What I'd like to do this evening, instead of reading all of the passages that I want to look at with you this evening, I think what I'd like to do is just read the Lord's Day, which is, if you can follow along, it's, where is it, page 255 in the little book. And then I'll read each passage as we come to that point. This being a Reformed catechism, each of the questions and answers, most of them anyway, are in three points. So, Bob will be happy tonight. He always gets after me. He says, you need to preach the whole Lord's Day. Well, here it is. In the 16th century, when they preached the whole Lord's Day, they had 60 minutes, and we mere mortals in 2022 don't get 60 minutes. Reverend Gordon gets close, but... Lord's Day 49, question 124, what does the third petition mean, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven? It means, help us and all people to renounce our own wills without any backtalk to obey your will for it alone is good. Help everyone carry out his office and calling as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. Will be done as it is in heaven. That's quite a thing to pray. It's a very big prayer. We go through the petitions in the Lord's Prayer, and they can pass our lips rather easily sometimes. But it is an amazing thing to say, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Because in heaven, everybody does God's will all of the time. as we say in the Catechism, without any backtalk. So we're making, as they say in business, a big ask. We are making a big ask, aren't we? Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And it's important that we understand what we're saying here, what we're saying in the Lord's Prayer, which is at the heart of the Christian prayer. This is the paradigm that our Lord gave us for our prayers. This structures our prayers. By the way, this is a freebie for the sermon, I guess, an extra. Never be ashamed to pray the Lord's Prayer. There are traditions that say, well, the Lord's Prayer is really not for today, it's for the millennial kingdom. And that's just not true. It's as not true as anything could be not true. Christian, you should make use of the Lord's Prayer. People have said to me many times, Pastor, I just don't know how to pray or I don't know what to pray. And I say without hesitation, use the Lord's Prayer. It's what it's for. So as you use this prayer to sort of guide your prayers, to structure your prayers, we have to ask ourselves, for what are we praying? Well, we're praying for the consummation of God's kingdom. your kingdom come, your will be done." This is, in a sense, a continuation of that prayer. When a king conquers, everyone knows it. The Jews were expecting Jesus to bring an earthly kingdom. There was a lot of kingdom confusion in the first century. Judas was looking for an earthly kingdom, and he became disgusted that Jesus was not going to meet his expectations, and so he betrayed him. But the rest of the disciples were also looking for an earthly kingdom, and lots of people were looking for an earthly kingdom right up until the point it became clear that It was not going to happen, so that at the end, Jesus was all by himself. We're going to come back to that. Pilate asks a very interesting question, and Jesus gives a very interesting answer in this regard. There was a lot of kingdom confusion in the first century. There's a lot of kingdom confusion today. I can identify two major sources of confusion. One, there is a movement or a couple of movements. They're really variations on the same theme. They wouldn't think of it, but they're really two sides of the same coin. And the one side would be, and Pastor has mentioned these, would be the theonomists and the Christian reconstructionists. That would be one group. These folks are looking forward to a future collapse of Western society, that's easy to predict. Yes, of course there's going to be a collapse of Western society, unless barring a miracle. And they're looking forward to a collapse, and then out of the collapse is going to rise like a phoenix from the ashes a reconstructed Christian civilization. And of course, we're all going to be looking to them for guidance and leadership. One fellow's already got a head start on that up in the Pacific Northwest. He started to build a little kingdom up in northern Idaho. They're ready for what happens after. They're ready for the collapse, and they're ready for what happens after. There's another group of Christians, and I used to be one of these, who look forward to a literal thousand-year kingdom on the earth. Now, the first group isn't looking for a literal thousand years, but they're looking for a glory age on the earth. The second group, typically known as premillennialists of various kinds, there's about four different kinds of premillennialists. I used to be one of them. We were, just by default, when I was a young Arminian Baptist evangelical, we were all pre-trib, premill, if that means anything to any of you. So we were going to be raptured out of the earth. Jesus was going to come partway down. We're going to be secretly raptured, and all the razors are going to be hanging from the wires and, you know, left behind and all of that stuff. We're