KNU International English ChurchJosh Broward
September 3, 2006
Audience survey: What do you pray for?
(write on white board)
health, finances, wisdom, character, educational success, guidance, to be closer with God, relationships, church, for someone to become a Christian, personal peace, peace in a particular country, poor people.
Does anyone pray for judgment? Come on. Anyone? Ever prayed for God to judge the world? No one? Have you ever prayed for God to pour out fierce justice like a tsunami? Ever prayed for God to shake the world with judgement like a dog shakes a chew toy? No? Really?
The martyrs in Revelation did: “I saw under the altar the souls of all who had been martyred for the word of God and for being faithful in their witness. They called loudly to the Lord and said, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge the people who belong to this world? When will you avenge our blood against these people?’” (Revelation 6:9-10).
Maybe we don’t pray for judgment because we aren’t martyrs. Or maybe we don’t pray for judgment because we aren’t saintly enough. Or maybe we do pray for judgment and don’t even realize it.
Our passage today is Revelation 8 and 9. At the beginning of our passage, God’s people pray, and the peoples’ prayers go up to God like sweet smelling incense. What are they praying for? Money, health, A+’s? Probably not. The prayers here are probably similar to the other prayers in Revelation. “God, you are worthy of all glory and honor” (4:11). “God, bring justice to the world” (6:10). “Jesus, you have bought us with your blood. You have made us your Kingdom” (5:9-10). “Salvation comes from you God” (7:10). “The whole world has finally become God’s Kingdom” (11:17). We can summarize all of these prayers from Revelation, and maybe all good prayer requests, in one line: “May your Kingdom come soon.”
We’ve been praying this prayer every week when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. This is the basic summary of all prayer. “God may your Kingdom, where none are sick or afraid or sad or alone, come. God may your Kingdom of peace and fullness and love come. God may everything be as you want it to be, and soon!” This is what we pray.
This is the world’s most dangerous prayer!
“Your Kingdom come” – these three little words are the most dangerous prayer ever prayed.
Why? Why is praying a simple prayer that Jesus taught us to pray so dangerous? If God’s Kingdom is going to come on earth, on this earth, then everything has to change. We humans – not to mention Satan and evil powers – have messed this world up with our sin. This is a sin-soaked earth. This world is full of pain and heartache and disease caused and enabled by our sin. We have set up a bazillion idols and false kings to replace God in our world. Some of them are obvious, but most of them are so subtle that we can’t even see them.
If God’s Kingdom is going to come here on this earth, he is going to have to clean house. In fact, he might have to tear the house down.
Oh, yes. This is a dangerous prayer. “Your Kingdom come.” Look out! That means the other kingdoms have to go, and they don’t want to go. And the truth is we don’t want them to go either. We like the little kingdoms that have invaded our world. We are comfortable with them. They have become warm and cozy for us like an old pair of jeans.
“Your Kingdom come” means a total earth shake-up. “Your Kingdom come” means a total church shake-up. “Your Kingdom come” means a total life shake-up. “Your Kingdom come.” Are you ready for this?
In chapter 8, God’s people pray. They pray the most dangerous prayer on earth. And God answers with lightening crashes, fire and hail, flaming mountains, and all sorts of wild things. “Your Kingdom come” – the most dangerous prayer on earth.
Let’s read the story about when God’s people pray and what happens in response. Let’s read Revelation 8 and 9 now.
See why this is the most dangerous prayer on earth? God’s people pray, and then the trumpets start blowing:1 fire and hail, blood, bitter water, darkness, terror, terror, terror, then locusts led by a demon king, then 200 million troops riding fire breathing beasts.2
What happens when you pray? Any fire? Maybe some hail? We’ve had people fall asleep during prayer meeting, but I’ve never seen any locust soldiers as a result of my prayers – at least not that I know of.
What’s going on here? God’s people pray “Your Kingdom come,” and all Hell breaks loose. Or more true to the text, God lets Hell out to destroy the earth. What is going on? Is this really happening? Are we really reading the Bible here? What on earth is God doing?
He is answering our prayers. “Oh, no,” you say. “I didn’t pray for this – fire and hail and locusts. I never prayed for any of this crazy stuff.” Ahh, but you did, and so did I. And so do all God’s people everywhere. When we pray for God’s Kingdom to come, we are asking God to disrupt our unholy world, to establish His holy Kingdom here.3 When we pray “Your Kingdom come,” we are asking God to do whatever is necessary to bring His Kingdom into our world. According to John, this is what is necessary.
And, somehow, it all works. When the 7th trumpet sounds, loud voices cry out: “The whole world has now become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (11:15). I don’t fully understand how God gets from the ugly scene of the 6th trumpet to the 7th trumpet with God’s kingdom being established over all the earth. That seems like a long step to me.
But the end of chapter 9 gives a strong hint as to how this all may fit together. Chapter 9 ends like this: “But the people who did not die in these plagues still refused to turn from their evil deeds. They continued to worship demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood – idols that neither see nor hear nor walk! And they did not repent of their murders or their witchcraft or their immorality or their thefts.”
