The Secret Message of Jesus May 28, 2006
Matthew 13:1-23
I’ll let you in on a secret.
The secret message of Jesus isn’t found in some lost manuscript found recently in the Egyptian desert. The secret message of Jesus isn’t found in an old Da Vinci painting, or a book by Dan Brown. The secret message of Jesus is not being guarded by some secret society who will release it when all the planets are aligned. The secret message of Jesus is hiding in plain sight, right in the New Testament.
The secret is… wait for it…. The Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ secretive talk of the Kingdom
If you go on to Biblegateway.com and type in kingdom, you’ll get all the times kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven occurs in the New Testament.
Jesus never gives a good definition of the kingdom, he instead talks in metaphors: the kingdom of heaven is like a woman who lost coin, an shepherd who lost a sheep, a father who lost a son; the kingdom is like a treasure buried in a field, a pearl of great worth, like seed in a field, yeast in dough, a net in the sea… And even then, he doesn’t much say what the kingdom is, he speaks more about how to enter or join the kingdom, or how to miss it rather than what it looks like when we do enter.
Let me read one of these metaphors to you. We usually call them parables
Parable of the sower: Matthew 13:1-23
It’s amazing, when the disciples ask why Jesus speaks in parables rather than in clear, definitive statements, his answer is “because it is a secret!”
We often say that Jesus talked in parables or metaphors and illustrations because he was such a good teacher: people understand your point so much better if it is connected to a story. But Jesus himself says that he tells stories so that the people who don’t get it won’t get it, and the people that do, will.
There are a few stories that he tells that are there for the people who don’t get it. He tells on story of people who are supposed to look after a vineyard, but instead they rebel and try to take it over for themselves. The religious leaders of the day suddenly get his stories and the say “hey, he’s talking about us!”
In Matthew 13:11, Jesus is basically saying, “If you are into what God is doing, you’ll get this, if you’re not, it’s going to fly right over your head (in the mouth of some birds). In fact, the parable itself is about who will receive the message of the kingdom, and who won’t get it at all. There are some for whom the message bounces right off: when you talk to them about the kingdom, their eyes glaze over: as a friend of mine used to say “I keep pitching ‘em, you keep miss’n ‘em.”
Some people are really entertained by all these Kingdom stories, they like the feel it gives them, but they don’t do anything about it.
For others, they like the sound of this whole kingdom of God thing, they sign up for it, lock, stock and barrel, but when they realize that it’s going to cost them, it no longer sounds so good, and they unsubscribe. The goodness of the kingdom remains a secret to them.
The last group (you want to be in this group) accept the message, they get it, and the parts they don’t get can be worked out later. They enter the kingdom.
So what is the Kingdom of God, and is it still a secret?
In Jesus day, when he used the words “the Kingdom of Heaven” the people who were listening at least thought they knew what he was talking about.
Because of the command not to use the name of the Lord in vain, Jews were reticent to say “god” at all, so they often substituted “heaven” when they meant “God” So the Kingdom of heaven was the kingdom of God and visa versa. The Kingdom of heaven was a time when God would be king once again. For some, this meant ridding the nation of Israel of outside forces like the Romans, for others it included a renewal of religious piety, where everyone obeyed God’s rules in the way that they interpreted them. For Jesus’ contemporaries the Kingdom of heaven always involved a specific geography, and a specific ethnic group: both of those being Israel. The kingdom of heaven included spiritual renewal, economic renewal, social and cultural renewal and a great peace. It might be better to say God’s reign, or what things look like when God’s in charge.
One of my favorite descriptions of the Kingdom is found in Isaiah 65. Here it is in Eugene Peterson’s translation:
New Heavens and a New Earth
"Pay close attention now:
I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain
are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Look ahead with joy.
Anticipate what I’m creating:
I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy,
create my people as pure delight.
I’ll take joy in Jerusalem,
take delight in my people:
No more sounds of weeping in the city,
no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle,
or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime;
One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal—
anything less will seem like a cheat.
They’ll build houses
and move in.
They’ll plant fields
and eat what they grow.
No more building a house
that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields
that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won’t work and have nothing come of it,
they won’t have children snatched out from under them.
For they themselves are plantings blessed by God,
with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.
Before they call out, I’ll answer.
Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough,
but snakes—they’ll get a diet of dirt!
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
anywhere on my Holy Mountain," says God.
Sounds good eh?
Brian McLaren, in his book, (from which I stole the title of these series from): The Secret Message of Jesus. Says that we, in our culture don’t get the concept of Kingdom very well. We don’t have very many functioning kings or queens in our world today. So, he makes some suggestions of words that might speak to what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of the kingdom and when he told us to prays saying “Your kingdom come, your will be done.
The Dream of God – the way God wants things to be
The Revolution of God – the movement that takes down the totalitarian system of lust, pride, power, prejudice, consumerism & greed. And replaces it with a system of true freedom and shalom.