going to skip the tribulation, which was great. That's great. And then, right after that, seven years, then there'll be a literal thousand-year kingdom on the earth, a glory age on the earth. So both groups are looking for an earthly glory age, and then the consummation, and then the consummation. So those are two different versions, I say, of the same thing, and they both reveal a kingdom confusion looking for a future earthly glory age. I'm very impressed with the language of the Second Helvetic Confession, chapter 11, which is on Christology, sort of an interesting place to put this, but This is a Swiss confession from 1561 or 66, where Heinrich Bullinger says, we reject the idea, we reject the Jewish dream, he says, of an earthly glory age when the church has defeated all her enemies and will basically be in charge of everything. Already in the 1560s, We knew about this kind of error, and we rejected at least the Swiss reform. There are lots of reform people signed the Second Helvetic Confession. It was written at the request of Frederick III, the same fellow who asked for the Heidelberg Catechism. So it was taken as a confession of the Reformed faith. There's another way that people are confused about the kingdom in the world today. And that is the culture war, and as an extension of that, who are looking for a transformation of this world in this age before Jesus returns. And the line between the future glory age and sometimes the way people talk about transformation is a dotted line, but there's a difference. But I think the folks who think that the kingdom of God consists of a culture war and cultural transformation are also, maybe to a lesser degree, but somewhat, I think, misguided. There's very little in the New Testament, or the Old Testament, properly understood through the lenses of the New Testament, that causes us to think that There's either that we ought to be seeking a cultural transformation or that there's going to be a cultural transformation before Jesus returns. About as transformational as the apostle Paul gets in 1 Timothy is to say that we seek to live quiet and godly lives. That's about as transformational as Paul gets. The way, so there's a third model, and I think this is the right way, I think it's the Reformed way, I think it's the biblical way, and that is that the kingdom of God is present chiefly in the visible institutional church, right here, right now. In fact, I'll let you in on a little secret. This is a high point, right now, right here. When we're gathered within these walls, when the ministers greeted you in the name of God, we gather as the people who bear the name of Christ, who've been baptized, who've been set apart from the world, who've been included in the visible covenant community. And children, I'm gonna tell you another secret. When we gather for public worship, Do you know that it's almost as if the roof isn't there anymore, and the heavens are open, and the angels are watching? Do you know that? Paul says that in 1 Corinthians. He says, listen, you people behave yourselves. Remember, the angels are present and watching in your corporate worship. How do you know? I had a professor say this to me one time, and I thought about it. A lot, since he says, you think that the tree limbs outside the classroom window are blowing, or moving, because the wind is blowing. Well, that's probably true, we believe in second causes. But how do you know there are not angels sitting on those branches? And the truth is, we don't. The truth is, we don't. It's easy for us to begin to think like modernists, that we live in a closed world, where there are no spiritual realities. It's just a machine, and we're just part of a machine. And part of the function of gathering together as the people of God is that we gather as not only the covenant assembly, but as citizens of the heavenly kingdom with direct access to the king in formal assembly before the king. And the king is seated enthroned, and here we are at his feet as his people. Some of you are from the Netherlands, and you have royalty, or they have royalty in the Netherlands. Some of you might be from England, or from the British Isles, or from the United Kingdom, and you have royalty, such as some of them are. We Americans, we struggle to grasp what it is to have a king. People who've been raised with royalty and nobility, they have some idea of what it means to revere a figure for the office that he or she, a king or queen, may hold and the power that they at least used to have and the power and the authority that they symbolize. Most of them are figureheads now. Once upon a time, kings had real authority and real power, both. In other words, they had authority to execute things and they had power to bring it about. In the ancient world, when the king said, go, you went or you died. Jesus still has that power. He still has that authority. