Thy Kingdom Come – Matthew 6:10 – Skip Heitzig
Welcome to Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig. We’re so glad you joined us today. As people of God, we are part of a spiritual kingdom even as we live in the world. Jesus will ultimately establish his kingdom on earth. But until then, we are called to be his ambassadors here and now. In this series, Pastor Skip explores what it means to occupy till he comes.
Good morning.
I tell you what, you’re a pretty lively group, listening to your worship, so loud, so vibrant. Are you the most fun of all the church services, would you say?
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]
Do you think you’re a little biased when you say that?
Yes.
Maybe a little bit? OK. So you bring a Bible with you?
Yes.
So make your way over to Matthew, chapter 6, Sermon on the Mount, familiar territory. We’re going to be looking at a very famous prayer. You know it well. It’s called the Our Father. It’s a prayer you grew up praying. Some of it by heart. Probably most of you know it by heart.
This prayer, Matthew, chapter 6, the Our Father, is put in more cards, posted on more plaques than any other prayer in the world. In fact, I would even say, unbelievers know this prayer, and many of them could record it from memory. They know it by heart.
Let me give you a few thumbnail facts about this prayer before we look at one particular verse. Number one, there are only 66 words in the prayer. So it’s a very short prayer, but you discover it goes to the heart of life. It is praying for the important stuff, the stuff that matters.
Number two, it’s not a prayer to be recited as much as it’s a prayer to be modeled. Think of it as a skeleton by which all of our prayers are formed. You’ll notice in verse 9, Jesus said, “in this manner, therefore, pray.” In other words, though you can recite it– many do, and they find great value in that– pray like this. Let this be your model that you base communication with God on.
Number three, you don’t find the word “me” in this prayer. There’s no “I.” There’s no “me.” There’s no “my.” You find pronouns like “you.” Yours is the kingdom, yours is the power.
And you find the word “our.” It’s a community prayer. Think of it as it’s a kingdom prayer, a kingdom city prayer. It’s not about you as much as about us.
Number four, this prayer is misnamed. We call this the Lord’s Prayer, even though Jesus never called it that. And it’s addressed to his disciples, and Jesus told them to pray like this. So this would be more aptly called the disciples’ prayer rather than the Lord’s Prayer. There’s not a record that he personally prayed this, but that he taught his disciples to pray like this.
A fifth interesting fact to me is this prayer was recited in movie theaters in England up until 2015. If you went to an English theater, a cinema, the Anglican church ran a video ad that simply recited the Lord’s Prayer until 2015. 2015, it was banned as being offensive, just praying the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. That’s offensive, so no more.
And then finally, the last little fact I want to bring out about this prayer is this prayer was regularly recited in the classrooms of this country, the United States of America, until 1962. In 1962, some of you will recall a gal by the name of Madalyn Murray O’Hair brought a lawsuit, and the prayer was banned, stating that it violated the First Amendment.
Let’s look at it and see just how offensive it is. “In this manner, therefore, pray– 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. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
Now, today, we’re going to look at one verse, one tiny, little snippet of this prayer, and that is in verse 10, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And I want to answer the question, what does it mean to be a kingdom city? What do we mean by that phrase, that title?
Now, you’ll notice in verse 10 there are actually two petitions. The first is a prayer for the kingdom and in particular, for the kingdom to come. The second is a prayer for the King himself to exercise his rule, his authority. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Now, what I’d like to do, in looking at this single verse, is to develop these thoughts by noticing three elements of God’s kingdom. In this series, you have heard the little tagline that we speak about. We say, this place, these people, my privilege. And you’re going to hear that a lot, this place, these people, my privilege.
Let’s say that together. This place, these people, my privilege. What we mean by that is this. God has called us to this place. And living in this place, God has called us to love these people. And God has called us to see it as a privilege, am honor, to serve him by serving these people.
And why? For one simple reason. He’s the King. It’s his kingdom. And it is our commission.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank, all five of you, for–
[LAUGHTER]
–liking that.
Hallelujah.
