This Sunday we will look at the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father in Heaven, … Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Our Scripture reading is Mark 1:14-28.
We will also read together Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 123.
On Sunday we will look at Jesus’ proclamation in Mark 1:15 when he said, “The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” We will study this passage in Scripture so that so that we will better understand what we pray for when we pray, “Your Kingdom come.” Darrell Johnson writes, “In order to appreciate what Jesus is calling us to do in this prayer, we need to be reminded of the staggering claim that Jesus made in his first sermon (Mark 1:14-15). But in order to appreciate that staggering claim we need to be reminded of the Jew’s concept of history.” We will focus on the words “time” and “kingdom” and how they shape our prayer.
By way of preparation for Sunday, I invite you to think about the kingdom of God. Dale Bruner writes, “few words are as difficult to understand and interpret as … ‘kingdom’ in the New Testament.” Jesus doesn’t give a clear definition and say, “The definition of the kingdom of God is this. When it comes it will look exactly like this.” Instead Jesus gives us pictures, parables, miracles, metaphors and similes.
Through parables, Jesus said that the kingdom of God (or, in Matthew, the kingdom of heaven) is like a banquet, a wedding feast, a treasure hidden in a field, a net cast wide, a landowner who hires laborers to work and pays them all the same no matter how long they worked, a mustard seed, yeast. (Read Matthew 13, Luke 13:18-30, and other parables of Jesus that describe the kingdom)
Jesus also made comments about the kingdom. “Seek first the kingdom of God …” (Matthew 6:33). Jesus said it must be received as a child (Mark 10:15). He said that a great reversal is coming, and that sinners will enter the kingdom before the Pharisees (Matthew 21:31). He said that the Pharisees shut the kingdom of heaven in peoples (Matthew 23:13).
The “Kingdom of God” is something so great and so big that it isn’t easily defined. Yet, as Jesus began his ministry he made the bold claim that the Kingdom of God has come near. In Him, by His presence, by Him coming to us here on earth everything has changed. The kingdom of God (in all its vastness and greatness and with all its implications) has come near.
As we prepare for Sunday let it not be lost on you that Jesus announces that the kingdom of God has come near (to us), and not the other way around. And His coming near ushers in a great new reality for us: the kingdom of God’s rule has come near in Christ.