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And when Jesus said that, he wasn't kidding. And now he has ascended and he's seated at the right hand of the father, which is a figure of speech to say that he is the ruling prince and king over all things, God has given it to him. And here we are gathered at his feet. What a marvelous thing. You will do no more important thing from the time that we sing the doxology. Until you gather again next week on the Christian Sabbath, Lord's Day morning, and the minister greets you again in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Ghost, nothing you will do will be as significant as gathering before his face. Because of our work schedules, we tend to think of tomorrow as the beginning of the week. That's not true. This is the beginning of the week. This is our tithe, in a sense. We tithe this day to Jesus because He claimed it by His resurrection. This day belongs to Him. It's His. And here we are. That's why I say that the kingdom of God is chiefly here, chiefly manifested here, chiefly present here. And you are citizens in that kingdom, and this is a formal kingdom assembly. And the Word that you're hearing, so far as it's faithful to the Word of God, is the Word of the King, the official Word of the King. And you are His citizens and servants. You need to have that clearly in your mind when you pray, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's an official request by a citizen to his or her king. It's an official request from a kingdom citizen to his or her king. You bow the knee and you bow the neck and you say, Majesty, may it be that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And what you're really saying, and we'll come to this, is make use of me as one of your servants in your kingdom. So I say it's hard for us Americans. I got a taste of it when I lived overseas, and I saw the reverence. It wasn't universally shown, but it was the 50th anniversary of World War II, and I saw a striking reverence among most of the English for their queen. And had Elizabeth II called them to Buckingham, every English citizen is bound to go. And if the queen said, I have a duty for you, my citizen, an English citizen is bound to say, Majesty, what do you will? There are protocols. When the president came to the UK when I was there, we stood around a line and we shook the first lady's hand and we shook the president's hand. There wasn't a lot of protocol. When you meet a king or a queen, there are protocols. You get instructed on those protocols. You stand a certain way. You stand a certain distance. You don't speak until you're spoken to. You don't reach until the king or the queen extends his or her hand. Because royalty is not an elected position. It's, in their view, a divinely instituted position. If it's that way for human, fallible human kings and queens, and if you've watched The Crown, then you know how fallible. How much more for an infallible king who, by the way, became incarnate for you, obeyed in your behalf? was punished on your behalf, was crucified on your behalf, was put to death on your behalf, was buried on your behalf as your vicar, your representative, was raised for you on the third day and ascended and, as I say, is seated at the right hand of the Father. So we need three things. We need a kingdom vision. It's the first thing. In order to pray this prayer intelligently, we need a kingdom vision. And I really struggled with this. Where do I go to try to picture a kingdom vision? And maybe you have a better passage, and you probably do, but I thought of the Revelation, and I thought, well, where in the... I mean, the whole Revelation is a picture of the kingdom. You know, much of the Revelation, particularly from chapters 4 and following, it's a picture of the heavenly kingdom. But I settled on Revelation 14, verses 14 through 19. And the Revelation is intended to be a series of snapshots. And so here's a snapshot of what heaven is like. And then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud, one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. There's some ambiguity about who that is. Some commentators think that's our Lord and it could well be. I don't have a strong, remarkably I don't have a strong opinion. And another angel came out of the temple calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, put in your sickle and reap for the hour to reap has come for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe. So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth and the earth was reaped. That would seem to make us think that it's Christ. Then another angel came out of the temple and he too had a sharp sickle and another angel came out from the altar. The angel who has authority over the fire and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth for its grapes are ripe. This is a picture of what it means to say, on earth as it is in heaven. This is how it is in heaven. The angels do the Lord's will without question. There are others too. You can look at verse 4 and you see there are others doing the Lord's will. It is these, verse 4, who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as first fruits for God. There are others. There are humans who do the will of God. And in the Revelation, many of these are pictured as martyrs for Jesus. Conquering, but not in the way that people think about conquering when they think about arming up and conquering with military power. Jesus conquered, but he didn't conquer in the way that people expected him to conquer. He