Praying “Your kingdom come” is a vital spiritual act, asking Heaven to intervene on earth. This prayer is nestled in a passage teaching that our Christian duties should be motivated by faith and performed for an audience of one: our Father who sees in secret. What pleases God most is not mere obedience, but the faith that inspires it. Understanding His kingdom requires grasping the principle of progressive revelation, where God unfolds His plan over time, just as He is doing with end-times events. Therefore, we should pray earnestly for His Kingdom to be demonstrated through revival, a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit that expands the church far more than human organisation ever could.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] There are some things about church services that do vary a fair bit as you go to different places and one of them is the amount of reciting of things like the Lord’s Prayer. I can remember my early days in Adelaide at a church where I was used to the style and then had to go along to a church that had a lot more sitting down and standing up and kneeling and I remember thinking that they had it all wrong because they didn’t do it like we did it but then I noticed about the church I was at that there was a bit of a habit back then that when you arrived you saw people who were coming and they’d stop and they’d bow their heads and they’re saying some silent prayer because there was a thing in that church, you came to start the service and you prayed before you began to ask the Lord

[00:00:59] to get you in the right atmosphere or something like that. But these are all habits that we have, many of them good, but not necessarily are they done evenly. And one of the problems is that if you make a rule to yourself that you have to do that to be holy or you have to do it that way or remember to say the Lord’s Prayer in the service to make it a good service, then you’ve done something that the scriptures themselves don’t do. It’s true that Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer but there’s things about it that he didn’t always say in each time that he taught it or as the scripture records that he did and so you’ll find that the Lord’s Prayer in one gospel leaves out some of the things that might have been the other gospel. I think we’re meant to learn by that

[00:01:51] that’s not to absolutise what we have to do when we worship. And the emphasis of Jesus, I think, was mostly to do with our hearts. But there’s one particular part of the Lord’s Prayer I wanted to talk on tonight because it will give us the opportunity to learn some things about the Scriptures, about worship, but also about the Kingdom of God. And it is in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. It has this in Matthew 6.10, And it’s very interesting that it talks about the Kingdom because the Kingdom of God was a major topic of Jesus when he taught the crowds. It’s a major topic of the Scriptures from beginning to end. But this raises a question when he taught his disciples to pray, Now, just to give you a bit of a background in the language,

[00:02:49] that is used here, if you read it in the Greek, the original language of the New Testament, they had a habit of putting the verb part, the action part, at the start. So you’d read, come your kingdom, if you’re with a Greek mindset. Be done your will. On earth as it is in heaven doesn’t quite have the same change, but in their language they put that command first. And everybody got the idea that it’s certainly a prayer that’s asking God to bring the Kingdom. Come your Kingdom. You’re praying to God. Now, that raised for me, when I realised it, how the Greek was, how much emphasis there was on that, we in English put the verb at the end, your Kingdom come, your will be done. But it raised to me the fact that this definitely is a prayer for something to happen that you’re wanting God to do.

[00:03:50] Now, that raised a difficulty in my mind, and that difficulty is that I thought God’s Kingdom, He always has, He’s always, the Kingdom’s always been there. Certainly, there’s so many spots in the Old Testament about God’s Kingdom, and there’s storylines of people who didn’t pay much attention to the fact that God is the eternal ruler. And you have all those stories of Daniel speaking against the kings back then, who thought to have a big party and to use the utensils of the Jewish temple that they’d ransacked, and use them for their celebrations to foreign gods. And how came that writing on the wall. You remember the story of the writing on the wall, that suddenly a finger began to write the condemnation of that King, for the audacity that he had to pay no attention,

[00:04:43] that there’s only one ruler over all of earth and heaven and seas, and that it is the Lord. And certainly, God’s Kingdom is taught everywhere through the Scriptures as something that is because He’s the King, and He didn’t have a beginning. There was no coronation of God, you know that, don’t you? There wasn’t any beginning moment when He became the King. If you do a bit of study about kings, actually, I should ask a question here just as a tangent. Do we have a King in Australia? Oh, that’s a trick question. Do we have a King in Australia? Let’s hear some answers. Do we have a King in Australia? Not the Lord, He’s the real King, but do we have a human in our society King in Australia? I’m going to hear what people say. I warn you, it is a trick question. no one’s game to say come on

