IVThe Second Petition
“Thy Kingdom come.”—Matt.vi.10;Lukexi.2.
The Bible is a book of hope. It looks, not backward, but forward. It has its face turned towards the light. It always speaks of “a best that is still to be.” We open its pages and we read of Eden; of a time when the world was free from pain and sorrow and sadness, because man was free from sin. While man was innocent his home was a garden, all nature served him, a sky that was always blue smiled down upon him, and God was his familiar friend. But we read on a chapter or two and a change comes over the aspect of things. Eden disappears, and has never been found since. Joy, harmony, peace vanish, and leave behind them discord, sorrow, hate. When man sinned, pain and grief and death entered the world, man’s sky grew black with clouds; God no longer spokewith him in the cool of the evening, and he was driven out of the garden, at the gates of which the cherubim were posted with swords of flame which pointed every way, as if to say, “No return, no return.”
But even in the story of that bitter loss I detect the note of “hope.” You perhaps remember the old Greek legend which says that when Pandora was married to Epimetheus the gods gave her a box, which was full of winged blessings, as a wedding present. As long as Pandora kept the box locked, so long life was like a summer’s day. She and her husband enjoyed every blessing. But one day, tempted by curiosity, she opened the box, and on the instant the little winged creatures who were locked inside took flight and left her for ever. All? did I say. No, not quite all.Hoperemained at the bottom of the box, the only blessing left to Pandora and her husband! And so exactly man lost everything by sin excepthope. When God made man He gave him every blessing. But when man unmade himself, these blessings took flight. He lost his innocence, he lost his peace, he lost his happiness, he lost his home, he lost everything buthope. God left himhopeto comfort him in his bitter grief. God left himhopeto save him from despair.When man’s night was blackest, God sent into his sky a star, a star that was the promise of a day to come. In pronouncing doom upon disobedient man, God also gave him a promise as if to say, “It shall not always be midnight and deep despair with thee. Thy dayspring shall again arise.” That note of hope, struck even in the story of the tragedy of the fall, is the key-note of the Bible. The Bible is a book of the future, and the spring-time, and the dawn. You will not find its pages taken up with regrets for the Eden which has been lost; it looks forward to a better Eden still to come. It does not spend its time in bewailing the sunshine that has disappeared from the earth; it rather bids men wake and watch that they may be ready to greet the still more glorious day which is about to break. For as you read the Bible, what do you discover? You discover one glowing promise after another given by God; you find hope ever waxing stronger; you find the assurance that the night is departing, ever waxing more confident, until at last some prophet, of keener vision than the rest, catches on the peaks of distant hills the foregleam of the dawn, beholds the vision of the light, not of moon or stars, but of the sun, and announces to a world sick with longing for the day, that “the light is come,and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” It is to the future the Bible looks. From its first page to the last it preaches the glad gospel ofhope. The old Eden which has been lost is a prophecy of the better Eden to be gained. The “golden age” of the Bible is before, not behind. Paganism could only look back wistfully to the past and sigh for the reign of Saturn, when the earth had peace and plenty and joy—those glad days which had been, but could return no more. But the Bible teaches us to look forward. Our good time is still to come. Our golden age is still in the womb of the future. We are still looking for that glorious “last for which the first was made.” It is of the golden age to which the Christian looks forward that this second petition speaks. “Thy Kingdom come” is a prayer for the good time coming, a prayer for the golden age, a prayer for the better Eden. For the earth’s golden age will come when God is King. I say theearth’sgolden age advisedly. Let me emphasise it—the earth’sgolden age! For many have misinterpreted the reference of this petition. Tertullian, the old Latin father, would have made this petition the third, not the second. He would have read the prayer thus, “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done, Thy Kingdom come,” because he thought thisprayer for God’s kingdom referred to the end of the world and the second advent. But when Jesus teaches us to pray that God’s kingdom may come, He means that we are to pray