Father in heaven, we have gathered here to sit under Your Word and we pray that we would not waste our time by distractions, by disobedience. Give us ears to hear, to obey. Help us whether we are thinking of these words for the first time or we have prayed these words 10,000 times. We ask that You would teach us and change us and that You would do a mighty work in our midst and in our day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

For the past few months I’ve been making my way through Andrew Roberts’ biography of Winston Churchill, I’m about halfway through. It’s an amazing biography. It’s very well-written and about an amazing life. Churchill would have made an amazing life if World War II had never happened, he would have been written about and had countless stories to tell, and half of the biography is over and you haven’t even got to World War II yet.

One of the themes running throughout the book is Churchill’s lifelong belief in the goodness and the greatness of the British Empire. Roberts, the biographer, remarks that today we tend to think differently of empire and colonialism and we can see the problems that they had, sometimes evils they perpetrated. But Churchill did not see things that way. When he as a young man was stationed in India for the first time, he couldn’t help but be amazed at the British rule there and what he saw were the railways and the irrigation projects, the education, the newspapers, the aqueducts, the roads, the bridges, the universities, the hospitals, the rule of law, the military protection afforded by the British Navy, the benefits of the English language, the abolishing of some traditional practices, like burning widows on funeral pyres.

For Churchill, all of this confirmed what he grew up believing, as an English aristocrat, namely that Britain was worth living and dying for.

I’m not here to parse out the historical debates about British rule in India or the British Empire, but I want us to notice is what Roberts says about Churchill’s commitments and what he embraced as a young man in his early 20s when he was in India. Quote: Churchill took the firm and irrevocable decision to dedicate his life to the defense of the British Empire against all its enemies at home and abroad. Time and again, throughout his political career, he would put his allegiance to his ideal of the Empire before his own best interests.

So my question is, if Winston Churchill, and many other men and women who are born of that late Victorian age, could make that sort of commitment about the British Empire with all of its may imperfections, how much more should we as Christians be committed to a vastly more gracious, more significant, more eternal kingdom. What if it was said about you, long after you’re dead and gone, that you had taken a firm and made an irrevocable decision to dedicate your life to the proclamation of the kingdom of God and its advancement against all enemies at home and abroad? What if it was said about you, years from now, that time and again you put your allegiance to God and His kingdom, and His will, above your own best interests?

And ultimately, of course, the two don’t diverge, but your own best interest, my best interests, are in God’s kingdom, seek first that kingdom and all these things will be added unto you. If Churchill could be committed to the British Empire, how much more ought we to be committed in our whole lives, with sacrifice and with zeal, to God’s kingdom?

We’re going to look in this message at the second and third petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. You find it there in Matthew 6, verse 10, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

I have three questions for us this morning. We will spend most of our time on the first question, so you can plan accordingly, that will be our heavy lifting.