What is the Kingdom of God?

01/07/12

Scripture:

This morning, as you can see on the screen, we are beginning a new series that’s called Finding Your Way into the Kingdom of God.  I want to begin by just reading a verse of scripture about Jesus just to show you that the kingdom of God was something near and dear to him.  He taught about it much.  We’re going to begin our study this morning looking into this concept, this idea of the kingdom of God, and the reason why is as your pastor I want you to find your way into the kingdom.  I want you to experience all that the Lord offers you this morning, so we’re going to begin by looking at Mark chapter 1, verses 14 and 15.  The context is this:  Jesus is now an adult somewhere around 30.  He has been living with his father and mother in Nazareth.  He has grown to learn the family trade of being a carpenter, but when the time was right he sought to be baptized by John the Baptist.  The Holy Spirit descended upon him in the River Jordan.  He went out into the wilderness for 40 days to fast and to focus on the Lord, and then he returned to begin his public ministry.  Mark tells us what that ministry was about, so I'm going to read it.  Mark chapter 1, verses 14 and 15:

¹⁴ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, ¹⁵ and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." 

This ends our reading this morning from the Lord’s holy word.  

So today I want to begin my message by saying that I believe we live in a wonderful yet a fearful day.  We live in a wonderful and fearful day, and what do I mean by that?  I mean that when it comes to wonder it’s amazing the things that you and I can have access to and to do.  It’s amazing that with things like computers and cell phones that we can stay connected into the world easily, that we can have so much access to information and help.  Just this past week Erin, our Youth Director, was in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was preparing to teach confirmation and a I needed something.  I got out my cell phone and I sent her a text and immediately I had the resolution that I needed from her.  No ‘oh my gosh, I’m back to square one.’  It’s amazing the world that we live in with technology that we have access to information as it happens real time.  Not only can we have access to information, but it’s amazing that when you go to the doctor they have the technology to invade your body and to do surgery on you without even cutting you open, that they can use robotics to get inside of your heart and to fix heart problems without even opening your chest.  It’s amazing that we have through medical technology eradicated so many diseases that struck down many people like us in previous generations.  We really do live in a wonderful age where you can board an airplane and in a matter of hours be in Europe or in Asia versus spending weeks on a boat.  But as I said, we live not only in a wonderful age, we live in a fearful age.  

There’s a lot that’s happening in the world that we say something isn’t right, what’s going on, where is this world heading?  Let me just put up on the screen a couple headlines for you.  This was something that I just pulled off the internet this week as I was looking at the news.  In South Sudan a massacre of 3000 people is reported.  Think about that, three thousand people!  That’s my entire home town murdered, executed.  Fortunately we don’t experience that in our life and in our nation, but these things happen in the world, and when we see them we look at that and we go what in the world is happening in the world.  Syria said “At Least 10 Killed in a Damascus Blast.”  We hear reports of bombs going off in other nations, people being killed simply for going to a market or going to a place of worship being killed by extremists who want to use violence to inflict their will upon the masses.  Or we get back to the United States—“Police Kill an Armed Eighth Grader in a Texas School.”   I don’t know how you feel when you see that, but I look at that and I go what in the world is happening in our nation when we have middle-school-aged kids carrying guns to school and being shot by police officers intending to kill other students.  This headline came along, too.  “War Drums: Iran Warns the US over Aircraft Carrier.”  If you’re a follower of what’s happening in the Middle East, you know that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and our nation and others are putting an embargo on them to try to cripple their economy so they’ll stop doing that, and Iran is sabre-rattling, threatening if we send our aircraft carrier back into the Persian Gulf there won’t be another warning.  Now what does that mean?  Does it mean we’re going to be in a shooting war with Iran in a couple weeks?  Are we going to be sending aircraft in to bomb them?  I don’t know.  This is the final headline I want you to be aware of:  “USA Closes Year with Record $15.22 Trillion in Debt.”  Do you ever think about that one?  There’s a lot of discussion in our politics as we’re looking forward to an election year this year, a lot of conversation about what is happening to our nation.  Are we going to be able to recover from the economic situation that we’re finding our self in?  Are our children or our grandchildren going to have a better America or a diminished America because of where we are?  

These kind of headlines...I don’t know how they are with you, but with me they get me wondering about what’s happening in the world and I think that happens to a lot of people.  We begin to ask our self questions like what does it all mean, where are we going as a society?  What is the meaning and the goal of human history?  Are we having a destiny that our society is moving toward or are we simply jerked across the stage of time like wooden puppets only to have the stage, the actors and the theater destroyed by fire leaving only ashes and the smell of smoke?  What does it all mean?  Where is our destiny?  

