KINGDOM LOST - KINGDOM GAINED
In business life there has to be a financial year-end when there’s stocktaking. That’s what Jeremiah had done for the nation of Israel - and he didn’t like the result. There was more loss than profit. The Old Testament prophets were often quite blunt in announcing the word of the Lord to their people. Jeremiah cried out, "The summer is ended, the harvest is passed, and we are not saved" (8:20). Jeremiah certainly didn’t pull his punches with Israel.
The nation had had a wonderful past but it had all changed. Where I live we often have a beautiful Indian Summer in September - the fine weather goes on and on, then suddenly in the first week in October it’s all over. The gales and the rain come with a vengeance, and any crops that haven’t been harvested are ruined. Jeremiah was talking about one of those moments in time. Israel had been called to be God’s own special people. Jehovah was their real king, the people were his kingdom but something had gone terribly wrong.
The Bible constantly declares God’s Kingship. The psalms are especially rich in this imagery: He "is King for ever and ever" (10:6); He "has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all" (103:19). The Kingdom of God was a central theme in the teaching of Jesus. In fact, one could say that the whole of Scripture is the account of God’s kingdom - it’s the story of the Kingdom Lost and the Kingdom Gained. It’s true at the national level but also with the individual people who comprise these nations. First of all then:
THE KINGDOM LOST
Very early on in the history of mankind we read of a rebellion against God’s rule. It was something that a holy God could not tolerate and yet in a mystery that the human mind can’t begin to fathom, rather than destroy the whole of his creation, God determined that salvation would be provided. He hadn’t given up on his creation. But how could that be accomplished? God would have to reveal himself to a lost humanity - and he did.
God so loved the world that he wanted to bring about a restoration of fellowship. His plan of action was to reveal himself to a chosen person, Abraham, a man of faith, and through his family and the nation of Israel into which it grew. But it wasn’t a smooth progression. There were high points when the nation was wonderfully delivered from its enemies, such as the exodus from Egypt, only to be followed by forty years trudging around the wilderness as a result of willful sinning.
History has a nasty habit of repeating itself. The breaking up of the nation followed the golden age of King David and his son Solomon. The cycle of disaster returned in the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and, a century later, for Judah by the Babylonians. God’s own people had turned their backs on their great benefactor. They had persistently ignored his pleading, ridiculed his warnings and abused his blessings. They’d spurned his love and rebelled against his authority. They’d been given God’s Kingdom, but now it was a case of the Kingdom Lost.
On a national level the people of God had plumbed the depths - they were now in a state of hopelessness. The situation is well summed up in the words of Jeremiah, "The summer is ended, the harvest is passed, and we are not saved" (8:20). The nation had been deceived by the evil one into believing that prosperity came from following the surrounding nations in worshipping the fertility gods and engaging in their corrupt practices.
That all took place 2,500 years ago. It’s ancient history - but what about today? The world has moved on; knowledge has increased by leaps and bounds in harnessing the resources of creation. But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed - and that’s the heart of man. C S Lewis put it rather well in an ironic parody of the hymn "Lead us Heavenly Father." His version reads, "Lead us evolution, lead us up the future’s endless stair; / Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us, for stagnation is despair; / Groping, guessing, yet possessing, lead us nobody knows where." That’s a good summary of the Kingdom Lost.
Mankind is still in a state of rebellion against God’s law, as Scripture tells us, "As for you" the apostle Paul wrote to the believers at Ephesus, "you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world" (2:1). Thank God, says the apostle, that your position of the Kingdom Lost is now in the past, but he says, you’re still living in an alien environment with many spiritual dangers ahead. He said of himself that he had to take great care that, at the end of the day, he wasn’t "disqualified for the prize" (1 Cor 9:27) of the Kingdom of God. What are these perils that can trip up the seeker after Christ or even the Christian? There is:
DISOBEDIENCE TO GOD’S LAWS
An admiral was sailing on his flagship on the North Sea. He was on the bridge on a dark night looking through his binoculars. To his alarm he saw a light coming directly towards them - they were on a collision course! He gave an order: "Send a signal; change two degrees south!" Back came the reply: "You change two degrees north!" He reacted rather indignantly, as he wasn’t used to having his orders countermanded. He sent another signal: "I am an admiral - change two degrees south!" The reply came: "I am an Able Seaman - you change two degrees north!" This was too much for the admiral - his professional pride and position was at stake. "I am a battleship," he signaled, "I order you to change course two degrees south!" Back came the irresistible demand: "I am a lighthouse - you can change two degrees north. You change! I can’t!"
