Text: Matthew 6:10
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
On Earth as it is in Heaven
The world that God made is deeply and unchangeably hierarchical. The world that God made is hierarchical—meaning it is a world of sovereigns and subjects, of realms and rulers, of kings and kingdoms. It is a world of up and down. It is a world of submission and headship. And even though many of the words I just said might trigger egalitarian moderns—all of this hierarchy is a glorious good.
Hierarchy is part of what God uttered his “very good” over in the beginning. It is a part of what he looked down upon and blessed. This is true before anything went wrong in the world—it’s not as if hierarchy was a result of the Fall.
In fact, part of the problem of the Fall—in a way, the fundamental problem—is a hierarchy problem. The Fall is many things, but certainly one of them is the problem of an upstart claiming the throne, Adam joining forces with the serpent and throwing off God’s good rule in favor of a make-believe sort of self-sovereignty. It is a cosmic coup.
It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe, where the white witch has claimed to be be the sovereign queen of Narnia. She’s invaded the land, set up her own little castle in contest with Cair Paravel, and even worse, by some sort of witchery she’s managed to make it always winter and never Christmas. There comes a point in the story where the good Mr. Beaver is quite displeased with her using the title—queen. But Aslan, the true sovereign, rather than getting bent out of shape, tells Mr. Beaver, “Peace, Beaver. All names will soon be restored to their proper owners.”
Today, as we continue our time in the Lord’s Prayer within Jesus’ great sermon on the mount, we learn to pray along these lines—to take comfort that, though the world is manifestly under the rule of upstarts and fools, every name and title will be returned to its proper owner. That the Father’s Kingdom will come and his will is to be done again on earth as it is in heaven. And that we are not waiting for this restoration to begin in some future time, but taught to expect it to unfold even now.
Let’s read the whole section again, starting in Matthew 6:9. Look there with me, if you would. This is the Word of the Living God:
“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,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”-Matthew 6:9–13
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.
Recap & Roadmap
Let me give you a recap and a roadmap. The recap would be to remind you of what we learned last week, that this part of the sermon on the mount, the Lord’s Prayer, isn’t a magical incantation, but rather a model for us.
It’s not the only proper prayer that one can ever pray, but rather a mold into which our prayer is to be pressed and conformed. We’re not to treat it as a mantra, but a model.
And last week, we took a look at how Fatherhood stands at the center of reality—that when we pray, we pray Our Father, that is, when we pray, we pray as sons. When we pray, we pray to One who is for us like a good dad is for us. But we also pray that the name of this Father would be hallowed, remembering that he is not to be trifled with, but approached as we would approach a dread warrior.
This week, we will focus on verse 10, where Jesus teaches us to pray,
“Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”-Matthew 6:10
That brings us to our roadmap for the day. We’re going to do do things: First, get our definitions and categories in order. We need to understand what it is that we are talking about when we talk about this Kingdom of the Father. And we need to know where in the Bible we get these definitions—how the Kingdom arc unfolds through the story of the Bible.
Having done that, we will turn to the “So what?” question. So what would and will happen if and as the Father answers this prayer? Because make no mistake: He will. And he is. This prayer is not something that the Father will hear and say, “Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? After the Second Coming I might get around to answering it.” No, this Father doesn’t give stones to his sons when they ask him for bread. And so we need to know what it will look like for this prayer to be answered as we pray it.
This is important, because once we understand what it means to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we will understand how to contextualize that prayer for our moment and place and time. We will understand how to pray that his Kingdom would root down and grow up and bear fruit in our homes, our lives, our church, our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, and our world.
The Kingdom Unfolding
So let’s begin with some definitions. When we pray, “Your Kingdom come,” what are we talking about? What is the Kingdom of God?
Already in the gospel according to Matthew, we have seen that the arrival of the Kingdom of God with the arrival of Christ is central to his ministry—it is the central point of his preaching. We saw this first, actually, in the ministry of John the Baptist. In Matthew 3:2, where he cries out, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
A chapter later, Jesus preaches the same message in Matthew 4:17, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!” And a few verses later, Matthew summarizes Jesus ministry as the proclamation of the good news of the Kingdom.
So it is essential that we understand what the Kingdom of God is, where it comes from, what it’s pointed at, and how we related to it. To that end, I’d like to define the doctrine of the Kingdom of God in a series of 16 points, beginning in the book of Genesis.
1. The world begins with God’s mashal.
The Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning, God…” In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Kingdoms are, at bottom, about realms and rulers. God is the Arch-King, the High Potentate, the Cosmic Emperor. He is the Ruler over all realms, because he is the Creator of all realms.
2. God extends his rule through appointed rulers in each created realm.
One of the features of kingship is delegated authority. Kings do very little directly. Nearly everything a king does is done through appointed emissaries, servants, representatives, and rulers. Can you picture the Queen of England making her own French toast?