Now, what I want to do is look at three basic elements of this, the character of this kingdom, the coming of this kingdom, and the commission of this kingdom. First of all, the character of this kingdom, and I’m zeroing in particular on one word, and that is the word itself, the word “kingdom,” verse 10, Your kingdom come.
What kind of a kingdom are we talking about? When we talk about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, what kind of kingdom are we talking about? Because I venture to say, most of us, when you hear the word “kingdom,” your mind is filled with memories of your youth, from movies you’ve seen, from cartoons you were a part of. When you hear kingdom, you think of knights and swords and banners and castles and moats and pomp and ceremony, maybe even a princess and a frog, depending on your memory of your childhood.
But you probably think of a kingdom as taking vast swaths of property by a powerful monarch, who would wage war to subjugate the people and bring them under his rule. In fact, if you were to look it up in Webster’s Dictionary, it defines it as “a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or a queen.” That’s the definition.
In other words, it’s a territory and a people over which a king reigns with total authority. That’s the dictionary definition. What’s the biblical definition?
In the Bible, when you look at the kingdom, in particular God’s kingdom, it speaks of it in two ways, outwardly, inwardly. In one sense, it’s outward and physical. In another sense, it’s inward and spiritual.
So you know that the Jews expected a kingdom, a literal, physical kingdom. The disciples were among them. When Jesus showed up, by listening to what he was saying, they were thinking, I want this king, as he calls himself, to establish a kingdom, a literal rule dominated by God ruling through his Messiah.
And the reason they thought this is because they were raised to believe this, all the Old Testament prophecies that predict a literal kingdom that would one day come on the earth, something we already looked at in a previous series, but also, because did you know that Jesus, one of his favorite subjects was the kingdom? He spoke on it so much. In fact, if you were to add them all up, 53 different times in the four Gospels, Jesus mentions a kingdom.
So I just want you to look at some of this. Go back to chapter 5, chapter 5 of Matthew. This is the beginning of this sermon that the Lord’s Prayer is found in, the Sermon on the Mount. And let’s look at just a few verses. Verse 3 of chapter 5, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Verse 10, “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Verse 19, “whoever, therefore, breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Then we get into chapter 6, the Lord’s Prayer, your kingdom come, yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. And then finally, in chapter 6, verse 33– or 31, he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. So just in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus keeps mentioning a kingdom, a kingdom, a kingdom.
To add to that, he gives stories. In Matthew, chapter 13. what do we call the stories of Jesus? Anybody know? Parables. And those parables in Matthew 13 are called kingdom parables. Why? Because Jesus said, I want to show you his words, the mysteries of the kingdom.
And so he said, “the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed seed in a field. And again, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Again he said, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman hid in a batch of dough.” He also said, “the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.” He also said, “the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls.” And finally, “the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet.”
So throughout Jesus’ teaching ministry, it’s all about the kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom. Then in Matthew 24, when the disciples want to know when this is coming, Jesus tells them about the eschatological kingdom, that is coming at the end of days, that he will set up literally, physically on the earth. So they’re waiting for that to happen.
Then Jesus went to the cross, died on that cross, rose from the dead three days later. And when he rose from the dead, guess what he started talking to his disciples about? The kingdom. Acts, chapter 1, “he was seen by them for 40 days, and he was speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”
This is why the disciples said to Jesus during that period of time, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? You keep talking about the kingdom. Would you set that up, please? They wanted that physical, literal kingdom to be established.
And it will be one day, but not yet. Remember Jesus had stood before Pilate. Pilate had heard that he claimed to be a king. People said he was a king. He said, are you a king?
Remember what Jesus said? He said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would rise up and fight. But my kingdom is not of this world.
However, one day his kingdom will be of this world. When he comes and sets it up, Revelation, chapter 11, the angel declares, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. And he will reign forever.
So the disciples expected a kingdom, but it didn’t happen yet. So to sum it up, the kingdom is both internal and external. It has a personal, individual aspect. It has a global, worldwide aspect. It is an invisible spiritual kingdom, as well as one day, a visible, actual, literal kingdom.