that God may reignhereupon the earth, that menheremay acknowledge Him as King, that lifeheremay be regulated by His commands. This is not a prayer that we may be taken out of earth into heaven, but it is a prayer that heaven may come down to earth, so that earth itself may become heavenly. It is a prayer for the “new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” It is a prayer for the world’s golden age—a golden age which shall come when there is established here on earth that kingdom of God which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Have you noticed how in most men’s minds the idea of a “golden age” is associated with the name of some king? The Israelites associated it with the name of David; the Germans associated it with the name of Frederick Barbarossa; for us British folk a special halo of romance gathers round the time of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. And as a matter of fact, the world’s good time is inseparably connected with the coming of a King and the establishment of a kingdom. But the kingdom is noearthly royalty, and the King is no David or Barbarossa or Arthur come back to life again. The kingdom is the kingdom of God, and the name of the King is Jesus. When that Kingdom is established, when that King is enthroned, a better Eden shall be here than the Eden we have lost. It is the world’s evil time just now. Earth is full of misery and grief and pain. Many are the schemes propounded for mending matters, and God knows they need mending. Each man has his own nostrum, every quack his own panacea; but if we leave God and Christ out of account every plan is doomed to fail. We shall mend matters only by making God a reality, and the final establishment of right and justice, and joy will come only whenHeis enthroned as King. But you may say to me, “Is not God King now? Is not the world His? Are not all men in His hands?” That is perfectly true! I do not forget that the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. It is my joy and strength to remember that in spite of all the bluster and brave show made by the forces of evil, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! But if you will examine the basis ofthatKingship you will find it rests on God’sCreatorship. He is Lord of the world and ofmen because He has created them—because in Him they live and move and have their being. But God wants to be King in Jesus Christ—that is to say, He wants to be King in virtue not of His power, but of Hislove. He wants men to obey Him not because they are afraid of Him, but because they love Him. Look at the prayer: “Thykingdom come.” Whose kingdom is it? Well, it is “ourFather’s” kingdom. Oh, this is a kingdom of love! God wants to be King not because He is Creator, but because He isFather. He wants men to be obedient to Him not under the pressure of force, but under the sweet constraint of love. God has been King by the title of Creator since the world began; but He is not even yet King by the title of “Father.” He is not even yet King in Jesus Christ. It is forthiskingdom we are to pray; for the time when men shall realise what God’s Fatherhood means, for the time when men’s hearts shall be so touched by God’s love to them in Jesus Christ, that out of pure and grateful affection they will render Him a willing and glad obedience.
“Thy kingdom come.” The prayer, you will notice, regards the “kingdom” as something still to be realised. As yet it is in the future. In other places in the New Testamentit is talked of as actually existent. Both views are true—the kingdom is bothpresentandfuture. You remember that when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God should come, he observed, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo, the kingdom of Godis in your midst.” The Pharisees were treating as future what was already present. The kingdom of God was already in their midst. But it was not surprising that the Pharisees failed to discover the presence of the kingdom. It was a very tiny affair at the time. Its subjects were only a handful of Galilean peasants. Our Lord Himself, speaking of the tiny, unnoticed beginning of the kingdom, said it was like unto leaven which a woman took andhidin three measures of meal! The kingdom is not hidden to-day. The leaven has been working through the centuries. The presence of thekingdomis the most noticeable fact in the world’s life to-day. We talk about the great empires of the world! We talk about the British Empire embracing one-fifth part of the habitable globe: and the great Russian Empire claiming a sixth part of the world; and the German Empire and the French Empire, and the rest of them. But there is one Empire greater, vaster than anyother—the Empire of King Jesus. It isin our midst, the mightiest kingdom, the most potent force on earth.
