingdom Come

Your God does not rule by referendum. As has been often said, the Ten Commandments are not ten suggestions.

They can be modified by popular vote. God reigns over his creation with sovereignty. It's good to have you with us for this Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham.

Since God reigns and is sovereign over all things, as you just heard from R.C. Sproul, what does the request mean in the Lord's Prayer, Your Kingdom Come? That's what Dr. Sproul will consider today, but before he does, don't forget to request the entire ten-message series, as today is the final message you'll hear from the series, and it's the final day of this offer.

Give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, and we'll unlock the series in the free Ligonier app, and we'll send you his book, The Prayer of the Lord, as our way of saying thank you. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on the kingdom of God and the Lord's Prayer. Recently, I was in a hotel room with my wife, and she had the TV on, and I said, what are you watching, honey? And she was in rapt attention to the pageantry that was being displayed on the television screen, and it involved the annual opening of Parliament in London by the Queen. It captured my attention, and I started to watch this too, and the TV cameras focused on the Queen and Prince Philip leaving Buckingham Palace, and they were headed toward the Parliament building in a beautifully ornate coach drawn by magnificent horses. And they had all of the pageantry of England, the greatness of the realm. They had the beef eaters in full decor, and they had the liveried butlers that were attending royalty, and all of the pomp and pageantry that surrounded this event was fascinating.

They followed the carriage all the way down the streets, and the police, the bobbies had traffic cleared and a path was made ready for the appearance of the Queen. And then the camera shot comes inside the chambers of Parliament, and there are the Lords all dressed up with formal garb and wearing these old-fashioned white wigs that they do. And I sat there, and I looked at this, and I thought, here we are at the end of the 20th century in a modern, sophisticated society, and there are these guys dressed up in costumes that look like something out of the Middle Ages and going through all of this ritual that seems so passé, so outdated, and so foreign to the environment in which we live. And I thought, what is it about human nature that likes to create ceremony, that likes to use all kinds of aesthetic devices to draw attention to the importance of certain events? We do it here for marriages and for other special occasions. And I thought, what is it that preoccupies my wife with the ongoing saga of British royalty, with the latest episode and the latest chapter between Charles and, what's her name, Diane, and all these other princes and princesses that go on?

Why is it that the fairy tales that we read our children abound with stories of monarchs, of kings and princes and princesses and so on? We're a nation that has rejected monarchy. One of my favorite illustrations of this occurred when my friend John Guest, who has been a noted evangelist, first came to America from England back in the late 60s, and he arrived on the shores of Philadelphia, and I lived in Philadelphia at the time and met John the first week that he was in America, and he told me of his virgin exposure to American culture, that the first couple of days that he was in Philadelphia somebody escorted him around the city and took him to Independence Hall and showed him the Liberty Bell and told him all the stories of the American Revolution and so on to introduce him to the history of this new world that he was embracing as his home. And John said he was enjoying all of this until they went to Germantown just outside of Philadelphia and visited what was an old antique store that specialized in the memorabilia of Americana, that sort of thing. And they came into this shop, and they had placards and signs dated back to the 18th century, dating to the Revolutionary period, that displayed some of the battle cries and slogans of that era, such as no taxation without representation and don't tread on me and so on. But he looked at me and he said, the one placard that drew his attention was one that announced with great big bold letters, we serve no sovereign here. And John said, it stopped me in my tracks. He said, and I looked at that because I had come across the ocean, I had left my native land in response to a call, a vocation, to be a minister of the gospel, to proclaim the kingdom of God.

And he said, suddenly I was filled with fear and consternation. He said, I thought, how can I possibly preach to people about the kingdom of God when they have built into their culture this profound aversion to sovereignty? We serve no sovereign here. We may enjoy the trappings of royalty. There may be a certain nostalgia in our culture where we long in some hidden way for the restoration of monarchy. We even try to impose a kind of royalty on our leaders. We remember the days of JFK that were called Camelot. We call Elvis Presley the king.