But right now it’s just the first part. Right now the kingdom is internal, personal, individual, spiritual, invisible. Or to put it another way, wherever God rules over the human heart, there the kingdom of God is established. If God is ruling over your heart, then the King and the kingdom is established with you personally, individually.
That’s why Jesus could say the kingdom of God is at hand, or the kingdom of God is near. He also said, the kingdom of God is within you. Boy, everybody messes that verse up. Like, well, everybody has the kingdom of God because the kingdom of God is within you.
Here’s a better translation. The kingdom of God is in your midst. You know why he could say that? Because he was there. The King has shown up, y’all. I’m the King. And because the King is here, the kingdom of God is in your midst. So that’s the character of this kingdom.
Let’s look at a second aspect, and that is the coming of this kingdom. Because that’s the prayer. “Your kingdom come.” That’s what we are to pray, Your kingdom come. To pray Your kingdom come is to, essentially, pray for God’s enthronement, his authority, his rule, personally, societally, and eventually.
Let me give you those three fleshed out a little bit. When we pray, Thy kingdom come, I mean that in my life personally. When I say your kingdom come, I first and foremost mean rule over me, Lord. Be in charge of my life. Have your way in my life.
But second, because there are others that live around me, I’m praying for that in the lives of other people collectively, corporately. And through evangelism, by telling them about Jesus, and through my good works that validate my evangelism, the kingdom of God will spread.
But when I pray, Thy kingdom come, I also mean in the future eventually. When I pray, Thy kingdom come, essentially, I’m saying come quickly Lord Jesus and take over this earth and establish your future millennial kingdom on the earth, which he will do one day.
So one day, someday, his kingdom literally will come. When it does, it will not be passive. It will not be silent. It will not be in the shadows. It will not be individual, as it is now. One day, God will impose his kingdom rule on the world from the real kingdom city, the city of Jerusalem, for 1,000 years.
Now, many people, and I would venture to say most of us in this room included, have made Jesus Christ the King of their lives. You’ve asked him to come in. You’ve surrendered your authority to him. You want his rule in your life.
But there has never been a universal reign of the kingdom of God on the earth yet. We are still waiting for that. I want to drill down on this.
When that kingdom comes, we won’t do it. He will do it. It’s something that he himself will do alone. The kingdom comes when the King comes. Without a king, you have no kingdom. And so we can talk about the kingdom of God internally and spiritually and individually, but the real show starts when Jesus the King shows up. Without the King, there’s really no kingdom.
Now, why do I press this? Because I don’t want you to get the idea by the title that we’ve used, Kingdom City, that we are somehow bringing in God’s kingdom. We are not. He’ll do that alone.
Do you remember in our previous series on the End Is Near? question mark. It was a pretty lengthy series. So back in February, I gave a message. I can’t expect you to remember that far back. But I bet you’re going to remember the content, at least.
So there was a message in February in that series where I told you the difference between premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. Raise your hand if you remember that we did that sermon, at least. OK, so good. So I mentioned that premillennialism– that’s what I am. I’m a premillennialist. I believe the world’s going to get worse and worse and worse until Jesus comes back.
Then there’s the amillennialist, doesn’t believe in a Millennium at all. It’s all spiritualized. It’s all allegorical, whatever. It’s just whatever. Push it away.
But then there is the postmillennialist. And the postmillennialist believes this. Listen. We are going to bring in the kingdom, and we’re going to deliver that kingdom to Jesus and that he won’t come back till after we do that.
You say, well, how do we do that? Well, we’re going to evangelize the world and Christianize the world. And things are going to get better and better and better, and more people are going to get saved. And the whole world is going to be Christianized. We’re going to bring in the kingdom, and we’re going to deliver that to Jesus Christ.
All I can say about that theology is that is wildly optimistic, in fact, out of touch optimistic. Because I’ve never seen where the world gets better and better and better. Usually, that theology flourishes in the West, in America, during times of peace. When there’s no war, when things are going good, the economy is going good, we think, hey, I think we’re pulling this off.
