GOD’S EMPIRE
‘Thy kingdom come.’
There are three portions of God’s empire which are particularly included in the petition, when we say, ‘Thy kingdom come.’ There are the reign of grace in a believer’s soul, which is personal religion; the extension of that kingdom in many hearts, which is the Church; and the final state, or coming in of eternal glory, which is heaven.
I. The reign of grace.—Let us look at it, first, in its particular, private sense. We have in it the aspiration of an awakened mind, feeling its disordered state, and its rebellion, conscious of great disobedience, painfully anxious after peace and holiness, ‘Thy kingdom come.’ What is the nature of that kingdom in the heart? See what it is not.
(a) It does not consist of the glory of this present life—‘My kingdom is not of this world.’
(b) It is not meat and drink nor the strictness of outward observances. That is nature’s kingdom of God.
(c) It cometh not with observation. It does not make its entrance as man generally expects it to make its entrance.
Now let us turn and try to see what ‘the Kingdom of God’ in the soul of a man really is.
(d) It is spiritual. The Holy Ghost broods over the soul; there is a breath, and that is the breathing of the Holy Ghost, and it awakens a new feeling in a man’s mind; it is a hope, it is a principle of action; it comes, and it exercises its deep influence over that man’s mind; and there is a ‘kingdom’ begun.
(e) It is free; no one knows liberty who does not know the kingdom.
(f) It is comprehensive. It includes a vast range, yet it gathers up the whole range into a system. Every affection, every desire, every action, every thought, fixes itself upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
(g) It is exclusive. The heart grows so full of God that it can hold nothing else. Whatever comports not with God must go.
II. The extension of the kingdom.—The Saviour also intended His words to refer to the setting up of His kingdom upon this earth. If you ask where that ‘kingdom’ is and when it was established, I answer, it is the Church; and it was set up when Christ, having ascended as a conqueror, took upon Himself the administration. Then did Christ form to Himself, out of this world, a distinct, especial province, which, under the present dispensation, is emphatically Christ’s ‘kingdom.’ In this province, the Church, we are to look for the present reign of God. True, after nineteen centuries it is still a very little kingdom, this spiritual Church, but it is a ‘kingdom.’ This kingdom is an ever-expanding kingdom, and it rests with us to further the extension of the reign of Christ. Hear the missionary call, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.’ Only so will the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ.
III. The coming in of eternal glory.—This prayer—‘Thy kingdom come’—has a prophetic sense. There pervades all Scripture—from Moses and Daniel to St. Paul and John—a universal expectation that Christ will Himself come again, and set up a glorious kingdom. Does not the whole of the New Testament lead the eye over the valley of death as a thing not much to be thought of, and fix it upon the Advent of Jesus Christ? And is not this a far happier focus of thought than death, seeing that it has all its solemnity and all its happiness, without any of its separation, without any of its gloom? But there is a state beyond and above the kingdom to be set up at the Second Advent; it is always mentioned after it in the Bible, as in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, or in the last two Chapter s of the Revelation—heaven, heaven properly so called, an eternal rest, final and complete, when there shall be no more conflict, no more sin, no more change. To that blessed state, the Church, with outstretched neck, reached on—‘Thy kingdom come.’
—Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustration
‘In using this prayer we declare our desire that the usurped power of Satan may speedily be cast down—that all mankind may acknowledge God as their lawful King, and that the kingdoms of this world may become in fact, as they are in promise, the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ. The final setting up of this kingdom has been long predicted, even from the day of Adam’s fall. The whole creation groans in expectation of it. The last prayer in the Bible points to it. The canon of Scripture almost closes with the words, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 11:15; Genesis 3:15; Romans 8:22; Revelation 22:20).’