These words form the chorus to a song on Mary Chapin Carpenter's newest CD called "A Place in the World." They express a view of the world that is prevalent today: Namely that stuff happens. In this case, anything good that comes is a gift of fate that you overwhich there is no control or direction. Relationships, gifts, blessings and joys are nothing more than sudden gifts of fate.
By the same token, when bad things happen, they too are sudden gifts of fate. You just have to roll with the punches, go with the flow. Stuff happens after all.
This is essentially the view taken by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book "Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People." Kushner's desire is to try and take the blame off God for bad that happens. In doing so he leaves us with the depressing conclusion that God is either powerless over his creation and has removed himself so far from human affairs that he cannot do anything or else God just doesn't care. I don't know about you but that does not make God at all appealing to me. Why would I worship or trust a God who either doesn't care or is powerless to intervene. Why would a God who leaves everything to sudden turns of fate be worthy of yours or my adoration and obedience.
That kind of a God wouldn't. R. C. Sprouls says that one maverick molecule or one subatomic particl;e that is not under God's control means that God is in control of nothing. If God cannot control everything then God is not Sovereign.
Instead, the Bible protrays a God who not only cares about his creation but upholds it by sovereign and providential rule. Not only does that God rule over the creation, but over the lives and affairs of each of his prized creations: human beings. This rule is called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. It is that for which Jesus taught us to pray in this second petition - Your Kingdom come!
As I wrote this part of my sermon I was listening to a tape of hymns and praise songs from a Promise Keepers Convention and the hymn Rejoice, Your Lord is King was playing. Indeed, we should rejoice because the Lord is King. His Kingship means that nothing is left to chance or blind fate. The rule of God extends to and covers every part of creation.
The question then is "Why do we pray for the Kingdom to Come" if in fact the Lord God is reigning in Kingly Majesty over all creation.
The Bible uses the word Kingdom in two senses. In its most fundamental sense, it speaks of the reign or rule of a king. The New Testament seems to be clear in stating that this kingdom is not so much a place as a relationship.
When a person prays for God's kingdom to come they are praying that they themselves would come to know and submit to God's kingly rule in their own life.
J.I Packer rightly says that to pray this prayer is both demanding and searching. For one must be ready to add -- and start with me; make me your fully obedient subject. Show me my place among the workers for the kingdom of God.'"
In other words if we sincerely pray this prayer, we are submitting to God's rule in our life so that we could serve him and live a holy life.
St Augustine in one of his sermons on this subject says "Therefore when you say, Your Kingdom Come, you pray for yourself that you may live a holy life and that God might reign in your life.
In this sense, the Kingdom is not a future hope but a present reality. Jesus preached that the Kingdom of Heaven was near or at hand. BY that he meant that God was and is reigning and that it need not mean merely some future pie in the sky dream. There has never been a time when God did not rule since his kingdom is prepared fromall eternity. His Kingdom has no beginning and it has no end. Therefore it is a mistake to look at it simply in future terms of heaven with its pearly gates and golden streets.
In Eighteenth Century Great Britain, there was a group of social reformers known as the Chapham Sect. They included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton Granville Sharp and John Venn. These were Christians who undersstood that the Kingdom of Heaven was a present reality in their lives and they sought to make it so in the world in which they lived.
John Venn once remarked that a "drawback of entering heaven might be the lost opportunities to do goodf: There will be no sick to visit, no naked to clothe, no afflicted to relieve, no weak to succor, no faint to encourage, nor corrupt to rebuke."
He understood the nature of this petition of the prayer. Thy Kingdom come...come to me and come through me into the world.
While we live inthis world, we continue to see that there are effects of sins entrance into the world. And though God still rules over all creation, in providence he has also allowed for the existence of evil and suffering. In this sense, the kingdom is yet to come and come it will when Jesus returns in power and glory to establish it once for all eternity.
In the meantime, the world groans as though it were in the pains of childbirth. People still exchange the truth of God for lies and end up paying the consequences for their own choices. Satan has still been allowed a relative degree of freedom to touch and afflict human beings even as he did God's serrvant Job.
But the existence of such does not negate the kingship of God even in the midst of such suffering. It simply points us to the fact that there will come a day when Gods WILL will be done on earth as it is already being done in heaven. In that kingdom, we are told that the lamb will lie down with the liion and the child will play over the hole of the snake and not be harmed. It will be a restoration of Eden's perfection and of God's complete rule.
We pray for that kingdom to come and to come to us so that we might be numbered as a part of it.
There are many who would bitterly complain against God that God is too powerless to do anything about the evil and the suffering in the world. There are others on the opposite end of the spectrum who would say that God is the source and author of evil.
The truth lies somewhere in middle. It lies in the assertion that God rules over all creation but does not always overrule sinful human actions and choices.
He rules over things so that even though evil might be permitted by God's will to be in our life, it is not a defeat but a vctory. For the Bible tells us that God is at work on behalf of those who love him to bring about good in all circumstances. Sickness, hunger, oppression, peril, injustice, nakedness even death cannot thwart God's purposes as King. Instead God uses even those things for Good.
There are two great examples of this principle. Both are from the pages of Scripture. The first is in the Old Testament lesson which we have read this morning. Joseph was the target of the jealous envy of his brothers who sought to kill him. His life was spared only because a caravan of traders, on their way to Egypt, happened by and they sold him as a slave.
He ended up in Pharoahs prisons and suffered greatly. It undoubtedly must have seemed that God had deserted him. Maybe you have felt that way at times.
But God did not desert him. Instead Joseph was providentially raised to a position of authority so that he could make it possible to preserve God's people who were suffering in famine. Had all that not happened, there would not have been slavery, no Moses, no Law, no entrance into Caanan, no King David, no throne established, no sacrrifices and ultimately no Christ...at least in the way Christ came.
When his brothers came forhelp and finally realized who it was they were adressing - the brother whom they had hated - they were afraid for their lives.
But notice Joseph's statement of faith. You intended to harm me but God intened it for Good.
In the same way, one of the most cruel events in history; one of the most horrendous miscarriages of Justice occurred on the day we now refer to as Good Friday. Why? Because God, the King, was still ruling on the thronoe when our Lord was crucified so that a greater good could come from his death than from his being spared. You and I are here today because of that miscarrriage of Justice and that cruel execution. Jesus suffering was bad, but we call it good, don't we?