Advent Week 2

 Hey guys, how's it going? Yay. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, you're already working and moving in this place, and I just pray that you'd meet us in what we're about to talk about in the scripture being read and whatever I have to say, God, I just pray that you would be in it. Yeah, Lord if we know that, if you don't show up

Nothing matters. So I just ask that you would show up right now, be in this Lord, and yeah, speak to us, transform us, renew our hearts this morning. Amen. So we are in our week two. We're on a break from our ACT series, which has been like a year and a half long series. It's been awesome. But we take little breaks.

So we're in an advent series right now. We're in week two. We're in a four week series on the Lord's. So last week, if you missed it, if you weren't here, I highly recommend going on our YouTube and watching it because Josh spoke on part one, which is our father who Art in Heaven, hallowed Be Your name.

It was awesome. He unpacked who it is that we're praying to, why the Lord's Prayer starts out the way that it does. And the part we're talking about today is your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in. Now, if you're anything like me, this is a really easy prayer to just pray like we pray it every week at the end of service.

If you come to Canopy regularly, you can expect it. We're gonna close with the Lord's Prayer. It's beautiful, it's poetic. If I were to pick a top 10, best of Jesus quotes, this would definitely be in there. It's so good and it's really easy. It's just your f Our Father, art in heaven, Halle, be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done. And if you're anything like me, Other than Sundays, I don't really pray this prayer. Most of my prayer life consists of me just asking God for things, asking God to get me this job, asking God to just do something in my life. Asking God to provide God, please do what I'm asking you to do.

In other words, my prayer life just consists of me petitioning before God for him to do what I want him to do, for my will to be done so that I can have a good life And the good news. We're so blessed to have a God who hears those prayers, who takes our thoughts into consideration. A God who, as it says in Psalm 34, I pray to the Lord and he answered me.

He freed me from my fears, and the Psalm goes on to say, in my desperation, I prayed to the Lord and he listened. He saved me from my troubles. That's the kind of God we pray to, and based off my own personal life experience, it's true. He hears us. He frees us, which is amazing. Josh talked about it last week.

Our father does care. He hears our prayers big and small, and he wants us to bring all of our needs to him. He wants us to lay them before him, our desires, our dreams. He knows us intimately and he loves us uniquely. And when we bring those to him, our deepest desires, even just the little things too, it brings us closer to him that builds intimacy with him.

But I have to wonder, Jesus told us how to pray on his sermon on the Mount. What did he mean by your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And as I took time to meditate on this particular part of the passage this week, it raised some questions for me and I wanna say that a scripture raises questions for you.

Awesome. That's okay. Jesus doesn't expect us to read the Bible and be like, yes, I will obey like robot. I don't know why I just did the robot, but like he doesn't expect that. He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. He wants us to wrestle intellectually.

He wants us to wonder and know and talk with him. So if it raises questions, that's great. Here are three of mine. The first being, if we are praying your kingdom come, your will be done. Then what is this kingdom that we're asking? Number two, why doesn't it just come now, ? And number three, can I trust it when it comes?

So question number one, let's go. What even is the kingdom? This is a really important question for us as Westerners to ask because we don't live in a kingdom. We live in a democracy where everybody gets a say, everybody gets a vote. We have a lot of freedoms in America. You can live whatever type of life you want.

You can go about your day to day, and unless you break a major law, the rulers and authorities we have in place won't really affect your day to day life. The highest goal of our government system is for individual freedoms to be recognized and the actualization of our own will. And from a worldly perspective, this is awesome.

This is great. People literally risk their lives getting to this country because of the freedoms that we have, and I'm so grateful for. We're not under an evil dictatorship where we don't have the right to speak free, speak freely, or meet here or gather or worship God out loud. But the Bible shows us that pursuing our own rights and our own individual freedoms can become an idol and a form of slavery in itself.

We talk about this a few times at Canopy, but in the Book of Judges, it says there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their. In modern day America. I think in the right context, maybe even in a church, if I read that passage, some people would be like, yes, no government. Yeah, let's do it.

Like we are free. We can do whatever is right because we're awesome and we know what's right and wrong and we're the best. But in the book of judges, this was not a good thing. When this first pops up in the story, things are literally tragic. There is sexual immorality through the. Misogyny is a way of life.

