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August 08, 2004
The Kingdom of God is at Hand
The Kingdom of God is at Hand
Psalm 91 / Lamentations 3: 22-33
Mark 1: 14-20
August 8th, 2004
The next three weeks the preaching part of our worship will focus on the Kingdom of God. I have two reasons for this. First, we think far too little about the Kingdom of God. It is the big picture in which everything we do hopefully plays a small part. We need to remember the big picture.
Second, this month we are focusing more than usual on ministries beyond our local church that we help to sustain. Part of our worship hour will include reports from ministries we support. Why do we do this? It is because we believe the Kingdom of God is larger than our local fellowship.
I hope to see Faith Church increase its involvement in the work of the Kingdom of God beyond us. To whom much is given, much is required. We have been given much in many ways. Our financial strength far exceeds the resources of other parts of the world. We should give generously. But we pray too. Prayer is the link between parts of the Kingdom of God as well as with God. When we pray we participate seriously with God in His work with others.
Beyond this, you have sent me to teach in Zambia and Colombia, and others of you too have gone to help the work of the Kingdom of God in Haiti, Mexico, Benin, and elsewhere. I hope these interactions in the Kingdom elsewhere will increase.
But these other places have been given much too that they share. The participation is not all one way, from rich to poor countries. Perhaps you have noticed that each time I come back from a ministry overseas, so far to Zambia and to Colombia, that I come back with my batteries recharged. Christians in these places shared with me their intensity. I reflected this to you. This interaction between sectors of the Kingdom of God nourishes us all.
The underlying theme of the entire Bible is that this world belongs to God. In the beginning God formed this world, creating it in beauty so that He said, “It is very good.” Here we see the boundary of the Kingdom of God. It encompasses everyone, everything, everywhere.
What went wrong that God’s world should today be so mired with violence, with moral rot, with epochal sickness and sadness? I should have thought that Genesis 1 would have been the first page of a story of gradually increasing joy in God’s creation. Why did not God create all things, declare it all very good, and then settle back to watch the eighth day of creation unravel in ascending joy?
It has not been a story of ascending joy. The very idea of the Kingdom of God presumes that there has been another kingdom not of God. The story of the human race, oddly enough, is a story of the violent battle going on between the Kingdom of God and the princedom of the Prince of this world.
The story of Israel tells of God’s special work to win this battle. He used Israel, a small, powerless people as the vanguard to reclaim a fallen humanity. How strange were God’s tactics.
We read from the Book of Lamentations this morning. Jeremiah wrote it with tears streaming from his eyes as he saw the final vestige of the old Kingdom of Israel taken captive. The Kingdom of Judah, the southern, smaller part of the kingdom once presided over by David was exiled in Babylon. Jerusalem’s broken streets were vacant and weeds grew in their cracks. Jeremiah began: “How lonely sits the city that was full of people, Judah has gone into exile . . . she dwells among the nations, but finds no resting place.”
Despite this and much else that the prophet wrote in his despair, Terry read for us words with a far different tone. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” We often remember these words on Wednesday morning when we gather to pray. They apply to us as much as to God’s ancient people. “Though the wrong seem oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” And God’s reign is full of mercy. It never ends.
Throughout the history of God’s people, Israel, after the exile the constant refrain echoed of trust that God would restore the fortunes of Israel. The Jews always thought of this in terms of the restoration of the Kingdom of David—to whom God had promised, “My steadfast love I will keep for him for ever, and my covenant will stand firm for him.” “His line shall endure for ever, his throne as long as the sun before me.”
The years went by in which Israel languished in exile but the hope never died that God would fulfill this promise. It was during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus, that the feeling started to grow among the Jews that God was about to do something immanently. When you read the Gospel of Matthew and Luke that tell of the birth of Jesus, remember you are reading the words of Jews who recognized the mysterious events surrounding the peasant woman, Mary, and Joseph, a carpenter of the tribe of Judah, David’s tribe. God was quietly, even surreptitiously fulfilling the promise to King David of an enduring king from his family line.
The magi saw an unusual star in the East and God told these non-Jewish wise men that it stood for the birth of the King of the Jews. Why should this have interested them since they weren’t Jews? It did interest them. It resonated with them as more than an event of interest to Jews. They were wise enough to know this King of the Jews born in Palestine had pertinence to the whole world. That’s why they brought gifts befitting royalty and bowed before the toddler Jesus. This took place in troubled times. Herod, Rome’s client king over the Jews, was a paranoid, vengeful man. It was a dark day to be a little boy.
When the baby Jesus was born, God was starting a momentum that needed this time of deep darkness. A tiny light began to shine, a light Herod could not quench, that would grow in splendor in unusual ways. John wrote, “We saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Not full of power and the vestiges of human empire, but full of grace and truth.
Thirty years went by during which Jesus, having survived Herod’s infanticide, lived quietly in Nazareth, seen by neighbors and townsfolk as just another good lad in town. Then one day he left home and went south into the Judean desert to hear a man preach who happened to be His cousin. He stood in line with all sorts of people who wanted to change their ways, and submitted to baptism in the Jordan River at the hands of John the Baptist. Jesus was baptized as though he was a just another sinner, so thoroughly did he identify with people’s deepest need.
