Kingdom Come Series

Your Kingdom Come

Matthew 6:10

First Baptist Chenoa

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

2-23-19

Prince Mongo

As Americans, because of our history, we don’t have must trust in kings or queens. In the Revolutionary period, we threw off the shackles of the Sovereign of England and forged our own destiny – don’t tread on me!

But what’s interesting is that Americans are obsessed with royals. We don’t want them ruling over us but many people want to know what Kate had for breakfast.

Growing up in Memphis, I was used to royalty. We had a King living in Graceland. Most people know that. But what many people don’t know is that we also had a prince – Prince Mongo.

Prince Mongo, Robert Hodges, is 333 years old and is from the ruling family of the planet Zambodia. He ran for mayor my entire childhood, owned a great pizza place, drove his neighbors crazy with his yard art (junk), and actually lived in a Castle.

When I was about ten years old, he wrapped himself in saran wrap and climbed into a hot air balloon. He bid all of us a sweet farewell and headed back to his home planet. Thankfully, at the last minute he received a message from Zambodia that told him to stay in Memphis so he landed a few miles away.

It was easy to call Elvis the King or Mongo a prince because they didn’t really hold any power over us. They might have been “royal” but they weren’t sovereigns.

Review

We are currently in a series about prayer focusing on what is commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer” in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew.

The disciples asked Jesus to “teach them to pray” (Luke 11). Jesus responds by giving them a model prayer, just 57 words in the Greek and it takes 20 seconds to pray it. But for 2,000 years believers of every nation have prayed this prayer.

In this prayer, there is a preface and then six different petitions. Two weeks ago, we looked at the preface, “Our Father in Heaven.”

We learned that if we have placed our full faith and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, we have the privilege of addressing God as Abba.

Abba means daddy or papa. It’s a term of endearment. In love, God chose to make us part of His family through adoption. Because we are God’s children, we can approach the throne of grace with “confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

The Lord’s Prayer begins with the word “our” to remind us that we are part of a huge family of believers all over the world.

And lest we are tempted to approach our Abba/Father without awe and reverence, Jesus reminds us that God is “in the heavens.” He is not the “the big man upstairs” but the majestic and mighty King.

Last week, we examined the phrase, “Hallowed be Your Name.” In this first petition, we are asking God to make His Name valued, treasured, revered, and exalted among all mankind. He can’t become more holy but humans can acknowledge Him as holy more and more.

This means at the very least, making sure that we who claim the name of Christ, honor Him with our words, thoughts, and deeds. But it also means taking seriously the call to be living billboards for the glory of God in our lives.

Kingdom Come

After leading the disciples to pray to their Abba that His Name would be exalted in all the earth, he utters three words that have the potential to completely revolutionize the world around us and in us!

Your kingdom come!

If you remember from the first sermon in this series, the verbs of the pray are in the imperative. That means we are commanding God to do something. But they are also in the imperfect mood. We are asking God to make His name hollowed. We are saying, “God, let Your kingdom come!”

This is a revolutionary prayer. This is a dangerous prayer!

Annie Dillard wrote:

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness for ladies to wear velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares and they should lash us to the pews!”

Define our terms

Before we dive deep into the concept of the Kingdom of God, it is important that we define our terms.

The word “kingdom” means royal power, kingship, to rule or to reign.