There is literally child sacrifice happening. This is not a good thing without a king. It says they did what was right in their own eyes. In other words, they indulged in whatever they wanted by their own will. You guys, this is the extreme picture, but the goal is the same. The fundamental premise of our society we live in is my will be done, but the fundamental premise of this kingdom that we're asking for is thy will be done.

And that's a definition of a kingdom. A kingdom is defined by where the king's will is done. The kingdom of God is any place where God's will is actualized, and this kingdom of God is a good one. We're talking Genesis one and two type of good you guys pre-fall type of good. And when we hear the word good in our society, usually it's used as oh my gosh, those tacos at West Side nights was so good.

Or, How does your fantasy football team do so good. I'm in a fantasy football league, by the way. Found out this morning. I'm in the playoffs, . So Jim's here. It's on or who's a good boy, but that's not the type of good that we're talking about. God's version of good isn't like that. Golden retriever is so cute,

When we hear God's version of good, it means perfect. It means functioning just the way he intended. And his intentions the way he intended it is for peace, for wholeness. Shalom, this week's traditional advent theme, as Josh mentioned earlier, is peace. That's the kingdom. That's the kind of good God is talking about.

And when Jesus talks about his kingdom, he described his kingdom that went, brings liberty to the captives, good news to the poor liberty, to those who are oppressed and sight to the. We see examples of this all throughout scripture. One of my favorites I came across this week. Jesus is out there doing stuff and he sees a funeral happening, and it happens to be a widow's only son that had passed away.

And I love this. It, she didn't even ask him anything. He just saw it happening and the scripture says his heart went out to her and he raised the son from the. He knew that this son was all she had. He says, don't cry because our king is a king who turns mourn into laughter. He's the type of king who actively empowers women, who actively includes and empowers the marginalized.

This king does not oppress. He lifts up when John the Baptist was in prison. He sent some of his disciples to go ask Jesus if he's really the king that they were waiting for, because so far Jesus hadn't called an army and then taken down the Romans by force. It wasn't what they expected, but Jesus said to them, go back and tell John the blind received sight, the lame walk.

Those who have leprosy are cleansed. The deaf here, the deader ray, and there's good news to the poor. That's the kingdom. This is a good kingdom that's coming. But if it's so good. That leads me to my next question. Why hasn't it come? Why doesn't it just come now? And even in telling us when Jesus says, pray your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

He's acknowledging that it's not here. It hasn't fully come. Even when he tells the disciples what he tells them to go back and tell John, he says, the blind receive site, the debtor. There's good news to the poor. He's acknowledging that there is sickness, death, and oppression happening right now. And it's obvious if you've been on the planet for longer than half a second, that his will isn't always done.

If you look around, if you read the news, if you literally talk to the person next to you, I'm sure you would recognize that we are living in a world that is full of broken systems and broken people. But when this thing all started, It was good. God's will was being done. It was perfect. It was God's definition of good, and what God said was the best, the most good was that he created human beings in his image and appointed us with authority to rule over the world.

He wanted our input. He wanted to know what we would name the animals. I was always jealous of that role. I literally, since I was little, I remember being like, man, I wish I had. He wanted our input, he cares. But as soon as you get to Genesis three, you find out that using the free will that God had given us to reign.

Instead, we handed it over to what the Bible calls principalities and powers, and they used the power that was supposed to be ours to seal, kill, and destroy. And when we gave our power over to the. We handed it to him because we doubted that God was who he said he was, and we doubted that we were who he said we were.

So now we're living in this world that is the complete opposite of the way that God intended it, the principalities and powers that we have given our authority to now rule this earth, kingdom of darkness. It's the exact opposite of the kingdom of light, which is Jesus' kingdom. We're living in a world that is under spiritual oppression.

And Jesus acknowledges this when he goes into the wilderness for 40 days and fast, which as a side note, when we fast on Wednesdays, I'm like, every time I'm like, how did he do this for 40 days? And then it says, when it says, if you read the story, it says after 40 days he got hungry. I'm like, okay, . Anyways, so Jesus goes, Fast for 40 days and Satan comes to tempt him.

