THE FATHER’S KINGDOM
Those of us of a certain age might be familiar with this passage from its having part in our lives at school, when it was part of the day’s routine to repeat it. I doubt if that custom is maintained now, but it means some of us are familiar with this prayer. We might have wondered then, and some may wonder now, why we do not say this prayer in our meetings. I might answer that by pointing out that the Lord has only just said in this passage that we should avoid vain repetition, and if He said that it is unlikely that this prayer was intended to be a formula, or that our prayers were to be dictated in this way. It is the intention of God that we should have liberty in prayer, and the Holy Spirit is the guide for prayer. He is able to add efficacy to the uncertainty of much that we speak about to God. Nevertheless this prayer is in the ministry and teaching of the Lord Jesus, and it has importance. It is not to be set aside because we do not use it.
I was led to read it now because, thinking about it, and thinking too about the needs of the brethren, which I may only dimly perceive, it struck me that this prayer is very comprehensive. I challenge myself, while I may not use the formula, whether I cover these things in my prayers? We may be so occupied with our needs that we rush straight into expressing them and perhaps we forget that we should begin by giving God His place, and by exalting Him in our thoughts before we turn to Him about anything that we might need. And are we dependent, as this passage shows we should be? Do we acknowledge that we lack the power to get through, unless He Himself provides it?
As we look at the passage, we observe that the Lord is speaking about two kingdoms that are opposed to one another. There is the kingdom of the Father.
I have liberty to call it the kingdom of God, but the Lord Jesus calls it the kingdom of the Father. It is an expression He uses in chapter 13:43, and at the supper He says that the Father’s kingdom has been appointed to Him (Luke 22:29). It is a precious idea that the Father has a kingdom. That is the first kingdom mentioned here. Then there is this request that we might be kept from evil. That is not simply a prayer to be kept from misfortune, or from calamity, or from accident. It is a prayer to be kept from the evil one, Satan (see footnote to v.13). He has a kingdom: the Lord Jesus speaks of him as the prince of this world (John 12:31), and the world and its system have – as Satan himself claims – been given up to him (Matt.4:8,9). The kingdom of God cannot be overthrown like that. It cannot be assailed by decisions that people make, or by things that Satan has done. And the kingdom of God is to be known here. It is not only a matter of being translated out of earth to be in heaven or anything like that. The truth of the matter is that we are in both of these kingdoms. If we are believers, God has “translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love”, Col.1:13. That is a privilege that brings with it wonderful blessing and wonderful security. But we are in the world too, the present evil world – in it but, as the Lord Jesus said, not of it (John 17:16). We are not exactly citizens of both kingdoms, but if we are believers we have to do with them both in our daily lives and we have to contend with the conflict between the two.
The purpose of this prayer is to guide people like us into how we successfully deal with this conflict. I want to speak about this because we need to be mindful of the way the world about us presents itself. I would not say that it is getting worse, although things are introduced that shock us more than things that we have become used to, but it changes its face all the time, and that is because its prince is a deceiver. His aim is to seduce people into his world. To achieve that purpose, the offering has to keep changing, just like a shop. As we grow older, we tend to forget that the generations that follow, including our own children, meet that changing face. The lessons that we have learned may not necessarily carry them through. The Lord Jesus knows that, and that is why He proposes that this should be the scope of our prayers.
I want to speak practically and feelingly about that, out of deep affection for all and especially for our young brethren. Young people are growing up in circumstances, even as regards the meetings, that are very different from when I was young. It might be said that it was a bad time when I was young, and in a sense it was. There has also been a wonderful recovery in my lifetime, although now so much has fallen away. The practical circumstances in which young people are growing up are doubly difficult because there are fewer people and there is less opportunity for friendships and relationships in the company in which they have grown up, and they face a rising clamour of diverting siren calls in the world around. I deeply sympathise with young people in the challenge that they face in making right choices in those conditions. Having weighed this up, I want to say a simple word of encouragement on that matter.