But the idea is the church will bring in the kingdom. Now, this shows up in different shades. It is sometimes called reconstruction theology, sometimes called kingdom theology. Sometimes, it’s known as liberation theology. It shows up in the signs and wonders movement. It shows up in the spiritual warfare movement, where we bind the demons, we take authority, we take them captive, and we bring in the kingdom.
That is not what we mean by kingdom city. God does not need our help to bring his kingdom. He’s going to do it all by himself quite apart from his church. Because he is sovereign. He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of Lords. And in his own time. He will bring in his own kingdom.
As Psalm 115 declares, “our God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases,” one of my favorite verses. God’s in heaven. He does whatever he wants. It’s like the little boy who said that God is greater than Superman, Batman, and the Power Rangers put together.
That’s an understatement. Of course he is. He’s King of kings. He’s Lord of Lords. So that’s the character of the kingdom. That’s the coming of the kingdom.
The third thing I want to talk about is the commission of the kingdom. Because we have a second request in verse 10, not only “Your kingdom come, but your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Now, the very fact that Jesus told us to pray this indicates that God’s will is not always being done on the earth.
Would you agree with that? Would you agree that God’s will is not always being done on the earth? I would. Well, I just said it. Of course, I’m going to agree with myself, right?
So let me explain. The Bible says, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Right? That’s his will. Question, is everybody saved?
No.
Has everybody come to repentance?
No.
Are there people who perish? Yes. Are there people who die and go to hell? Yes. That’s not what God wants. He is not willing. He does not will that. And yet. That. Happens all the time.
So we are taught to pray, Your will be done because God’s will is not always perfectly being done on the earth. So God is sovereign, yes. He rules over all, yes. He will bring his kingdom, yes.
But that doesn’t mean we just sit on our hands. It does not mean that we are fatalistic and say, well, what will be. God is sovereign, and he’s going to bring his kingdom. So I’m going to just sit back and let that happen. No.
This prayer implies a responsibility, a commission. And what is that commission? What is that responsibility? To represent the kingdom of God.
OK, let’s look at the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus lived on this earth how long? 33 years. You guys know your stuff. OK, let me ask you a second question. Do you know how long his ministry was? Three years. Three, 3 and 1/2 years was the extent of his ministry.
During that time, here’s Jesus living in a fallen, broken world. Question, what did he do? What did he do during that time? Some of you might say, well, he preached the gospel. Good. You got part of the answer correct.
But that’s not all that he did. We happen to have two verses in the Gospel of Matthew that are summary verses of his entire ministry. The first is Matthew 5:23. The second is Matthew 9:35. They’re almost identical with a little bit of nuance change.
“Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.” There’s three activities Jesus did. He engaged in evangelism, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He engaged in discipleship, teaching in their synagogues. And number three, he alleviated human suffering to validate the message he was preaching. He was healing all kinds of sickness, all kinds of disease among the people.
So he preached the gospel. He trained disciples. And he got his hands dirty to make things better. Now, Christians throughout history have noticed this. They’ve noticed what I just said. And in noticing that this sums up Jesus’ life, they believed they had a mandate to do something about the culture in which they lived, that Christians are not called to apathy, but to activity; that Christians are not called to indifference, but involvement.
And you may or may not know that the great revivals of the past produced a number of things in terms of fruit. You could study the great revivals of history, and you’ll find that there was strong gospel preaching. There was mass conversion. There was a renewed love for the scriptures, the Bible.
There was prolific song writing, that would express what God was doing. And the society in which those people were saved in got better. It got better. Did you know that most social reforms in the West are related directly to the preaching of the gospel?
So many examples of this– as Christianity began to spread west, in the 4th century AD, the very first hospital we have in history came about by Christians. And the reason they developed the hospital idea or hospital system is because they believed Jesus gave us a mandate to care for the sick. Why? Because Jesus preached the gospel, trained disciples, and healed people. So they thought, we follow Christ. We have a mandate to care for the sick.