He takes Jesus up to a high point and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and he says, all of these things I will give to you if you fall down and worship me. Jesus doesn't say you don't have authority to do that. Jesus knows that the kingdom of darkness is ruling this world, but Jesus says away with you.

I love that. It's so dismissive. It's just like away with. He knew that the enemy had authority, but he knew that Jesus had more. Jesus knew his authority came from the Father. It came from worshiping God and God alone. He knew his kingdom could take out the kingdom of darkness. I just wanna say that again.

He knew that his authority came from the Father and from worshiping God and God alone, we find our authority when we were on our knees before the Father. So the picture we have here is a perfect world. A functional one the way God intended it, but it was corrupted when we handed over our authority, and that's why Jesus came to bring the kingdom back into the story, and that's what the Christmas story is all about.

It's him showing up in the context of this good world that's been broken by sin and through pain, through his sacrifice restoring his kingdom. The king showed up to set wrong, to write again, and to quote my favorite book. You guessed it wrong will be right. When Aslan comes in sight at the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.

When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death, and when he shakes his main, we shall have spring again. That's the kingdom Spring is coming, which raises the side question. If he came to set wrong to write, then why isn't it fixed? Why hasn't it fully. That's the question that John and the disciples were asking Jesus all the time.

As Josh said a few weeks ago, this is because the king has extended an era of grace. If he would've just made a clean cut, boom, place the kingdom here on earth, all the wicked, all of us would be done. Jesus said it like this in Matthew 13. If you wanna open your Bibles or look up, it'll, it should be up on the.

It's the parable of the weeds. Matthew 1324. Jesus told another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sew a good seed in his field, but while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sewed weeds among the wheat and went away. When the weeds sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

The owner's servants came to him and said, sir, didn't you sow good seed into your field? Where then did the weeds come from? An enemy did this. He replied. The servants asked him, do you want us to go and pull them up? No, he answered, because while you're pulling up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together and tell the harvest. At that time, I will tell the harvesters first, collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned. Then gather the weeds and bring them into my. So what's happening here is these workers are like, let's just rip it all up and let's rip up the weeds.

And Jesus says, no. If you rip up the wheat before, or the weeds before it's fully grown, before you can fully tell, you might accidentally throw some wheat into the fire. It hadn't fully grown. The wheat needed time to grow. It wasn't time for the harvest. In other words, this is all about grace.

What Jesus is saying is that we need to let the wheat grow before we rip it out. It's about letting the gospel spread to the ends of the earth, giving everyone a chance to receive the grace if they want it. But this parable doesn't just explain grace and mercy. It also explains why the world is the way that it is.

Why we see the kingdom breaking out, why we see healing, why we see all the good stuff, but while we also are living in darkness, why we're living in devastation and brokenness and why sometimes we don't see healing. It's because it's all growing together, but it's not just an external thing. The wheat and the weeds are growing inside of us as well.

We have the spirit and we have our flesh, and they're growing together. They're not two separate. They're growing inside of us at once, and so in praying your kingdom come here will be done. Asking God to rip the weeds out is asking for a part of you to die. That's what our king says. You have to lose your life so you can find it.

We're living in attention of two different realities. We have this kingdom that's coming and sprouting up all around in the midst of this dark, sinful. We're living in the now and the not yet, as Jesus says himself, a time is coming and has now come. So we have a choice which one we wanna participate in, and that's the hard part.

Which leads me to question number three. , if I'm going to die to myself, if I'm going to offer up what I have to this king, can I trust it? Take a sip of water.

And what if I don. What if I don't wanna lose the life I have envisioned for myself? What if I've already experienced loss, pain and suffering, and I haven't seen the kingdom in it yet? I really struggle with this. I've had dreams I've been praying for literally 15 years, and the thought of those dreams, not being god's will for my life terrifies me.

I've prayed countless hours for things I want God to do for healing. I wanna. It's funny when I pray for those things I prayed so many times like, God, I'm not gonna ask. I'm not gonna say if it's your will, I'm just gonna ask for it. I'm gonna demand it. Hebrews force has approached the throne with boldness, so that's what I'm gonna do.