What was the point of all of the damage in the first 6 trumpets? What was the point of all of this unleashing of evil? The point was to get the people to repent. The point was to convince the people to turn away from their false gods and to turn back to the True God. The point was to show evil for what it really is: evil. The point was to convince the people to live for good instead of for evil, for God instead of for Satan.
Theology books often talk about “the problem of evil.” Usually the question is: “How can an all-loving, all-powerful God allow evil in His world?” Or more simply, “Why does God allow so much suffering?” John doesn’t give us a full answer to this question, but he does give a partial answer. I have to confess to you -- I don’t like John’s answer. I am not comfortable with John’s answer. I wish he had another answer to share with us. But John is clear and unmistakable here. It seems impossible, but God allows evil to have destructive power in our world to bring us back to God. It is a paradox – something that is true even though it seems impossible. God uses evil for good. God allows evil forces to cause problems on the earth so that people will eventually turn to God.
Maybe you’re thinking God needs a new strategy? I have felt like that this week. It doesn’t seem to be working, God. One of peoples’ biggest objections against God is all the suffering in the world.
But before we say God needs to go back to school and read How to Win Friends and Influence People, we need to ask a question. How does God expect this strange strategy to work? What does God hope to accomplish by letting evil out and about on earth?
He wants to show us that our idols, our false gods, are – well – false. Throughout the Bible God consistently uses judgment to reveal his supremacy over false gods. The idols and the things we are tempted to worship in this world are truly worthless. In the end, they can’t protect us, can’t satisfy us, can’t heal us, can’t give us anything like true life. In the end, one way or another, we discover that putting our life-trust in anything but God is a foolish waste.
How does God show us our idols are false? He has lots of ways, but one way is to crush them and us. One sure way for God to get our attention is to take everything else away, so that we have to focus on him.
In his introduction to the book of Joel, Eugene Peterson writes: “There is a sense in which catastrophe [or problems in general don’t] introduce anything new into our lives. It simply exposes the moral or spiritual reality that already exists but was hidden beneath an overlay of routine, self-preoccupation, and business as usual. Then suddenly, there it is before us: a moral universe in which our accumulated decisions – on what we say and do, on how we treat others, on whether or not we will obey God’s commands – are set in the stark light of God’s judgment.”4
In other words, it seems like sometimes God allows evil to cause problems just to reveal the evil in us. Sometimes God lets bad things happen so that we can see that our hearts aren’t right and turn back to God. In Joel, God seems to say, “Quit complaining, and get your hearts right” (2:13).
It’s interesting that the people at the end of chapter 9 are surprisingly like the evil forces that God sets loose. The evil powers come “to steal, to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10). The people of chapter 9 “refuse to turn from their evil deeds” (9:20), and they go on murdering, doing witchcraft, using other people, and stealing. Faced with the fullness of evil and all its terrible consequences, the people still chose evil. And by choosing evil, they further evil’s cause. By continuing in the way of evil, they cause more evil to happen.
Revelation gives all of us a choice: Be part of the solution or part of the problem. Evil attacks our world. If we respond with the power tactics of evil - complaining, arguing, name-calling, violence, lying, stealing, cheating, killing – then we are only furthering evil’s cause.
When problems and evil come, we face a choice – the choice of Revelation -- let the problems take us into their evil world, or resist the problems like the Lamb, by standing quietly on the side of good, by laying down our lives for others, by overcoming evil with good.
“Your Kingdom come.” This is the world’s most dangerous prayer. This is the world’s most dangerous prayer because God’s Kingdom must first come in us. We cling so strongly to our idols that for God’s Kingdom to come, sometimes he has to shake us and tear us apart inside, to rip us away from the things we are holding on to. This process hurts. It hurts a lot. I know. I know because I too have idols and things that attract my worship, and God has to shake me and tear me apart, too.
But God is not cruel in relentlessly tearing us away from our idols. In fact, this painful act is very kind. God is like a doctor setting a broken bone or cutting out a tumor. It hurts, but it heals.
Our idols lead to death, death for us and death for others. Our idols keep us from the beautiful life he wants for us and for others. Our idols keep His Kingdom out. And his Kingdom is what we all want. His Kingdom is what we all pray for. We all long for the Kingdom we read about last week in Revelation 7, the place where God shelters us, the place where every culture is affirmed and welcomed, the place where no one is hungry or thirsty, the place where no one wanders alone, the place where God wipes every tear from our eyes. We all long for this Kingdom, and so we pray. We all long for this Kingdom, so we pray “Your Kingdom come.”
But this – this is the most dangerous prayer in the world. Yes. Yes. Yes. It is the most dangerous prayer in the world, but it is our only hope. And what a beautiful hope!
And so with fear and trembling and joy and hope we pray: “May Your Kingdom come soon, Lord! Your Kingdom come!”
1 See Pat Marvenko Smith’s picture at:
2 See Smith’s picture at: http://www.revelationillustrated.com/shop/image14.htm .
3 Marva Dawn, Joy in Our Weakness, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 134.
4 Eugene Peterson, The Message Remix (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2003), 1634-5.
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