And yet, while the kingdom of God is thuspresentand potent, it is stillfuture. Its full realisation has yet to come. So long as there is in this world one man who has not yielded his heart to Christ, so long as there is a single department of life which is not brought into subjection to the law of Christ, so long will the kingdom beunrealised, so long shall we need to pray this prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” All the misery of this world is due to the fact that there are multitudes of men still in rebellion, that there are whole departments of human activity which are not regulated by the spirit of Christ. The kingdom is still imperfect, incomplete. Its full establishment lies in the future somewhere. Until that full establishment takes place, until God is King everywhere and over everybody and everything, the world’s golden age will never come.
What kind of kingdom is this?It is worth while noticing that the “kingdom” occupied a large place in the thought and speech of Christ. His gospel was a gospel of the kingdom. He announced that He had come to found a kingdom; He claimed the title “King” forHimself; and in what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, He gave us, shall I say, the laws and rules of the kingdom. Christ was not the first to picture an “Ideal State,” Plato had already done it in his “Republic.” But Plato’s picture would not satisfy you or me. It is an impossible, fantastic dream. Plato’s state, with its philosopher king and its destruction of the family, repels instead of attracting us. But the kingdom of God which Christ has pictured for us, that gleaming vision of a new earth in which love shall rule, fascinates and enthrals us, and the hope of its realisation becomes the mainspring of all human progress and attainment. Well what kind of a kingdom is it? Let me answer in the words of the great Apostle Paul, and say, “The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” There you have in one brief sentence the characteristics of the kingdom. The kingdom of God isrighteousness, or, in other words, the kingdom of God isjustice. There is cruel wrong in this world of ours, wrong that daily cries up to God for vengeance. Man wrongs man, brother oppresses brother. The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty, and places that are usually supposed to be “light,” like this favoured England of ours,are full of cruelty also. Oh, brethren, to see the wrong, the oppression, the wickedness of life, is a maddening sight! I can understand how men are sometimes driven by it into the blasphemy of despair! But the kingdom of God is justice—strict, level, even-handed justice. WhenHiskingdom comes, tyranny, oppression, wrong shall cease; men shall do right out of love for their righteous King.
The kingdom of God ispeace. Peace between men, peace between nations. All strife and mutual distrust shall be for ever buried, and the noise of war shall be heard no more, but men shall beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Hate and enmity shall die. “The wolf and the lamb shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain,” saith the Lord.
The kingdom of God isjoy. We are in the winter of our discontent just now. Life is full of tears and grief and pain. The tears and the grief and pain spring from the hate and the oppressions and the injustices of life. But when God is King there shall be justice and peace, and joy will follow as a natural consequence. Justice, peace, happiness those arethe characteristics of the kingdom of God! Is not this a kingdom worth praying for?
Now let me go on to ask the question,What is the sphere of the kingdom?First let me say, the sphere of the kingdom is theindividual heart. When I pray, “Thy kingdom come” I do not feel that I am praying solely for the work of foreign missions. I do not think only of the millions of heathen in China or India or Africa. When I pray “Thy kingdom come,” I am not satisfied with adding to the thought of the heathen abroad remembrance of the heathen at home. No! when I utter that prayer I feel I am praying for myself. I am praying that God’s kingdom may come in my own heart. Oh, yes, this prayer has reference to ourselves. When we pray “Thy kingdom come,” we pray “Lord, come into our own hearts; rulethere; take the thronethere: make us completely thine.” “Thy kingdom come!” Brethren, do we mean it? Do we honestly desire it? For see what it means. It means that we are asking that every cherished sin and passion may be cast out of our hearts; it means that we desire that neither money nor pleasure nor fame should have any power over us or draw away our love from God. It means that God’s will and not our own may rule.Oh, that is a great prayer! Do we honestly and sincerely mean what we say? I have known men who loved their sins too much, their pleasures, their money, themselves too much, ever to be able to pray sincerely “Thy kingdom come!” May God give us grace honestly to pray this prayer! May He make us able and willing to give to His commands a glad and complete obedience! God’s kingdom must come in our own hearts before it can come in the world at large! It is only true and loyal subjects of the kingdom who can extend its boundaries and further its interests. Men will not enter the kingdom, though we preach to them till Doomsday, if we ourselves remain without. But if God truly reigns in our hearts, and His kingdom begets in us righteousness, peace, and joy, we shall then be able to go forth and win others as loyal subjects to our King.