conquered by allowing people to arrest him, humiliate him, and beat him. That's how he conquered. And there's two kinds of people in the world. There are people who understand that, and there are people who don't. If that makes no sense to you, either you are spiritually immature or you're not regenerate. The way of the kingdom is the way of the cross. Peter said, don't go! And do you know what Jesus said when Peter said, don't go? Don't go to the cross? Get behind me, Satan. That's a pretty harsh rebuke. Peter didn't yet understand that the way of the kingdom is the way of death. And it might come to that, beloved, I never thought, you know, I used to say, as I'm a church historian, at least I pretend to be one, and you read about the way the church suffered in the second and particularly in the third century, pretty much for all of the third century, the church was being persecuted right up until the point at which it was recognized in the very early fourth century as a legal religion. I mean, it's like a cessation of hostilities, right? You're shooting right up until the armistice goes into effect. And while we were dying, while we were being arrested, while Roman soldiers were telling us, renounce Christ, pledge allegiance to Caesar, declare that Caesar is a god, pour out a drink offering in the name of Caesar, pledge allegiance to the Roman pantheon, but particularly to Caesar, and you can live. And do you know what question, children, that the Roman soldiers asked the suspected Christians? They asked them one question three times. Are you a Christian? Are you a Christian? Are you a Christian? And you had a very simple choice to say, I am. or to deny our Lord. If you denied Him, you could live. If you did not deny Him, you would surely die. The Romans didn't really care what you believed, but they demanded conformity. And you can imagine that now, can't you? You will conform. If you work for a major corporation, you don't have to imagine. You already know. You've already received the memo that says, what are your pronouns? And anyone who doesn't say what his or her pronouns are gets a memo to appear before HR. It's coming. It's already happening in the corporations. They've already announced that they're going to fund anybody who wants to abort their child. Who do you think is going to pay for that? Are you going to be allowed to opt out of that? I'm not making things up, I'm just reading the news. It's not that hard to imagine a Roman soldier saying to you, are you a Christian? Some of you probably have already had that conversation in HR. Are you a Christian? What did you say? Did you say, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Or did you say, No, no, no. No, no, no. That's crazy. Christianity? Nah. Nobody believes that stuff anymore. It was OK for Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa, Oma and Opa. I'm a modern, enlightened, successful, prosperous person. I mean, I'm woke. I know better. Do you? When the Germans were tromping around in the Netherlands, some of you people stood up. You know, you know, you saw it. You were little, but you saw it. They thought they were bringing a thousand-year kingdom. That's what a Reich is, a thousand-year kingdom, a glory age, an Aryan glory age on the earth. And Jesus sat in the heaven and he mocked them. He rules them with a rod of iron. But as he rules them with a rod of iron, there is a lot of blood of Christians on that rod of iron. That's what you have to understand. That's the nature of the kingdom of God. It doesn't go by power. It goes by human weakness. The power is in the gospel. It's in Christ. Secondly, quickly, we need a kingdom vision. We need a kingdom vicar, and praise God we have one. I've already alluded to it. Pilate asked Jesus, are you a king? John chapter 18, verse 36. Are you, verse 34, are you king of the Jews? Pilate, of course, is thinking about an earthly kingdom. Are you going to challenge me? Are you going to try to overthrow me? Are you leading a coup? Are you leading an insurrection? An insurgency? And Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. Were my kingdom of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from this world. Pilate said, so you are a king. Jesus said, you say that I am a king for this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth? We need a kingdom vision and we need a kingdom vicar and we have one. A vicar is a representative. A vicar who is in someone else's place, and that's Jesus. He came in our place, and He stood for the kingdom when everybody else ran away. And as I said, He bought that kingdom. He earned that kingdom. He took possession of that kingdom, not on the back of a white horse, but with a broad, gleaming sword and legions of angels. I could call down legions of angels. But he didn't do it, because that's not the kingdom. All of the glory of the Old Testament to the degree it existed under David and under Solomon, it was all a prelude to the real thing, and the real thing came to earth when God the Son was incarnate and was in the womb of the Virgin. It was a young girl who was pregnant with an infant, and that infant is God the Son, true God and true man, God the Son incarnate. And she