[00:05:42] you’re game or you’re saying yes who is that now come on own up yes he did say yes all right well that was where the trick came in because he’s not in Australia but we do have a king we’re what you call a constitutional monarchy and the constitutional monarchy is not quite the fully fledged monarchy where there’s a king who tells all the orders about everything but a constitutional monarchy gives him the right to set things going in the correct direction and to do it through a parliament so it’s actually the prime minister who is a major decision maker about what laws might, or his major influence about what laws gets up. It’s something we all participate in. But we are not a king as in there being one person who’s a dictator of the lot. But the Lord is. He’s not a halfway king. He’s the king

[00:06:46] over everything. But it is true that his kingdom is something that he wants us to be praying to be put into effect. And that statement your kingdom come, your will be done. Come your kingdom is what you’re asking. You’re asking God for that kingdom to show up and be demonstrated. You’re asking for his will to be done and not the wrong will because there’s a lot of illustrations all around us in this world and at this time where it’s not God’s will what’s happening. but we’re praying and that’s partly what we do when we come to church is to assert a spiritual act that’s asking heaven to do things on earth. And it’s a very important question, a very important prayer to be asked to use our influence in heaven upon the things of earth. That’s a part of what this is doing in the Lord’s Prayer.

[00:07:47] And he was teaching his disciples then to become spiritually active in the affairs of the world. I think this is very important to notice because often we think that we can’t influence the world, it’s just the world, you’ve got to somehow adjust to it. No, we can change what happens in the world by our prayers. Your kingdom come, come your kingdom. We’re meant to be praying that regularly and the effect of those prayers is indeed that there’s a greater heavenly bringing to pass of the rulership of God’s kingdom here on earth. It’s interesting, you know, about the Lord’s Prayer and about the fact that we have that responsibility because this chapter in Matthew has some other things in it besides just what I’m talking of at this moment.

[00:08:42] It actually talks about some of the attitudes that we are meant to have. And in those attitudes it’s quite interesting that you’ll see, let’s look at Matthew 6, the remainder of the verses around us, and verse 4 for a start, and then 6 you’ve already seen, but then verses 16 to 18. So these verses are verses in the very section where the Lord’s Prayer has a major place. And something that you notice, and we’ve got verse 4, he’s talking about giving. That your giving may be in secret, that your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And what is happening here is that the type of obedience to God that the Lord’s Prayer is nestled in, calling for us to do obedient things, and it includes our giving, is not something that we often take to be the way you get in God’s good books.

[00:09:47] The natural, uneducated, all of us being fallen, human heart, often takes the teachings of the Church about things like giving to be the mechanism by which you can enhance yourself in God’s good books. And there’s plenty of churches where that which happens at this moment, well not this moment, we’re not taking up the collection just now, but where one of the things that I’ve discovered going to some other churches is that they have not only the sermon I’m giving you now, but they have some other sermons in the service order. and one of them is just before you take up the offering and it’s interesting that they then are trying to get people to give more. Now what is really striking me, a contrast in looking at the Lord’s Prayer is the Lord’s Prayer is us praying for God to get into action

[00:10:39] but we can turn it all around and have a service and just before you take up the offering you give a bit of a harangue if you’re the pastor to get the people to give more. And so the prayer is sort of being pushed in the wrong direction to be more about getting the people to be obedient. It’s not a wrong thing, the advice about giving and doing it with the right atmosphere and the right attitudes, but you can be doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. And then stepping back from the whole scenario one step further back from it, we find ourselves thinking that prayer is about motivating people No, the prayer is getting God into action to do what is his thing to do. When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners

[00:11:37] that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you that they’ve received their reward. I’ve been puzzling over this. I’ve been running away from doing this sermon and getting back into the book of Matthew because I didn’t really understand this. And what I was having trouble understanding is the fact that the Bible teaches us to be obedient and to do things in the right motives. But on the other hand, there’s been a change from the Old Testament to the New Testament as to what emphasis there is on obedience and what place it plays. And actually obedience was probably, obedience to God was the biggest thing that you saw in the Old Testament. There are other things as well, I might say. Faith is not missing in the Old Testament. But nonetheless, the call for obedience is one that is very readily apparent

[00:12:33] to us from the Old Testament. But then in the New Testament, you’ll find that something has come over the top of obedience. Listen carefully, I’m not speaking, encouraging you to be disobedient, but I’m speaking to say that there’s something more important than obedience. Does that sound like a heresy? Is there something more important than being obedient? Well there is. It’s faith. Faith is actually the right motive that calls on for our obedience. But it’s the faith that God really wants. And in fact the change from the old covenant to the new reflects this change of emphasis away from keeping God happy by your obedience, that some people think is what the Old Testament teaches, to what is far more clear in the new, that what he wants more than your obedience is your heart.

[00:13:33] And what he wants more than just the actions is the faith that would sponsor those actions. And when by faith you trust him, that’s what pleases him. Your faith will please him more than your obedience. And I haven’t meant that in any way as though disobedience is good. It’s not. I’m just saying that the thing that will motivate your obedience will be when you do it out of faith. When you pray you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and to pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen of others. Now this gives us a bit of a clue. The part of what God is looking for is not that we would fall into line with what is seen to be the right thing, but God wants us to fall into line with trust in him.

[00:14:34] And there sometimes are occasions when you may do something that the outside world will scoff at, or maybe the world of your friends, even amongst us as Christians, I think we can be the same. And it could well be that what God is wanting is for some of us to do what is what you do when you believe, and you believe God. He might call on you to do something that society around dislikes. There is a sense in which every time we step out and witness with the gospel, you’re in danger of getting a rejection from society around us, or amongst your peers at work or at education places. It’s not the way to get popular, to become a person who obeys Romans 1.16, which says, Paul says, I’m not ashamed of the gospel, the call for us to follow suit and not be ashamed of the gospel.

[00:15:41] The truth is that there’s a big step in your discipleship when you take on board the fact that what God is wanting of you is to do something that might make you unpopular, or that you might have to learn ways of doing that will help you do it better. That’s something that we all have to learn along the way, that obeying God is something you do when you believe that he’ll help you. But if you do it without the faith, you’ll discover that it’s a very difficult road to tread. Well, in this particular chapter, there’s a number of spots. It’s not only in verse 5, but in verse, what did I say before, 16, I think it is, there’s another spot in Matthew where you can be called on by God to do a thing that is your Christian duty. There it is.

[00:16:37] And when you fast, now, I’m not going to ask you to put your hand up if you’ve fasted recently. I’m not talking about driving down here to get here in time. I’m talking about the word fast meaning when you go without something and you put yourself in a place of physical need if you don’t eat, for example, or you put yourself in a place of emotional need if you don’t cater for that which you normally would do as a human being. And sometimes when we have friends at school or university, we can fail to really pick up on the witnessing side because we feel in danger of not making it socially. That’s the sort of a fast you do when you decide to step out and go without being socially acceptable, but at least you raise the flag.

[00:17:39] Do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. There’s something in this that really I’ve been holding back from having to preach on this passage because I had never seen actually what’s lying behind it before. And what’s lying behind it is whose audience are you living for? Whose audience are you living for? There’s only one true audience that the scripture is calling us to live for and it’s God himself. And there can come times in your life when you have to do what God has told you to do and even though you might get misunderstood you do it because he’s the only audience that counts. Don’t do what you do even if it’s obedience even if it’s a good thing even if it’s something that as Christians is the right thing for us to do