The Mission of God
The Party of God – in three stories in Luke Jesus says, “the kingdom of God is like a party.”
The Network of God – community, ecosystem…
The Dance of God
All of these words might help us in understanding what Jesus is getting at when he talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, the help us “get” the secret.
Many of the people in Jesus day didn’t get the secret because the ideas that they had about the Kingdom of God loomed too large in front of their eyes to be able to see what the Son of God was saying
The Kingdom of God also involved a specific moment in time when everything would be changed. It maybe a process, like the rising up of a powerful messiah who would usher in the kingdom of God by military means, but it’s not happening until that point. By having that point in the future that they looked forward to, they didn’t have to take the present as seriously. We get in trouble this way in our own lives – we are waiting for something big to happen to change a certain behavior – “I’ll start spending more time with the kids when work is less crazy,” “I’ll think about looking after the environment when it becomes more convenient.” “I’ll quite smoking when I’m not under so much stress.” “When the Kingdom comes, then you’ll be impressed by how I act!”
This is the part of the secret that Jesus shares with the people that get it. He says the kingdom of God is upon you. The Messiah has come: the kingdom is now. All the things you said you would do when the Kingdom came, well it is here, so start doing them. We are not waiting for pie in the sky by and by when I die – the kingdom is now.
We don’t have to wait until the Romans are kicked out for the kingdom to come; the Kingdom is now.
We don’t have to wait until Israel’s borders are back to the days of David and Solomon; the kingdom is now.
We don’t have to wait until all our neighbours start to behave themselves; the kingdom is now.
The message is not as easy to receive as you might think – as long as you are waiting for the messiah to come, or the oppressors to leave, or everyone else to get their act together, you don’t have to get yours together! Jesus says, the kingdom is here, it is among you, start to live in the kingdom.
The Kingdom of God
What Jesus taught about the kingdom is still a secret today – not that He is keeping it a secret – it’s hiding in plain sight in the scripture if we have eyes to see and ears to hear; but it remains hidden in the church.
Where has the secret been hiding?
The secret has been hiding behind things that are true and right, but loom so large in the eyes of the church, that we miss the kingdom
The Kingdom Hides Behind individual Salvation.
We, in the evangelical church, focus a lot on the fact that Jesus died for my sins, for your sins, and for the sins of all the other individuals out there. He did! People have said that if you were the only one in the world that needed salvation through the forgiveness of your sins, Jesus still would have died for you. I love serving communion when I can say to some of you, “The blood of Christ shed for YOU.”
We place such a strong emphasis on individual salvation because we each need to receive the salvation as individuals – we don’t receive the kingdom because we are born into a Christian family, or a Christian country, we must walk through the door ourselves.
But because of this emphasis on individual salvation, we have missed the bigger plan, and that is the salvation of the cosmos.
Our favorite verse says this:
16"For God so loved the world (THE COSMOS!) that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
John 3:16-17
This is Romans 8:19 says
19The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved.
People who protest against abuses committed by the police turn the motto “To serve and protect” back on the police and ask “To serve and protect WHO?” People could do the same for us and ask the question “saved for what?” Did Jesus save you so that he would have a nice collection of souls in heaven?
No! it is for the hope of bringing all of creation into the freedom of the Kingdom that we are saved.
Don’t miss the secret; listen to the verse at the end of this great passage of salvation:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
- Ephesians 2:4-10
The Secret Also Hides Behind an Old Understanding of Heaven
Like the people of Jesus’ day, we see heaven as something that will happen some time in the future, and for many of us, in a completely different dimension. Heaven begins after you die, eternal life begins immediately after you draw your last breath. There is some truth in this, there is life after death, but it is not separated from this world: what we look forward to is a resurrected body living on a renewed earth, a time when the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. But if all we see is that future hope, we lose our part in the action. We just wait for the rescue that heaven sounds like, or that eternal life promises, we miss the kingdom of God that is hear and now.
If the kingdom is a revolution, right now the revolution is not complete, we are supposed to be like subversive cells, living the values, the ways, the dream of the kingdom until it comes in its fullness. Paul tells Timothy to “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” 1 Timothy 6:12
He says to the Philippians:
12Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13
I did a mountain bike race yesturday. There’s a kids race that they run in the afternoon. The kids get participant t-shirts, and prizes. My kids did it, and a friend of ours was trying to convince her kids to do it too. Casey declared that she wanted the t-shirt, but she didn’t want to do the race. Isn’t that the way we can be as Christians? We want the t-shirt without going in the race – we want the Kingdom without ever living for it. But we actually signed up for the race, not the t-shirt. The t-shirt is just a bonus!
The Kingdom can get hidden, but don’t miss it – it is the dream of God
This is the Secret message of Jesus: The Kingdom of Heaven.
This is what we will be looking at over the next month.