As I said, the Lord Jesus begins this teaching by speaking about the honour and glory of the Father – a wonderful thing. It is a very blessed thing that God has chosen to make Himself known, through Jesus, as a Father, a very wonderful thing. I remember talking to my own father about it, and what he said was that he thought that God chose to come out that way so that we might get a deep sense of His grace. Think of that! And if the Father has taken that name, it means that He wants us to know what it means to be His children, and not only to take character from Him, but to prove in every matter, His loving care. It is a wonderful thing to be associated with and in the care of One who is supreme. “My Father …”, the Lord Jesus says, “… is greater than all”, John 10:29. Who could look after you better? Who could consider for your welfare better than He can? Who could have thoughts and hopes and aspirations for you that are greater than His? And who would be more able to bring these aspirations to pass and to make them a reality? The Father is able to do these things, and we have been brought to know Him. We take His name, even when we give thanks for our food – it is not a commonplace thing to call Him by that name, beloved. “Let thy name be sanctified”, the Lord Jesus says. Sanctification means that we hold something apart from common use, for a holy purpose, and there is no more simple holy purpose than our liberty to approach Him. We should not do that without thinking of the privilege of it. It is not that it should frighten us, or make us reticent or hesitant, for He loves to hear us; but it is a great privilege, and the fact that we can draw near to Him only amplifies the privilege.
Then He says, “let thy kingdom come”. In other words, let that kingdom of which I spoke earlier prevail. Think of that: the Lord Jesus will deliver up every other rule and authority and dominion, it will all be annulled (1 Cor.15:24,25). Whatever hopes people might pin on the present structure of things, it is going. And when it is all gone, one kingdom will remain, and it will remain for ever – the kingdom of the Father. But it exists now: God is not waiting to establish His kingdom. It might appear to be so publicly, but that is because the conflict I spoke of earlier is not over yet. His kingdom subsists now. It has a heavenly character, but it is to be entered into and experienced now. I am not speaking about a disciplinary system or an authoritarian system, but of a system in which everything that you need is supplied in grace. That is the Father’s kingdom. He does not need to borrow, there is no national debt in this kingdom. He is not under any obligations to anybody else. He does not need alliances or unions with other kingdoms to establish the authority of His own. He does not need to trade with other entities: no, He has enough and more than enough, not only to fulfil your needs as you might see them, but to express what is in His heart toward you, which is greater than you have any idea of. In His kingdom God has, if you could appreciate it, expressed how He loves you.
“Let thy kingdom come”. Ah! What a wonderful thing that would be, if we were prepared to let go of any other influences over our lives, and let God have His way, let the blessing flow, let the windows of heaven open – not wait to do it, not see heaven simply as a prospect for the future, but as the only source of life and satisfaction in a world full of care and anxiety and conflict. That kingdom is here; the supplies are getting through, if only we would draw upon them. The Holy Spirit is here to administer these supplies. He has not left that in the care of angels, or brothers who minister, or anything of that sort. God has entrusted the dispensing of these wonderful resources to none less than the Holy Spirit, and He needs to be your Friend. The better you know Him, the more you will get.
The Lord goes on to say, “let thy will be done”. That is not fatalistic, as if to say ‘God will have His way in the end’. No, it means that I am going to give way to His will, I am going to commit myself to the will of God. And it is interesting that Paul says that the will of God is our sanctification (1 Thess.4:3). Having thought that God’s name may be sanctified, we are also asking that we ourselves might be sanctified. That means that we recognise that, having our part in the kingdom of God and seeking the blessings of it, we stand apart from things that would distract us from, and debase, what would otherwise be our inheritance. We commit ourselves to the good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Rom.12:2) and that covers not only our thoughts and our ways, but even our bodies: we devote them to the will of God – not in servitude, but because it puts us in the way of the river of God’s blessing.
