Thine Is The Kingdom | Rediscovering the Lord's Prayer | Episode 11

What happens when we finally stop trying to control our own lives and acknowledge who truly rules the universe? Pastor Jim Thomas explores the triumphant concluding doxology of the Lord's Prayer: "For Thine is the kingdom." Diving into one of his favorite theological pursuits, the absolute sovereignty of God, Pastor Jim breaks down the immense comfort found in God's rightful reign over all creation. Drawing on insights from John Stott, this study shows how a lifestyle of humility and surrender allows King Jesus to take His rightful place over our desires, our daily work, and our very identity.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

So today's episode of Timeless Truth touches on one of my very favorite subjects in all of theological inquiry the rightful reign of God over all creation, the sovereignty of God. Before I get into that, let's pray the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen and amen. Well, you probably have guessed that the line I would like to focus in on today is for thine is the kingdom. The kingdom image was mentioned near the front of the Lord's Prayer when we prayed, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. And here it is yet a second time, again, in the Lord's Prayer, toward the end. And so it returns once again. And it's like bookends in a way, from the beginning to the end, and everything in between. We keep in mind that we're going to be realigning and realigning our hearts, our minds, our desires, all with God's heart, with God's desires, with God who is king. And we begin to list the basic needs of our own lives. We keep that in mind that He's our King, that He's sovereign, that He's in charge. Thy kingdom come. The declaration of God as King, it's not just here in the Lord's Prayer and in the New Testament. Israel's great king David recognized God as the rightful reign and ruler, rather, as having the rightful reign and ruler over all creation. 1 Chronicles 29, 11, where David prays before all the people, Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. You'd almost think King David had an idea where this was all going to go in the New Testament, with Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. Thine is the kingdom. And so the righteous rule of God, the rightful and the righteous rule of God, will be recognized by God's people all the way back into the Old Testament, all the way into the New Testament, and all the way into the present realm as well. The Lord is king. We are subjects in his kingdom. And so we say, thine is the kingdom. That means God doesn't revolve around my agenda, my desires, my hopes, my wishes, my dreams. In the Lord's Prayer, we've set God at the center, God is King over our desires, hopes, wishes, and dreams. All of that comes under the Lordship of King Jesus. We know that honoring God as King brings us into the proper ordering of everything else in our lives. We subject who we are, our identity, who we love, our relationships, our vocation, what we set our hand to, and the way we work, and our, you know, our work ethic and the things that we choose to do. Everything is presented to God, subjected to God as our king over all of our life, our mission, our purpose in life, all belongs to King Jesus, because we are subjects in the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of the heavens. So that idea of praying thine is the kingdom also includes the idea that each one of us are part of something bigger than us. That is, we're a part of a kingdom. There's more than one person in that kingdom. And further, in God's kingdom, we're now part of something that is even greater than the earthly kingdom of this world. Because you know, I mean, all of us do, all we have to do is look up in the night sky and see how big, how vast the universe is. And we don't, with a naked eye, we can't even begin to see the, you know, the first, you know, sort of edges of the Milky Way galaxy itself, and there are millions and millions and millions and millions upon millions of galaxies. We belong to God, the only truly sovereign, and we delight to have been invited into his kingdom. And it's much bigger than we are, much bigger than our planet, much bigger than our solar system, much bigger even than our galaxy. Sometimes we may find the kingdom of ourself getting in the way. And so, along with Alan Redpath, we might have to pray this way. Before we can pray, Lord, thy kingdom come, we must be willing, he said, to pray, my kingdom go. And I think I think Redpath was right there. I love when people come up with statements like that that are, you know, short, pithy, to the point, um, honest and kind of brutally honest in a way, right? Kind of kicks our pride out of the way, doesn't it? Uh Redpath was a 20th-century British evangelist pastor and author, and I think that's great. Before we can pray, Lord, thy kingdom come, we must be willing to pray, my kingdom go. He's right. I'll put this in the show notes for you if you're curious to see it again. But the longer I'm on this pr pilgrim road, the more I find that trying to be my own king is actually exhausting and frustrating. I'm just not that great of a sovereign. And um, I don't think any of us could ever get close to being as good a king as God. We're simply not smart enough, we're not powerful enough, we're not good enough, we're not holy enough. We're just not anything enough. We need Jesus to be king. So here in the Lord's Prayer, we pray thy kingdom come and we pray thy will be done, and we declare that the kingdom belongs to him. Uh Tim Keller has a book called Prayer. I've quoted from it before. I'll quote from it again right here with this in mind. We are seeing the necessary balance of two purposes of petitionary prayer. To put the world right, thy kingdom come, and to align our hearts with God, thy will be done. That's right. So we want the world set right. We want to