But in offering this prayer, we must not stop at ourselves. The prayer embracesthe wide world in its sweep. Thy kingdom come! Where? Everywhere. All nations are to bow down before Him, all people are to serve Him. Men discuss the question sometimes as to which race is likely to become the dominant race in the earth. We people who live in this little island are inclined to believe that this splendid destinyis reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. We stand among the nations for the principles of liberty and truth and justice; and as I heard Dr. Clifford say some months ago, we believe that “the momentum of these ideas will carry us to the government of the earth.” And so far as England does stand for those great ideas, I am not ashamed to confess I am an English Imperialist. But there is something I am more anxious about even than the dominion of England, and that is the dominion of Christ. Above everything else I am a Christian Imperialist. I want to see the banner of the Cross floating over every land. I want to see every nation acknowledging one and the same King—even Jesus. I want to see the crown of the world on the brow which bears still the scars of the crown of thorns! And, brethren, I know that all this shall come to pass! The place of England in the future of the world is, after all, a matter of conjecture. But there is no conjecture, no doubt, no perhaps about the place of Christ. He is destined for the throne! He shall reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet, “Thy kingdom come” in my own heart, over all the world, and let me addin every department of life. When we pray this prayer, we are praying that God may rule in our businesslife, and our social life, and our political life. We are asking Him to preside in our Parliaments and our Council Chambers. We are asking Him to take the government of our markets and our offices and our exchanges. We are asking Him to be Lord in the realms of art and literature. What an enormous sweep this prayer has! And we must not only pray this form of words, but if our prayer is not to be a sham and a pretence, we musttoilto realise the kingdom. “Laborare est orare,” says the old Latin proverb: “To labour is to pray.” At any rate, no one has truly prayed this prayer who does not bend all his energies to the task of seeking to establish this kingdom on earth. England keeps in every important foreign town consuls to look after the interests of English people. Let me use that to illustrate the duties of Christian people. We are in this world to look after the interests of God and of His kingdom. We are His consuls. You business men, you are in business to look after God’s interests and to promote His kingdom! You professional men—doctors, lawyers, schoolmasters—you are in your professions to look after God’s interests and to promote His kingdom! You politicians, you are in politics to look after God’s interests and to promote His kingdom! Youfathers and mothers in the homes, you are there to look after God’s interests and to promote His kingdom. You must be Christian business men, Christian lawyers, Christian doctors, Christian teachers, Christian politicians, Christian parents. Be faithful to your trust!Solive,solabour, that God’s kingdom may come! No wish or prayer of ours can make the summer come an hour before its time, or stave off by one hour the approach of grim winter, but itdoes dependupon our prayers and labours whether it shall be soon or late that summer gladness shall come into the souls of men; whether it shall be soon or late that Christ shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.
