As Jesus began his ministry, the Bible says that he, “traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:1). The concept of the kingdom of God was central to the teaching of Jesus, and therefore it is critical to our understanding of what it is to believe in and follow after Christ. E. Stanley Jones defines the kingdom of God like this: “The kingdom of God is God’s total order, expressed as realm and reign, in the individual and in society; and which is to replace the present unworkable world order with God’s order in the individual and in society; and while the nature of the Kingdom is social, the entrance into it is by a personal new birth now; the character of that kingdom is seen in the character of Jesus — the Kingdom is Christlikeness universalized; while it comes on earth in the time process it is eternal and is the same rule which is in heaven and because it is Christlikeness this makes it heaven — there and here; and while it is a total order demanding a total obedience, it brings total freedom.”
The purpose of God in creating the world was to establish his reign over all the earth. That reign was marred and spoiled by our disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Christ came to reclaim that which was his own, and to proclaim God’s rule and reign over all the earth through Christ’s victory, as he overcame the cross and arose from the grave. He proclaimed that his complete victory would come at the time he returned to earth, when every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). The kingdoms of this world go blindly on, believing that their power and glory is the only thing that counts in this world. They do not see that there is an eternal Hand working behind the scenes which determines the destiny and fate of every individual and nation. The Psalmist assures us: “The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad” (Psalm 97:1). The hymn reminds us that:
This is my Father’s world,
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world,
The battle is not done;
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and heaven be one.
In other words, chill out; God is in control. As Julian of Norwich wrote: “All is well, and all manner of things will be well.”
The question is: “How does this affect us?” As we consider the kingdom of God, there are four major truths we need to understand. To begin with, the reality of the kingdom of God affects us in two ways: individually and globally. The first point I wish to make is that: The kingdom of God transforms us individually. The problem with the people of Jesus’ day was that they supposed that the Messiah’s kingdom would only be national in scope. It would be political in nature and transform their nation into a world power.
They were not much different from us were they? There are some who think that the kingdom of God will come with the election of a president who will come closest to our political views of what is important for the nation. We put our hope in a political leader as much as they did. We place our confidence in a person, or the military power of the state, rather than placing our confidence in God and the power of reaching out in his name to the poor and disenfranchised of the world. I do not believe that the answer to our nation’s problems lie within either political party, but in the repentance and transformed lives of the nation’s people. And when our loyalties to a particular political party come before our loyalty to the kingdom of God and the people of that kingdom, then we may know for sure that our confidence has been misplaced.
Can you imagine the Christians of the early church placing their hope in the Roman empire? Do you think they dreamed of having a Christian Caesar, laws based on the Bible or political leaders who based their decisions on the teachings of Jesus? That would have been a laughable thought. They saw themselves as being a kingdom within a kingdom. The problem for them was surviving the persecution of the government and not being the next meal for a hungry lion. Jesus’ disciples fled when he was arrested because they assumed they would be crucified along with him. Their hope was not in Rome eventually getting the picture and becoming a Christian empire; their hope was in the God who was transforming the world one person at a time. Their hope was in the fact that they had a living Savior, and that the power of the Holy Spirit was available to them. They knew their experience with God had transformed their lives and they believed, without a doubt, that it could transform others.
The Bible says, “Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20-21). Within you. The Kingdom is not in Washing D. C., it is within you. Within you resides the power of the Universe. You have a Kingdom within.
How does this happen? It happens when we accept God’s invitation to be a part of his Kingdom. Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3). Just as you have had a physical birth, so you must have a spiritual birth. We become subjects of a kingdom within a kingdom. We are a part of the kingdom of this world, but our allegiance is to another Kingdom. Mother Theresa once said, “By blood and origin, I am all Albanian. My citizenship is Indian. I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the whole world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to Jesus.”
The second point is that: The kingdom of God transforms the world. The kingdom of which we are a part is not just for our private enjoyment, and neither can the church just become a little holy club where we insulate ourselves and become separate from the world. This is too big to be kept to ourselves. It is not just about you and Jesus. The kingdom of God goes against the radical individualism of our culture. When you belong to Christ, you become a person for the world. You become a part of the larger community. You are here to make a difference in the world. Paul wrote: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). It is frightening to realize that God’s plan is to reconcile the world to himself and use us to bring about that reconciliation. But what could be a higher honor or privilege?
There is hopelessness in the world. There is injustice. If you just keep your life to yourself, you will never have a part in bringing Christ’s kingdom here on earth. You need to be a worldly Christian in the sense that you do not see yourself as separate from the world, but very much a part of it with a real responsibility to make this world God’s world. When God reigns and rules in our lives, we want to share what it has done for us and minister to a world which is living in confusion and despair.
Never in the New Testament do we see individual Christians operating separately from the church. Always we see Christians working together for the purpose of bringing the world to Christ. In the second chapter of the book of Acts, we see them selling everything they own in order to provide for the needs of others. They pool their resources and do not consider themselves to own anything. Their relationships with each other take on a new importance, as well as their responsibility toward the world. They are ministering to the poor and proclaiming good news to the outcasts.
An English visitor recently commented about U.S. churches, “You Americans are so concerned about being happy, as if our kingdoms were the focal point of God’s designs rather than God’s kingdom the focal point of ours.” When we begin to focus on the kingdom of God, we begin to focus on the world. It is not just about our personal faith, it is about being a community of faith which is faithful to God in reaching out to the world around us.