The moral of the story is easy to see - the standards set by the word of God do not, and cannot change. It’s we who must take care to avoid the hidden rocks that would shipwreck us on our voyage to the Kingdom of God. It would be a tragedy if at the end of our lives the sad words spoken by Jeremiah were to be true of us, "The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved." The nation of Israel was grievously damaged by sheer Disobedience to God’s Laws - the warning is there for all to see. Jesus illustrated another potential disaster in his Parable of the Ten Virgins. It’s that of:
DELAY IN DECIDING TO FOLLOW CHRIST
The parable pictures an Eastern wedding, apparently celebrated at night. The bridegroom would fetch the bride from her home and bring her in procession to his own, accompanied by the bridesmaids, each holding a lamp. Perhaps on this occasion there was some delay, and five of the girls kept their lamps burning unnecessarily while they had a sleep. The other five had taken the precaution of conserving their oil or bringing an extra supply. At midnight, the cry came, "The bridegroom is here!" The girls woke up and got their lamps ready for the procession, but half of them found that their oil was running out. So they said to the others, "Quick, quick, lend us some oil!"
The lesson that Jesus was teaching was that each of us has to be ready for our moment of destiny. The five girls left without oil wanted to borrow from the others, but that proved impossible. The truth is that in the matter of personal commitment to Christ, we can’t borrow a friend’s faith in an emergency. Character can’t be transferred from one person to another. Our salvation, our service for Christ, is a very personal matter - delay is dangerous.
Jeremiah had spent all his energies in warning his people to put their house in order, but they were too busy enjoying the fleeting pleasures of the world; too stubborn to repent of their sinful ways. And now it was too late - the summer was over, with no time to sow a new crop; the harvest they were reaping was one of weeds. The only prospect before them was that of winter.
There’s a beautiful, well-known passage in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: "There’s a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." Don’t miss the tide! Delay to trust in Christ; delay to serve him faithfully, can mean the Kingdom Lost. We never know when the opportunity will be gone forever. The uncertainty of life injects urgency into our dealings with God as with all else. An old rabbi was asked by one of his disciples when he ought to make peace with God. The rabbi thought for a moment and then said, "One moment before you die." "But, Master," protested the disciple, "I don’t know when I shall die!" "Exactly," said the rabbi, "Do it now!"
God is love and it’s not his will that any should perish or fail to receive the rewards he has in store for faithful service, but there comes a time when he will appeal no longer. God respects the gift of freewill that he has given to mankind. Martin Luther once described God’s grace as like a shower of rain. He wrote, "It came to the Greeks and passed over, then to the Romans and the Jews. You must not think that you have it for ever." How terrible if our Delay in Deciding to Follow Christ should result in missing the summer of opportunity, of seeing the harvest passed.
DEFIANCE OF GOD’S WARNINGS
Jeremiah had pleaded with his nation to return in repentance to God so that he would heal their backslidings and be saved from his righteous anger and wrath. But no, the people just wouldn’t believe that it would happen. They defiantly replied, “Where is the word of the Lord?” And to further provoke the Lord they scoffed, “Let is come now” (17:15). They had made the mistake of their life in forgetting that God’s Word is infallible. What we do with the Word of God will determine our eternal destiny. “Where is the word of the Lord?” was the scoffers’ sarcastic challenge. Ah, but it came! What the prophet forecast came to pass, and it wasn’t long before these people were in chains marching to Babylon.
The Jews said the same thing when they heard Christ’s prophetic words telling them the result of rejecting him. With reckless boldness they flippantly cried out, “Let his blood be upon us and on our children” (Matt 27:25) – and it came upon them! Within forty years their city was in ruin and those who hadn’t been killed by the emperor Titus were being marched to Rome as slaves. So, too, will it come at the end of this age. Man may speak scoffingly of the second advent of Christ and of the day of judgment, saying, “Let it come,” but it will come!