[00:18:39] nonetheless don’t do it because of the audience that you’re keeping happy but do it because God is watching to see whether you’ll trust him. truly I say to you these ones who are fasting to be seen truly I say to you they have received their reward but the reward for obeying God because of your faith is so much more enormous but when you fast anoint your head and wash your face so it’s not apparent to the audience down on earth but your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret and it is an element of the Christian life when you come to the spot of being able to work out that what you’re doing is not to keep happy other people but to keep happy the Lord and your father who is in secret he will reward you now I think that’s really what Jesus is getting at all the time

[00:19:46] live your life before your father’s eyes and ignore the rest now there is a proper place for the sake of others not to ignore the rest there’s times when you need to do some things not because you’re pleasing God but because you don’t want to hurt them and that’s a more difficult task to dodge making the wrong making the mistake but here we have Jesus telling us about his kingdom and where to be praying for the kingdom to come. That word kingdom is actually picked up and utilised in a lot of the theological discussions done by church leaders and there is a sort of type of church that says we’re a kingdom church. Some of that talk is good and some of it is bad. Some of it is bad because what it does this puts on the people, the bad ones, bad type, that you have to do these things to be a kingdom thing.

[00:20:49] If you don’t do those things you’re not being in the kingdom properly. And they’re interpreting kingdom too much in terms of what effect it has on the people outside. There’s a lot of things that we should be praying about but it isn’t how we bring the kingdom about. We’re not in the job of causing the kingdom to come. We can cooperate with the kingdom coming by being in prayer and asking God to work. I had a very big learning time at one time in my development of getting the effect of my father’s doctorate. When he did his doctorate, I was only a little baby and so it wasn’t during his doing it. But afterwards, he had this big thing that it was so complicated that he had trouble getting it printed because people said they wanted more popular level things, you know, printing people.

[00:21:53] But I did learn from him some of what he did. He did the development of the Holy Spirit across Christian growth across the centuries. And one of the things that I learned from what he taught me and his dissertation was that if you want to understand Christianity, you have to understand it through the lens of the scriptures. But those scriptures have involved what is called progressive revelation. Now, I do want you to remember this word. Often you hear in sermons things that you can not bother remembering because it sounds too complicated or too, you know, intellectual, but progressive revelation is important. Now, can you say with me together, progressive revelation now? Progressive revelation. You’ll never understand the Bible until you recognise

[00:22:48] that it is God bringing progressively a revelation of himself. I won’t take you through. I could take you lots of verses to prove this. One that you’ll hear many times from my preaching is Hebrews where it says, in times past God spoke through the prophets in many and diverse ways, but now in these last days he has spoken through his son. And the whole concept of last days has to do with God having a program of revelation through the years. And what my father’s doctorate did was to show how the development of some doctrines were immediately given through the apostles and learned quickly by the church. And if you’re a conservative person that believes the Bible, it’s pretty easy to find the central core doctrines that is what it is to believe the Bible. And it is interesting, though,

[00:23:43] that there is other parts of the scriptures that are not so easy to cotton on to or to know exactly whether you’ve got it right, I’ll give you two that were not developed through church history straight away. One has to do with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the other one is another doctrine. I thought I should ask you, anybody got an idea as to what is another doctrine that hasn’t been developed quickly across the centuries? Holy Spirit is one. What’s another one? I know many of you know these things and you just don’t like being too public but what’s another one that doesn’t get developed across the centuries quickly? So there’s lots of different views and people don’t and they have a lot. Yeah, thank you. End times, exactly. The second coming. Now there’s a biblical reference

[00:24:35] that says exactly what I’m saying is the Lord speaking through his angels to Daniel and about the prophecies that end up saying about the final end times and the Antichrist and all the things that are going to happen. Daniel is told to shut it up and shut up the book or the investigation because it will be revealed in due season. I’ve paraphrased it but that’s what God says. You can’t know it. It will become visible as those events happen. That’s true about the second coming and it was true in the development of the doctrines of the scriptures. The people took a long time to work out about the Holy Spirit but not as much time as they are taking to work out about the second coming. And so this is not something that we should necessarily get settled on and think that we’ve got the only right answer