Then there was John Wesley, in England, in the 1700s. He was a gospel preacher. I mean, he got on a horse and would ride from village to village and just in the open air, proclaimed the gospel and brought great revival to that country. But he not only preached the gospel of salvation, but he preached against slavery, he preached for prison reform, and for education. He got involved politically, et cetera.
He inspired by his preaching a young man by the name of William Wilberforce, who was indeed a politician in the Parliament of England. And Wilberforce led an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade, which he was successful at doing eventually in 1834. Three days before his death, John Wesley wrote a little letter to William Wilberforce, assuring him that God raised him up for this season, for such a time as this, and urged him not to be weary in well doing.
Now, that whole mentality spilled over across the Atlantic Ocean into the United States of America, so that the Christians began preaching, especially the Quakers. They preached that slavery is the greatest sin against God. And by that preaching in the pulpit and teaching the scriptures, there developed a movement known as the American Anti-slavery Society, direct result of those churches.
That culminated in Abraham Lincoln crafting and signing the Emancipation Proclamation. A little later, in the 1800s, a guy by the name of Charles Finney, I don’t know if you’ve ever read anything by him or about him. But I suggest you do. It’s incredible reading. I have been inspired by him for years.
Charles Finney was an interesting cat. He was a lawyer turned evangelist. So he was a very critical thinker. He became an evangelist. He shared the gospel everywhere he went. It is estimated that between 100,000 to 500,000 people got saved under his ministry alone. It spread throughout the entire Eastern seaboard.
But Charles Finney also said, “the church’s neglect of social reform grieved the Holy Spirit and hindered revival.” So one of Finney’s converts was a guy by the name of Theodore Weld. He became Finney’s assistant for a period of years, eventually left serving Finney, and devoted the rest of his life to the struggle to end slavery in America.
Here’s what I want you to see. Whether it’s Wesley or Finney, they’re both preachers of the gospel. People are in mass coming to Christ. But the gospel they preach inspired others to get involved. Why? Because the gospel transforms people. And then those people are sent out to transform the lives of other people with that gospel and by their works that validate the gospel that they preach.
So a saved soul sanctifies society. How’s that for a tongue twister? A saved soul sanctifies society. Hey, can you imagine if every single human being on earth were saved? Hard to imagine. But imagine just for a moment every person in the world saved. That’ll happen one day. It’s called the Millennium. So it’s not going to happen anytime soon unless Jesus comes back.
But imagine if everybody were saved. Would we have a different world? So let’s work at getting more saved. Let’s work at getting more saved and showing them why they should get saved because they see the transformation in the lives that God’s people make. That’s a kingdom city. We are salt and light. We are a city set upon a hill that cannot be hid.
Now, I mentioned Finney, and I mentioned Wesley. Let me add a few names to that. There was a German Lutheran minister named Theodore Fliedner, who built homes for ex-prisoners, like halfway houses, when they got out of jail, to get them back on their feet. He decided he should build hospitals, asylums for the mentally ill. And one of his most famous students was a gal by the name of Florence Nightingale, who became the mother of modern nursing.
Then in the 1800s, because of the unhealthy conditions in London, due to the Industrial Revolution, the YMCA developed, Young Men’s Christian Association, and the YWCA, Young Woman’s Christian Association, to bring people in who had been oppressed and abused and win them to Christ and love them for Christ’s sake. Then there were missionaries, William Carey, who went to India, David Livingstone, who went to Africa, to share the gospel and help to heal the nation’s wounds that they were living in.
Why did they do that? Why should we do that? Because social concern is the twin sister of evangelism. Social concern is the twin sister of evangelism.
We sort of have a false dichotomy in the evangelical world. We decry. We speak out against people that just do the social gospel because it has been abused. There are churches who do not preach the gospel. But let’s just be kind to everybody and help people and have this campaign– it’s the social gospel.