We speak of jazz musicians as the count or as the duke. We still try to bring back the titles of royalty because we recognize that in this freedom that we enjoy, in this populist type of culture, there's something missing. And perhaps what is missing is that which we need most desperately, an awakening to authentic sovereignty. Well, if we look back to the Lord's Prayer and we see the priorities of prayer that are given to the church by Jesus, we remember that the first petition that he gave to the church was the petition that we should pray, hallowed be thy name, that we should regard your name, O God, as holy. And in doing that, that places us in a posture of veneration, and not only of veneration, but it moves us to a position of obeisance. We are to kneel. We are to bow before the one who is altogether holy. We are to stand before the Holy One as a faithful vassal, as a subject kneels before their king.

And so there's a point of continuity here in these petitions. Jesus says, first of all, hallowed be your name, and then the very next petition is what? Thy kingdom come. He moves immediately from a petition about the veneration of the name of God to the manifestation of the kingdom of God. Thy kingdom come.

Now, before I expound that a little bit more deeply, let me just point out a small detail here in these petitions. Hallowed be is a word that recurs, thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then the next petition, the fourth petition, is give us this day our daily bread. It's a long way into this model prayer before any attention or concern is given to us.

The focal point of attention at the beginning of these petitions, again the priorities of the prayer of Jesus, points to the exaltation and concern for God. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done. Because that's where the priorities are in a realm where sovereignty exists. It is not the will of the people that is ultimate. It is not the will of the individual that is ultimate. In a monarchy, it is the will of the sovereign that is most important.

It is the will of the King, because the King's very word is law in a monarchy. So Jesus fixes our gaze, not on ourselves in the initial phases of prayer, but on God. Now I've said many times when people come to me and ask me the question, you know, what are the rules for prayer? How should we approach God in prayer?

What's the right way to pray? And I said, there are really only two rules that you have to keep in mind when you're in prayer. Two things that should drive and govern and control your prayer life.

Two matters of memory. Two things that you have to remember. Two things that should be in the front of your mind all the time you are conversing with the Almighty. The two most important things that you need to remember when you're praying to God are, first of all, to whom you are speaking and who is doing the speaking. That is to say, the first thing you are to remember and keep foremost in your mind when you're in prayer is who it is you're talking to, because nothing will condition your prayer life more deeply than that, that you remember who you're addressing. You're talking to God.

And second of all, you have to remember who you are. You're not God. This is not a conversation between peers.

This is not a far-side chat among equals. This is the creature speaking to His sovereign Creator. One of the most frequently asked questions in the theology of prayer is, does prayer change things? And we know that it does. The New Testament makes it clear that prayer changes all kinds of things.

We'll explore that more deeply later. But the next question that comes is, does prayer change God's mind? I say, well, wait a minute. Let's go back to our two rules. Remember who He is.

Remember who you are. If you remember who God is, remember who you are, then ask the question, does your prayer change God's mind? What would induce God to change His mind? He's determined or planning to do something. He has a will that He is about to execute. And all of a sudden, He changes His mind.

What would induce Him to change His mind? Well, perhaps new information, new knowledge that He lacked before you in your brilliance communicated this data for His consideration. But does not the Bible say that when we come to our King in prayer, that He knows what we need before we ask it? And not only that, the psalmist tells us that this sovereign God with whom we are conversing, knows what we're going to say before the words are even formed on our lips, and that He knows those words all together. So if we remember, we're talking to one who is omniscient.

He doesn't learn anything new. So if He's going to change His mind, it's not because He's going to get new information from me. Why else do we change our minds? Well, we change our minds, I hope, when we realize that what we had planned to do in the first place was a bad plan. And we made a mistake, and we got better counsel from somebody, and they say, oh, or see, you shouldn't do that because if you do A, B is going to follow, and it's going to mess everything up. And so we go to God. And we say, God, we know that you've planned to do such and such, but even in your omniscience, perhaps you've made a mistake here, and what you're planning to do is not good because you may know everything, but your will may be wicked, and let me reprove you and rebuke you and counsel you to do the right thing.

I mean, how absurd is that? Let me say this. No prayer of any human being ever uttered in history ever changed the mind of God a bit because His mind does never need to be changed. Now, when I say that to people, oh, they react in horror. They say, oh, then why should we pray? What good is prayer if we can't change God's mind? Why should we even be engaged in this exercise?