[00:25:32] because there’s a development that may prove to give you. I can cite some of that development. One of them is that if you go back far enough my parents had friends who were operational in ministry to Jewish people and there was one family that was their entire ministry is to try and win Jewish people to Christ. This is going back a bit in time. They had difficulty because mostly the people in the churches didn’t know what to think about Jewish people. Some of them had the idea they’re the ones who had the old covenant and they didn’t get to understand the new and Jerusalem got destroyed and now who the people are counter us. And so they had a picture of Jewish people that really wasn’t what the Bible eventually shows. If you trace eschatology which is the name of the theology of the last times

[00:26:25] if you traced about that through it says that it’s going to be understood at the end and all those questions that we have in our minds as to what is the right doctrine, you can afford to leave them to be there. But you might want to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Your kingdom come. Because sometimes that call for that kingdom is phrased in the scriptures about something that’s yet to come. And yet in other times it’s talking about that overall fact that God is always in control. Both are true. But the fact that the things of the end times are yet to come and you won’t understand them until some things occur. And those Jewish people used to go out talking. I don’t know if they were Jews or not, but the ones with the ministry to Jews went around talking about

[00:27:18] the fact that the Jewish people are going to come to Christ and they’re going to get back to their homeland. This is before those 1940 events when it all happens. but the general Protestant church didn’t know what to make of some of that witness but then 1947 and 1948 happens the Jews got back to the homeland they did it just like Ezekiel 37 talks about the fact that God brought them from foreign places the metaphor used in Ezekiel’s chapters is that God would open their graves and bring them up alive but then the picture has the prophet going and walking around as God directs him to the valley of bones and he discovers they’re all dead and then he’s told a second prophecy to do it it’s a prophecy to the bones prophesy to the bones God says and when he prophesies they all shake around and stand up

[00:28:17] and they become alive and the prophecy is that there’s a second stage to God doing something for the Jews the first ones happen which is why they’re in Jerusalem why they’re there today while they are the people of God as Jewish people but the second one is when they’re going to get converted to Christ that surely hasn’t happened because most of them over there in Jerusalem I’m picking on that city they’re atheists or they’re just non-Christians or they’re orthodox Jews in the sense that they’ve still got the Old Testament Jewish type of living. No, we will see the fulfilment of that as history turns its pages just as it did for that first step of them getting back to the promised land. And so now it is that you’ll discover that around the world, I know this from theological circles,

[00:29:11] that believing in the more conservative approach about the end times has a lot more, you can argue for it, so much more successfully because of what is happening. And particularly now, when you see all the annoyance and see the anger at the Jewish people and how that spreads around the world and even in countries that are meant to be Christians, there are people who are picking on Jews. We’ve seen that down through the centuries that what the scriptures speak is something that has come true and is coming true. History brings a key. So don’t lock up your understanding of the end times because you might find the Lord turns another key and you get proven wrong. So that’s why I always think that it’s on this issue, you’re one that can say this is what I believe but you’re able to have fellowship with others

[00:30:06] who might unwrap the end times question differently from you. Well, these are some of the things we learn and I think there has a significance to the prayer, your kingdom come or come your kingdom. When I read the book of Revelation, boy, it has me pray that prayer, come your kingdom. Lord, get it on. Don’t leave us in this time of not seeing the full development of your plans. Progressive revelation is when God builds one thing upon another. If you’re not sure when you go home of what this sermon’s been about, use your phone and, you know, look it up on where you can do that and type in progressive revelation. I did so this morning just to check up on what I was going to say that would be true. That there’s an awful lot of good teaching on the progressive revelation that you find through the Bible.

[00:31:04] I just will give you one way to prove it without giving you all the evidence and that is that the scriptures tell us that there’s an old covenant and a new covenant. And some of you who’ve been listening on Sunday mornings have heard me say it was a revelation to me actually to discover what word in the Greek is the word used for covenant. It was a shock to me because it influenced how to interpret the Lord’s table. It influenced how I interpret studying the Bible because I’m very used to having a Bible that’s got Old Testament and New Testament. But what I discovered is that the word for covenant and the word for testament is the same word. Diothec here, if you want to know. and that word is the word for, we’re used to it in our English societies talking about one’s last will and testament.