Then He says, “give us to-day our needed bread”. We must be dependent. We make plans for the future. I think about the future and it depresses me sometimes, but we are to look to God each day. There is a hymn that begins ‘Lead, kindly light’, and goes on to say, ‘I do not ask to see the distant scene – one step enough for me’1. That is not the path of faith. The path of faith will show you two things: it will show you first the end of the road; and it lights the next step you have to take towards it. It will always do that. If you take a step, you will find that the light is on the next step. It does not shine half a dozen steps down the way and lead you to make a big leap so that you wonder if you are able for it; no. Scripture speaks of “the steps of the faith … of our father Abraham”, Rom.4:12. The light shone on the next step that he had to take as soon as he had taken the first one. That is the spirit in which we are to handle our relationship with the Father. And what we find is that whatever is needed for the next step, whether it is in practical circumstances and the challenges and problems of life – that is counted; or the food on our tables – that too is included because the Father provides and we give Him thanks for that; but the faith that you need for the next step, the courage you need, the grace you need – you will see them on that next step. You may say, ‘This is difficult, I do not know how to take this step’. But there is light to show you how to take this step, so step on it, and all of a sudden you will find there is light for another step; and each step is bringing you nearer and nearer to the light at the end of the way that God has set before you to keep your eyes above the scene below. That is what the Lord Jesus tells us that we should ask for.
And then He says, “and forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors”. It has been commented that a Christian operates to a higher standard than that nowadays. If God was prepared to forgive me only in the measure in which I was prepared to forgive my brother, I might be in a hard place. But the apostle Paul says, “forgiving one another, so as God also in Christ has forgiven you”, Eph.4:32. How that should free us from these things. It says in the law not to “bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”, Lev.19:18. We may find that we are not set always with company that we find totally congenial, and we also find that we often offend (Jas.3:2). But there is this spirit in which we rise above the failings of others, recognising that they are rising above our failings too, and that God Himself in His grace is doing that as well. It is not that He is ignoring our sins; no, He paid a terrible price that He could “forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”, 1 John 1:9. But He has in mind that that should give us a generosity of spirit in the way that our relations with one another need to work out.
I speak of these things because they are all very positive. They are things that God has supplied, things that God has provided; they are things that He gives the power to enter into and to appreciate: they are realities. It is not wishful thinking – some kind of ideal picture that is painted and that we dream of. No, these are things that the Lord Jesus has taught us to ask for because they are available, and God is ready to give them.
Then the Lord says, “and lead us not into temptation, but save us from evil”. I have a burden to speak about this and I trust that the brethren will bear with me in what I have to say. It may be that this word “temptation” includes the idea of trials. And we cannot ask God to preserve us from trials, because He uses them. “Put to grief by various trials, that the proving of your faith …”, 1 Pet.1:7. Trials are part of God’s ways. “For who is the son that the father chastens not?”, Heb.12:7. God has not promised us a smooth ride; life is about exercise, because it brings us nearer to God, or should do. It would be a great pity if exercise alienated us from God, but exercise is intended to bring us to God and we should not seek to avoid it. A brother said that he would be afraid to ask for discipline, and I understand that, because the Father would choose what the discipline was and then he could not say that he had not asked for it. And we will pass through trials: the path of the Christian goes that way.
But the reason we might pray like this, as to temptations or trials, is not exactly that we might avoid these things, but it expresses the humble recognition in the presence of God that we will not get through the trials unless He helps us. And He has promised to do that. Paul says, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear, but will with the temptation make the issue also, so that ye should be able to bear it”, 1 Cor.10:13. There will always be a way through – not a way of escape necessarily, but a way through the exercise, and fruit from it. There should be. But we need to remember that we will not in ourselves have the power for the trials through which we will pass in our lives. That applies to exercises in your soul, and in your circumstances, and in your household, and in the local meeting, and among the brethren generally. It applies in all these domains. We do not have the power in ourselves to face these things and to get through them without loss.
