The Kingdom

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Transcript:

All right. Well, you may have noticed that my voice was starting to give out at the end of the service this morning. And I don’t know that it’s any better now.

So I’m going to give you, tonight I’m going to give you the highlights of my notes. I’m going to kind of summarize and give you a few quick thoughts about the kingdom. I say that, watch me go 40 minutes tonight.

Ain’t no way. We’re going to look at the kingdom tonight, and I hope you don’t mind if we do get out of here a little bit early, but I’ve never heard anybody complain before that a sermon was too short. So we’re going to look at the kingdom tonight.

We’re going to start out in John chapter 18, if you turn with me there. If you have your handouts on the Baptist faith and message, we’re going to be on page 15 of that. Start on page 15 and John chapter 18.

It says here in section 9 of the Baptist faith and message, the kingdom of God includes both his general sovereignty over the universe and his particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge him as king. Particularly, the kingdom is the realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. Christians ought to pray and to labor that the kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth. the full consummation of the kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.

So what this is telling us is that there are two aspects of the kingdom and I guess I’m on the right track because this is what I’ve told people in the past that the kingdom is not only the fact that God reigns over all the universe whether we bow and acknowledge him as Lord or not, he’s still Lord. The interesting thing about being king is it’s not dependent upon my opinion, right? And so his kingdom, he rules over all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Sort of like the protesters right after Trump’s inauguration, and really right after Obama’s inauguration. You hear it every time. It doesn’t matter who’s in power.

Somebody starts harping, well, not my president. Well, yeah, well, he’s president of the United States, so I don’t know what to tell you. And give them a chance.

See what they’re going to do. But that’s always the, well, they’re not my president. Well, the fact is the Electoral College voted them into office and they’re whether you acknowledge it or not.

I can refuse to acknowledge that speed limits apply to me too, but that’ll work out real well when I’m tased on the ground. So God rules over the universe whether people want to acknowledge it or not. He is sovereign.

He is sovereign in such a way that he still allows us free will without his sovereignty being threatened. And I don’t fully understand how that works, but I see both principles being taught in Scripture, the sovereignty of God and him allowing us free will. But he is in particular, talks about his particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge him as king.

And even though he is sovereign over everything, there’s a particular aspect of his rule over those of us who acknowledge that we are his subjects, that we are his children. And so the kingdom, there’s the universal aspect of the kingdom, which is and one day will be visible, but isn’t yet. And then there’s the aspect of the kingdom where each of us are citizens of a kingdom who are wandering around here in a lesser, in a lower realm.

And it says here that particularly the kingdom is the realm of salvation. You and I enter into the kingdom when we trust Jesus Christ as our Savior. We’re going to talk about that in just a minute.

By trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. And we ought to pray and to labor that the kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth. I think some people misunderstand what that means, thy kingdom come. Some people are trying to build the kingdom of God here on earth in the sense that they’re trying to make the world into the kingdom of God in a way that only Jesus Christ can accomplish during his return.

And I see some conservative Christians trying to do this through legislation. They’re trying to build the kingdom in the sense that they’re trying to pass the right laws and restore the family and make everybody moral. I think it’s a great thing if we can strengthen our families and if we can encourage morality, but doing that without Christ does nothing for people. So trying to build a political kingdom is not the kingdom of God.

And then you’ve got some liberal churches that are trying to build the kingdom because they say, well, we’ve got to take care of the environment, we’ve got to have all these programs for the poor, we’ve got to do all this, and there’s nothing wrong with not polluting, there’s nothing wrong with taking care of the poor, But this idea that you can build a perfect utopia before Jesus Christ returns, I think both sides of this are misguided and they’ve misunderstood because Jesus himself said that his kingdom was not an earthly one. His kingdom was not an earthly one. And where we’re going to be in John chapter 18, you’ll see this.

And it even says here, the full consummation of the kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age. So we’re supposed to work to build the kingdom. And by that, I believe that means we’re supposed to bring more people into the kingdom of salvation, or we’re supposed to work toward that end.

