This morning I did one of the most ludicrous things that I've ever attempted in my short time as a preacher. My church is in the middle of a sermon series titled "Why Jesus?", and we are talking about why Jesus is God's answer to the world. Specifically, we're asking questions like "Why was Jesus born?", "Why did Jesus die?" and "Why did Jesus resurrect?" This morning, the topic was "Why did Jesus live?", and so I undertook in one sermon to talk about how Jesus' life and ministry inaugurated the "kingdom of God."
That topic is much to big for a single sermon. Jesus spent three years talking about the kingdom of God, and I tried to do it in half an hour.
When I started working on my sermon, I really had no idea where to start. So I did something that can be helpful whenever you're preaching or teaching on a big topic like this. I printed off a list of all the verses that include the phrase "kingdom of God" or "kingdom of heaven," and I went through and wrote a couple words next to each one to note what each is saying about the kingdom. Pretty soon, certain trends start to emerge. Of course, there are certain limitations to this type of study, since a passage doesn't need to specifically mention the phrase "kingdom of God" in order to be communicating something about the kingdom. But it's a good place to start, at least. And while I realized that there was no way it could all make it into my sermon, I did think, "This wouldn't make a bad series of blog posts." And so that's what I'll be doing for a while--sharing some of the truths that came from my brief observations in these passages.
I remember that for a long time, whenever I read about the kingdom of God in the Bible, I always assumed it was just another way of speaking about heaven. That the kingdom of God is where Christian go when they die. And thus, it was a future reality. Something spiritual, vague, and ethereal that would be later on, and thus something that didn't have that much bearing on my life right now.
But one of the most noticeable themes concerning God's kingdom (that is, God's reign on earth) is that the kingdom is imminent. It's near. In the ministry and person of Jesus, it was already breaking into the world. We see this when Jesus begins his preaching ministry. Mark 1:14-15 says, "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." These are the first words that show up in red ink my Bible. As far as Mark is concerned, these are the first words of Jesus. That suggests that what he says here, this "gospel" that he proclaims, is going to set the tone for the rest of his ministry. And what is that gospel? It's the the kingdom is at hand. The kingdom is coming to earth in Christ. The word translated "is at hand" (εγγιζω) is in a tense that suggests an event that has already occurred but has continuing implications. When Jesus is preaching, the kingdom has come.
Luke 17:20-21 makes this even more clear. The Pharisees come to Jesus and ask, "When is the kingdom of God coming?" He responds by saying, "The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you." The Pharisees had been looking in a pot on the stove, waiting for the kingdom to start bubbling up, but they didn't realize that it was already boiling all around them. They were expecting to drive down the highway and see a sign saying "Kingdom of God: 45 miles," but they had already reached the location.
The kingdom of God exists, at least in part, now. It was inaugurated in the life and death of Jesus. Wherever people have oriented their lives toward God and are living as thought God is on the throne, that's where the kingdom is. If the kingdom were purely future, I could dismiss it as having no present-day relevance. But if the kingdom is now, and if God is on the throne now, and if I'm invited to be a citizen of this kingdom now...then that changes everything.
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