It's an exercise in futility. I say, no, no, no. Remember what I said a moment ago? Does prayer change things? You bet it changes things.

It changes all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us because the deeper we are engaged in this communion with God and the more we become aware of the One to whom we are speaking, that knowledge of God redounds back to us and reflects all the more brilliantly who we are. And our need to change in conformity to Him. Prayer changes us.

God gave prayer to the church, not for God's benefit. The sovereign has condescended to give us an audience. He's invited us into the heavenly palace. He has lifted the scepter and told us to enter.

We have access to His very throne. But when we go there, we don't walk in there like Babe Ruth did when he met the king of England. Before Babe Ruth went to England for the first time, he had an audience with the king, King George, I guess. And before he was to meet with the king, the king's counselors and the assistants and so on carefully briefed Babe Ruth on all of the propriety that was necessary to maintain proper protocol and explained how when he went in, he had to bow before the king and address him as your majesty and all of that sort of thing.

And so what does Babe Ruth do in typical American fashion? He walks right in the room where the king is and he walks up to us and says, hi king. See, that's America. That's the way we are. Well, sometimes I think that's how we feel when we come into the presence of God. Hey, hi God.

How you doing? We only talk that way with God with the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt and reveals contempt when we forget who He is and we forget who we are. And we forget that we are in the presence of the king, not just a king, but the king, the king of kings, the Lord of lords, the one who is absolutely sovereign. Now, if there's any motif that ties together the Old Testament and the New Testament, it is the theme, the central theme of the kingdom of God. The beginning of our Lord's earthly ministry was heralded by John the Baptist who announced to Israel their need to repent.

Why? He said, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. The first message that is recorded from the lips of Jesus is the same announcement. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus' parables have a common theme.

Almost all of the parables are designed to reveal something about what? The kingdom of God. Jesus would say the kingdom of God is like unto this. The kingdom of God is like unto that.

And when His disciples gather around Him and say to Him, Lord, teach us how to pray, He said, when you pray, you pray that the kingdom comes. You pray that the kingdom comes on earth as it already is in heaven because in heaven there is no rebellion. There is no Magna Carta.

There is no declaration of independence. But willingly and joyfully, the entire host of heaven, all of the angels of heaven, and the archangels of heaven, and all of the spirits of just men made perfect who are now residing in heaven, joyfully and willingly bow before their King and submit to His sovereignty. That's the way it is in heaven.

That's not the way it is on earth. Jesus said, you come and you regard Him as holy, and the next thing you do is that you regard Him as your King because the kingdom of God is not going to come in any territory where the King himself is not honored. How do you feel about royalty? Bill Buckley's laughed at frequently when he advocates the restoration of monarchy, constitutional monarchy, as the preferred form of government.

And he's laughed out of town. It's unthinkable in American culture. History is replete with the record of kings who have been corrupt, who have been tyrants. And we think that the only cure for that kind of tyranny is the tyranny of the majority where there is no honor, and there is no duty, and nothing is sacred, and no one is sovereign. But that's not the way it is in the realm of God. Your God does not rule by referendum. As has been often said, the Ten Commandments are not ten suggestions that can be modified or amended by popular vote. God reigns over His creation with sovereignty.

And the question we have to face is, does He reign over us with sovereignty? A great question to consider as we close out another week of Renewing Your Mind. Another five messages remain in this series. And to hear them, all you need to do is give a donation of any amount in support of Renewing Your Mind and the global outreach of Ligonier Ministries.

And we'll unlock them for you in the free Ligonier app. This series also has a companion book titled The Prayer of the Lord. We'll send you that as an additional expression of our thanks for your generosity. Truly, without your support, the daily outreach of Renewing Your Mind would not be possible. You can call us at 800 435 4343.

Visit renewingyourmind.org or use the link in the podcast show notes to give your donation, and we'll get these resources to you. Don't miss Saturday's episode of Renewing Your Mind wherever you listen to podcasts, as we'll have another message on prayer from R.C. Sproul as he tackles how we can each grow in our prayer lives. But beginning Monday, you'll hear messages from a brand new series on covenant theology. You won't want to miss it. That'll be Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind. .