pushed, and she pushed, and she pushed, and he was born. And he had an umbilical cord. And he grew in favor with God and man. He grew in stature and in knowledge and in favor with God and man, Luke says, Luke 2.52. Hebrews 5 says that Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered. And he did it as your representative. I say kingdom vicar, he's the king. on earth as it is in heaven. Not my will, he says in Matthew 26, 39, but yours. We said, not your will, but mine. Jesus said, not my will, but yours. Let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours. That's the paradigm for submission to the will of God. Not my will, but yours. And again, there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who can say those words with some degree of sincerity, and there are those who cannot and will not, who can't imagine saying, not my will, but yours. Our whole culture is built on my will, my way. And if you don't believe me, you clearly don't commute to work. I'm going to have my way. Yes, I'm going to cut you off. I'm going to exercise my autonomy. I'm going to get what I want, the way I want, when I want. They're not kidding when they say it's a dog-eat-dog world out there. It really is. That's not the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is people giving themselves to each other, led by a king who said, not my will, but yours, and then did it. He literally did the will of God all of his life for you. You need to know that when you pray that prayer. You're praying that prayer to one who actually did it, unlike you and unlike me. He understands. He actually did it. He understands it in a way that you and I will never understand, at least not in this life. But he really did it, and that's how much he loves you. And when you don't do it, he still loves you. And when you don't do it, he still loves you. And one last thing, when you say, well, that's all great, Pastor, but what about this life? Well, Psalm 103 is, really wonderful in that regard. Psalm 103 verse 20 is instructive. And I'm thinking here about the language of the last part of 124, so that everyone may fulfill his office and we might say vocation. Say, what does this mean for my daily life? Well, you have an office and you have a vocation. You say, what office do you have? What office do I have? I wasn't elected to anything. I didn't run for office. No, that's true. You didn't run for office. You were chosen. You were chosen and appointed to office. You were, some of you were running away from it. And God, the Holy Spirit reached out and he took a hold of you by the back of the neck. like a benevolent, long-armed Irish cop. Oh, Faith, where are you going now, sunny boy? Boy, oh, where are you going? And gently brought you back. And didn't give you a wood shampoo, did he? That you deserved, that I deserved. I'm not thinking about anything in my past in particular. God the Holy Spirit sovereignly and graciously brought you to himself, brought you to Jesus, gave you new life and true faith. He incorporated you into his eternal kingdom, unchangeable kingdom, the kingdom that's going to be consummated and all things are going to be, it's going to be all in all. So how do we live now in this life? Well, in the 1563 edition of the Heidelberg Catechism, in the German text, there are proof texts in the margins, and one of the proof texts says Psalm 103, and it's a reference to Psalm 103, verses 20 through 22. Bless the Lord, O you angels. Notice it's gone back to angels. You mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all his hosts. That's an army. His ministers, His servants who do His will bless the Lord all His works in all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. It's the middle part here. Obeying the voice of His word. All His armies, His servants, His ministers who do His will. That's you. That's you. Jesus has an army of kingdom citizens whom he's conforming to his will mysteriously, secretly, right now. You can't see it, you can't measure it, but God the Holy Spirit is at work in you right at this very moment, beloved, conforming you to Jesus, making you a little more willing, a little more ready to say, not my will, but yours. Be encouraged. He really is doing it. It's an act of faith to say that, but it's true. And so this week as you go out, you live your life as one who's been redeemed, as one who's been incorporated into a kingdom, and one who's been bought with the blood and righteousness of a benevolent, all-loving King. And every day and every morning when you pray, you say, Father, not my will, but yours. And every day, a little bit more, you mean it a little bit more. Let's give thanks. Lord Jesus, we are so grateful that you have not left us outside the kingdom, but you've included us in the kingdom. And you've changed our hearts, you've changed our wills, you've changed our affections, and you are changing our hearts, our wills, and our affections. O Lord Jesus, make it so more and more that we should say with all of our hearts, not my will, but yours. Help us to say it, Lord, every day, and help us to mean it a little bit more. For we ask it in the name of him who said it every day and who meant it with all of his heart. Amen.