The third thing we need to consider is: The kingdom of God is Now. The kingdom of God is not in the distant future, it is now. When Jesus showed up on earth, the Kingdom had effectively come. That means that we don’t have to wait for eternity to experience heaven. If you have had your sins forgiven and you are living in loving obedience to Jesus, you are experiencing life at a level that those without him do not know. Once, as Jesus was ministering in the power of the Spirit, he said: “. . .the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). That is an amazing statement because he was proclaiming that the kingdom of God was already here. In the sermon on the mount, he said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). That was not a promise about the future, but a statement about the present.
After the resurrection, Jesus continued to emphasize the importance of the Kingdom. Luke writes: “After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). This idea of the present reign of God was preeminent on his mind. It was also on the mind of the apostles. When Paul was a prisoner in Rome, he was allowed to meet with people and preach. The book of Acts says, “From morning till evening he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God. . . .” (Acts 28:23).
Dallas Willard, in his book, The Spirit of Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives writes, “Spirituality in human beings is not an extra or ‘superior’ mode of existence. It’s not a hidden stream of separate reality, a separate life running parallel to our bodily existence. It does not consist of special ‘inward’ acts even though it has an inner aspect. It is, rather, a relationship of our embodied selves to God that has the natural and irrepressible effect of making us alive to the kingdom of God — here and now in the material world.”
Here is what this mean for us. The world is built on the principles of the kingdom of God. Live according to the principles of the Kingdom and you will discover that life works and your life is filled with certain blessings. Go against the principles of the kingdom of God and your life will experience everything from difficulty to disaster. God made the world, and he also built laws into it which determined the way we are to live. Every microscopic cell operates according to God’s design, as well as the farthest and largest star in space. What this means is that you may be an atheist and not believe in God, or a rebel who does not obey God, and it does not matter; you are still under those laws. You must obey the laws of God or invite disaster. You may not believe in God, but if you jump off a building which is 100 feet tall, you are going to die, because the physical law of gravity, which God has built into the universe, will prevail over your disbelief and rebellion. The moral laws of the universe work in the same way. For example, your body was made for marriage and sexual fidelity within that relationship. If you walk according to that moral law, you will discover that life works best that way. If you break that moral law, you will discover that there are not only diseased relationships that follow, but physical disease as well. Your body was made to obey the ten commandments and the teachings of Jesus. The whole world was made that way, because it is based on the kingdom of God. And, again, this is true whether you believe in Jesus and desire to obey him or not. We have the freedom to rebel against these kingdom principles, but we do not have the freedom to escape their consequences. You do not break God’s commandments, they break you — a fact which thoroughly frustrates those who do not wish to be under the reign of God. You can build your house upon the Rock or on the sand. But if you choose the sand your house will fall.
The principles of the Kingdom are a blessing that flow from the rule and reign of Christ. They are not confining rules, they are the liberating secrets of life itself. But living in the kingdom of God does not guarantee that things will always go well with us — anymore than it did for Jesus or Paul. Things will always go better when we live by the principles of the Kingdom, but they will not always go well. The book of Acts tells us that Paul worked to strengthen the disciples and encourage them to remain true to the faith by saying, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, professor at Duke University, says, “It’s hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of God’s new age, a kingdom of surprise.”
But this world is not all there is. There is more to come. The fourth point is: The kingdom of God is Not Yet. Part of the problem is that we keep expecting this world to be heaven. Sometimes this world is so close to heaven. We get a taste of it when we see a beautiful sunrise, walk through the woods on a Fall day, experience love, see a star-lit night, eat fresh peach pie, drink water straight from a spring or laugh with a child. But we don’t understand the reality that, even though we may have a taste of heaven here, there is more to come when the full realities of heaven will be realized. We have the privilege of living on this side of Easter, and that is Kingdom time. But the kingdom of heaven will not be experienced in its fullness until this present world, as we know it, is over. We are Easter people, and we believe that there will be a final resurrection, a judgment, the separation of good and evil and new heavens and a new earth. Wrongs will be righted; wounds will be healed; sorrow will be turned to joy, and we and the whole world will be changed, as the Bible puts it: “in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52). So we have much to look forward to. We have the Now, but we look forward to the Not Yet. God has something wonderful in store for us. The Bible talks about the time when: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).
On the final page of the final book of C. S. Lewis’ work entitled The Chronicles of Narnia, some of the children who have been to Narnia lament that they once again must return to their homeland. But Aslan (the lion who represents Jesus) has the best news of all for the children. “[Aslan speaks to the children and says,] ‘You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.’ Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’ ‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’ Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. ‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are — as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands — dead. The [school] term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream has ended; this is morning.’ And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Rodney J. Buchanan
October 24, 2004
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
The Kingdom of God
(Questions for October 24, 2004)
1. If you were a person living during the time of Jesus who expected the Messiah to be a military leader who would deliver the nation from Rome, how would you feel about him? What was Jesus’ actual purpose?
2. Read the stanza of the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” used in the sermon. What does this say about the kingdom of God?
3. What is your understanding of the kingdom of God?
4. What is Christ’s purpose in the world today?
5. Are atheists and moral rebels unaffected by the kingdom of God, or are they under God’s rule?
6. Read 2 Timothy 2:12. How does it affect you when you think that you are not only a part of a kingdom, but that you will rule in that kingdom?
7. Read 2 Corinthians 5:18-19. What are we to do as a part of the ministry of reconciliation?
8. Read Acts 2:42-47. How does this differ from the church today?
9. Why is it important for us to be in community with each other?
10. What are our responsibilities toward the world around us?