Only God can bring them into salvation. But we’re supposed to work toward that, and we’re supposed to pray toward that. But as far as building this perfect utopian kingdom, it’s never going to happen until Jesus Christ returns.

So let’s look at John chapter 18. John chapter 18, just a couple of verses here. Jesus is being tried by Pilate, Pontius Pilate.

And he’s being asked questions by Pilate. Pilate answers, am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you to me.

What have you done? So he’s questioning Jesus. Jesus asks questions back.

And Pilate basically asks, why should I have to answer to you? He said, you’re the one here to answer to charges. What have you done?

And Jesus answered, look at this, verse 36 of John chapter 18. My kingdom is not of this world. And see, that was part of the reason he was headed to the cross in the first place.

Actually, his reason for being on the cross is because that was God’s plan all along. But part of what caused the Jews to want to put him there is because they were expecting an earthly Messiah, somebody who was going to come restore the golden age of Israel and kick the Romans out. They were not looking for somebody who was going to say, no, the Romans don’t matter.

Mine is a spiritual kingdom and claimed to be the Son of God. They weren’t happy with that. Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. Now my kingdom is not from here.

He said, If I had come to build an earthly kingdom, don’t you think my followers would fight for the kingdom? That’s how you built a kingdom. You raised an army, and you went to war.

And you conquered other kingdoms, and you strengthened your kingdom, and you extended your rule. And that’s not what Jesus had ever been about. As a matter of fact, at the moment of his arrest, at the moment of his arrest in the garden, Peter is so incensed at the thought that these authorities had come to arrest Jesus that he pulls his sword, he draws his sword, and he chops off the ear of the high priest’s servant.

Jesus, if his was an earthly kingdom, Jesus would have said to Peter, you know, good job, go get him. And this would have been the start of the uprising, where Jesus not only overthrows the Romans, but overthrows the religious authorities there. But instead, Jesus told Peter, put your sword away.

And then he goes and he picks up the guy’s ear and puts it back on and heals him. Because Jesus didn’t come as a king to conquer an earthly kingdom. Jesus came as a king to save his spiritual kingdom.

So we need to understand the kingdom of God is not an earthly kingdom. And I think we are called to engage the culture. I think we’re called to expand the kingdom where we can.

I think we’re called to work on behalf of our king. But nothing about that is meant to build a utopia on earth. Jesus didn’t come to reform society.

Although I think you can apply gospel principles and it has a good impact on society. I think infanticide was ended in the Roman Empire because of the Christians. I think women were elevated in the Roman Empire because of the Christians.

And ultimately it was the abolitionist movement led by Christians that abolished slavery, not only in the British Empire, but in America. I think we can apply Jesus’ principles and get a good outcome. Jesus’ message was ultimately not about reforming society and building a kingdom here on earth.

It was about men being reconciled to God and being welcomed into the spiritual kingdom. So my first note tonight is that the kingdom of God is not an earthly kingdom. But to explain a little bit more about what it is, the second is that the kingdom is the rule of God in the hearts of his people.

And for that, we’re going to go to John chapter 3. Again, it’s not necessarily my favorite thing to say we’re going to take multiple passages and we’re going to look at one passage per topic. But sometimes in something so broad as trying to explain the whole concept of the kingdom, that’s what you have to do.

John chapter 3, starting in verse 1, There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

So he says to him that you cannot get into the kingdom of God without being born again. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?

And Jesus answered, Most assuredly, I say unto you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. So what he tells Nicodemus is, if you want to be in the kingdom of God, you’ve got to come into it spiritually.

you’ve got to enter into this relationship with God where you are born again and when we’re born again it means we are born spiritually and we are born into God’s family where we are his adopted sons and daughters now through what Jesus Christ has done for us and so you and I in so far as we’re in the kingdom tonight we’re in the kingdom because of the spiritual change that has come to us through Jesus Christ We’re in the kingdom if we’ve been born again. We don’ get and into the kingdom of his Son. And that word translate means to pick us up and move us somewhere else.