This need not happen. The Bible has a contrasting message of hope and assurance. The apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is over; the day is almost here" (13:11,12). This gives us the wonderful prospect of:
THE KINGDOM GAINED
Jeremiah’s sad cry ended with the words, " ... and we are not saved" but Paul’s is one of hope, "because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." It was there’s potentially, but yet there was danger that it might slip from their grasp if they didn’t "wake up from their slumber." The antidote to this is to:
FULFIL THE LORD’S COMMANDS
The believers had made considerable progress in the Christian pilgrimage. It might be said that they were on the last lap of an arduous race, but they couldn’t afford to slacken off, to lower their guard against the enemy’s attacks. They were told "to wake up from your slumber." It may be that they’d grown a little complacent. They had to get back to basics; to be reminded of the obligation laid upon all believers to obey the Lord’s commands.
When the apostle wrote to the church at Rome, he quoted several of the Ten Commandments, together with the command "to love your neighbour as yourself" (13:9), the command which Jesus also quoted in his teaching. There’s a famous saying by Augustine, "Love God - and do what you like." If love is the governing force in our lives, we will automatically keep, or at least try, to keep all the Lord’s commands. Paul summarizes his argument; "Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (10).
Another basic command is that of forgiveness. Forgiveness of sins comes top of any list of God’s benefits through his Son Jesus Christ. Where would we be without it? Forgiveness is no easy thing for God for it cost him the giving of his Son to be our Saviour, even to the extent of his death on the Cross. That was his part, but as the forgiven, an obligation is laid on us to forgive others. This is made quite clear in the Lord’s Prayer. We are not to expect mercy from God if we are unwilling to show it to others.
Forgiving others is not to be thought of as a good work that merits God’s forgiveness, but rather as the removal of an obstacle to our experiencing his forgiveness. It’s not why God forgives us, because it’s his gift, but it is a condition. This can be illustrated in this way: if we are given a complimentary ticket for a concert, it requires some action on our part. We didn’t pay for it, but we must present the ticket at the entrance so that we can enter the hall and enjoy the event.
Jesus vividly reinforced this truth in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matt 18:23-25). One of the king’s servants owed his master 10,000 talents, in present-day value, of £5 million. When he failed to pay he and his family were about to be sold into slavery but he appealed to his master who took pity on him and cancelled the debt. However the servant forgot this generosity when he himself was owed a mere hundred denarii, only £10, refusing to be merciful to a fellow servant, throwing him into prison. When the king heard of this, he was furious and called the servant in. "You wicked servant," he said, "I cancelled all that debt of yours ... shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow-servant just as I had on you?" Jesus followed up the story by saying, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."
We are well advised to learn to be loving and forgiving if we want to Fulfil the Lord’s Commands. To do so is to be on the pathway to the Kingdom Gained. But there’s yet another aspect - it is to have:
FORTITUDE TO JOURNEY’S END
For most of us the Christian life is more like a marathon than a race of a hundred yards sprint. Perseverance can be a problem. It’s easy to falter in the hard stretches of the Christian pilgrimage. The apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Galatia, "You were running the race nobly. Who had interfered (hindered or stopped) you...?" (5:7 Amplified). They had taken their eyes off Jesus. It can happen without us hardly noticing it. We can be too preoccupied with earthly matters, in themselves quite legitimate. We can become downhearted by adverse circumstances. We can become weary in well-doing, disappointed if we don’t feel our service for Christ is sufficiently recognized.
We have a choice whether we persevere or not. The Christian life has stretches of unexciting life, even weariness, when it’s easy to give up. We have to trust when we cannot see. I was told of a dream someone had. He had seen a picture of a beautiful baby lying in a cot with a mobile overhead. Photographers poised with camera waiting for the baby to smile surrounded the cot. But the baby was expressionless and many of the cameramen packed up, then suddenly a breath of wind from the open window caught the mobile making it spin around and the baby beamed. The moral was that God was saying, "Wait until I am ready." Persevere! We can become impatient of waiting - but Fortitude to Journey’s End is essential to arrive at the Kingdom Gained.
Our earthly life is a period of transition, of preparation for eternity. It’s essential we ask ourselves if we’re in the position that Jeremiah described: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved" - this is negative, leading to the Kingdom Lost. Please God, this will not be so, but rather as the apostle Paul, we will be moving steadily towards the Kingdom Gained: "Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."
