For their honeymoon someone lends them an enormous American SUV. A manoeuvre in an underground car park ends with a white scratch down the whole side of a vehicle worth more than their house, and a week of dinners made of hot dogs. That is how the kingdom we pray for should be handled (Matthew 6), because it is not ours, it is a gift. The kingdoms of this world promise prosperity and security in exchange for your integrity, and keep your attention on entertainment so that nobody starts thinking. Listen and ask whether you are trying to expand that kingdom by your own effort, as though you owned it.
Discussion questions
For your small group or for personal reflection after the sermon.
- The speaker explains that the closing line of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:13) was probably the early Christians' response to the prayer. What does this doxology tell us about what they believed?
- What might it have meant for Christians living under Roman rule to declare that the kingdom, the power and the glory belong to God rather than to the emperor?
- According to the sermon, the kingdoms of this world offer prosperity and security at the cost of our moral integrity and keep people busy with pleasures. Where do you see these temptations around you today?
- The story of the scratched SUV shows that we treat things differently when they are not ours. How does knowing the kingdom is God's, not yours, change the way you approach it?
- God has the power to do anything, yet He does not coerce but invites us into relationship. What does this reveal about His character and about how we should share the gospel?
- What could trusting God to bring His kingdom His way, instead of pushing it forward by your own effort, look like for you this week?