But a question the Holy Spirit has been challenging me with this week is, what if the only prayer I ever prayed was your kingdom come, your will be done. Would that be enough for me? Is the kingdom enough for me? Can I trust the king with the things most precious to me? Am I willing to bring my hopes, my dreams to Jesus and lay them down the altar and say, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Even if it means I might not get what I want. It's really hard. I literally wrestle with this daily, you guys. It's why it's honestly why I was a little bit, not a little bit, a lot, a bit nervous to preach this sermon. Cause I'm like, I'm literally wrestling with this. God, show me that you're enough.

Show me that your kingdom is enough because my kingdom would be pretty great. If we all got, but what I'm learning is it's not that Jesus is looking to take away our. I feared that for a long time that he just wanted to take away my dreams. It's not, that's not the case. He wants us to lay them down on the altar with open hands so that we can be free, not make them an idol so that we can first receive him and what he has to offer.

What I don't mean is that if you tie 10%, Jesus will give you back 20. I don't mean. That . What I'm saying is if you tie 10%, you'll become more free from the bondage of the idol of money, you'll be available for the word of God to work in your heart. I think we have a mindset, at least I do, . We have this instant gratification culture that if we lay something down, if we finally release it to God, then it'll come.

If we let's say you're single and you're really wanting to date and you're like, I'm gonna lay this down. Finally, I'm just gonna offer it up. I think we have this mindset that then our spouse will walk through the door or even me, like with like I, with my music career, like as soon as I lay it down to God, as soon as I give it to him, then I'm gonna get that phone call.

Then everything's gonna change. But the thing is, when we lay these things down on the altar, you get. You get Jesus. I don't know. Did we get the teddy bear picture? Okay, so we're gonna show this picture and I'm sure most of you have seen it. Okay. Oh, it's so sweet. No, I have a lot of problems with this picture.

That was, yeah, the sweet part with sarcasm. Obviously it's this little girl and she's holding this little teddy bear and it's oh God, I love it. I don't wanna give it up to you. And Jesus is like, give it to me. And you know what? What she doesn't know is he's holding a bigger teddy bear behind his back.

I don't think Jesus needs to hold a teddy bear behind his back for him to be good enough for us that, let's get it off the screen. Yeah.

I just don. What if we just put the teddy bear down and embraced him? So if what we get when we offer up our own wants and our needs to the king is the king himself, then the only way I can answer whether or not I can trust the king is by talking about who he is. And in writing this sermon, this is the part I really struggled with the most, not because I didn't have anything to say.

Because it's like, how do you describe someone who's indescribable? Because it's funny, like nothing is, Jesus isn't like anything. Everything is like him. So it's like how do you describe that I'm gonna do my best just by doing my best . Jesus is a kind king. What is what you get. He holds his word.

He listens when I'm sad. He's. He heals our hearts. He fills our souls. He's a king who even the wins and the waves obey. He brings liberty to his subjects. He does not exploit them for more power. Everyone in our world uses power to gain more power. But what did he do? He came from the most privileged position in all of creation.

Came down as a child, as a baby, became like us, and gave up his power for. He is the first born of all creation, and yet he chooses to share his inheritance with us. He is holy and mighty and sits on a throne above it all, and yet through heartbreak, devastation, and loss. He's right there. He is so close if you let him be and he will lay down his life for you.

He did lay down his life for you. Philippians two says Christ Jesus, who being in very nature. Did not consider equality with God as something to be used for his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing. By taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross, you can trust him because he went first.

He made the greatest sacrifice. He laid his most precious thing down on the altar, his own life. In the garden of get Sony. He fell on his face and prayed saying, my father, if it be possible, let this cut pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. In other words, God, I wanna offer this up to you.

I'll do it. I'll do whatever you ask, but please don't make me. I feel that way a lot, but Jesus went first. That's why I can answer the question whether or not I can trust him with a yes. Because he went first and it was really good . Billions of lives were changed because he went first. We're sitting here today because he went first.

He's not a king that will take you by force. Revelation three 20 says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and he with me, and I will eat with him, and he with me. He just wants to eat with you. He wants to share a meal with. He wants to sit down, ask you about your day.

When Jesus is telling his disciples that many will betray him, Peter responds with, where else would we go? You alone have the words of life. It's cuz Peter knew him. And when I sit and think about all these things about this king, when I sit and think about the times I spent with him, I literally don't have a choice in the best way possible.