recognize God's rightful reign and rule over all that is, especially over our own hearts, minds, hearts, desires, uh, everything. You know, all of who we are, will, uh, every bit of who we are. And we want to align, as Keller says here, our hearts with God. So we pray things like, Thy will be done, and we declare that thine is the kingdom. And we'll get into and the power and the glory and all of that again in uh in the next come uh couple of episodes. But thine is the kingdom, one more time, reminding ourselves that we aren't in charge, that God is, and that he rightfully is uh is our king. He's the only one worthy to be king. Because Jesus is the only one who's righteous and holy enough, gentle and lowly enough to deserve to be king, and to be such a beautiful and a great king. God's love for us in Christ has proven how the King of the God of the Bible is faithful and true. His love, grace, and mercy run deep and wide. And when all other loves have failed us, the love of Jesus remains steadfast. Um when we have messed up, when we've lost our self-control, broken his commandments over and over and over again, his love remains, his love endures forever. Um we're all sinners, but God loves his children and he's eager for us to repent. You and me today, now. There's no reason for us to move forward at all with any guilt and shame when he has thrown open the doors to his throne room of grace and mercy. He's eager for us to come home to him, to return to him, and to bow before him. We are his beloved, and just as there was nothing we did to earn his love, there's nothing we can do to turn his love away. What's more, being part of God's kingdom in the present world is actually kind of a foretaste of how amazing it will be in the future. Um I want to read, uh let me turn real quickly to Revelation chapter 21. Such a beautiful passage, verses one through five. And I've got a big heavy, if you can't see, if you're not on a uh platform where you can see what I'm reading from, I'm I'm holding a pretty heavy ESV study Bible. So if I struggle a little or drop it and you hear a loud thunking noise, that's what that was. But I love this uh ESV study Bible. Highly recommend you if you're looking for a good study Bible. It's got great running commentary throughout the entire Bible. Here's what it says in Revelation 21 about the new heaven and the new earth when God's kingdom comes in its fullness. Uh the Apostle John receives this revelation of Jesus Christ. And John writes, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also, he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And that's I love that. This is a king of the kingdom, the new kingdom that's coming, the new heavens and the new earth, the king of the kingdom that's begun to unfold with the coming of Jesus, the first advent. We have the inauguration or the beginning, if you will, uh, the introduction of the kingdom of the heavens. Um, and I love this. And we look forward when we read something like Revelation 21 to the kingdom of God coming in its fullness. The consummation of the kingdom. They'll often, uh theologians often refer to it that way. Our appetite for the living God has been wetted, W-H-E-T-T-E-D. Wetted. Our appetite has been wetted with a bit of bread and a sip of wine, and we want more, says William Willeman and Stanley Howros. And this is their little tiny booklet. I've quoted from it before. It's called Lord Teach Us to Pray, The Lord's Prayer in the Christian Life. It's a brilliant little small booklet, but he says, uh, or they say, our appetite for the living God has been wetted with a bit of bread and a sip of wine, and we want more, and by God's grace we shall have more. We've got that to look forward to. We shall feast at that great banquet open to all ages, nations, and peoples. We read about that right there in Revelation 21, didn't we? Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. And so we pray. Thine is the kingdom. The church is a worshiping community that follows in the way of King Jesus by living out the Christian gospel in our words and our deeds, and this flows out of the hearts, our hearts that have been seized by the great love of Christ, and now passionately seek to honor and glorify our King Jesus. Close with this John Stock quote. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he was not referring to the general sovereignty of God over nature and history, but to that specific rule over his own people, which he himself had inaugurated, and which begins in anybody's life when he humbles himself, repents, believes, submits, and is born again. That's John Stott, his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. Let's pray one more time. Lord, yes, your kingdom come. And uh it is your kingdom, Lord. We, as we head toward the final couple episodes of uh going line by line through the Lord's Prayer, we want to pray with great enthusiasm for your kingdom uh to come and be realized in our own lives. Um we we want you to be God and to be sovereign, to be our king, Jesus. Have your way in our hearts, in our minds. Uh be Lord over our desires, be king of our identity, um, be honored in our relationships, in our behavior, in our thought life, uh in our attitudes toward others, toward our work. Lord, be honored in our work ethic, in our uh in the way we go about our creativity. Be um uh be uh our God and our king, we pray this in Jesus' name who's made it all possible. Amen and amen.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Thank you for listening to today's episode of Timeless Truth. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Wherever you are in your walk of faith, we're glad you joined us today. And we hope this conversation encouraged, challenged, or inspired you. At the Village Chapel, we believe God's word is unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, and transforming in its power. To find more resources or support our ministry, visit the VillageChapel.com.