Let me now proceed to the question, “How is this kingdom to be established?” Let me first say how itcannot. It cannot be established by force. Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon built up their empires with the sword, and cemented them with blood, but not so is the kingdom of God to be established. Men have tried that method; they have used fire and sword to make God’s kingdom come. Peter had that spirit when he pointed to the two swords the disciples possessed. Mahomet followed this plan when he gave to men the alternative, either Islam or death. The Crusaders, spurred on by theburning eloquence of Peter the Hermit, committed the same blunder. The old Saxon and Gothic kings, who when they accepted Christianity themselves compelled their people to be baptised as well, followed the same mistaken method. But these people did not advance the kingdom of God one whit. You do not make a man a member of this kingdom by baptising him, or enrolling him among the adherents of a church, or bycallinghim a Christian. Men must have their hearts changed, they must be born again. They must be willing to render glad obedience to theirFatherKing before they become members of this kingdom. Force may increase the numbers of a sect, it cannot add one to the membership of the kingdom. The sword may compel a man to change his name; it can never compel him to change his heart! Oh no; it is not by the sword that God’s kingdom will come. To all ecclesiastical persecutors Christ says, “Put the sword up into its sheath.” Not by the sword is the kingdom to come, but by the Cross! Constantine of old, when on the eve of a critical battle, dreamed he saw a cross in the sky, and around it this legend, Σὑ τουτῷ vῖκᾳ, “by this conquer.” That is the weapon we have to use in our warfare. That is the weapon wherebyGod’s kingdom is to be established. We are to conquer “by the Cross.” We are to conquer by the power of love. For the Cross means love—love at its best, love in the glory of sacrifice. The Cross is the power of God. It is by the story of the Cross that men’s hearts are to be broken, and their affection and allegiance won. “By this conquer” is the charge given to us. Preach the Cross! Exalt the dying Redeemer of men! When we lift Him up He will draw all men unto Him.
“Thy kingdom come.” It is a prayer to-day; but the time will come when the prayer shall be changed into praise, and we shall be able to say, “Thy kingdom has come!” It has been coming for eighteen hundred years, and it is not here yet; but doubt not, despair not, faint not, itSHALLcome. Men have called the visions such men as Plato and Sir Thomas More have given us of the “Ideal State,” “Utopias,” “Nowheres,” to mark their idea of those visions as fantastic, impractical, impossible. But let no one dare to call the kingdom of God a Utopia. Let no one dare to say of the new earth which Christ foretold that it is a vain, an impossible dream. To say that is to deny the faith, and to be guilty of the great Apostasy. Do you say that the establishment of a kingdom ofjustice and peace and joy is impossible? I will tell you nay. God is pledged to it, and He shall not fail nor be discouraged. The time is coming when our evil hearts shall be made pure and clean; the time is coming when our life day by day shall be sweet and holy and happy; the time is coming when lying, deceit, and greed and strife, and distrust and shame shall be banished from the earth; the time is coming when asylums and penitentiaries and gaols shall no longer openly proclaim our shame; the time is coming when the drunkard and the profligate and the criminal and the harlot shall be no more, but the people shall be all righteous—a branch of God’s planting, that He may be glorified! The time is coming when trade and politics and pleasure shall be carried on to the glory of God. The time is coming when literature and art shall be cleansed of all impure taint, and shall speak of God as the Bible speaks of Him to-day. The time is coming when China and India and the Dark Continent and the isles of the sea shall place their crowns on the head of Christ. The time is coming when every idol shall be broken and every superstition destroyed, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. The time is coming whenrighteousness, peace, and joy shall everywhere prevail, and sin and wrong shall be words whose meaning men no longer understand.Sursum corda.Lift up your hearts! That glorious time is coming! That glorious day is about to break. “The world is grey with morning light.” Thy Kingdom come! Itmustcome; itwillcome. Its coming does not depend upon you or me, but upon the risen and exalted Christ. “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands.”
Break, triumphant day of God,Break at last, our hearts to cheer;Throbbing souls and holy songsWait to hail thy dawning here.Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,May they all for God be won;And, in every human heart,Father, let Thy kingdom come.
Break, triumphant day of God,Break at last, our hearts to cheer;Throbbing souls and holy songsWait to hail thy dawning here.Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,May they all for God be won;And, in every human heart,Father, let Thy kingdom come.
Break, triumphant day of God,Break at last, our hearts to cheer;Throbbing souls and holy songsWait to hail thy dawning here.
Break, triumphant day of God,
Break at last, our hearts to cheer;
Throbbing souls and holy songs
Wait to hail thy dawning here.
Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,May they all for God be won;And, in every human heart,Father, let Thy kingdom come.
Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,
May they all for God be won;
And, in every human heart,
Father, let Thy kingdom come.