One of the first things things God does after making all realms in heaven and on earth is to appoint rulers for those realms. You see this in Genesis 1:16, for example, that God made two great lights in the heavens, one to rule the day and one to rule the night. The Hebrew word is mashal, to rule. Each realm in Genesis 1 is given its corresponding ruler.
In each of the first three days, he makes a realm, and then corresponding to each realm, he makes and appoints rulers of those realms in days 4, 5, and 6.
Day 1: Light and Dark
Day 4: Sun, Moon, and Stars
Day 2: Skies and Seas
Day 5: Birds and Sea Creatures
Day 3: Dry land and plants
Day 6: Animals and Man
This brings us to the next major point in the unfolding of the Kingdom narrative in the Scriptures.
3. God appoints the man as a high-king over the realm of the earth.
The man, Adam, is set apart as the high king over all the earth—not autonomously as his own representative, but rather as the image bearer of God. He’s given domain over all the fish, the sea, the birds, the living things on the earth.
In an act of authority, he names these things. Whatever he calls them, that is their name. He even names his wife, Eve, who is taken from him. And together with his helper, his bride, he is to take dominion over all things.
The Psalms agree with this, Psalm 8, for example, sings in wonder at the mystery of why God—whose glory is above the heavens—would put tiny, insignificant man over all the works of God’s hands, why God would put all things under his feet. Psalm 115:16 even says, “The heavens are the LORD’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.”
4. The high king, Adam, chooses to be ruled by sin and extend the dominion of sin, rather than to be ruled by God and extend the dominion of God.
The serpent comes—a creeping thing which the man is supposed to have rule over—and the man submits to serpent rather than ruling over him.
Adam’s son, Cain, is warned by God that sin desires to rule over him—and it does. Cain murders his brother, serving sin.
And so this is what goes with man everywhere man goes: Everywhere he goes, he now brings and extends the dominion of sin and the serpent, ruled by it as a wicked master. The Serpent has the rightful claim, then, to all the kingdoms of men and their glory by time we get to Matthew 4, even offering these to the Lord Jesus.
5. But God isn’t going to cede the earth. He makes a nation to demonstrate, and ultimately to restore, his rule over earth through man.
He starts with Abraham in Genesis 12, calls him out of Ur of the Chaldees, and promises to make of him a nation in whom all the families of the earth would find blessing. And so he does it, bringing forth a son from a dead womb.
6. He gives promises to this budding nation.
By the end of Genesis, he promises that rule, that the scepter, wouldn’t depart from Judah, a prophecy Balaam echoes in Numbers 24:17, that a scepter will come forth from Israel to crush the enemy’s head.
So a royal, head-crushing ruler is on the way, from Judah, who will restore rule over God’s enemies.
7. Joseph prefigures this scepter, ruling over even the Gentiles and saving the world.
Joseph suffers at the hands of his brothers, sons of Abraham, but through his suffering is enthroned as a high ruler, providing bread to save a starving world. Sounds familiar.
8. Through Moses, God shows that his Kingdom will be established through judgment and deliverance.
The nation is incubated in Egyptian slavery, far from its intended realm, only to be delivered through the judgment of Egypt’s gods. So the Kingdom breaks out from slavery and journeys to its appointed realm, the Promised Land.
9. In the wilderness, God gives his people the Law, promising blessing for those who submit to his rule, but a curse for those who don’t.
The Kingdom is to be a place wherein righteousness dwells. Though Israel manifestly fails to keep this Law, we find in the New Covenant promises that this problem will not be solved by relaxing the righteousness of this Kingdom, but by transforming the people.
10. Joshua then leads a a Kingdom of Priests, bearing the throne of God through the River (Josh. 3–5) and into the Land. They conquer idolatry to show that this realm will be under one Lord, not many gods.
The Kingdom is one that will not live side by side in a kind of idolatrous syncretism with false gods. It is rather one which progressively displaces and throws down those false gods by conquering their people.
11. But there is a problem: Israel lacks a wise human king. This is one of the points of Judges.
From the beginning, remember that the ideal God established is for a human man to rule as King in his name over the people in an extension of his rule. Israel lacks this. Though they want a king for unrighteous reasons—to be like their neighbors—God fully intends for them to be ruled by a King.
So God teaches his people that they need a King who is like the description of Deuteronomy 17: One who keeps the law on his heart, the Torah as his guard. One who won’t be arrogant like Saul, but fears God.
The book of Judges shows over and over what happens when this people isn’t ruled by a good King, instead being ruled by the whims of their own hearts. Long story short: It’s really, really bad.
12. So God raises up the twice-anointed one, David.
Saul, the king who ends up embodying all that is wrong with human rule cut off from the root of God’s righteousness, is thrown down, and David raised up.
David, the shepherd-king, the psalmist, the man after God’s own heart, represents—imperfectly, as through a glass darkly—the coming Shepherd-King Jesus.
He is anointed with oil by the prophet Samuel to be king over Israel in 1 Samuel 16:13: “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward.”