[00:32:03] That testament could be translated covenant. It properly does in the scriptures and so I have a New Testament, an Old Testament, that’s just the New Covenant and the Old Covenant because the Old Covenant itself promised that there would come a day of the New Covenant and the New Covenant had differences and the differences were that instead of there being a few specialists, the priests, the kings, the prophets who had a time of God’s Spirit coming and helping them prophesy and do things or do spectacular workings instead of just being a few who have the Spirit come on in the New Covenant the Spirit comes on all of God’s people and all who receive God right with God and under the new covenant receive the Holy Spirit and are led by the Spirit we are in a different era

[00:32:58] and because the Bible itself presents itself as an old covenant and new covenant there’s a difference as to how you go and in the new covenant Jesus taught pray this way your kingdom come even though God’s kingdom is there all the time but the prayer is to ask him to make his kingdom happen. What we do in our church is that we pray for God to step in. What we do when we have a special event and we’ve been listening in in our family to what happened up at the SMAD camp and we got to hear the sermons. I won’t comment because Kiran’s sitting there. But anyway, we got to hear the sermons and we were praying. What do you think I was praying for? That moment where the Spirit of God moves and people get converted to Christ and people come and find a deeper walk. One of the beauties of that Scripture Union camp

[00:33:59] has not only been those that have come to know the Saviour through it, but people come back so much more aware of what is ministry. They might have gone up there understanding music or understanding a bit of dance or understanding what the other things they do. But when you get a spiritual understanding of those things, it sets you in a far more definite trajectory because you’re there to use it for ministry. It’s a thing of the Spirit. Now in our discussions in the apologetics night that we have, one of the things we get onto is to exactly what is a spiritual gift and also the very word spiritual needs to be looked at. And I want us to look at something in, I don’t know whether I wrote it down, but there’s a verse in Matthew where Jesus is dealing with the Pharisees and he has to say to them,

[00:35:00] if I by the Spirit of God drive out demons, then has the Kingdom of God come upon us. if I by the spirit of God drive out demons then has the kingdom of God come upon us and what that verse teaches me I didn’t note down where it is but it’s in the later verse of Matthew I think but anyway what that verse does is tell us that spiritual is a category that Jesus talked about to do with the kingdom and spiritual is something that he recognized to happen when there was a deliverance from demon possession so at least some of the gifts or some of the demonstration of the power of the spirit by Jesus had to do with the very very spiritual thing of facing the spiritual world we should never just interpret spirituality is merely another way of saying different personalities. The Bible speaks

[00:36:13] about us as Christians to all have a part to play in the body of Christ. That isn’t just that you use your natural talents only. They are a part, they’re a gift of God. But nonetheless there is a spirituality of what it is to exercise the gift that you have. Some people have gifts that do involve their human characteristics. It’s certainly true I think in the terms of those of you who do worship leading and it involves music. There are some people who don’t have gifts in that arena and there are some who do. But it doesn’t mean that what ministry is in worship and music is just in the natural. There can be a spiritual side to all ministry and sometimes the natural and the spiritual are working together. But this is something that we need to recognise that spirituality has to

[00:37:14] do with the work of the Holy Spirit and Jesus told his generation, if I drive out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you. And there is a spiritual happening. There’s a part of what church is meant to be. And we need to be praying. Now you’re wondering how that’s to be interpreted. One of the features that I had travelling overseas when I studied in Dallas and then in Wheaton was the fact that when I got to Wheaton they had heard about me from anyway I won’t go into the connections but they’d heard about my coming and they knew that in Australia I’d had some happenings where God’s Spirit had been working. Someone had told the stories of our younger days where the Spirit of God was moving and and so at Wheaton College they had a chapel and I was curious about it. I thought it would be a big chapel where