And so what God does is he pulls us out of the kingdom of darkness and through Jesus Christ brings us into his kingdom. So if we want to see the kingdom of God, it’s the rule that God has in the hearts of his people when he has changed us spiritually and brought us into that kingdom through Jesus Christ. We have to be born again. And so we’ve got this idea of the spiritual kingdom, the kingdom that is not of this world, the invisible kingdom, if you want to put it that way.

But there are all these prophecies that, you know, if that’s all there is, then we don’t know what to do with all these prophecies and all these things where he talks about the kingdom, and it sounds more visible. And I know some people, and I don’t fault them, I know some good Christian people, I know some good Baptist people who have said, well, all of those are just symbolic. They’re what we call amillennial. They don’t believe in the literal millennium, the reign of Christ for a thousand years.

I respect these people. I disagree with them on that. I think the Bible does speak of a time when the kingdom of God will become visible on earth, not just invisible and in the hearts of his people, but visible on the earth.

But that can’t happen without Jesus Christ. How do you have a kingdom without a king present? Alexander the Great. We’ve talked about him some here.

You know, God told Daniel that Alexander was going to come conquer this massive empire. He’d come after the Persians. Alexander conquered a massive empire that went from Greece all the way to India and from Persia down to Egypt.

Just a massive empire. And he ruled this thing for something like 13 years. from the time he took over from his dad to the time that he died.

He was barely cold and in the ground yet. His kingdom has fallen apart. For that big of a kingdom, it took a big king to hold it together.

And his generals who came up after him, because he didn’t have a successor, his generals who came up after him just weren’t up to the task. Now, you and I are not up to the task of holding the kingdom together. And that takes a great king.

And for the kingdom to come in a visible way, in a visible rule over the earth, is going to require the king to be here. So we turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6. 1 Timothy chapter 6.

And folks, there are so many. I would encourage you to go do some research on the kingdom yourself. We could do a whole series over the kingdom.

There’s so much that the Bible says. And one of the great places to start is if you have Bible software at home. And there are some places you can get it for free.

There’s a site called theword. net. And they have Bible software that is free, and it’s what I use.

If you have a Mac, it’s a little harder to download, but it can be done. If you have Windows, it works perfectly. It’s what I’ve used for years in study and sermon preparation, theword.

net. They have two books on there called Torrey’s Topical Textbook and Nave’s Topical Bible. And what these do is they’re each a little different, but they list all these categories.

And you can go to Kingdom, and it’ll list every, as far as they could find it, every passage in the Bible that talks about the kingdom. And they may even have subsections. It may say Kingdom, comma, of God.

It may say kingdom, of heaven, which by the way, I know those are different terms, but when Jesus talks about in some gospels the kingdom of God and in other gospels the kingdom of heaven, he’s basically talking about the same thing. But I’d encourage you to go read some. I’m presenting you with a very generalized view tonight.

I would encourage you to go read some of those passages, and you may be able to find those listed elsewhere, But go into the Word Bible software. That’s an easy place to start. You can look it up in the concordance in the back of your Bible.

Look up some of these verses that deal with the kingdom. Read them for yourself because there’s so much information that God gives us. But in 1 Timothy 6, we’re going to look at verses 14, 15, and 16.

And Paul is writing to Timothy. He’s ending the letter. And he says that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, which he will manifest in his own time, he who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power forever.

Everlasting power, amen. I added forever. He talks about Jesus Christ, and he tells Timothy that he wants him to remain blameless until Jesus Christ returns.

And as he’s talking about Jesus Christ appearing, returning, he says that he’ll come in his own time, and he will be the blessed and only potentate. And the word potentate means an earthly ruler. That word potent means strong.

So a potentate is somebody who has a lot of strength, a lot of majesty. It’s not a weak ruler. But he’s the blessed and only potentate.

And we will one day see him for who he is. The king of kings and lord of lords, who alone has immortality. And you and I know that he has that role.

You and I know that he is the king of kings and lord of lords. We know that he’s the blessed and only potentate. We know that he’s the sovereign over all things.

And yet there’s going to come a day when he will appear. When he will appear, when he will return. and the whole world will know him as we, the whole world will see him the way we see him.

And in that day, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father. One day, the kingdom will show up in the visible rule of God.