Sermon Tone Analysis

ATTN - GAME CHANGER: JACKIE ROBINSON

There was a guy who mattered!

There was a man who, regardless of how you might feel about him or baseball, he made a difference when a difference was not easy to make.

And, as a result, Jackie Robinson still lives in our memory as a courageous and significant person.

Have you ever mattered like that?

Have you ever achieved that kind of significance.

Have you ever had an impact on the world like that?

NEED

And right away I know that there may be some of us who would say, “Well, uh, no!

And I don’t want to.

Hey, man, I’m just not that ambitious!

That’s not me!

I’m content just to drift through life . . .

you know, go to work, come home, watch TV, eat the frozen dinner, get through life, keep my house in a bad economy, live till I’m seventy-five, die in my sleep, and then, hopefully, go to heaven where I’ll be just as bored praising God in heaven as I’ve been living for Him here!”

Now, from the practical point of view, that is the extent of most christians’ dream.

They’re just surviving.

They’re getting through the world, but they’re not having much impact on it.

They’re not building the kingdom, they’re often embarrassing the King!

And yet, this hand-top-mouth existence is not what Christ intended.

He meant for you to matter.

BACKGROUND

Which brings me to what we have been talking about over the last few weeks.

We’ve been discovering the depth of meaning in the Lord’s prayer.

You remember how it all started, right?

Jesus’ disciples evidently observe up close and personal His dynamic relationship with His Father and they are intrigued.

It wasn’t that they had never prayed before, I’m sure they had.

It was that they had never prayed the way Jesus prayed.

He could spend hours upon hours doing it, and it was obvious that the Father moved in response to what Jesus prayed because people were being healed and Jesus spoke with a wisdom and power they’d never experienced before.

So when they asked Him to teach them how to pray, they really meant it.

And since they are willing to learn, Jesus is willing to teach.

He gives them a model of what prayer should look like.

That prayer begins with a note of intimacy.

He tells them to address their “daddy” in heaven.

Having established this powerful, intimate, vital connection, they are then to worship God.

They are to hallow His name.

I think if they were really getting what Jesus was telling them, they probably begin to get a much different picture of what it really meant to pray.

You remember, He told them to pray by saying, “Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

Then came the phrase that was a “game-changer.

Then came the phrase that made them matter.

What comes next?

Say it with me: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is actually the first specific request, and it is somewhat peculiar to our ears.

We’re not used to talking about Kingdoms, much less the “Kingdom of God,” but that is what we are told to long for and, indeed, ask for.

And just what did Jesus mean when He told them to ask for God’s Kingdom to come?

Well, while there were several characteristics of this kingdom found in Jesus’ teaching, the one most vital to understanding this passage is this: The Kingdom of God was not some vague hope for the future that could be passively acknowledged, then ignored.

No! It found personal expression in Christ and a response to His demands was required.

And what were those demands?

Very simply that His followers make a personal commitment to prefer His Kingdom to any and every other loyalty.

Jesus makes it very clear that, to follow Him, He must come first.

In a very real sense, then, when I ask God for His Kingdom to come, I am not asking first for cosmic events to align so that some never seen figure emerges, the world is shaken, and empires fall.

It isn’t a political thing at all, it is personal.

When I pray for His Kingdom to come, I am personally pledging to place His Kingdom ahead of all other things so that His will is done in my life.

And what is His will?

What is that thing we are to do as loyal subjects of His kingdom.

That really is no mystery.

Time and again, we are told what the mission of Kingdom people is.

One of the most familiar is found in Matthew 28 where we are told that since all authority is given to the risen King, we are to go around the world and make followers of His out of all nations.

His Kingdom exists in and above all other kingdoms.

In short, the priority of the Kingdom is the gospel.

When we pray for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth, we are praying that the gospel will be spread and that many will follow the King.

More than that, we are, through our very own request, committing ourselves to be a part of making that a reality.

Thus our prayer for His Kingdom to come is nothing short of our own pledge to prioritize the gospel in our own lives.

The question becomes, How?

How do we live out this prayer and prioritize the gospel?

For that answer, let’s look at another time when Jesus talked to would-be followers who said that they had Kingdom priorities but really did not.

Read Luke 9:57-62 with me:

57 Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

59 Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”

But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”

60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” 61 And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”

62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

Three encounters are described in these verses.

All of them are with people who claimed to have Kingdom priorities but really did not.

They give us three barriers which we must overcome to truly be able to pray for His Kingdom to come.

In the first place, we can prioritize the gospel when we

DIV: SURRENDER THE EGO

EXP

I saw something I had never seen in this passage of scripture when I began studying it for this message.

Always before, when I read about this first guy, I thought that Jesus was emphasizing the fact that, if you follow Him, you will probably lose your material possessions.

Now, while that may indeed be true, I believe that, if you take the passage in context, there is something else in play here.

You see, this little encounter occurs immediately after Jesus has gone to try to evangelize the Samaritans.

That in itself was quite a unique occurrence.

As you may recall, Jews had very to do with the Samaritans.

The Samaritans were “half-breeds.”

They were formerly Jewish people who had intermarried with other nations and were no longer pure.

They were despised because, not only had they sacrificed their Jewishness, they had, in a sense, committed treason by intermarrying with the very people who had conquered them.

For this reason they were hated by “pure” Jews and they returned the favor.

In that context, read v 51

51 Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before His face.

And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him.

53 But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.

54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” 55 But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.

56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

And they went to another village.

Do you get what’s happening here?

They’re on their way to Jerusalem, and, on the trip, they have to pass through a Samaritan village.

Jesus sends some of his disciples ahead to prepare a place for Him to stay for the night.

The Samaritans ask where He’s heading and, when they learn that He is on His way to Jerusalem, they refuse to give Him a place to sleep.

His disciples are indignant!

How dare these half-breed traitors refuse to receive the Messiah!