Why would I want anything? When you know him, when you really spend time with him, you realize there's nothing else you'll want.

Who's seen the movie? Elf? Yeah. Okay. I'm surprised more people didn't raise their hands. Yeah, I need participation. I need to know You're with me? Yes. Okay, great. Okay, great. Okay. You know the scene where the store manager walks in? He's Santa's coming to town 10:00 AM and Buddy's like Santa. I know him.

Oh my god, it's Santa. Like he's literally about to burst out of his skin that it's Santa is coming to town. If you watch the movie I watched this clip this week cuz I, it. The Holy Spirit put it on my heart. And so I watched the clip and I was like, oh my gosh, like he's literally about to explode with the fact that Santa is coming to town.

He's so excited and I'm like, just the thought, like what if we thought about Jesus that way? What if we were like, Jesus, he's coming to town 10:15 AM Sunday morning. What if we got that excited because we knew the king was coming? Buddy knew Santa would show. And so I just, that's what I imagined.

John the Baptist was like, he's behold the lamb of God. I'm not even worthy to unie his sandals, but make way for the king. Like this is the excitement because of who this king is that we get to have for this kingdom that's coming. And as a side note, when Santa does come in the movie and Buddy gets close enough, he realizes it's a counter.

The only reason he was able to recognize a fake Santa is because he'd spent time with the real one. He knew what he smelled like. It wasn't beef and cheese.

Do we spend enough time with our king to know when someone else tries to take the throne and do we call them out when they do? I want you to know your king has enough time for you, so spend time. Ask him to be enough.

He's there. He's ready to listen. If you don't trust him right now, tell him

when you know this king, you know you can trust him. So when he says to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done. It's because you know it's going to be good. You can trust that it's gonna be good functioning just the way he intended.

As we head into response, I just want us to take a few moments maybe just close your eyes

and really ask ourselves if this prayer is enough,

ask God to show you that it is. If that's something you're doubting. Ask God, if this prayer was the only prayer I prayed, would you come through? Would it be enough? And invite Jesus into that with you.

In a moment, we're gonna head into worship but just take as much time as you need.

It's okay to wrestle.

But I think there's an invitation this morning into that. I think there's an invitation into trust.

Don't feel like you need to rush outta this moment with him.

In just a few seconds, we're gonna start singing songs about this king. Because as we sing these songs together in unison, the melodies, the rhythms unite us in worship in saying things that are true so that we can align our lives to those truths. But if you're in a place right now where you just need to sit, Be present to him as he's present to you.

Just go ahead and sit as we're singing these songs, we'll sing them over you. If as you're singing the songs, you or you're sitting, you feel like you need somebody to be with you in it and you wanna pray with someone there'll be some space over here on the side of the stage. Just come over here.

There's nothing special about what happens there. It's just it's not magical or anything. It's just a space and maybe it might be helpful to have somebody walk with you. So if you wanna pray with someone, come up during worship and someone will pray with you. And then something we talked about last week we're gonna do every week of Advent is we're going to decorate this Christmas tree with prayers.

CS Lewis in his book on prayer called Letters to Malcolm, talks about he calls it fast studenting. It just means decorating. It means hanging your own life experiences on these famous phrases of the Lord's Prayer. So when you pray, your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth is in heaven.

What's coming into your mind? And so what we're doing is we've got these bulbs and these markers, we're just asking you to write a word or a short phrase on them. It comes to your mind as you pray this prayer. And then just hang out on the Christmas tree, there are some hooks that Cyrus Rigdon has beautifully spread out around the table, so they're not clumped together like they were last week.

Cyrus painstakingly separated every single hook for you. This is an act of worship by an eight year old boy. It was beautiful and laid them out on the table for you. There are bulbs again. Great idea. Poor execution on my part. Very tiny bulbs, very big markers. So you probably won't be able to get more than a word or two on there, but that's probably all you'll need.

So we're gonna worship together. If you're ready to worship, if you're ready to stand and declare things about the king that are true with our voices, then stand and sing loud and strong. And if you wanna sit in his presence, then sit in his presence. If you wanna pray with someone, pray as you're ready.

Come write your prayers on the tree. Let's respond to this together.