And so the false dichotomy is, well, you either preach the true gospel, or you just practice the social gospel. I have an idea. Let’s do both. Let’s actually preach the gospel and because it’s the true gospel, get involved socially to better people. Faith without works is dead, the Bible says. The fruit of the gospel is change.
Now, in Psalm 146, it’s a beautiful psalm. I was finding it this week and reading through it. And so it’s basically a psalm where the psalmist encourages people to put their trust in God. But then he describes the God that they are to put their trust in.
And it says this, in Psalm 146, verse 7, “God executes justice for the oppressed. He gives food to the hungry. He gives freedom to the prisoners. He opens the eyes of the blind. He raises those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. He watches over the strangers.” Then it goes on to say in verse 10, “the Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.”
So there’s a kingdom coming. Until then, God is all about helping the oppressed, the hungry, the bowed down, the prisoners, the strangers. So that’s what we are to do in the meantime as we’re waiting for that coming kingdom. See, if I’ve tasted the kingdom personally, and the kingdom is coming literally eventually, what am I to do in the world practically? This.
John Stott is a book I was reading this week. John Stott asks the question, which Jesus do we believe in, and which Jesus do we preach? That’s a question I want to just close with. Which Jesus do we believe in, and which Jesus do we preach?
You say, why should anybody ask that question? Because Paul the apostle said, there are people in the Church of Galatia who are preaching a different Jesus. So which Jesus do we believe in, and which Jesus do we preach? Do we believe and proclaim the Jesus who only preached the gospel of the kingdom? Do we believe in and proclaim the Jesus who only taught people the truth?
Or do we believe in the Jesus who preached the gospel, taught people the truth, and brought kingdom values to the culture in which he lived? And that’s why we say, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
You see, I cannot say, our, if my religious experience has no place for others. I cannot say, Father, if I don’t demonstrate that relationship in my life. I cannot say, who art in heaven, if all my interests are on earthly things. I cannot say, Your kingdom come, if I’m unwilling to give up my sovereignty. And I cannot say, Your will be done, if I’m not willing to let the Lord have his will done in my life.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done. We must not become like the country preacher in England. They’re called vicars over there. A country vicar was approached by a homeless lady who needed help for her condition. The preacher had all sorts of excuses for her. He said that he was busy. And he was.
He said, he didn’t quite know what to do with her and her condition. And he didn’t. And so what he just said to her is, I’ll pray for you and left. She wrote a letter. “I was hungry, and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger. I was imprisoned, and you crept quietly off to your chapel and prayed for my release. I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.
I was sick, and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely, and you left me alone to pray for me. You seem so holy, so close to God, but I am still very hungry and lonely and cold.”
So what are we to do? We are to preach. We are to teach. And we are to help heal the wounds of those around us. When we do that, we are validating what we are teaching and what we are preaching.
Now, I would be remiss unless I said something else as we close, the fact that you already do that. I am speaking to a group of people– I’m, essentially, preaching to the choir because you are one of the most generous organizations, group of believers, I have ever met. When there are needs that we bring up locally, internationally, with Operation Christmas Child, with feeding people here and kids in town, you step up to the plate over and over and over again. So I applaud you for that. And we must never get to a place where we don’t do that. Because we preach a gospel that is transformative, we need to live transformed lives that demonstrate that.
Father, thank You for this commission that you have given us to see your will exercised in our life personally, to spread the gospel to other people, so that your will is done in their lives socially, while we wait for the literal kingdom of God to be set up on earth eventually.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All of that is at play here. We place ourselves before you as your people, living sacrifices, and pray that we would not neglect one for the other. It would not all be about preaching, but not teaching or helping. It would not all be about teaching, but not preaching or helping. It would not all be about helping, but neglect preaching and teaching.
We would do all in balance for your glory. Because there is the joy zone for us to operate in. The joy of the Lord is our strength when we give ourselves to you in these things. Help us. Encourage your people. So many of them do so much of this already. Thank you. Encourage them to go on. In Jesus’ name, we pray. And God’s people said, amen.
Amen.
Again, God’s people said–
Amen.