Now I say this humbly, but sometimes when we hear about a problem among the brethren, there may be a tendency to jump in as if we know the answer: ‘If only someone would listen to me, this problem would go away’. Unless God gives the power for that intervention, it will cause more difficulty than there was before. That is because, no matter how much you know, unless God gives you the power for a difficulty that you pass through, especially one among His people, you will fail. That is something that we learn. Why did I fail? Why was it that I tried to do what was right and I did not succeed? Surely God wanted me to succeed. But did you ask for the power? Or did you think that you could get through the trial on your own? It would have been better not to have the trial, than to try to work things out in your own strength and fail. In our prayers, I think we should be very ready to acknowledge that we get through in the power of God. We need to be careful about that. No problem is small enough to come within the compass of our own strength. We must depend on God. And just as He supplies what we require for our daily needs, so he will supply what we need for the steps of the path of faith along which He is leading us. It is very important to remember that we have been called into a path in connection with which God has promised to supply a power, which we lack, for every step along that way.
But the scripture does not actually refer to trials; it says, “lead us not into temptation”. When Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he refers to the tempter. He says that he was fearful that the tempter might have troubled them, and that his work in Thessalonica might have come to nothing (1 Thess.3:5). It is one element of Satan’s ways, that he is a tempter. As I have said, he is the prince of this world, and Paul calls him “the god of this world”, 2 Cor.4:4. We look around at the world in which we live, and it would be easy to shake our heads over the state of things. I do not want to make a catalogue of all the things that you might regret in the world around, but we know that the world is not at peace, and there is dishonesty, and evil, and unrighteousness on every hand; institutions that are of God, like the family and marriage, are being challenged and questions are being raised about the certainty of God-given identity, and so on. These things are rife, and there is anxiety about them. And there is dislocation: some of it may be ordered by God, as I believe the pandemic was; other examples are self-inflicted by the world in which we are. Satan is, after all, the author of confusion.
I mention these things briefly because I do not think that if this was the only face of the world that we contemplated, we would find it particularly alluring. I remember a brother who used to speak about the temptations, those through which the Lord Jesus passed, remarking how it says that Satan showed Him “all the kingdoms of the habitable world in a moment of time”, Luke 4:5. The brother said it was as well he does not linger: if they flashed past your eye, you would not notice, maybe, the seething problems that are underneath. You cannot look at the world for very long before you realise that it is not a very inviting proposition. Satan of course does not want to occupy you with that side of things. You cannot say that you are not aware of it, but he is not occupying you with it because he is not only a tempter but a deceiver, and he will present the world and his domain to you as an opportunity. That is where the subtlety of it is. As I say, as time goes on, the fashion of the world passes and different things come to the fore. They all have their origin in the nature of sin and in the effect sin produces in fallen man.
I want to speak simply and frankly about this, because it is as well not to be ignorant of his thoughts (2 Cor.2:11). The inception of sin was disobedience, but what was the motive behind that disobedience? A proposition was made to the woman that she could decide for herself what was right and wrong. I say quite simply, that proposition is put to schoolchildren now every day: ‘make your own values’, ‘don’t listen to anyone else’, ‘don’t pray about it’, ‘don’t listen to God’, ‘don’t borrow ideas from other people’. I tried to help someone once who was telling me that the values I hold were outdated traditions – ‘Make your own decisions’, they said. But then if you make your own decisions that is self-will, and it will lead you to do something that you know is wrong. That is what the sinner will do – things that you know are wrong. We all know that, because sinners do not want other people to know what they have done, or thought. Sin works in my will, as well as in any claim I make to knowledge. Then in self-will I go further than that, and I think that God must see things as I now see them. If my sins do not matter to me, then they should not matter to Him. And if I want Him to pass over them, or pretend that they did not happen, or not give them due punishment or sentence, then it is unreasonable or unloving of God not to do that. These things are deceiving.
When we think of the world in which we are nowadays, these things are promoted. I was once in the hall of a school where meetings were being held and they had on the wall an alphabet of values that were being taught to the children. I looked at the list and wondered – what will they say for ‘Q’? And it said: ‘Question everything’. This is what the world will say: ‘What you read in the Bible, and what brethren hold, and what your parents teach you, question it.’ That is what young people are up against nowadays. I trust I can say that the young people here will object to these propositions. But they will recognise them; they know that these propositions are being made. That is the world in which we live; that is what the enemy is trying to do; he is tempting us. The evil one is tempting people into those kinds of paths, and you will suffer immeasurable loss in your soul if you listen. That is because those values that you have been taught are true. They themselves are of infinite value. They are things that God in His kingdom has been pleased to bless you with. They represent the order and structure within which blessings for time and eternity can be found. The security of your soul, the peace of your mind, the order of your life, depend on those values. Yet people have the temerity to say that they do not matter.