[00:38:14] everybody came and and had someone speak to them but it wasn’t just that. It was a little chapel where people could go to pray and they said to me we want you to look after the chapel. I was a bit surprised. I don’t know where they got the idea of there being someone there to look after and I thought you just have a room, you go in and pray. What was the person meant to do if they’re looking after the chapel? Well what they explained to me was the fact that much of what happens at Wheaton College was based on, based in, there being times of revival and the history in the northern hemisphere particularly is dotted through with times of great expanse of the kingdom of God of times where the church, the people attending church in the northern hemisphere, we’re talking about Britain, we’re talking about Wales

[00:39:13] we’re talking about what happened in America in the The Great Awakening with Jonathan Edwards. What happened in those times was a sudden coming of the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t just coming only on individuals or on a church or they got the program right. It wasn’t caused by a lot of good organization that made it get up and go. It was just the sovereign work of God as people prayed and they had a habit of always praying for the next revival. Something in Australia I missed. I’d never ever heard of such ideas. I always thought revivals were so rare that you don’t pray for them. You get on with the job and do the best you can. But revivals, in fact I want to tell you, I had a way of understanding revivals that every time I went to Kürung Bookshop,

[00:39:58] I had in my mind there’s a revival that you hear about in America in the Great Awakening and in Wales and the special times that they had or in other places in the world. There’s that sort of revival that turns up and God just does it and you can’t do anything about it. If it comes, it’s good. if it doesn’t you go on we’re doing the best you can but there’s another type of revival and that is personal revival in fact there are books written if you go to Kaurong I don’t know what books they have in revival these days but it used to be if you went and looked for a book on revival some of them said now there’s two types of revivals and one of them is your personal revival which you can have at any time you choose I think the book is right if you’re prepared to satisfy the conditions and you feel dead and dried

[00:40:42] and you just do what the scriptures say if any people are called by my name there’s a thing for nations as well to do to have a revival come then God will do it for you personally you might not get the big revival because that’s in God’s sovereignty but this is how I used to think but the Americans wanted me to sit in the chapel all this time and be somehow making a revival come I thought I can’t do that then do you know I had a try of praying for revival and other people would come and pray and nothing much happened I left and finished my degree there and lent but then I heard the news something came maybe a couple of years later I can’t remember the details but there came a chapel time a proper chapel where they had the 2,000 students there or whatever it is and the spirit of God moved on them

[00:41:36] and they wouldn’t stop classes never started there’s something different I don’t know the details but revival came and that was a heritage they’ve got if we pray long enough we’ll get another revival and I’d never even seen that was possible where to pray your kingdom come and the expanse of Christianity across the world has been done more listen to me more by there being revivals and surges of the spirit that swept people into the kingdom then it’s been done by good organisation in fact if you go back and you look at the times of Jonathan Edwards they didn’t do much organising they had their things that they did but it was done by the work of the spirit in revivals I’ve been speaking in Sunday mornings recently about church government and I think we’re living in an age where people work out how do you grow a church

[00:42:32] Well, you look up ten good churches that have grown or are big and you find out what they’re doing and you copy it. But what they’re doing is a mistake. They’re thinking that you make churches grow. I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re making the numbers of people in them grow. That doesn’t necessarily mean the essence of the church has gone on. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re changing the society in which they’re found. We need a time when God’s revival comes to Australia and changes what is out there in the world. Well, it won’t be a revival at all, but actually what’s out there in the world is getting worse and worse and worse and we’re not making much difference. We can pluck a few people out to get converted, but we need to learn to pray, Your kingdom come. I’ve been drawn to understand

[00:43:29] that in my ministry, in this church, my best purpose is that there be a possibility of having a revival. It’s a pretty far-fetched possibility, I have to tell you, because I’m not ruling out that sovereignty element. But if we prayed and kept saying, unitedly, Your kingdom come, Lord, we are not satisfied with anything less and the Holy Spirit stepping in, who knows where that will go. I think it is consistent with understanding the Lord’s Prayer not to be us trying to live out a righteousness, the proper righteousness, though it may be, and then saying we’ve done the right thing, but to realise that what God wants us to do is to believe in His righteousness and His doings and pray for that to happen. Amen. Amen.