Then He came back home to Galilee in the north and started to say, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” What time was fulfilled? He didn’t have to explain. People knew what time. It was the time that filled everyone’s longing, the time when God would fulfill the promise to King David to ignite again the Kingdom of God. The ancient Israelites thought of David’s kingdom as far more than another earthly kingdom. It represented the reign of God—the Creator of heaven and earth who presided between the outstretched wings of the cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant. This Ark was at the heart of the Temple in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city.
When Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is at hand,” He meant it has drawn near. It had seemed far away. In fact, it seemed God had forgotten about it. But now it had drawn near. But the Kingdom drew near without the conspicuous signs of earthly dominion.
The only signs of the Kingdom of God’s drawing near were to be seen in the person of Jesus—so far. And mostly the blind noticed, and the lame, and the seriously ill.
Remember what blind Bartemaeus said, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” How did he know Jesus was a descendent of King David?
When he opened the eyes of the blind it was a sign fulfilling the promise of the prophet Isaiah, “Behold your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy.”
Even though these were the kinds of signs the prophet Isaiah promised, the Jews looked for a conquering king, one to overthrow the Romans. No wonder. They were profoundly weary of being under the yoke of a succession of foreign governments. But this was not Jesus’ intent. He did not stand against Rome. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” He taught. He did, as the prophet said would happen. He healed the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the dumb. His kingdom would conquer by stooping not by overwhelming.
When Jesus died on the cross it seemed that the flash of promise that appeared in the life of Jesus was a false hope. How could a dead Jesus restore the Kingdom to Israel? Indeed, Jesus did crush the hope that Israel would be restored to the highly romanticized glory days of King David. His power was not the ordinary kind that wins momentary battles and loses wars. He made no attempt to overwhelm all competitors for world domination. He had a greater project that winning over temporary governments.
When Jesus died He not only conquered death and sin—a victory we must trust took place since people still sin and die, He showed us the direction of our participation in the conquest of the Kingdom of God. To share in the triumph we have to share in the battle, trusting that the outcome is secure. God triumphed on the cross, but we wait to see the fruits of this victory. As Paul wrote, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” As John wrote in his first epistle, “And this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” A strange victory many would say.
Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ,” and in saying this, he showed how he understood the conquest of the human heart must happen. He said this not just as a personal statement, but to teach everyone who reads these words how we take part in Jesus’ invincible campaign against the powers of evil.
“Come learn of me,” Jesus said. And his disciples did that. They watched Jesus walk about Palestine interacting with Jews and Samaritans, with people the Jews referred to as “dogs,” with Roman centurions who represented Rome’s hated domination—extending to all the tenderest care. And when Jesus was about to leave His disciples, He told them to carry on. He meant not only that they should speak the words of the Gospel but also that they should do as He did as an exhibit of the reign of God.
Bishop Wright has observed, I think rightly, that Christians have focused much more on why Jesus died than on why Jesus lived. Following Jesus means not just claiming the forgiveness of sin brought to us by His death, but deliberately trying to follow in His footsteps, as we see Him walking in the first century, in the twenty-first century in which we live. We are afraid that too much emphasis on Jesus’ life looks like “works righteousness.”
In I Peter we read a very picturesque description of what a Christian is to do. He uses a word in calling Jesus our example, taken from an elementary school classroom where a teacher is helping children learn to write. The teacher writes the letters clearly and then has the students trace over the letters as he has written them. By tracing over the letters the student learns to write them as the teacher does. We are to trace over the life of Jesus in a twenty-first century context.
When Jesus told His disciples and their followers to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel,” it is unthinkable that He meant to divide His death from His life. The reason why we bother with the needs of University Church in its ministry to Purdue students, or with The Theological College of Central Africa in Zambia, or with the Biblical Seminary in Medelllin, Colombia is because we believe the life of Jesus as well as well as the death of Jesus is important in these places. We want TJ Jenney and Will Miller to represent the life of Jesus well as well as to proclaim the death of Jesus from the pulpit. When Paul tells us that we are “saved by his life,” it has to do with the actual tracing out of His life, and not just with proclaiming heaven yet to come.
So think on these things as you listen to the ones who will speak to us these next four weeks. And ponder how you will trace over Jesus’ life in your daily life. Jesus calls you and me to present not only the message of His death but also the message of His life—evident as we trace over it. Then, we realize our calling is not just to where we live, but also beyond where we live, in fact, to the whole world.
I pray that God will help us to understand this. I pray that God will help me to understand this more clearly. I pray that we as a people may discover the joy of participating as fully as we can in the wholehearted spread of the Gospel—its tracing over of Jesus’ life, and its proclamation of His victorious death and resurrection.
Let us pray: O Lord, Grant us the will and the determination to take our part in your project of restoring your sovereignty over life in this world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at August 8, 2004 09:30 AM