Now we aren't the first to ask these questions.  The ancients longed for an ideal society, a hope of a better day in the past, a golden age.  The Greek poets Hesiod and Virgil spoke of that long lost golden age in their poetry, an ideal state that does not reflect the brokenness of the world in which we live.  Perhaps you feel like that.  You look into the grave of a loved one.  You see death of children and suffering in the world and you wonder is this the best it’s ever going to get.  Well, the Hebrew and the Christian faith expresses a belief that a better day is coming, a hopeful day is coming and they use the term the ‘kingdom of God’ to describe this better day. 

The biblical idea here of the kingdom of God is deeply rooted into the Old Testament text, and it’s this concept that there is one eternal God who has revealed himself to human kind, who has a purpose for the human race, who is going to accomplish that purpose through his nation Israel.  It’s this concept of the kingdom of God that becomes central to Jesus in our scripture today.  

Let me ask you to look at our text today.  It marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  It’s just a summary, so to speak, of what Jesus was about, and we’re told that when John was arrested Jesus went into Galilee and he began to proclaim the gospel of God.  That word ‘gospel’ means the good news of God, and he was saying, and here is the content of his good news:  The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.  So here Mark wants us to see that Jesus’ life, his teaching was centered on this topic of the kingdom of God, of this hope for this world in which we live.  Now what I want you to realize is that Jesus not only mentioned this concept casually, it permeated all of his time on earth.  In fact, at the end of his life in the Book of Acts Jesus is about ready to depart this world for heaven, and it says there in Acts chapter 1 verse 6 when the disciples had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Again a reference to this idea of the kingdom of God, God's favor coming through the people of Israel.  

On the night that Jesus was betrayed as he gathered with his disciples to celebrate what we call the Lord’s Supper he says to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”  (Luke 22:15-16).  So again he’s making reference to this concept, the kingdom of God, a centerpiece of his words recorded for us.  I want you to realize here that over a third of Jesus’ sayings, his words, consisted of parables, of teachings, and the primary focus of his teaching is this concept of the kingdom of God.  In fact, he tells his disciples when they ask him, ”Lord, teach us how to pray,” one of the things he wants them to say is pray this:  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is heaven.  He’s wanting his followers to have prayer, their prayer focused on the matter of the kingdom of God.  Another time when Jesus was teaching his followers about how to trust him and how to trust God for their provisions he told them, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and then all the things that you need, your clothing, your food, all that will be added unto you.  You’ll be taken care of.  But seek first the kingdom of God.  So what I want you to see is that Jesus’ life, his focus, is on this concept of the kingdom of God.   

Yet, nowhere in his teaching does he clearly define what the kingdom is.  He uses parables.  He uses stories to get us to see pictures of the kingdom.  But he doesn’t define it for us because in a sense the foundation for understanding that kingdom was already in the mind of his audience.  The people that listened to Jesus are different from you.  They were Jewish people steeped in the writings of the Torah, of the teaching of Moses, the Psalms of David, the prophets, and they knew therein contained this idea of the kingdom of God.  

I want to take a moment to introduce you to one text just so that you get an idea of what the kingdom of God is about.  This is from the prophet Daniel.  Daniel is having a vision here in the seventh chapter of how the kingdoms, the rulers of this world, are moving forward and he interjects to us a teaching here about the kingdom of God.  Let’s look at it and then I will elaborate on it a little bit and then we’ll move on in our message.  So he has a vision:  I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.  And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.  

A couple things to note here.  We’re introduced in this vision to a character, a man, identified as ‘son of man’, the son of man who comes and stands before God who is described here as the ‘Ancient of Days.’  And God bestows the son of man a kingdom so that all peoples, all nations, all languages will serve this king.  We’re told that this kingdom will last forever and it will not be destroyed, unlike the Roman kingdom or the Greek’s kingdom or the Babylonian’s kingdom.  And so the idea here in Daniel and in other places is that God is going to do something in this world to establish his rule and his power to make this world a better place.  That is the concept of the kingdom of God.  Now I want you to notice that the person who is getting this kingdom is called the son of man.  That is a title that Jesus used more than any other to refer to himself.  So Jesus saw himself as this son-of-man character who was receiving this kingdom from God.  