Does every father and mother here know that that is what is going on? What are you doing to counter it? Because if you do not do anything, then the beloved young people, for whom so much is available in the kingdom of the Father, are at risk of being swept away in this current or torrent that rushes through the world in which we are. We live in a solemn time, beloved, in which even little children are being corrupted in their minds, to try to lead them away from God’s salvation. That is what the tempter is doing. It is essential to pray. The Father will never tempt you into those kinds of things, He will never do so. James says, “himself tempts no one”, Jas.1:13. He tempts no one. God will never offer anything to you, even the smallest thing, under false pretences; never. You will never find that you thought He would give you something, and it is not there; never. And He will never lead you into evil. He will never lead you to do or think anything that displeases Him, or that causes you to forfeit, even for a moment, the consciousness and enjoyment of His presence.
We might well say, what a challenge we face! I do not want to end on a negative note, but we may look around on the beloved young people, and their parents, and indeed on all of us here, and someone might say, ‘I could go somewhere else, where many more people go.’ Beloved, you have been called to come here, and I say to you simply, this is where you are. And what you will find here is the manifestation and enjoyment of the kingdom. It is not simply something that you can sit back and let wash over you, but it is something in which you can have a living and active part, something to which you can contribute.
Now if I go back to the meeting in which I grew up, there was a large meeting and there were many brothers there with gift. You may have heard their names, although you probably remember hardly any of them, but it was a great privilege to grow up in these circumstances. It was also a great struggle to understand what they were speaking about, and it seemed quite a remote possibility that I, at any rate, in my state of knowledge would have anything to contribute. And yet I learned that I could make a contribution, that there was something that the Lord would give power and grace for. The young people here may find it a bit of a struggle to understand what we say in the meetings – I recognise that. You would be different from me if that wasn’t so. But what I would like to say is that, in the circumstances in which we are – reduced as they have been – there is liberty for you to learn. That is what we are here for. God is waiting to take us out of this scene because He wants to use the day in which we are as a learning time. At the meeting, among the brethren, and at home are places where we can learn, learn about God, learn about His inheritance, learn about the service of God and the things that please Him.
And I would say to the young ones, do contribute and do put yourself out to discover more about these things. And if you have the liberty to do that, do not be afraid to say in the meeting what you are thinking about. I know that the young people here would not want to question what the brethren hold, they would not want to bring the ways of the world into the meeting: I know that.
They would think it was very disorderly and they would be right. But that does not mean that you cannot ask about things that you do not understand. If you want your understanding opened, then ask when there is someone there who could help open your understanding. And as you do that, you will feel that your contributions are welcome, they will be welcomed by everybody there. You will find that this kingdom is not a kingdom in which there is a ruling class, and everybody else is in some state of subjugation. No, it is a kingdom in which everybody is livingly active, receiving from God, and responding to Him in adoring thanksgiving and praise. In that, I promise you that you will find a fulfilment that no calling in life elsewhere can come near. You will find satisfaction because you have found your place in the divine system of things.
Well, beloved, let these things enter into our daily prayers. I am not saying that we need to repeat these verses, but I trust I have given you something to pray about for yourself, dear young person. Would you be prepared to speak to the Father and ask Him to make some of these things more of a reality to you, and ask Him to strengthen you to stand against this current we have spoken of, ask Him to deliver you from it? Ask Him to help your parents to provide an alternative, a counterweight to the things you have to face, and the reproach that goes with facing it. God is ready for all these things. He will not let you down. He is more than ready to help you to meet things that you have to refuse; He has things to offer that He would love you to accept and come into the enjoyment of.
May He bless the word.
Glasgow
28 October 2023
Andrew Burr