Then again in 2 Samuel 5:3 “So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.”
The word “anointed” is the root word from which we get the word “Messiah.” The Messiah is a Spirit-anointed King. And like the Spirit-anointed King Jesus, David slays the scaly serpent-giant, Goliath, felling him with what looked weak and then killing him with his own sword.
13. But first David, then his son Solomon, is then subdued by the serpent. Solomon is unable even to embody his own wisdom, the wisdom for kings.
Though David is the man after God’s own heart, he is a murderous adulterer. Though Solomon writes the Proverbs—wisdom for kings—he takes 1,000 sexual partners and gives his heart to idols.
Point: We still need a better king. Number 14, enter more promises:
14. David’s Son must sit on his throne. God’t won’t annul his promises to David (Psalm 89:35–37).
As Psalm 89:35–37 promises,
“Once for all I have sworn by my holiness;
I will not lie to David.
His offspring shall endure forever,
his throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon it shall be established forever,
a faithful witness in the skies.”-Psalm 89:35–37
So what? Number 15:
15. So what? The Lion of Judah will come to save a people, like the Exodus, through the judgment of their true enemy: Sin, Satan, and Death.
The better Son of David, the better Son of Abraham, the better Solomon, the better Joseph, the better Goliath-killer, the better head-crusher, the better man after God’s heart, the better Torah-keeper, the true King after the mold of Deuteronomy 17 comes.
He comes with a Kingdom. He comes to make the earth his Promised Land. He comes to live and die and rise and reign forever.
He comes to restore what had, from the beginning been the intention of the Father for his good Kingdom, for his good realm—for a human King to rule over it in his name. He is truly man, and he is truly God. David’s throne will be filled forever.
And lastly, number 16:
16. Mankind in Christ will then rule, a Kingdom of priests, restored to their true purpose, over the earth as their inheritance.
The meek, Jesus said at the beginning of the sermon, will inherit the earth. Our lives, Paul tells us in Colossians 3, are hidden with Christ in God. Mankind in Christ is restored to her true purpose: A Kingdom of priests, the dwelling place of God, reigning with Christ in glory.
As Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2:11–12, “The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him…”
And so we can define the Kingdom:
The Kingdom of God is a realm.
The realm wherein the King reigns. It is everywhere, because Jesus has ascended and he has claimed everything.
The Kingdom of God is a people.
It is mankind, restored in the God-Man to her true purposes. It is mankind, washed of her sin in the blood of Christ, having died with him, and living forever with him.
The Kingdom of God is a way.
It is the place where men are ruled—not by sin, the serpent, or their own self-sovereign hearts—but by the King and his Law. This sermon, the sermon on the mount, teaches us this way.
The Kingdom of God is a destination.
It is an end—the end towards which creation is aimed. The kingdoms of the world will become the Kingdom of our God in Christ—completely and without exception. Not one rogue atom will remain outside of perfect obedience to him anywhere by the time he is done extending his realm.
What Does This Prayer Mean?
So what? What does it mean for the Kingdom to come and the will of the Father to be done on earth as it is in heaven? What are we praying when we pray that? What are we asking for? I’ll leave you with five things:
1. It means that this world is not as it ought to be.
Our prayer of petition that the earth would be a place where the will of God is done as it is in heaven tells us something: It is not being done on earth as it is in heaven yet.
God is sovereign over all. Even the crucifixion of Christ was his good and perfect will—see Acts 4:23–28. His will of decree is being carried out exactly. Even sin is serving his ends.
But how is his will done in heaven? Without sin. It is being done all the way, right away, with a good attitude everyday, as we teach our kids to say.
So take heart when the world is full of sin. Take heart and pray: Father, your will be done here like it’s being done there. Save, judge, crush, redeem, and intercede.
2. It means that another world is invading and colonizing this one.
Jesus says in John 18 that his Kingdom is not of this world—meaning its origins and ways are not native to the Fallen world—but this prayer teaches us that it is certainly invading and colonizing this one. So get to work by faith, with thankful hearts, merry warriors in Christ’s Kingdom. Our stated goal, friends, is therefore to make Ogden a Christian city, Utah a Christian state, and the world a Christian place—because it is. It belongs to the Lord.
3. The reign of sin and death will be ended.
As we pray this prayer, we are asking that God would sanctify us. We are asking that what has been won in principle—the removal of sin’s enslaving power over us, his people—would be worked out in practice by his power.
4. The reign of the demonic powers will be ended.
The Serpent has been put to open shame. His kingdom is fallen. Don’t fear him, but resist him in this prayer.
5. All names will be restored to their proper owners.
God will be praised by every tongue everywhere. His Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
This is Central
And don’t forget: This is all central, not peripheral, to the Christian life. This prayer Jesus teaches us to pray is not long. It is therefore obvious that every single part of it is essential. The Kingdom of God breaking in and invading and colonizing this world is no side-issue: It is central.
May we pray and live as if it were so.