Now I want you to be mindful of that because, as I said, Jesus came and he announced to his followers that the time has been fulfilled.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe the good news.  He came and he began with eager expectation to address people that were wondering is now the time that God's going to do this great work in the world.  Here’s what Jesus says.  He says the time is fulfilled.  It’s interesting here that the word ‘time’ is not the way we think about time like its 10 minutes from now.  In the Greek there are two terms for time.  One is chronos...you’ve heard of chronology...if you wear a watch it’s technically called a chronometer.  It lets you measure the passing of time.  That’s not the term that’s used here.  There’s another Greek word referring to significant events.  It’s called kairos, and so Jesus is saying the significant events are all fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.  Think about it this way.  If I asked you where were you when John F. Kennedy was shot...now I wasn't around...some of you were and you can remember.  That would be a ‘kairos’ moment for you, an event so significant that you can remember where you were.  Now I could say where were you when the towers fell back September 11, 2001, and you know as I know where you were and what you were doing during that time—a ‘kairos’ moment there, a moment of significance.  What Jesus is saying is that all of the significant things that must happen for God's kingdom to arrive are completed.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  

Now we’re going to look at the kingdom of God for the next few weeks, so I want you to be thinking about that concept.  I want you to be picking up your Bible and looking in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and chewing on the way Jesus uses that term.  It is going to be like a multifaceted diamond.  Think about this:  You know when a woman wants to show you her new engagement ring and she sticks it out, if you’re outside in the sun it’s so bright and shiny.  If you begin to turn it, it looks differently depending on the way you’re looking.  The light breaks into it differently.  Well, in the same way the kingdom of God.  There is so much to it to learn, and we’re going to look in the weeks ahead into the teaching of Jesus so he can instruct us more about this in-breaking kingdom of God that is at hand.  It’s near, Jesus says, and it beckons a response.  

Some of you may remember back in 1979 in a place near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the United States had a crisis.  It’s called Three Mile Island.  Some of you may remember.  For those of you that don’t, let me elaborate.  Three Mile Island was a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania that was responsible for providing electricity for the people of Pennsylvania.  On March 28 they had a reactor core meltdown.  Something happened in there, something broke, the radioactive material they were concerned was released into the atmosphere.  So what happened?  Because that was near, the people around it had to make significant adjustments to their life.  The state authorities began to encourage people to voluntarily evacuate, and so the governor advised that pregnant women and preschool-aged children within a five-mile radius needed to get away.  Eventually it was extended to a twenty-mile radius in two days, and so over that period of time 140,000 people had to leave the area because it was near.  Something significant was near and it beckoned a response from them.  I want you to think about that as we look at this idea.  Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is near, it’s at hand, it’s coming, and like the people of Three Mile Island, you and I need to respond.  And that response is repenting and believing, changing our thinking, changing the course of our life, becoming different people because God is breaking into our world. 

Now how did people respond to Jesus?  Many listened intently.  They became his followers.  They began to invest their time in following him and listening to him and learning from him and grasping what Jesus had to say about this significant thing called the kingdom of God.  Others dismissed him.  They liked what he did, they thought it was great that he healed people, but they weren't concerned with the significance of the kingdom of God.  Now why do I tell you that?  Because I want you to respond to Jesus’ words.  We’re removed from the moment by 2000 years, but the statement is just as significant today.  The kingdom of God is at hand and you and I need to repent and believe the good news.  So I want to invite you to join with me over the next 12 weeks.  We’re going to look at the concepts of the kingdom of God that Jesus taught.  We’re going to look closely at our master’s teaching, and we’re doing this because I as your pastor want you to understand when you pray for the kingdom of God to come, when you are investing your life that you’re investing in what’s truly significant and that you can find your way into the kingdom of God.  It is something that our history is moving forward to.  The kingdom is something that lies before all of us and I want you to be informed and you to be ready.  So join with me as we prepare to study about the kingdom of God.  Let’s pray.

Gracious God, I thank you for the truth of your kingdom.  I thank you that there are promises in the Bible that this world with its violence and its disease and with death is not simply just the way it’s going to be, but that you’re invading this world, that your kingdom is coming, and it’s going to affect every single one of us.  Lord, help us to be ready.  Help us to know and to understand what this idea of the teaching of Jesus is about.  Help us to know the kingdom of God and help us, Lord, to enter into that kingdom, to experience the benefits and blessings that come from you so that we, Lord, might not miss out on all that you’ve offered through your word to those who would repent and believe.  Give us understanding, give us a passion for the truth, Lord.  Keep us awake at night so that we don’t become distracted, we don’t resist what you have to say, but we seek to be obedient.  For I ask this prayer in Jesus’ name.  And we pray together as he taught us saying our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.  Amen.